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The Nature of Time Essay Contest (2008)
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Time as an Emergent Phenomenon: Traveling Back to the Heroic Age of Physics by Elliot McGucken
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Elliot McGucken wrote on Aug. 25, 2008 @ 18:38 GMT
Essay AbstractIn his 1912 Manuscript on Relativity, Einstein never stated that time is the fourth dimension, but rather he wrote x4 = ict. The fourth dimension is not time, but ict. Despite this, prominent physicists have oft equated time and the fourth dimension, leading to un-resolvable paradoxes and confusion regarding time’s physical nature, as physicists mistakenly projected properties of the three spatial dimensions onto a time dimension, resulting in curious concepts including frozen time and block universes in which the past and future are omni-present, thusly denying free will, while implying the possibility of time travel into the past, which visitors from the future have yet to verify. Beginning with the postulate that time is an emergent phenomenon resulting from a fourth dimension expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c, diverse phenomena from relativity, quantum mechanics, and statistical mechanics are accounted for. Time dilation, the equivalence of mass and energy, nonlocality, wave-particle duality, and entropy are shown to arise from a common, deeper physical reality expressed with dx4/dt=ic. This postulate and equation, from which Einstein’s relativity is derived, presents a fundamental model accounting for the emergence of time, the constant velocity of light, the fact that the maximum velocity is c, and the fact that c is independent of the velocity of the source, as photons are but matter surfing a fourth expanding dimension. In general relativity, Einstein showed that the dimensions themselves could bend, curve, and move. The present theory extends this principle, postulating that the fourth dimension is moving independently of the three spatial dimensions, distributing locality and fathering time. This physical model underlies and accounts for time in quantum mechanics, relativity, and statistical mechanics, as well as entropy, the universe’s expansion, and time’s arrows.
Author Bio“Dr. E” received a B.A. in physics from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in physics from UNC Chapel Hill, where his research on an artificial retina, which is now helping the blind see, appeared in Business Week and Popular Science and was awarded a Merrill Lynch Innovations Grant. While at Princeton, McGucken worked on projects concerning quantum mechanics and general relativity with the late John Wheeler, and the projects combined to form an appendix treating time as an emergent phenomenon in his dissertation. McGucken is writing a book for the Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology (artsentrepreneurship.com) curriculum he created.
Excal wrote on Aug. 27, 2008 @ 23:09 GMT
Dr. E:
Isn't this just a copy of work published elsewhere? My understanding is that the contest essays are to be original.
Dr. E wrote on Aug. 28, 2008 @ 16:09 GMT
Hello Excal,
The work has never been submitted to a formal peer-reviewed publication, and thus it has never been published in one. It hasn't even been posted on arxiv.org. But I hope to submit something soon! I'm looking forward to feedback on this forum, so as to further hone the theory.
I have shared variations of this work on the internet, and a very early version appeared in an appendix in my dissertation entitled "Multiple unit artificial retina chipset to aid the visually impaired and enhanced holed-emitter CMOS phototransistors."
However, this is the very first paper in which I lead with "Time as an Emergent Phenomenon."
The postulate that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions (dx4/dt=ic) has implications across many realms of physics, and thus various papers could be written, including:
Time as an Emergent Phenomenon (the current paper--feedback would be greatly appreciated!)
The Unique Source of Quantum Mechanics' Nonlocality and the Relativity of Simultaneity
Unifying the Dualities--the Physical Reality Underlying the Space/Time, Wave/Particle, and Energy/Mass Dualities
Time's Arrows Unified: Entropic, Radiative, Cosmological, Quantum, and Pscyhological
Deriving Einstein's Relativity From a more Fundamental Postulate of a Fourth Expanding Dimension
Moving Dimensions Theory: Extending GR with a Fourth Dimension Moving independently of the Three Spatial Dimensions
Simultaneity and Nonlocality in Time: Ageless Photons are Forever Entangled
Time's Assymetries and the Fourth Expanding Dimension
The Gravitational Redshift and Slowing of Time Explained With a New Invariant: dx4/dt=ic
Why Radiation is Quantized and Gravition is Not
Relativity Does Not Imply a Block Universe, as the Fourth Dimension is Not Time, but ict.
Moving Dimensions Theory: A Physical Reality Underlying Quantum Mechanics, Statistical Mechanis, and Relativity
dx4/dt=ic : Underlying Einstein's Two Postulates of Relativity
Well, those are some titles for potential papers.
I'll look forward to your feedback on the current paper!
Thanks,
Dr. E :)
Dr. E wrote on Aug. 28, 2008 @ 16:33 GMT
p.s.
there are also new ideas/concepts in the current paper "Time as an Emergent Phenomenon: Traveling Back to the Heroic Age of Physics by Elliot McGucken" that have never been released anywhere else.
i'll look forward to your feedback! thanks!
dr. e :)
Excal wrote on Aug. 29, 2008 @ 21:27 GMT
Thanks for that clarification. I started to read the paper, but having only recently discovered a similar paper on physicsmathforums.com, I thought I was reading the same one again.
Anyway, I will reread it soon. In the meantime, I do have some feedback for what it's worth. If the expansion of the fourth dimension is scalar, which it must be, then the radius of the spherical expansion is one unit of space in all directions, in one unit of time. Therefore, the radius of the sphere, r, is equal to ct = Äs/Ät * t = s = 1 (s = space), which makes ict = 2^1/2 = 1.414..., the radius, r’, an imaginary value corresponding to the coordinate pair, [x, y] = [1,1], if we slice the sphere for simplicity.
But if we write dx4/dt = ic, aren’t we writing di(s/t * t}/dt = is/t ? Then what is ‘i*s’ if not 1.414…? If it is 1.414… then ic is > c, correct?
Excal wrote on Aug. 29, 2008 @ 21:29 GMT
Grrr, that umlauted A in the previous post was supposed to be the delta triangle.
Dr. E wrote on Aug. 29, 2008 @ 22:18 GMT
Hello Excal--yes-I also posted the paper at physicsmathforums.com right after I submitted it here on 8/14/08. When did you read it first? I am trying to get as much feedback as possible, so I post it around. A great thing about the internet is it costs nothing extra to share an idea in different forums and get the word out. Indeed, I imagine scientific journals will evolve over time, so that ideas can propagate faster to a greater audience and with less expense.
Thanks for the feedback, but I'm not sure what you are saying.
dx4/dt = ic is what MDT states, which comes straight from Einstein's work.
x4 = fourth dimension
i = imaginary number
c = velocity of light
t = time
Suppose I told you x4 = ict and asked you to draw x4 at t=1, t=2, t=3 . . . etc.
Would you not draw x4 in different places for different t's?
Then, since Einstein and Minkoswki agree that the fourth dimension x4 = ict, does it not make sense that the fourth dimension moves over time?
Thanks.
Excal wrote on Aug. 30, 2008 @ 00:55 GMT
Dr. E:
Clearly it does. However, what I’m saying is that, if, for velocity c = 1, we choose a unit of time (1 Planck time, 1 second, whatever) then that fixes a unit of space for the equation of motion, c = s/t = 1/1. Please see the attached diagram.
An expansion from the origin of the diagram, in all directions, at unit speed, ds/dt = 1/1 = c, will expand as the red sphere with...
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Dr. E:
Clearly it does. However, what I’m saying is that, if, for velocity c = 1, we choose a unit of time (1 Planck time, 1 second, whatever) then that fixes a unit of space for the equation of motion, c = s/t = 1/1. Please see the attached diagram.
An expansion from the origin of the diagram, in all directions, at unit speed, ds/dt = 1/1 = c, will expand as the red sphere with radius r = 1, in one unit of time. But if the coordinates tangent to the sphere, at x = 1, and y = 1, are used to calculate the radius of the expansion, according to the Pythagorean theorem, the calculation would give the radius of the green sphere, r’ = 2^1/2 = 1.414….
Thus, the red sphere, with radius r = 1 is the real expansion, while the green sphere, with radius r’ = 1.414…, does not exist, it is an imaginary sphere, projected we might say from the real one. Hence, the question I asked was, since r’ goes from 0 to 1.414… in one unit of time, wouldn’t the speed of expansion for the green sphere be s/t = 1.414/1, instead of 1/1?
However, after thinking about it, I realized that the answer is no, it is still equal to c, for the following reason. As soon as we choose a unit of time for c that fixes its unit of space, it also fixes a unit, albeit a different unit, for ic, because, no matter how finely we divide r, into ‘a’ intervals, for integration purposes, the corresponding, ‘b’, intervals that apply to r’ will always be 41.4% larger than those of a, so when r reaches unity at a/a, r’ will reach unity at b/b. I guess it’s analogous to the apparent velocity of an EM wave in a waveguide.
The question is, though, if it’s proportional to the red (real) sphere, why use the green one? I can see why it would be useful in quantum mechanics (it’s the unit circle in the complex plane), and they need it for the phase space of gauge theory, but it seems to me that, the postulate that “time is an emergent phenomenon resulting from a fourth dimension expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c,” is confusing, since expansion, by definition, is motion, ds/dt.
So, in a sense, to identify r’ with the fourth dimension is not wrong, but to say it expands at the “rate” of s/t makes no sense, because it already represents a rate. For a rate to grow at a rate would turn it into acceleration. The radius r’ expands, as the radius r expands, at the rate of c, but this is an expression of the s/t relation itself, one unit of space for one unit of time, the unit speed, which is a four dimensional ratio of 3 space dimensions over 1 time dimension.
Hence, in the equation of motion, the spatial expansion is defined in three, orthogonal dimensions, while the fourth dimension is time, defined in zero, orthogonal, dimensions; that is, the equation of motion for the spherical expansion is (s^3/t^0 * (tn^0 – t0^0). When n = 1, we get the spatial unit sphere inside the eightfold cube, but we also get the complex, imaginary, sphere, circumscribing the cube.
In other words, the fourth dimension is the time dimension, but it is the inverse of the three space dimensions, x1, x2, x3, on the unit circle, and x1’, x2’, x3’, on the complex circle. At unit speed, s/t = 1/1, x4 = ct (r) and x4’ = ict (r’) represent unit expansion, which means that they can easily be mistakenly identified as a fourth spatial dimension, but in reality they only correspond to the real fourth dimension, t^0.
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attachments:
UnitComplexCircles.jpg
Dr. E wrote on Aug. 31, 2008 @ 16:49 GMT
Hello Excal,
i think you may be making this a bit more complicated than it is . . . i hope the following might help!
real quick, before we get into it, could the expanding fourth dimension be the source of compactified kaluza-klein geometires? imagine points of x4 expanding in a spherically-symmetric...
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Hello Excal,
i think you may be making this a bit more complicated than it is . . . i hope the following might help!
real quick, before we get into it, could the expanding fourth dimension be the source of compactified kaluza-klein geometires? imagine points of x4 expanding in a spherically-symmetric manner:
http://www.diffusion.ens.fr/vip/images/10.11.jpg
http:
//www.asci.org/artikel945.html
(more on this later)
in his 1912 manuscript, Einstein wrote x4 = ict.
thus dx4/dt = ic
ergo x4 is moving relative to the three spatial dimensions. now this movement can be interpreted as an expansion. there are many, many parallel clues for this, from quantum mechanics, to relativity, to statistical mechanics, to cosmology, to all the arrows of time and their assymetries.
one simple clue for the concept of a moving or expanding fourth dimension is the propagation of a photon. an ageless, timeless photon, which remians stationary in the fourth dimension, is represented by a spherically-symmetric expanding wavefront of probability. ergo the fourth dimension may be represented by a spherically-symmetric expanding wavefront.
so in order to get the postualte "the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial diemsnions, we look at several clues:"
x4 = ict
dx4/dt = ic
the ageless photon
entropy
time's arrows
times assymmetries
qm's entanglement
relativity's simultaneity = inherent nonlocality of the fourth dimension
the only way to stay stationary in the fourth dimension is to move at c relative through the three spatial dimensions.
more clues are discussed in the paper, where towards the bottom of page 6, i write:
"Einstein definitively states x4 = ict, and time and ict are very different entities. Einstein
states, “One has to keep in mind that the fourth coordinate u (which Einstein sometimes writes as
x4) is always purely imaginary.” It is imaginary because the expansion of the fourth dimension is
orthogonal to the three spatial dimensions in every direction, just as the radii of an expanding
sphere are perpendicular to its surface at every point."
note the i in the equation dx4/dt = ic.
if we considered a 2d plane, and an expanding 3rd dimension, we could write dx3/dt = ic which would manifest itself an expanding sphere of locality. in the 2d plane, this would appear as an expanding circle.
http://www.diffusion.ens.fr/vip/images/10.11.jpg
an expanding fourth dimension manifests itself as an expanding sphere in our three spatial dimensions.
http://www.diffusion.ens.fr/vip/images/10.11.jpg
M
DT may provide a natural explanation for compactified dimensions.
Now an interesting thing is that as the fourth dimension expanded, the entire surface of the sphere in the above figure would retain a locality, explaining both the non-locality in quantum mechanics' EPR paradox and entanglement, as well as the non-locality in relativity's simultaneity, where a phton remains local in the fourth dimension, no matter how far it travels. In both QM and realtivity, two photons emitted from a common origin can yet be considered to retain a locality (manifested in entanglement and agelessness), no matter how far they travel apart. Perhaps this arises from a fourth expanding dimension, which is inherently nonlocal via its very expansion, which would also account for free-will, time as we witness it, and entropy.
So it is that time, time's arrows, and time's assymetries may be viewed as emergent phenomonena in all realms, all originating from a common, underlying physical reality dx4/dt = ic, as elaborated on in the paper.
Well Excal, thanks for your feedback and I hope this helps! I hope I am adressing your questions and not being too redundant in trying to communicate the motivations for MDT.
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Excal wrote on Aug. 31, 2008 @ 22:35 GMT
Dr. E:
You are welcome to the feedback for what it’s worth. I find that theoretical development is greatly dependent upon communication, and dialog versus monolog is an essential part of that communication, lest we end up convincing ourselves that our ideas are sound, but fail to convince others. So, I appreciate your patience.
My basic problem in trying to follow your thinking is...
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Dr. E:
You are welcome to the feedback for what it’s worth. I find that theoretical development is greatly dependent upon communication, and dialog versus monolog is an essential part of that communication, lest we end up convincing ourselves that our ideas are sound, but fail to convince others. So, I appreciate your patience.
My basic problem in trying to follow your thinking is this: Your identification of the fourth dimension as the radii of an expanding sphere, which are perpendicular to the three coordinate points on the surface of the sphere seems misguided to me.
The dictionary definition of the word “dimension” is: “A measure of spatial extent, especially width, height, or length.” In mathematics this means: “The least number of independent coordinates required to specify uniquely the points in a space.”
The least number of rectangular coordinates it takes to uniquely specify a given point on the surface of a sphere is three; the point’s width, height, and length distances from the origin. The least number of polar coordinates it takes to specify the same point is three: the two angles theta and psi, and the point’s distance from the origin, p. To me, what you seem to have done is taken the distance parameter, p, of the polar coordinate system and made it a fourth dimension in the rectangular coordinate system, as if it were a fourth dimension of space in the rectangular coordinate system, by virtue of its orthogonality to x, y, z.
If this is correct, then you are not following the definition of “dimension” that your readers follow, because the x, y, z, point can be uniquely identified with three measures of spatial extent. It is not necessary to use four dimensions to uniquely identify the point. If this is not correct and the fourth dimension is not a dimension of space, then it must be a dimension of time, which is something your readers could readily grasp, because one time dimension, in addition to three space dimensions, is the least number of independent coordinates required to uniquely specify a point in spacetime.
However, you state that it’s a mistake to identify this fourth dimension as a dimension of time. You say it’s an imaginary dimension. My question then is, “What is a dimension of the imagination? Is there more than one? If so, what do these dimensions specify?”
In putting the question this way, I’m not trying to be facetious, or mock you in any way, but simply trying to illustrate my confusion in regards to your work. To me, the fourth dimension, as ict, is always imaginary, because it specifies (being orthogonal to x’, y’, z’ on the unit circle of the complex plane) a unique point on a circle that doesn’t exist, as I’ve tried to explain above. The green circle of unit expansion in the diagram I provided as an illustration in the previous post is simply a geometric artifact of the real red circle of unit expansion.
If the red circle doesn’t exist, then, like a shadow of an object, the green circle doesn’t exist either. That is why Einstein insisted that it is always a purely imaginary quantity.
Having pointed this out, I don't wish to convey the idea that I think your work has no value. I just think there is more analysis required.
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Dr. E wrote on Sep. 1, 2008 @ 05:14 GMT
Thanks Excal,
Yes it is difficult to picture the fourth dimension. Some people over at Michio Kaku's forums have been kind in helping out with figures, and I'm currently working on some too:
http://www.mkaku.org/forums/showthread.php?t=1491&page=21
I quote Einstein a lot in the paper when it comes to the fourth dimension: "Einstein definitively states x4 = ict, and time and...
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Thanks Excal,
Yes it is difficult to picture the fourth dimension. Some people over at Michio Kaku's forums have been kind in helping out with figures, and I'm currently working on some too:
http://www.mkaku.org/forums/showthread.php?t=1491&page=21
I quote Einstein a lot in the paper when it comes to the fourth dimension: "Einstein definitively states x4 = ict, and time and ict are very different entities. Einstein
states, “One has to keep in mind that the fourth coordinate u (which Einstein sometimes writes as
x4) is always purely imaginary.” It is imaginary because the expansion of the fourth dimension is
orthogonal to the three spatial dimensions in every direction, just as the radii of an expanding
sphere are perpendicular to its surface at every point."
Einstein writes, "One has to keep in mind that the fourth coordinate u is always purely imaginary."
i represents an orthogonality, so i would infer that i represents a perpendicularity--the fourth dimension is perpenidular to the three spatial dimensions.
now einstein also writes x4 = ict, so that dx4/dt = ic.
consider a 2D x-y plane and an expanding 3D sphere. the expansion of the sphere would appear as an expanding circle in the 2D plane. now, the surface of the sphere would be perpendicular to every point in the 2D plane. instead of writing the third coordinate as z, we could associate it with i--the imaginary number, which would represent the orthogonal surface at every point in our 2d plane.
now, let us consider the above with an extra dimension, so:
consider a 3D space and an expanding 4D surface. the expansion of the 4D surface would appear as an expanding sphere in the 3D space. now, the surface of the 4D surface would be perpendicular to every point in the 3D space. instead of writing the fourth coordinate as x4, we could associate it with i--the imaginary number, which would represent the orthogonal surface at every point in our 3D space.
now, 4D is a tough entity to envision, and i don't know if my theory improves on previous treatments.
but, it does do the following:
1. recognizes that time is not the fourth dimension, but x4 = ict, as Einstein and Minkowski agreed.
2. shows all of time's arrows from various realms derive from a common physical reality--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic
3. shows all of time's assymetries from various realms derive from a common physical reality--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic
4. derives relativity from a simple postulate/equation: dx4/dt = ic
5. presents a physical model for QM's nonlocality & entanglement, relativity's silumtaneity, and entropy
6. unifies the dualities with a common postulate: wave-particle duality, space-time duality, and matter-energy duality are all natural results of a fourth expanding dimension, which distributes nonlocality via its expansion. note that entanglement always occurs between two particles that were formerly in contact, and thus all nonlocality emerges from a common point or locality--another clue.
7. provides a physical model for time's fundamental assymetry in this universe
8. shows that time, as measured on our watches and witnessed in the world around us, emerges from a deeper reality dx4/dt = ic.
i am working on some more figures which i will be sharing soon.
thanks for your feedback & again i hope that the responses are helpful.
more figures soon.
also, Dr. John Baez writes at: http://www.qedcorp.com/pcr/pcr/baeztime.html
"The laws of physics do not distinguish the future from the past direction of time. More precisely, the famous CPT theorem says that the laws are invariant under the combination of charge conjugation, space inversion and time reversal. In fact effects that are not invariant under the combination CP are very weak, so to a good approximation, the laws are invariant under the time reverseal operation T alone. Despite this, there is a very obvious difference between the future and past directions of time in the universe we live in. One only has to see a film run backward to be aware of this." --http://www.qedcorp.com/pcr/pcr/baeztime.html
MDT presents a physical model that naturally distinguishes between the past and future, providing a model for entropy and time's arrows--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic.
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Alex Nelson wrote on Sep. 7, 2008 @ 04:39 GMT
Dr E wrote (in the paper): "Consider the emission of a photon in free space."
When would this ever happen though? The only justification that immediately comes to mind (and I may be wrong, which is why I ask!) requires use of Feynman diagrams...but doesn't that kind of contradict what is being proposed?
(And why aren't we using our old friend the metric system in the paper?!)
Dr E writes:
"Consider the fascinating physical reality implied by Einstein's most famous equation—E=mc^2."
Uh wait this really is a special instance of the relationship $p_mu p^mu = (E/c)^2 - vec{p}cdotvec{p} = (mc)^2$ (if you will pardon my use of LaTeX) for relativistic systems.
This equation $E=mc^2$ is less general thus (speaking from a mathematician's perspective) *worse* because it is 0 for massless particles, but the dot product of the 4-momenta vector yields the condition $(E/c)^2 - vec{p}cdotvec{p} = 0$ for massless relativistic systems, which is sensible.
Just my concern as a mathematician and physicist...
"It is because the mass, which appears stationary in the lab, is yet propagating through space-time at the rate of c, as is every object, as the fourth dimension is expanding at c."
Uh wait don't you mean the world line of the body is "traveling" at $c$?
This argument doesn't really follow however since massless bodies also propagate at $c$ (consider photons!). So the cause is not mass...
The fact of the matter is that mass is seen as a sort of "potential energy"...the example I gave to a philosopher friend is the following: consider your wallet, you presumably have money in it. You can spend it willy nilly and buy whatever you want at the moment (this can be thought of analogous to kinetic energy); or you can invest it in a long period of time so it will last a great deal of time (this is analogous to potential energy -- you can change it to kinetic energy under certain conditions). Now (massive) particles have to invest a certain amount in a weird sort of potential which we call "mass", it is the cost of the particle even existing!
The third equation on page 7 is incorrect, it should read (in evil LaTeX):
$ int^{u}_{a}frac{dx^4}{du}dx^4 = ic(x^4(u)-x^4(a)) $
You are missing that value of $ic$...
If you instead had $dt/dx^4$ you may have something, but this is kind of mathematically fudgy what you are writing.
How do you deal with how well the notion of proper time works in relativity with your approach? It seems like this is overlooked completely...but I may be wrong.
Dr. E wrote on Sep. 7, 2008 @ 16:10 GMT
Thanks for the comments Alex,
Yes--I used E=mc^2 as it is the more common form of the equation and we are also addressing a lay audience, but the results are the same! Mass is equivalent to energy because the fourth dimension is expanidng relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic. The more formal approach is included in longer treatments of Moving Dimensions Theory, along with...
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Thanks for the comments Alex,
Yes--I used E=mc^2 as it is the more common form of the equation and we are also addressing a lay audience, but the results are the same! Mass is equivalent to energy because the fourth dimension is expanidng relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic. The more formal approach is included in longer treatments of Moving Dimensions Theory, along with treatments of proper time, which jive perfectly with MDT. There's a 5,000 word limit on the current essay, so I had to drop a lot.
Moving Dimensions Theory fully supports Feynman diagrams and it actually provides a *physical* stage underlying Feynman's many-paths interpretations and Huygens' Principle in all realms.
"Consider the emission of a photon in free space," could apply to a photon being emitted from an atom or entity into an unobstructed area. Now I know one could argue there are no such things as a truly unobstructed area and that space is naturally abuzz with a quantum soup, but there again, we see that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c, so there is indeed a lot going on at every point throughout "free" space!
However, we can picture a photon emitted into this which propagates without crashing into anything, and that was how I was using the notion of a photon being emiited in free space. Perhaps I could have written "picture a photon being emitted from an atom or other entity into relatively free space where it does not crash into anything," but I feel most people get the drift of the shorter sentence, and there's a word limit. Perhaps the longer description will appear in future papers, so thanks!
Thanks for noting the dropped constant "ic" in the third step on page 7--I saw that and corrected it a couple weeks back. It got dropped in the transcibing, and it comes back in the next step and is there at the end; but perhaps I'll upload the corrected version. However, the conclusion remains the same: dx4/dt = ic --> the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
Have you ever thought about Feyman's "many paths" interpretations of quantum mechanics and why it is that a particle somehow "feels" out every path en route to its destination? Well, moving dimensions theory accounts for this.
How can a single point become a spherically-symmetric expanding wavefront?
It happens all the time in QED and nature, and it happens all the "time" in teh expansion of the fourth dimension.
Please see Huygens Principle, as clues are to be found in the Huygens-Freznel Principle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huygens'_principle : "The Huygens–Fresnel principle (named for Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens, and French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel) is a method of analysis applied to problems of wave propagation (both in the far field limit and in near field diffraction). It recognizes that each point of an advancing wave front is in fact the center of a fresh disturbance and the source of a new train of waves; and that the advancing wave as a whole may be regarded as the sum of all the secondary waves arising from points in the medium already traversed. This view of wave propagation helps better understand a variety of wave phenomena, such as diffraction."
MDT states that the expansion of the fourth dimension appears as a spherically-symmetric wavefront expanding through the three spatial dimensions.
Just like Huygens' Principle, which pervades all levels of nature, MDT recognizes that each point of an advancing wave front is in fact the center of a fresh disturbance and the source of a new train of waves; and that the advancing wave as a whole may be regarded as the sum of all the secondary waves arising from points in the medium already traversed. The fourth dimension is expanding, manifesting itself as an expanding 3D sphere in our world, and each point on its surfcae obeys Huygens' principle, underlying Huygens' principle in all realms.
And thus MDT explains double-slit diffraction.
Wikipedia writes,
Huygens' principle follows formally from the fundamental postulate of quantum electrodynamics – that wavefunctions of every object propagate over any and all allowed (unobstructed) paths from the source to the given point. It is then the result of interference (addition) of all path integrals that defines the amplitude and phase of the wavefunction of the object at this given point, and thus defines the probability of finding the object (say, a photon) at this point. Not only light quanta (photons), but electrons, neutrons, protons, atoms, molecules, and all other objects obey this simple principle.
And so it is seen that MDT underlies Feynman's many-paths treatments and the fundamental postulate of quantum electrodynamics – that wavefunctions of every object propagate over any and all allowed (unobstructed) paths from the source to the given point. All paths have a probability of being followed because of the fundamental nature of a fourth dimension that is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. The probability distribution of the photon expands at the rate of c. After a photon is emitted, the spherical wavefront that defines its probability for being found at any point has a radius of 186,000 miles. This is the net result of billions and billions of quantum expansions of the fourth dimension, and during each expansion, the photon had an equal chance of being found anywhere on the surface of the net sphere, which is the sum total of billions upon billions of smaller spheres.
These diagrams illustrate the basis of Huygens' Principle, which pervades all of nature, providing clues for a fundamental reality from which Huygens' principle arises:
http://support.svi.nl/wikiimg/hugensPrinciple_2.png
ht
tp://cache.eb.com/eb/image?id=5704&rendTypeId=4
http://www.le
ms.brown.edu/vision/researchAreas/Shocks3D/Figs/fig4.jpg
MDT describes the fundamental motion of the unviverse, from which time and entropy arise--both which characterize the constnat motion of dx4/dt = ic.
From the simple postulate: "The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions," captured in the simple equation d(x4)/dt=ic, the following emerges:
Huygens' Principle: The fundamental postulate of quantum electrodynamics – that wavefunctions of every object propagate over any and all allowed (unobstructed) paths from the source to the given point
Time
Entropy
Action at a Distance
Entnaglement
Double slit interference
Relativity
Length contraction
Time dilation
The equivalence of mass and energy: E=mc^2: Energy is but matter (momenergy) caught upon the fourth expanding dimension.
Time's radiative arrow
Time's thermodynamic arrow
Time's qunantum Arrow
And finally, the goal of physics is ultimately to describe physical reality. We live in a universe whose physical reality is that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic, from which relativity may be derived and which provides a physical model underlying entropy, entanglement, Hugens' principle time's arrows, and father time himself.
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Dr. E wrote on Sep. 7, 2008 @ 16:23 GMT
Hello again Alex--your comments brought to mind this discourse on a passage from Brian Greene's Elegant Universe.
MDT & Brian Greene’s Elegant Universe:
In An Elegant Universe, Brian Greene almost characterizes Moving Dimensions Theory’s deeper reality:
“Einstein found that precisely this idea—the sharing of motion between different dimensions—underlies all of the...
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Hello again Alex--your comments brought to mind this discourse on a passage from Brian Greene's Elegant Universe.
MDT & Brian Greene’s Elegant Universe:
In An Elegant Universe, Brian Greene almost characterizes Moving Dimensions Theory’s deeper reality:
“Einstein found that precisely this idea—the sharing of motion between different dimensions—underlies all of the remarkable physics of special relativity, so long as we realize that not only can spatial dimensions share an object’s motion, but the time dimension can share this motion as well. In fact, in the majority of circumstances, most of an object’s motion is through time, not space. Let’s see what this means.” Space, Time, and the Eye of the Beholder, An Elegant Universe, Brian Greene, p. 49
Right here Brian almost grasps MDT. But time is not a dimension. Time is an emergent phenomenon that arises because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c. Let’s rewrite Brian’s paragraph with MDT's insights:
“Einstein found that precisely this idea—the sharing of motion between different dimensions—underlies all of the remarkable physics of special relativity, so long as we realize that not only can the three spatial dimensions share an object’s motion, but the fourth dimension, which is moving relative to the three spatial dimensions, can share this motion as well. In fact, in the majority of circumstances, most of an object’s motion is through the fourth dimension, not the three spatial dimensions. Let’s see what this means.” Space, Time, and the Eye of the Beholder, An Elegant Universe, Brian Greene, p. 49
Most objects are traveling far less than c through the three spatial dimensions. Thus most objects are traveling close to the rate of c through the fourth dimension. To be stationary in the three spatial dimensions implies a velocity of c through the fourth dimension. Ergo the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. To be stationary in the fourth expandning dimension, as is the timeless, ageless, nonlocal photon, implies a velocity of c through the three spatial dimensions. Ergo the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
dx(4)/dt = ic
Brian Greene continues:
“Motion through space is a concept we learn about early in life. Although we often don’t think of things in such terms, we also learn that we, our friends, our belongings, and so forth all move through time, as well. When we look at a clock or a wristwatch, even while we idly sit and watch TV, the reading on the watch is constantly changing, constantly “moving forward in time.” We and everything around us are aging, inevitably passing from one moment of time to the next. In fact, the mathematician Hermann Minkowski, and ultimately Einstein as well, advocated thinking about time as another dimension of the universe—the fourth dimension—in some ways quite similar to the three spatial dimensions in which we find ourselves immersed.” Space, Time, and the Eye of the Beholder, An Elegant Universe, Brian Greene, p. 49
What Greene misses is that the time measured on your watch—the ticking seconds—is not the fourth dimension, but it is a phenomenon that emerges because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. The time measured on a clock or watch relies on the emission and propagation of photons, be it in the context of an unwinding clock spring or an oscillating quartz crystal, or even the beating of a heart. And photons are matter that surf the fourth expanding dimension. As time is so inextricably wed to the emission and propagation of photons, and as photons are matter caught in the fourth expanding dimension, our notion of “time” inherits properties of the fourth expanding dimension. But the fact is that time emerges from a deeper physical reality—a fourth dimension that is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
Brian Green continues on, heading off in the wrong direction that just misses the central postulate of MDT:
“Although it sounds abstract, the notion of time as a dimension is actually concrete.”
But it is not. Can you move to where your watch reads three seconds back in time? Or can you move to where your watch reads an hour back in time? We can walk left or right. We can climb up or down. We can move forwards or backwards. But we can’t move through time like we can through the three spatial dimensions. This is because time, as measured on our watch, is not the fourth dimension, but it is a construct we have devised which is based on the fundamental fact that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, governing the emission and propagation of photons, by which time is known and measured on our watches.
Brian Green continues on,
“When we want to meet someone, we tell them where “in space” we will expect to see them—for instance, the 9th floor of the building on the corner of 53rd Street and 7th avenue. There are three pieces of information here (9th floor, 53rd Street, 7th avenue) reflecting a particular location in the three spatial dimensions of the universe. Equally important, however, is our expectation of when we expect to meet them—for instance, at 3 PM. This piece of information tells us where “in time” our meeting will take place. Events are therefore specified by four pieces of information: three in space and one in time. Such data, it is said, specifies the location of the event in space and in time, or in spacetime, for short. In this sense, time is another dimension.”
But again, time is different from the three spatial dimensions. Time is inextricably wed to our sense of the past—the order stored in our memory, long with our ability to imagine and dream of future events. The present is where we put our dreams into action. However, the time defined by past, present, and future is not a dimension akin to the three spatial dimensions, but rather it is a phenomenon that emerges because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
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John Merryman wrote on Sep. 7, 2008 @ 21:00 GMT
Dr. E,
Expansion implies contraction. How might that extend your conceptual model? Put it in the context of a convection cycle, where energy radiates out, while structure contracts inward. Not only does this describe the basic relationship that defines our physical situation, but may describe the relative nature of time as well. Just as the present moves from one unit of time to the next, these units go from being in the future to being in the past. To the hands of the clock, the face moves counterclockwise. Yes, reality only moves into the future, but the events of which this reality consist go from being in the future to being in the past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, as we go from yesterday to tomorrow. So the expanding energy goes into the future, as the defined contracted, reductionist structure it manifests as, goes from future potential to past circumstance. The energy doesn't collapse, but the information created by it must, in order to be information. Order condenses out of the energy.To paraphrase, 'Bit from it.'
Dr. E wrote on Sep. 9, 2008 @ 16:46 GMT
Thanks for your comments John,
Indeed energy does tend to radiate outwards, and MDT accounts for this with a *physical* model--as the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c, and as photons (energy) are but matter caught on the fourth expanding dimension, the photon appears as a spherically-symmetric expanding wavefront, as it surfs the expanding fourth dimension. All of nature rests upon this fundamental reality, and all of time's arrows and entropy derive from this simple premise, as does nonlocality, entanglement, and the agelessness of the photon.
I would highly recommend "Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point: New Directions for the Physics of Time" by Huw Price
Wikipedia writes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler%E2%80%93Feynman_absorbe
r_theory
"The Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory is an interpretation of electrodynamics that starts from the idea that a solution to the electromagnetic field equations has to be symmetric with respect to time-inversion, as are the field equations themselves. The motivation for such choice is mainly due to the importance that time symmetry has in physics. Indeed, there is no apparent reason for which such symmetry should be broken, and therefore one time direction has no privilege to be more important than the other."
But, in our reality, time has a definitive arrow. We all know this, we all see this, we all experience this, time afeter time, and empirical evidence never stops supporting time's relentless arrows.
What has brought us all here is "why?"
There is nothing permanent except change – Heraclitus. But why?
Relativity implies a block, timeless universe. "And yet it moves," as Galileo said. "Eppur si muove"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_pur_si_muove!
And yet, we continue to ask questions--those questions which keep us up at night, searching for a *physical* reality and model that might answer them.
Why entropy? Why time's arrows? Why time's asymmetries? Why is c the maximum velocity and why is c independent of the source? Why the dualities? Why does physics present us with the mass-energy, space-time, and wave-particle dualities? Why entanglement, length-contraction, nonlocality, and time dilation? Why *time*? All of these phenomena can be traced to a simple principle--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c: dx4/dt = ic, from which Einstein's relativity is derived.
I remember when Wheeler came out with his "it from bit" publication--it was a small pamphlet with the picture of a sphere on the cover, covered in ones and zeroes--trying to find a cover photo/picture of it on google--if you find one, let me know! Thanks!
John Merryman wrote on Sep. 9, 2008 @ 21:14 GMT
Dr. E,
Relativistically speaking, from the perspective of this expanding dimension which is carrying light, or is light, it is the three spatial dimensions which are shrinking. If, as Einstein said, time doesn't exist for the photon, it would seem this wave is the constant, not the three spatial dimensions. In fact it was because his theories described gravity as shrinking space to a point that Einstein felt compelled to add the Cosmological Constant, a factor which he subsequently rejected, but has been resurrected to explain dark energy, which does appear to cause space to expand. So from Einstein's original perspective, it would seem time is contracting space to that gravitational absolute, yet we seem to have lost sight of that as we have tried to understand the expansion of space and energy. Could there be some larger relativistic equilibrium that hasn't been recognized? According to measurements by COBE and WMAP,the expansion of space is roughly balanced by the contraction of gravity, resulting in overall flat space.
Entropy refers to useable energy in a closed set, but what if the very concept of "set" is a subjective concept necessary to define "information?" So that energy is just traded around, collapsing into sets as particles and expanding back out as waves, which collapse back into particles when we try to measure the energy, ie. define the informational content.
Yes, time has an arrow, but it is moving against a relative context, which is therefore going the opposite direction, as events go from being in the future to being in the past. Reality exists as this quantum field, of which macroscopic reality is an emergent phenomena. That's why I think it's more logical to understand time as an emergent property of this field, like temperature, thus time is the flow of created events from future potential to past circumstance, as this field fluctuates. One of the rebuttals raised to this is that quantum mechanics isn't intuitive, so conventional logic doesn't apply. My response to that it is the description of time as a dimensional projection which moves from past events to future ones that is intuitive, as our individual, biological perception of time is of a linear narrative from beginning to end. The same logic used to describe time as a dimensional projection of space could also be used to argue that temperature is another parameter of volume, since their relationship to measuring energy is similar.
Volume and distances/dimensions are descriptions of the vacuum. Time and temperature are consequences of the fluctuation.
Excal wrote on Sep. 10, 2008 @ 23:43 GMT
Dr E,
The one question on the MDT that I don't see any answer to yet is, “What is the fourth dimension?” If it's not time, then it has to be space, but there is not a fourth spatial dimension, orthogonal to the three observed spatial dimensions, that can be observed.
And even if there were an unknowable fourth dimension, it would have to be an unknowable dimension of space, since everything else is eliminated.
It seems to me that calling it an imaginary dimension is not very scientific. At least the imaginary number ‘i’ was a number, but how do you get an imaginary dimension? Every dimension has two directions, or no directions. There is no in between. A scalar, like time has no direction, while each spatial direction has two directions. The three spatial dimensions define the direction of any one of the radii of an expanding sphere, like two spatial dimensions define the direction of any one of the radii of an expanding circle. The radius is not an independent dimension, by any stretch of the imagination, as far as I can tell.
Anonymous wrote on Sep. 11, 2008 @ 02:53 GMT
Hello Excal,
Thanks again for your insights/questions.
MDT agress 100% with Einstein's and Minkowski's relativity. The fourth dimension is a direction that is orthogonal to the three spatial dimensions. All that MDT states is that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. In his 1912 paper Einstein just states x4 = ict. MDT begins at a more...
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Hello Excal,
Thanks again for your insights/questions.
MDT agress 100% with Einstein's and Minkowski's relativity. The fourth dimension is a direction that is orthogonal to the three spatial dimensions. All that MDT states is that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. In his 1912 paper Einstein just states x4 = ict. MDT begins at a more fundamental level: dx4/dt=ic, which also provides a physical model accounting for entropy, entnaglement, quantum mechanics' nonlocality, and time and its arrows in all realms, in addition to relativity.
MDT contends that the fourth dimension is very much like the spatial dimensions, except that it is expanding relative to them! dx4/dt = ic.
Now, regarding i, i does not imply "imaginary" in the sense of "it doesn't really exist." But rather i implies a very real perpendicularity.
i is an imaginary number, but it can define very real entities!
For instance, in a complex plane, we can designate the x axis to be real and the y axis to be imaginary. This is a mathematical tool, but the y axis is very real! Imaginary numbers are very useful in describing oscillations and rotations. When we solve an equation and we see one, that is math's way of lettig us know--"hey there is something going on here that is perpendicular to where you started."
