This statement is fully applicable to the topic of Essay Contest 2012.
I do not intend to participate in this competition,but would be read with great interest the essay "Gravity as a force of interaction is wrong assumption?"
T H Ray replied on May. 26, 2012 @ 21:55 GMT
"But some implications could prove absurd, and then the assumption is false (provided all other assumptions are true). In my view, the implication that an arbitrarily long object can be trapped inside an arbitrarily short container is absurd:"
Only if one doesn't know relativity. The relative states of motion of these hypothetical objects are symmetrical. Taking ALL of Baez's explanation,...
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"But some implications could prove absurd, and then the assumption is false (provided all other assumptions are true). In my view, the implication that an arbitrarily long object can be trapped inside an arbitrarily short container is absurd:"
Only if one doesn't know relativity. The relative states of motion of these hypothetical objects are symmetrical. Taking ALL of Baez's explanation, instead of your selective cutting and pasting, this is clear:
"These are the props. You own a barn, 40m long, with automatic doors at either end, that can be opened and closed simultaneously by a switch. You also have a pole, 80m long, which of course won't fit in the barn.
Now someone takes the pole and tries to run (at nearly the speed of light) through the barn with the pole horizontal. Special Relativity (SR) says that a moving object is contracted in the direction of motion: this is called the Lorentz Contraction. So, if the pole is set in motion lengthwise, then it will contract in the reference frame of a stationary observer.
You are that observer, sitting on the barn roof. You see the pole coming towards you, and it has contracted to a bit less than 40m, in your reference frame. (Does it actually look shorter to you? See Can You See the Lorentz-Fitzgerald Contraction? for the surprising answer. But in any case, you would measure its length as a bit less than 40m.)
So, as the pole passes through the barn, there is an instant when it is completely within the barn. At that instant, you close both doors simultaneously, with your switch. Of course, you open them again pretty quickly, but at least momentarily you had the contracted pole shut up in your barn. The runner emerges from the far door unscathed.
But consider the problem from the point of view of the runner. She will regard the pole as stationary, and the barn as approaching at high speed. In this reference frame, the pole is still 80m long, and the barn is less than 20 meters long. Surely the runner is in trouble if the doors close while she is inside. The pole is sure to get caught.
Well does the pole get caught in the door or doesn't it? You can't have it both ways. This is the "Barn-pole paradox." The answer is buried in the misuse of the word "simultaneously" back in the first sentence of the story. In SR, that events separated in space that appear simultaneous in one frame of reference need not appear simultaneous in another frame of reference. The closing doors are two such separate events.
SR explains that the two doors are never closed at the same time in the runner's frame of reference. So there is always room for the pole. In fact, the Lorentz transformation for time is
t'=(t-v*x/c2)/sqrt(1-v2/c2)
It's the v*x term in the numerator that causes the mischief here. In the runner's frame the more distant event (larger x) happens earlier. The far door is closed first. It opens before she gets there, and the near door closes behind her. Safe again -- either way you look at it, provided you remember that simultaneity is not a constant of physics.
What if the doors are left shut?
If the doors are kept shut the rod will obviously smash into the barn door at one end. If the door withstands this the leading end of the rod will come to rest in the frame of reference of the stationary observer. There can be no such thing as a rigid rod in relativity so the trailing end will not stop immediately and the rod will be compressed beyond the amount it was Lorentz contracted. If it does not explode under the strain and it is sufficiently elastic it will come to rest and start to spring back to its natural shape but since it is too big for the barn the other end is now going to crash into the back door and the rod will be trapped in a compressed state inside the barn.
References: Taylor and Wheeler's Spacetime Physics is the classic. Feynman's Lectures are interesting as well."
Now if one doesn't understand these things -- no rigid rod, no simultaneity, no privileged rest frame -- one hasn't learned the first thing about relativity.
Tom
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Pentcho Valev replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 00:40 GMT
Tom,
The conclusion that an 80m pole is "trapped in a compressed state" inside the 40m barn is absurd, in my view. Since this absurdity is a consequence of Einstein's 1905 light postulate, the latter must be false. As an extremely intelligent Einsteinian you don't see the absurdity do you? Then say it explicitly: Arbitrarily long objects can gloriously get trapped, in a compressed state, inside arbitrarily short containers, Divine Einstein, yes we all believe in relativity, relativity, relativity.
Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com
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Paul Reed replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 06:00 GMT
Pentcho
Here we go again. “Yes length contraction and time dilation are "measurements relative to the observer's state of motion" predicted on the assumption that the speed of light is independent of the speed of the light source”
No they are not. The hypothesis was that matter alters dimension in the direction of travel as a result of force applied, which also causes an alteration in momentum. This has consequences on both space and timing (not what is commonly referred to as time). It has nothing to do with light, or the relative spatial position/momentum of observers. It is, supposedly, a real effect; subsequent misconceptualisation of the variables and their relationships (particularly with the model of spacetime) has confused this. Whether this effect on dimension actually occurs, and if so, what is the relationship between force and dimensional change, is another issue.
Incidentally, picking up on your point about light and particles/waves. This is irrelevant to the logical point I made in a thread above, when you asserted Einstein’s 1905 postulate was wrong by confusing different existent states of the emitting body and light. What the effect in photons (which we know as light) is, and how it travels, is of no consequence in the sense that it is still an existent ‘something’, and can be affected by the environmental conditions within which it travels. And, more importantly, each ‘light’ is a different existent ‘something’. I do not know, and I am not sure anybody else does, of the exact relationship between light and change in the entity being interacted with. In other words, the extent to which this phenomenon of creating effects in photons upon interaction, ‘captures’ all the change that occurs. The physical process pre-existed the role it has acquired as a result of the evolution of sensory detection in organisms.
Paul
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Eckard Blumschein replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 06:52 GMT
Hello Yuri,
You confused me when you apologized for unintentionally deleting a post of mine. How did you manage that? Which post did you refer to?
Anyway, since I recall some helpful hints you gave me related to my 833 essay, I would appreciate you reconsidering your decision concerning contest 2012.
I do not understand what you meant with "Gravity as a force of interaction is wrong assumption?" Perhaps it should read: Is gravity as a force of interaction a wrong assumption?
Best,
Eckard
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T H Ray replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 13:34 GMT
"Then say it explicitly: Arbitrarily long objects can gloriously get trapped, in a compressed state, inside arbitrarily short containers."
The lengths are NOT arbitrary. They are relative. You read Baez's explanation without understanding the fundamentals of relativity.
Tom
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Pentcho Valev replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 15:30 GMT
Tom,
Baez says that an 80m pole is trapped, "in a compressed state", inside a 40m long barn, Divine Einstein, yes we all believe in relativity, relativity, relativity:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/
SR/barn_pole.html
"These are the props. You own a barn, 40m long, with automatic doors at either end, that can be opened and closed simultaneously by a switch. You also have a pole, 80m long, which of course won't fit in the barn. (...) If it does not explode under the strain and it is sufficiently elastic it will come to rest and start to spring back to its natural shape but since it is too big for the barn the other end is now going to crash into the back door and the rod will be trapped IN A COMPRESSED STATE inside the barn."
The pole could be longer, the barn shorter, and yet Divine Albert's Divine Theory says trapping would occur if the relative speed of the pole and the barn is high enough. In other words, arbitrarily long objects can gloriously get trapped, in a compressed state, inside arbitrarily short containers, Divine Einstein, yes we all believe in relativity, relativity, relativity. Do you agree?
Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com
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emc replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 17:39 GMT
hmm... "Divine Albert" ...
If you suggest that physicists are stupid and accept relativity because they believe without questioning in "Divine Albert", then how do you explain that they don't accept Einstein's ideas about quantum mechanics? How do you explain that in these days if one takes side of Einstein in the Einstein-Bohr debate, it is considered a crackpot? Doesn't this prove that in fact most physicists don't accept without questioning what "Divine Albert" said?
As for the relativity of length, probably your personal experience at relativistic speeds makes you say that it can't happen. But this is visible already from electrodynamics: a spherical electromagnetic field actually get contracted to an ellipsoidal shape, as predicted by relativity. There is plenty of experimental data, and if you want to fight it, you have a lot of work to do. Anyway, I congratulate you for challenging the foundations.
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Pentcho Valev replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 19:16 GMT
I must admit that the "Divine Albert" irony is not relevant anymore - leading theoreticians have already left the sinking ship and even know exactly where the root of the evil lies:
http://www.amazon.com/Trouble-Physics-String-Theory-Sci
ence/dp/0618551050
Lee Smolin, The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next, p. 226: "Einstein's special theory of relativity is based on two postulates: One is the relativity of motion, and the second is the constancy and universality of the speed of light. Could the first postulate be true and the other false? If that was not possible, Einstein would not have had to make two postulates. But I don't think many people realized until recently that you could have a consistent theory in which you changed only the second postulate."
http://www.amazon.com/Faster-Than-Speed-Light-Speculation/dp
/0738205257
Joao Magueijo, Faster Than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation, p. 250: "Lee [Smolin] and I discussed these paradoxes at great length for many months, starting in January 2001. We would meet in cafés in South Kensington or Holland Park to mull over the problem. THE ROOT OF ALL THE EVIL WAS CLEARLY SPECIAL RELATIVITY. All these paradoxes resulted from well known effects such as length contraction, time dilation, or E=mc^2, all basic predictions of special relativity. And all denied the possibility of establishing a well-defined border, common to all observers, capable of containing new quantum gravitational effects. Quantum gravity seemed to lack a dam - its effects wanted to spill out all over the place; and the underlying reason was none other than special relativity."
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/waseinsteinwrong/
Paul Davies: "Was Einstein wrong? Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 is the only scientific formula known to just about everyone. The "c" here stands for the speed of light. It is one of the most fundamental of the basic constants of physics. Or is it? In recent years a few maverick scientists have claimed that the speed of light might not be constant at all. Shock, horror! Does this mean the next Great Revolution in Science is just around the corner?"
Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com
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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 19:35 GMT
The experimental data in support of special relativity is overwhelming. The predictions of special relativity are 100% confirmed. General relativity is pretty well confirmed; with the only outstanding test being the direct observation of gravitational radiation. The Hulst-Taylor observation of pulsar timing is however indirection confirmation of the physics of gravity waves.
We live in...
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The experimental data in support of special relativity is overwhelming. The predictions of special relativity are 100% confirmed. General relativity is pretty well confirmed; with the only outstanding test being the direct observation of gravitational radiation. The Hulst-Taylor observation of pulsar timing is however indirection confirmation of the physics of gravity waves.
We live in an interesting time where many people seem to feel that if science does not conform to their expectations it must be wrong. Creationists reject evolution because the science of evolution does not conform to their theology. Conservative politicos reject climate change science because that science falls outside their ideology. It is all a bit like GW Bush administration where Cheney or Rumsfeld said the intelligence had to be made to fit the policy, which got the US into the Iraq war. Often with such thinking comes conspiracy theories; creationists are convinced there is a secular science conspiracy against God. Climate deniers think there is a science conspiracy to demolish free enterprise, UFO nutsos are convinced there is a big cover up against the “truth,” and on it goes. With physics there are those who reject aspects of modern physics, and they too have ideas about how the whole physics community has been deluded for a century by Einstein or Heisenberg and so forth. A curious alt-geophysics idea making the rounds is the idea that Earth is losing gravity and has been expanding; thus creating oceans in the surface area of the Earth created, and all in contradiction to tectonic theory. There is even a growing community of people who insist that geocentric theory is right, and I am sure that flat-Earth theory is not far behind.
