Harmonics Theory, Part 11: Flow of Energy

by Ray Tomes

Harmonics Theory: Flow of Energy

This blog series from FSC Science Director Ray Tomes shares the fundamentals of physics in layman's terms, showing how present theory must inevitably lead to all waves losing energy and forming harmonically related waves. The end result is a very specific detailed structure that matches the observed universe and explains many previously mysterious observations. This series was previously published.

Flow of Energy

These patterns help to see what is going on as regards how strong or energetic each harmonic is and its relation to others, but they do not make clear why it happens. For an understanding of why this happens it is helpful to look at the flow of energy between harmonics as described in the harmonics axiom. Each harmonic loses energy to exact multiples of that harmonic.

The following diagram does not attempt to be an exact representation or to show every harmonic and every flow of energy, just the flows to multiples, 2, 3, 4, and 6. Remember that more energy flows to the lower harmonics, especially 2 times. The thickness of the blue lines is representative of the amount of energy flowing. Those harmonics with little input obviously must have corresponding output.

The diagram does show that even though energy is mostly lost from harmonic 1 along the first line and only a small proportion goes downwards, eventually that proportion accumulates because it never comes back upwards. So by the time we get to 8 the next line at 24 is already stronger. Further along the leakage has made the third line predominate and so on. The green circles show the strongest harmonics which are called the main line.

Remember that some energy is also going to ratios other than 2, 3, 4 and 6 as shown here. Some of these ratios are within the diagram such as 8, 12, 16, 24, 9 ... but the direction of travel of energy is always from left to right and top to bottom. The extra flows not shown include 5, 10, 15 and others with the ratio 5. To include these in the diagram we would need to include a third dimension, putting another layer below the first with harmonics 5 times higher and another with 25 times higher. Such a diagram would then show why eventually the families related by ratios of 3 also fall away, because the family with one ratio of 5 then takes over in the main line.

Between these different ways of looking at things it should now be clear that although the initial assumptions of the harmonics theory are extremely simple, the pattern of energy made by harmonic number, or frequency, is quite elaborate. The question to be ultimately asked is whether that elaborate pattern bears any relationship to the real world around us. If it doesn't then this exercise would still be interesting in terms of mathematics and music but would not have served its purpose which is to explain the structural scales at which the universe manifests energy.

Before looking at these relationships to the universe it is necessary to look at extremely large harmonics, going not just up to a million but through more than 170 octaves to numbers with over fifty digits in them. This is required because the scales of the universe that have been observed range from tens of billion light years down to around 10^-17 metres which is below the scale of naturally (at least in our little corner of the universe) occurring sub-atomic particles. The ratio between these extremes is about 10^43 and we cannot just assume that the largest scale so far observed is the size of the universe, because the distance that we have observed to keeps on going up over time.