If we were called upon to draw i, we would draw it perpendicular to the real number line. i^2 would be -1 on the real number line i^3 would be -i--it would point "south" along the y axis. And i^4 is 1 on the real number line. So multiplying by i rotates something by 90 degrees! Multiplying by i makes something perpendicular to its former self! Now although i is "imaginary," the y-axis is a very real entity. So i has a reality to it.
So if we're solving an equation, and an i pops out, all of a sudden we need to start thinking of an orthogonal space.
Now the way I interpret x4 = ict is that x4 is perpendicular to the three spatial dimensions, and that as t advances on our clock or watch, it moves.
Consider a 2D x-y plane and an expanding 3D sphere. We could then say that the sphere will also expand in the imaginary direction, which is directed along the z axis. The expansion of the sphere would appear as an expanding circle in the 2D plane. Now, the surface of the sphere would be perpendicular to every point in the 2D plane. instead of writing the third coordinate as z, we could associate it with i--the imaginary number, which would represent the orthogonal surface at every point in our 2d plane.
Now, let us consider the above with an extra dimension, so:
consider a 3D space and an expanding 4D surface. The expansion of the 4D surface would appear as an expanding sphere in the 3D space. now, the surface of the 4D surface would be perpendicular to every point in the 3D space. instead of writing the fourth coordinate as x4, we could associate it with i--the imaginary number, which would represent the orthogonal surface at every point in our 3D space.
more clues are discussed in the paper, where towards the bottom of page 6, i write:
"Einstein definitively states x4 = ict, and time and ict are very different entities. Einstein states, “One has to keep in mind that the fourth coordinate u (which Einstein sometimes writes as x4) is always purely imaginary.” It is imaginary because the expansion of the fourth dimension is
orthogonal to the three spatial dimensions in every direction, just as the radii of an expanding sphere are perpendicular to its surface at every point."
The fourth dimension is very very real.
All motion rests upon its fundamental expansion relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic. Every object moves at but one speed through space-time--c. This is because space-time moves at but one speed through every obeject--c. Catch up with the fourth expanding dimension, and you'll be going close to c relative to the three spatial dimensions. Remain stationary in the three spatial dimensions, and you'll be traveling at close to c relative to the fourth dimension. And isn't it cool that the faster an object moves, the shorter it is in the three spatial dimensions? This is because it is physically being rotated into the fourth dimension--the fundamental source of all motion by its never-ending motion, which sets the universe's maximum velcoity at c.
Relativity implies a frozen, timeless, block universe. But as Galileo said, "Yet it moves!" *Why* is this? Because dx4/dt = ic! And the spherically symmetric expansion that the expanding fourth dimension manifests itself as--this smearing of locality--jives perfectly with the motion of a photon as well as its nonlocal properties, setting its velocity to c independent of the source and rendering it timeless and ageless--stationary in the fourth expanding dimension, which would also explain entanglement with other photons with which it once shared a common origin! And we also get a *physical* model for entropy and time.
Well, I hope this helps! Thansk for the questions--the onus is on me to answer them.
Best,
Dr. E
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Anonymous wrote on Sep. 11, 2008 @ 10:38 GMT
Dr,
In your reply to Excal above, you seem to be making the point that this fourth dimension is the quantum constant, so it is the three spatial dimensions which are shrinking/moving into the past. ?
That does seem to accord with the impression that the present is the constant and time is the procession of events which recede into the past as each one is replaced by the next, as each is created and consumed by this energetic constant.
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John Merryman wrote on Sep. 11, 2008 @ 10:39 GMT
Forgot to sign the above post...
Dr. E wrote on Sep. 11, 2008 @ 15:18 GMT
Thanks for the comments John,
Yes--perhaps you can interpret it that way, but for the moment I'm trying to keep things as simple as possible, by stating that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt=ic. Einstein's Relativity may be derived from this simple postulate and its equation, and too, it unfreezes time, it liberates us from the block...
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Thanks for the comments John,
Yes--perhaps you can interpret it that way, but for the moment I'm trying to keep things as simple as possible, by stating that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt=ic. Einstein's Relativity may be derived from this simple postulate and its equation, and too, it unfreezes time, it liberates us from the block universe, and it accounts for quantum mechanics' nonlocality and entangelment, as well as entropy and time's arrows in all realms.
There may be many ways of interpreting a fourth expanding dimension, as you suggest. What do you mean by "quantum constant?"
I propose that a fundamental invariant of the universe is dx4/dt = ic. It is this deeper reality that leads to the constancy of c--both its independence of the velocity of the soure and the fact that it is measured to be c for all observers. dx4/dt = ic accounts for both of these c's in different ways, with the same physical model. It does not simply state that c is constant, but it also states "why."
Time--the t in dx4/dt--is the time we're all so used to--the time we see ticking away on our watches. Now this time is typically measured by some process that involves the propagation of photons, or changes in energy, be it an unwinding clock spring, an oscillating quartz crystal, or an electronic circuit. t is then ultimately tied to the propagation of photons, which are just matter surfing the fourth expanding dimension. And so it is that relativity's math inherits this notion of the fourth dimension, as relativity was born by comntemplating the propagation of light--photons. We define time by the propagation of light, and then we measure the propagation of light via time. This tautology has lead to c's constancy and too, one can see how it is the fount of realtivity's beauty--for think of the very word "relativity." It means that the way we measure physical reality is "relative" to how we are moving through space-time. Does it not make sense that measurements utilizing meter sticks, clocks, and light should be relative to motion, when both the clocks as well as the light depend on photons, which are surfing the fourth expanding dimension, which meter sticks are rotated into, and thus foreshortened in our three spatial dimensions, whenever they move? But yet, there are invariant entities, such as interval, c, and rest mass, and that's what physics has always truly been about--the rock-hard invariance of a physical reality.
MDT proposes a deeper invariance dx4/dt = ic, from which the invariance of c and the invariance of interval both naturally emerge.
Relativity is really all about invariance--about the physical reality that transcends our "relative" perceptions. Einstein once noted that it could of, and perhaps should of, been called "The Theory of Invariance."
From: http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/views/invariance.htm
"Alber
t Einstein was unhappy about the name "theory of relativity". He preferred "theory of invariance". The reason is that [one] cornerstone of his 1905 theory of relativity is that the measured velocity of light is the same (invariant) regardless of any relative motion between a laboratory and the source of light. What Einstein feared came to pass when the popular catchphrase of his theory became "everything is relative". It was snatched up by people not acquainted with the scientific context, who regarded the theory as evidence in support of their own social views. { Arthur Miller, from a letter in New Scientist }" --http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/views/invariance.htm
From
: http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/views/invariance.htm
"In actual fact, the theory of relativity is anchored in absolutism — in the concrete of Einstein's two postulates: The velocity of light is a universal constant, and the laws of physics are constant. He described these postulates as principles of invariance. An insightful textual analysis of the introductory sections of the 1905 paper would have recognized that the two "postulates" specify unchanging principles that serve as the foundations of the theory. In fact, Einstein called his creation an "Invariententheorie," a theory of invariance. The name "theory of relativity" was coined later in a review by German physicist Max Planck. Einstein resisted that name for years, although he reluctantly bowed to peer pressure. The relativistic features of time and space that led to the term "theory of relativity" are derived from the principles of invariance. { quoted from POSTMODERNIST RHETORIC DOES NOT CHANGE FUNDAMENTAL SCIENTIFIC FACTS by Irving M. Klotz, who is a Morrison Professor, Emeritus, in the departments of chemistry and of biochemistry, molecular biology, and cell biology at Northwestern University }
" --http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/views/invariance.htm
And Moving Dimensions Theory posulates that underlying relativity, as well as quantum mechanics, entropy, statistical mechanics, and time and all her arrows and assymetries, is a deeper *physical* invariance: The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions." dx4/dt=ic
Thanks for the comment--hope this helps a bit, and I'll look forward to more!
Best,
Dr. E
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John Merryman wrote on Sep. 11, 2008 @ 16:20 GMT
Dr. E,
I'm in clear agreement with your model, but it seems to me that you haven't fully considered the implications of it. We view this energy field as expanding, but if in fact it is the constant, which we both seem to agree, than it is our perspective, our intellectually reductionistic, three dimensional model that is shrinking. This seems to me that is what Einstein was pointing to, with light as the constant and gravity as shrinking space. I think there exists some equilibrium of these two sides, but the tendency is to view it from one direction or the other, so that from the perspective of structure, light is expanding, while from the perspective of light, structure is shrinking. There just doesn't exist a stable middle ground to view the full relationship, so since light is uniform, it is the constant. Complexity Theory is a good example, with bottom up process(chaos) as expanding energy, top down order as contracting structure and complexity as the intermediate state.
By quantum constant I'm suggesting a physical reality sans block time. It's not presentism because as a measure of motion, it would be meaningless to describe time as a point or instant, since that would mean the cessation of motion. Peter Lynds develops this particular observation in his essay, though in a different context. Basically it means the quantum state is reality and macroscopic structure, including time, is an emergent phenomena of the inherent instability which causes collapse and expansion.
I submitted my own essay to the contest, titled Explaining Time, that provides some basic detail, although I edited it to the most clear cut points, having learned not to leave too many loose ends when making an initial presentation.
Excal wrote on Sep. 11, 2008 @ 17:36 GMT
Dr. E:
Thank you for taking the considerable time and effort to carefully explain your ideas that you have taken. I don’t want to burden you further, but we seem to be talking past each other. You wrote:
MDT agress 100% with Einstein's and Minkowski's relativity. The fourth dimension is a direction that is orthogonal to the three spatial dimensions.
A dimension cannot be a direction, since directions are a property of dimensions. In 3-space, three orthogonal dimensions are sufficient to define any direction in the space: N-S, E-W, U-D. Mathematically, these three dimensions are three numbers; N-S = 2^1, E-W = 2^1, and U-D = 2^1.
Any radius of the expanding sphere, expanding at the rate of c, reaches a unit value, from zero, in one unit of time. If we freeze the expansion at that point in time and analyze the unit sphere, or its cross-section, a unit circle, we see that, in terms of motion, the length of the sphere’s radius is given by the equation of motion:
L = c * t = 299,792,458 m/s * 1 sec = 299,792,458 meters
Certainly, the length of this radius, regardless of the angle from the origin, is constant, never changing. It’s a real radius of a real sphere. However, if we consider the values of the x, y, z coordinates of its corresponding point on the surface of the sphere, they cannot, of course, be equal to the value of the radius, they must be approximately .707 times the length of the radius, due to the geometry of the sphere in terms of the geometry of the cube (the rectangular coordinate system).
So, while the radius of the real sphere is L = ct, the coordinates of its corresponding point on the surface, in each of three, orthogonal directions, is .707L. But they each increased, from zero to .707L in 1 sec, so the speed of increase, or the speed in each orthogonal direction, in terms of a given coordinate, is .707c. But isn’t this an imaginary speed? Did anything really move at that speed? Of course not. The sphere actually expanded at c-speed. The fact that we can describe the position of the point on the surface of the sphere, corresponding to L, with three, orthogonal coordinates of length .707L, is not anything real, but only a consequence of the properties of right lines and circles.
Therefore, just as there is no actual expansion speed of .707c, there is no expansion speed of 2(.707c) = ict either. If there is no expansion speed = ict, then there is no expansion = ict/t = ic, and if it doesn’t exist, how can it have properties?
Dr. E wrote on Sep. 11, 2008 @ 18:06 GMT
Hello Excal,
Thanks for the note. I'm enjoying this!
I wrote,
"MDT agress 100% with Einstein's and Minkowski's relativity. The fourth dimension is a direction that is orthogonal to the three spatial dimensions."
It would have been better worded with "The fourth dimension *represents* a direction that is orthogonal to the three spatial dimensions."
Or perhaps...
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Hello Excal,
Thanks for the note. I'm enjoying this!
I wrote,
"MDT agress 100% with Einstein's and Minkowski's relativity. The fourth dimension is a direction that is orthogonal to the three spatial dimensions."
It would have been better worded with "The fourth dimension *represents* a direction that is orthogonal to the three spatial dimensions."
Or perhaps simply "The fourth dimension is orthogonal to the three spatial dimensions." Or perhaps "The fourth dimension is orthogonal to each one of the three spatial dimensions."
As MDT agrees with Einstein and Minkowski's relativity, perhaps your argument is more with their formulation of relativity,a nd relativity in general, than with MDT.
Speaking of "directions," Niels Bohr stated "We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down."
The second part of this quote is "The word reality is also a word, a word which we must learn to use correctly."--Bohr
MDT's greater purpose is grasping the underlying physical *reality* that underlies and physically accounts for relativity, quantum mechanics, entropy, time's arrows, and time.
MDT postulates a deeper universal invariant--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic. From this emerges the invariance of c--both in its independence of the velocity of its source, and the independence of velocity of the inertial frame in which it is measured.
Relativity proposes a block universe. Godel pointed out the paradoxical "timeless" implications of this, as well as its inability to account for time as we experience it, and this problem has largely been swept under the rug, along with curiosities such as quantum entanglement, nonlocality and all the dualities--space/time, energy/mass, and wave/particle. Today we are told that that is "just the wya things are" and not to worry about it. Perhaps this helps explains why physics has not really advanced in the past thirty years... for Einstein stated, "curiosity is more importnat than knowledge."
And thus MDT's center and circumference rests upon asking and answering fundamental questions with a simple, elegant *physical* model that comes with both a postulate of a fourth expanding dimension and an equation: dx4/dt = ic.
From this all of relativity may be derived, and an added bonus is that it accounts for quantum mechanics' entanglement and nonlocality.
As you know, relativity has been very well verified in a cornucopia of experiments and observed phenomena over the years.
However, relativity, as interpreted, came with a problem--a block universe. Relativity's interpretations suggested that time is frozen and that free will did not exist. Relativity implied the possibility of time travel, which visitors from the future have yet to verify, and even more paradoxially, without free will, how can one choose to travel back in time anyways?
MDT has liberated us from the block universe.
The great thing about MDT is that it gives us everything relativity gives us--time dilation, length contraction, and the equivalence of mass and energy--while also libertating us from a timeless, block universe, as well as providing a *physical* model for time, entropy, quantum entanglement and nonlocality, and the equivalence of mass and energy.
Now a major goal of physics has ever been to unify disparate physical phenomena with common principles, postulates, and equations representing something fundamental about our "reality," as Bohr suggested.
MDT suggests a novel, deeper reality in the universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic.
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Dr. E wrote on Sep. 11, 2008 @ 18:24 GMT
Hello Johnn,
You write, "By quantum constant I'm suggesting a physical reality sans block time."
Yes! I agree!
Change is woven into the fundamental fabric of the universe!
dx4/dt = ic acknowledges this fundamental change from where time, as measured on our watches, naturally emerges.
The invariant expansion of the fourth dimension, expressed with dx4/dt = ic, allows us to keep all of relativity, while also liberating us from a block universe and *physically* acocunting for the flow of time, time's arrows, entropy, and free will. And it also provides a *physical* model accounting for quantum mechanical phenomena such as entanglement, nonlocality, and the uncertainty principle, while showing a common *physical* source for all the dualitiess--space/time, enegery/mass, and wave/particle.
Change is woven into the fundamental fabric of the universe on a quantum level, from where relativity and time emerge!
Excal wrote on Sep. 11, 2008 @ 20:26 GMT
I'm glad you are not annoyed Dr. E:
You wrote:
“As MDT agrees with Einstein and Minkowski's relativity, perhaps your argument is more with their formulation of relativity, and relativity in general, than with MDT.”
No, because in Einstein’s case, x4 = ict = iL/t * t = iL is an imaginary length that is the radius, r’, of an imaginary sphere, as he pointed out, but the coordinates of the point on the surface of the imaginary sphere are equal to the radius, r, of the real sphere (see the attachment again). Thus, x4, the coordinate point, is real, while ict, the radius, r’, is imaginary, so using the imaginary concept as Einstein used it, as a fourth coordinate in spacetime, is perfectly consistent, but using it the way you are using it, is not consistent.
That is to say, for the imaginary sphere, the speed of a given dimension of the expanding coordinate point, x, or y, or z, is equal to c, the length of which is L = ct =1, which is equal to the radius, r, of the real sphere.
Consequently, the coordinates of the imaginary sphere are real, but its radius, r’, is imaginary, while the radius, r, of the real sphere is real, but its coordinates are imaginary. If we disregard this fact, we invite confusion.
attachments:
1_UnitComplexCircles.jpg
Anonymous wrote on Sep. 11, 2008 @ 21:05 GMT
Hello Excal,
I am using x4 and ict exactly how Einstein and Minkowski used them.
MDT agrees entirely with Einstein's Relativity.
My paper quotes Einstein's 1912 Manuscipt, from where it also takes its direct inspiration and equations.
I highly recommend the book!
http://www.amazon.com/Einsteins-Manuscript-Special-Theo
ry-Relativity/dp/0807615323/
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P.S. The above post was from Dr. E wrote on Sep. 11, 2008 @ 21:07 GMT
Best,
Dr. E :)
P.S. I'm used to forums that keep me logged on throughout the day. :)
John Merryman wrote on Sep. 12, 2008 @ 00:14 GMT
Excal,
I think the conversation is circling around the issue of cosmic expansion and how to explain it and how to describe it. While it's not advisable to stray too far from the standard model(singularity/inflation/dark energy) in polite company, I'm of the impression it is a cosmological constant, ie. a curvature or expansion of space opposite that of gravity. Since this would compound the redshift, then the further light travels the faster the source appears to recede, until it eventually appears to be receding at the speed of light, which creates a horizon line over which visible light can't travel, only black body radiation. The source is not actually receding, any more than gravitational lensing actually causes a star to move because its light shifts position. As gravity is described by matter falling together and radiation expands directly out of gravitational wells, at least those weaker than black holes, this opposing expansion is as much a consequence and cause of light radiation as gravity is of mass. So as particular light waves cross this medium, they are redshifted because they are stretched by the expansion, just as when they cross a gravitational field, they are curved. Think in terms of running up the down escalator, the floors are not moving apart, nor are the galaxies, because what expands between galaxies falls into them. Thus Omega=1 and gravity and expansion balance out. Between the valleys of gravity are hills of radiant expansion.
This would be a possible explanation for how Dr. E's fourth dimension is expanding, as a field effect, rather than radially, from a particular location.
Keep in mind that if space were actually expanding, then our most stable measure of it, the speed of light, would have to increase proportionally. Otherwise it's not expanding space, but an increasing distance in stable space, which would place us at the center of the universe, since other galaxies are redshifted directly away from us. If C did increase as space expanded, we wouldn't be able to detect the expansion, since the source would still appear at the same distance relative to our only measure, C.
Dr. E wrote on Sep. 18, 2008 @ 17:39 GMT
Hello All!
One thing I hope to do is to set up a site which shares excerpts from notable physics papers and books which support Moving Dimensions Theory, or which ask questiosn or pose problems that are solved via MDT
Here is a passage from page 350 of John A. Wheeler's 1998 GEONS, BLACK HOLES, AND QUANTUM FOAM:
"Theory suggests also that black holes of incredibly small size,...
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Hello All!
One thing I hope to do is to set up a site which shares excerpts from notable physics papers and books which support Moving Dimensions Theory, or which ask questiosn or pose problems that are solved via MDT
Here is a passage from page 350 of John A. Wheeler's 1998 GEONS, BLACK HOLES, AND QUANTUM FOAM:
"Theory suggests also that black holes of incredibly small size, at the scale of the so-called Planck length, are forming and dissolving all the time by the trillion, with the dimenions of every elementary particle. At that scale, with spacetime churned into quantum foam, space and time in fact lose their meaning. When we blend the two greatest theories of the twentieth century, quantum theory and general relativity, we have to conclude that time is a secondary concept, a derived concept. It has meaning only at a scale large compared with the Planck length and only well away from black holes, the Big Bang, or the Big Crunch. It is not a river that rolls inexorably forward. It is not a lake across which we glide. It is more to be compared with tempertature or with entropy, concepts that take their meaning only when large numbers of particles are involved. Time, we conclude, is of statistical origin, valid only when dimensions are large enough and when conditions are not too extreme." --page 350 of John A. Wheeler's 1998 GEONS, BLACK HOLES, AND QUANTUM FOAM
Moving Dimensions Theory, with its simple postulate of a fourth expanding dimension and equation: dx4/dt=ic agrees with this passage. Time is an emergent phenomenon, or, as Wheeler stipulates, "time is a secondary concept, a derived concept." Ergo time is not the fourth dimension, but it is a phenomenon that emerges because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c. Now as this expansion distributes locality, it is also the source of quantum mechanics' probability. It is why a photon, which travels by surfing the fourth expanding dimension, has an equal chance of being detected anywhere upon the surface of a spherically-symmetric wavefront which expands at the rate of c.
All of relativity, and its implications including E=mc^2, is derived from MDT in my paper, beginning with a 4D universe in which the fourth dimension is expanding at the rate of c: dx4/dt=ic. This invartiant expansion, underlying all motion and entropy, unfreezes time, and shows that time, as a "secondary concept, a derived concept" naturally emerges from a deeper physical reality--a fundamental invariance: dx4/dt=ic which is the deeper source of the velocity of light's invariance: c, and all the dualities--space/time, mass/enegry, wave/particle. And too it shows that nonlocality and quantum mechanics' probabilistic nature naturally emerges from this same deeper principle, as the fourth dimension inherits nonlocal properties via its expansion, which grants all particles nonlocal wave-like properties.
So it is that the EPR Paradox is resolved as we are liberated from Einstein's/Godel's block universe. MDT provides a fundamental framework for all of QM and relativity, while also granting us free will and explaining entanglement and length contraction with the exact same principle, from which time, and all its assymmetries, naturally emerges.
Well, thanks again for all the feedback! I have short excerpts from a couple dozen books and original papers that I am assembling, all of which support MDT. If you should come across anything, I would be grateful!
In addition to Einstein's 1912 Manuscript on Relativity, a book I would highly recommend, with a lot of the original papers, is:
Quantum Theory and Measurement (Princeton Series in Physics) (Paperback)
by John Archibald Wheeler (Author), Wojciech Hubert Zurek (Author)
Read Feynman, Eisntein, Bohr, Wheeler, and Godel! So many mysterious entities that inspired and exalted them almost seemed banned from today's common discourses on physics. Although they all "stood upon the shoulders of giants," back then physics was rooted more in simple truths, humble honety, and rugged individualism, all guided by an inspired sense of wonder.
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." --Einstein
Yes--as we know so very little, it means that so very much remains mysterious to those who open their eyes, look, and ask, and thus opportunity abounds for "true art and all science!"
Best,
Dr. E :)
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Clinton "Kyle" Miller wrote on Sep. 29, 2008 @ 20:04 GMT
Awesome essay, cannot wait to see the *final* version!
I feel like your theory might integrate nicely with the here-and-now (see essay)?
Perhaps, the here-and-now is physically defined as the surface of the 'expanding fourth dimension sphere' (i.e., photons) which is *coincident* to our *subjective moments*.
CKM
Dr. E wrote on Sep. 30, 2008 @ 18:26 GMT
Thanks for the words Clinton.
Yes--I have enjoyed your paper and am currently re-reading it. I love your thesis, "Third, the importance of experimental empirical information for an objective world-view is stressed with examples." Yes! Too many have forgotten that physics ought be about *physical* reality.
I also enjoy the words in your appendix on page 9 of your paper, ". . ....
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Thanks for the words Clinton.
Yes--I have enjoyed your paper and am currently re-reading it. I love your thesis, "Third, the importance of experimental empirical information for an objective world-view is stressed with examples." Yes! Too many have forgotten that physics ought be about *physical* reality.
I also enjoy the words in your appendix on page 9 of your paper, ". . . measurement is performed by nature serving in the role of an observer in the retinal rod, more specifically the rhodopsin molecule, leading to a stochastic discontinuous nonlinear objective wave function collapse. This means that while neither the brain, mind or consciousness play any subjective role in the collapse of the wave function, they do play a role in analyzing and interpreting the information presented to them. . .We observe nothing, rather observed or collapsed information of an objective nature is presented to us in a sequential fashion by nature for our subjective analysis or interpretation. Our supposed role as an observer is just an illusion!"
Yes! When a photon blackens a grain on a photographic plate, or when it warms the pavement, it does so independent of any observer. There is a *physical* reality independent of observers! This is also what Einstein's relativity ultimately states, and he actually wanted to call the theory the theory of *invariance*.
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/views/invaria
nce.htm
"Albert Einstein was unhappy about the name "theory of relativity". He preferred "theory of invariance". The reason is that [one] cornerstone of his 1905 theory of relativity is that the measured velocity of light is the same (invariant) regardless of any relative motion between a laboratory and the source of light. What Einstein feared came to pass when the popular catchphrase of his theory became "everything is relative". It was snatched up by people not acquainted with the scientific context, who regarded the theory as evidence in support of their own social views. { Arthur Miller, from a letter in New Scientist }" --from http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/views/invariance.htm
Craig Rusbult goes on to write in Einstein's Theory of Invariance,
"In actual fact, the theory of relativity is anchored in absolutism — in the concrete of Einstein's two postulates: The velocity of light is a universal constant, and the laws of physics are constant. He described these postulates as principles of invariance. An insightful textual analysis of the introductory sections of the 1905 paper would have recognized that the two "postulates" specify unchanging principles that serve as the foundations of the theory. In fact, Einstein called his creation an "Invariententheorie," a theory of invariance. The name "theory of relativity" was coined later in a review by German physicist Max Planck. Einstein resisted that name for years, although he reluctantly bowed to peer pressure. The relativistic features of time and space that led to the term "theory of relativity" are derived from the principles of invariance." --from http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/views/invariance.htm Einstein's Theory of Invariance
So it is that both quantum mechanics and relativity describe an invariatiant *physical* reality that exists independent of us! And Moving Dimensions Theory proposes a new, more fundamental invariance underlying both relativity and quantum mechanics--an invariance that also accounts for entropy and time's arrows and assymetries in all realms: the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions or dx4/dt = ic. MDT represents that kind of tehory that we have not seen for awhile--a simple postulate and equation reflecting a fundamental invariance underlying all change--a new postulate and equation exalting a novel feature of this universe that has hitherto remained unsung, and suddenly time is unfrozen and we are liberated from the block universe! Relativity, QM, and entropy are given a common foundational framework, and time in all realms is shown to be an emergent phenomenon.
Consider the photon. Measurement of its position relies on the collapse of a wavefunction--the irreversible localization of the photon's momenergy. When a photon is emitted, it is carried along by the fourth expanding dimension, which defines a nonlocal spherically-symmetric probabilistic wavefront expanding at the rate of c through the three spatial dimensions. The expanding fourth dimension is responsible for nonlocality--it "smears" locality throughout all of space, and hence the photon is ageless--it remains in the exact same place in the fourth dimension, no matter how far it travels, as it surfs the fourth expanding dimension. And hence entanglement--two initially-interacting photons remain fundamentally connected no matter how far apart they travel, as they yet inhabit a common locality that resulst because of the nonlocal expansion of the fourth dimension. And hence a photon's ageless (from relativity) and entanglement (from qm) derive from a common principle, which also presents a *physical* model for measurement, entropy, and time and its arrows in all realms.
So, so many physical entities and phenomena derive from the expansion of the fourth dimension, from qm's entanglement, nonlocality, and probabilistic nature, to time's arrows and assymetries in all realms, to entropy, to all of relativity which is derived from MDT in my paper.
So many cool things in your paper, Clintom, so thanks! I will be returing to it. And you're only twenty! Time is on your side, so seize the day--Carpe Diem! I remember John Wheeler spoke to all the freshmen physics majors at Princeton, and he told us that the time to start research is "now." And if we had questions, he suggested that we ask the grad students before we asked the professors, as the grad students were more likely to be on the cutting edge.
Well, honest curiosity is always on the cutting edge, so thanks for the paper and keep up the great work!
"Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be" -- Joseph Campbell
Best,
Dr. E :)
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Clinton "Kyle" Miller wrote on Sep. 30, 2008 @ 20:24 GMT
Thank you Dr. E!
I have to admit, however, that time is not on my side--my fluid intelligence will begin to decline over the next 10 years--this past year I realized that *now* is my opportunity to make something of my life. Since I arrived at college I began a journey into the depths of science, my lifelong passion. When confronted with that question "what do you want to be?" I began to re-discover my joy for learning--and the *wonder* it can arouse. Curiosity was the energy that drove me this past year to do all the research that led to my essay.
Learning is an emotional activity. This is why its so hard to remember what the molecular mass of seaborgium is--who cares! We have books, videos, and the internet for that. Two Einstein quotes come to mind,
“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” - Albert Einstein
“Never memorize what you can look up in books.” - Albert Einstein
These statements are at odds with my current situation, college. I want to *give* something to *us*. I do not want to *get* good grades for *me*.
“It is high time the ideal of success should be replaced with the ideal of service... Only a life lived [in the here-and-now] for others [past, present, and future] is a life worthwhile.” - Albert Einstein
CKM
P.S.
"When a photon blackens a grain on a photographic plate, or when it warms the pavement, it does so independent of any observer. There is a *physical* reality independent of observers!"
I agree with this idea apart from the word independent. That word incurs an assumption (i.e., objective reality). But the word *coincident* does not.
Dr. E wrote on Sep. 30, 2008 @ 21:50 GMT
Thanks Clinton!
Great Einstein quotes! Hang in there & seek out professors who encourage creativity and independent thought--I was quite lucky to find John Wheeler and then a dissertation advisor who stated, "you can do anything, but you gotta do something," which led to the artificial retina project.
Yes--you would enjoy Joseph Campbell's writings...
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Thanks Clinton!
Great Einstein quotes! Hang in there & seek out professors who encourage creativity and independent thought--I was quite lucky to find John Wheeler and then a dissertation advisor who stated, "you can do anything, but you gotta do something," which led to the artificial retina project.
Yes--you would enjoy Joseph Campbell's writings too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Fa
ces
They just came out with a new edition!
We need a return to the classic, heroic, mythological spirit in science!
In the book Campbell talks about the Knights of the Round Table who all had to begin their "hero's journeys" by finding their own way through the forest. It was dishonorable to walk in someone else's path. And once in the forest, they would happen upon a white rabbit (Neo follows one in The Matrix), or an amulet, or a goddess (Luke Skywalker sees princess Leah after following R2D2--a modern white rabbit), who would "call them to adventure."
In so many ways the advancement of science follows the classic hero's journey.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey
2 The Seventeen Stages of the Monomyth
2.1 Departure (or Separation)
Getting to college/leaving home. Or being fired from a job, or forced to work outside academia as a patent clerk. Joseph Campbell chose the woods of Woodstock, and the Great Books, over graduate school.
2.1.1 The Call to Adventure
Curiosity--Einstein wondering what it would be like to catch up with a light beam. & his happiest thought.
2.1.2 Refusal of the Call
People railing against relativity and QM, as well as Boltzman's s=klogw which is on his tombstone. The mob burning Bruno and the Inquisition forcing Galileo to recant his theory. Sometimes we internalize this mob mentality, and we fear to speak truth to power, and so we refuse the call, as did Jonah.
2.1.3 Supernatural Aid
Meeting a mentor. Feynman meeting Wheeler. Einstein meeting Planck/Minkowski. Wheeler calling upon you to begin research right "now."
2.1.4 The Crossing of the First Threshold
The courage to go beyond the mentor, with the mentor's guidance, or sometimes even against the mentor's beliefs, even though the mentor will eventually come back to help you out, as our parents so often do, and as Minkowski did for Einstein.
2.1.5 Belly of The Whale
Years of darkness, frustration, and exhaustion. Dead ends. Wrong turns. Exile--Dante penned the Inferno in Exile, and Einstein revolutionized physics while exiled from academia. Do not fear the darkness, for in the darkness one can better see one's own light.
2.2 Initiation
Finally finding the right path--getting underway. Einstein's two postulates & the principle of relativity. The quantum nature of light.
2.2.1 The Road of Trials
Meeting collaborators, overcoming obstacles, trusting in one's instincts. The exhausting work of calculations, research, and writing.
2.2.2 Mother as Goddess
Mother earth--the physical, empirical nature of the world which ultimately rules all physics.
2.2.3 Woman as Temptress
Following the wrong path by "beauty" or narcisism alone, like String Theorists and LQG. Narcissus staring at his reflection until he falls in.
2.2.4 Atonement with the Father
Einstein and Minkowski making peace, as Minkowski, Einstein's math teacher, provided the ultimate framework for relativity, even though Einsetin did not appreciate it at first, and Minkowski called Einstein a "lazy dog" when Einstein was Minkowski's student.
2.2.5 Apotheosis
Reaching one's full potential. Often comes after a "death," after an exile or firing, for one's ideals are immortal, as is E=mc^2.
2.2.6 The Ultimate Boon
Einstein's GR&SR. Boltzman's thermodynamics. Bruno's/copernicus's/Galileo's views.
2.3 Return
Coming on back with newfound knoweldge--Einstein's GR&SR. Boltzman's thermodynamics. Feynman's many paths. Moses coming down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments.
2.3.1 Refusal of the Return
Einstein refusing to accept quantum mechanics in his later years.
2.3.2 The Magic Flight
Somehow, even all of his wrong turns and mistakes seemed to lead towards triumph for Einstein in his "magic flight," as if his physical intuition transcended even the genius's physical grasp on reality.
2.3.3 Rescue from Without
Suddenly the cosmological constant is needed again, by a universe whose acceleration seems to be increasing.
2.3.4 The Crossing of the Return Threshold
It seems that only those physicists/artists/writers who part ways with the establishment ever return to exalt the establishment. It is a tragic irony that they are opposed at every step.
2.3.5 Master of Two Worlds
Einstein as a master of both Newtonian gravity and his superior forumlation found in GR.
2.3.6 Freedom to Live
Knowledge is augmented for all, and I would argue that freedom herself derives from the honest pursuit of Truth!
And so it is that we must return to teaching the Classic Mythologies, as well as the classic texts on physics, while encouraging students to hold ingenuity, curiosity, creativity, honor, and truth over political consensus-building.
And then, just as MDT liberates us from frozen time and a block universe, theoretical physics may be liberated from its frozen state.
Well, I think the hero's journey would be a fun structure/platform/metaphor for a book studying the lives of the epic scientists.
Best,
Dr. E
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Clinton "Kyle" Miller wrote on Oct. 1, 2008 @ 02:44 GMT
Dr. E,
I had another thought about your MDT.
In my paper Nature is *coincident* to our *subjective moments* through the here-and-now. If the here-and-now is physically defined as the photons impinging upon our sense modalities (i.e., the surface of the expanding fourth dimension), we can then infer that between the here-and-now and the cosmic background radiation (the limit of...
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Dr. E,
I had another thought about your MDT.
In my paper Nature is *coincident* to our *subjective moments* through the here-and-now. If the here-and-now is physically defined as the photons impinging upon our sense modalities (i.e., the surface of the expanding fourth dimension), we can then infer that between the here-and-now and the cosmic background radiation (the limit of Nature) we have the radius of *physical* reality. Perhaps this radius can then be used to implement the so-called holographic principle...
As per Paul Davies, in his paper (Davies, P. C. W. (2007) “The Implications Of A Cosmological Information Bound For Complexity, Quantum Information And The Nature Of Physical Law,” Fluctuation and Noise Letters, 7, L391.), this information bound could then be used to constrain Nature (the laws of physics).
" . . . linking the present with the past via quantum measurement is part and parcel of standard quantum mechanics, and can even be demonstrated experimentally, although so far only over very short time scales. This backwards-in-time effect cannot be used to send information into the past, or to change the past, but it does constrain the past to conform to the present.
So can the 'retro-causation' aspect of quantum physics explain why the laws of physics are fine-tuned for life? Not in the usual formulation, no. Although quantum mechanics requires the presence of many alternative pasts, every allowed history develops over time in conformity with the same laws of physics. The differences come about purely from inherent quantum uncertainty, not from any variations in the laws of physics as such. What we would like to explain is why the laws themselves are bio-friendly, thus permitting at least some quantum histories containing observers.
To do so, we would need to find some way of applying the general principle linking future to past through quantum observations to the laws of physics themselves. Until now, such an application would have been meaningless, because the laws were regarded as fixed and infinitely precise. But treating the laws as cosmic software, with an inherent flexibility, neatly lends itself to the task.
Observations made throughout the entire duration of the universe can contribute to fashioning the form of the laws [at the cosmic background radiation] . . . when they were still significantly malleable. Thus the potential for future life acts like an attractor, drawing the emerging laws towards a bio-friendly region of the available parameter space. In this way, life, mind and cosmos form a self-consistent explanatory loop.
For four hundred years, science has been based on the implicit belief that the laws of nature are themselves supernatural, and thus off limits to scientific inquiry. The time has come to challenge this fundamental assumption and seek a natural physical mechanism [the physical definition of the here-and-now] that enables the universe to generate its own bio-friendly laws.
In the eternal quest to explain life, the universe and everything, it could be that life explains the universe even as the universe explains life. Which pretty much covers everything."
- Paul Davies (http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1479)
CKM
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Dr. E wrote on Oct. 1, 2008 @ 16:49 GMT
Thanks for this CKM.
A great book you must get your hands on is: http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Theory-Measurement-Princeton-P
hysics/dp/0691083169
Quantum Theory and Measurement (Princeton Series in Physics) (Paperback)
by John Archibald Wheeler
This book was in my freshman dorm at Princeton--the only physics book in the little library/study room. And so I picked...
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Thanks for this CKM.
A great book you must get your hands on is: http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Theory-Measurement-Princeton-P
hysics/dp/0691083169
Quantum Theory and Measurement (Princeton Series in Physics) (Paperback)
by John Archibald Wheeler
This book was in my freshman dorm at Princeton--the only physics book in the little library/study room. And so I picked it up! Then, a few days later, I heard Wheeler speak, and I saw the book again and realized it was that same Wheeler!
In the book you will find the origins of many of the ideas you speak of above, although those ideas have perhaps been taken a bit far, and are a bit speculative. A similar thing happened with relativity, which people have used to speculate about time travel into the past and wormholes, which are safe from experimental tests. Had they only noticed that Einstein never stated that time is the fourth dimension, but rather that he wrote x4=ict, inspired by Minkowski in his 1912 paper. As t advances, the fourth dimension expands at the rate of ic, distributing locality and fathering time and quantum phenonema, as well as relativity and entropy. And as photons, by which we measure time and distance, are but matter trapped in the expanding dimension, time inherits properties of the fourth dimension in relativity's mathematics, but time is not the fourth dimension.
Einstein stated, "I like to think that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it," and I agree!
Tautological, anthropic, circular arguments are hard to lose, but too, they are hard to win. The universe is the way it is because it has to be the way it is to support us might or might not confuse cause and effect, and thus I don't often get involved in such debates. Also, the universe is the way it is because we measure it, and our meausurements affect the actual laws might be giving us a bit too much credit. Also, how can we test it? What are the physical postulates and equations that this line of thinking leads to?
Read http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Theory-Measurement-Princeton-P
hysics/dp/0691083169 and Einstein's, Bohr's, Schrodenger's, Pauli's, Newton's, Dirac's, Maxwell's, Feynman's original papers/works/books, and you will see they did not quite think this way.
It seems that the higher forms of physics have ever been advanced by a quest for Truth with a capital T, that Timeless, objective, eternal Truth.
"Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity." Albert Einstein
That would be the same eternity Dante, Shakespeare, and William Blake wrote for:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
MDT longs for that heroic age of physics, whence simple postulates and equations strove to expose, discover, define, and express deeper aspects of our reality. The proposition that the fourth dimension is moving and expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions is no small proposition. In many ways MDT is bold, but yet, if the purpose of physics is to make everything as simple as possible but not moreso, if the purpose of physics is to unify disparate *physical* phenomena with a common *physical* model, if the purpose of physics is to present simple postualtes and equations representing a fundamental *physical* reality, then Moving Dimensions Theory is far more humble than String Theory, LQG, and speculative philosophies concerning our influence on the laws of nature, as MDT humbles itself before QM, entropy, free will, and relativity--it humbles itself before our empirical reality which presents us with quantum entanglement, nonlocality, relativity, entropy, and time and all its arrows and assymetries. MDT humbles itself before Einstein's 1912 Manuscipt on Relativity, Godel's problems with time in relativity, and the EPR Paradox. From MDT's simple postulate and equation, all of relativity can be derived, and all the dualities (time/space, energy/matter, wave/particle) can be acocunted for with a common model. And too, MDT liberates us from the block universe and grants us free will, by simply stating that Einstein and Minkowski had it right--away back when they wrote x4 = ict, implying that the fourth dimension must be moving relative to the three spatial dimensions and dx4/dt = ic.