Such people often entrench their minds around these ideas and it is like chiseling barnacles off a boat hull to make them change their mind. Even here with Joy Christian we have a man who argues quite ardently about something which at its core means that 1 = -1. This seems to be a social phenomenon that has become popular in the last few decades. Methods of argumentation involve a range of tactics, from the so called Gish gallop to shaving a point endlessly. The Gish gallop is a strategy of making in rapid sequence a range of objections to established science that can’t be responded to in either the proper time of a debate, or to just simply exhaust the patience of those arguing established science. Often pointing flaws in the arguments of those in alt-science is easy to do, but it is like shooting ducks in a shooting gallery; the damned ducks keep popping back up. The point shaving is seen with the Morris’ (a creationist) statement that every missing gap that is found creates two new missing gaps. In this way the alt-science defendant can keep pushing their case into narrower cracks or seams, whether real or just perceived, of established science and will never concede the argument.
To pad their arguments they further make conspiracy claims, which usually involve some nefarious plot by scientists to deny God, or to push a political agenda, or to conceal their activities (eg reverse engineering UFOs) and so forth. You can take creationism, climate change denialism, UFO claims, and so forth and substitute out the object or subject of consideration, change some verbs or inferences and you have much the same thing. To pad these claims is the conspiracy narrative.
In the case of Velav this involves some elements of the Gish gallop, where he tirelessly posts these anti-Einstein mini-essays here. I think it must be up to 5 or so a day, which are long and would require considerable effort to counter them all. Further, there is the shooting gallery problem; anything that is refuted on Thursday is likely to reappear the following Tuesday.
I think science oriented forums need to monitor out this sort of thing. In effect it might be called a light form of peer review. There is no point in arguing with such people, these arguments can cycle around endlessly (look at the number of posts in the proof-disproof forum!) and such people need to be removed from discussion. If these people have no forum to voice their fatuities in they will go away--- presumably to crankier forums that are further removed from real science.
Cheers LC
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Joy Christian replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 19:52 GMT
"Even here with Joy Christian we have a man who argues quite ardently about something which at its core means that 1 = -1."
This is a fallacious, baseless, and slanderous claim made by those who have nothing but bubbles in their heads. Any competent physicist who knows the physics of the EPR-Bohm experiment and the basics of Bell's local-realistic framework can verify the beauty and cogency of my local model from just the few lines of the attached one-page paper. If that is not enough, then there is also a longer explanation, which can be found in the second attached paper.
attachments:
13_disproof.pdf,
6_1106.0748v6.pdf
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Fred Diether replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 20:28 GMT
Lawrence,
Please show specifically where in
Joy's papers that Joy claims or even implies that 1 = -1. If you are going to continue to make such false claims, you need to put your money where your mouth is with a current argument to support such claims. All such claims have been thoroughly refuted on the blog here and by Dr. Christian on the arXiv. If you can't back up your claim with a new argument, then you definitely should stop making such false claims about Joy's model.
Fred
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Pentcho Valev replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 20:34 GMT
Lawrence B. Crowell wrote: "The experimental data in support of special relativity is overwhelming. The predictions of special relativity are 100% confirmed."
Consider the Michelson-Morley experiment. Of the two statements:
A. The speed of light varies with the speed of the light source.
B. The speed of light is independent of the speed of the light source.
A is true, B is false. In 1887 the Michelson-Morley experiment confirmed A and refuted B but at that time B was the cherished one (A had been predicted by Newton's emission theory of light which was completely forgotten) so scientists built a "protective belt" around the false B:
http://bertie.ccsu.edu/naturesci/PhilSci/Lakatos.html
"Lakatos distinguished between two parts of a scientific theory: its "hard core" which contains its basic assumptions (or axioms, when set out formally and explicitly), and its "protective belt", a surrounding defensive set of "ad hoc" (produced for the occasion) hypotheses. (...) In Lakatos' model, we have to explicitly take into account the "ad hoc hypotheses" which serve as the protective belt. The protective belt serves to deflect "refuting" propositions from the core assumptions..."
The protective belt ("contracting lengths, local time, or Lorentz transformations") referred to by Banesh Hoffmann:
http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Its-Roots-Banesh-Hoffmann/d
p/0486406768
"Relativity and Its Roots" By Banesh Hoffmann: "Moreover, if light consists of particles, as Einstein had suggested in his paper submitted just thirteen weeks before this one, the second principle seems absurd: A stone thrown from a speeding train can do far more damage than one thrown from a train at rest; the speed of the particle is not independent of the motion of the object emitting it. And if we take light to consist of particles and assume that these particles obey Newton's laws, they will conform to Newtonian relativity and thus automatically account for the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment without recourse to contracting lengths, local time, or Lorentz transformations. Yet, as we have seen, Einstein resisted the temptation to account for the null result in terms of particles of light and simple, familiar Newtonian ideas, and introduced as his second postulate something that was more or less obvious when thought of in terms of waves in an ether."
Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com
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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 20:50 GMT
Jou & Fred,
The simple fact is that Joy writes β_j = β_j(λ) so that that
β_iβ_j(λ) = λ β_i β_j = -λ(δ_{ij} + ε_{ijk}β_k)
which leads to a contradiction with the value of λ. The construction has problems, where if β_i(λ) is Lie algebraic, then the product
β_i(λ)β_j(λ) = -δ_{ij} - ε_{ijk}β_k(λ)
= -δ_{ij} - λε_{ijk}β_k,
However by definition β_i(λ) = λβ_i we also have
β_i(λ)β_j(λ) = λ^2β_iβ_j =
β_iβ_j = -δ_{ij} - ε_{ijk}β_k.
This is inconsistent if λ = -1. You replace β(λ)=λβ by β at some point which changes λ^2 =1 to λ. This permits you to cancel an "unwanted" term that doesn't cancel if you do things right.
This permits you to set -1 to 1. You then keep saying something to the effect that I and other naysayers of your theory don’t understand these local principles the way you do. This would be like somebody offering up a proof on squaring the circle and upon being found wrong by others says, “You don’t understand squaring the circle the way I do.” This begins to sound similar to somebody’s subjective experience of seeing God. You then counter with some pretty negative comments directed at those pointing these problems out, which puts you dangerously close to the crank territory, where defending these positions often resorts to that sort of thing.
It is not my intention of dragging a debate over your “disproof of Bell” here. I will say that if you enter this in the contest and win on the basis of your “disproof” I will have to abandon any respect for FQXi. I also prefer to keep the debate of your “disproof” in the disproof of disproofs area, where given time I suspect enough bits of information will fill the server to cause it to implode into a black hole ;-). I would prefer to avoid further controversy over this, other than to say that what I write above is in a nutshell the inconsistency in your quantum locality “proof.”
Cheers LC
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Fred Diether replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 20:59 GMT
Lawrence,
You said in your first sentence, "The simple fact is that Joy writes B_j = B_j(L) so that that..."
Joy never wrote that so your whole argument doesn't even get off the ground. Try again.
Fred
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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 20:59 GMT
Pentcho,
I really have no intention of engaging a debate over relativity and your arguments. I dropped dealing with Joy Christian’s stuff (albeit to encapsulate it today here) almost a year ago, for in that case the arguments endlessly cycle. I pretty clearly see that much the same will happen with your anti-Einstein claims as well. I really want to avoid getting on a verbal/text treadmill that can only end by abandoning it. It is not hard for anyone who is reasonably educated in physics to see that somebody who argues against special relativity is a crackpot, and for somebody who does so as adamantly as you must have their brains hopelessly calcified by this nonsense.
Cheers LC
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Joy Christian replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 21:13 GMT
"The simple fact is that Joy writes β_j = β_j(λ) so that that
β_iβ_j(λ) = λ β_i β_j = -λ(δ_{ij} + ε_{ijk}β_k)
which leads to a contradiction with the value of λ."
Nowhere in any of my papers I write what you are claiming I write. Therefore everything you are claiming about my model is nonsense. You cannot claim a contradiction in model X by replacing it with a self-contradictory straw-model Y.
Stop making fallacious claims about my model, Lawrence, and I might just forgive you.
For the readers, I attach a document which shows where Lawrence has gone wrong.
attachments:
25_Richard_said.pdf
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Eckard Blumschein replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 21:21 GMT
Lawrence,
Did you deliberately confuse Valev and Velav?
I am sure you will be in position to write an excellent essay that convincingly shows why there is not a single wrong basic assumptions in physics.
Eckard
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emc replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 21:24 GMT
"Any competent physicist who knows the physics of the EPR-Bohm experiment and the basics of Bell's local-realistic framework can verify the beauty and cogency of my local model from just the few lines of the attached one-page paper."
And did you find any "competent physicist"?
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Pentcho Valev replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 21:30 GMT
Lawrence B. Crowell wrote: "It is not hard for anyone who is reasonably educated in physics to see that somebody who argues against special relativity is a crackpot..."
Crackpots (according to your definition):
http://www.amazon.com/Faster-Than-Speed-Light-Sp
eculation/dp/0738205257
Joao Magueijo, Faster Than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation, p....
view entire post
Lawrence B. Crowell wrote: "It is not hard for anyone who is reasonably educated in physics to see that somebody who argues against special relativity is a crackpot..."
Crackpots (according to your definition):
http://www.amazon.com/Faster-Than-Speed-Light-Sp
eculation/dp/0738205257
Joao Magueijo, Faster Than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation, p. 250: "Lee [Smolin] and I discussed these paradoxes at great length for many months, starting in January 2001. We would meet in cafés in South Kensington or Holland Park to mull over the problem. THE ROOT OF ALL THE EVIL WAS CLEARLY SPECIAL RELATIVITY."
http://www.fqxi.org/community/articles/display/1
48
"Many physicists argue that time is an illusion. Lee Smolin begs to differ. (...) Smolin wishes to hold on to the reality of time. But to do so, he must overcome a major hurdle: General and special relativity seem to imply the opposite. In the classical Newtonian view, physics operated according to the ticking of an invisible universal clock. But Einstein threw out that master clock when, in his theory of special relativity, he argued that no two events are truly simultaneous unless they are causally related. If simultaneity - the notion of "now" - is relative, the universal clock must be a fiction, and time itself a proxy for the movement and change of objects in the universe. Time is literally written out of the equation. Although he has spent much of his career exploring the facets of a "timeless" universe, Smolin has become convinced that this is "deeply wrong," he says. He now believes that time is more than just a useful approximation, that it is as real as our guts tell us it is - more real, in fact, than space itself. The notion of a "real and global time" is the starting hypothesis for Smolin's new work, which he will undertake this year with two graduate students supported by a $47,500 grant from FQXi."
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/ias/earlycaree
r/events/time/programme/julian_barbour.pdf
Aspects of Time, Julian Barbour, Warwick, August 24th 2011: "Was Spacetime Glorious Historical Accident? (...) ABSOLUTE SIMULTANEITY RESTORED!"
http://www.rense.com/general13/ein.htm
Einstein's Theory Of Relativity Must Be Rewritten, Jonathan Leake, Science Editor, The Sunday Times - London: "A group of astronomers and cosmologists has warned that the laws thought to govern the universe, including Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, must be rewritten. The group, which includes Professor Stephen Hawking and Sir Martin Rees, the astronomer royal, say such laws may only work for our universe but not in others that are now also thought to exist. "It is becoming increasingly likely that the rules we had thought were fundamental through time and space are actually just bylaws for our bit of it," said Rees, whose new book, Our Cosmic Habitat, is published next month. "Creation is emerging as even stranger than we thought." Among the ideas facing revision is Einstein's belief that the speed of light must always be the same - 186,000 miles a second in a vacuum."
Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com
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Joy Christian replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 21:32 GMT
"And did you find any "competent physicist"?"
Yes.
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Fred Diether replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 21:46 GMT
LOL! Several I would think..., that would like to remain nameless for obvious reasons.
Fred
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emc replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 21:56 GMT
"LOL! Several I would think..., that would like to remain nameless for obvious reasons."
Yeah, the same reason why Santa Claus remains hidden...
Quote from
here:
"Scott Says:
Comment #44 May 3rd, 2012 at 7:59 am
Joy #41: Have any of the fine folks you mention-Abner Shimony, Lucien Hardy, Greenberger, Zeilinger, Gisin-found anything of merit in your Bell disproof? Have they gone on record as saying so?
Joy Christian Says:
Comment #45 May 3rd, 2012 at 8:08 am
@ Scott # 43
No and no. It took 30 years to recognize von Neumann's error. It may take at least that many to recognize Bell's."
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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 21:56 GMT
Pentcho,
This is an example of a
Gish gallop. In order to respond in full I would have to write something about what these physicists have worked. That would probably occupy the rest of the day. Without going into detail, I will say that some of these ideas I have questions about, and further none of these men are claiming what you state about the speed of a photon being dependent on the velocity of a source. I have spent too much time here as it is and I doubt that taking more time will accomplish anything.
Cheers LC
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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 22:10 GMT
Fred Diether replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 22:15 GMT
Lawrence,
Yeah, I didn't think you could muster up any kind of physics argument to validate your false claim. It is time to put your money where your mouth is or stop making false claims. The simple fact is, that all you have are strawman arguments.
Fred
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Pentcho Valev replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 22:21 GMT
Then change your definition, Lawrence, e.g. in the following way:
Lawrence B. Crowell's definition of a crackpot: "Somebody who argues against special relativity is not necessarily a crackpot but if he/she says something about the speed of photons being dependent on the velocity of a source then he/she is definitely a crackpot, Divine Einstein, yes we all believe in relativity, relativity, relativity."
Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com
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Joy Christian replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 22:41 GMT
Lawrence,
The parrot is indeed dead. It was stillborn in 1964.
A theorem that never was!
this post has been edited by the author since its original submission
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Joy Christian replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 22:51 GMT
I wonder what emc stands for. Could it be "entirely mindless coward"?
Whatever it stands for, what you quote was 25 days ago. Thanks to Scott, things have moved on since then.
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T H Ray replied on May. 28, 2012 @ 01:31 GMT
Lawrence,
I am truly saddened by your defense of false and misguided arguments against Joy's framework. And particularly, because I recognize that your knowledge of relativity is deep.
Tom
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emc replied on May. 28, 2012 @ 04:54 GMT
"I wonder what emc stands for. Could it be "entirely mindless coward"?"
Speaking about being coward, in only 25 days, an army of good quantum physicists which defend your position arose, but they don't have the guts to say it publicly.
Let me quote you:
"This is a fallacious, baseless, and slanderous claim made by those who have nothing but bubbles in their heads: Any competent physicist who knows the physics of the EPR-Bohm experiment and the basics of Bell's local-realistic framework can verify the beauty and cogency of my local model from just the few lines of the attached one-page paper. If that is not enough, then there is also a longer explanation, which can be found in the second attached paper."
Gee, you give us no choice: we either are with you, or are incompetent.
According to what you said, the only competent physicists are you, Tom, Fred, and an anonymous movement of reputed physicists having no observable effects, and all appeared in the last 25 days. Probably these hidden guys are built of hidden variables.
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Joy Christian replied on May. 28, 2012 @ 05:02 GMT
Thank you for confirming that emc stands for "entirely mindless coward."
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emc replied on May. 28, 2012 @ 06:12 GMT
Initially I thought you are brave, for challenging Bell's theorem. Reading your mistaken papers and endless attacks against those who dare to doubt them, I saw that you have no courage to admit when you are wrong, and instead of discussing the arguments, you focus on insulting those who don't agree with you. You cowardly ran when they challenged you to arbitrated debate. To satisfy your curiosity, emc stands for "exposer of mindless coward".
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Anonymous replied on May. 28, 2012 @ 06:26 GMT
Lawrence has gone off on a political rant above, which must indicate that he is feeling poorly in the political department. His utopia of the day is not working out according to projections. Oh well.
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Joy Christian replied on May. 28, 2012 @ 06:40 GMT
Yes, please, Mr. Exposer, let us expose the mindless coward. You do not have to expose your real name if you are ashamed of it, but I presume you can expose a bit of your "knowledge" of physics by putting forward an actual, competent argument? Please do tell us what is wrong with my papers. All I have seen so far from you is baseless accusations against me and my work. Give us some real beef if you can.
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Fred Diether replied on May. 28, 2012 @ 06:49 GMT
emc,
Do YOU have any physical arguments as to how Dr. Christian's theory is wrong or are you going to babble on endlessly with your ad hominem nonsense?
To this date, there have been no peer reviewed refutations of Dr. Christian's physical model that disproves Bell's theorem. All there has been is just a bunch of online nonsense that has totally been refuted on this blog and by Dr. Christian on the arXiv.
If you were falsely ATTACKED about your theory with a bunch of strawman arguments, don't you thing you would find it necessary to attack back?
Fred
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emc replied on May. 28, 2012 @ 07:42 GMT
Joy & Fred,
Oh, I so did not want to enter this. My first comment here under the name "emc" was about something not related to Joy's stuff. But then he claimed that any competent quantum physicist would agree with him, and it is that affirmation that I questioned - Joy has no evidence for this claim, which cannot be tested, or the evidence chooses to remain hidden (are they "ashamed of their names"?). And now I am the one who has to prove something. Fred, read from the beginning, and you will see who is the one with the ad hominem.
OK. I take your challenge. But I want to add some conditions (which admittedly are not very original):
1. To have a separate thread (this was about a different topic)
2. Joy convince at least three FQXi or PI members who are quantum physicists, to constitute a jury and to arbitrate the debate under their real names. I agree to let Joy Christian select those fellows.
3. Each point raised against or in defense of Joy's theory will be reviewed and evaluated by the jury, and the result of the evaluation will be made public.
Optional:
- Avoid insults and name calling. I put this to be optional because I don't want the jury to disqualify Joy because he is making personal attacks. I want to win the debate on the grounds of the arguments.
- Since I see that Joy's friends intervene all the time, I agree to allow them to contribute to the debate, if also opponents of Joy's theory are allowed.
- Once everything is prepared for the debate, I will let Joy decide if he wants me to use my real name, or continue to use "emc".
I take your challenge, with the above conditions. Accept them, or accept that when you called me "coward", this applies in fact to you.
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Joy Christian replied on May. 28, 2012 @ 08:00 GMT
I agree to ALL of your conditions provided you reveal your real name and qualifications (mine are known to "everyone"). Put your money where your mouth is and let us have a completely open debate, only about the technical merits of my argument and nothing else. But tell us who you are first.
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emc replied on May. 28, 2012 @ 08:06 GMT
Once everything is prepared for the debate, I will let Joy decide if he wants me to use my real name, or continue to use "emc".
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Joy Christian replied on May. 28, 2012 @ 08:17 GMT
I agree to ALL of your conditions if you reveal your real name and qualifications.
I am not wasting my time -- or of my FQXi and PI friends and colleagues -- for the ego trip of some nameless nobody. If you are a genuinely qualified person worthy of debating with me, then I will bother my friends.
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emc replied on May. 28, 2012 @ 08:43 GMT
Joy,
To be honest, I don't trust you. You just want to know who I am, and then you hope to find some yellow excuse to refuse.
If you really accept, you can start this challenge as being open to anyone interested. Thus, you can "disturb" your friends. You can challenge one of the fine physicists you know and disagree with you (I think there is no contradiction between being worthy of your time, and disagreeing with you. I hope they will find time too.). So you can do this and in the same time not disturb you friends for me only. As soon as you do this, I will join the discussion and reveal my identity. If no one shows up, you win by default.
But I have the feeling that you prefer the 'forum guerrilla', where anything goes...
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Joy Christian replied on May. 28, 2012 @ 09:00 GMT
Nameless,
You are not fooling anyone. What you are saying is total hogwash and you know it. You have just exposed yourself by not exposing yourself.
My friends will certainly find time for me if I ask. That is what friends are for. But I will not bother them for the ego trip of some nameless nobody. I would never disrespect them or their valuable time like that.
For the last time: I agree to ALL of your conditions if you reveal your real name and qualifications first.
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emc replied on May. 28, 2012 @ 09:09 GMT
You said "I agree to ALL of your conditions if you reveal your real name and qualifications first."
Do I have your word that you will continue to agree after I reveal my full name and qualifications?
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Joy Christian replied on May. 28, 2012 @ 09:12 GMT
I have already given you my word several times.
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emc replied on May. 28, 2012 @ 10:06 GMT
Dear Joy,
Thank you for accepting my conditions to the challenge.
In fact, I already invited you to a debate like this last year, on
one of these forums.
You asked for my qualifications. I have a masters in Differential Geometry with applications to theoretical physics, and now I am enrolled in a PhD in Differential Geometry. I work for some years as a computer programmer specialized in geometric algorithms.
I used the nick "emc" as reference to a joke in a
parody about Einstein. It had nothing to do with you, since the comment was for someone else, but somehow the discussion became about some of your statements (LC mentioned you in a reply to emc (me), so you replied, so emc replied etc).
Regards,
Cristi Stoica
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Joy Christian replied on May. 28, 2012 @ 10:17 GMT
Cristi,
Thank you for revealing your identity. We shall continue the debate once you secure your PhD.
Good luck with your studies.
Joy
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Cristi replied on May. 28, 2012 @ 10:32 GMT
Joy,
thank you for revealing your identity, and the value of your word ;)
Let the jury I allowed you to choose at your will decide the value of my arguments by themselves, and not by the degrees. You gave your word, please don't hide behind your degrees.
Cristi
P.S. I hope the FQXi site will soon start loading again on my default browser.
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Fred Diether replied on May. 28, 2012 @ 21:30 GMT
Cristi said, "Fred, read from the beginning, and you will see who is the one with the ad hominem."
I did. You started it with post "emc replied on May. 27, 2012 @ 21:56 GMT"; a veiled ad hominem if I ever saw one but still an ad hominem. We know all the tricks you Bell worshippers do.
Now, have you got any new arguments that haven't been thoroughly refuted yet?
Fred
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Cristi replied on May. 29, 2012 @ 01:29 GMT
Fred,
The discussion concerned Joy's affirmation that any competent physicist would agree with him. What I did was to put his own words against his statement. Now you claim that quoting Joy's own words is an "ad hominem".
And to be clear: I did not ask him to prove the value of his work by telling us what physicists agree with him. I don't take the opinion of the "competent authorities" as proof of the value of someone's work. It was Joy who introduced the appeal to authority, by claiming that any competent physicist would agree with him. So it was natural to ask him to give examples of such competent physicists. You said there are plenty, but they remain hidden, maybe because they will be witch-hunted by the authorities or so. There is more evidence for Big Foot.
About my arguments concerning his papers, you did not refute any of them, you just repeat endlessly that you did. And Joy knows, that's why he backed of. I decided for last year to stop arguing with him and his worshipers (what evidence do you have that I am Bell's worshiper? Instead, you proved to be Joy's), unless the debate is arbitrated. If you want to see my cards, convince Joy to honor his promise. Don't try to attract me in your dishonest kind of fight where anything but math and physics goes.
Joy said "I agree to ALL of your conditions if you reveal your real name and qualifications first."
I asked "Do I have your word that you will continue to agree after I reveal my full name and qualifications?"
Joy replied "I have already given you my word several times."
Then he backed of, proving the value of his word.
No trick of yours will erase this.
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Fred Diether replied on May. 29, 2012 @ 01:50 GMT
Cristi said in the "ad hominem" post that started this, "Yeah, the same reason why Santa Claus remains hidden..."
That is a veiled ad hominem if I have ever seen one. So you can stop lying about what you did right now. Furthermore, that post you did referring to something on Scott's blog had nothing to do with the discussion. You posted it simply as a veiled ad hominem attack.
All your previous arguments were simply nonsense and have been shown to be that on this very blog. So... ya got any new arguments? Or... do you even want to go over any old arguments. But my guess is you just want to continue with your ad hominem nonsense.
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Cristi replied on May. 29, 2012 @ 02:21 GMT
Fred,
Anyone can read by himself from the beginning both this discussion and those on the other forums.
My offer of arbitrated debate (which Joy already accepted, and then broke his promise) stays open until the end of this day.
If you prefer instead your favorite mud fighting, please do it with somebody else.