Imagine an undergraudate program in which one read all the original papers! Or at least where the original papers were regularly brought in! Imagine textbooks that regularly included excerpts form the original papers! This is surely something to work towards! We can perhaps begin with a website or two--hey--perhaps this is what an MDT website could accomplish.
One of the things I enjoyed about your paper, CKM, is your wide, solid range of references! And how you wove them all together in something new. You have a scholar's soul, so keep it up!
You will love this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Theory-Measurement-Prince
ton-Physics/dp/0691083169
Best,
Dr. E :)
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Clinton "Kyle" Miller wrote on Oct. 1, 2008 @ 18:01 GMT
Dr. E,
Thank you for your comments, they are greatly appreciated.
I hold my position, however.
"Einstein stated, "I like to think that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it," and I agree!"
By all means I implore you to think as you wish, but, that fact of the matter is by agreeing with that statement you are only voicing your opinion—a product of your *imagination*—not the invariant structure of reality.
Only the here-and-now or "present moment" can exist.
"Also, the universe is the way it is because we measure it, and our meausurements affect the actual laws might be giving us a bit too much credit. Also, how can we test it? What are the physical postulates and equations that this line of thinking leads to?"
We do not measure the universe. Nature preforms measurement in our sense modalities. All measurement can be traced back to this *real* measurement. And we do not need to test it—we need only to live it—reality is what it is.
“Nature uses only the longest threads [ageless photons] to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.” - Richard Feynman
———
I absolutely love the William Blake poem. (One of my favorites.) However, I think the eternity he speaks of is subjective. I have experienced this before.
———
"MDT longs for that heroic age of physics, whence simple postulates and equations strove to expose, discover, define, and express deeper aspects of our reality."
"We are very lucky to be living in an age in which we are still making discoveries... The age in which we live is the age in which we are discovering the fundamental laws of nature, and that day will never come again. It is very exciting, it is marvelous, but this excitement will have to go."
- Richard Feynman, in *The Character of Physical Law*, 1965
CKM
Dr. E wrote on Oct. 2, 2008 @ 15:41 GMT
Hello CKM,
I agree with what you write, "We do not measure the universe. Nature preforms measurement in our sense modalities. All measurement can be traced back to this *real* measurement. And we do not need to test it—we need only to live it—reality is what it is."
Yes--Feynman was fairly prophetic in predicting the era dominated by String Theory and LQG and other "ironic" forms...
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Hello CKM,
I agree with what you write, "We do not measure the universe. Nature preforms measurement in our sense modalities. All measurement can be traced back to this *real* measurement. And we do not need to test it—we need only to live it—reality is what it is."
Yes--Feynman was fairly prophetic in predicting the era dominated by String Theory and LQG and other "ironic" forms of physics: "We are very lucky to be living in an age in which we are still making discoveries... The age in which we live is the age in which we are discovering the fundamental laws of nature, and that day will never come again. It is very exciting, it is marvelous, but this excitement will have to go." - Richard Feynman, in *The Character of Physical Law*, 1965
Yes, it seems that some of the excietment has dimmed over the last thirty years, culminating in this episode of Big Bang Theory:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOwS0N3sX_M
And that is why we need to return to the "heroic spirit," as suggested by Achilles in The Iliad: "As I detest the doorways of Death, I detest that man who hides one thing. in the depths of his heart and speaks forth another."
All too often these days it seems people speak forth one thing while hiding in their hearts another, in an attempt to fool the lay public and sometimes even themselves and their peers, who may actually be easier to fool than the layman. But I would argue that the advancement of physics relies upon a rigorous honesty and a holding of physical truth over politics, grants, and team sports.
And while Feynman has been right over the last thirty or so years, perhaps science is not yet over--perhaps there are yet simple aspects of this universe that have remained unsung--simple physical characteristics which unify diverse phenomena in physical postulates and equations, such as the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt = ic. Perhaps string theorists and LQGers have not been asking the right questions.
"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." - Albert Einstein
Einstein stated that curiosity is more important than knowledge, but all too often modern physicists forget to ask fundamental questions. Below is a list of foundational questions asked and answered by a simple theory that answers each and every question with: "Because the Fourth Dimension is Expanding Relative to the Three Spatial Dimensions: dx4/dt=ic"
1. Why is light’s velocity a constant c?
2. Why is light’s velocity c independent of its source?
3. Why is it that nothing can travel faster than c?
4. Why does a photon, which travels at c, not age?
5. Why does a photon’s spherically symmetric path define simultaneity—a locality in the fourth dimension?
5. Why are energy and mass equivalent? Why E=mc^2?
6. Why do all of time’s arrows point in the same direction—towards dissipation, decoherence, and entropy?
7. Why do so many physicists say time is the fourth dimension, when Einstein never said x4 is time, but instead said x4 = ict?
8. Why can matter can appear as energy or mass?
9. Why is it that when matter appears as pure energy, it propagates at c through space?
10. Why does all matter have particle—local—and wave—nonlocal—properties?
11. Why does all energy have particle—local—and wave—nonlocal—properties?
12. Why is it that when matter appears as stationary mass it propagates at c through the fourth dimension?
13. Why is it that when matter appears as energy, it propagates at c through the three spatial dimensions?
14. Why is it that to move at c through space is to stand still in the fourth dimension?
15. Why is it that to move at c through the fourth dimension is to stand still in space?
16. Why is it that all objects move at but one speed through space-time—c?
17. Why is the universe expanding?
18. Why does radiation expand outwards, but not inwards?
19. Why do we see retarded waves, but not advanced?
19. Why is it that entropy imitates the general motion of all radiation and the universe’s expansion—a spherically-symmetric expanding wave?
20. Why is it that Huygens’ Principle, which underlies all reality ranging from QED to Feynman’s many-paths, to classical physics, state that every point of a spherically-expanding wavefront is in turn a spherically-expanding wavefront?
21. Why are all photons described by a spherically-expanding wavefront propagating at c?
22. Why is it that two initially-interacting photons remain entangled, no matter how far they travel apart?
23. Why is it that two initially-interacting photons remain the exact same age, no matter how far they travel apart?
24. Why is it that Young’s double-slit experiments show that mass and energy have nonlocal wave properties?
25. Why is it that the collapse of the wave function is immediate in the photoelectric effect?
26. Why is there no way for an object to gain velocity without being reduced in length via relativistic length contraction?
27. Why does a photon trace out a null vector through space-time?
28. Why does time’s arrow point in a definitive direction?
29. Why does entropy increase?
30. Why do Moving clocks run slow?
31. Why is time travel into the past impossible?
32. Why does free will exist?
33. Why is it that time is not frozen—-how come the block universe does not exist? Why do we have free will?
34. Why does a photon’s probabilistic wavefront travel at c?
45. Why is the velocity of quantum entanglement c? Why is it that only initially interacting particles can yet be entangled? Why is it that they must first share a common locality or origin, in order to share an entangled nonlocality when tehy are separated?
36. Why is it that in Schroedinger’s equation, the first derivative with respect to the fourth dimension is proportional to the second derivative with the respect to the three spatial dimensions? Any change in position in the fourth expanding dimension is an acceleration in the three spatial dimensions.
37. Why is it that a photon emitted from the sun is redshifted as it travels away? It's wavelength appears longer as it is measured against space that is less-stretched. A photon inherits the local geometry of the spacetime where it was emitted.
38. Why do clocks in gravitational fields run slow?
39. Why are photons redshifted as they move away from massive objects, and blueshifted as they move towards them?
40. Why the conservation laws? Why does an object maintain its rotation in space time, unless acted upon by an exterior force?
41. Why is the velocity of every object through space-time c?
42. Why is it that the only way to stay stationary in the fourth dimension is to move at c through the three spatial dimensions?
43. Why is it that the only way to remain stationary in the three spatial dimensions is to move at c relative to the fourth dimension?
44. Why does a photon have zero rest mass, and how does zero rest mass imply the velocity of light? None of the object’s matter exists in the three spatial dimensions, but only in the fourth expanding dimension.
45. Why time's arrows?
46. Why time's assymetries?
47. Why entropy?
Firstoff, imagine a universe where one was allowed to ask such questions; instead of having to engage in groupthink mathematics and snarky politics for tenure; while bringing the advancement of theoretical physics to a halt for the last thirty years or so. And then imagine if there was one simple principle underlying and unifying all these questions and clues with a fundamental physical model. That would be MDT: The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
dx4/dt = ic
The fourth dimension expands at the rate of c.
The fourth dimension is nonlocal via its expansion.
Entropy results as the local becomes nonlocal—as a point, or compactified sphere, of the fourth expanding dimension expands in a spherically-symmetric manner, dragging all of entirety along with it.
Quantum Mechanics’ nonlocality and entropy are inextricably linked, as the fourth dimension expands at c, and carries photons and particles apart.
Photons surf the fourth expanding dimension.
Energy is but matter trapped on the fourth expanding dimension. Hence E=mc^2.
All matter has vast potential for energy, if only it is rotated into the fourth expanding dimension.
General Relativity freezes the fourth dimension, whereas quantum mechanics is built upon its flux—hence the differential operators.
Entropy and Huygens’ principle rest upon the fourth expanding dimension, as do all photons which surf its expanding wavefront.
Nonlocality arises because the fourth dimension is nonlocal as it expands.
Simultaneity is relative because our measurement of time is relative to our propagation with respect to the fourth expanding dimension.
Time, as measured in our watches and perceived in the stored order of our memories, is not the fourth dimension, but a phenomenon that emerges because a fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, caryring the photons in our time-measuring instruments and clocks.
The block universe does not exist, as the past is but a memory of a state that is long since gone.
Wave interference arises because of probability interference, and probability is defined by the expansion of the fourth dimension, which distributes the locality of a dimension upon an spherically-symmetric wavefront, where all points yet are one point in that dimension; until the wave is measured, and the particle is localized in the three spatial dimensions.
All motion requires that an object have a component in the source of all motion—the fourth expanding dimension. Hence all moving objects are foreshortened, and the faster they move, the more they are foreshortened in the three spatial dimensions, as they are rotated into the fourth expanding dimension.
And the great thing about MDT is that in addition to providing a *physical* model for entropy, nonlocality, and time's arrows and assymetries in all relams, all of relativity may be derived from its simple postulate and equation:
Consider a 4D universe: x1, x2, x3, x4, where x4 is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c described with dx4/dt = ic. Ergo relativity.
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clinton "Kyle" Miller wrote on Oct. 2, 2008 @ 16:24 GMT
Dr. E,
Assuming your theory is testable and vindicated, it seems to me that we have *the* 'fundamental *physical* invariant'--the *physical* definition of the here-and-now (i.e., photons)?
That being the case, what is left for *fundamental* physics...?
Perhaps it is time not for a "heroic age of physics" but for a 'heroic age of humanity'...
I do not think that science is "done". I think it is time for science to be brought to the people.
“Is no one inspired by our present picture of the universe? This value of science remains unsung by singers, you are reduced to hearing not a song or poem, but an evening lecture about it. This is not yet a scientific age.” - Richard Feynman
———
I wrote a letter at the end this past summer, where I worked in a solid-state physics lab at UC Berkeley (attached).
In principle one could ignite awe with theoretical ‘parallel universes,’ but, I now realize that, *in practice*, it is our mission as scientists to unveil the shroud of ignorance that envelops the human condition—with *objective truth*.
This idea is echoed in the words left on Richard Feynman's board at his time of death.
“What I cannot create, I do not understand.” - Richard Feynman
We *create* our *physical* theories (e.g., space-time), whereas we *discover* the order of Nature through *real* experiments (e.g., the quantum of light or photon).
CKM
attachments:
Final_Letter.pdf
Dr. E wrote on Oct. 2, 2008 @ 17:33 GMT
Hello CKM,
Love the closing paragraph of the eloquent letter you attached above!
"Many more days have passed and my hands have built quite a few devices. My experiences here have played no small role in my life, and will no doubt continue to shape how I conduct my own inquiries. “Philosophy begins with wonder,” as Socrates proclaimed. In principle one could ignite awe with...
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Hello CKM,
Love the closing paragraph of the eloquent letter you attached above!
"Many more days have passed and my hands have built quite a few devices. My experiences here have played no small role in my life, and will no doubt continue to shape how I conduct my own inquiries. “Philosophy begins with wonder,” as Socrates proclaimed. In principle one could ignite awe with theoretical ‘parallel universes,’ but, I now realize that, in practice, it is our mission as scientists to unveil the shroud of ignorance that envelops the human condition—with objective truth."
And your sentiment, "In principle one could ignite awe with theoretical ‘parallel universes,’ but, I now realize that, *in practice*, it is our mission as scientists to unveil the shroud of ignorance that envelops the human condition—with *objective truth*." You are twenty years old, but right here you have penned the footnote, as well as the opening paragraph, to 99% of modern articles on science.
Yes! And Leonardo Da Vinici agreed!
Ideals must be rendered real via *action*.
Check out all the quotes in the lead graphic of the Mona Lisa here:
http://herosjourneyrenaissance.org/
"I have been impressed iwth the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough. Being willing is not enough. We must do." --Leonardo da Vinci
"All virtue is summed up in dealing justly." --Aristotle Action, always action is required, as Bogle states.
"There's a difference between knowing the path and walking it." --Morpheus from The Matrix
"How often is science improved, and turned into new directions by non-scientific influences! it is up to us, it is up to the citizens of a free society to either accept the chauvinism of science without contradiction or to overcome it by the counterforce of public action." --Paul Feyerabend
Math can be very pretty, but Einstein reminds us that physicists ought pursue *physics,* founded in a physical reality--“Mathematics are well and good but nature keeps dragging us around by the nose.”"
"It is anomalous to replace the four-dimensional continuum by a five-dimensional one and then subsequently to tie up artificially one of those five dimensions in order to account for the fact that it does not manifest itself." –Einstein to Paul Ehrenfest. Just think what Einstein would have said about entire parallel universes we cannot see!
With an heroic spirit, MDT takes us back to origin of modern physics--to the original papers on relativity and QM, and it humbles itself upon that mountaintop. And when it comes on down, off the shoulders of relativity and QM's giants, MDT presents us with a fundamental view of reality that conforms to all experimental evidence, while not only resolving the paradoxes of the non-locality of the EPR effect and seemingly frozen time in Godel’s block universe, but also unifying the resolution of both physical curiosities within a simple physical postulate--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt = ic. In a sense, this is the first theory to predict QM's nonlocality and entanglement, by postulating that the fourth dimension is inherently nonlocal via its expansion--an empirical fact that the timeless, ageless, nonlocal photon agrees with, as the photon surfs the fourth expanding dimension. And not only does MDT predict this, but it also provides a *physical* model for entropy and time and all its arrows and assymetries throughout all realms. And finally, all of relativity may be derived from MDT's simple postulate, as it is in my paper--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions--dx4/dt = ic. A postulate and an equation representing a novel *physical* feature of our universe--a fourth expanding dimension--and the natural, subsequent prediction of all of relativity, qm's nonlocality, entropy, time's arrows and assymetries in all realms, and quantum entanglement.
Best,
Dr. E
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Clinton "Kyle" Miller wrote on Oct. 2, 2008 @ 18:00 GMT
Dr. E,
Thank you!
I see your *knowledge* of MDT, and I like where this is going...
But what is the course of *action* you suggest?
CKM
Dr. E wrote on Oct. 2, 2008 @ 18:49 GMT
Well, no man is an island, and physics has ever been advanced by cordial conversation in the context of rigorous honesty and a humble acknowledgement of empirical facts. Einstein and Bohr disagreed often, but yet they had a deep respect for one-another, and I highly recommend the perusal of their converstations! Where would be be without the disagreements between Einstein and Minkowski, between...
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Well, no man is an island, and physics has ever been advanced by cordial conversation in the context of rigorous honesty and a humble acknowledgement of empirical facts. Einstein and Bohr disagreed often, but yet they had a deep respect for one-another, and I highly recommend the perusal of their converstations! Where would be be without the disagreements between Einstein and Minkowski, between Bohr and Einstein, and between Pauli and just about everybody? Contrast their exalted dialogues to the snarky dialogues in the modern string-LQG wars, and the perhaps even more troubling complete *lack* of dialogue for topics and approaches transcending those two "theories" which might not even be successful theories after all.
"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck
And yet today's science is dominated by "communal" theories bolstered by multi-million-dollar media teams. And again, these theories aren't really theories. They are often merely "not even wrong."
Planck also wrote, "Eine neue wissenschaftliche Wahrheit pflegt sich nicht in der Weise durchzusetzen, daß ihre Gegner überzeugt werden und sich als belehrt erklären, sondern vielmehr dadurch, daß ihre Gegner allmählich aussterben und daß die heranwachsende Generation von vornherein mit der Wahrheit vertraut geworden ist."
Translation: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
Once upon a time new theories were opposed by established scientists and established science. But today, new theories are mostly opposed by established bureaucracies and established bureaucrats, which have done little, if anything, to advance or contibute to actual science. So it's more akin to Galileo standing before the Inquisition.
It seems too many have forgotten the Hippocratic Oath--"first, do no harm."
Perhaps we ought contemplate one for scientists!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath_for
_Scientists
So, in light of all this, CKM, I'm thankful for this conversation and to fqxi for providing this forum which brought us togetehr!
MDT provides opportunities for novel research programs and curriculums--for new directions and exalted pursuits in physics, philosophy, and knowledge--based upon the foundational works of physics. And on a deeper level, the "heroic spirit" the program exalts could find use across all realms in academia and throughout our economy, in which far, far too many people profit by saying one thing and doing another--activities which have lead to our current crisis.
MDT predicts all of relativity from a simple postulate and equation that also provides *physical* model for entropy, time, and all its arrows, quantum entanglement and nonlocality, and all the dualities--space/time, energy/mass, and wave/particle. Not bad for one small equation: dx4/dt = ic, which offers a *physical* unification across all realms of physics, tying together entities as diverse as quantum entanglement and the timelessness of the photon, while presenting insight into a novel physical facet of our universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
Science is more of an art than a science, and it always seems to advance in manners never before anticipated by the establishment, as Planck stated. One cannot legislate, nor vote on, nor dictate the advancement of science by fiat. "One cannot pray a lie," as Mark Twain once said.
"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck
And again we see the primacy of the honest individual in the classic, epic hero's journey!
"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man." --Joseph Campbell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth
And the Nobel Laureate eocnomist F.A. Hayek agrees!
"The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for “conscious” control or “conscious” planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme—while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the superindividual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." –F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom
Well, thanks again for the exalted dialogue CKM.
With our newfound freewill provided by MDT, which liberates us from the block universe while llowing us to keep all of relativity, we can become those things we seek!
Best,
Dr. E :)
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Clinton "Kyle" Miller wrote on Oct. 2, 2008 @ 22:10 GMT
Dr. E,
Thank you for thanking me for the conversation, I have enjoyed it as well.
But I still cannot figure out what you think the outcome of our conversation is: you seem to agree with everything I say, and then repeat your comments about MDT...?
CKM
Dr. E wrote on Oct. 2, 2008 @ 23:06 GMT
Yes CKM--I agree with your general perspectives and view on the higher purposes of science.
I've been taking the opportunity to approach MDT from different angles, with slight variations on the theme, as that is the ultimate purpose of this specific forum.
Best,
Dr. E
John Merryman wrote on Oct. 3, 2008 @ 00:43 GMT
Not to belabor the point, but doesn't the opposite also apply; From the perspective of the "fourth dimension," it is the three spatial dimensions which are shrinking?
Einstein said the photon is timeless and that gravity shrinks the measure of space. If energy is the "now," then there is no future and the events we perceive as time are constantly receding into the past, as each is replaced by the next, so that our three dimensional context shrinks relative to this energy.
On the other hand, he did feel compelled to add the cosmological constant, for balance, so maybe there is some counteracting curvature to this fourth dimension. It's my feeling that redshift is evidence of a cosmological constant, which is a property of space, not the source of it, as the singularity would be. So this outward curvature, expanding fourth dimension, would be the direction of the future.
Dr. F wrote on Oct. 4, 2008 @ 13:44 GMT
A review of Elliot “Dr. E” McGucken’s “Time as an Emergent Phenomenon: Traveling Back to the Heroic Age of Physics”:
In this essay, McGucken claims that all of physics, including all of quantum mechanics, relativity, thermodynamics, and a large part of cosmology, including universal expansion and the Big Bang, follow from one line that appears in a 1912 paper by Einstein: “x4 =...
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A review of Elliot “Dr. E” McGucken’s “Time as an Emergent Phenomenon: Traveling Back to the Heroic Age of Physics”:
In this essay, McGucken claims that all of physics, including all of quantum mechanics, relativity, thermodynamics, and a large part of cosmology, including universal expansion and the Big Bang, follow from one line that appears in a 1912 paper by Einstein: “x4 = ict” (the Lorenz transformation for the 4th dimension of space-time), which McGucken rewrites as “dx4/dt = ic”. From this, he concludes pretty much everything else in the universe.
Some observations by the careful reader of this essay start planting seeds of suspicion on McGucken’s grasp of elementary math. For example, on page 7 he spends about half a page trying to show that the integration of the relation dx4/dt = ic with respect to t results in x4 = ict, a “feat” that any year-12 high-school student would regard as obvious and not worth showing. Worse, McGucken performs a “crime” that any 1st-year college student of calculus is warned to avoid: he throws away the constant of integration, because it doesn’t suit his purpose! Specifically, McGucken writes: “Dropping the arbitrary constant, we get...” But constants of integration, we learn in math, are not to be dropped like unwanted fruits of illicit love affairs! If they appear in physics, they must have a physical explanation, otherwise there is something wrong with the idea of integration. And, indeed, there is something *very* wrong with McGucken’s idea of taking the derivative with respect to time in Einstein’s x4 = ict. The problem is, x4 = ict is *not* a physical equation, such as F = m·a, which connects different physical quantities; it is a *transformation of coordinates* (part of the Lorenz system of transformations), and as such, it is meaningless to try and find its derivative on both sides. The symbol x4, which also appears as t´ in other versions of Lorenz transformations, represents *time*. Thus, t´ = ict means this: if you want to find the new 4th coordinate, t´, of a point (x´, y´, z´, t´) in an inertial frame of reference that moves with a given uniform speed relative to another point (x, y, z, t) in another inertial frame of reference, then multiply t by ic, and this will give you the fourth coordinate of the point (or 4d-event, as is usually called). Einstein would often write (x1, x2, x3, x4) instead of (x´, y´, z´, t´), to emphasize that the four coordinates of space-time are more similar to each other than our choice of letters, x, y, z, t, tricks us to believe -- that’s all that there is between the symbol x4 and the concept of time: x4 *is* time, it’s the new time-coordinate.
But instead of realizing that t´, or x4, is the Lorenz-transformed temporal coordinate of a 4d-event, McGucken proceeds to differentiate both sides of this transformation with respect to time t. In essence, he takes the derivative of time with respect to time on the left side, and finds that it is (surprise-surprise) constant. Thus, instead of interpreting x4, or t´, as the transformed temporal (4th) coordinate in space-time, McGucken makes the ad hoc interpretation that x4 is *another* dimension, not the temporal one, which “moves” at speed c. But if it is another dimension, how can it be related with time t through a constant such as ic? Multiplying a dimension by a constant does not result in another dimension, but in a modification of the *metric* that returns the distance between points in the space (space-time, in our case) that includes that dimension. Specifically, having the factor ic in front of t, implies that when we compute the distance d² = x² + y² + z² + (ict)², then we get d² = x² + y² + z² - c²t², because i² = -1, a fact known by every child in the kindergarten. Thus, the minus sign in front of c²t² results in the well-known Minkowskian metric, rather than the Euclidean one, d² = x² + y² + z² + t², otherwise known as Galilean, because it is suitable in Galilean (or Newtonian) physics, which treats space-time as Euclidean. McGucken, instead of realizing that the transformation t´ = ict results in the Minkowskian metric, in which “circles” (i.e., equidistant points from a given point) are hyperbolas satisfying the equation d² = s² - t² (rather than true circles in the Euclidean metric, which satisfy the equation d² = s² + t²), imagines an essentially Euclidean geometry for the universe, which he assumes to be a 4d-sphere that expands radially at the speed of light, the “3d-surface” of which is our familiar 3d space. McGucken’s “time” is quintessentially Newtonian, absolute, independent of space.
Moreover, as hard as McGucken tries to rid himself of the idea that time is the fourth dimension, he fails to do so, because a 3d-sphere that expands in time does not expand “along an imaginary 4th dimension”, but *in time*. That is, each point within such an expanding sphere is adequately described by four coordinates: x, y, z (the 3d-spatial ones), and t, the time of “now” of the point in that sphere. With his description, McGucken brings evidence that he doesn’t understand very well the concept of dimension.
Further, the idea that 3d-space is spherical, i.e., closed along any direction, does not follow from anything in McGucken’s essay. Space could be infinite (open), in one, two, or all three dimensions, and still expanding in size (and still with a wrong Euclidean geometry, as per McGucken’s essay). McGucken’s conception of 3d-space as spherical is an arbitrary axiom of his, but he doesn’t say so explicitly.
There are more points in this essay that cause the reader to question McGucken’s grasp of even the most elementary math. For example, on p. 4 he states: “Consider two interacting photons that propagate in opposite directions, […] One second later, […] although separated by 372,000 miles, the photons yet inhabit a common locality in the fourth dimension”. This is McGucken’s “explanation” of quantum non-locality, for, he says, the photons might be 372,000 miles apart, but they stand at the same temporal coordinate, ergo... “It is as if the photons are yet side-by-side during the measurement.” This is like saying that, suppose we have two points on the familiar 2d-plane, with coordinates [1,2] and [3,2]. Although the points are separated by a distance of 2 units of length, they stand “side-by-side” because their y-coordinates are equal, and so one influences the other! Does McGucken understand the notion of *distance*? Or of “Cartesian coordinates”? Quite doubtful, given what he states.
Overall, the essay does not stand serious criticism. If this review was written, it was because McGucken appears to have persuaded some readers that he has something of significance to say, when in reality he is saying absolutely nothing. -- End of review.
---------------------------------------
This review was prepared by “Dr. F”, which is the first derivative of “Dr. E” with respect to time, i.e., d“Dr. E”/dt = “Dr. F”, where “F” stands for “Failure”. Pure, total, complete, and undoubted failure.
This review was also prepared with the knowledge that “Dr. E” (the integral of “Dr. F” minus some unwanted and dropped constants) will respond with yet another one of his loooooooooong “answers”, which he copy-pastes from texts he has already prepared, entirely irrelevant to the points made by his critics, and the purpose of which is to “bury” the critic’s comments under an avalanche of irrelevant text: “out of sight, out of mind,” according to Dr. E/McGucken. A prime example of this was when Dr. Nikolic (topic 259) asked Dr E to please answer with a single letter (a, b, c, or d) in a multiple-choice question, through which poor Dr. Nikolic was trying to figure out what Dr. E was really saying. Instead of a single letter, McGucken’s “answer” was another several-page-long irrelevant document, through which McGucken effectively “buried” Dr. Nikolic’s question. Taking into account this, the present post requests from the eloquent and speech-unrestrained Dr E to answer with exactly zero (0) letters to this post. If Dr. Nikolic’s 1 letter was multiplied by a factor of several thousand to become Dr E’s response, let us see what multiplying 0 by any factor means for Dr. E. Let us see at least Dr. E’s grasp of *this* rule of arithmetic.
Dr. F
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Dr. E wrote on Oct. 4, 2008 @ 16:56 GMT
Hello Dr. F,
Thanks for the feedback. It seems you are arguing with yourself, as MDT agrees wholeheartedly with Einstein's relativity, quantum mechanics, and statistical mechanics.
Einstein stated "The Lord is subtle, but he is not malicious." Now you are being malicious, launching emotional ad-hominem attacks. Is that why you are refraining from using your real...
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Hello Dr. F,
Thanks for the feedback. It seems you are arguing with yourself, as MDT agrees wholeheartedly with Einstein's relativity, quantum mechanics, and statistical mechanics.
Einstein stated "The Lord is subtle, but he is not malicious." Now you are being malicious, launching emotional ad-hominem attacks. Is that why you are refraining from using your real name?
You'll enjoy this post on Peter Woit's blog:
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=894
"The
topic of blogs came up mainly in a section where Smolin discussed the ethical importance of scientists putting their name and reputation behind what they have to say about their science. He characterized anonymous criticism as one of the main reasons for the low signal/noise ratio and nasty environment of the comment sections of many blogs, describing this as far worse than anything he had encountered in his professional career, and something that is giving science a bad name. The theoretical physics group at Harvard in the 1970s was given as an example of about the worst it could get in academia. At the end of the discussion session, Paul Ginsparg took him to task about this, saying that he had been there too and it wasn’t that bad. I was there at the same time as both of them, and remember it as a rather unfriendly environment with a quite high arrogance level. But, with faculty like Coleman, Weinberg, Glashow, and postdocs like Witten, the talent and accomplishments of the people involved seemed to justify quite a bit of arrogance.
Ginsparg went on to agree with Smolin about anonymity on blogs, comparing trying to have a serious discussion in such an environment to trying to do so in a Fellini movie, being attacked by dwarves wearing masks." from--http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=894
I highly recommend Lee Smolin's speech:
http://pirsa.org/08090035/
"Abstract: I develop the idea that science works because scientists form communities defined by a set of ethical principles which, even if imperfectly applied, tend to lead to progress in our understanding of nature. While these communities have long been international, the combination of the internet with cheap airfare and easy migration of educated people makes scientists into 'global souls', in Pico Iyer's phrase. This opens up new opportunities and also new challenges for the thriving of scientific communities."
So in the spirit of science, please do provide us with your real name and credentials. When Bohr and Einstein debated, they didn't hide beyond cowardly anonimity to accuse one-another of not understanding arithmetic. What good can come of this childlike behavior?
You are extrapolating, augmenting, twisting, convoluting, and compromising MDT, and then castingating and impugning the straw man you erected. So congrats on that.
MDT has come not to deny the laws of the Founding Fathers of physics, but to unite them. MDT has come to liberate us from the block universe and unfreeze time, while providing a common *physical* model for all of relativity, quantum mechanics, entropy, and time's arrows and assymetries.
If you really believe what you are saying, could you please provide your real name and credentials?
Why do you not want us to know who you really are?
You write "x4 *is* time, it’s the new time-coordinate."
Actually, in his 1912 Manuscript, Einstein wrote x4 = ict. There is an equal sign in the above equation, and hence time's arrows and assymetries, entanglement, nonlocality, entropy, and relativity, which are all united in the *physical* framefork afforded by MDT.
All the above posts do pertain to MDT, and I am passionate about talking about it, but then again, this forum is devoted to MDT.
So now the question is, "Which forum is devoted to your novel theories regarding time and its arrows and assymetries, entropy, entanglement, nonlocality, relativity, qm, and a new interpretation of the classic double-slit experiment?"
MDT offers a simple postulate and equation, and an ensuing novel unification of diverse physical phenomena, as well as insight into a fundamental facet of our universe that has hitherto been unsung--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions--dx4/dt=ic. Expect the Inquisition, and expect them to be anonymous "dwarves wearing masks.
Best,
Dr. E
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Dr. F wrote on Oct. 4, 2008 @ 23:30 GMT
Dr. E,
Why don’t you focus on the questions asked in my review regarding your incompetence in math? What difference does it make what my real identity is? I told you who I am: I am your derivative, your first derivative with respect to time: “Dr. F”. (Why, do you think you have the exclusive right to differentiate anything and everything?) I have no “forum devoted to [my] novel...
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Dr. E,
Why don’t you focus on the questions asked in my review regarding your incompetence in math? What difference does it make what my real identity is? I told you who I am: I am your derivative, your first derivative with respect to time: “Dr. F”. (Why, do you think you have the exclusive right to differentiate anything and everything?) I have no “forum devoted to [my] novel theories,” sorry for dashing your hopes. Nor do I have novel theories at all. I am just a passerby. Your derivative.
But is it really important to know *who* gives you the message? Isn’t it more important to look at *what* the message is, and answer to everybody, specifically and explicitly, each one of the cases of McGucken-math-salad that I pointed out in my review? I questioned your grasp of elementary math. For example, on page 7 you spent about half a page trying to show that the integration of the relation dx4/dt = ic with respect to t results in x4 = ict, a “feat” that any year-12 high-school student would regard as obvious and not worth showing. Worse, you performed a “crime” that any 1st-year college student of calculus is warned to avoid: you threw away the constant of integration, because it didn’t suit your purpose! Specifically, you wrote: “Dropping the arbitrary constant, we get...” But constants of integration, we learn in math, are not to be dropped like unwanted fruits of illicit love affairs! If they appear in physics, they must have a physical explanation, otherwise there is something wrong with the idea of integration. And, indeed, there is something *very* wrong with your idea of taking the derivative with respect to time in Einstein’s x4 = ict. The problem is, x4 = ict is *not* a physical equation, such as F = m·a, which connects different physical quantities; it is a *transformation of coordinates* (part of the Lorenz system of transformations), and as such, it is meaningless to try and find its derivative on both sides. The symbol x4, which also appears as t´ in other versions of Lorenz transformations, represents *time*. Thus, t´ = ict means this: if you want to find the new 4th coordinate, t´, of a point (x´, y´, z´, t´) in an inertial frame of reference that moves with a given uniform speed relative to another point (x, y, z, t) in another inertial frame of reference, then multiply t by ic, and this will give you the fourth coordinate of the point (or 4d-event, as is usually called). Einstein would often write (x1, x2, x3, x4) instead of (x´, y´, z´, t´), to emphasize that the four coordinates of space-time are more similar to each other than our choice of letters, x, y, z, t, tricks us to believe -- that’s all that there is between the symbol x4 and the concept of time: x4 *is* time, it’s the new time-coordinate. And t΄ = ict (or x4 = ict) is NOT AN EQUATION for Pete's sake, McGucken, it is a COORDINATE TRANSFORMATION. The Lorenz transformation. The equal sign (=) DOES NOT STAND FOR EQALITY of quantities. It could very well be an arrow, like this: t΄
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Dr. F wrote on Oct. 4, 2008 @ 23:41 GMT
(Continuing from my previous post)
...
like this: t΄ ARROW ict. AND WE DON’T DIFFERENTIATE TRANSFORMATIONS. Understooded?
But instead of realizing that t´, or x4, is the Lorenz-transformed temporal coordinate of a 4d-event, you proceed to differentiate both sides of this transformation with respect to time t. In essence, you take the derivative of time with respect to...
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(Continuing from my previous post)
...
like this: t΄ ARROW ict. AND WE DON’T DIFFERENTIATE TRANSFORMATIONS. Understooded?
But instead of realizing that t´, or x4, is the Lorenz-transformed temporal coordinate of a 4d-event, you proceed to differentiate both sides of this transformation with respect to time t. In essence, you take the derivative of time with respect to time on the left side, and find that it is (surprise-surprise) constant. Thus, instead of interpreting x4, or t´, as the transformed temporal (4th) coordinate in space-time, you make the ad hoc interpretation that x4 is *another* dimension, not the temporal one, which “moves” at speed c. But if it is another dimension, how can it be related with time t through a constant such as ic? Multiplying a dimension by a constant does not result in another dimension, but in a modification of the *metric* that returns the distance between points in the space (space-time, in our case) that includes that dimension. Specifically, having the factor ic in front of t, implies that when we compute the distance d² = x² + y² + z² + (ict)², then we get d² = x² + y² + z² - c²t², because i² = -1, a fact known by every child in the kindergarten. Thus, the minus sign in front of c²t² results in the well-known Minkowskian metric, rather than the Euclidean one, d² = x² + y² + z² + t², otherwise known as Galilean, because it is suitable in Galilean (or Newtonian) physics, which treats space-time as Euclidean. You, instead of realizing that the transformation t´ = ict results in the Minkowskian metric, in which “circles” (i.e., equidistant points from a given point) are hyperbolas satisfying the equation d² = s² - t² (rather than true circles in the Euclidean metric, which satisfy the equation d² = s² + t²), imagine an essentially Euclidean geometry for the universe, which you assume to be a 4d-sphere that expands radially at the speed of light, the “3d-surface” of which is our familiar 3d space. Your “time” is quintessentially Newtonian, absolute, independent of space.
Moreover, as hard as you try to rid yourself of the idea that time is the fourth dimension, you fail to do so, because a 3d-sphere that expands in time does not expand “along an imaginary 4th dimension”, but *in time*. That is, each point within such an expanding sphere is adequately described by four coordinates: x, y, z (the 3d-spatial ones), and t, the time of “now” of the point in that sphere. With your description, you bring evidence that you doesn’t understand very well the concept of dimension.
Further, the idea that 3d-space is spherical, i.e., closed along any direction, does not follow from anything in your essay. Space could be infinite (open), in one, two, or all three dimensions, and still expanding in size (and still with a wrong Euclidean geometry, as per your essay). Your conception of 3d-space as spherical is an arbitrary axiom of yours, but you don’t say so explicitly.
There are more points in this essay that cause the reader to question your grasp of even the most elementary math. For example, on p. 4 you state: “Consider two interacting photons that propagate in opposite directions, […] One second later, […] although separated by 372,000 miles, the photons yet inhabit a common locality in the fourth dimension”. This is your “explanation” of quantum non-locality, for, you say, the photons might be 372,000 miles apart, but they stand at the same temporal coordinate, ergo... “It is as if the photons are yet side-by-side during the measurement.” This is like saying that, suppose we have two points on the familiar 2d-plane, with coordinates [1,2] and [3,2]. Although the points are separated by a distance of 2 units of length, they stand “side-by-side” because their y-coordinates are equal, and so one influences the other! Do you understand the notion of *distance*? Or of “Cartesian coordinates”? I am still expecting an answer.
Try to concentrate on “the beef”, McGucken. Just the beef.
Your derivative,
Dr. F
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Dr. E wrote on Oct. 5, 2008 @ 01:22 GMT
Anonymous Coward,
If you had serious points to make, I imagine you would be able to do it without the snarky name-calling and childish attacks. Also, if you were proud of your name, you would use it. If you had faith in your words, you would put your name on them.
Your tone and tenor bring to mind atheme from Lee Smolin's The Trouble With Physics--physics has come to a standstill...
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Anonymous Coward,
If you had serious points to make, I imagine you would be able to do it without the snarky name-calling and childish attacks. Also, if you were proud of your name, you would use it. If you had faith in your words, you would put your name on them.
Your tone and tenor bring to mind atheme from Lee Smolin's The Trouble With Physics--physics has come to a standstill largely because of well-funded, established snarkers, who haven't exactly advanced physics themselves, but only built a mean-spirited bureaucracy that is closed to new ideas--a bureaucracy you seem to be a part of. So who are you?
You write, "What difference does it make what my real identity is?" It obviously makes a vast difference, as you are carefully concealing your identity, while launching snarky, childish, ad hominem attacks.
In the spirit of truth and science, please share your name and credentials, if you have any.
Your greatest critique of my paper is that MDT is too simple, too beautiful, too elegant.
Again, we would like to know your identity and program of research, so that we can better understand why you so detest simple theories based upon rock-solid precepts and principles.
"Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone." Albert Einstein
Did you know that the most quoted phrase from the most-perfomed play of all time is "To be or not to be, that is the question?" Are you also one of those snarky deconstructors of Shakespeare, who removed him from the academy for using such simple phrases--the most fundamental verb in our language--to be?
Beethoven's 9th is based on the first five notes of the simple C Major scale. Do you also detest this final symphony because it is so simple that it cannot possibly be good?
Must all physics be tied up in knots and non-theories, to please your anonymous demands? So man up and let us know your name and program of research, so that we might better understand your emotional attacks, snarky namecalling, and put-downs.