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Fred Diether replied on May. 29, 2012 @ 02:47 GMT
Joy never broke his promise. He said he would do it as soon as you got your PhD. So you have something to look forward to after your studies. I never did see you say anything about when the debate need take place. In legalese it is called "time is of the essence".
I told you to go ahead with your arguments; even the old ones if you wish. How is that mud slinging? Seems you are the one here that wants to keep slinging mud around. Ya got a physics or related math argument about Joy's model? Go for it. Get 'em off your chest.
Fred
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Cristi replied on May. 29, 2012 @ 05:14 GMT
Fred,
There was never a clause like this, which he invoked only afterwards.
On the dedicated forums I gave plenty of evidence, physical and mathematical, that his theory is wrong. None of my arguments was refuted, they were only denied. I will not repeat them here. If you claim that they are wrong, you may want to explain where are they wrong.
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Fred Diether replied on May. 29, 2012 @ 06:15 GMT
That is right that you didn't say a clause like that; you should have specified a date and time as to when the debate is to take place. You didn't. Joy didn't invoke anything. He agreed to the debate when you get your PhD. When might that be?
I'm not going to bother to look up your arguments in the old threads as they are way too slow and they probably have been refuted already since then anyway. Post them now or don't. Your choice.
Fred
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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on May. 29, 2012 @ 14:08 GMT
Cristi,
I suspect you are wasting your breath, or maybe finger and wrist muscles. This message is a bit of a test, but since yesterday I can't post on FQXi. I don't know if that is a tech-glitch or whether this is an intentional blocking by JC and his "allies." This is in part a test message, and if it goes through then my suspicions are less likely.
Which ever is the case if JC wins an FQXi essay prize I will be furious. It will clearly indicate a big problem with this organization.
Cheers LC
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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on May. 29, 2012 @ 14:21 GMT
It appears I can post to the blog entries, but I still can't post to the forum entries. I am not sure what is going on. My suspicions I indicated above are however reduced.
There are two curious characters here. One is Pentcho who thinks Einstein is all washed up. Pentcho is clearly a crank. Then there is JC who thinks Bell is all washed up, but anyone who presents problems with his disproof finds that JC keeps claiming how the goalposts are moved to elsewhere.
This topic is interesting, but the removal of an operating assumption in current physics is far more subtle than just denying something about current physics. This will happen where quantum physics and general relativity merge. With quantum mechanics there was a huge reduction in the numbers of degrees of freedom. In fact the complete sets of commuting operators reduced it by half. The merging of quantum mechanics and general relativity will be another massive reduction in the number of fundamental degrees of freedom in the universe. This means that the amount of data, or qubits, necessary to describe the universe is far smaller. The subtle question is how are physical postulates employed today either removed are drastically revised to make this happen.
I will say that JC's "sign change" which reduces nonlocal variables to local ones does the opposite. JC is tacitly increasing the number of degrees of freedom.
Cheers LC
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Joy Christian replied on May. 29, 2012 @ 14:26 GMT
Lawrence,
There is no need for you to raise your blood pressure on my account. I am not entering the FQXi essay contest. My work is not meant for some essay contest. Neither was the work of Max Born for that matter. You can happily go back to your dogmatic slumber.
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Pentcho Valev replied on May. 29, 2012 @ 15:18 GMT
Lawrence B. Crowell wrote: "There are two curious characters here. One is Pentcho who thinks Einstein is all washed up. Pentcho is clearly a crank."
The problem is that Einstein is all washed up in the quotations I refer to, Lawrence. For instance, Carl Mungan and Roger Barlow suggest that, when the observer moves toward the source, "the wave speed is simply increased by the observer speed". That is, the speed of the light wave, as measured by the observer, varies with the speed of the observer. Are Carl Mungan and Roger Barlow cranks?
http://www.usna.edu/Users/physics/mungan/Scholarship/Doppler
Effect.pdf
Carl Mungan: "Consider the case where the observer moves toward the source. In this case, the observer is rushing head-long into the wavefronts... (...) In fact, the wave speed is simply increased by the observer speed, as we can see by jumping into the observer's frame of reference."
http://www.hep.man.ac.uk/u/roger/PHYS10302/lecture18.pdf
Roger Barlow, Professor of Particle Physics: "Moving Observer. Now suppose the source is fixed but the observer is moving towards the source, with speed v. In time t, ct/(lambda) waves pass a fixed point. A moving point adds another vt/(lambda). So f'=(c+v)/(lambda)."
Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com
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T H Ray replied on May. 29, 2012 @ 17:05 GMT
"JC is tacitly increasing the number of degrees of freedom."
Lawrence, you, like Marc Holman, think this is a bad thing. In fact, though, there's no contradiction between the reductionist paradigm of science and Joy's program. The introduction of the point at infinity (caused by compactifying R^3 to S^3) increases (or rather, explicitly acknowledges) the degrees of freedom on R^3 but...
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"JC is tacitly increasing the number of degrees of freedom."
Lawrence, you, like Marc Holman, think this is a bad thing. In fact, though, there's no contradiction between the reductionist paradigm of science and Joy's program. The introduction of the point at infinity (caused by compactifying R^3 to S^3) increases (or rather, explicitly acknowledges) the degrees of freedom on R^3 but constrains the measure space to the manifold of S^3. The equator of this simple Riemann sphere admits only 3 discrete results (+ 1, - 1 and i)so one *should* be able to easily see the binary dichotomy, and the reason why Joy's input argument [E(a,b)= - a.b] reduces to perfect anti-correlation for a continuous measurement function of results observed in a bounded length of time. For an orientable outcome, it *has* to. Without nonlocality, nonrientable R^3 admits infinite degrees of freedom; Joy presents a true local realistic model of finite measure with classical time symmetry.
All this noise about "Joy's supporters" being some kind of cult following is a crock. It couldn't have escaped one's notice that while I have been an outspoken supporter of Joy's research, he has shown no support for mine -- and with good reason. I disagree with the fast and loose characterization of the role of a mathematical model in physics, and I've been outspoken about that, too. We can't have theorems "disproven," or else physics becomes a kind of alchemy, mixing some arcane symbols with experimental observations and cobbling an a posteriori explanation for the outcome. In other words, anything goes.
In fact, though, that alchemy metaphor fits what standard quantum theory has become. All that makes it (and ever made it) coherent, is the assumption of nonlocality. So I think it was completely wrong in the first place to speak of "disproving" Bell's theorem. It works quite well with the assumption of nonlocality, as well as Newtonian classical physics works in its own limit. What Joy has done is to show that quantum pair correlations to infinity are not independent of classical geometry (generalized to topology), that there is therefore no boundary between classical and quantum domains -- or as Einstein put it, "All physics is local."
I don't deny that Joy's mathematical model needs improvement, to clarify beyond doubt that it stands completely independent of experiment, which would lay forever to rest these bogus strawman arithmetic arguments. I understand the criticism, but it is baseless. Joy's model has nothing to do with probability theory, Hilbert spaces or any other trappings that attend standard quantum theory.
Your argument that if Joy's theory had merit, that you would have heard about it by now, is simply ridiculous. Take as an example Leslie Lamport's April 2012 Found. Phys. paper
"Buridan's Principle," IMO a seminal contribution to the computational study of the physics of continuous functions, which was written almost three decades ago. Lamport recounts the history of the paper in part:
"My problems in trying to publish this paper and [22] are part of a long tradition. According to one story I've heard (but haven't verified), someone at G. E. discovered the phenomenon in computer circuits in the early 60s, but was unable to convince his managers that there was a problem. He published a short note about it, for which he was fired. Charles Molnar, one of the pioneers in the study of the problem, reported the following in a lecture given on February 11, 1992, at HP Corporate Engineering in Palo Alto, California:
"One reviewer made a marvelous comment in rejecting one of the early papers, saying that if this problem really existed it would be so important that everybody knowledgeable in the field would have to know about it, and 'I'm an expert and I don't know about it, so therefore it must not exist.'"
'Nuff said.
Tom
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Cristi replied on May. 29, 2012 @ 17:55 GMT
Dear Lawrence,
"The merging of quantum mechanics and general relativity will be another massive reduction in the number of fundamental degrees of freedom in the universe."
I fully agree. Btw, congratulations for the honorable mention at GRF.
Best regards,
Cristi
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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on May. 29, 2012 @ 18:56 GMT
Tom & Cristi:
The general progress of physics has been about reducing the number of degrees of freedom. In fact it goes back to Galileo who realized that the accelerated mass was observed in all inertial reference frames with the same acceleration. If you think about it that was a huge reduction in the number of cases one needed to treat in a special way; we call it Galilean relativity. ...
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Tom & Cristi:
The general progress of physics has been about reducing the number of degrees of freedom. In fact it goes back to Galileo who realized that the accelerated mass was observed in all inertial reference frames with the same acceleration. If you think about it that was a huge reduction in the number of cases one needed to treat in a special way; we call it Galilean relativity. Kepler did the same, where the equal area ~ equal time is a huge simplification that reduces the number of specific calculations needed. The same holds with Newton and up to Einstein and the quantum founders. The next step will be entirely the same; there will be a huge reduction in the number of fundamental degrees of freedom.
The large number of degrees of freedom in the universe is due to entanglement entropy, or entropy associated with event horizons. Our observable universe, or the observable region out to the particle horizon χ = ∫dt/a(t), is entangled with the rest of the universe beyond that horizon. We are limited in our observations by the entanglement entropy associated with that horizon. There are then limits on the observables we currently think are absolute in QM, such as those in a complete set of commuting operators. If one tried to observe an observable out to 10^{30} decimal points the data involved would turn your apparatus into a black hole. That is a fundamental limit, identical to the cosmological issue, and it stems from the fact quantum states have representation in configuration space or spacetime via this entanglement. The configuration space of a quantum state is then fundamentally reduced to “no representation,” which would then massively reduce the number of degrees of freedom in the universe.
I think this means the universe has only one type of elementary particle. There is only one electron, one photon, one up quark with blue-red charge, one tau, one W one…. . What we see as the large number of these particles is then a multiplicity induced by their entanglement across event horizons. Event horizons then impose locality of field amplitudes and induces this enormous duplication of quantum states and their various configuration space representations. This configuration space representation has its complement in a momentum space representation. So the photons reaching my eye have a large range of momenta I perceive as colors, but on a deep level this is just one photon entangled across the cosmic horizon with specific configuration variables.
What I see is ultimately an illusion.
Quantum gravity implies spacetime is a geometric representation of a field that exhibits quantum properties. General relativity is a geometric theory of spacetime, and quantizing gravity which requires a description of spacetime that is beyond the causal and local configuration imposed by GR. QFT is local, but the fundamental (diffeomorphism-invariant) physical observables of quantum gravity are necessarily nonlocal. QFT takes causality as a fundamental postulate, but in quantum gravity spacetime geometry has complementary description, by way of consequence light cones and the causal structure are themselves subject to quantum fluctuations. Time evolution in quantum field theory is determined by a Hamiltonian operator, but for spatially closed universes, the natural candidate for a Hamiltonian in quantum gravity is identically zero when acting on physical states. Quantum mechanical probabilities must add up to unity at a fixed time, but in general relativity there is no preferred time-slicing on which to normalize probabilities.
The transition from quantum gravity to classical gravity imposes strict light cones and classical horizons in a spacetime with strict locality and causality structure. This results in a huge redundancy in quantum fields with various configuration variables established by locality on the classical spacetime.
Cristi: This connects in part with your work on removal of spacetime singularities. Your idea appears to be a type of analytic continuation which uses a complex structure to remove the singularity. It has been a while since I have looked at your work, so I may be somewhat amiss with this assessment. I think there is some nonlocal duality between fields on the holographic horizon and the singularity in a black hole. Field theoretic content on the two structures can be transformed into each other. It is not hard to seen that the event horizon for an accelerated observer can be transformed into a singularity-like structure.
We think of the case of an observer stationary above a black hole event horizon. The accelerated frame near the event horizon observes the outside world “speed up,” for units of proper time on this frame correspond to very large units of time is asymptopia. As the accelerated frame approaches the horizon, which requires a larger acceleration, we may think of adiabically moving this situation to the stretched horizon. The distinction between this frame and the frozen appearance of a freely falling frame on the stretched horizon as observed from the outside are indistinguishable. This flies in the face of some standard physics, where physics is written according to inertial frames. There is an asymmetry between inertial and accelerated frames, which I think is in greater generality removed
For the accelerated observer the life time of the exterior world races by in a flash. For a stellar mass black hole it requires billions of g-forces to remain a few meters from the horizon, and to get within centimeters requires about a billion billion g's of acceleration. If by some means an observer could do this the outside world would be racing by, say for a small proper time with t = g^{-1} cosh(gs). So the proper time element is s ~ g^{-1}ln(gt) for a time unit t outside. As a result for t the lifetime of the black hole ~ 10^{67}year, g in units of distance ~ 1cm ~ 10^{-10} sec ~ 10^{-17}year the proper time the observer on the accelerated frame observes the BH to evaporate is
s ~ 5x10^{18} years.
This is much shorter than the BH life time measured by the exterior world. Assume you get that acceleration up to 10^{33}cm^{-1} or 10^{43}sec^{-1} or 10^{50}year^{-1}, then you are hovering practically on the stretched horizon. The BH evaporates in about 10^{-42} seconds, or close to the Planck unit of time! Bang!; which means all that ingoing and outgoing radiation which interacts with the black hole hits you at once is a colossal thunderclap. The event horizon appears for larger g close in to be more of a singularity, or a surface region of huge energy density that is radiating and absorbing energy at a ferocious rate.
The accelerated observer ever closer to the event horizon observes a singular physical situation. This is also found for the case of a black hole approaching the extremal condition, where the horizon is replaced by a singularity. There is an exchange between horizons and singularities, or a complementary condition for observables on them. The event horizon with its holographic fields or strings has those fields annihilated by the nonlocal occurrence of fields or strings outside the black hole, or equivalently a tunneling of fields from the interior singularity to the outside. If an observer watches the horizon ever closer by accelerating ever more to extreme g the horizon appears more and more as the singularity where fields are intensely blue shifted or in the UV domain. The interior singularity to an infalling observer is much the same. In that case fields are divergently blue shifted as they approach the singularity.
Cheers LC
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Steve Dufourny replied on May. 29, 2012 @ 19:17 GMT
Your analyzes and discussions are really ANTI RATIONAL Mr TH and Mr Joy.
Degrees of freedom, no but frankly ??? Where are your foundamentals ?
like said Lawrence, the special relativity FOR A BOSON is an universal essential. At my humble opinion, several persons really confound the meaning of the RELATIVITY.
And the computing will not change this evidence !
Regards
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Pentcho Valev replied on May. 29, 2012 @ 19:49 GMT
Lawrence B. Crowell wrote: "The general progress of physics has been about reducing the number of degrees of freedom. (...) The next step will be entirely the same; there will be a huge reduction in the number of fundamental degrees of freedom."
Not if the present contest is successful and basic principles are shown to be wrong. For instance, an initial version of the second law of thermodynamics states that all heat engines working reversibly between the same two temperatures, T1 and T2, have the same efficiency. Obviously a huge reduction in the number of degrees of freedom but now the reverse process - a huge increase in the number of degrees of freedom - will take place if the second law is wrong. The case with Einstein's 1905 light postulate is analogous.
Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com
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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on May. 29, 2012 @ 21:32 GMT
The statistical basis for the thermodynamics according to bits of information is from the Shannon-Khinchon theorem (proven) that the unit of entropy is
s = -k p(n) log(p(n)).
The summation over all possible p(n) is then S = sum_n s or S = ∫ds. For simplicity we assume p(n) = 1/n, for a microcanonical ensemble at maximum entropy. The result is that for N = max number of bits that S = k log(N). Hence if N is larger S is larger; the log function is convex. The number N represents the size of the volume Ω in phase space a system occupies, so the general entropy formula is then S = k log(Ω) --- which is engraved on Boltzmann’s gravestone.
It is clear that you are terribly confused about many things, such as saying above that a Lorentz contracted rod is in some state of compression. You are also seriously pissing up a rope if you are trying to counter statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. Please learn the real stuff instead of hammering away on nonsense.
Cheers LC
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Pentcho Valev replied on May. 29, 2012 @ 22:01 GMT
Lawrence B. Crowell wrote: "It is clear that you are terribly confused about many things, such as saying above that a Lorentz contracted rod is in some state of compression."
John Baez says the rod is in a compressed state:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/ba
rn_pole.html
"These are the props. You own a barn, 40m long, with automatic doors at either end, that can be opened and closed simultaneously by a switch. You also have a pole, 80m long, which of course won't fit in the barn. (...) If it does not explode under the strain and it is sufficiently elastic it will come to rest and start to spring back to its natural shape but since it is too big for the barn the other end is now going to crash into the back door and the rod will be trapped IN A COMPRESSED STATE inside the barn."
Other Einsteinians teach the rod is contracted but without compression:
http://www.quebecscience.qc.ca/Revolutions
Stéphane Durand: "Ainsi, une fusée de 100 m passant à toute vitesse dans un tunnel de 60 m pourrait être entièrement contenue dans ce tunnel pendant une fraction de seconde, durant laquelle il serait possible de fermer des portes aux deux bouts! La fusée est donc réellement plus courte. Pourtant, il n'y a PAS DE COMPRESSION matérielle ou physique de l'engin."
Finally, according to some Einsteinians, special relativity predicts length elongation as well:
http://math.ucr.edu/~jdp/Relativity/Bug_Rivet.html
John de Pillis Professor of Mathematics: "In fact, special relativity requires that after collision, the rivet shank length increases beyond its at-rest length d."
Anything goes in Einsteiniana.
Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com
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Cristi replied on May. 30, 2012 @ 04:57 GMT
Dear Pentcho,
I congratulate you for questioning the foundations. This job should be done constantly, especially on the principle widely accepted. This thing should be encouraged by the mainstream, and I think they don't do this enough. The reason is simple: time. Most physicists are very busy with two things: keeping them updated, and doing and promoting their own research. To be kept...
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Dear Pentcho,
I congratulate you for questioning the foundations. This job should be done constantly, especially on the principle widely accepted. This thing should be encouraged by the mainstream, and I think they don't do this enough. The reason is simple: time. Most physicists are very busy with two things: keeping them updated, and doing and promoting their own research. To be kept updated in these days is nearly impossible, and that's why most physicists are forced to give up the love to learn by checking everything by themselves, and to replace it with accepting many things at second hand, on the basis that they were checked by others (the "peers"). This is bad, but it is efficient for two reasons: it allows you to appear that you know more, and to agree more with the others. Agreeing more with them makes them agree back, and this helps you promote your work. And for a physicist this is very important, because they have to publish, or they will perish. They are not happy with this, and they will want to go back to their early youth, when they had more time to question anything, and to explore alternatives, but that's life. After a time, they forget their initial impetus, having now other motivations.
But I think that any good physicist who knows relativity, at some point in his childhood questioned it, as you do. As you surely know, learning relativity doesn't limit at reading popular or introductory literature (even people like John Baez, when try to explain the things to others, may dumb down the explanation, or at least use too much metaphor).
For some reason, when people learn relativity, when they check the calculations, apply the principles to solve real problems, understand the connections with other principles of physics, their objections fall one by one. After a time they consider they were silly for doubting these principles, and probably they will try to be more efficient, by questioning less what they learn. Some of them, who skipped the phase of questioning relativity, or who did not finish it, learn to pass the exams, and may become acknowledged scientists in the new mainstream. Then, they remember their questions, and re-take their inquiry, and publish papers in which they claim that relativity has some issues. Maybe it is their late childish exploration, or maybe they really found some issues. To really know, one should really understand both relativity and their proposed alternatives. Just selecting quotes may lead to any conclusion.
I consider relativity a very good theory. I did my share in questioning it in the childhood. I love it, because it leads from simple principles to a wide net of consequences, which penetrate the entire physics. I love it because I see it everywhere, and not because Einstein is so much promoted as the ultimate genius. In fact, I consider that he should share more of his merits with Lorentz, Poincare, Hilbert, Schwarzschild, Riemann, Clifford, and probably others. Well, he was great, and I love him, but so were others. I am telling you this because you think that people accept relativity, which you consider rubbish, because they cherish so much Einstein. If this would be so, they would have to accept Einstein's view on quantum mechanics too, and most don't.
I know that relativity is counterintuitive. For some reason, Nature seems to care for us to understand her - probably because we needed this to survive. But some phenomena are far from our usual experience and need of survival. For example the Lorentz "contraction" at velocities near the speed of light. If the tunnel has 40m, and the train 80m, how can a train at a velocity very close to the speed of light be "trapped" inside the tunnel?
From the viewpoint of the passengers the train is not contracted, it has 80m. In fact, they see the tunnel contracted at 20m, and they see the train being only 25% inside the tunnel. If there are two doors, at the ends of the tunnel, an observer which is immobile with respect to the tunnel may see them both closed, and the train trapped inside. Just for a fraction of a second. But for the passengers, the doors are not closed simultaneously. The front door is closed, and opens just a tiny fraction of a second before the front of the train exits the tunnel. Then, after the back of the train enters the tunnel, the rear door may become closed, but for the passengers, 3/4 of the train is already out of the tunnel. So, the passengers conclude that the tunnel trapped the front of the train at t1, and the back of the train at t2, where t1
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Cristi Stoica replied on May. 30, 2012 @ 05:00 GMT
Dear Pentcho,
I congratulate you for questioning the foundations. This job should be done constantly, especially on the principle widely accepted. This thing should be encouraged by the mainstream, and I think they don't do this enough. The reason is simple: time. Most physicists are very busy with two things: keeping them updated, and doing and promoting their own research. To be kept...
view entire post
Dear Pentcho,
I congratulate you for questioning the foundations. This job should be done constantly, especially on the principle widely accepted. This thing should be encouraged by the mainstream, and I think they don't do this enough. The reason is simple: time. Most physicists are very busy with two things: keeping them updated, and doing and promoting their own research. To be kept updated in these days is nearly impossible, and that's why most physicists are forced to give up the love to learn by checking everything by themselves, and to replace it with accepting many things at second hand, on the basis that they were checked by others (the "peers"). This is bad, but it is efficient for two reasons: it allows you to appear that you know more, and to agree more with the others. Agreeing more with them makes them agree back, and this helps you promote your work. And for a physicist this is very important, because they have to publish, or they will perish. They are not happy with this, and they will want to go back to their early youth, when they had more time to question anything, and to explore alternatives, but that's life. After a time, they forget their initial impetus, having now other motivations.
But I think that any good physicist who knows relativity, at some point in his childhood questioned it, as you do. As you surely know, learning relativity doesn't limit at reading popular or introductory literature (even people like John Baez, when try to explain the things to others, may dumb down the explanation, or at least use too much metaphor).
For some reason, when people learn relativity, when they check the calculations, apply the principles to solve real problems, understand the connections with other principles of physics, their objections fall one by one. After a time they consider they were silly for doubting these principles, and probably they will try to be more efficient, by questioning less what they learn. Some of them, who skipped the phase of questioning relativity, or who did not finish it, learn to pass the exams, and may become acknowledged scientists in the new mainstream. Then, they remember their questions, and re-take their inquiry, and publish papers in which they claim that relativity has some issues. Maybe it is their late childish exploration, or maybe they really found some issues. To really know, one should really understand both relativity and their proposed alternatives. Just selecting quotes may lead to any conclusion.
I consider relativity a very good theory. I did my share in questioning it in the childhood. I love it, because it leads from simple principles to a wide net of consequences, which penetrate the entire physics. I love it because I see it everywhere, and not because Einstein is so much promoted as the ultimate genius. In fact, I consider that he should share more of his merits with Lorentz, Poincare, Hilbert, Schwarzschild, Riemann, Clifford, and probably others. Well, he was great, and I love him, but so were others. I am telling you this because you think that people accept relativity, which you consider rubbish, because they cherish so much Einstein. If this would be so, they would have to accept Einstein's view on quantum mechanics too, and most don't.