In your snarky mean-spiritedness, which I would not be surprised to see fqxi delete, you completely miss the greater glory of MDT. It is hard to imagine a true physicist leading with childish putdowns and unadulturated snark. You ought be grateful I am even responding, but it is easy to sing the virtues of MDT.
Relativity freezes time and consigns us to a block universe. MDT unfreezes time and liberates us from the block universe, while also providing a *physical* model for time and all its arrows and assyemtries, entropy, entanglement, nonlocality, and relativity--a relativity wherein time flows, just as it does in our universe.
What do you personally have against the flow of time? Why are you snarking the ageless, timeless photon with ad hominem attacks? Why does time stop at the speed of light? Does not time flow day in and day out? *Why* does time flow? Do we not witness time in all realms of physics? Does not time have a dominant direction and arrow? Do not two initially-interacting photons remain entangled, no matter how far they are separated? All these things can be seen to descend from a common, simple principle--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, distribuuting locality and fathering time.
One of the chilish contentions in your diatribes is that x4 = ict is not an equation.
Well, it has two sides and an equals sign. It equates two entities, and this action is from where the word "equation" derives. x4 = ict.
You also tell me that I break some law in taking the derivative of the equation with respect to t.
dx4/dt = ic
There.
I did it again. Are you going to dress up as an anonymous dwarf and attack me personally some more, so as to preserve the sanctity of your block universe and time travel fanatasies? Go ahead, make my day.
In his 1912 Manuscript, Einsetin wrote x4=ict, inspired in part by Minkowski. Ergo, as t progresses, x4 must move.
dx4/dt = ic
There--I just took the derivative again. Are you going to round up a posse of masked, anonymous snarkers and hang me for this crime?
If simplicity, beauty, elegance, novelity, and truth are crimes, then I am guilty. You and your posse of anonymous snarkers can try and force me to sign a paper stating that the fourth dimension does not move relative to the three spatial dimensions, but even if you overpower my hand and force it to move so as to form the words, I will yet speak and think, "but yet it--the fourth dimension--moves." "E pur si muove." All the anonymous masked dwarves in the world cannot stop the fourth dimension from moving, nor can they keep time and progress in the realm of theoretical physics frozen forever.
The dominant source of your vituperation, ad-hominem attacks, childish namecalling, and bitter emotion seems to be that MDT is *too* simple, *too* beautiful, *too* elegant.
Well, if we got rid of all simple, elegant physics, we'd be left with string theory and the other non-theories that I am betting you have devoted your life to, and are too embarrassed to admit to, which is why you refuse to man up and share your identity. Your cowardly behavior is a tragic part of the postmodern, unheroic age, where the Great Books and Classics have been deconstructed, and small souls seek to rule via anonymous snark and fiat.
So what role do you play in all this?
That is one reason we would all like to know your true identity and program of research. Hundreds of millions of dollars--billions of dollars--have been spent over the past thirty years in theoretical physics. And yet, there has been no progress.
Theoretical physics has come to a standstill, and I would suggest that it is the fault of close-minded, snarky individuals such as yourself, and furthermore, I would suggest that deep down you know this, and this is the ultimate reason you remain anonymous.
You go on and on to accuse MDT of failing at things it does not even attempt, while ignoring all the things it gets right--the unification of time's arrows and assymetries across all realms, the unification of the dualities (space/time, mass/energy, wave/particle), our liberation from frozen time and a block universe, an expalnation for entanglement and nonlocality, and a fundamental invariance underlying all of relativity. It are anonymous, embittered folks like you who would prefer to live in a block universe and frozen time and frozen physics, where all progress is outlawed by anonymous snarkers, and math is used not in a simple manner to emlighten and exalt, but to berate, bring down, and destroy that which one did not create.
So please do share your name, title, and program of research, if you wish to continue. Perhaps by using your real name, you won't descend into snarky namecalling, and ad hominem attacks against straw men you created, and you can concentrate on discussing physics and physical reality.
Dr. E
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Dr. F wrote on Oct. 5, 2008 @ 09:41 GMT
You keep asking for my identity, Dr. E. But you failed to reply to the essence of the several counts, on the basis of which I charge that your essay violates high-school math. You only made a feeble attempt to answer *one* of those points, saying that, no, t´=ict is an equation, because “it has two sides and an equals sign”. This is another indicator of your detachment from even the most...
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You keep asking for my identity, Dr. E. But you failed to reply to the essence of the several counts, on the basis of which I charge that your essay violates high-school math. You only made a feeble attempt to answer *one* of those points, saying that, no, t´=ict is an equation, because “it has two sides and an equals sign”. This is another indicator of your detachment from even the most elementary math notation, because not every symbolism in math with an equals sign and two sides is an equation. But I’ll come back to this and answer it soon. First, I’d like to focus on a few other, interesting observations.
You accuse me of ad hominem attacks. Is it an ad hominen attack to point out not one, not two, but *five* points in which your essay violates high-school math and logical deduction? An ad hominem attack would be one in which I would be (I copy from the dictionary) “Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason”. But I appeal to logic and reason only when I point out at least *five* *points* in which your essay screws up high-school math. It’s not my fault if you read between the lines of my review and took my critique as an attack on your person! On the contrary, your insistence to learn my “true identity” betrays your passion to shift the discussion away from the essence, which is your mishandling of elementary math --more on that below-- and move it toward attacking my supposed “novel theories” (which I don’t have any). But this is a very common and well-known tactic of people like you: sweep the annoying questions under the rug, and shift the discussion to something else --anything would do. You have nothing you can find, because you don’t know who I am (and that’s why I won’t tell you, to prevent you from shifting the discussion). And so you keep repeating your mantras, hoping to bury away my obnoxious questions on your essay. But you won’t manage. UNTIL YOU ANSWER MY QUESTIONS ON THE SUBJECT, day in and day out, I’ll be there to remind you that you ought to reply, to concentrate on “the beef”. (I’ll get to the beef in a minute. Patience, Dr. E, patience. ;-) There are more “pearls of reasoning” worth mentioning in your previous posts.)
You wrote: “All the above posts do pertain to MDT, and I am passionate about talking about it, but then again, this forum is devoted to MDT.” But Dr. E, it doesn’t matter how passionate you are about supporting a scientific idea. Science is not based on passion, but on the experimental verification of ideas. We are not the Taliban in science, passionately supporting our false beliefs! If your idea is right, it will be proven right by experiment. If it’s wrong, it’ll be thrown into the dustbin of crackpot theories, no matter how many tons of ink you waste in preaching passionately for it.
You complained about my supposed misuse of blogs. Look who’s talking! You, sir, went to the blog of another author (Dr. Nikolic’s, topic 259), and after writing two or three trivial remarks on his essay, you went on expounding your magnificent “MDT theory” even there, causing noise and distraction, and shifting the topic from a discussion on his essay, to a monologue on your theory of everything --which, in my humble opinion, is a theory of nothing. I didn’t do anything like that sort of violation of ethics. It is *you* who did, and *you* must apologize. If “this forum is devoted to MDT”, then the other person’s forum is devoted to that person’s ideas, so why did you go and defile it, turning it into a monologue on your “MDT”?
Finally, I remind you once more that you *still* DIDN’T ANSWER MY QUESTIONS on the misuse of math on your part. Since you made that feeble attempt to answer only *one* of my points in your previous post, I’ll do you the favor and answer that now.
Here is why a Lorenz transformation (such as t´=ict, or x4=ict), is called a *transformation*, NOT an equation, and why, consequently, it is *meaningless* to differentiate it. (Warning to the casual reader: what you’re about to read is high-school math, perhaps year 11 or year 12; I apologize for having to explain such elementary concepts in this forum, but it is Dr. E’s essay that violates them, and in addition, he doesn’t realize that it does.)
Dr. E,
An equation in physics is some relation that connects two *different* physical quantities. For example, s = v·t, which relates space, velocity, and time. We can differentiate both sides of this equation with respect to time, and obtain a somewhat meaningful result: ds/dt=v, in other words, v (speed) is the first derivative of s (space) with respect to t (time). We can differentiate because the equation s = v·t describes a process that happens *in time* (e.g., a car moving), therefore, it is meaningful to ask: “How fast does it happen in time? What is the speed of it (e.g., of the car)?” That is the meaning of the first derivative with respect to time. Another example: water is dripping from a tap and is filling up a container. It is meaningful to ask: “How fast does the water fill up the container?” We can then differentiate the relation that connects the volume of water and time, and find the speed. Is this clear?
Now let’s go to coordinate transformations. Suppose I have a point on the xy-plane (the familiar 2D Cartesian plane). Say the point is (x, y). Now I want to rotate this point on the plane by angle theta around the origin, and obtain its new coordinates (x´, y´). So I write down the transformation relations:
x´ = x·cos(theta)
y´ = y·sin(theta)
In doing so, I provided two *transformations* of coordinates, not two equations of physics. More important, it is not a question how fast, or how slow, I do the rotation. In fact, there is no physical process at all in this transformation. It’s *not* a process by which point (x, y) “glides”, say, with some speed on the plane, and goes to its new location at (x´, y´). Nothing like that. Point (x, y) is converted instantaneously, and *mathematically* to its new coordinates. It’s like converting dollars to yen: you don’t ask how fast or slow the conversion takes place, nor do you pass smoothly from dollars to yen through a number of in-between currencies. You just go to the exchange booth and do it.
Ditto with the transformation t´=ic·t, which is the basis of your theory of everything. It tells us how to find the new temporal coordinate, t´, of a point in 4D space-time with new coordinates (x´, y´, z´, t´), given that that point has old coordinates (x, y, z, t). The transformation does not happen *in time*, but instantly, *mathematically*, because it is a mathematical computation of a new coordinate, like x´ = x·cos(theta), not a physical process that happens in time, and for which we could be legitimately asking “What is the *speed* by which it’s happening?” That question would be answered by finding the first derivative w.r.t. time. But a coordinate transformation is *not* a physical process. In my analogy with the rotation by angle theta, what corresponds to theta in the Lorenz transformation is the relative speed of the two concerned frames of reference.
Also, just like x is one of the coordinates, and the tick that we place on the left side of the transformation x´ = x·cos(theta) means “this is the new x coordinate”, similarly, t is one of the coordinates in the Lorenz system of transformations, and the tick we place on the left side in t´=ic·t means “this is the new time coordinate”. That you see t´ written as x4 does not make it a new dimension, it’s merely a renaming, a change of the name of a variable. Understooded, Dr?
Do you have anything to reply on the above, and only the above (the beef) “Dr. E”?
You would tell me again that I continue my “ad hominem attacks”. :-) But no rational reader will be fooled by your renewed attempt to shift the topic to something other than answering how you dare to differentiate a coordinate transformation, a non-physical process. (Let alone all the other points of math abuse that I mentioned in my review.) You’ll keep asking for my identity, having nothing more essential to say. By the way, Dr. E, my identity has been adequately given to you: I am your derivative, Dr. F. A derivative is sometimes marked with a tick, like this: (Dr. E)´. You could say, I am a tick of sorts. A tick on you, Dr. E. ;-) That answers your question, “So what role do you play in all this?” But stop being obsessed with who I am, and do focus on the *beef*: answer my criticisms!
So, you’d wish that my posts are removed from the forum? :-) (“In your snarky mean-spiritedness, which I would not be surprised to see fqxi delete[…]”) Ha-ha! :-) I don’t think so, Dr. E. “Out of sight, out of mind,” right Dr. E?
Answer my questions. How do you dare to differentiate w.r.t. time t´=ic·t, a coordinate transformation, a non-physical process! Answer!
Your derivative,
Dr. F
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John Merryman wrote on Oct. 5, 2008 @ 10:24 GMT
Drs. E and F,
Wouldn't "Entangled particles" make more sense as different points on a wave front?
First it would explain why the information they carry is identical and also why it isn't disrupted, as particles would likely be. Such as why the light of stars that has traveled for billions of years is still extremely focused. It seems that while this light is measured as quanta, it travels as a wave.
Dr. F wrote on Oct. 5, 2008 @ 13:59 GMT
Dear John Merryman,
Sorry, I have no idea. He (Dr. E) might have. I suspect that, even if he doesn’t, he’ll make up something. Actually, posts like yours, though based on legitimate and interesting questions, serve as “lifejackets” for people like Dr. E. You see, my prediction is that he’ll use the opportunity to get away from the need to reply to my main point, which is that his “equation” is not an equation but a transformation of coordinates. He’ll say, “Oh, how very interesting your question, Mr. Merryman, allow me to… [blah-blah-blah]”, and then offer you a bogus “explanation” based on a bogus differentiation, dx4/dt=ic. You do very well by asking, but... I believe you should direct your question to others, who I’m sure are more qualified to answer than me, and definitely more than Dr. E, who’s capable of differentiating even the plus sign in isolation.
So, Dr. E, if I may use the opportunity... :-) Would you please care to focus on my questions, summed up in my previous post? Thank you for your attention, and your ability to home in on the essential, leaving out the irrelevant.
Always your derivative,
Dr. F
Dr. E wrote on Oct. 5, 2008 @ 16:58 GMT
Hello All,
Anonymous Coward,
The one thing I want to make clear throughout this is that the main question here is why must you remain anonymous? Is it because you do not believe your words and do not want to have your name associated with them? Is it because you do not want your department chair or funders to see your childlike namecalling and ad-hominem attacks that you use...
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Hello All,
Anonymous Coward,
The one thing I want to make clear throughout this is that the main question here is why must you remain anonymous? Is it because you do not believe your words and do not want to have your name associated with them? Is it because you do not want your department chair or funders to see your childlike namecalling and ad-hominem attacks that you use instead of logic and reason? Is it because you think that simple logic and reason is not enough, and that snarky namecalling and childish put-downs accomplish what your logic and reason cannot? Please focus on my questions here, and please answer, as I am answering your questions, even though you do not want to meet at high noon, but you prefer to catcall from behind a mask and shoot your opponent in the back, like a coward.
Niels Bohr had a lot to say about the Cowboy Code, and therein we can find insights as to why your behavior ultimately loses both on the cultural and scientific levels:
From: http://holasunshinegirl.blogspot.com/2006/07/westerns-and-ni
els-bohr.html
"The great Danish Physicist Niels Bohr, an avid Western film fan, wondered why in all the final shoot-outs, the hero shoots faster even if his adversary is the first to reach for his gun. Bohr asked himself if some physical truth might not explain this convention. He came to the conclusion that such a truth did indeed exist: the first to draw is the slowest because he decides to shoot, and dies. The second to draw lives because he is faster, and he is faster because he doesn't have to decide, he is decided. This brilliant discovery was the result of a whimsical empirical research: Bohr and his assistants went off to a toy shop, bought water pistols , and back in their laboratory duelled for hours and hours."
--http://holasunshinegirl.blogspot.com/2006/07/westerns-and-
niels-bohr.html
So it is that you decided to shoot first in the dark of night, from behind a mask like a lowly outlaw, and thus made my decision for me. EBohr--a Dane--had a great appreciation for the Cowboy--for honor and integrity--for Truth and Justice. Too, too many postmodern "physicists," such as yourself, have lost that honorable, noble spirit. The classic, epic showdown goes back 2800 years to The Odyssey, when Odysseus rides back on into his home, disguised as a beggar. Eventually he alone strings the bow and slays all the false suitors to his wife who kicked him around and spat on him--that eternal faceless, nameless mob which you, and all too many postmodern physicists, run with. But alas, they banned *The Odyssey* from the academy, and thus your behavior dominates.
What we have here is an evolution and paradigm shift, and deep down you sense it. That is the source for your emotional vitriol. If you were certain that I was wrong, you would calmly state so and let your Word--let your Name--let your Reason speak for themsleves. But as you are driven by emotions you do not understand, and as you do not have faith in your Word nor reason, and are embarrassed by it and/or your Name, you hide behind anonimity. Perhaps you do not wish to badmouth MDT, as you sense that in a year or so you may be seeking funding to support your MDT research.
A few major forces have ever driven the evolution of physics: The realization that math is actually telling us something about the *physical* nature of reality, the realization that one thing that was formerly believed to be stationary moves, the realization that two disparate entities are actually the same--as in space/time, wave/particle, mass/enegery, and the relaization that we must not ignore physical realtity just to have some fancy-shmancy math/science fiction.
Well, MDT is driven by all these forces.
Consider the equation x4 = ict .
x4 represents the fourth dimension. Now Einstein taught us that dimensions are very, very real *physical* entities. They can bend. They can warp. They can *move*. The fourth dimension is a *physical* entity.
i is the imaginary number--the square root of -1.
c is the *physical* velocity of light. c is a *physical* entity. we generally know it by the *physical* enity of the photon.
t is time--that *physical* parameter--that ever-moving force none can deny, except for some advanced postmodern physicists, who wish to keep quantum gravity, which does not exist, and get rid of time, which does, in fact, exist.
So it is that we have a *physical* equation telling us the relationship between *physical* entities.
x4 = ict.
The glaring mistake you make, pilgrim, is asserting that
x4 = ict is not a physical equation, relating physical quantities. How embarrassing! No wonder you must remain anonymous. Imagine if your department chair or funders found out!
I take great pride in MDT's simplicity, elegance, and boldness. You, the anonymous masked dwarf, like all too many physicists over the past thirty years whence Homer's Odyssey was deconstructed, adhere to a debased religion in which postmodern physics must be complicated, snarky, convoluted, indecipherable, filled with advanced, meaningless math that is used to select and promote groupthinkers, and to intimidate and cajole indie thinkers and lone cowboys, while building postmodern bureuacracies (like the machines did in The Matrix)rather than to exalt and explain--rather than to actually perform physics. Your fallen, mean spirit is the dominant brand and trademark of postmodern physics and academia, and your behavior can be seen throughout the internet and academy, where young physicists are taught to engage in groupthink math and snark independent thinkers who come forth with simple logic and reason. The Nobel Laureate economist F.A. Hayek's THE ROAD TO SERFDOM has two chapters entitled The End of Truth and Why The Worst Get on Top. Because of the nature of the system, you feel you are forced into anonymity.
But more and more of us, who agree with Einstein, are banding together, and time, as a *physical* entity, is on our side:
"Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone." --Albert Einstein
As physicists, it is not our job to wallow in snarky, meaningless mathematics and use it to convolute and confound the simple, so as to build postmodern bureaucratic empires, but it is our job to figure out what the math *physically* means.
That is *exactly* what MDT does--it goes back to Einstein's 1912 paper and tells us what the equation x4 = ict *physically* means, granting us new insight into a hitherto unsung feature of the universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
"But even if the radiation formula should prove to be absolutely accurate it would after all be only an interpolation formula found by happy guesswork, and would thus leave one rather unsatisfied. I was, therefore, from the day of its origination, occupied with the task of giving it a real physical meaning." --(Max Planck, 1919 Nobel Prize address, 'The Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory')
Something that was once considered to be mere math, is seen to have physical content, implicatioons, and meaning. Something that was once more or less considered to be stationary--the fourth dimension--is seen to be moving. 'Tis a revolutionary affront to the church of wormholes and time travel worthy of burning me at the stake, you can bet all the well-funded, anonymous cowards agree.
And too, where so many dismissed x4 = ict as "meaningless math," I actually noted that it has physcial meaning. Now I know that the highest form of postmodern physicists today are those who can look at an equals sign and deny it exists, just as the postmodern lit professor denies Shakespeare's and Dante's greatness, but I look at an equals sign and see it for what it is, just as I see x4, i, c, and t for what they are--entities in Einstein's 1912 Mansucript which are related in a *physical* manner.
And from MDT's simple postulate and equation we naturally get all of relativity in a 4D universe where the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic. This also shows that time, as measured on our watches, is an emergent phenomena that arises because the propagation of photons, which are but matter carried upon the fourth expanding dimensions. The expansion of the fourth dimension distributes locality and thus is the cause of quantum entanglement, as well as qm's general features such as wave-particle duality and its probabilistic nature, wherein a photon has an equal chance of being found anywhere upon the nonlocal, spherically-symmetric probability distribution defined by the expansion of the fourth dimension, manifested in our three spatial dimensions. Entropy, and time and all its arrows and assymetries, can also be seen to arise naturally from MDT, and too, all the dualties--space/time, energy/mass, and wave/particle--are shown to have a common source.
Yes, anonymous coward, I am going to have to stick with Moving Dimensions Theory's simple beauty and elegance, which unifies so much of our entirety with a comon *physical* model. All the NSF mondey in the world, and the approval of your department chair and grad students, could not force me to change my mind--the fourth dimension moves and expands independent of the three spatial dimensions.
And I encourage you to choose MDT over your anomymous, cowardly, snarkfest behavior, which is intellectual violence unbecoming of a physicist.
For your unmanly, dishonorabe snark and bitter mean-spiritedness, we cannot forgive you, anonymous coward, and we hope you change your ways are man up and walk into town with your head held high, proud of your word and honor--proud of the Name your parents gave you. But for your refusal to recognize that the simple math can sometimes be telling us something profound and new about physics, perhaps we *can* forgive you, as even Planck did not believe the deeper implications of the quantum theory he developed. Einstein did.
Planck lectured at Columbia, "Consequently, there remains only the one conclusion, that previous electron theories suffer from an essential incompleteness which demands a modification, but how deeply this modification should go into the structure of the theory is a question upon which views are still widely divergent. J. J. Thompson inclines to the most radical view, as do J. Larmor, A. Einstein, and with him I. Stark who even believe that the propagation of electromagnetic waves in a pure vacuum does not occur precisely in accordance with the Maxwellian field equations, but in definite energy quanta hv.
I am of the opinion, on the other hand, that at present it is not necessary to proceed in so revolutionary a manner, and that one may come successfully through by seeking the significance of the energy quanta hv solely in the mutual actions with which the resonators influence one another. A definite decision with regard to these important questions can only be brought about as a result of more experience."--(From Max Planck's famous Columbia Lectures)
From: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/Einstein_and_pho
toelectric_effect.html
"Experimentalists railed at the prospect of what Einstein's equation of the photoelectric effect implied. Robert Millikan, the very man who showed that the equation really did work, would have nothing to do with its physical interpretation. In 1915, Millikan wrote: "The semicorpuscular theory by which Einstein arrived at his equation seems at present wholly untenable." Three years later, Ernest Rutherford, the great New Zealand physicist who probed the structure of the atom, said there appeared to be "no physical connection" between the energy and frequency in Einstein's hypothesis about light quanta. It didn't seem to make sense that a particle could have a frequency, or that a wave could act as if it were made of energetic particles. The two concepts seemed to rule each other out." --http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/Einstein_and_p
hotoelectric_effect.html
Well, at least they all used their names when they railed against a new theory. Sure, they were all great physicists, but first and foremost, like Bohr, they were rugged *cowboys*.
Gamow loved cowboys & Westerns too. Check out, "Mr. Tompkins Gets Serious: The Essential George Gamow, The Masterpiece Science Edition (Hardcover)
by George Gamow."
"The Cowboy Experiment
Father's nickname was Joe. Niels Bohr and my father were addicted to western movies while they were in Copenhagen together. All the cowboys in these movies—Gary Cooper types—were called Joe. That's how Father's nickname came about—he was named after a typical cowboy movie hero.
Bohr had some difficulty with cowboy movies. Being a great physicist he took things very literally. After seeing one of the many films in which there was a shootout between a good guy in a white hat and a bad guy in a black hat, Bohr asked Father, "How is it possible that the man in the black hat always reaches... "
--http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Tompkins-Gets-Serious-Masterpiece
/dp/0131872915
Even more important than MDT is that we bring that classic, epic, western, heroic, cowboy spirit on back; for it is the true source of all enduring art and sicence, of truth and freedom, of rugged romance, beauty, and elegance--that rugged, lone truth seeker is how physics has ever advanced.
"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck
"The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for “conscious” control or “conscious” planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme—while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the superindividual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." –F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom
You can stand him up at the gates of hell, but he won't back down. Bruno, Socrates, Galileo, Dante, Einstein, Gamow, and Bohr--they all walked and spoke freely in plain sight, and stuck by their guns when the chips were down. They, like Odysseus, were classic, epic cowboys, always standing up against the anonymous, faceless mob for truth, reason, and justice.
Well, we've all got a showdwon commin'. And if you call down the thunder, you've got to man up and face it at high noon--you can't just run and hide and use snarky, postmodern math in the dark of night, sneaking up anonymously behind the mysterious stranger. For ultimately, as Feynman knew, science is not advanced by those seeking fame and fortune--tenure and titles--but by those seeking truth and classic, epic honor.
Perhaps we ought make a list of Bohr's and Gamow's favorite Westerns.
"Bohr was very fond of seeing Western (cowboy) movies in which gun duels are quite common. In all such duels, the villain draws his gun but the hero always shoots down the scoundrel first. Bohr had an explanation for this phenomenon, ascribing this as the difference between wilful and conditioned thinking. “The scoundrel has to think and decide when to go for his gun, which slows his action, while the hero acts faster because he acts, without thinking, the moment he sees the scoundrel reaching for his gun.” When nobody agreed with his theory, he bought a pair of toy guns and playing the hero, tried duels with his pupils. Surprisingly, he ‘killed’ everybody who tried to take a shot at him first." --from http://www.dawn.com/weekly/dmag/archive/030420/dmag21.htm
Bes
t,
Dr. E
p.s. http://confoundingvariable.com/article.cfm/id/211368
"New Book about 'Galloping Gamows' Shows Relationship between Physics and Cowboys"
view post as summary
Dr. F wrote on Oct. 6, 2008 @ 17:38 GMT
Dear reader,
At this point I think it’s high time that I stop castigating poor Dr. E, feeling that he doesn’t really deserve any more whipping. He’s evidently unable to perceive his condition, to rationalize, and conclude that he’s grappling with issues that are light-years ahead of his theoretically reachable horizon. After all, what horizon can one expect from someone who...
view entire post
Dear reader,
At this point I think it’s high time that I stop castigating poor Dr. E, feeling that he doesn’t really deserve any more whipping. He’s evidently unable to perceive his condition, to rationalize, and conclude that he’s grappling with issues that are light-years ahead of his theoretically reachable horizon. After all, what horizon can one expect from someone who concludes that two points that share a common coordinate stand “side-by-side”, and who thinks that anything with two sides and an equal sign, such as a coordinate transformation, is an equation that can be differentiated. And what rationality can one expect from someone who accuses me of “name calling”, when in fact I haven’t used a single name-calling adjective against him, whereas he has used the following against me: “anonymous coward”, “mean-spirited”, “anonymous dwarf”, “snarky individual”, and many more. In addition, he thinks I am a man (!) so he asks me to stand up like a man with pride, as if women have no dignity and only men can do such things as keep their heads up with pride (sorry for the dumb language, I’m just using his expressions).
I suppose the main purpose for which I decided to write in this forum has been achieved: I wanted to warn the unwary reader that what they read in Dr. E’s essay is pure and unadulterated nonsense. If anyone, after this, falls for Dr. E’s “theory”, fooled by his tactic to bury his interlocutor’s criticisms under tons of irrelevant material(*), I don’t think there is anything further I can do.
(*) His last post was 1/8th in length of the total on this page, and he went on telling us about the Odyssey, cowboys, and what films Bohr enjoyed. He could’ve posted the yellow pages as well --that would be more effective as a dumping material.
I admit my strategy to conceal my name worked only partially. But, had I disclosed it, he would waste ten times more energy and web space in trying to attack me personally. This way he was confined to repeating his calls to let him know who I am, ad nauseam.
What I want to express to you (and only to you, dear reader) is my puzzlement about our educational system. What kind of college graduates do we produce? (I’m assuming you’re an American. If not, you must be wondering what kind of graduates American colleges produce, and you’re right in sharing my puzzlement.) Do you like what you’re seeing? Think about it, this person claims he has a PhD in physics from UNC Chapel Hill! Is this ever possible? Can anyone obtain a PhD in physics from a well-known university, and yet be unable to understand what a coordinate transformation is, or even the very idea of distance on the xy-plane? If he says the truth, I’d find it’s tragic! How can I send my children to UNC Chapel Hill knowing they deliver PhD’s in physics over there to individuals of Dr. E’s caliber? (And how do I know that other universities are any better?) I prefer to believe that his resume, just as his essay, is a fraud --that makes me feel more tranquil regarding our universities. But even so, it’s still pathetic that someone can graduate from high school, work toward a degree in science, and still not have grasped what a coordinate is! Our secondary education is third-world like --all statistics and international competitions (e.g., math Olympiads) point toward this conclusion-- and it doesn’t look like it’s getting any better. I think we’re doomed.
Sorry about this rant, dear reader. Just think about it--a million thanks.
Dr. F
view post as summary
Dr. E wrote on Oct. 6, 2008 @ 18:46 GMT
I'll be surprised if fqxi allows ad-hominem, libellious defamiation (which is illegal), and personal attacks to remain here, which the anonymous coward engages in instead of responding to the physics in the above post, so I will repeat the above post below, as I stand by my words. An anonymous coward who cannot put their own name on their childish slanders, vitriol, and false libel and defamation...
view entire post
I'll be surprised if fqxi allows ad-hominem, libellious defamiation (which is illegal), and personal attacks to remain here, which the anonymous coward engages in instead of responding to the physics in the above post, so I will repeat the above post below, as I stand by my words. An anonymous coward who cannot put their own name on their childish slanders, vitriol, and false libel and defamation (which is illegal) is not worthy of the spirit embodied by every other participant here, nor is it worthy of further responses.
Anonymous Coward,
The one thing I want to make clear throughout this is that the main question here is why must you remain anonymous? Is it because you do not believe your words and do not want to have your name associated with them? Is it because you do not want your department chair or funders to see your childlike namecalling and ad-hominem attacks that you use instead of logic and reason? Is it because you think that simple logic and reason is not enough, and that snarky namecalling and childish put-downs accomplish what your logic and reason cannot? Please focus on my questions here, and please answer, as I am answering your questions, even though you do not want to meet at high noon, but you prefer to catcall from behind a mask and shoot your opponent in the back, like a coward.
Niels Bohr had a lot to say about the Cowboy Code, and therein we can find insights as to why your behavior ultimately loses both on the cultural and scientific levels:
From: http://holasunshinegirl.blogspot.com/2006/07/westerns-and-ni
els-bohr.html
"The great Danish Physicist Niels Bohr, an avid Western film fan, wondered why in all the final shoot-outs, the hero shoots faster even if his adversary is the first to reach for his gun. Bohr asked himself if some physical truth might not explain this convention. He came to the conclusion that such a truth did indeed exist: the first to draw is the slowest because he decides to shoot, and dies. The second to draw lives because he is faster, and he is faster because he doesn't have to decide, he is decided. This brilliant discovery was the result of a whimsical empirical research: Bohr and his assistants went off to a toy shop, bought water pistols , and back in their laboratory duelled for hours and hours."
--http://holasunshinegirl.blogspot.com/2006/07/westerns-and-
niels-bohr.html
So it is that you decided to shoot first in the dark of night, from behind a mask like a lowly outlaw, and thus made my decision for me. EBohr--a Dane--had a great appreciation for the Cowboy--for honor and integrity--for Truth and Justice. Too, too many postmodern "physicists," such as yourself, have lost that honorable, noble spirit. The classic, epic showdown goes back 2800 years to The Odyssey, when Odysseus rides back on into his home, disguised as a beggar. Eventually he alone strings the bow and slays all the false suitors to his wife who kicked him around and spat on him--that eternal faceless, nameless mob which you, and all too many postmodern physicists, run with. But alas, they banned *The Odyssey* from the academy, and thus your behavior dominates.
What we have here is an evolution and paradigm shift, and deep down you sense it. That is the source for your emotional vitriol. If you were certain that I was wrong, you would calmly state so and let your Word--let your Name--let your Reason speak for themsleves. But as you are driven by emotions you do not understand, and as you do not have faith in your Word nor reason, and are embarrassed by it and/or your Name, you hide behind anonimity. Perhaps you do not wish to badmouth MDT, as you sense that in a year or so you may be seeking funding to support your MDT research.
A few major forces have ever driven the evolution of physics: The realization that math is actually telling us something about the *physical* nature of reality, the realization that one thing that was formerly believed to be stationary moves, the realization that two disparate entities are actually the same--as in space/time, wave/particle, mass/enegery, and the relaization that we must not ignore physical realtity just to have some fancy-shmancy math/science fiction.
Well, MDT is driven by all these forces.
Consider the equation x4 = ict .
x4 represents the fourth dimension. Now Einstein taught us that dimensions are very, very real *physical* entities. They can bend. They can warp. They can *move*. The fourth dimension is a *physical* entity.
i is the imaginary number--the square root of -1.
c is the *physical* velocity of light. c is a *physical* entity. we generally know it by the *physical* enity of the photon.
t is time--that *physical* parameter--that ever-moving force none can deny, except for some advanced postmodern physicists, who wish to keep quantum gravity, which does not exist, and get rid of time, which does, in fact, exist.
So it is that we have a *physical* equation telling us the relationship between *physical* entities.
x4 = ict.
The glaring mistake you make, pilgrim, is asserting that
x4 = ict is not a physical equation, relating physical quantities. How embarrassing! No wonder you must remain anonymous. Imagine if your department chair or funders found out!
I take great pride in MDT's simplicity, elegance, and boldness. You, the anonymous masked dwarf, like all too many physicists over the past thirty years whence Homer's Odyssey was deconstructed, adhere to a debased religion in which postmodern physics must be complicated, snarky, convoluted, indecipherable, filled with advanced, meaningless math that is used to select and promote groupthinkers, and to intimidate and cajole indie thinkers and lone cowboys, while building postmodern bureuacracies (like the machines did in The Matrix)rather than to exalt and explain--rather than to actually perform physics. Your fallen, mean spirit is the dominant brand and trademark of postmodern physics and academia, and your behavior can be seen throughout the internet and academy, where young physicists are taught to engage in groupthink math and snark independent thinkers who come forth with simple logic and reason. The Nobel Laureate economist F.A. Hayek's THE ROAD TO SERFDOM has two chapters entitled The End of Truth and Why The Worst Get on Top. Because of the nature of the system, you feel you are forced into anonymity.
But more and more of us, who agree with Einstein, are banding together, and time, as a *physical* entity, is on our side:
"Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone." --Albert Einstein
As physicists, it is not our job to wallow in snarky, meaningless mathematics and use it to convolute and confound the simple, so as to build postmodern bureaucratic empires, but it is our job to figure out what the math *physically* means.
That is *exactly* what MDT does--it goes back to Einstein's 1912 paper and tells us what the equation x4 = ict *physically* means, granting us new insight into a hitherto unsung feature of the universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
"But even if the radiation formula should prove to be absolutely accurate it would after all be only an interpolation formula found by happy guesswork, and would thus leave one rather unsatisfied. I was, therefore, from the day of its origination, occupied with the task of giving it a real physical meaning." --(Max Planck, 1919 Nobel Prize address, 'The Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory')
Something that was once considered to be mere math, is seen to have physical content, implicatioons, and meaning. Something that was once more or less considered to be stationary--the fourth dimension--is seen to be moving. 'Tis a revolutionary affront to the church of wormholes and time travel worthy of burning me at the stake, you can bet all the well-funded, anonymous cowards agree.
And too, where so many dismissed x4 = ict as "meaningless math," I actually noted that it has physcial meaning. Now I know that the highest form of postmodern physicists today are those who can look at an equals sign and deny it exists, just as the postmodern lit professor denies Shakespeare's and Dante's greatness, but I look at an equals sign and see it for what it is, just as I see x4, i, c, and t for what they are--entities in Einstein's 1912 Mansucript which are related in a *physical* manner.
And from MDT's simple postulate and equation we naturally get all of relativity in a 4D universe where the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic. This also shows that time, as measured on our watches, is an emergent phenomena that arises because the propagation of photons, which are but matter carried upon the fourth expanding dimensions. The expansion of the fourth dimension distributes locality and thus is the cause of quantum entanglement, as well as qm's general features such as wave-particle duality and its probabilistic nature, wherein a photon has an equal chance of being found anywhere upon the nonlocal, spherically-symmetric probability distribution defined by the expansion of the fourth dimension, manifested in our three spatial dimensions. Entropy, and time and all its arrows and assymetries, can also be seen to arise naturally from MDT, and too, all the dualties--space/time, energy/mass, and wave/particle--are shown to have a common source.
Yes, anonymous coward, I am going to have to stick with Moving Dimensions Theory's simple beauty and elegance, which unifies so much of our entirety with a comon *physical* model. All the NSF mondey in the world, and the approval of your department chair and grad students, could not force me to change my mind--the fourth dimension moves and expands independent of the three spatial dimensions.
And I encourage you to choose MDT over your anomymous, cowardly, snarkfest behavior, which is intellectual violence unbecoming of a physicist.
For your unmanly, dishonorabe snark and bitter mean-spiritedness, we cannot forgive you, anonymous coward, and we hope you change your ways are man up and walk into town with your head held high, proud of your word and honor--proud of the Name your parents gave you. But for your refusal to recognize that the simple math can sometimes be telling us something profound and new about physics, perhaps we *can* forgive you, as even Planck did not believe the deeper implications of the quantum theory he developed. Einstein did.
Planck lectured at Columbia, "Consequently, there remains only the one conclusion, that previous electron theories suffer from an essential incompleteness which demands a modification, but how deeply this modification should go into the structure of the theory is a question upon which views are still widely divergent. J. J. Thompson inclines to the most radical view, as do J. Larmor, A. Einstein, and with him I. Stark who even believe that the propagation of electromagnetic waves in a pure vacuum does not occur precisely in accordance with the Maxwellian field equations, but in definite energy quanta hv.
I am of the opinion, on the other hand, that at present it is not necessary to proceed in so revolutionary a manner, and that one may come successfully through by seeking the significance of the energy quanta hv solely in the mutual actions with which the resonators influence one another. A definite decision with regard to these important questions can only be brought about as a result of more experience."--(From Max Planck's famous Columbia Lectures)
From: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/Einstein_and_pho
toelectric_effect.html
"Experimentalists railed at the prospect of what Einstein's equation of the photoelectric effect implied. Robert Millikan, the very man who showed that the equation really did work, would have nothing to do with its physical interpretation. In 1915, Millikan wrote: "The semicorpuscular theory by which Einstein arrived at his equation seems at present wholly untenable." Three years later, Ernest Rutherford, the great New Zealand physicist who probed the structure of the atom, said there appeared to be "no physical connection" between the energy and frequency in Einstein's hypothesis about light quanta. It didn't seem to make sense that a particle could have a frequency, or that a wave could act as if it were made of energetic particles. The two concepts seemed to rule each other out." --http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/Einstein_and_p
hotoelectric_effect.html
Well, at least they all used their names when they railed against a new theory. Sure, they were all great physicists, but first and foremost, like Bohr, they were rugged *cowboys*.
Gamow loved cowboys & Westerns too. Check out, "Mr. Tompkins Gets Serious: The Essential George Gamow, The Masterpiece Science Edition (Hardcover)
by George Gamow."
"The Cowboy Experiment
Father's nickname was Joe. Niels Bohr and my father were addicted to western movies while they were in Copenhagen together. All the cowboys in these movies—Gary Cooper types—were called Joe. That's how Father's nickname came about—he was named after a typical cowboy movie hero.
Bohr had some difficulty with cowboy movies. Being a great physicist he took things very literally. After seeing one of the many films in which there was a shootout between a good guy in a white hat and a bad guy in a black hat, Bohr asked Father, "How is it possible that the man in the black hat always reaches... "
--http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Tompkins-Gets-Serious-Masterpiece
/dp/0131872915
Even more important than MDT is that we bring that classic, epic, western, heroic, cowboy spirit on back; for it is the true source of all enduring art and sicence, of truth and freedom, of rugged romance, beauty, and elegance--that rugged, lone truth seeker is how physics has ever advanced.
"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck
"The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for “conscious” control or “conscious” planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme—while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the superindividual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." –F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom
You can stand him up at the gates of hell, but he won't back down. Bruno, Socrates, Galileo, Dante, Einstein, Gamow, and Bohr--they all walked and spoke freely in plain sight, and stuck by their guns when the chips were down. They, like Odysseus, were classic, epic cowboys, always standing up against the anonymous, faceless mob for truth, reason, and justice.
Well, we've all got a showdwon commin'. And if you call down the thunder, you've got to man up and face it at high noon--you can't just run and hide and use snarky, postmodern math in the dark of night, sneaking up anonymously behind the mysterious stranger. For ultimately, as Feynman knew, science is not advanced by those seeking fame and fortune--tenure and titles--but by those seeking truth and classic, epic honor.
Perhaps we ought make a list of Bohr's and Gamow's favorite Westerns.
"Bohr was very fond of seeing Western (cowboy) movies in which gun duels are quite common. In all such duels, the villain draws his gun but the hero always shoots down the scoundrel first. Bohr had an explanation for this phenomenon, ascribing this as the difference between wilful and conditioned thinking. “The scoundrel has to think and decide when to go for his gun, which slows his action, while the hero acts faster because he acts, without thinking, the moment he sees the scoundrel reaching for his gun.” When nobody agreed with his theory, he bought a pair of toy guns and playing the hero, tried duels with his pupils. Surprisingly, he ‘killed’ everybody who tried to take a shot at him first." --from http://www.dawn.com/weekly/dmag/archive/030420/dmag21.htm
Bes
t,
Dr. E
p.s. http://confoundingvariable.com/article.cfm/id/211368
"New Book about 'Galloping Gamows' Shows Relationship between Physics and Cowboys"
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Dr. E wrote on Oct. 6, 2008 @ 19:28 GMT
Hello John,
Thanks for your above comment,
"Wouldn't "Entangled particles" make more sense as different points on a wave front?
First it would explain why the information they carry is identical and also why it isn't disrupted, as particles would likely be. Such as why the light of stars that has traveled for billions of years is still extremely focused. It seems that while...
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Hello John,
Thanks for your above comment,
"Wouldn't "Entangled particles" make more sense as different points on a wave front?
First it would explain why the information they carry is identical and also why it isn't disrupted, as particles would likely be. Such as why the light of stars that has traveled for billions of years is still extremely focused. It seems that while this light is measured as quanta, it travels as a wave."
I'm not quite sure what you mean... but yes--waves and nonlocality do walk hand-in-hand.
Consider two entangled photons emitted from a common source. A photon is ageless, and thus both photons share a common locality in time. If one of them is measured, or halted, the two photons will no longer be entangled. So it is that the only way for the photons to remain entangled--to remain in the same place in the fourth dimension--is for both to travel at the velocity of light.
How curious is that!
To stay in the same place in the fourth dimension--to stay entangled--both photons must travel at c, which in its simplest case defines a spherically-symmetric expanding wavefront in 3D.
Ergo the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
On page 4 of my paper, I write, "Consider two interacting photons that propagate in opposite directions, as in experiments inspired by Bell’s Inequality and conducted by Aspect et al. One second later, each photon's polarization is measured at detectors separated by 372,000 miles. According to the laws of quantum mechanics and numerous supporting experiments, the measurement at one detector
instantaneously affects the measurement at the second detector. It is as if the photons are yet side-by-side during the measurement. This “spooky action-at-a-distance,” as Einstein called it, is not so spooky in the context of a fourth expanding dimension, for although separated by 372,000 miles, the photons yet inhabit a common locality in the fourth dimension, as the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, distributing locality at the rate of c. So it is that both quantum and relativistic phenomena are accounted for with the simple elegance of the postulate: the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions."
Now, if we consider the x-y plane, every point in it shares a common z cooridnate of 0 (zero). If we consider points moving about the x-y plane, they can move anywhere they wish, and they will yet share a common z coordinate of 0. Or, they can be stationary in the x-y plane, and their z corrodinate will remain 0 (zero).
Now, the interesting thing about our 4D universe is that the only way to stay stationary in the fourth dimension is to move at c through the three spatial dimensions. If one stands still in the x,y,z coordinate system, one cannot stand still in fourth dimension, and vice versa. Ergo the fourth dimension is moving relative to the three spatial dimensions.
And we see this fact manifested in the entangled photons. The only way for them to remain (1) entangled (share a locality) and (2) ageless (locality in time), is to move at the velocity of light. Ergo the fourth dimension is expanding or moving at the velocity of c, relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt = ic.
All of relativity may be derived from dx4/dt = ic in a 4D universe, and we also get a *physical* model for nonlocality (the fourth expanding dimension distributes nonlocality), entanglement, entropy, and time and all its arrows and assymetries. dx4/dt = ic is a fundamental invariance upon which the very invariance of the velocity of light rests--both its independence of the source, and its independence of the velocity of the observer.
Thanks for the words--I hope this helps make clear how MDT provides a *physical* model for entanglement.
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Dr. E wrote on Oct. 6, 2008 @ 22:54 GMT
Anonymous Coward,
If you had serious points to make, I imagine you would be able to do it without the snarky name-calling and childish attacks. Also, if you were proud of your name, you would use it. If you had faith in your words, you would put your name on them.
Your tone and tenor bring to mind atheme from Lee Smolin's The Trouble With Physics--physics has come to a standstill...
view entire post
Anonymous Coward,
If you had serious points to make, I imagine you would be able to do it without the snarky name-calling and childish attacks. Also, if you were proud of your name, you would use it. If you had faith in your words, you would put your name on them.
Your tone and tenor bring to mind atheme from Lee Smolin's The Trouble With Physics--physics has come to a standstill largely because of well-funded, established snarkers, who haven't exactly advanced physics themselves, but only built a mean-spirited bureaucracy that is closed to new ideas--a bureaucracy you seem to be a part of. So who are you?
You write, "What difference does it make what my real identity is?" It obviously makes a vast difference, as you are carefully concealing your identity, while launching snarky, childish, ad hominem attacks.
In the spirit of truth and science, please share your name and credentials, if you have any.
Your greatest critique of my paper is that MDT is too simple, too beautiful, too elegant.
Again, we would like to know your identity and program of research, so that we can better understand why you so detest simple theories based upon rock-solid precepts and principles.
"Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone." Albert Einstein
Did you know that the most quoted phrase from the most-perfomed play of all time is "To be or not to be, that is the question?" Are you also one of those snarky deconstructors of Shakespeare, who removed him from the academy for using such simple phrases--the most fundamental verb in our language--to be?
Beethoven's 9th is based on the first five notes of the simple C Major scale. Do you also detest this final symphony because it is so simple that it cannot possibly be good?
Must all physics be tied up in knots and non-theories, to please your anonymous demands? So man up and let us know your name and program of research, so that we might better understand your emotional attacks, snarky namecalling, and put-downs.
In your snarky mean-spiritedness, which I would not be surprised to see fqxi delete, you completely miss the greater glory of MDT. It is hard to imagine a true physicist leading with childish putdowns and unadulturated snark. You ought be grateful I am even responding, but it is easy to sing the virtues of MDT.
Relativity freezes time and consigns us to a block universe. MDT unfreezes time and liberates us from the block universe, while also providing a *physical* model for time and all its arrows and assyemtries, entropy, entanglement, nonlocality, and relativity--a relativity wherein time flows, just as it does in our universe.
What do you personally have against the flow of time? Why are you snarking the ageless, timeless photon with ad hominem attacks? Why does time stop at the speed of light? Does not time flow day in and day out? *Why* does time flow? Do we not witness time in all realms of physics? Does not time have a dominant direction and arrow? Do not two initially-interacting photons remain entangled, no matter how far they are separated? All these things can be seen to descend from a common, simple principle--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, distribuuting locality and fathering time.
One of the chilish contentions in your diatribes is that x4 = ict is not an equation.
Well, it has two sides and an equals sign. It equates two entities, and this action is from where the word "equation" derives. x4 = ict.
You also tell me that I break some law in taking the derivative of the equation with respect to t.
dx4/dt = ic
There.
I did it again. Are you going to dress up as an anonymous dwarf and attack me personally some more, so as to preserve the sanctity of your block universe and time travel fanatasies? Go ahead, make my day.
In his 1912 Manuscript, Einsetin wrote x4=ict, inspired in part by Minkowski. Ergo, as t progresses, x4 must move.
dx4/dt = ic
There--I just took the derivative again. Are you going to round up a posse of masked, anonymous snarkers and hang me for this crime?
If simplicity, beauty, elegance, novelity, and truth are crimes, then I am guilty. You and your posse of anonymous snarkers can try and force me to sign a paper stating that the fourth dimension does not move relative to the three spatial dimensions, but even if you overpower my hand and force it to move so as to form the words, I will yet speak and think, "but yet it--the fourth dimension--moves." "E pur si muove." All the anonymous masked dwarves in the world cannot stop the fourth dimension from moving, nor can they keep time and progress in the realm of theoretical physics frozen forever.
The dominant source of your vituperation, ad-hominem attacks, childish namecalling, and bitter emotion seems to be that MDT is *too* simple, *too* beautiful, *too* elegant.
Well, if we got rid of all simple, elegant physics, we'd be left with string theory and the other non-theories that I am betting you have devoted your life to, and are too embarrassed to admit to, which is why you refuse to man up and share your identity. Your cowardly behavior is a tragic part of the postmodern, unheroic age, where the Great Books and Classics have been deconstructed, and small souls seek to rule via anonymous snark and fiat.
So what role do you play in all this?
That is one reason we would all like to know your true identity and program of research. Hundreds of millions of dollars--billions of dollars--have been spent over the past thirty years in theoretical physics. And yet, there has been no progress.
Theoretical physics has come to a standstill, and I would suggest that it is the fault of close-minded, snarky individuals such as yourself, and furthermore, I would suggest that deep down you know this, and this is the ultimate reason you remain anonymous.
You go on and on to accuse MDT of failing at things it does not even attempt, while ignoring all the things it gets right--the unification of time's arrows and assymetries across all realms, the unification of the dualities (space/time, mass/energy, wave/particle), our liberation from frozen time and a block universe, an expalnation for entanglement and nonlocality, and a fundamental invariance underlying all of relativity. It are anonymous, embittered folks like you who would prefer to live in a block universe and frozen time and frozen physics, where all progress is outlawed by anonymous snarkers, and math is used not in a simple manner to emlighten and exalt, but to berate, bring down, and destroy that which one did not create.
So please do share your name, title, and program of research, if you wish to continue. Perhaps by using your real name, you won't descend into snarky namecalling, and ad hominem attacks against straw men you created, and you can concentrate on discussing physics and physical reality.
If you had serious points to make, I imagine you would be able to do it without the snarky name-calling and childish attacks. Also, if you were proud of your name, you would use it. If you had faith in your words, you would put your name on them.
Your tone and tenor bring to mind atheme from Lee Smolin's The Trouble With Physics--physics has come to a standstill largely because of well-funded, established snarkers, who haven't exactly advanced physics themselves, but only built a mean-spirited bureaucracy that is closed to new ideas--a bureaucracy you seem to be a part of. So who are you?
You write, "What difference does it make what my real identity is?" It obviously makes a vast difference, as you are carefully concealing your identity, while launching snarky, childish, ad hominem attacks.
In the spirit of truth and science, please share your name and credentials, if you have any.
Your greatest critique of my paper is that MDT is too simple, too beautiful, too elegant.
Again, we would like to know your identity and program of research, so that we can better understand why you so detest simple theories based upon rock-solid precepts and principles.
"Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone." Albert Einstein
Did you know that the most quoted phrase from the most-perfomed play of all time is "To be or not to be, that is the question?" Are you also one of those snarky deconstructors of Shakespeare, who removed him from the academy for using such simple phrases--the most fundamental verb in our language--to be?
Beethoven's 9th is based on the first five notes of the simple C Major scale. Do you also detest this final symphony because it is so simple that it cannot possibly be good?
Must all physics be tied up in knots and non-theories, to please your anonymous demands? So man up and let us know your name and program of research, so that we might better understand your emotional attacks, snarky namecalling, and put-downs.
In your snarky mean-spiritedness, which I would not be surprised to see fqxi delete, you completely miss the greater glory of MDT. It is hard to imagine a true physicist leading with childish putdowns and unadulturated snark. You ought be grateful I am even responding, but it is easy to sing the virtues of MDT.
Relativity freezes time and consigns us to a block universe. MDT unfreezes time and liberates us from the block universe, while also providing a *physical* model for time and all its arrows and assyemtries, entropy, entanglement, nonlocality, and relativity--a relativity wherein time flows, just as it does in our universe.
What do you personally have against the flow of time? Why are you snarking the ageless, timeless photon with ad hominem attacks? Why does time stop at the speed of light? Does not time flow day in and day out? *Why* does time flow? Do we not witness time in all realms of physics? Does not time have a dominant direction and arrow? Do not two initially-interacting photons remain entangled, no matter how far they are separated? All these things can be seen to descend from a common, simple principle--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, distribuuting locality and fathering time.
One of the chilish contentions in your diatribes is that x4 = ict is not an equation.
Well, it has two sides and an equals sign. It equates two entities, and this action is from where the word "equation" derives. x4 = ict.
You also tell me that I break some law in taking the derivative of the equation with respect to t.
dx4/dt = ic
There.
I did it again. Are you going to dress up as an anonymous dwarf and attack me personally some more, so as to preserve the sanctity of your block universe and time travel fanatasies? Go ahead, make my day.
In his 1912 Manuscript, Einsetin wrote x4=ict, inspired in part by Minkowski. Ergo, as t progresses, x4 must move.
dx4/dt = ic
There--I just took the derivative again. Are you going to round up a posse of masked, anonymous snarkers and hang me for this crime?
If simplicity, beauty, elegance, novelity, and truth are crimes, then I am guilty. You and your posse of anonymous snarkers can try and force me to sign a paper stating that the fourth dimension does not move relative to the three spatial dimensions, but even if you overpower my hand and force it to move so as to form the words, I will yet speak and think, "but yet it--the fourth dimension--moves." "E pur si muove." All the anonymous masked dwarves in the world cannot stop the fourth dimension from moving, nor can they keep time and progress in the realm of theoretical physics frozen forever.
The dominant source of your vituperation, ad-hominem attacks, childish namecalling, and bitter emotion seems to be that MDT is *too* simple, *too* beautiful, *too* elegant.
Well, if we got rid of all simple, elegant physics, we'd be left with string theory and the other non-theories that I am betting you have devoted your life to, and are too embarrassed to admit to, which is why you refuse to man up and share your identity. Your cowardly behavior is a tragic part of the postmodern, unheroic age, where the Great Books and Classics have been deconstructed, and small souls seek to rule via anonymous snark and fiat.
So what role do you play in all this?
That is one reason we would all like to know your true identity and program of research. Hundreds of millions of dollars--billions of dollars--have been spent over the past thirty years in theoretical physics. And yet, there has been no progress.
Theoretical physics has come to a standstill, and I would suggest that it is the fault of close-minded, snarky individuals such as yourself, and furthermore, I would suggest that deep down you know this, and this is the ultimate reason you remain anonymous.
You go on and on to accuse MDT of failing at things it does not even attempt, while ignoring all the things it gets right--the unification of time's arrows and assymetries across all realms, the unification of the dualities (space/time, mass/energy, wave/particle), our liberation from frozen time and a block universe, an expalnation for entanglement and nonlocality, and a fundamental invariance underlying all of relativity. It are anonymous, embittered folks like you who would prefer to live in a block universe and frozen time and frozen physics, where all progress is outlawed by anonymous snarkers, and math is used not in a simple manner to emlighten and exalt, but to berate, bring down, and destroy that which one did not create.
So please do share your name, title, and program of research, if you wish to continue. Perhaps by using your real name, you won't descend into snarky namecalling, and ad hominem attacks against straw men you created, and you can concentrate on discussing physics and physical reality.
Dr. E
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Dr. E wrote on Oct. 6, 2008 @ 22:59 GMT
Anonymous Coward,
The one thing I want to make clear throughout this is that the main question here is why must you remain anonymous? Is it because you do not believe your words and do not want to have your name associated with them? Is it because you do not want your department chair or funders to see your childlike namecalling and ad-hominem attacks that you use instead of logic and...
view entire post
Anonymous Coward,
The one thing I want to make clear throughout this is that the main question here is why must you remain anonymous? Is it because you do not believe your words and do not want to have your name associated with them? Is it because you do not want your department chair or funders to see your childlike namecalling and ad-hominem attacks that you use instead of logic and reason? Is it because you think that simple logic and reason is not enough, and that snarky namecalling and childish put-downs accomplish what your logic and reason cannot? Please focus on my questions here, and please answer, as I am answering your questions, even though you do not want to meet at high noon, but you prefer to catcall from behind a mask and shoot your opponent in the back, like a coward.
Niels Bohr had a lot to say about the Cowboy Code, and therein we can find insights as to why your behavior ultimately loses both on the cultural and scientific levels:
From: http://holasunshinegirl.blogspot.com/2006/07/westerns-and-ni
els-bohr.html
"The great Danish Physicist Niels Bohr, an avid Western film fan, wondered why in all the final shoot-outs, the hero shoots faster even if his adversary is the first to reach for his gun. Bohr asked himself if some physical truth might not explain this convention. He came to the conclusion that such a truth did indeed exist: the first to draw is the slowest because he decides to shoot, and dies. The second to draw lives because he is faster, and he is faster because he doesn't have to decide, he is decided. This brilliant discovery was the result of a whimsical empirical research: Bohr and his assistants went off to a toy shop, bought water pistols , and back in their laboratory duelled for hours and hours."
--http://holasunshinegirl.blogspot.com/2006/07/westerns-and-
niels-bohr.html
So it is that you decided to shoot first in the dark of night, from behind a mask like a lowly outlaw, and thus made my decision for me. EBohr--a Dane--had a great appreciation for the Cowboy--for honor and integrity--for Truth and Justice. Too, too many postmodern "physicists," such as yourself, have lost that honorable, noble spirit. The classic, epic showdown goes back 2800 years to The Odyssey, when Odysseus rides back on into his home, disguised as a beggar. Eventually he alone strings the bow and slays all the false suitors to his wife who kicked him around and spat on him--that eternal faceless, nameless mob which you, and all too many postmodern physicists, run with. But alas, they banned *The Odyssey* from the academy, and thus your behavior dominates.
What we have here is an evolution and paradigm shift, and deep down you sense it. That is the source for your emotional vitriol. If you were certain that I was wrong, you would calmly state so and let your Word--let your Name--let your Reason speak for themsleves. But as you are driven by emotions you do not understand, and as you do not have faith in your Word nor reason, and are embarrassed by it and/or your Name, you hide behind anonimity. Perhaps you do not wish to badmouth MDT, as you sense that in a year or so you may be seeking funding to support your MDT research.
A few major forces have ever driven the evolution of physics: The realization that math is actually telling us something about the *physical* nature of reality, the realization that one thing that was formerly believed to be stationary moves, the realization that two disparate entities are actually the same--as in space/time, wave/particle, mass/enegery, and the relaization that we must not ignore physical realtity just to have some fancy-shmancy math/science fiction.
Well, MDT is driven by all these forces.
Consider the equation x4 = ict .
x4 represents the fourth dimension. Now Einstein taught us that dimensions are very, very real *physical* entities. They can bend. They can warp. They can *move*. The fourth dimension is a *physical* entity.
i is the imaginary number--the square root of -1.
c is the *physical* velocity of light. c is a *physical* entity. we generally know it by the *physical* enity of the photon.
t is time--that *physical* parameter--that ever-moving force none can deny, except for some advanced postmodern physicists, who wish to keep quantum gravity, which does not exist, and get rid of time, which does, in fact, exist.
So it is that we have a *physical* equation telling us the relationship between *physical* entities.
x4 = ict.
The glaring mistake you make, pilgrim, is asserting that
x4 = ict is not a physical equation, relating physical quantities. How embarrassing! No wonder you must remain anonymous. Imagine if your department chair or funders found out!
I take great pride in MDT's simplicity, elegance, and boldness. You, the anonymous masked dwarf, like all too many physicists over the past thirty years whence Homer's Odyssey was deconstructed, adhere to a debased religion in which postmodern physics must be complicated, snarky, convoluted, indecipherable, filled with advanced, meaningless math that is used to select and promote groupthinkers, and to intimidate and cajole indie thinkers and lone cowboys, while building postmodern bureuacracies (like the machines did in The Matrix)rather than to exalt and explain--rather than to actually perform physics. Your fallen, mean spirit is the dominant brand and trademark of postmodern physics and academia, and your behavior can be seen throughout the internet and academy, where young physicists are taught to engage in groupthink math and snark independent thinkers who come forth with simple logic and reason. The Nobel Laureate economist F.A. Hayek's THE ROAD TO SERFDOM has two chapters entitled The End of Truth and Why The Worst Get on Top. Because of the nature of the system, you feel you are forced into anonymity.
But more and more of us, who agree with Einstein, are banding together, and time, as a *physical* entity, is on our side:
"Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone." --Albert Einstein
As physicists, it is not our job to wallow in snarky, meaningless mathematics and use it to convolute and confound the simple, so as to build postmodern bureaucratic empires, but it is our job to figure out what the math *physically* means.
That is *exactly* what MDT does--it goes back to Einstein's 1912 paper and tells us what the equation x4 = ict *physically* means, granting us new insight into a hitherto unsung feature of the universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
"But even if the radiation formula should prove to be absolutely accurate it would after all be only an interpolation formula found by happy guesswork, and would thus leave one rather unsatisfied. I was, therefore, from the day of its origination, occupied with the task of giving it a real physical meaning." --(Max Planck, 1919 Nobel Prize address, 'The Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory')
Something that was once considered to be mere math, is seen to have physical content, implicatioons, and meaning. Something that was once more or less considered to be stationary--the fourth dimension--is seen to be moving. 'Tis a revolutionary affront to the church of wormholes and time travel worthy of burning me at the stake, you can bet all the well-funded, anonymous cowards agree.
And too, where so many dismissed x4 = ict as "meaningless math," I actually noted that it has physcial meaning. Now I know that the highest form of postmodern physicists today are those who can look at an equals sign and deny it exists, just as the postmodern lit professor denies Shakespeare's and Dante's greatness, but I look at an equals sign and see it for what it is, just as I see x4, i, c, and t for what they are--entities in Einstein's 1912 Mansucript which are related in a *physical* manner.
And from MDT's simple postulate and equation we naturally get all of relativity in a 4D universe where the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic. This also shows that time, as measured on our watches, is an emergent phenomena that arises because the propagation of photons, which are but matter carried upon the fourth expanding dimensions. The expansion of the fourth dimension distributes locality and thus is the cause of quantum entanglement, as well as qm's general features such as wave-particle duality and its probabilistic nature, wherein a photon has an equal chance of being found anywhere upon the nonlocal, spherically-symmetric probability distribution defined by the expansion of the fourth dimension, manifested in our three spatial dimensions. Entropy, and time and all its arrows and assymetries, can also be seen to arise naturally from MDT, and too, all the dualties--space/time, energy/mass, and wave/particle--are shown to have a common source.
Yes, anonymous coward, I am going to have to stick with Moving Dimensions Theory's simple beauty and elegance, which unifies so much of our entirety with a comon *physical* model. All the NSF mondey in the world, and the approval of your department chair and grad students, could not force me to change my mind--the fourth dimension moves and expands independent of the three spatial dimensions.
And I encourage you to choose MDT over your anomymous, cowardly, snarkfest behavior, which is intellectual violence unbecoming of a physicist.
For your unmanly, dishonorabe snark and bitter mean-spiritedness, we cannot forgive you, anonymous coward, and we hope you change your ways are man up and walk into town with your head held high, proud of your word and honor--proud of the Name your parents gave you. But for your refusal to recognize that the simple math can sometimes be telling us something profound and new about physics, perhaps we *can* forgive you, as even Planck did not believe the deeper implications of the quantum theory he developed. Einstein did.
Planck lectured at Columbia, "Consequently, there remains only the one conclusion, that previous electron theories suffer from an essential incompleteness which demands a modification, but how deeply this modification should go into the structure of the theory is a question upon which views are still widely divergent. J. J. Thompson inclines to the most radical view, as do J. Larmor, A. Einstein, and with him I. Stark who even believe that the propagation of electromagnetic waves in a pure vacuum does not occur precisely in accordance with the Maxwellian field equations, but in definite energy quanta hv.
I am of the opinion, on the other hand, that at present it is not necessary to proceed in so revolutionary a manner, and that one may come successfully through by seeking the significance of the energy quanta hv solely in the mutual actions with which the resonators influence one another. A definite decision with regard to these important questions can only be brought about as a result of more experience."--(From Max Planck's famous Columbia Lectures)
From: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/Einstein_and_pho
toelectric_effect.html
"Experimentalists railed at the prospect of what Einstein's equation of the photoelectric effect implied. Robert Millikan, the very man who showed that the equation really did work, would have nothing to do with its physical interpretation. In 1915, Millikan wrote: "The semicorpuscular theory by which Einstein arrived at his equation seems at present wholly untenable." Three years later, Ernest Rutherford, the great New Zealand physicist who probed the structure of the atom, said there appeared to be "no physical connection" between the energy and frequency in Einstein's hypothesis about light quanta. It didn't seem to make sense that a particle could have a frequency, or that a wave could act as if it were made of energetic particles. The two concepts seemed to rule each other out." --http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/Einstein_and_p
hotoelectric_effect.html
Well, at least they all used their names when they railed against a new theory. Sure, they were all great physicists, but first and foremost, like Bohr, they were rugged *cowboys*.
Gamow loved cowboys & Westerns too. Check out, "Mr. Tompkins Gets Serious: The Essential George Gamow, The Masterpiece Science Edition (Hardcover)
by George Gamow."
"The Cowboy Experiment
Father's nickname was Joe. Niels Bohr and my father were addicted to western movies while they were in Copenhagen together. All the cowboys in these movies—Gary Cooper types—were called Joe. That's how Father's nickname came about—he was named after a typical cowboy movie hero.
Bohr had some difficulty with cowboy movies. Being a great physicist he took things very literally. After seeing one of the many films in which there was a shootout between a good guy in a white hat and a bad guy in a black hat, Bohr asked Father, "How is it possible that the man in the black hat always reaches... "
--http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Tompkins-Gets-Serious-Masterpiece
/dp/0131872915
Even more important than MDT is that we bring that classic, epic, western, heroic, cowboy spirit on back; for it is the true source of all enduring art and sicence, of truth and freedom, of rugged romance, beauty, and elegance--that rugged, lone truth seeker is how physics has ever advanced.
"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck
"The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for “conscious” control or “conscious” planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme—while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the superindividual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." –F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom
You can stand him up at the gates of hell, but he won't back down. Bruno, Socrates, Galileo, Dante, Einstein, Gamow, and Bohr--they all walked and spoke freely in plain sight, and stuck by their guns when the chips were down. They, like Odysseus, were classic, epic cowboys, always standing up against the anonymous, faceless mob for truth, reason, and justice.
Well, we've all got a showdwon commin'. And if you call down the thunder, you've got to man up and face it at high noon--you can't just run and hide and use snarky, postmodern math in the dark of night, sneaking up anonymously behind the mysterious stranger. For ultimately, as Feynman knew, science is not advanced by those seeking fame and fortune--tenure and titles--but by those seeking truth and classic, epic honor.
Perhaps we ought make a list of Bohr's and Gamow's favorite Westerns.
"Bohr was very fond of seeing Western (cowboy) movies in which gun duels are quite common. In all such duels, the villain draws his gun but the hero always shoots down the scoundrel first. Bohr had an explanation for this phenomenon, ascribing this as the difference between wilful and conditioned thinking. “The scoundrel has to think and decide when to go for his gun, which slows his action, while the hero acts faster because he acts, without thinking, the moment he sees the scoundrel reaching for his gun.” When nobody agreed with his theory, he bought a pair of toy guns and playing the hero, tried duels with his pupils. Surprisingly, he ‘killed’ everybody who tried to take a shot at him first." --from http://www.dawn.com/weekly/dmag/archive/030420/dmag21.htm
The
one thing I want to make clear throughout this is that the main question here is why must you remain anonymous? Is it because you do not believe your words and do not want to have your name associated with them? Is it because you do not want your department chair or funders to see your childlike namecalling and ad-hominem attacks that you use instead of logic and reason? Is it because you think that simple logic and reason is not enough, and that snarky namecalling and childish put-downs accomplish what your logic and reason cannot? Please focus on my questions here, and please answer, as I am answering your questions, even though you do not want to meet at high noon, but you prefer to catcall from behind a mask and shoot your opponent in the back, like a coward.
Niels Bohr had a lot to say about the Cowboy Code, and therein we can find insights as to why your behavior ultimately loses both on the cultural and scientific levels:
From: http://holasunshinegirl.blogspot.com/2006/07/westerns-and-ni
els-bohr.html
"The great Danish Physicist Niels Bohr, an avid Western film fan, wondered why in all the final shoot-outs, the hero shoots faster even if his adversary is the first to reach for his gun. Bohr asked himself if some physical truth might not explain this convention. He came to the conclusion that such a truth did indeed exist: the first to draw is the slowest because he decides to shoot, and dies. The second to draw lives because he is faster, and he is faster because he doesn't have to decide, he is decided. This brilliant discovery was the result of a whimsical empirical research: Bohr and his assistants went off to a toy shop, bought water pistols , and back in their laboratory duelled for hours and hours."
--http://holasunshinegirl.blogspot.com/2006/07/westerns-and-
niels-bohr.html
So it is that you decided to shoot first in the dark of night, from behind a mask like a lowly outlaw, and thus made my decision for me. EBohr--a Dane--had a great appreciation for the Cowboy--for honor and integrity--for Truth and Justice. Too, too many postmodern "physicists," such as yourself, have lost that honorable, noble spirit. The classic, epic showdown goes back 2800 years to The Odyssey, when Odysseus rides back on into his home, disguised as a beggar. Eventually he alone strings the bow and slays all the false suitors to his wife who kicked him around and spat on him--that eternal faceless, nameless mob which you, and all too many postmodern physicists, run with. But alas, they banned *The Odyssey* from the academy, and thus your behavior dominates.
What we have here is an evolution and paradigm shift, and deep down you sense it. That is the source for your emotional vitriol. If you were certain that I was wrong, you would calmly state so and let your Word--let your Name--let your Reason speak for themsleves. But as you are driven by emotions you do not understand, and as you do not have faith in your Word nor reason, and are embarrassed by it and/or your Name, you hide behind anonimity. Perhaps you do not wish to badmouth MDT, as you sense that in a year or so you may be seeking funding to support your MDT research.
A few major forces have ever driven the evolution of physics: The realization that math is actually telling us something about the *physical* nature of reality, the realization that one thing that was formerly believed to be stationary moves, the realization that two disparate entities are actually the same--as in space/time, wave/particle, mass/enegery, and the relaization that we must not ignore physical realtity just to have some fancy-shmancy math/science fiction.
Well, MDT is driven by all these forces.
Consider the equation x4 = ict .
x4 represents the fourth dimension. Now Einstein taught us that dimensions are very, very real *physical* entities. They can bend. They can warp. They can *move*. The fourth dimension is a *physical* entity.
i is the imaginary number--the square root of -1.
c is the *physical* velocity of light. c is a *physical* entity. we generally know it by the *physical* enity of the photon.
t is time--that *physical* parameter--that ever-moving force none can deny, except for some advanced postmodern physicists, who wish to keep quantum gravity, which does not exist, and get rid of time, which does, in fact, exist.
So it is that we have a *physical* equation telling us the relationship between *physical* entities.
x4 = ict.
The glaring mistake you make, pilgrim, is asserting that
x4 = ict is not a physical equation, relating physical quantities. How embarrassing! No wonder you must remain anonymous. Imagine if your department chair or funders found out!
I take great pride in MDT's simplicity, elegance, and boldness. You, the anonymous masked dwarf, like all too many physicists over the past thirty years whence Homer's Odyssey was deconstructed, adhere to a debased religion in which postmodern physics must be complicated, snarky, convoluted, indecipherable, filled with advanced, meaningless math that is used to select and promote groupthinkers, and to intimidate and cajole indie thinkers and lone cowboys, while building postmodern bureuacracies (like the machines did in The Matrix)rather than to exalt and explain--rather than to actually perform physics. Your fallen, mean spirit is the dominant brand and trademark of postmodern physics and academia, and your behavior can be seen throughout the internet and academy, where young physicists are taught to engage in groupthink math and snark independent thinkers who come forth with simple logic and reason. The Nobel Laureate economist F.A. Hayek's THE ROAD TO SERFDOM has two chapters entitled The End of Truth and Why The Worst Get on Top. Because of the nature of the system, you feel you are forced into anonymity.
But more and more of us, who agree with Einstein, are banding together, and time, as a *physical* entity, is on our side:
"Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone." --Albert Einstein
As physicists, it is not our job to wallow in snarky, meaningless mathematics and use it to convolute and confound the simple, so as to build postmodern bureaucratic empires, but it is our job to figure out what the math *physically* means.
That is *exactly* what MDT does--it goes back to Einstein's 1912 paper and tells us what the equation x4 = ict *physically* means, granting us new insight into a hitherto unsung feature of the universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
"But even if the radiation formula should prove to be absolutely accurate it would after all be only an interpolation formula found by happy guesswork, and would thus leave one rather unsatisfied. I was, therefore, from the day of its origination, occupied with the task of giving it a real physical meaning." --(Max Planck, 1919 Nobel Prize address, 'The Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory')
Something that was once considered to be mere math, is seen to have physical content, implicatioons, and meaning. Something that was once more or less considered to be stationary--the fourth dimension--is seen to be moving. 'Tis a revolutionary affront to the church of wormholes and time travel worthy of burning me at the stake, you can bet all the well-funded, anonymous cowards agree.
And too, where so many dismissed x4 = ict as "meaningless math," I actually noted that it has physcial meaning. Now I know that the highest form of postmodern physicists today are those who can look at an equals sign and deny it exists, just as the postmodern lit professor denies Shakespeare's and Dante's greatness, but I look at an equals sign and see it for what it is, just as I see x4, i, c, and t for what they are--entities in Einstein's 1912 Mansucript which are related in a *physical* manner.
And from MDT's simple postulate and equation we naturally get all of relativity in a 4D universe where the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic. This also shows that time, as measured on our watches, is an emergent phenomena that arises because the propagation of photons, which are but matter carried upon the fourth expanding dimensions. The expansion of the fourth dimension distributes locality and thus is the cause of quantum entanglement, as well as qm's general features such as wave-particle duality and its probabilistic nature, wherein a photon has an equal chance of being found anywhere upon the nonlocal, spherically-symmetric probability distribution defined by the expansion of the fourth dimension, manifested in our three spatial dimensions. Entropy, and time and all its arrows and assymetries, can also be seen to arise naturally from MDT, and too, all the dualties--space/time, energy/mass, and wave/particle--are shown to have a common source.
Yes, anonymous coward, I am going to have to stick with Moving Dimensions Theory's simple beauty and elegance, which unifies so much of our entirety with a comon *physical* model. All the NSF mondey in the world, and the approval of your department chair and grad students, could not force me to change my mind--the fourth dimension moves and expands independent of the three spatial dimensions.
And I encourage you to choose MDT over your anomymous, cowardly, snarkfest behavior, which is intellectual violence unbecoming of a physicist.
For your unmanly, dishonorabe snark and bitter mean-spiritedness, we cannot forgive you, anonymous coward, and we hope you change your ways are man up and walk into town with your head held high, proud of your word and honor--proud of the Name your parents gave you. But for your refusal to recognize that the simple math can sometimes be telling us something profound and new about physics, perhaps we *can* forgive you, as even Planck did not believe the deeper implications of the quantum theory he developed. Einstein did.
Planck lectured at Columbia, "Consequently, there remains only the one conclusion, that previous electron theories suffer from an essential incompleteness which demands a modification, but how deeply this modification should go into the structure of the theory is a question upon which views are still widely divergent. J. J. Thompson inclines to the most radical view, as do J. Larmor, A. Einstein, and with him I. Stark who even believe that the propagation of electromagnetic waves in a pure vacuum does not occur precisely in accordance with the Maxwellian field equations, but in definite energy quanta hv.
I am of the opinion, on the other hand, that at present it is not necessary to proceed in so revolutionary a manner, and that one may come successfully through by seeking the significance of the energy quanta hv solely in the mutual actions with which the resonators influence one another. A definite decision with regard to these important questions can only be brought about as a result of more experience."--(From Max Planck's famous Columbia Lectures)
From: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/Einstein_and_pho
toelectric_effect.html
"Experimentalists railed at the prospect of what Einstein's equation of the photoelectric effect implied. Robert Millikan, the very man who showed that the equation really did work, would have nothing to do with its physical interpretation. In 1915, Millikan wrote: "The semicorpuscular theory by which Einstein arrived at his equation seems at present wholly untenable." Three years later, Ernest Rutherford, the great New Zealand physicist who probed the structure of the atom, said there appeared to be "no physical connection" between the energy and frequency in Einstein's hypothesis about light quanta. It didn't seem to make sense that a particle could have a frequency, or that a wave could act as if it were made of energetic particles. The two concepts seemed to rule each other out." --http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/Einstein_and_p
hotoelectric_effect.html
Well, at least they all used their names when they railed against a new theory. Sure, they were all great physicists, but first and foremost, like Bohr, they were rugged *cowboys*.
Gamow loved cowboys & Westerns too. Check out, "Mr. Tompkins Gets Serious: The Essential George Gamow, The Masterpiece Science Edition (Hardcover)
by George Gamow."
"The Cowboy Experiment
Father's nickname was Joe. Niels Bohr and my father were addicted to western movies while they were in Copenhagen together. All the cowboys in these movies—Gary Cooper types—were called Joe. That's how Father's nickname came about—he was named after a typical cowboy movie hero.
Bohr had some difficulty with cowboy movies. Being a great physicist he took things very literally. After seeing one of the many films in which there was a shootout between a good guy in a white hat and a bad guy in a black hat, Bohr asked Father, "How is it possible that the man in the black hat always reaches... "
--http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Tompkins-Gets-Serious-Masterpiece
/dp/0131872915
Even more important than MDT is that we bring that classic, epic, western, heroic, cowboy spirit on back; for it is the true source of all enduring art and sicence, of truth and freedom, of rugged romance, beauty, and elegance--that rugged, lone truth seeker is how physics has ever advanced.
"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck
"The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for “conscious” control or “conscious” planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme—while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the superindividual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." –F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom
You can stand him up at the gates of hell, but he won't back down. Bruno, Socrates, Galileo, Dante, Einstein, Gamow, and Bohr--they all walked and spoke freely in plain sight, and stuck by their guns when the chips were down. They, like Odysseus, were classic, epic cowboys, always standing up against the anonymous, faceless mob for truth, reason, and justice.
Well, we've all got a showdwon commin'. And if you call down the thunder, you've got to man up and face it at high noon--you can't just run and hide and use snarky, postmodern math in the dark of night, sneaking up anonymously behind the mysterious stranger. For ultimately, as Feynman knew, science is not advanced by those seeking fame and fortune--tenure and titles--but by those seeking truth and classic, epic honor.
Perhaps we ought make a list of Bohr's and Gamow's favorite Westerns.
"Bohr was very fond of seeing Western (cowboy) movies in which gun duels are quite common. In all such duels, the villain draws his gun but the hero always shoots down the scoundrel first. Bohr had an explanation for this phenomenon, ascribing this as the difference between wilful and conditioned thinking. “The scoundrel has to think and decide when to go for his gun, which slows his action, while the hero acts faster because he acts, without thinking, the moment he sees the scoundrel reaching for his gun.” When nobody agreed with his theory, he bought a pair of toy guns and playing the hero, tried duels with his pupils. Surprisingly, he ‘killed’ everybody who tried to take a shot at him first." --from http://www.dawn.com/weekly/dmag/archive/030420/dmag21.htm
The
one thing I want to make clear throughout this is that the main question here is why must you remain anonymous? Is it because you do not believe your words and do not want to have your name associated with them? Is it because you do not want your department chair or funders to see your childlike namecalling and ad-hominem attacks that you use instead of logic and reason? Is it because you think that simple logic and reason is not enough, and that snarky namecalling and childish put-downs accomplish what your logic and reason cannot? Please focus on my questions here, and please answer, as I am answering your questions, even though you do not want to meet at high noon, but you prefer to catcall from behind a mask and shoot your opponent in the back, like a coward.