I know that relativity is counterintuitive. For some reason, Nature seems to care for us to understand her - probably because we needed this to survive. But some phenomena are far from our usual experience and need of survival. For example the Lorentz "contraction" at velocities near the speed of light. If the tunnel has 40m, and the train 80m, how can a train at a velocity very close to the speed of light be "trapped" inside the tunnel?
From the viewpoint of the passengers the train is not contracted, it has 80m. In fact, they see the tunnel contracted at 20m, and they see the train being only 25% inside the tunnel. If there are two doors, at the ends of the tunnel, an observer which is immobile with respect to the tunnel may see them both closed, and the train trapped inside. Just for a fraction of a second. But for the passengers, the doors are not closed simultaneously. The front door is closed, and opens just a tiny fraction of a second before the front of the train exits the tunnel. Then, after the back of the train enters the tunnel, the rear door may become closed, but for the passengers, 3/4 of the train is already out of the tunnel. So, the passengers conclude that the tunnel trapped the front of the train at t1, and the back of the train at t2, where t1 is less than t2. But in no case the entire train at the same time.
So who're right, the passengers, or the people walking near the tunnel? Both. Assume that the train displays the time on two clocks, one in the front, and the other in the back. Before leaving the station, the two clocks show the same time. When passing through the tunnel, even if it is trapped for a tiny fraction of a second, an observer from tunnel's frame will see that the two clocks show different times: t1, and t2. So they will know that this contraction is not real for the train, but it is due to the way the see the train. Not just an optical illusion, because it involves four dimensions. But thinking in four dimensions, and drawing Minkowski spacetimes, would help.
Now, the difficulty of understanding is not that there are four dimensions, but some of those who understand feel cooler to suggest that they are some gurus who transcended the three dimensions. In fact, the problem of the train and the tunnel requires only two dimensions, one space dimension, and the time. So, a one plus one Minkowski diagram will suffice. I will not draw it, maybe it is better if you will do so. Not because by doing this I am sure you will understand and accept relativity. But because, even if you continue to reject relativity, it is better for you to understand it, to "know your enemy" so to speak. Or maybe you understand relativity, but you just disagree, I don't know.
I like very much people who question the foundations (this doesn't mean I have to agree with them). Critical thinking is a good tool, and it has to be used both ways. Question everything others tell you, and question what you think you understand from what they tell. A complete usage of critical thinking require not only to question the others, but to submit to a thorough checking our own understanding. Understanding relativity, and showing this to an expert, puts you in a much better position to expose your own doubts and ideas. Because people are busy, don't have time to make sense by themselves of what you tell them. If I were in the position to contest relativity, I would first try to work out the basic notions, and understand what they mean, until I would be able to pass an exam, and to write an introduction to the subject, in which I just present the theory, with neutrality (without praising its merits or despising it). Then, I would try to take the arguments of the theory and attack them. It is difficult. Maybe a good essay for this contest will have an introduction in which you prove that you understand relativity and establish a common language, and a body in which you expose the mistakes of relativity. Quoting from experts who doubted relativity would help only as an argument from authority (unless they did not in fact doubt it, but tried to present what a person who doubts would say). The best would be to point the mistakes (if you will still believe there are mistakes), if possible at a mathematical level.
Good luck,
Cristi
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Paul Reed replied on May. 30, 2012 @ 07:26 GMT
Lawrence
“What I see is ultimately an illusion”
No, what is receivable which can be sensed by organisms might, from the perspective of its acquired role in sensory detection, best be characterised as a representation rather than an illusion. There is a definable physical process involving physically existent phenomena. The description ‘representation’ reflects the fact that:
1 what is receivable is not the reality being considered, as such, but the result of an interaction with it
2 that resultant effect may be altered in some way during its travel
3 there is no reason to assume that these physical interactions, which have become usable with the evolution of sensory detection in organisms, fulfil this acquired function perfectly, eg a certain amount of change or some existent states may not be ‘captured’ or they may in some way distort the original state.
Paul
PS: re your next paragraph and the post in general, if you represent time as the physical phenomenon that it corresponds with in reality, then the problems you refer to vanish. Put the other way around, the core problem is the underlying misrepresentation as to how reality physically occurs.
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Eckard Blumschein replied on May. 30, 2012 @ 13:09 GMT
Lawrence,
I like a theorem by Wiener/Khinchin (writung Khintchon you made a typo) because I see it a confirmation of my opinion that the putatively additional degree of freedom with the usual description of a function of time in C instead of R+ is just an illusion. I see the representation in C twice redundant. Real part and imaginary part, past and symmetrically to it anticipated future are entangled pairs that can be calculated from each other. So I guess, JC is formally correct while on the same detour as virtually all theory of signal processing and non-Galilean relativity.
I appreciate your preference for minimalistic representations.
You seem to declaring cranks all those hundreds of experts who questioned SR in particular by signing petitions. I would rather suggest waiting until the SKA (square kilometer array) operates after 2016. Of course, Einstein was correct when he reacted to the 100 reasons why SR is wrong with the argument: A single compelling one would be sufficient.
Eckard
Eckard
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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on May. 30, 2012 @ 23:56 GMT
I think Baez' use of the word compressed is a bad word choice. Besides the observer riding along with the rod observes no change in its length. There are no internal compressing forces on the rod.
Paul, the reality I observe could be said to be "hard enough." It is not advised to step in front of a moving truck with the idea it is an illusion. However, I think the majority of what we call reality is little more than a sort of holographic or Moire phase pattern that has no fundamental depth.
I really don't want to argue special relativity. I think it best to let Pentch have his eelf-dialogue at this point. I do which though that this blog was monitored to weed out cranks.
Cheers LC
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Pentcho Valev replied on May. 31, 2012 @ 05:57 GMT
Cristi,
Concerning the 80m pole (train) trapped inside the 40m barn (tunnel), you are changing the problem. Trapping does not last "just for a fraction of a second". Rather, special relativity predicts that arbitrarily long objects can remain trapped inside arbitrarily short containers FOR GOOD:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/bar
n_pole.html
"These are the props. You own a barn, 40m long, with automatic doors at either end, that can be opened and closed simultaneously by a switch. You also have a pole, 80m long, which of course won't fit in the barn. (...) If it does not explode under the strain and it is sufficiently elastic it will come to rest and start to spring back to its natural shape but since it is too big for the barn the other end is now going to crash into the back door and the rod will be trapped IN A COMPRESSED STATE inside the barn."
http://www.parabola.unsw.edu.au/vol35_no1/vol35_no1_2.pdf
"Suppose you want to fit a 20m pole into a 10m barn. (...) Hence in both frames of reference, the pole fits inside the barn (and will presumably shatter when the doors are closed)."
Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com
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Cristi Stoica replied on May. 31, 2012 @ 06:17 GMT
Pentcho,
What Baez does is to add to the problem of the train and tunnel the twist that the two doors of the tunnel will remain closed. Relativity predicts that for a short duration the train will be seen from the reference frame of the tunnel as being trapped.
What comes next, the twist, is not the prediction of relativity, it is a speculation of what could happen if the two doors will remain closed, and if they are able to stop the train, or the pole if you wish. To stop them means to make it slow from a velocity closed to that of light, to 0. Normally, this would blow up any door, and if it wouldn't, the train would blow up, and the mountain with the tunnel would be moved by the impact, and if it doesn't, then it comes what you said. The train would be stopped, and it will remain compressed, I mean compressed as you would compress it at a car cemetery. So, when Baez said "compressed state", I understand now that he really meant compressed.
If there would exist such an extreme tunnel, with such good doors, then this will reduce to the impact of the train at almost c, to its compression during the impact, etc. This is not a problem, unless you want the train or the pole to be a perfectly rigid object.
So the conflict is between relativity and the existence of objects with these magical properties. While the relativistic effects are well studied by experiments, I don't know of any evidence of such objects with such extreme properties.
Regards,
Cristi
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Paul Reed replied on May. 31, 2012 @ 07:03 GMT
Lawrence
Compressed (or contracted) is what they hypothecated. The “observer riding along with the rod observes no change in its length” because the observer is also an entity and is similarly being compressed, by definition. The assumption there being that, although comprising different forms of matter, both are similarly affected by the same force. The comparison is really entity to entity. Which does raise the question as to whether the observer would see it that way. In the case of that lorry, you receive photon based representations of the entity first, but do not have enough time differential before you receive a feeling sensation! – unlike pigeons that see the world at a much faster rate.
I am not sure why people keep on bringing up SR. Einstein stated clearly what it constituted, that is, a conceptualised circumstance where there was no gravity (ie force) so bodies are fixed in shape, rays of light move in straight lines, there is only uniform rectilinear and non-rotary movement and Euclidean maths can be applied. I think the problem is that people think all that was written in 1905 equals SR, which it does not.
Paul
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Paul Reed replied on May. 31, 2012 @ 07:20 GMT
Pentcho
“…special relativity predicts that arbitrarily long objects can remain trapped inside arbitrarily short containers FOR GOOD”
No it does not. SR involves no alteration in the dimension of objects whatsoever. Here is the man himself telling you so:
“Provided that they are in a state of uniform rectilinear and non-rotary motion… The validity of the principle of relativity was assumed only for these reference-bodies, but not for others (e.g. those possessing motion of a different kind). In this sense we speak of the special principle of relativity, or special theory of relativity” (Einstein 1916 SR & GR Section 18 para 5)
“The special theory of relativity has reference to Galileian domains, ie to those in which no gravitational field exists…In gravitational fields there are no such things as rigid bodies with Euclidean properties; thus the fictitious rigid body of reference is of no avail in the general theory of relativity. (Einstein SR & GR 1916 Section 28)
Apart from misinterpreting the consequences of what was actually said, you are presuming that all that written in 1905 equals SR, rather than listening to what the man himself tells you it is.
Paul
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Pentcho Valev replied on May. 31, 2012 @ 07:27 GMT
Cristi,
I admit that the transition from Einstein's 1905 light postulate (the premise) to the strange effects accompanying the permanent trapping of an 80m pole inside a 40m barn (the conclusion) is not reductio ad absurdum par excellence. Still in my view the feeling that length contraction is perhaps too awkward should emerge even in the heads of faithful Einsteinians. Then this feeling...
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Cristi,
I admit that the transition from Einstein's 1905 light postulate (the premise) to the strange effects accompanying the permanent trapping of an 80m pole inside a 40m barn (the conclusion) is not reductio ad absurdum par excellence. Still in my view the feeling that length contraction is perhaps too awkward should emerge even in the heads of faithful Einsteinians. Then this feeling should become unbearable in the context of the Michelson-Morley experiment. In 1887 the experiment UNEQUIVOCALLY confirmed the assumption that the speed of light varies with the speed of the light source (as predicted by Newton's emission theory of light) and refuted the antithesis which was to become Einstein's 1905 second postulate - that the speed of light is independent of the speed of the light source. It was the length contraction hypothesis that completely reversed the interpretation of the experiment - the null result became compatible with the antithesis and incompatible with the Newtonian concept:
http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Its-Roots-Banesh-Ho
ffmann/dp/0486406768
"Relativity and Its Roots" By Banesh Hoffmann: "Moreover, if light consists of particles, as Einstein had suggested in his paper submitted just thirteen weeks before this one, the second principle seems absurd: A stone thrown from a speeding train can do far more damage than one thrown from a train at rest; the speed of the particle is not independent of the motion of the object emitting it. And if we take light to consist of particles and assume that these particles obey Newton's laws, they will conform to Newtonian relativity and thus automatically account for the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment without recourse to contracting lengths, local time, or Lorentz transformations. Yet, as we have seen, Einstein resisted the temptation to account for the null result in terms of particles of light and simple, familiar Newtonian ideas, and introduced as his second postulate something that was more or less obvious when thought of in terms of waves in an ether."
http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/companion.doc
John Norton: "These efforts were long misled by an exaggeration of the importance of one experiment, the Michelson-Morley experiment, even though Einstein later had trouble recalling if he even knew of the experiment prior to his 1905 paper. This one experiment, in isolation, has little force. Its null result happened to be fully compatible with Newton's own emission theory of light. Located in the context of late 19th century electrodynamics when ether-based, wave theories of light predominated, however, it presented a serious problem that exercised the greatest theoretician of the day."