Niels Bohr had a lot to say about the Cowboy Code, and therein we can find insights as to why your behavior ultimately loses both on the cultural and scientific levels:
From: http://holasunshinegirl.blogspot.com/2006/07/westerns-and-ni
els-bohr.html
"The great Danish Physicist Niels Bohr, an avid Western film fan, wondered why in all the final shoot-outs, the hero shoots faster even if his adversary is the first to reach for his gun. Bohr asked himself if some physical truth might not explain this convention. He came to the conclusion that such a truth did indeed exist: the first to draw is the slowest because he decides to shoot, and dies. The second to draw lives because he is faster, and he is faster because he doesn't have to decide, he is decided. This brilliant discovery was the result of a whimsical empirical research: Bohr and his assistants went off to a toy shop, bought water pistols , and back in their laboratory duelled for hours and hours."
--http://holasunshinegirl.blogspot.com/2006/07/westerns-and-
niels-bohr.html
So it is that you decided to shoot first in the dark of night, from behind a mask like a lowly outlaw, and thus made my decision for me. EBohr--a Dane--had a great appreciation for the Cowboy--for honor and integrity--for Truth and Justice. Too, too many postmodern "physicists," such as yourself, have lost that honorable, noble spirit. The classic, epic showdown goes back 2800 years to The Odyssey, when Odysseus rides back on into his home, disguised as a beggar. Eventually he alone strings the bow and slays all the false suitors to his wife who kicked him around and spat on him--that eternal faceless, nameless mob which you, and all too many postmodern physicists, run with. But alas, they banned *The Odyssey* from the academy, and thus your behavior dominates.
What we have here is an evolution and paradigm shift, and deep down you sense it. That is the source for your emotional vitriol. If you were certain that I was wrong, you would calmly state so and let your Word--let your Name--let your Reason speak for themsleves. But as you are driven by emotions you do not understand, and as you do not have faith in your Word nor reason, and are embarrassed by it and/or your Name, you hide behind anonimity. Perhaps you do not wish to badmouth MDT, as you sense that in a year or so you may be seeking funding to support your MDT research.
A few major forces have ever driven the evolution of physics: The realization that math is actually telling us something about the *physical* nature of reality, the realization that one thing that was formerly believed to be stationary moves, the realization that two disparate entities are actually the same--as in space/time, wave/particle, mass/enegery, and the relaization that we must not ignore physical realtity just to have some fancy-shmancy math/science fiction.
Well, MDT is driven by all these forces.
Consider the equation x4 = ict .
x4 represents the fourth dimension. Now Einstein taught us that dimensions are very, very real *physical* entities. They can bend. They can warp. They can *move*. The fourth dimension is a *physical* entity.
i is the imaginary number--the square root of -1.
c is the *physical* velocity of light. c is a *physical* entity. we generally know it by the *physical* enity of the photon.
t is time--that *physical* parameter--that ever-moving force none can deny, except for some advanced postmodern physicists, who wish to keep quantum gravity, which does not exist, and get rid of time, which does, in fact, exist.
So it is that we have a *physical* equation telling us the relationship between *physical* entities.
x4 = ict.
The glaring mistake you make, pilgrim, is asserting that
x4 = ict is not a physical equation, relating physical quantities. How embarrassing! No wonder you must remain anonymous. Imagine if your department chair or funders found out!
I take great pride in MDT's simplicity, elegance, and boldness. You, the anonymous masked dwarf, like all too many physicists over the past thirty years whence Homer's Odyssey was deconstructed, adhere to a debased religion in which postmodern physics must be complicated, snarky, convoluted, indecipherable, filled with advanced, meaningless math that is used to select and promote groupthinkers, and to intimidate and cajole indie thinkers and lone cowboys, while building postmodern bureuacracies (like the machines did in The Matrix)rather than to exalt and explain--rather than to actually perform physics. Your fallen, mean spirit is the dominant brand and trademark of postmodern physics and academia, and your behavior can be seen throughout the internet and academy, where young physicists are taught to engage in groupthink math and snark independent thinkers who come forth with simple logic and reason. The Nobel Laureate economist F.A. Hayek's THE ROAD TO SERFDOM has two chapters entitled The End of Truth and Why The Worst Get on Top. Because of the nature of the system, you feel you are forced into anonymity.
But more and more of us, who agree with Einstein, are banding together, and time, as a *physical* entity, is on our side:
"Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone." --Albert Einstein
As physicists, it is not our job to wallow in snarky, meaningless mathematics and use it to convolute and confound the simple, so as to build postmodern bureaucratic empires, but it is our job to figure out what the math *physically* means.
That is *exactly* what MDT does--it goes back to Einstein's 1912 paper and tells us what the equation x4 = ict *physically* means, granting us new insight into a hitherto unsung feature of the universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
"But even if the radiation formula should prove to be absolutely accurate it would after all be only an interpolation formula found by happy guesswork, and would thus leave one rather unsatisfied. I was, therefore, from the day of its origination, occupied with the task of giving it a real physical meaning." --(Max Planck, 1919 Nobel Prize address, 'The Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory')
Something that was once considered to be mere math, is seen to have physical content, implicatioons, and meaning. Something that was once more or less considered to be stationary--the fourth dimension--is seen to be moving. 'Tis a revolutionary affront to the church of wormholes and time travel worthy of burning me at the stake, you can bet all the well-funded, anonymous cowards agree.
And too, where so many dismissed x4 = ict as "meaningless math," I actually noted that it has physcial meaning. Now I know that the highest form of postmodern physicists today are those who can look at an equals sign and deny it exists, just as the postmodern lit professor denies Shakespeare's and Dante's greatness, but I look at an equals sign and see it for what it is, just as I see x4, i, c, and t for what they are--entities in Einstein's 1912 Mansucript which are related in a *physical* manner.
And from MDT's simple postulate and equation we naturally get all of relativity in a 4D universe where the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic. This also shows that time, as measured on our watches, is an emergent phenomena that arises because the propagation of photons, which are but matter carried upon the fourth expanding dimensions. The expansion of the fourth dimension distributes locality and thus is the cause of quantum entanglement, as well as qm's general features such as wave-particle duality and its probabilistic nature, wherein a photon has an equal chance of being found anywhere upon the nonlocal, spherically-symmetric probability distribution defined by the expansion of the fourth dimension, manifested in our three spatial dimensions. Entropy, and time and all its arrows and assymetries, can also be seen to arise naturally from MDT, and too, all the dualties--space/time, energy/mass, and wave/particle--are shown to have a common source.
Yes, anonymous coward, I am going to have to stick with Moving Dimensions Theory's simple beauty and elegance, which unifies so much of our entirety with a comon *physical* model. All the NSF mondey in the world, and the approval of your department chair and grad students, could not force me to change my mind--the fourth dimension moves and expands independent of the three spatial dimensions.
And I encourage you to choose MDT over your anomymous, cowardly, snarkfest behavior, which is intellectual violence unbecoming of a physicist.
For your unmanly, dishonorabe snark and bitter mean-spiritedness, we cannot forgive you, anonymous coward, and we hope you change your ways are man up and walk into town with your head held high, proud of your word and honor--proud of the Name your parents gave you. But for your refusal to recognize that the simple math can sometimes be telling us something profound and new about physics, perhaps we *can* forgive you, as even Planck did not believe the deeper implications of the quantum theory he developed. Einstein did.
Planck lectured at Columbia, "Consequently, there remains only the one conclusion, that previous electron theories suffer from an essential incompleteness which demands a modification, but how deeply this modification should go into the structure of the theory is a question upon which views are still widely divergent. J. J. Thompson inclines to the most radical view, as do J. Larmor, A. Einstein, and with him I. Stark who even believe that the propagation of electromagnetic waves in a pure vacuum does not occur precisely in accordance with the Maxwellian field equations, but in definite energy quanta hv.
I am of the opinion, on the other hand, that at present it is not necessary to proceed in so revolutionary a manner, and that one may come successfully through by seeking the significance of the energy quanta hv solely in the mutual actions with which the resonators influence one another. A definite decision with regard to these important questions can only be brought about as a result of more experience."--(From Max Planck's famous Columbia Lectures)
From: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/Einstein_and_pho
toelectric_effect.html
"Experimentalists railed at the prospect of what Einstein's equation of the photoelectric effect implied. Robert Millikan, the very man who showed that the equation really did work, would have nothing to do with its physical interpretation. In 1915, Millikan wrote: "The semicorpuscular theory by which Einstein arrived at his equation seems at present wholly untenable." Three years later, Ernest Rutherford, the great New Zealand physicist who probed the structure of the atom, said there appeared to be "no physical connection" between the energy and frequency in Einstein's hypothesis about light quanta. It didn't seem to make sense that a particle could have a frequency, or that a wave could act as if it were made of energetic particles. The two concepts seemed to rule each other out." --http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/Einstein_and_p
hotoelectric_effect.html
Well, at least they all used their names when they railed against a new theory. Sure, they were all great physicists, but first and foremost, like Bohr, they were rugged *cowboys*.
Gamow loved cowboys & Westerns too. Check out, "Mr. Tompkins Gets Serious: The Essential George Gamow, The Masterpiece Science Edition (Hardcover)
by George Gamow."
"The Cowboy Experiment
Father's nickname was Joe. Niels Bohr and my father were addicted to western movies while they were in Copenhagen together. All the cowboys in these movies—Gary Cooper types—were called Joe. That's how Father's nickname came about—he was named after a typical cowboy movie hero.
Bohr had some difficulty with cowboy movies. Being a great physicist he took things very literally. After seeing one of the many films in which there was a shootout between a good guy in a white hat and a bad guy in a black hat, Bohr asked Father, "How is it possible that the man in the black hat always reaches... "
--http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Tompkins-Gets-Serious-Masterpiece
/dp/0131872915
Even more important than MDT is that we bring that classic, epic, western, heroic, cowboy spirit on back; for it is the true source of all enduring art and sicence, of truth and freedom, of rugged romance, beauty, and elegance--that rugged, lone truth seeker is how physics has ever advanced.
"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck
"The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for “conscious” control or “conscious” planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme—while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the superindividual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." –F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom
You can stand him up at the gates of hell, but he won't back down. Bruno, Socrates, Galileo, Dante, Einstein, Gamow, and Bohr--they all walked and spoke freely in plain sight, and stuck by their guns when the chips were down. They, like Odysseus, were classic, epic cowboys, always standing up against the anonymous, faceless mob for truth, reason, and justice.
Well, we've all got a showdwon commin'. And if you call down the thunder, you've got to man up and face it at high noon--you can't just run and hide and use snarky, postmodern math in the dark of night, sneaking up anonymously behind the mysterious stranger. For ultimately, as Feynman knew, science is not advanced by those seeking fame and fortune--tenure and titles--but by those seeking truth and classic, epic honor.
Perhaps we ought make a list of Bohr's and Gamow's favorite Westerns.
"Bohr was very fond of seeing Western (cowboy) movies in which gun duels are quite common. In all such duels, the villain draws his gun but the hero always shoots down the scoundrel first. Bohr had an explanation for this phenomenon, ascribing this as the difference between wilful and conditioned thinking. “The scoundrel has to think and decide when to go for his gun, which slows his action, while the hero acts faster because he acts, without thinking, the moment he sees the scoundrel reaching for his gun.” When nobody agreed with his theory, he bought a pair of toy guns and playing the hero, tried duels with his pupils. Surprisingly, he ‘killed’ everybody who tried to take a shot at him first." --from http://www.dawn.com/weekly/dmag/archive/030420/dmag21.htm
The
one thing I want to make clear throughout this is that the main question here is why must you remain anonymous? Is it because you do not believe your words and do not want to have your name associated with them? Is it because you do not want your department chair or funders to see your childlike namecalling and ad-hominem attacks that you use instead of logic and reason? Is it because you think that simple logic and reason is not enough, and that snarky namecalling and childish put-downs accomplish what your logic and reason cannot? Please focus on my questions here, and please answer, as I am answering your questions, even though you do not want to meet at high noon, but you prefer to catcall from behind a mask and shoot your opponent in the back, like a coward.
Niels Bohr had a lot to say about the Cowboy Code, and therein we can find insights as to why your behavior ultimately loses both on the cultural and scientific levels:
From: http://holasunshinegirl.blogspot.com/2006/07/westerns-and-ni
els-bohr.html
"The great Danish Physicist Niels Bohr, an avid Western film fan, wondered why in all the final shoot-outs, the hero shoots faster even if his adversary is the first to reach for his gun. Bohr asked himself if some physical truth might not explain this convention. He came to the conclusion that such a truth did indeed exist: the first to draw is the slowest because he decides to shoot, and dies. The second to draw lives because he is faster, and he is faster because he doesn't have to decide, he is decided. This brilliant discovery was the result of a whimsical empirical research: Bohr and his assistants went off to a toy shop, bought water pistols , and back in their laboratory duelled for hours and hours."
--http://holasunshinegirl.blogspot.com/2006/07/westerns-and-
niels-bohr.html
So it is that you decided to shoot first in the dark of night, from behind a mask like a lowly outlaw, and thus made my decision for me. EBohr--a Dane--had a great appreciation for the Cowboy--for honor and integrity--for Truth and Justice. Too, too many postmodern "physicists," such as yourself, have lost that honorable, noble spirit. The classic, epic showdown goes back 2800 years to The Odyssey, when Odysseus rides back on into his home, disguised as a beggar. Eventually he alone strings the bow and slays all the false suitors to his wife who kicked him around and spat on him--that eternal faceless, nameless mob which you, and all too many postmodern physicists, run with. But alas, they banned *The Odyssey* from the academy, and thus your behavior dominates.
What we have here is an evolution and paradigm shift, and deep down you sense it. That is the source for your emotional vitriol. If you were certain that I was wrong, you would calmly state so and let your Word--let your Name--let your Reason speak for themsleves. But as you are driven by emotions you do not understand, and as you do not have faith in your Word nor reason, and are embarrassed by it and/or your Name, you hide behind anonimity. Perhaps you do not wish to badmouth MDT, as you sense that in a year or so you may be seeking funding to support your MDT research.
A few major forces have ever driven the evolution of physics: The realization that math is actually telling us something about the *physical* nature of reality, the realization that one thing that was formerly believed to be stationary moves, the realization that two disparate entities are actually the same--as in space/time, wave/particle, mass/enegery, and the relaization that we must not ignore physical realtity just to have some fancy-shmancy math/science fiction.
Well, MDT is driven by all these forces.
Consider the equation x4 = ict .
x4 represents the fourth dimension. Now Einstein taught us that dimensions are very, very real *physical* entities. They can bend. They can warp. They can *move*. The fourth dimension is a *physical* entity.
i is the imaginary number--the square root of -1.
c is the *physical* velocity of light. c is a *physical* entity. we generally know it by the *physical* enity of the photon.
t is time--that *physical* parameter--that ever-moving force none can deny, except for some advanced postmodern physicists, who wish to keep quantum gravity, which does not exist, and get rid of time, which does, in fact, exist.
So it is that we have a *physical* equation telling us the relationship between *physical* entities.
x4 = ict.
The glaring mistake you make, pilgrim, is asserting that
x4 = ict is not a physical equation, relating physical quantities. How embarrassing! No wonder you must remain anonymous. Imagine if your department chair or funders found out!
I take great pride in MDT's simplicity, elegance, and boldness. You, the anonymous masked dwarf, like all too many physicists over the past thirty years whence Homer's Odyssey was deconstructed, adhere to a debased religion in which postmodern physics must be complicated, snarky, convoluted, indecipherable, filled with advanced, meaningless math that is used to select and promote groupthinkers, and to intimidate and cajole indie thinkers and lone cowboys, while building postmodern bureuacracies (like the machines did in The Matrix)rather than to exalt and explain--rather than to actually perform physics. Your fallen, mean spirit is the dominant brand and trademark of postmodern physics and academia, and your behavior can be seen throughout the internet and academy, where young physicists are taught to engage in groupthink math and snark independent thinkers who come forth with simple logic and reason. The Nobel Laureate economist F.A. Hayek's THE ROAD TO SERFDOM has two chapters entitled The End of Truth and Why The Worst Get on Top. Because of the nature of the system, you feel you are forced into anonymity.
But more and more of us, who agree with Einstein, are banding together, and time, as a *physical* entity, is on our side:
"Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone." --Albert Einstein
As physicists, it is not our job to wallow in snarky, meaningless mathematics and use it to convolute and confound the simple, so as to build postmodern bureaucratic empires, but it is our job to figure out what the math *physically* means.
That is *exactly* what MDT does--it goes back to Einstein's 1912 paper and tells us what the equation x4 = ict *physically* means, granting us new insight into a hitherto unsung feature of the universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
"But even if the radiation formula should prove to be absolutely accurate it would after all be only an interpolation formula found by happy guesswork, and would thus leave one rather unsatisfied. I was, therefore, from the day of its origination, occupied with the task of giving it a real physical meaning." --(Max Planck, 1919 Nobel Prize address, 'The Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory')
Something that was once considered to be mere math, is seen to have physical content, implicatioons, and meaning. Something that was once more or less considered to be stationary--the fourth dimension--is seen to be moving. 'Tis a revolutionary affront to the church of wormholes and time travel worthy of burning me at the stake, you can bet all the well-funded, anonymous cowards agree.
And too, where so many dismissed x4 = ict as "meaningless math," I actually noted that it has physcial meaning. Now I know that the highest form of postmodern physicists today are those who can look at an equals sign and deny it exists, just as the postmodern lit professor denies Shakespeare's and Dante's greatness, but I look at an equals sign and see it for what it is, just as I see x4, i, c, and t for what they are--entities in Einstein's 1912 Mansucript which are related in a *physical* manner.
And from MDT's simple postulate and equation we naturally get all of relativity in a 4D universe where the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic. This also shows that time, as measured on our watches, is an emergent phenomena that arises because the propagation of photons, which are but matter carried upon the fourth expanding dimensions. The expansion of the fourth dimension distributes locality and thus is the cause of quantum entanglement, as well as qm's general features such as wave-particle duality and its probabilistic nature, wherein a photon has an equal chance of being found anywhere upon the nonlocal, spherically-symmetric probability distribution defined by the expansion of the fourth dimension, manifested in our three spatial dimensions. Entropy, and time and all its arrows and assymetries, can also be seen to arise naturally from MDT, and too, all the dualties--space/time, energy/mass, and wave/particle--are shown to have a common source.
Yes, anonymous coward, I am going to have to stick with Moving Dimensions Theory's simple beauty and elegance, which unifies so much of our entirety with a comon *physical* model. All the NSF mondey in the world, and the approval of your department chair and grad students, could not force me to change my mind--the fourth dimension moves and expands independent of the three spatial dimensions.
And I encourage you to choose MDT over your anomymous, cowardly, snarkfest behavior, which is intellectual violence unbecoming of a physicist.
For your unmanly, dishonorabe snark and bitter mean-spiritedness, we cannot forgive you, anonymous coward, and we hope you change your ways are man up and walk into town with your head held high, proud of your word and honor--proud of the Name your parents gave you. But for your refusal to recognize that the simple math can sometimes be telling us something profound and new about physics, perhaps we *can* forgive you, as even Planck did not believe the deeper implications of the quantum theory he developed. Einstein did.
Planck lectured at Columbia, "Consequently, there remains only the one conclusion, that previous electron theories suffer from an essential incompleteness which demands a modification, but how deeply this modification should go into the structure of the theory is a question upon which views are still widely divergent. J. J. Thompson inclines to the most radical view, as do J. Larmor, A. Einstein, and with him I. Stark who even believe that the propagation of electromagnetic waves in a pure vacuum does not occur precisely in accordance with the Maxwellian field equations, but in definite energy quanta hv.
I am of the opinion, on the other hand, that at present it is not necessary to proceed in so revolutionary a manner, and that one may come successfully through by seeking the significance of the energy quanta hv solely in the mutual actions with which the resonators influence one another. A definite decision with regard to these important questions can only be brought about as a result of more experience."--(From Max Planck's famous Columbia Lectures)
From: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/Einstein_and_pho
toelectric_effect.html
"Experimentalists railed at the prospect of what Einstein's equation of the photoelectric effect implied. Robert Millikan, the very man who showed that the equation really did work, would have nothing to do with its physical interpretation. In 1915, Millikan wrote: "The semicorpuscular theory by which Einstein arrived at his equation seems at present wholly untenable." Three years later, Ernest Rutherford, the great New Zealand physicist who probed the structure of the atom, said there appeared to be "no physical connection" between the energy and frequency in Einstein's hypothesis about light quanta. It didn't seem to make sense that a particle could have a frequency, or that a wave could act as if it were made of energetic particles. The two concepts seemed to rule each other out." --http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/Einstein_and_p
hotoelectric_effect.html
Well, at least they all used their names when they railed against a new theory. Sure, they were all great physicists, but first and foremost, like Bohr, they were rugged *cowboys*.
Gamow loved cowboys & Westerns too. Check out, "Mr. Tompkins Gets Serious: The Essential George Gamow, The Masterpiece Science Edition (Hardcover)
by George Gamow."
"The Cowboy Experiment
Father's nickname was Joe. Niels Bohr and my father were addicted to western movies while they were in Copenhagen together. All the cowboys in these movies—Gary Cooper types—were called Joe. That's how Father's nickname came about—he was named after a typical cowboy movie hero.
Bohr had some difficulty with cowboy movies. Being a great physicist he took things very literally. After seeing one of the many films in which there was a shootout between a good guy in a white hat and a bad guy in a black hat, Bohr asked Father, "How is it possible that the man in the black hat always reaches... "
--http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Tompkins-Gets-Serious-Masterpiece
/dp/0131872915
Even more important than MDT is that we bring that classic, epic, western, heroic, cowboy spirit on back; for it is the true source of all enduring art and sicence, of truth and freedom, of rugged romance, beauty, and elegance--that rugged, lone truth seeker is how physics has ever advanced.
"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck
"The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for “conscious” control or “conscious” planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme—while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the superindividual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." –F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom
You can stand him up at the gates of hell, but he won't back down. Bruno, Socrates, Galileo, Dante, Einstein, Gamow, and Bohr--they all walked and spoke freely in plain sight, and stuck by their guns when the chips were down. They, like Odysseus, were classic, epic cowboys, always standing up against the anonymous, faceless mob for truth, reason, and justice.
Well, we've all got a showdwon commin'. And if you call down the thunder, you've got to man up and face it at high noon--you can't just run and hide and use snarky, postmodern math in the dark of night, sneaking up anonymously behind the mysterious stranger. For ultimately, as Feynman knew, science is not advanced by those seeking fame and fortune--tenure and titles--but by those seeking truth and classic, epic honor.
Perhaps we ought make a list of Bohr's and Gamow's favorite Westerns.
"Bohr was very fond of seeing Western (cowboy) movies in which gun duels are quite common. In all such duels, the villain draws his gun but the hero always shoots down the scoundrel first. Bohr had an explanation for this phenomenon, ascribing this as the difference between wilful and conditioned thinking. “The scoundrel has to think and decide when to go for his gun, which slows his action, while the hero acts faster because he acts, without thinking, the moment he sees the scoundrel reaching for his gun.” When nobody agreed with his theory, he bought a pair of toy guns and playing the hero, tried duels with his pupils. Surprisingly, he ‘killed’ everybody who tried to take a shot at him first." --from http://www.dawn.com/weekly/dmag/archive/030420/dmag21.htm
view post as summary
Dr. E wrote on Oct. 6, 2008 @ 23:09 GMT
Hello all--this is Dr. E here. (fqxi can verify my ip address)
I did not make the above two posts.
The above two posts (supposedly) by Dr. E dated on Oct. 6, 2008 @ 22:54 GMT and on Oct. 6, 2008 @ 22:59 GMT were copied and pasted by someone other than me. FQXI could check the ip addresses to see who posted it. I would not be surprised if it is the anonymous coward who keeps engaging in childish, libellious defamations, and general snark, instead of contributing positively to the otherwise great atmosphere and discourses that are evolving here.
If fqxi sent me the offenders' ip address, I would be happy to contact their institution.
Thanks again to fqxi and all the participants for the great forum and opportunity to share ideas in an exalted manner.
Best,
Dr. E
(the real Dr. E, as can be verified by the ip address of this post)
Dr. E wrote on Oct. 7, 2008 @ 07:36 GMT
Hello all--this is again the real Dr. E speaking.
I would like to grab the opportunity to bring to everybody’s attention that the posts in this forum have exceeded in number all the posts of all the other forums combined! It seems we have quite a crowd following here, don’t you think so? We’re making quite a splash in the scientific community. People, finally, have started paying attention!
dx4/dt = ic
The one and only truth, that answers all questions in physics and the universe. I’ll never cease defending the truth, sticking by my guns against all anonymous dwarves, all snarky “physicists” who wish to imprison us in block universes, deprive us of our free will, crucify us, and make our voices hush. They will not succeed! The truth will shine above all, all of you pilgrims, who mock and ridicule the one and only truth: x4 = ict. I’ll say it, and I’ll keep saying it again and again, until you (the dwarves, not the gentle readers who follow this discussion) get it deep in your little minds: “E pur si muove!”
"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck
You can stand him up at the gates of hell, but he won't back down. Bruno, Socrates, Galileo, Dante, Einstein, Gamow, and Bohr--they all walked and spoke freely in plain sight, and stuck by their guns when the chips were down.
Did you know that Bohr loved Westerns? Perhaps we ought make a list of Bohr's and Gamow's favorite Westerns. Niels Bohr had a lot to say about the Cowboy Code, and therein we can find insights as to why your behavior ultimately loses both on the cultural and scientific levels:
From: http://holasunshinegirl.blogspot.com/2006/07/westerns-and-ni
els-bohr.html
Well, cheers to every gentle soul, celebrating more than 60 posts in this forum, the most popular forum in fqxi!
Best,
Dr. E
(I repeat, this is the real Dr. E -- fqxi can verify the ip address of this post)
Dr. E wrote on Oct. 7, 2008 @ 10:50 GMT
Hello all, once again. This is Dr. E here. (fqxi can verify my ip address)
I did not make the above two posts.
The above two posts (supposedly) by Dr. E dated on Oct. 6, 2008 @ 23:09 GMT and on Oct. 7, 2008 @ 07:36 GMT were posted by someone other than me. FQXI could check the ip addresses to see who posted it. I would not be surprised if it is the anonymous coward who keeps engaging in childish, libellious defamations, and general snark, instead of contributing positively to the otherwise great atmosphere and discourses that are evolving here.
If fqxi sent me the offenders' ip address, I would be happy to contact their institution.
Thanks again to fqxi and all the participants for the great forum and opportunity to share ideas in an exalted manner.
Best,
Dr. E
(the real Dr. E, as can be verified by the ip address of this post)
Dr. E wrote on Oct. 7, 2008 @ 15:36 GMT
This is the real Dr. E as can be verified by my ip address.
Two more posts were made by someone forging my identity--
The Oct. 7, 2008 @ 07:36 GMT and the Oct. 7, 2008 @ 10:50 GMT posts were made by someone forging the "Dr. E" identity. FQXI can easily tell the difference between the real and fake Dr. E's by looking at the IP addresses. That would be cool if someone could change...
view entire post
This is the real Dr. E as can be verified by my ip address.
Two more posts were made by someone forging my identity--
The Oct. 7, 2008 @ 07:36 GMT and the Oct. 7, 2008 @ 10:50 GMT posts were made by someone forging the "Dr. E" identity. FQXI can easily tell the difference between the real and fake Dr. E's by looking at the IP addresses. That would be cool if someone could change the fake Dr. E's name to "Fake Dr. E," or simply remove the fake posts.
So there you have it. Ad-hominem attacks, anonimity, forged identities, snarky games, libel, and defamation are the tactics some players in the postmodern physics establishment must employ.
Forging my identity, libel, snark, and slander, cannot stop the fourth dimension from expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions (dx4/dt=ic), just as the Inquisition was unable to stop the earth from revolving about the sun by placing Galileo under house arrest and burning Bruno alive. E pur si muove!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_pur_si_muove!
The glaring question is, why all the anonimity and negative energy? With all the unanswered questions out there, with all the mysterious beauty that surrounds us, why do some choose ad-hominem attacks, anonimity, forged identities, libel, snark, and defamation, over simple logic, reason, and physics?
Luckily such players are in the minority, but yet, the modern technologies present them with a vehicle by which they may amplify their debauched noise and distract and deform an online community in manners far greater than their name and stature would allow in the real world.
Everyone should get a copy of Nobel Laureate economist F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom and read the two chapters, "The End of Truth," and "Why The Worst Get on Top."
Again, everyone should check out Peter Woit's blog and Lee Smolin's lecture on this: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=894
Peter blogs,
"Many of the talks are now available on-line here. I’ve only had time to watch a couple of them, but one that I found worth paying attention to was Lee Smolin’s. He covered some of the same issues discussed in his book, including the question of what science is, the ethics of how it is pursued, and the difficulties of encouraging new ideas. The discussion with the audience was also quite fascinating, including an exchange about differences between the American and British academic systems, with a British participant describing his shock at seeing how much the “American academic system is a training in sycophancy”.
Peter continues,
"The topic of blogs came up mainly in a section where Smolin discussed the ethical importance of scientists putting their name and reputation behind what they have to say about their science. He characterized anonymous criticism as one of the main reasons for the low signal/noise ratio and nasty environment of the comment sections of many blogs, describing this as far worse than anything he had encountered in his professional career, and something that is giving science a bad name. The theoretical physics group at Harvard in the 1970s was given as an example of about the worst it could get in academia. At the end of the discussion session, Paul Ginsparg took him to task about this, saying that he had been there too and it wasn’t that bad. I was there at the same time as both of them, and remember it as a rather unfriendly environment with a quite high arrogance level. But, with faculty like Coleman, Weinberg, Glashow, and postdocs like Witten, the talent and accomplishments of the people involved seemed to justify quite a bit of arrogance.
Ginsparg went on to agree with Smolin about anonymity on blogs, comparing trying to have a serious discussion in such an environment to trying to do so in a Fellini movie, being attacked by dwarves wearing masks." --from http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=894
And I also highly recommend Lee's lecture:
http://pirsa.org/08090035/
"Science as an ethical community
Speaker(s): Lee Smolin
Abstract: I develop the idea that science works because scientists form communities defined by a set of ethical principles which, even if imperfectly applied, tend to lead to progress in our understanding of nature. While these communities have long been international, the combination of the internet with cheap airfare and easy migration of educated people makes scientists into 'global souls', in Pico Iyer's phrase. This opens up new opportunities and also new challenges for the thriving of scientific communities."
Best,
Dr. E
(the real, real Dr. E, as can be verified by the ip address of this post)
view post as summary
Kyle "the pliers" Gallahue wrote on Oct. 7, 2008 @ 18:36 GMT
Dear Dr. E,
(Actually I don’t know which Dr. E I’m writing to now, the “real” or the “forger”, no matter how many “real” you put before “Dr E”. I’ve lost track of who’s saying what, but I’ll try to communicate anyway--with all of you.)
Dr. E, the real one, I don’t think you have some exclusive right in using the “Dr. E” as a signature. Am I right? Why, did you buy any rights of use, paid any money for using it? Anybody can sign as “Dr. E”, that’s not forbidden by any rules. At least, that’s my view. So, asking fqxi to change the “fake” one’s signature does not make sense. He/she has every right to sign as “Dr. E” as you have.
Take, for example, my signature. Who can guarantee that that’s my real name? (As a matter of fact it is, but I’m just trying to make a point here.) I could be another one of those who you call “anonymous cowards,” and so on.
And asking fqxi to remove the “fake” posts is not right either. The “forger” is using exactly your language, it seems, so if you make some points in your posts, so does he or she, since your posts are identical in meaning to his/hers. So if his/her posts should be removed on the basis of meaning, so should yours, on the same basis.
Overall, I read your essay with interest, and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say I was impressed. How did you come up with dx/dt=ic, if I may ask?
Kind regards,
Kyle
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Oct. 7, 2008 @ 19:00 GMT
Thanks Kyle,
I agree a lot of the faking of "Dr. E" above is in good fun, but too, there's been some malice, libel, and defamation from the source. The forger has used my words, but too, they have also interjected their own--imagine if we all did that!
Sticking with our own names, as opposed to appropriating other folks', is more likely to further the quailty of the conversation and thus any ultimate insights into physics. If fqxi wants to remove the fake posts, cool. If not, relabeling the posts as coming from the "fake Dr. E" would seem to be more in line of what they're trying to accomplish in this community. Imagine going to faculty meetings/conferences where some people were wearing masks so that they looked like other people! Then you might hear a Lubos Motl singing the praises of LQG, which would cause confusion, and might stop the earth from turning and even the fourth dimension from expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions! Maybe this happens in the parralel universes people are always talking about, but I have never been to a conference in a parallel universe where scholars wear the masks of people whose ideas they disagree with, as I hear such universes disappear as soon as they are created, or something--they exist just long enough for theoretical physicists to get tenure, I suppose, but not for the experimentalists. :)
Well, I don't know for sure if it *is* you when I see someone using your name in this forum, but I do know it is *not* me when I see someone using *my* name--Dr. E. :) And I'm assuming its you, of course.
You write, "And asking fqxi to remove the “fake” posts is not right either. The “forger” is using exactly your language, it seems, so if you make some points in your posts, so does he or she, since your posts are identical in meaning to his/hers. So if his/her posts should be removed on the basis of meaning, so should yours, on the same basis."
Again, the forger is actually changing some words around. And finally, to make a long story short, would not life be easier if we just posted under our own names?
Thanks for the post--have to run! Will return to answer your final question, "Overall, I read your essay with interest, and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say I was impressed. How did you come up with dx/dt=ic, if I may ask?" in which there's a typo--it's dx4/dt = ic.
Best,
Dr. E :) (The Real McCoy)
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Oct. 7, 2008 @ 22:48 GMT
Hello Kyle,
I'm back to answer your question from ealrier--you wrote: "Overall, I read your essay with interest, and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say I was impressed. How did you come up with dx4/dt=ic, if I may ask?"
Well, I guess it all goes back to asking "why?"
That deeper "why" about foundational questions, that needs a *physical* answer--an answer I finally found...
view entire post
Hello Kyle,
I'm back to answer your question from ealrier--you wrote: "Overall, I read your essay with interest, and it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say I was impressed. How did you come up with dx4/dt=ic, if I may ask?"
Well, I guess it all goes back to asking "why?"
That deeper "why" about foundational questions, that needs a *physical* answer--an answer I finally found in the *physical* reality MDT presents. I was asking questions like:
*Why* time, I wondered my freshman year at Princeton, when I still believed in the block universe I had read about. Why does it move, and why is now "now?" if relativity makes all nows equal? Why can't I get back to yesterday's now and that 1989 summertime when the days were long?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be7T8CRC4TI
Well, MDT answeres this. Alas, they, like the block universe, do not exist. But, we do get free will!
*Why* does time stop at the speed of light? "Because relativity says so," is how physicists are generally trained to respond. Yes, I would answer, but "why? Why are photons ageless, and why do two initially interacting photons remain entangled? What secret, deeper reality of our universe dictates that this must be so?"
I think all the questions started back in the late eighties/early nineties with "Why length contraction?" "Because relativity says so," is how physicists are generally trained to respond. Yes, I would answer, but "*why?*"
And in 1990, I remember standing in P.J. Peebles office, who I had for Quantum Mechanics, asking him how it could be that an ageless photon was ultimately defined by a spherically-symmetric wave-front expanding at c through our three spatial dimensions. This struck me as odd. That same year I worked on projects pertaining to relativity (GR) and quantum mechanics (EPR/delayed choice/spooky entanglement) with John Archibald Wheeler. And it struck me that both were ultimately founded upon curiosities that rested upon measurement, and measurement always somehow rests upon light, which is wed to time.
“My solution was really for the very concept of time, that is, that time is not absolutely defined but there is an inseparable connection between time and the signal [light velocity.” –Einstein
So maybe, maybe, if we could find the primal force that powers light--if we could perceive the deeper reality which renders photons ageless and bestows upon them the unchanging, constant velocity of c--which is both independent of the observer and the source--if we could catch up with a light beam and find out exactly what it was that ordinary matter was surfing on when it became light propagating at c--perhaps we could unify a helluva lot in quantum mechanics, relativity, and statistical mechanics, as MDT does.
What is the *physical* reason for length contraction? What *physical* entities of this universe give rise to length contraction? What deeper *physical* reality dictates that any moving object must be foreshortened in the direction of its motion? What is *physically* going on on a deeper level? There must be some *primary* cause--some universal invariant--for length contraction, time dilation, entropy, entanglement, nonlocality, and time and all its arrows and assymetries, and all the dualities--space/time, mass/energy, and wave/particle.
And then, as time went on, I found I was able to answer a wide array of foundational questions with: "Because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimension: dx4/dt = ic." And I went back to Einstein's original words and found that he had never quite provided a deeper motivation for setting x4 = ict, other than that it works! Well, x4 = ict because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
And this small recognition of a primary universal invariant answered an abundance of questions with a *physical* model. When when diverse questions spanning all realms of physics are answered by a common *physical* model, surely that points the way to unification!
Here are some of the questions that are answered with "because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions."
0. Why time? Why time’s arrows and asymmetries?
1. Why is light’s velocity a constant c?
2. Why is light’s velocity c independent of its source?
3. Why is it that nothing can travel faster than c?
4. Why does a photon, which travels at c, not age?
5. Why does a photon’s spherically symmetric path define simultaneity—a locality in the fourth dimension?
6. Why are energy and mass equivalent? Why E=mc^2?
7. Why do all of time’s arrows point in the same direction—towards dissipation, decoherence, and entropy?
8. Why do so many physicists say time is the fourth dimension, when Einstein never said x4 is time, but instead said x4 = ict?
9. Why can matter can appear as energy or mass?
10. Why is it that when matter appears as pure energy, it propagates at c through space?
11. Why does all matter have particle—local—and wave—nonlocal—properties?
12. Why does all energy have particle—local—and wave—nonlocal—properties?
13. Why is it that when matter appears as stationary mass it propagates at c through the fourth dimension?
14. Why is it that when matter appears as energy, it propagates at c through the three spatial dimensions?
15. Why is it that to move at c through space is to stand still in the fourth dimension?
16. Why is it that to move at c through the fourth dimension is to stand still in space?
17. Why is it that all objects move at but one speed through space-time—c?
18. Why is the universe expanding?
19. Why does radiation expand outwards, but not inwards?
20. Why do we see retarded waves, but not advanced?
21. Why is it that entropy imitates the general motion of all radiation and the universe’s expansion—a spherically-symmetric expanding wave?
22. Why is it that Huygens’ Principle, which underlies all reality ranging from QED to Feynman’s many-paths, to classical physics, state that every point of a spherically-expanding wavefront is in turn a spherically-expanding wavefront?
23. Why are all photons described by a spherically-expanding wavefront propagating at c?
24. Why is it that two initially-interacting photons remain entangled, no matter how far they travel apart?
25. Why is it that two initially-interacting photons remain the exact same age, no matter how far they travel apart?
26. Why is it that Young’s double-slit experiments show that both mass and energy have nonlocal wave properties?
27. Why is it that the collapse of the wave function is immediate in the photoelectric effect?
28. Why is there no way for an object to gain velocity without being reduced in length via relativistic length contraction?
29. Why does a photon trace out a null vector through space-time? How can movement across teh universe describe a path of zero length
30. Why does time’s arrow point in a definitive direction?
21. Why does entropy increase?
32. Why do moving clocks run slow?
33. Why is time travel into the past impossible?
34. Why does free will exist?
35. Why is it that time is not frozen—-how come the block universe does not exist? Why do we have free will?
36. Why does a photon’s probabilistic wavefront travel at c?
37. Why is the velocity of quantum entanglement c? Why is it that only initially interacting particles can yet be entangled? Why is it that they must first share a common locality or origin, in order to share an entangled nonlocality when tehy are separated?
38. Why is it that in Schroedinger’s equation, the first derivative with respect to the fourth dimension is proportional to the second derivative with the respect to the three spatial dimensions? Any change in position in the fourth expanding dimension is an acceleration in the three spatial dimensions.
39. Why is it that a photon emitted from the sun is red-shifted as it travels away? It's wavelength appears longer as it is measured against space that is less-stretched. A photon inherits the local geometry of the space-time where it was emitted.
40. Why do clocks in gravitational fields run slow?
41. Why are photons red-shifted as they move away from massive objects, and blue-shifted as they move towards them?
42. Why the conservation laws? Why does an object maintain its rotation in space time, unless acted upon by an exterior force?
43. Why is the velocity of every object through space-time c?
44. Why is it that the only way to stay stationary in the fourth dimension is to move at c through the three spatial dimensions?
45. Why is it that the only way to remain stationary in the three spatial dimensions is to move at c relative to the fourth dimension?
46. Why does a photon have zero rest mass, and how does zero rest mass imply the velocity of light? None of the object’s matter exists in the three spatial dimensions, but only in the fourth expanding dimension.
47. Why time's arrows?
48. Why time's assymetries?
49. Why entropy?
50. Why is there an i in x4=ict?
51. Why is the velocity of light both independent of the velocity of the source and the velocity of the observer?
52. Why are light, time, and measurement so fundamentally related?
And over the years, MDT has provided a *physical* model that answered these and other questions, unifying diverse fields and physical phenomena in a common, simple principle.
As I said, I think all the questions started back in the late eighties/early nineties with "why length contraction?"
Why does an object become foreshortened in the direction of its motion? Why is it that the only way for something to move is to become shorter in the direction of its motion?
Consider a ruler--it gets shorter as it moves due to length contraction.
But wait, does not a ruler also appear shorter as it rotates? Consider a ruler at the end of a football field, parallel to the field goals. As it rotates, it will appear shorter and shorter to us, standing at the other end of the field. Have you ever noticed this illusion, as a rotating radar on a distant ship looks like something that keeps contracting and expanding? It is hard for us to tell it is rotating--rather we might actually guess that it is actually getting physically shorter and longer.
And I saw that relativistic length contraction is a rotation of sorts. The ruler is rotated out of our three spatial dimensions. But what is it rotated into? It is rotated into the fourth dimension. But why, when this happens, does the ruler always, always propagate in the direction of its foreshortening? Well, it is because the fourth dimension--the dimension which the ruler is being rotated into--is moving. Thus relativistic length contraction is always, always accompanied by a change in velocity.
Then, the - sign in the spacetime metric puzzled me. Why does x4 have a - sign infront of it? What is a photon telling us by defining a null vector? It can cross the universe, and yet not travel at all? Ahaha! For in the fourth dimension, it has not moved, as the fourth dimension has been moving with it, just as a surfer stays with the wave they ride. This brings de Broglies' pilot waves to mind...
Well, that's some of the story behind MDT. An early version of it appeared in my dissertation:
http://elliotmcgucken.com/dissertation.html
Best
,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
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Kyle "the pliers" Gallahue wrote on Oct. 8, 2008 @ 21:33 GMT
Dear Dr. E,
You wrote: “And I'm assuming its you, of course.” Yes, it’s me, Kyle Gallahue, the physicist--thanks!
I take it as a given that the previous post (Oct 7, 19:00) is by you, the real one. There’s something in it that makes me think the forger wouldn’t write it. In any case, let’s leave forgers and fakers aside, and concentrate on physics, shall we? :-)
I asked how you came up with dx4/dt=ic in my previous post (sorry about the typo), and you answered partially, but not fully to my satisfaction. I thank you for the detailed description of how you felt as a freshman at Princeton, and about your questioning of the deepest roots of physics, but what I wanted to learn was how you came up with the idea that dx4/dt=ic. Just that. How did it occur to you? Did you first come across Einstein’s 1912 paper and thought “What if I differentiate x4=ict?” or did you first think that the 4th dimension must be expanding, therefore with some speed dv/dt, which might be the maximum known speed, c, and then came across Einstein’s x4=ict, and put the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together? Or was it some third possibility that took place?
I would appreciate very much if, in answering the above question, you could confine your post simply to answering the above question. It is really not very nice to have to see again, and again, and yet again, tons of material that you have already written. If you feel you should make this material known, you could consider publishing it at your web site--you do have a web site, as I learned. Otherwise, I’m not sure people have the patience to scroll through amazing loads of text to fish out the new and non-repeating posts. Just friendly advice.
Thanks very much--I’ll be waiting for your reply.
Kyle
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Oct. 8, 2008 @ 23:44 GMT
Hello Kyle,
I just spent two hours revising my post from yesterday, as I felt I could better answer your question! It is far more detailed, but unfortunately it is also longer! Wish I could merely log in and edit the previous answer/post. I have taken your advice and posted it elsewhere, on a blog I set up today:
http://movingdimensionstheory.blogspot.com/
Let me focus on...
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Hello Kyle,
I just spent two hours revising my post from yesterday, as I felt I could better answer your question! It is far more detailed, but unfortunately it is also longer! Wish I could merely log in and edit the previous answer/post. I have taken your advice and posted it elsewhere, on a blog I set up today:
http://movingdimensionstheory.blogspot.com/
Let me focus on your above question.
I actually had the idea for Moving Dimensions Theory long before I laid eyes on Einstein's 1912 Manuscript a few years back--I bought the 1912 Manuscript in 2005 in Durham, NC, I think. Seeing his manuscript was when it all came together, as I saw that Einstein did not quite tell us *why* x4 = ict. Nor does he provide any justification for x4 = ict, other than that it works!
Einstein treated the principle of relativity as a fundamental law--MDT derives realtivity from a deeper invariance--a hitherto unsung aspect of our universe--the fourth dimension is expanidng relative to the three spatial diemnsions: dx4/dt=ic.
But years before 2005, I was saying that time is a moving dimension, as shown in the below usenet/forum posts--this of course was an inaccurate version of the present theory, which sees time not as a dimension, but as a parameter that emerges because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions--here is a 2001 post (I only agree with parts of this usenet post today, but I agree with the conclusion! "The underlying fabric of all reality, the dimensions themselves, are moving relative to one another." ):
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.physics.relativity/brow
se_thread/thread/39a42b0afbe3dc2e/efdf36bd57015666?hl=en&lnk
=st&q=%22Moving+Dimensions%22#efdf36bd57015666
And here is another 2001 post:
http://jollyroger.com/physics/htm/Forum1/HTML/000007.html
(I only agree with parts of this post today, as time is not a dimension)
However, I agree with the final conclusion! "The underlying fabric of all reality, the dimensions themselves, are moving relative to one-another."
I hope these 2001 posts, which echo the appendix of my 1998 physics PH.D. dissertation, help shed light on how MDT came to me.
You can see in those 2001 posts that I did not quite grasp that dx4/dt = ic. But yet, you can tell what I'm getting at. I had not yet realized that time is not the fourth dimension. It had been pounded into our heads over and over again, in all books and popular treatments of relativity, that time is the fourth dimension and we live in a block universe. But I was rebelling against this. Something is different about the coordinate x4--something is moving! Motion and time seem to be embedded in all realms of physical reality, and thus we needed an equation that embedded motion and change in the fundamental fabric of spacetime, which MDT does. I think that treating time as a fourth dimension has lead to vast confusion as to the true physical nature of time, as I say so in the abstract of my paper.
And so I was quite surprised to find that in Einstein's 1912 Manuscript, he never explicity states time is the fourth dimension! Einstein does not state that time is the fourth dimension, but rather he writes x4 = ict, which naturally implies dx4/dt = ic.
The following, which is on the new blog post, is interesting:
http://movingdimensionstheory.blogspot.com/
It is interesting that Einstein introduced relativity as a principle--as a primary law not deduced from anything else.
Well, I guess I was dumb enough to even ask, "why relativity?"
And I found the answer in a more fundamental invariance--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt = ic. Change is fundamentally embedded in space-time. And not only can all of relativity be derived from this, but suddenly we had a *physical* model for entropy, time and its arrows and assymetries in all realms, free will, and quantum nonlocality and entanglement. MDT accounts for the the constant speed of light c--both its independence of the source and its independence of the velocity of the observer, while establishing it as the fastest, slowest, and only velocity for all entities and objects moving through space-time, as well as the maximum velocity that anything is measured to move. And suddenly we see a *physical* basis for E=mc^2. Energy and mass are the same thing--it's just that energy is mass caught upon the fourth expanding dimension, and thus it surfs along at "c."
On page 37 of "Einstein's Mistakes, The Failings of Human Genius," by Hans Ochanian, we read,
"Einstein acknowledged hid debt to Newton and to Maxwell, but he was not fully aware of the extent of Galileo's fatherhood. In an introduction he wrote for Galileo's celebrated fatherhood. In an introduction he frote for Galileo's celebrated Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, he faults Galileo for failing to produce a general mathematical proof. Galileo regarded relativity as an empirical, observational fact, that is, a law of nature, and Einstein's own formulation of the Principle of Relativity three hundred years later imitated Galileo's in treating this principle as a law of nature and not as a mathematical deduction from anything else."
Well, MDT provides a more fundamental law with an equation: dx4/dt = ic, from which relativity is derived in my paper. And an added benefit are all the other entities dx4/dt=ic accounts for with a *physical* model.
What I need to do for you is to dig out my 1998 dissertation and look at the appendix, where I set an early version down formally--I'm pretty sure it's pretty much the same thing as the 2001 posts, and I'm pretty sure I stated, "As physics concerns itself at all levels with changes relative to both space and time, it makes sense that all physics, time, motion, reality, life, and consciousness itself are founded upon a stage which is endowed with intrinsic motion."--I'm pretty sure this exact sentence is in my 1998 dissertation--I will try to dig it up and scan it in!
Hope this helps & thanks for the questions!
I know even my short responses are long. :)
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
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Kyle "the pliers" Gallahue wrote on Oct. 9, 2008 @ 12:13 GMT
Dear Dr. E,
Well, looks like my initial hunch was right: first you came up with the idea that there is a fourth moving dimension, and then (relatively recently, as you wrote, in 2005) you came across Einstein’s 1912 paper. Thanks for your reply, although I’d really appreciate if your replies are not only shorter, but also to the point. What is the relevance to my question of a quotation that you include, which in fact you misquoted, repeating a phrase twice? (Check near Galileo’s “fatherhood.”) It only makes me tired, unwilling to keep the discussion going on, because I feel I waste my precious time. Sorry about telling you how things are perceived on this side of your blog, but I suppose you’d want to know how things really are, rather than how you’d wish they were. Don’t you agree?
If you agree on these discussion terms, then I’d propose to set aside Einstein’s (actually Lorenz’s) x4=ict, only for a short while, since you see it as a _conclusion_ of your basic premise, and concentrate on your basic premise: “The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the other three dimensions at a constant speed, the speed of light.” This, you express as: dx4/dt=ict. You’ve said the physical meaning of “i” is that the fourth is an “imaginary dimension,” whatever that means. Very well. Now, I’d be delighted to know, if you’d care to explain--but in as short and to-the-point way as possible, no quotations please if you don’t mind, but in your own words--any of the following four conclusions of the assumption dx4/dt=ict.
1. Why is light’s velocity a constant c?
or
2. Why is light’s velocity c independent of its source?
or
3. Why is it that nothing can travel faster than c?
or
4. Why does a photon, which travels at c, not age?
Please pick one--but only one--of the above four, and explain how it follows from “The fourth dimension is expanding…” etc. (dx4/dt=ic). I tried hard to find explanations in your essay, but couldn’t. Don’t direct me to another site, don’t quote even yourself, if you don’t mind, but explain in your own words, one and only one of the above. I want just one of them because, as you see, I like to focus on things. Not ten things at a time, but one thing at a time. That’s my modus operandi, and that’s how I’d like our discussion to proceed. I don’t care about math at this stage, just a verbal explanation would suffice.
Well, thanks again for your contributions to physics, Dr. E! :-)
Kyle
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Oct. 9, 2008 @ 16:17 GMT
Thanks for the specific questions, Kyle--it is a great opportunity to better hone MDT and practice communicating its basic tenets.
Please forgive me for answering two of your questions--feel free to read the two different answers at your convenience. :)
2. Why is light’s velocity c independent of its source?
No matter how fast an object is moving, when it emits a photon,...
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Thanks for the specific questions, Kyle--it is a great opportunity to better hone MDT and practice communicating its basic tenets.
Please forgive me for answering two of your questions--feel free to read the two different answers at your convenience. :)
2. Why is light’s velocity c independent of its source?
No matter how fast an object is moving, when it emits a photon, that photon is carried by the fourth expanding dimension. Now dx4/dt = ic is an invariant of the universe, independent of the motion of an object, so no matter how fast a flashlight is moving when it is turned on, it is the invariant expansion of the fourth dimension (dx4/dt=ic) that carries the photon away from the flashlight, and the invariant expansion does not care about the flashlight's velocity. So it is that c is independent of the velocity of the source!
3. Why is it that nothing can travel faster than c? All motion in the entire universe arises from the fundamental invariant dx4/dt = ic--the fourth dimension's expansion relative to the three spatial dimensions at c. Did you know, Kyle, that there is but one velocity for every single entity through space-time? That is c. Brian Greene has an excellent treatment of this in The Elegant Universe. Both a book sitting on a table and a photon are moving at c through space-time. So it is that nothing can travel slower than c through space-time either. Components of an object's velocity, may vary across the four dimensions--but the singular net velocity through 4D space-time is always c for all objects and entities. A photon moves at c through the three spatial dimensions (while remaining stationary in the fourth dimension), while a "stationary" object in the lab moves through the fourth dimension at c. This alone is enough to prove that the fourth dimension must be expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. c is the one, unique velocity through space-time because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c. A photon surfs this expanding dimension, and thus while it remains stationary in the fourth dimension (ageless and timeless), it moves at c through the three spatial dimensions. A photon cannot go any faster than c, as it has already caught up with the wavefront of the source of all motion in the universe--the expanding fourth dimension.
Basically all your questions can be readily answered by relativity, and as relativity can be derived from MDT, all your questions can be answered by MDT in a more fundamental manner, as MDT presents a *physical* model appealing to the deeper *why*. Einstein introduced relativity as a principle--as a law of nature not deduced from anything else, and well, I guess I was dumb enough to ask, 'why relativity?' And I found the answer in a more fundamental invariance--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt = ic. Change is fundamentally embedded in space-time.
You write, "You’ve said the physical meaning of “i” is that the fourth is an “imaginary dimension,” whatever that means."
What do you mean, "whatever that means?" I explain in the above posts and in my paper that Einstein stated thus, and I explain also what it means. As a physicist you should never be content with "whatever that means." :) From an above post: "the only way to stay stationary in the fourth dimension is to move at c relative to the three spatial dimensions. more clues are discussed in the paper, where towards the bottom of page 6, i write: "Einstein definitively states x4 = ict, and time and ict are very different entities. Einstein states, “One has to keep in mind that the fourth coordinate u (which Einstein sometimes writes as x4) is always purely imaginary.” It is imaginary because the expansion of the fourth dimension is orthogonal to the three spatial dimensions in every direction . . ."
I encourage you to read the above posts that pertain to this further.
Thanks again Kyle,
I think you will be pleased that this post, while probably not short enough, is shorter!
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
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John Merryman wrote on Oct. 10, 2008 @ 01:13 GMT
Dr. E,
I have to agree with Kyle that you need to edit yourself more effectively and I say this as someone who is in basic agreement with your understanding of time as the relationship between light expanding relative to structure/mass/the three dimensions contracting, as opposed to a dimensional block time.
Look at it this way, rather then presenting your theory as an expanding wave to fill every possible function, think of it as the wave of potentials collapsing into the most concise possible exposition/structure. From the perspective of the structure, light expands, but from the perspective of the light, structure contracts and it's the structure of your argument you want to present.
Kyle "the pliers" Gallahue wrote on Oct. 10, 2008 @ 08:28 GMT
Dear Dr. E,
You don’t like to play by my rules, right? :-)
But, you know what? We must agree to the rules of the game. Otherwise, we can’t talk. And I take it that you encourage people to converse with you in this forum. :-)
Look, I have a colleague here whom I try to convince that there’s something interesting in what you’re saying. But I can’t show him the contents of this blog, because the moment I do he’ll run away on all four, reasoning there’s loads of irrelevant stuff here. And I wouldn’t blame him. People in our business want to be concise, focused, accurate, and to the point. We’re physicists, Dr. E, not lawyers!
Anyway, I read your explanation of “2. Why is light’s velocity c independent of its source?”, and I have a further question as a result of your answer, which I’ll express in a moment. But first, I must tell you that I skipped your answer to “3. Why is it that nothing can travel faster than c?”, feeling that again you’re giving me more than one thing at a time. I skipped it consciously, refusing to read it, and only got a glimpse of your last sentence, just above your signature: “I think you will be pleased that this post, while probably not short enough, is shorter!” Yes, shorter, but not short enough. No offense, but you really need to try harder.
So, here is the preamble to my question. You say “when [a flashlight] emits a photon, that photon is carried by the fourth expanding dimension.” And “the invariant expansion does not care about the flashlight’s velocity.” Ergo, the photon’s velocity is constant.
Question: What happens to the flashlight? Isn’t it also carried by the fourth expanding dimension?
I would really appreciate it if your answer is as short as “No, it’s not,” or “Yes, it is.”
Thanks in advance,
Kyle
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Oct. 10, 2008 @ 16:52 GMT
Thanks Kyle,
Feel free to have your colleauge contact me at drelliot@gmail.com -- I'll be happy to converse with them and even speak to them or anyone by phone too about MDT.
Also, the MDT paper is about ten pages--it is fairly concice. Has your colleague read it? What did they think?
Einstein stated that everything must be made as simple as possible, but not moreso, as...
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Thanks Kyle,
Feel free to have your colleauge contact me at drelliot@gmail.com -- I'll be happy to converse with them and even speak to them or anyone by phone too about MDT.
Also, the MDT paper is about ten pages--it is fairly concice. Has your colleague read it? What did they think?
Einstein stated that everything must be made as simple as possible, but not moreso, as oversimplifying something can lead to greater complexity and confusion.
So your question, "What happens to the flashlight? Isn’t it also carried by the fourth expanding dimension?"
In order for a flashlight to move it must somehow find itself rotated into the fourth expanding dimension. So yes, I would argue that ultimately a flashlight gains velocity by existence in the fourth expanding dimension.
Instead of a flashlight, consider a ruler--feel free to place a light at one end of the ruler so that it effectively becomes a flashlight.
Consider the ruler--it gets shorter as it moves due to relativistic length contraction.
But wait, does not a ruler also appear shorter as it rotates? Consider a ruler at the end of a football field, parallel to the field goals. As it rotates, it will appear shorter and shorter to us, as we stand at the other end of the field, looking on. Have you ever noticed this illusion, as a rotating radar on a distant ship looks like something that keeps contracting and expanding? It is hard for us to tell the object is rotating--rather we might actually guess that it is actually getting physically shorter and longer.
These youtube videos almost illustrate this rotating radar effect:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd6ZxHk2-zA&feature=re
lated
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMlsmqWSo8A&feature=rela
ted
And I saw that relativistic length contraction is a rotation of sorts. The ruler/flashlight is rotated out of our three spatial dimensions as it gains velocity, so it appears shorter. But what is it rotated into? It is rotated into the fourth dimension as energy and momentum are added to it, as its growing energy component exists in teh ofurth dimension. But why, when this happens, does the ruler always, always propagate in the direction of its foreshortening? Well, it is because the fourth dimension--the dimension which the ruler is being rotated into--is moving! Thus relativistic length contraction is always, always accompanied by a change in velocity.
Rotate something into the fourth dimension, and it gains a translational velocity. Give something a translational velocity, and it will appear foreshortened in our three spatial dimensions. All because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions or dx4/dt = ic.
Then, right after I pondered length contraction, the - sign in the space-time metric puzzled me. Why does x4 have a - sign in-front of it? How is x4 different from the three spatial dimensions? What is a photon telling us by defining a null vector? A photon can cross the universe, and yet not travel at all? Ahaha! For in the fourth dimension, it has not moved, as the fourth dimension has been moving with it, just as a surfer stays with the wave they ride. This brings de Broglies' pilot waves to mind...
So, yes, the ruler gains any motion via the fourth expanding dimension.
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Kyle "the pliers" Gallahue wrote on Oct. 11, 2008 @ 12:38 GMT
Dear Dr. E,
Thanks for your address, I’ll give it to my colleague as soon as I feel confident that I can convince him to consider your ideas.
From your response, I’ll quote the following (which would suffice, without the rest): “So yes, I would argue that ultimately a flashlight gains velocity by existence in the fourth expanding dimension.”
Let’s summarize what you’re saying (I’m trying to understand):
1. The speed of a photon is constant because “that photon is carried by the fourth expanding dimension”, which expands (according to dx4/dt=ic) at the speed of light, “so no matter how fast a flashlight is moving when it is turned on” the “expansion does not care about the flashlight’s velocity.”
2. “[U]ltimately a flashlight gains velocity by existence in the fourth expanding dimension.”
But if the flashlight also exists in the fourth dimension when it moves at speed v, together with the photon that moves at speed c, then how is it that the speed of the photon WITH RESPECT TO THE FLASHLIGHT (I’m not shouting, just that I have no better way of emphasizing a whole phrase) is not c - v?
See what I’m saying? The photon is carried by the 4th dimension, and has speed c relative to us, who don’t move relative to the flashlight. But the moving flashlight (at speed v relative to us) is also slightly into the 4th dimension. So, although the photon has speed c relative to us, shouldn’t it have speed c-v relative to the flashlight, since they are both in the 4th dimension (the photon fully, the flashlight slightly)? If not, why not? Am I missing something?
Thanks for any clarification you can provide.
Kyle
Kyle "the pliers" Gallahue wrote on Oct. 11, 2008 @ 12:43 GMT
Oops, sorry, please delete the phrase "who don't move relative to the flashlight" from my paragraph above. Of course we move, at speed v.
Waiting for your response,
Kyle.
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Oct. 11, 2008 @ 15:33 GMT
Hello Kyle,
Thanks for the question--you write, "But if the flashlight also exists in the fourth dimension when it moves at speed v, together with the photon that moves at speed c, then how is it that the speed of the photon WITH RESPECT TO THE FLASHLIGHT (I’m not shouting, just that I have no better way of emphasizing a whole phrase) is not c - v?"
This is a basic relativity...
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Hello Kyle,
Thanks for the question--you write, "But if the flashlight also exists in the fourth dimension when it moves at speed v, together with the photon that moves at speed c, then how is it that the speed of the photon WITH RESPECT TO THE FLASHLIGHT (I’m not shouting, just that I have no better way of emphasizing a whole phrase) is not c - v?"
This is a basic relativity question. The addition of velocities in Einstein's relativity are different from the addition of velocities in Galileo's relativity, which you seem to be invoking. An excellent book describing all this is: Spacetime Physics by Edwin F. Taylor and John Archibald Wheeler. I highly recommend it!
I could cover the relativistic addition of velocities here, but it would take pages to cover thoroughly, and I would do no better than Taylor & Wheeler.
The *reason* our universe obeys Einstein's relativity is that we reside in a 4D universe wherein the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt = ic.
Einstein's Relativity may be derived from dx4/dt= ic, which represents a more fundamental invariance of this universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. Einstein introduced relativity as a principle--as a law of nature not deduced from anything else, and well, I guess I was dumb enough to ask, 'why relativity?' And I found the answer in a more fundamental invariance--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt = ic.
And not only can all of relativity be derived from this, but suddenly we are liberated from the block universe and time and progress in theoretical physics are unfrozen. And change is seen in a most fundamental equation that weaves change into the very fabric of space-time, where it needs to be, as change pervades every realm of physics and all acts of *physical* measurement. And suddenly we have a *physical* model for entropy, time and its arrows and assymetries in all realms, free will, and quantum mechanics' nonlocality, entanglement, and wave-particle duality. The fourth expanding dimension distributes locality, fathering time. MDT accounts for the constant speed of light c--both its independence of the source and its independence of the velocity of the observer, while establishing c as the fastest, slowest, and only velocity for all entities and objects moving through space-time, as well as the maximum velocity that anything is measured to move. And suddenly we see a physical basis for the dualities--for space/time, wave/matter, and energy/mass or E=mc^2. Energy and mass are the same thing--it's just that energy is mass caught upon the fourth expanding dimension, and thus it surfs along at "c."
Well, I would call all of this a massive unification--all based on a simple *physical* model and equation. I imagine this is just the tip of the iceberg of everything implied by this new physical model--this hitherto unsung feature of the universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt=ic.
Please let me know if you get your hands on Taylor & Wheeler! I lent one of my copies out, but if it comes back, I would be happy to send it your way.
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
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Kyle "the pliers" Gallahue wrote on Oct. 12, 2008 @ 13:44 GMT
Dear Elliot (if you don’t mind),
Oh, but I thought your claim is that special relativity _follows_ from your assumption that there is a fourth dimension that expands at the speed of light (actually at a speed of ic). What you wrote in your last answer amounts to _assuming_ that relativity holds. I thought you were about to show why the speed of light is independent of the speed of its source, which is an _axiom_ in relativity, and leads to practically everything else in relativity. You wanted to prove it. So you can’t assume that which you want to prove, am I missing something?
That’s why I used Galilean kinematics, because I can’t assume the Einsteinian one, since the latter is what we want to derive.
Note please, I’ve read your essay, but didn’t see the derivation of special relativity anywhere. Can you help me to see how you derive it, please?
By the way, let’s agree on what exactly the fundamental claim that you make is, so we’re sure we discuss having the same assumptions in our minds, OK? When you say that the fourth dimension expands at a speed of ic, my understanding is that the other three dimensions of space do _not_ expand along as well, am I right? Expansion happens only along the 4th dimension, correct?
Thanks as always,
Kyle
PS: I feel no need to review elementary relativity concepts, I think my memory is pretty good on the subject. ;-)
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Oct. 12, 2008 @ 21:45 GMT
“The main purpose of science is simplicity, and as we understand more things, everything is becoming simpler.”
--Edward Teller
Consider a 4D universe (x1, x2, x3, x4) in which the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic. Ergo Einstein's Relativity.
It really is this simple. "If you can't explain it simply, you don't...
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“The main purpose of science is simplicity, and as we understand more things, everything is becoming simpler.”
--Edward Teller
Consider a 4D universe (x1, x2, x3, x4) in which the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic. Ergo Einstein's Relativity.
It really is this simple. "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough” --Albert Einstein
“Physics is, hopefully, simple. Physicists are not.”
--Edward Teller
Have you gotten your hands on Einstein's 1912 Manuscript of Relativity? It sometimes seems that you have not read it. I would encourage you to read Einsetin's 1912 Manuscript! I am taking Galileo's advice here in recommending this, “You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him discover it in himself.” --Galileo Galilei
"“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.”
--Galileo Galilei
Read my paper and Einstein's 1912 Manuscipt of Relativity and you will see that it really is that simple--relativity rests upon the fundamental invariance of this universe: dx4/dt = ic: the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, distributing locality and fathering time.
“The only real valuable thing is intuition.” --Albert Einstein. And intuition is from where MDT came over ten years back. I will be scanning in the pages of the appendix of my 1998 dissertation on this! "Multiple unit artificial retina chipset to aid the visually impaired and enhanced holed-emitter CMOS phototransistors"
“Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler.”--Einstein. MDT provides a physical model that unifies diverse physical phenomena.
Consider a 4D universe in which the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic. Ergo Einstein's Relativity. And not only does Moving Dimensions Theory (MDT) give us all of relativity, but it also liberates us from the block universe and unfreezes time (as well as progress in theoretical physics), while acknowledging free will. MDT also provides a *physical* model for time and its arrows and assymetries in all realms, entropy, and quantum mechanical features such as entanglement, nonlocality, and qm's probabilistic nature. MDT provides a *physical* model for the distribution of locality, and the subsequent nonlocal behavior observed throught quantum mechanics.
MDT is a most powerful unifying force. Shakespeare said that brevity is the soul of wit, and MDT is brief: The fourth dimension is expanidng relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic.
Once again, consider a 4D universe (x1, x2, x3, x4) in which the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic. Ergo Einstein's Relativity.
You can see a very brief treatment of this on page 7 of my manuscript (which was kept short due to the fact that the papers are limited to < 5000 words, and I needed space to cover MDT and time and all its arrrows, thermodynamics, the universe's expansion, quantum mechanics, nonlocality, entropy, entanglement, the dualities (space/time, wave/particle, energy,mass), Einstein's Annus Miraiblis, the photoeletric effect, Brownian Motion, Huygens' principle, Bell's Inequalities, relativity, and other physical phenomena), where I write, "Armed with this simple result (x4=ict which was implied by dx4/dt=ic), we are ready to return to Einstein’s 1912 manuscript and provide the motivation for a four-dimensional coordinate system where the fourth dimension is written as x4 = ict. When Einstein wrote x4 = ict, inspired by Minkowski’s work, he never qualified the fundamental motivation for this—the fact that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. When Einstein penned his 1912 manuscript, he did not perceive that relativity’s equivalence of mass and energy and QM’s wave-particle duality—time dilation and the EPR paradox—entropy and length contraction—E=mc^2 and the double slit experiment—could all be accounted for with a fourth expanding dimension. Nor did he recognize that while relativity considers instantaneous frozen snapshots of the universe, quantum mechanics acknowledges the fundamental flux of the expanding fourth dimension, and is thus based on differential operators and probabilistic wavefronts, which acknowledge the perpetual smearing of locality into non-locality, and the emergence of time."
It really is this simple: Consider a 4D universe (x1, x2, x3, x4) in which the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic. All of Einstein's relativity descends from this. Ergo relativity.
I would encourage you to get your hands on Einstein's 1912 Manuscipt, and work through the detailed math.
Einstein's Relativity may be derived from dx4/dt= ic, which represents a more fundamental invariance of this universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. Einstein introduced relativity as a principle--as a law of nature not deduced from anything else, and well, I guess I was dumb enough to ask, 'why relativity?' And I found the answer in a more fundamental invariance--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt = ic.
And not only can all of relativity be derived from this, but suddenly we are liberated from the block universe and time and progress in theoretical physics are unfrozen. And change is seen in a most fundamental equation that weaves change into the very fabric of space-time, where it needs to be, as change pervades every realm of physics and all acts of *physical* measurement. And suddenly we have a *physical* model for entropy, time and its arrows and assymetries in all realms, free will, and quantum mechanics' nonlocality, entanglement, and wave-particle duality. The fourth expanding dimension distributes locality, fathering time. MDT accounts for the constant speed of light c--both its independence of the source and its independence of the velocity of the observer, while establishing c as the fastest, slowest, and only velocity for all entities and objects moving through space-time, as well as the maximum velocity that anything is measured to move. And suddenly we see a *physical* basis for the dualities--for space/time, wave/matter, and energy/mass or E=mc^2. Energy and mass are the same thing--it's just that energy is mass caught upon the fourth expanding dimension, and thus it surfs along at "c."
Well, I would call all of this a massive unification in teh relam of physics--all based on a simple *physical* model and equation. I imagine this is just the tip of the iceberg of everything implied by this new physical model that rests upon a hitherto unsung feature of the universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt=ic.
Today is a great day for celebration, as after 100 years or so, we have been liberated from the block universe, and time has been unfrozen.
A more fundamental universal invariant has been discovered--one which weaves change into the fundamental fabric of spcaetime, while granting us free will and the flow of time we perceive and observe in the very act of measurement, liberating us from the block universe, and providing a fundamental, bedrock principle from which all of relativity arises, along with time and its arrows. And too, we get a *physical* model for entropy, entanglement, and nonlocality.
And even moreso, we return to teh heroic age of physics. A lone individual arises to exalt entities, such as simple posutlates and equations, that were the hallmark of that nobler age of physics. Behold MDT's simple postulate and equation which unify diverse physical phenomena in a common principle.
Moving Dimensions Theory—which regards time as an emergent phenomena—was inspired in part by Einstein’s words pertaining to the higher purpose of physical theories--words which ought be nailed above the door of every physics department, so as to liberate us from frozen time and frozen physics: “Before I enter upon a critique of mechanics as a foundation of physics, something of a broadly general nature will first have to be said concerning the points of view according to which it is possible to criticize physical theories at all. The first point of view is obvious: The theory must not contradict empirical facts. . . The second point of view is not concerned with the relation to the material of observation but with the premises of the theory itself, with what may briefly but vaguely be characterized as the "naturalness" or "logical simplicity" of the premises (of the basic concepts and of the relations between these which are taken as a basis). This point of view, an exact formulation of which meets with great difficulties, has played an important role in the selection and evaluation of theories since time immemorial.”
MDT meets, manifests, and exalts all of Einsteine's criterion, enumerated above.
"The purpose of science is not to analyse or describe but to make useful models of the world. A model is useful if it allows us to get use out of it." --Edward De Bono, (b. 1933) Psychologist & Author
MDT allows us to get relativity, entropy, entanglement, nonlocality, time and all its arrows and assymetries, Huygens' principle and other physical phenomena. I would imagine that this is just the tip of the iceberg. If QM and GR are to be unified, perhaps MDT points the way, a sit already shows that phenonema in both QM and relativity can be accounted for with a common principle--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt = ic.
And too the EPR Paradox is resolved via a simple scientific principle: “By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.”
--Galileo Galilei
dx4/dt=ic is a fact of the universe. The fourth dimension is expanidng relative to the three spatial dimensions. "Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty.” --Galileo Galilei
"To command the professors of astronomy to confute their own observations is to enjoin an impossibility, for it is to command them not to see what they do see, and not to understand what they do understand, and to find what they do not discover.” --Galileo Galilei. Today we are commanded to "forget time," forget free will, forget entanglement and nonlocality, forget the EPR paradox and Godel's problems with the block universe and time, forget the higher purpose of physics, forget both the foundational questions and foundational papers, and forget Einstein's 1912 Manuscript on Relativity--today we are so often commanded to forget reason, brevity, clarity, and beauty--to forget simple, elegant, unifying postulates and equations. We are told to forget The Great Books, honor, simplicity, Galileo, Newton, and the giants whose shoulders they stood upon.
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." --Isaac Newton
MDT represents a changing of the guard--the Greats are coming on back, beginning with Einstein's 1912 Manuscript on Relativity and Homer's Odyssey, in which we see the first showdown in all of Western literature. And as we know, Bohr loved Westerns:
--http://www.timelinetheatre.com/copenhagen/cpn_stu
dy_guide.pdf
"Bohr fathered many scientific ‘children’. Almost every country in the world has physicists who proudly say, ‘I used to work with Bohr.’” – George Gamow. Movie Westerns: A Thought ExperimentFor Bohr, any event could become a thought problem. George Gamow, in his book, Thirty Years that Shook Physics, says that Bohr loved movie Westerns. He always took his students along to the movies with him to have them explain the plot complications. After one Western, he began to argue with Gamow and some other students about why the good cowboy always shoots the bad guy even though the bad guy always draws his gun first. Bohr theorized that the hero was quicker because he responded on instinct and was not delayed by having to decide when to shoot. To test the hypothesis Gamow bought cap pistols and Bohr spent an afternoon at the Institute shooting his students." --from http://www.timelinetheatre.com/copenhagen/cpn_study_guide.pd
f
Maybe Lubos/Witten/Smolin/Woit need to watch Westerns together and buy some toy guns/water pistols. Fistful of Dollars should be shown before all String Theory/LQG conferences, as it's a story about lone The Man With No Name riding into a town dominated by two warring gangs/bureaucracies--the Baxters and the Rohos--the String Theorists and LQGers. Directed by the Italian genius Sergio Leone, based on the Japanese Samurai film Yojimbo, and shot for less than $200,000 in Spain, the "Spaghetti Western" film launched Clint Eastwood into international stardom. And watching the movie, one realizes something--when the smoke clears, MDT will yet be standing.
Like all classic Westerns, and stories of scientific advancement, Fistful of Dollars exalts the moral individual over the corrupt bureuacracy. This is communicated in the dialogue:
"When a man with a .45 meets a man with a rifle, the man with a pistol is a dead man." -"Ramon" from A Fistful of Dollars --http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/A_Fistful_of_Dollars
"I'll stick with my forty-fives." -"The man with no name" from A Fistful of Dollars
And later, Eastwood states, "When the man with a 45 meets the man with a rifle, you said the man with a pistol is a dead man. Let's see if it's true."
The translation of this is "When the lone scientist with an original idea meets the man with the millions in funding and a posse of graduate students and postocs, the man with the original idea is a dead man."
Now Ramone can wield the rifle like no other. Ramone always shoots for the heart, and never misses, just like String Theory and LQG never fail, as they attract all the greatest postmodern physicists. And Eastwood uses Ramone's arrogance and pride in his marksmanship--the fact that he never misses the heart, to defeat him. Watch and learn:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eeo52VfDfkU
Western science, philosophy, literature, film, all have a common soul--the exaltation of truth, justice, and the humble, heroic indivdiual, from Homer on down; and without that soul--without that lone cowboy--all is for naught.
"Anybody who has been seriously engaged is scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: 'Ye must have faith.' It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with.”" --Max Planck
"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck
But all too often these days, the science bureuacracies encourage the young mercenaries who join them to laugh at, snark, and mock the man with no name's mule:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADzFve-tKnU
All scientists ought read Homer's Odyssey, from where Leone's Masterpieces descends, as well as Thomas Jeffersons' masterpiece--that Declaration of Independence:
"But as we advance in life these things fall off one by one, and I suspect we are left at last with only Homer and Virgil, perhaps with Homer alone." --Thomas Jefferson
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
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Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Oct. 12, 2008 @ 22:57 GMT
Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek wrote an excellent book called the Road to Serfdom, in which he detailed how central-planning and bureaucracy lead not too the advancement of science, truth, and freedom; but to the very opposite. Two awesome chapeters, whose titles tell half the story, are "The End of Truth" and "Why The Worst Get on Top."
"What does it profit a man to gain the world and lose...
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Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek wrote an excellent book called the Road to Serfdom, in which he detailed how central-planning and bureaucracy lead not too the advancement of science, truth, and freedom; but to the very opposite. Two awesome chapeters, whose titles tell half the story, are "The End of Truth" and "Why The Worst Get on Top."
"What does it profit a man to gain the world and lose his soul?" A wise prophet once asked, and so it is that those with lesser souls are the first to sell out the Truth en route to climbing the bureaucratic ladder to the top. Those bureaucrats who are not the true parents of the child/physics/innovation/truth are more content to see it cut in half and thusly destroyed.
Hayek writes, "The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for “conscious” control or “conscious” planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme—while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the superindividual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." –F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom
Max Planck agreed:
"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck
And again we see the primacy of the honest individual in the classic, epic hero's journey!
"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man." --Joseph Campbell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth
It is so often the lone individual--or the few--standing up against the many. Bertrand Russell talked about how "commonly accepted wisdom" is so often wrong, and how, in fact, the more people that beleived something, the more likely it was often wrong! And Galileo held the individual's reason over the rule of the "authorities," who must preserve the bureaurcacy at all costs--even truth and freedom.
Another historical film that exalts the classical Western ideals of Truth, Science, and Freedom--the few standing herocially against the many for classical ideals--is 300:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416449/quotes
"Xerxes: There will be no glory in your sacrifice. I will erase even the memory of Sparta from the histories! Every piece of Greek parchment shall be burned. Every Greek historian, and every scribe shall have their eyes pulled out, and their tongues cut from their mouths. Why, uttering the very name of Sparta, or Leonidas, will be punishable by death! The world will never know you existed at all!
King Leonidas: The world will know that free men stood against a tyrant, that few stood against many, and before this battle was over, even a god-king can bleed."
--from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416449/quotes
watch it at youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZBMFX-Yt68&feature=related
Th
e film is based on the true story about how 300 Sparatns faced down a much-larger force, and thusly preserved the Western ideals of freedom, which so many seem to be forgetting these days across all realm, where all too many say one thing while holding in their hearts another.
"As I detest the doorways of Death, I detest that man who hides one thing. in the depths of his heart and speaks forth another." Achilles, The Ilaid
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.