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/1743/2/Norton.pdf
John Norton: "In addition to his work as editor of the Einstein papers in finding source material, Stachel assembled the many small clues that reveal Einstein's serious consideration of an emission theory of light; and he gave us the crucial insight that Einstein regarded the Michelson-Morley experiment as evidence for the principle of relativity, whereas later writers almost universally use it as support for the light postulate of special relativity. Even today, this point needs emphasis. The Michelson-Morley experiment is fully compatible with an emission theory of light that CONTRADICTS THE LIGHT POSTULATE."
Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com
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Paul Reed replied on May. 31, 2012 @ 08:23 GMT
Pentcho
How many more times must you be told? This effect (which may or may not actually occur) is hypothecated to be a real dimensional effect. It has nothing to do with light, time, observers, etc, etc. The process whereby they came up with this conclusion, and whether or not is is actually valid, is irrelevant to the fact that this is what they asserted, and everything flows from...
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Pentcho
How many more times must you be told? This effect (which may or may not actually occur) is hypothecated to be a real dimensional effect. It has nothing to do with light, time, observers, etc, etc. The process whereby they came up with this conclusion, and whether or not is is actually valid, is irrelevant to the fact that this is what they asserted, and everything flows from there. Or would have done, had there not been a misinterpretation of the interaction of the variables which, funamentlly lead to timing becoming the surrogate for dimensional alteration.
Here is Lorentz (1892 para 3):
“It consists of the assumption, that the line joining two points of a solid body doesn't conserve its length, when it is once in motion parallel to the direction of motion of Earth, and afterwards it is brought normal to it. [The difference when comparing the two motions in the same dimension being p2/2V2] . Such a change in length of the arms in Michelson’s first experiment, and in the size of the stone plate in the second, is really not inconceivable as it seems to me”.
Simple translation: matter alters dimension in the line of motion when the rate of motion is caused to alter, and once the cause ceases it reverts to its ‘normal’ dimension. [The cause was subsequently attributed to gravity].
Here is Poincaré (July 1905):
“An explanation was proposed by Lorentz and Fitzgerald, who introduced the hypothesis of a contraction undergone by all bodies into the direction of the motion of earth and proportional to the square of aberration; this contraction hypothesis would become insufficient, however, if one were to assume the postulate of relativity in all its generality.
It is thus necessary to return from here to the theory of Lorentz; but if one wants to preserve it and avoid intolerable contradictions, it is necessary to suppose a special force which explains at the same time the contraction and the constancy of two of the axes. I sought to determine this force, I found that it can be compared to a constant external pressure, acting on the deformable and compressible electron, and whose work is proportional to the variations of the volume of the electron.
Simple translation: Lorentz was correct about dimension alteration, except for a minor tweek which I have provided. [This was a reaction to some commentator who’s name I have forgotten]
Here is Einstein (Foundation of GR 1916):
“The unit measuring rod appears, when referred to the co-ordinate-system, shortened by the calculated magnitude [equation (71)] through the presence of the gravitational field, when we place it radially in the field. The gravitational field has no influence upon the length of the rod, when we put it tangentially in the field [equation (71a)]…But a glance at (70a) and (69) shows that the expected difference is much too small to be noticeable in the measurement of earth's surface”
Simple translation: the effect exists but is too small in the context of earth.
Paul
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T H Ray replied on May. 31, 2012 @ 10:52 GMT
Lawrence, you wrote, "If an observer watches the horizon ever closer by accelerating ever more to extreme g the horizon appears more and more as the singularity where fields are intensely blue shifted or in the UV domain. The interior singularity to an infalling observer is much the same. In that case fields are divergently blue shifted as they approach the singularity."
That's exactly right. And it's the very reason that I have been emphasizing that the continuous measurement function as described by Joy's framework is nondegenerate near the singularity. What one has to account for, is that EVERY continuous measurement function (Lamport) contains a singularity, in which the measure diverges to the left or right. In a fully relativistic model (which Joy's demonstrably is) and given that the universe is expanding, every point EXCEPT ONE is a finite distance from every other; one point at infinity decides -- in the bounded length of time of the measurement -- between left or right, which TO THE OBSERVER must appear as a continuous function nondegenerate near the singularity. Allowing that there is no privileged frame, the objective case is only clear on one side of the record at a time (hence, Joy's unjustly maligned input argument, E(a,b) = - a.b). Classical time symmetry -- exactly as sustains special relativity -- restores the objective case. The moon is there when no one is looking, as is the singularity when no one is measuring.
Tom
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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on May. 31, 2012 @ 14:21 GMT
TH Ray, Cristi et al,
This transformation between holographic fields on a stretched horizon and a singularity has absolutely nothing to do with JC’s locality claim of QM. Cristi has found ways the singularity of a black hole can be transformed away or removed by analytic extension. This is similar to Hawking’s imaginary time argument. The removal of the internal singularity in a black hole is then equivalent to removing the UV spectrum fields on an event horizon to the IR spectrum by turning off the acceleration g, g --- > 0, so the observer is on an inertial frame. This does not have much to do with anything JC is claiming.
As for the moving rod, there is clearly no compression force that contracts it as seen in a frame moving relative to the rod. Trapping the rod in a box and trapping its contracted length involves accelerated reference frames. This is a bit of a complicated question involving how an object that has an extended length can be placed in the same accelerated reference frame. There is also an optical component to this as well called the
Terrell rotation This optical effect happens to largely cancel the Lorentz contraction, but relativistic motion still distorts the appearance of objects nonetheless.
I suppose maybe this gets touches on what Paul says above. Einstein laid down the transformation properties of spacetime in 1905. There are of course other things one can derive in special relativity, such as these funny optical effects. I will say that I am annoyed and tired of this constant drum-fire of ignorance and misinformation that Pentcho keeps peppering this blog with.
Cheers LC
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Paul Reed replied on May. 31, 2012 @ 15:23 GMT
Tom
If the universe/reality is expanding, that is an omnipresent effect, ie there is no point of reference to detect it when considering everything that is existent at any given point in time. It is only detectable by comparing change over time and discerning a certain irregularity from that which would otherwise have been expected.
Infinity is not a point. By definition, it does not exist. For any judgement one must involve a reference, but that must exist, otherwise comparison (ie judgement) is impossible. Having chosen any given reference (no one being privileged) then one must continue to deploy that reference, otherwise the outcomes are not comparable.
Observation is distinct from reality (as in the sense of what is being observed). Because it is not reality that is observed, but a photon based representation thereof resulting from an interaction therewith. Which is received by the observer some time after the existent state (reality) has occurred, and indeed by then been superseded by another.
Paul
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Paul Reed replied on May. 31, 2012 @ 15:46 GMT
Lawrence
The effect in light was deemed to be the same as the same as the effect in dimension. Because that famous null result was translated as being: the light effect does exist, it is just being cancelled out by an alteration in dimension. But as I keep on saying, the derivation of an hypothesis is irrelevant. It was declared, and not rescinded. Moreover, again as I keep on saying, what happens in light is entirely separate from what happens in the reality being depicted by it. They are physically different existent entities. So what happens with light is irrelevant anyway in terms of determining what happened in the reality. Other than that this is our only way of observing it and hence deducing it.
The set of variables and their actual interaction was ‘highjacked’ by the model of spacetime, which is flawed as it misrepresents time. There is no ‘time’ in reality, as it is concerned with the rate at which any given existent state alters. And alteration involves more than one. But only one existent state in any given sequence can exist at a time. So ‘time’ is concerned with change. All that exists in reality is spatial position. Not even dimension, which is just a human simplification of possible direction, that being a function of potential spatial positions available from any given spatial point.
Paul
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T H Ray replied on May. 31, 2012 @ 16:25 GMT
Lawrence, if you're relying on Paul's philosophy to evaluate Joy's framework, then you are totally lost. You two might just as well go off somewhere and discuss Aristotle.
"Cristi has found ways the singularity of a black hole can be transformed away or removed by analytic extension. This is similar to Hawking's imaginary time argument."
It is actually more akin to the Hamilton-Perelman proof that singularities on the manifold of S^3 are extinguished in finite time (Thurston's geometric uniformization conjecture). That keeps the measure space on a positively curved manifold, in the half-open interval [0, oo) and suppresses the role of complex analysis on which Hawking's proposal depends. You and Cristi are going to realize sooner or later that you are betting on the wrong horse.
Paul -- an expanding (and accelerating) universe places the spatial point of creation at ANY arbitrary locus of 3 + 1 spacetime. The point at infinity (in the 4 dimensions of a 3-sphere) is what differentiates Euclidean R^3 from S^3. Philosophizing over existence has nothing to do with the physics -- which is quite straightforward both in the continuous 4-space of Minkowski space-time and the discrete quaternion algebra of W.R. Hamilton.
Tom
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T H Ray replied on May. 31, 2012 @ 16:39 GMT
Sorry, Lawrence, I misread. I thought you were using Paul's commentary in re Joy. I now see that it refers to Valev's nonsense, which is eminently ignorable.
Tom
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Paul Reed replied on Jun. 1, 2012 @ 06:22 GMT
Tom
“an expanding (and accelerating) universe places the spatial point of creation at ANY arbitrary locus of 3 + 1 spacetime”
What is this, but philosophy? If we know reality, as manifest to us, is expanding, then that which it is expanding into is also part of reality. Whether it is currently expanding or not is irrelevant to the location of the start point. Neither does that, or any other factor, mean that that point is at “any arbitrary locus”. If there was such a start, that would have been at a specific spatial position, and that position still ‘exists’. Spatial position does not alter, space does. But space is itself only the corollary of object. That is, there is no such entity as space, only object; space being that which is not the objects under consideration at any given point in time. Whether all possible spatial position is occupied by object at any given point in time, I do not know. But if that is the case then that is just spatial position that is, at that time, not occupied by any object (ie as opposed to just the ones under consideration).
All that is happening is that we cannot know where this original start point is, but we cannot in those circumstances just assert it as being anywhere. Furthermore, your depiction of reality as 3 +1 has no physical validity. There are not 3. There is no corresponding physically existent phenomenon to the concept of dimension. What exists is a definitive number of possible spatial points adjacent to the one currently occupied, ie there are a number of directions in which any given object can move. There is direction, not dimension. That which physically exists and corresponds with the concept ‘time’ (ie +1) is concerned with an attribute (specifically the rate) of change in reality, ie the difference between realities, not an attribute of any given reality.
As I said, a point of infinity cannot exist. It therefore cannot be used as a point of reference. Since we are trapped in a closed system, we can, and must, select any ‘point’ as a reference in order to effect any judgement. Philosophising over anything is pointless. Establishing, logically, how reality physically occurs for us, is not, because that underpins physics. Otherwise it is liable to be based on flawed models which do not correspond with how reality occurs, and hence are just beliefs/ philosophies.
Paul
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Cristi Stoica replied on Jun. 1, 2012 @ 08:32 GMT
Tom,
"It is actually more akin to the Hamilton-Perelman proof that singularities on the manifold of S^3 are extinguished in finite time (Thurston's geometric uniformization conjecture). That keeps the measure space on a positively curved manifold, in the half-open interval [0, oo) and suppresses the role of complex analysis on which Hawking's proposal depends. You and Cristi are going to realize sooner or later that you are betting on the wrong horse."
I am familiar with Hamilton's and Perelman's stuff, I am more familiar with mine, but I don't understand what you say. What is "akin", that both are about metrics and singularities? Do I use the Ricci flow? Do I use surgery at singularities, like Perelman, and are they extinguished in time? And assuming there are connection with Perelman's work, how does this invalidate my approach, or Lawrence's?
Cristi
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T H Ray replied on Jun. 1, 2012 @ 09:26 GMT
“an expanding (and accelerating) universe places the spatial point of creation at ANY arbitrary locus of 3 + 1 spacetime”
What is this, but philosophy?"
Mathematics.
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T H Ray replied on Jun. 1, 2012 @ 09:29 GMT
"And assuming there are connection with Perelman's work, how does this invalidate my approach, or Lawrence's?"
It doesn't invalidate them. It makes them incomplete. As are all physical models lacking a reversible time parameter.
Tom
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Cristi Stoica replied on Jun. 1, 2012 @ 10:45 GMT
I don't know if Lawrence is still waiting for you to explain the connection you claimed to exist between what he said and Joy's ideas.
But you still did not answer the questions I asked about the statements you made:
"What is "akin", that both are about metrics and singularities? Do I use the Ricci flow? Do I use surgery at singularities, like Perelman, and are they extinguished in time"
Instead, you added to these new statements: "It makes them incomplete. As are all physical models lacking a reversible time parameter."
First, you did not show that the connection you claimed exists. And assuming it exists, how does it make incomplete my approach? Is Perelman's theory incomplete? And in what sense do you say my approach is incomplete? Maybe you can define "complete" and give some examples, and show how it is incomplete. And what "reversible time parameter" does my "model" lack? How do you know it lacks it? Why do you say this lack of a "reversible time parameter" is making a theory incomplete?
What do you mean by "reversible time parameter"? You can reverse the time in any model, by replacing it with -t. Some models are reversible, some are not, but how can the parameter not be reversible?
Anyway, if you want to know, my models are reversible, unless you redefine the term "reversible".
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T H Ray replied on Jun. 1, 2012 @ 11:52 GMT
"But you still did not answer the questions I asked about the statements you made:"
Yes I did.
"First, you did not show that the connection you claimed exists. And assuming it exists, how does it make incomplete my approach? Is Perelman's theory incomplete?"
Perelman's proof is not a theory, it is a mathematical proof -- of a conjecture that all 3-manifolds with finite fundamental group are compact, implying that every closed simply connected 3-manifold is homeomorphic to the 3-sphere.
"And in what sense do you say my approach is incomplete? Maybe you can define 'complete' and give some examples, and show how it is incomplete."
The special and general theory of relativity are mathematically complete; every element of the mathematical theory corresponds to every element of the physical observation to the prescribed limit.
"And what 'reversible time parameter' does my 'model' lack? How do you know it lacks it? Why do you say this lack of a 'reversible time parameter' is making a theory incomplete?"
Show that your method of analytical continuation is reversible in the same way as reversal of Ricci flow with surgery back to the singularity, and I will withdraw my comment. Good luck.
"What do you mean by 'reversible time parameter'?"
That the time trajectory backward in time looks the same as forward in time.
"You can reverse the time in any model, by replacing it with -t."
Only if one assumes |t|. In which case, all time intervals are equal. As Leslie Lamport ("Buridan's Principle") has definitively shown, however, every continuous function physical model obviates that assumption.
"Some models are reversible, some are not, but how can the parameter not be reversible?"
When the time evolution of the system is shown to be irreversible.
"Anyway, if you want to know, my models are reversible, unless you redefine the term 'reversible'."
I haven't redefined anything. Until the advent of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics, all physics incorporated a simple time parameter of reversible trajectory.
Cristi, I've not tried to hide my disappointment that Lawrence, whom I know to have expert knowledge of relativity, has bought into quantum models that cannot be completely fit into that framework. I think that if both you and Lawrence honestly investigated the role of topology -- and the leading-edge research in the field that sheds new light on physical phenomena -- you would find as Joy Christian has, that quantum phenomena are in the classical domain, without boundary.
Tom
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Cristi Stoica replied on Jun. 1, 2012 @ 12:20 GMT
Tom,
You wrote a long reply, but still did not prove your affirmations.
You did not show the relation you claim to exist between my theory and Perelman's proof.
You did not show that my theory is incomplete, and irreversible. You gave as example of a complete theory general relativity. My results are about general relativity, completed to singularities. So how can it be less complete?
You just made some unsupported claims about things you did not check. I tried to understand what you said, and asked you for details for this, but I see now that you made up arguments. As you made up "reversible time parameter" (Google says
No results found for "reversible time parameter".).
"I think that if both you and Lawrence honestly [...] you would find as Joy Christian has [...]."
What has this to do with Joy Christian? This was all about?
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T H Ray replied on Jun. 1, 2012 @ 12:33 GMT
You should have been looking for
classical mechanics. You know, the stuff you were supposed to have learned before you got to grad school.
Don't worry, I won't bother to make any more long replies.
Tom
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Lawrence B. Crowell replied on Jun. 1, 2012 @ 13:29 GMT
I wrote a post on the Ricci flow in connection to this on a fresh post below, thus liberating this discussion from this deeply buried set of hidden posts.
No I am not interested in tying JC’s work to this in any way. The notion of locality in QFT is not equivalent to the same term with quantum EPR and Bell’s theorem. JC’s work is not something I have any interest in commenting on further in any way. We have to be honest, that stuff is not going anywhere. The Disproof of disproofs blog section is over 2000 entries, it is too large to conveniently comment on, and I hope there is not a fresh page started for that. Frankly I think it best to keep other blog entries here “JC-free.”
Cheers LC
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Paul Reed replied on Jun. 2, 2012 @ 06:18 GMT
Tom
Your post 1/6 09.26 “Mathematics”. Yes, but a system/model which does not correspond with how reality occurs. So, intrinsically it ‘works’ but only in ‘its own terms’, which can be characterised as philosophy.
Here is another example. Take the sentence that Cristi questions above from another perspective. There is nothing but “finite time” (as in timing). If the timing is not finite, then that just means it has not finished. So therefore we cannot know what will occur in this circumstance, because it cannot occur, or be predicted.
Then you post (1/6 09.29) “As are all physical models lacking a reversible time parameter” [which I note Cristi questions] which you explain with (1/6 11.52) “That the time trajectory backward in time looks the same as forward in time”. There is no such thing as a “time trajectory”. There are only occurrences (or better still: physically existent states) at any given point in time (as in timing). [Which is why you cannot have a ‘not-finite time’, because nothing can occur]. By definition, the occurrences happen in a sequence (leaf turns brown, electron spins), which is not reversible. Assuming any given model has depicted the occurrences correctly, and employed the proper relationship between them and timing, then the selection of any sequence of points in time will not ‘affect’ the reality (occurrences). Timing being a methodology for comparing (and hence quantifying) rates of change (which is the physical phenomenon to which ‘time’ corresponds). You may have meant this.
Paul
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T H Ray replied on Jun. 2, 2012 @ 11:01 GMT
" .... (mathematics) a system/model which does not correspond with how reality occurs ..."
If it doesn't, science -- being languageless -- is therefore meaningless.
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Paul Reed replied on Jun. 3, 2012 @ 06:43 GMT
Tom
"If it doesn't,[correspond with how reality occurs] science -- being languageless -- is therefore meaningless"
That is what I said, except rather than "meaningless", I characterised it as philosophy, or one could use the description: belief. Science must be objective knowledge (whether expressed in numbers, words, graphics is irrelevant), ie reflect reality 'as is'. And that requires a start point which corresponds with how reality occurs. Reality is not an abstract concept. It exists, for us-but then there is no other form we can know-in a specific physical form as the result of a definable physical process. What occurs at any given point in time, and why, within a closed system, are really what science can establish. Any other form of how, other than that which is a logical truism, is unknowable, because we cannot transcend our existence.
Paul
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T H Ray replied on Jun. 5, 2012 @ 17:25 GMT
"we cannot transcend our existence."
If we can't, then anything one says about existence is meaningless.
Tom
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Paul Reed replied on Jun. 6, 2012 @ 05:20 GMT
Tom
Not so. Anything one says about an existence other than our own is meaningless, because we can only examine reality as it exists to us. There is the logical possibility of other forms, but by definition we can never know them. So the first question, before then establishing what occurred and why within those confines, is to establish, logically, how reality (aka existence) occurs for us (or more precisely all organisms capable of sensory detection).
Our reality exists, it is not an abstract concept. And it does so as the result of a definable physical process. We can hypothecate, in order to overcome certain known limitations of the sensory systems, but this must be on the basis of confirmed sensory evidence. Otherwise it is just belief, because there is no basis for objective validation.
Paul
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T H Ray replied on Jun. 6, 2012 @ 10:15 GMT
" ... we can only examine reality as it exists to us."
Then you are compelled to agree with standard quantum theory that the moon isn't there when no one is looking. Paul, these metaphysical questions surely lie at the heart of current physics controversy. The capacity to philosophize one's way out of them, though, lies beyond scientific method.
Tom
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Paul Reed replied on Jun. 7, 2012 @ 05:41 GMT
Tom
Not so. Because we know that is not how reality occurs. It is independent of the sensing of it. But we can only know it through that process. [Furthermore, hypothecation to overcome certain known practical problems in that process is possible, so long as it is firmly rooted in what has been proven by direct experience, ie it is not philosophy/belief].
"... these metaphysical questions surely lie at the heart of current physics controversy". Absolutely. And a proper understanding as to how reality occurs would resolve it immediately (in the sense of pointing out that the 'controversy' is a function of misconceptualisation, ie two competing and incorrect philosophies. It would not resolve what occurs and why). Because it would point to the flaws in both spacetime and the Copenhagen Interpretation as representative models of that. It would also highlight how Relativity works, though this is clearly stated at the outset anyway, before then being subverted by incorrect thinking, as reified in the spacetime construct.
Neither is it "philosophising" one's way out of the existential conundrum we are in, nor does it "lie beyond scientific method". It is very easy to identify, once one ejects "baggage". We are part of an existence. On what physical basis do we know this? Science, whether expressed in terms of mathematical, word, graphical, representational devices must then correspond with that (eg not deploy a meaning for time which has no physical reality, etc), in order to establish the what and why. There is no choice in the how because it is determined, for us, by our very existence.
Paul
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T H Ray replied on Jun. 7, 2012 @ 10:52 GMT
" ... we know that is not how reality occurs."
We don't know anything about how reality occurs, Paul. We don't even know IF reality occurs accordng to common way of understanding what it means for reality to occur even if it does. You use this "we" as if what is self-evident to you is an eternal truth.
Tom
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Paul Reed replied on Jun. 8, 2012 @ 07:21 GMT
Tom
"We don't know anything about how reality occurs, Paul. We don't even know IF reality occurs..."
What we do not know, and can never know, is what is 'really' happening. 'Really' being a reference to a logical state that transcends all forms of existence. But by definition, that can never be known by anything, because whenever there is something, then there is always the logical possibility of something else. If A, there is the logical possibility of not-A.
So, rather then get lost in the indeterminable minefield of metaphysical possibilities that result from this existential conundrum, it is important to address the corollary of it. We are trapped in a closed system. We do have the ability to conceptualise 'outside' that, like the Hitchhickers Guide ultimate solution, but this is not knowledge, just belief. To know we must stay within the closed system. The question then becomes how does that occur?
And as Lawrence pointed out some postings back, the train is very real. But as I was pointing out, in terms of the sight mode of sensory detection what is received is not the train but an effect in photons caused by interaction with the train. Very quickly after he feels it!! Etc, etc. Once one establishes the inherent and valid boundaries and then investigates what is physically happening within them, it is very easy to establish, at a foundational level, how it works. On the subject of "we", that includes all organisms, but like many other concepts it gets to torturous to write down all the words. Indeed, reality can only be, for us, all that which is potentially sensorily experienceable by any organism capable of effecting sensory detection. Potentiality there being a reference to known practical problems in the sensory systems. It is also worth noting that that definition includes the potential for a Matian to arrive with a whole new set of sensory capabilities.
Paul
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