I would like to add something that's not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you're talking as a scientist. I am not trying to tell you what to do about cheating on your wife, or fooling your girlfriend, or something like that, when you're not trying to be a scientist, but just trying to be an ordinary human being. We'll leave those problems up to you and your rabbi. I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen." --R.P. Feynman, http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/cargocul.htm
Nobel Laureate (for literature) William Golding wrote, "A little of Leonidas lies in the fact that I can go where I like and write what I like. He contributed to set us free."
One can almost hear the modern god-kings/administrators, who so often over-hype their own theories to raise funding, as Feynman suggests, "For example, I was a little surprised when I was talking to a friend who was going to go on the radio. He does work on cosmology and astronomy, and he wondered how he would explain what the applications of this work were. "Well," I said, "there aren't any." He said, "Yes, but then we won't get support for more research of this kind." I think that's kind of dishonest. If you're representing yourself as a scientist, then you should explain to the layman what you're doing--and if they don't want to support you under those circumstances, then that's their decision." --http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/cargocul.htm
Yes, one can hear modern Xerxes/god-kings/administrators:
Modern god-kings/administrators/Xerxes: "There will be no glory in your sacrifice. I will erase even the memory of Moving Dimensions Theory from the histories! Every piece of Einstein's 1912 Manscript shall be burned. Every physicist who references foundational papers, and every scribe who asks foundational questions shall have their eyes pulled out, and their tongues cut from their mouths. Why, uttering the very name of Galileo, or MDT, will be punishable by death! The world will never know you existed at all!"
Well, it's not quite that severe, but there are a lot of humorous parallels!
In addition to being about the hitherto unsung reality of the fourth expanding dimension (dx4/dt=ic)--and the fundamental invariant's wide-ranging implications and unifications across all realms of physics, the final book about MDT is going to be about the classic, epic "Hero's Journey" that defines the Western soul, film, literature, and science--how we lost it, and how we can get it back by rendering classical ideals real on our own hero's journeys.
For what doe sit profit a man to gain the world--to gain knowledge and science--and lose his soul? As has been seen over the past several decades, without that classic, epic soul, theoretical science comes to a standstill.
Perhaps the most heroic Socrates--the mentor to Plato who inscribed "Let no one ignorant of geometry enter" above his Academy--was right about the importances of putting the horse before cart, "For this is the command of God, as I would have you know; and I believe that to this day no greater good has ever happened in the state than my service to the God. For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons and your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue come money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, my influence is ruinous indeed. But if anyone says that this is not my teaching, he is speaking an untruth. Wherefore, O men of Athens, I say to you, do as Anytus bids or not as Anytus bids, and either acquit me or not; but whatever you do, know that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times."
And again, Socrates exalts Achilles' courage, for all the Greeks reveled in Homer, inclduing those original physicists--Plato and Aristotle:
"Someone will say: And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end? To him I may fairly answer: There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong - acting the part of a good man or of a bad. Whereas, according to your view, the heroes who fell at Troy were not good for much, and the son of Thetis above all, who altogether despised danger in comparison with disgrace; and when his goddess mother said to him, in his eagerness to slay Hector, that if he avenged his companion Patroclus, and slew Hector, he would die himself - "Fate," as she said, "waits upon you next after Hector"; he, hearing this, utterly despised danger and death, and instead of fearing them, feared rather to live in dishonor, and not to avenge his friend. "Let me die next," he replies, "and be avenged of my enemy, rather than abide here by the beaked ships, a scorn and a burden of the earth." Had Achilles any thought of death and danger? For wherever a man's place is, whether the place which he has chosen or that in which he has been placed by a commander, there he ought to remain in the hour of danger; he should not think of death or of anything, but of disgrace. And this, O men of Athens, is a true saying." --Socrates, http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/apology.html
And I guess that My Commander has placed me at the helm of MDT, and "For wherever a man's place is, whether the place which he has chosen or that in which he has been placed by a commander, there he ought to remain in the hour of danger; he should not think of death or grants or funding or tenure or anything, but of disgrace. And this, O men of Athens, is a true saying."
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
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Kyle "the pliers" Gallahue wrote on Oct. 13, 2008 @ 13:34 GMT
Dear Dr. E (the real one),
As you see, the anonymous coward did his hit-and-run thing again. Someone forged your identity, just like several posts back, copying excerpts from your earlier posts. I know you wouldn’t have done this, since we tacitly yet honestly and sincerely agreed that you wouldn’t be posting rants and quotations about Western cowboys and ancient heroes as replies to my posts.
To the anonymous coward:
Whoever you are, take note: you can’t fool me! I know it’s you, the forger, and this became obvious to me the moment you switched from physics to cowboys and cattle, Homer, King Leonaides, and Socrates. And you did it in too obvious a manner, anonymous coward. Dr. E would never be so inconsiderate to dump into our faces a full 11 pages of irrelevant junk. Taking advantage of Dr. E’s obvious temporary inattention to this discussion, you grabbed the chance to fool everybody again. But you can’t fool Dr. Kyle Gallahue, the physicist! Get out of our way, anonymous wretch!
To the real Dr. E (again):
I’ll be waiting until you come back, Elliot, and inform our readers that the above two posts aren’t yours, as I’m sure they aren’t. All the best to you, in case you are sick or something and couldn’t check your blog recently.
Kyle
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Oct. 13, 2008 @ 18:06 GMT
300 and Fistful of Dollars are actually two of my favorite movies! I'd give anything to watch Westerns with Bohr & Gamow! How cool would that be! Sometimes I actually wish that MDT wasn't right, and that we did, in fact, live in a block universe, so that I could travel back on Michio Kaku's/Paul Davies' time machine and watch a western or two with Bohr. And we'd invite Boltzman too. It's sad...
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300 and Fistful of Dollars are actually two of my favorite movies! I'd give anything to watch Westerns with Bohr & Gamow! How cool would that be! Sometimes I actually wish that MDT wasn't right, and that we did, in fact, live in a block universe, so that I could travel back on Michio Kaku's/Paul Davies' time machine and watch a western or two with Bohr. And we'd invite Boltzman too. It's sad that Boltzman passed on never knowing how great a success his theory was to become. Would be fun to travel on back and meet King Leonidas too.
One of the great things about MDT is that it is helping fellow physicists in solving long-recognized problems and resolving paradoxes. The EPR Paradox is resolved via the inherent nonlocality of the fourth expanding dimension (which desribes the photon perfectly), and Godel's problems with time in the block universe that relativity seemingly implied are done away with.
A great book that everyone should read is Lee Smolin's THE TROUBLE WITH PHYSICS: THE RISE OF STRING THEORY, THE FALL OF SCIENCE, AND WHAT COMES NEXT.
Here are some quotes from your rockin' book and my responses:
"Thus all the theories that triumphed had consequences for experiment that were simple to work out and could be tested within a few years. This does not mean that the theories could solved exactly--most theories never are. But it does mean that physical insight lead immediately to a prediction of a new physical effect." -Lee Smolin, The trouble With Physics, The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of Science, and What Comes Next
MDT presents a new, deeper, hitherto unsung physical invariance from where all of relativity arises. It also explains physical phenomena such as entanglement and action-at-a-distance as never before, with teh very sme postualte and euqation that account for relativity. And thus it also unifies relativity and QM with a simple *physical* model, which alos accounts for time and all its arrows and assymetries across all realms. MDT shows that quantum mechanical, relativistic, and entropic phenomena derive from the same underlying physical reality--a fourth dimension that is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
Lee writes in TTWP, "Whatever else one says about string theory, loop quantum gravity, and other approaches, they have not delivered on that front. The standard excuse has been that experiments on this scale are impossible to perform-but, as we've seen, this is not the case. So there must be another reason. I believe there is something basic we are all missing, some wrong assumption we are all making. If this is so, then we need to isolate the wrong assumption and replace it with a new idea." -Lee Smolin, The trouble With Physics, The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of Science, and What Comes Next
The wrong assumption originates from the confusion of time with the fourth dimension. Time is not the fourth dimension, but it is an emergent phenomenon that arises from a fourth dimension that is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. Time inherits certain properties of the fourth dimension, but the over-extending of the dimensionality of time has lead to troubling and ridiculous situations such as Godel's block universe, wherein time is frozen; and wherein the past, present, and future already exist.
The fourth dimension expands at the rate of c in units of the Planck length. Thus macroscopic objects rarely ever enter into the fourth expanding dimension deeper than the Planck length. A photon is matter that surfs the expanding fourth dimension, jumping from crest to crest of all the tiny expansions of the fourth dimension which manifest themselves as expanding spheres of locality in the three spatial dimensions. Thus a photon appears as a nonlocal, spherically-symmetric expanding wavefront of probability in the three spatial dimensions. Furthermore, a photon does not age as it stays in the exact same place in the fourth expanding dimension, causing its nonlocal, expanding probability wave to translate with a velocity of c in the three spatial dimensions. The expansion of this nonlocal, spherically-symmetric probability distribution that desribes the photon's motion is a most fundamental clue that practically screams at us that the fourth dimension is expanidng relative to the the three spatial dimensions, as a photon remains stationary in the fourth dimension, and thus a photon's spherically-symmetric expanidng wavefront defines a locality in the fourth dimension, no matter how large it gets. Ergo nonlocality and entanglement.
Lee Smolin continues in TTWP, "What could that wrong assumption be? My guess is that it involves two things: the foundations of quantum mechanics and the nature of time. We have already discussed the first; I find it hopeful that new ideas about quantum mechanics have been proposed recently, motivated by studies of quantum gravity. But I strongly suspect that the key is time. More and more, I have the feeling that quantum theory and general relativity are both deeply wrong about the nature of time. It is not enough to combine them. There is a deeper problem, perhaps going back to the origin of physics." -Lee Smolin, The trouble With Physics, The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of Science, and What Comes Next
MDT takes us back to the origin of physics, and it presents us with a fundamental view of reality that conforms to all experimental evidence, while not only resolving the paradoxes of the non-locality of the EPR effect and Godel's block universe, but unifying the resolution within a simple physical postulate. Before Einstein's relativity, space and time (as well as matter and energy) were considered to be disparate entities. Einstein's relativity united them, and suddenly time was mistakenly seen as the fourth dimension, rather than as an emergent property of a fourth dimension expanding relative to three spatial dimensions. Then, when Einstein correctly saw that all moving objects are shortened when energy is added-when they are rotated out of the three spatial dimensions and into a fourth dimension-just as a far-away ruler appears shortened as it is rotated, Einstein had the genius to call upon a the four-dimensional formulation of space-time.
However, this lead to confusion; as Einstein did not see that macroscopic object's-rest masses-never enter the fourth dimension deeper than the Planck length. Hence the past and future do not yet exist, but only the present. Nor did Einstein realize that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions-a simple postulate with far-reaching consequences.
Both Einstein and Minkowski wrote x4 = ict, but they never saw that this naturally implied dx4/dt = ic.
And Einstein's Relativity may be derived from dx4/dt= ic, which represents a more fundamental invariance of this universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. Einstein introduced relativity as a principle--as a law of nature not deduced from anything else, and well, I guess I was dumb enough to ask, 'why relativity?' And I found the answer in a more fundamental invariance--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt = ic.
And not only can all of relativity be derived from this, but suddenly we are liberated from the block universe and time and progress in theoretical physics are unfrozen. And change is seen in a most fundamental equation that weaves change into the very fabric of space-time, where it needs to be, as change pervades every realm of physics and all acts of *physical* measurement. And suddenly we have a *physical* model for entropy, time and its arrows and assymetries in all realms, free will, and quantum mechanics' nonlocality, entanglement, and wave-particle duality. The fourth expanding dimension distributes locality, fathering time. MDT accounts for the constant speed of light c--both its independence of the source and its independence of the velocity of the observer, while establishing c as the fastest, slowest, and only velocity for all entities and objects moving through space-time, as well as the maximum velocity that anything is measured to move. And suddenly we see a *physical* basis for the dualities--for space/time, wave/matter, and energy/mass or E=mc^2. Energy and mass are the same thing--it's just that energy is mass caught upon the fourth expanding dimension, and thus it surfs along at "c."
Dr. Lee Smolin continues in TTWP, "Around the beginning of the seventeenth century, Descartes and Galileo made a wonderful discovery: You could draw a graph, with one axis being space and the other being time. A motion through space then becomes a curve on the graph. In this way, time is represented as if it were another dimension of space. Motion is frozen, and a whole history of constant motion and change is presented to us as something static and unchanging. If I had to guess (and guessing is what I do for a living), this is the scene of the crime". -Lee Smolin, The trouble With Physics, The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of Science, and What Comes Next
MDT unfreezes time, liberating us all with free will-the free will to move beyond ST & LQG, which are not inextricably locked into the fixed future of the block universe as Brian Green et al might have you suppose. Neither the future nor the past exists. Motion is inherent in the underlying four-dimensional space-time geometry, as the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
Finally a postualte and equation step forth to weave change into the fundamental fabric of space-time!
Einstein noted that all objects are moving through space-time at the velocity c. This never changes. An object stationary in the three spatial dimensions is translating through the fourth dimension at the rate of c. An object stationary in the fourth dimension-a photon-is translating through the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c. Hence it is obvious that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
String Theory's greatest contribution to physics has been the utter rejection of the obvious, the denial of common sense, and the institutionalization of thousands of mediocrities to ignore or shout-down any physics that might get in the way of their vast commercial industries which must trump truth-their salaries, benefits, and science-fiction books. Indeed, ST gives full license to make one's ignorance one's arrogance, and thus it is the breeding ground for those with ambitions overshadowing their talents.
Lee Smolin writes in TTWP, "We have to find a way to unfreeze time-to represent time without turning it into space. I have to idea how to do this. I can't conceive of a mathematics that doesn't represent a world as if it were frozen it eternity. It's terribly hard to represent time, and that's why there's a good chance this representation is the missing piece." -Lee Smolin, The trouble With Physics, The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of Science, and What Comes Next
MDT unfreezes time, as well as progress in theoretical physics, and liberates us from the block universe!
There actually is no problem with the representation of time in physical theories, but only within the interpretations and extrapolations of modern theorists. Time, as it is defined, works perfectly in quantum mechanics and relativity, as it does in Newtonian mechanics and classical electrodynamics. Hence our cars and computers which work perfectly well each and every day.
However, when the notion of time is warped and extrapolated to suit the fantasies of prominent physicists who ignore login, reason, and experiment, in order to create wormholes and time machines, it only goes to show that time is not the fourth dimension, but an emergent property of a universe wherein a fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
Lee Smolin continues in TTWP, "One thing is clear: I can't get anywhere thinking about this problem within the confines of string theory. Since string theory is limited to the description of strings and branes moving in fixed background spacetime geometries, it offers nothing for someone who wants to break new ground thinking about the nature of time or of quantum theory. Background-independent approaches offer a better starting point, because they have already transcended the classical pictures of space and time. And they are simple to define and easy to play with." -Lee Smolin, The trouble With Physics, The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of Science, and What Comes Next
Indeed String Theory has banned asking the questions that MDT addresses, such as "What is the nature of the physical framework underlying the observed phenomena of relativity and quantum mechanics?" String theory has bred an entire generation of physicists who believe that politics, hype, and name-calling are to be preferred over logic, reason, and truth to advance physics. String Theory, though funded with hundreds of millions, yet lacks the simple truth and beauty of this postulate and equation--"the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. dx4/dt =ic." It is almost as if simple postulates and equations representing simple physical truths have been banned form physics, along with physics.
Dr. Smolin continues in TTWP, "I won't say any more about this, because I want to move on to a different question. Suppose an intellectually ambitious young person with an original and impatient mind wants to think deeply about the five great questions. Given our failure to solve any of them, I can't imagine why such a person would want to be limited to working in any of the current research programs. Clearly, if string theory or loop quantum gravity by themselves were the answer, we would know it by now. They may be starting points, they may be parts of the answer, they may contain necessary lessons. But the right theory must contain new elements, which our ambitious young person is perhaps uniquely qualified to search for." -Lee Smolin, The trouble With Physics, The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of Science, and What Comes Next
Everyone should read George Orwell's Animal Farm.
Perhaps the excessive funding of theories never backed by experiment, nor logic, simplicity, elegance, and reason for that matter, has resulted in institutions that now oppose the advancement of physics. Remember how in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 the firemen existed to light fires and burn books, and not to save them? Well, is it any wonder that Esinetin's 1912 Manuscript is never assigned by the current regime, nor any of the other foundational papers? Imagine a school that assigned the foundational papers in every class! Why not learn relativity from Einstein's 1912 Manuscript? Perhaps then we'll see that he never said that time is the fourth dimension, but rather that x4 = ict.
With mortgages to be paid and families to be supported, who can afford truth and beauty after investing thirty years into mythology and groupthink? Smolin is to be commended for firing a warning shot across the bow of all young physicists--letting them know that they, if they are to be true physicists, are essentially on their own. For the advancement of science has ever been the domain of the individual, as has the creation of all lasting art, philosophy, literature, and culture. Make no mistake-the individual truth seeker is not alone in the context of the greats-they stand upon the shoulders of giants-but they are often alone in the context of their contemporaries. String Theory, by deconstructing great physicists and science, has tried to invert this, placing politics over philosophy and money over meaning, and that is why they are destined to fail. For as Shakespeare said, "foul deeds will rise, thou all the earth overwhelm them, to men's eyes."
Smolin continues in TTWP, "What has my generation has bequeathed to these young scientists? Ideas and techniques they may or may not want to use, together with a cautionary tale of partial success in several directions, resulting in a general failure to finish the job Einstein started a hundred years ago. The worst thing we could do would be to hold them back by insisting that they work on our ideas. So the question for the last part of the book is a question I ask myself every morning: Are we doing all we can to support and encourage young scientists--and, by the virtue of this, ourselves--to transcend what we have done these last thirty years and find the true theory that solves the five greatest problems in physics?" -Lee Smolin, The trouble With Physics, The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of Science, and What Comes Next
Well, I guess the jury is still out on all this. But Max Planck warns us about the centralization of funding and power, as well as the micromanaging of curiosity:
"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." --Max Planck
"Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds." --Einstein (e.g. Boltzman, Bruno, Galileo, Socrates, Dante, Jesus)
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing." --Einstein. And the big questions which have driven science have always been asked by an individual.
"Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity." --Einstein. It is interesting to point out that neither ST nor LQG really have equations, nor meaningful postulates, for that matter. Contrast this to MDT: dx4/dt=ic: the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatail dimensions.
"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge." --Einstein. Yes--the truth does set us free, from the block universe and frozen time and progress in theoretical physics.
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
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Kyle "the pliers" Gallahue wrote on Oct. 14, 2008 @ 14:52 GMT
Ahem…
Given that there were no “disowning statements” by the real-real-real McCoy (a.k.a. Dr. E) regarding the previous posts for several days now, I have to admit only one possibility: that they were written by Dr. E himself. So I now turn to talking to him again.
Dear Elliot,
You seem to have misunderstood my tolerance limits. I was willing to give it a try and...
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Ahem…
Given that there were no “disowning statements” by the real-real-real McCoy (a.k.a. Dr. E) regarding the previous posts for several days now, I have to admit only one possibility: that they were written by Dr. E himself. So I now turn to talking to him again.
Dear Elliot,
You seem to have misunderstood my tolerance limits. I was willing to give it a try and understand your ideas about space and time, but I thought we had agreed on some rules. Instead, you violated those rules, posting again in a self-unrestrained manner, repeating yourself for the umpteenth time, quoting the quotations you have posted time and again, to the point of inanity. Very well, as you wish, Elliot. However, do you remember the dictum “The customer is always right?” In this case, the customer is I, wanting to “buy” your views. I really wanted it. If you don’t want to sell, suit yourself, or rather, from now on speak only to yourself. It’s not my fault if you’re a bad seller--indeed, the worst I’ve ever seen.
Focusing for the last time on physics, here is what I see: I asked you how relativity follows from your MDT, and what did I get as an answer? “Consider a 4D universe in which the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic. Ergo Einstein's Relativity.” You repeated this non-sequitur (“Ergo Einstein's Relativity”) four times. Well, sorry to inform you, but from what you’ve shown in your essay so far, Einstein’s relativity most definitely does NOT follow from your dx4/dt=ic. What follows from that relation is something like x4=ict+C, where C is some constant that depends on initial conditions. But that’s NOT relativity. Special relativity follows partially from s=ct, which weaves space and time into one inseparable whole, not from x4=ict, which keeps s (three dimensional space) separable from t, thus implying a Galilean geometry for 3-d space + 1-d time--an absolute, Newtonian time, mind you. You’ve misunderstood the role of x4=ict in Einstein’s 1912 paper. I would advise you to take another look at that paper and try to understand it better, had you not convinced me by now that you can’t understand anything deeply, and you’re prone to misinterpret everything--even my intention to understand you. You’ll misinterpret that, too, lumping me into the mass of your supposed “prosecutors”, who supposedly want to quiet your voice.
No Elliot, I really wanted to understand you, but you don’t seem to be able to help your case. I asked you to show me how relativity follows from your only assumption, and instead of that you asked me to find it out by myself: “Read my paper and Einstein's 1912 Manuscipt[sic] of Relativity and you will see that it really is that simple”, you wrote. This, Elliot, is as if you want to sell some miracle toaster, which you advertise as loud as you can, and when the customer comes and asks you to explain how your wonder toaster works, you tell him “Go and figure that out by yourself, you idiot! And buy my toaster now!” Well, I guess I’d be a true idiot if I bought your toaster under such circumstances.
In any case, my conclusion is you can’t understand many things. Most important, you can’t understand what the people who want to converse with you are asking from you. Keep talking then, but this time only to yourself. (I don’t know if you noticed, but for the past several days you’ve been talking only to me and none else.)
Bye-bye blog,
Kyle
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Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Oct. 14, 2008 @ 17:43 GMT
The late professor J.A. Wheeler--"the last notable figure from the heroic age of physics lingering among us — a man who could claim to be the student of Bohr, teacher of Feynman, and close colleague of Einstein"--was a very, very humble man, considering his massive accomplishments; and very kind to give me the time of day, with that eternal twinkle in his eye, which shines on, even though he has...
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The late professor J.A. Wheeler--"the last notable figure from the heroic age of physics lingering among us — a man who could claim to be the student of Bohr, teacher of Feynman, and close colleague of Einstein"--was a very, very humble man, considering his massive accomplishments; and very kind to give me the time of day, with that eternal twinkle in his eye, which shines on, even though he has departed this world. So often it is that the
Greats have Great Humility, and Benjamin Franklin's thirteenth, and most important precept, was "Humility: Imitate Scorates and Jesus."
I remember Wheeler clenching his fist one day while looking out the window of his Jadwin Hall office, and stating that "today's world lacks the noble," and then turning and smiling and saying, "and it's your generation's job to bring it back." I was just a twenty-year-old junior, nodding silently and anxiously in agreement, and those words have stayed with me and meant more and more over the years, as they seem to explain so much about postmodern life--our disregard for the classical eternities and Einstein's 1912 Manuscript (which I get the feeling nbody here has yet read, or is going to read), and our arrogance that has lead to the current financial crisis/wealth transfer to the top, the breakdown of the family, and the resounding lack of progress in physics, other than the progress that has been made by deconstructing the classics, which tends to work better in realms that do not require empirical evidence.
I also remember standing in PJ Peebles' office that year, when I had him for quantum mechanics, and asking him, "when a photon is emitted from a light bulb, do we really not know where it's headed? Is it really just a probabilistic wave expanding at the rate of c?" "Yes," he said. And that stuck with me, because this is what quantum mechanics telles us. And relativity tells us that the ageless photon stays in the exact same place in the fourth expanding dimension. Ergo the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. dx4/dt = ic. It really is that simple, and yet the world yet refuses to see. But the world shall.
It was many years later that I wrote that equation down, but somehow I sensed it that year, walking between Peebles' and Wheelers' offices. Somehow I sensed the block universe did not exist, and I knew that someday I would rise to free time and liberate us from frozen time and frozen theoretical physics.
Legend has it that Einstein eventually came up with relativity because he so often contemplated what it would be like to catch up with light--a pursuit which began in his childhood. I often wonder, had Einstein known that light actually propagates as a spherically-symmetric probabilistic wavefront at the rate of c--had he actually known quantum mechanics--would he have seen that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt=ic?
What's really funny to me is not that people try to refute MDT, but that they try to refute the timeless, ageless photon, free will, quantum entanglement, nonlocality, entropy, time and all its arrows and assymetries, simple math, elegance, relativity, and novel physical theories that come with a postulate and equation.
MDT: The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic
What's even funnier to me is that while refuting the obvious, profound, and simple, people stubbornly want to hold onto the block universe, time travel into the past, wormholes, tiny little vibrating strings and loops that make different colors of light travel at different c's, hyperspace, and other complete and unadalturated mythologies which don't make logical sense, and which have no empirical basis whatsoever. I have often made the joke that parallel universes, which are supposedly always popping in and out of existence, exist just long enough for theoretical physicists to get tenure, but disappear before the experimentalists can get tenure.
And yet, I maintain that physics ought be about *physics.*
Hundreds of years from now someone will read these words and know that one lone cowboy stoop apart the madding crowd to state what he sees, to state what he saw.
Both Einstein and Minkowski wrote x4 = ict, but they never saw that this naturally implied dx4/dt = ic. All of relativity is right--it's just that change is now forever wedded into the fundamental fabric of spacetime with dx4/dt = ic. I know they will ignore this and continue to raise tens of millions for mytholgies, while training grad students in the art of sycophancy, thuggery, and anonimity, and picking the best to reward with a few pennies now and then from their millions, as senior citizen physicists dictate the questions, banning those who wer eborn with their own curiosities, like Einstein, Newton, Bruno, Galileo, and every other scientist and artist who has ever contributed to art and science.
And Einstein's Relativity may be derived from dx4/dt= ic, which represents a more fundamental invariance of this universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. Einstein introduced relativity as a principle--as a law of nature not deduced from anything else, and well, I guess I was dumb enough to ask, 'why relativity?' And I found the answer in a more fundamental invariance--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt = ic.
And not only can all of relativity be derived from this, but suddenly we are liberated from the block universe and time and progress in theoretical physics are unfrozen. And change is seen in a most fundamental equation that *weaves* change into the very fabric of space-time, where it needs to be, as change pervades every realm of physics and all acts of *physical* measurement. And suddenly we have a *physical* model for entropy, time and its arrows and assymetries in all realms, free will, and quantum mechanics' nonlocality, entanglement, and wave-particle duality. The fourth expanding dimension distributes locality, fathering time. MDT accounts for the constant speed of light c--both its independence of the source and its independence of the velocity of the observer, while establishing c as the fastest, slowest, and only velocity for all entities and objects moving through space-time, as well as the maximum velocity that anything is measured to move. And suddenly we see a *physical* basis for the dualities--for space/time, wave/matter, and energy/mass or E=mc^2. Energy and mass are the same thing--it's just that energy is mass caught upon the fourth expanding dimension, and thus it surfs along at "c."
The biggest tragedy of postmodern physics is not that it doesn't accomplish anything, but that it has banned the asking of foundational questions, without which, nothing can be accomplished.
MDT asks, and *answers*, the following, all with its simple postulate and equation:
What is the *physical* reason for length contraction? What *physical* entities of this universe give rise to length contraction? What deeper *physical* reality dictates that any moving object must be foreshortened in the direction of its motion? What is *physically* going on on a deeper level? There must be some *primary* cause--some universal invariant--for length contraction, time dilation, entropy, entanglement, nonlocality, and time and all its arrows and assymetries, and all the dualities--space/time, mass/energy, and wave/particle.
And then, as time went on, I found I was able to answer a wide array of foundational questions with: "Because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimension: dx4/dt = ic." And I went back to Einstein's original words in his 1912 Manuscript and found that he had never quite provided a deeper motivation for setting x4 = ict, other than that it works! Well, x4 = ict because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
And this small recognition of a primary universal invariant answered an abundance of questions with a *physical* model. And when diverse questions spanning all realms of physics are answered by a common *physical* model, surely that points the way towards unification!
One reason I think String Theory and Loop Quantum Gravity have not made much progress is because they have not been asking the fundamental questions I enumerate below. Rather, a system is set up where grad students and postdocs apply for grants to work on questions asked by the people with the funding, who while not ebing successful at physics, have been quite successful at science fiction and raising funds. Max Planck, Joseph Campbell, and F.A. Hayek all tell us why this does not work:
"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck
And again we see the primacy of the honest individual in the classic, epic hero's journey!
"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man." --Joseph Campbell
In King Arthur's Court, is was dishonorable for a knight to follow another knight into the woods, but rather they had to find their *own* path, like Dante did.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth
And the Nobel Laureate economist F.A. Hayek agrees!
"The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for “conscious” control or “conscious” planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme—while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the super-individual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." –F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom
So it is that in asking my own questions, I had to find my own way through the woods. And in Arthurian Legend, which Joseph Campbell oft talks about, it is dishonorable to follow someone else's path through the forest, but instead, one must blaze one's own trail. Dante starts off alone in this dark woods in the Divine Comedy, and Morpheus tells Neo, "there is a difference between knowing the path and walking it." "I can tell you of the way, but you must find it and walk it on your own."
Could you ever imagine Eisenstein working on something he wasn't naturally curious about? The Greats were never sycophants, but that is exactly who today's funders surround themselves with. Pete Woit blogged aboutthe sycophancy in American academia.
Here are some of the questions that are answered with Moving Dimensions Theory's simple postulate and equation: "because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic."
I know it is a crime to ask such questions, another crime to answer them, and yet another crime to answer them with a simple postualte and equation, as postualtes and equations represeting hitherto unsung *physical* realties have been outlawed, and the top grad students and postdocs are regularly sent forth to detroy them, while wearing masks, in the dark of night, for all sycophants must eventually transform into anonymous cowards,as the Nobel laureate economist hints at in his two chapters "The End of Truth," and "Why The Worst Get on Top."
But, yet, the fourth dimension moves. "E pur si muove!" as Galileo atated. We have been liberated from frozen time and the block universe! Ergo I have free will, and I shall use it to both ask and answer foundational questions in physics via MDT's simple elgance and beauty.
Below are some of the questions that are answered with Moving Dimensions Theory's simple postulate and equation: "because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic."
0. Why time? Why time’s arrows and asymmetries?
0.1 Why relativity? Why the principle of relativity? What deeper physical reality underlies relativity?
0.2 Why entanglement and nonlocality?
1. Why is light’s velocity a constant c? Why relativity's postulates?
2. Why is light’s velocity c independent of its source?
3. Why is it that nothing can travel faster than c?
4. Why does a photon, which travels at c, not age?
5. Why does a photon’s spherically-symmetric probablistic wavefront define simultaneity—a locality in the fourth dimension?
6. Why are energy and mass equivalent? Why E=mc^2?
7. Why do all of time’s arrows point in the same direction—towards dissipation, decoherence, and entropy?
8. Why do so many physicists say time is the fourth dimension, when Einstein never said x4 is time, but instead said x4 = ict?
9. Why can matter can appear as energy or mass?
10. Why is it that when matter appears as pure energy, it propagates at c through space?
11. Why does all matter have particle—local—and wave—nonlocal—properties?
12. Why does all energy have particle—local—and wave—nonlocal—properties?
13. Why is it that when matter appears as stationary mass it propagates at c through the fourth dimension?
14. Why is it that when matter appears as energy, it propagates at c through the three spatial dimensions?
15. Why is it that to move at c through space is to stand still in the fourth dimension?
16. Why is it that to move at c through the fourth dimension is to stand still in space?
17. Why is it that all objects move at but one speed through space-time—c?
18. Why is the universe expanding?
19. Why does radiation expand outwards, but not inwards?
20. Why do we see retarded waves, but not advanced?
21. Why is it that entropy imitates the general motion of all radiation and the universe’s expansion—a spherically-symmetric expanding wave?
22. Why is it that Huygens’ Principle, which underlies all reality ranging from QED to Feynman’s many-paths, to classical physics, state that every point of a spherically-expanding wavefront is in turn a spherically-expanding wavefront?
23. Why are all photons described by a spherically-expanding wavefront propagating at c?
24. Why is it that two initially-interacting photons remain entangled, no matter how far they travel apart?
25. Why is it that two initially-interacting photons remain the exact same age, no matter how far they travel apart?
26. Why is it that Young’s double-slit experiments show that both mass and energy have nonlocal wave properties?
27. Why is it that the collapse of the wave function is immediate in the photoelectric effect, and all other experiments?
28. Why is there no way for an object to gain velocity without being reduced in length via relativistic length contraction?
29. Why does a photon trace out a null vector through space-time? How can movement across the universe describe a path of zero length?
30. Why does time’s arrow point in a definitive direction?
21. Why does entropy increase?
32. Why do moving clocks run slow?
33. Why is time travel into the past impossible?
34. Why does free will exist?
35. Why is it that time is not frozen—-how come the block universe does not exist? Why do we have free will?
36. Why does a photon’s probabilistic wavefront travel at c?
37. Why is the velocity of quantum entanglement c? Why is it that only initially interacting particles can yet be entangled? Why is it that they must first share a common locality or origin, in order to share an entangled nonlocality when they are separated?
38. Why is it that in Schrodinger's equation, the first derivative with respect to the fourth dimension is proportional to the second derivative with the respect to the three spatial dimensions? Any change in position in the fourth expanding dimension is an acceleration in the three spatial dimensions.
39. Why is it that a photon emitted from the sun is red-shifted as it travels away? It's wavelength appears longer as it is measured against space that is less-stretched. A photon inherits the local geometry of the space-time where it was emitted.
40. Why do clocks in gravitational fields run slow?
41. Why are photons red-shifted as they move away from massive objects, and blue-shifted as they move towards them?
42. Why the conservation laws? Why does an object maintain its rotation in space-time, unless acted upon by an exterior force?
43. Why is the velocity of every object through space-time c?
44. Why is it that the only way to stay stationary in the fourth dimension is to move at c through the three spatial dimensions?
45. Why is it that the only way to remain stationary in the three spatial dimensions is to move at c relative to the fourth dimension?
46. Why does a photon have zero rest mass, and how does zero rest mass imply the velocity of light? None of the object’s matter exists in the three spatial dimensions, but only in the fourth expanding dimension.
47. Why time's arrows?
48. Why time's asymmetries?
49. Why entropy?
50. Why is there an i in x4=ict?
51. Why is the velocity of light both independent of the velocity of the source and the velocity of the observer?
52. Why are light, time, and measurement so fundamentally related?
53. Why the - sign in-front of x4 in the space-time metric? What is different about x4?
Well, MDT answers all theses questions, and more, with a simple physical postulate and equation: "The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions or dx4/dt = ic."
Over the years, MDT has provided a *physical* model that answered these and other questions, unifying diverse fields and physical phenomena in a common, simple principle.
Now as MDT unfreezes both time and progress in theoretical physics, it will be opposed by many. Furthmore, as MDT explains away wormholes and time travel into the past, which have never been seen but yet form the foundations of many modern religions adhered to by geometric mystics and soothsayers, it will be opposed even more. As MDT provides a simple equation and postulate that hearken on back to the heroic age of physics, instead of presenting indecipherable math that can be used to raise massive funding for some groupthink Matrix/corporate-state/MTV show, it will be opposed even more, by those in The Matrix who have nothing to gain by simple truth and beauty, and so much to lose--their illusions of grandeur.
I think all the questions started back in the late eighties/early nineties with "why length contraction?"
Why does an object become foreshortened in the direction of its motion? Why is it that the only way for something to move is to become shorter in the direction of its motion?
When I wondered about this, as when I pondered all the above questions MDT answers, I tried to envision the *physical* structure of space-time and reality that would account for the behavior. For ultimately physics is about physics, and sometimes, a mathematical equation comes forth which supports the physical reality--in this case of a ofurth expanding dimension: dx4/dt= ic.
And here is how it worked out while contemplating the physical reality underlying relativistic length contraction.
Consider a ruler--it gets shorter as it moves due to length contraction.
But wait, does not a ruler also appear shorter as it rotates? Consider a ruler at the end of a football field, parallel to the field goals. As it rotates, it will appear shorter and shorter to us, as we stand at the other end of the field, looking on. Have you ever noticed this illusion, as a rotating radar on a distant ship looks like something that keeps contracting and expanding? It is hard for us to tell it is rotating--rather we might actually guess that it is actually getting physically shorter and longer.
These youtube videos almost illustrate this rotating radar effect:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd6ZxHk2-zA&feature=re
lated
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMlsmqWSo8A&feature=rela
ted
And I saw that relativistic length contraction is a rotation of sorts. The ruler is rotated out of our three spatial dimensions. But what is it rotated into? It is rotated into the fourth dimension. But why, when this happens, does the ruler always, always propagate in the direction of its foreshortening? Well, it is because the fourth dimension--the dimension which the ruler is being rotated into--is moving! Thus relativistic length contraction is always, always accompanied by a change in velocity.
Rotate something into the fourth dimension, and it gains a translational velocity. Give something a translational velocity, and it will appear foreshortened in our three spatial dimensions. All because the fourth dimension is expanidng relative to the three spatial dimensions or dx4/dt = ic.
Then, right after I pondered length contraction, the - sign in the space-time metric puzzled me. Why does x4 have a - sign in-front of it? How is x4 different from the three spatial dimensions? What is a photon telling us by defining a null vector? A photon can cross the universe, and yet not travel at all? Ahaha! For in the fourth dimension, it has not moved, as the fourth dimension has been moving with it, just as a surfer stays with the wave they ride. This brings de Broglies' pilot waves to mind...
Well, that's some of the story behind MDT. A very early version of it appeared in my 1998 dissertation:
http://elliotmcgucken.com/dissertation.html
And I am forever indebted to J.A. Wheeler, through whom I first encountered not only these questions, but the courage to ask them. Wheeler always used to say, "I want to know what the show is all about, before it's out." And not only were foundational questions allowed and encouraged in his office, but one could not enter nor leave without naturally asking them. His Great Spirit has moved on, and while the past is no longer real, the immortal soul is, as Socrates concludes:
"I think Socrates, said Cebes, that even the dullest person would agree, from this line of reasoning, that the soul is in every possible way more like the invariable than the variable.
And the body?
To the other.
Look at it in this way too. When soul and body are both in the same place, nature teaches the one to serve and be subject, the other to rule and govern. In this relation which do you think resembles the divine and which the mortal part? Don't you think that it is the nature of the divine to rule and direct, and that of the mortal to be subject and serve?
I do.
Then which does the soul resemble?
Obviously, Socrates, soul resembles the divine, and body the mortal." --The Phaedo
For some reasons I wrote a lot of sonnets that first year in grad school--often during quantum mechanics. At the end of the semester, when the professor was passing out the exams, he looked at me and said, "You will do very well on this! You took many notes!" I guess he thought I was taking notes the whole time. I've never been much of a class learner, but I made up for it by staying up late, reading the quantum texts. It wasn't always efficient, but here're some of the poems I wrote in quantum mechanics--I sent them to Wheeler during that first year of grad school:"
"cxl.
Now suppose we have a hole in a slate,
A photon from a source passes on through,
And it darkens a grain on a film plate,
To say it went through the hole would be true.
Several photons pass through, we wait a bit,
And quite a simple pattern we do see,
A bright spot directly behind the slit,
Fading away as you move outwardly.
We choose to add an additional slit,
The photon seems to have a decision,
It must choose one of them through which to fit,
For photons are not allowed to fission.
But now there are fringes, common to waves!
In this manner, can particles behave?
cxli.
What's seen is an interference pattern,
Which is common to every type of wave,
On the vast ocean or from a lantern,
This is the way every wave does behave.
Though you think particles blacken the spot,
Between the source and plate light is a wave,
As to its whereabouts we can say not,
Such is the way reality behaves.
These ghostly facts are true of all matter,
Electrons and protons and you and me,
We're but empty waves that somehow matter,
Striving to comprehend reality.
Wavy winds blow, our consciousness is lit.
It makes up our mind, our minds make up it.
cxlii.
"The question is to be or not to be,
Whether it is nobler within the mind,
To believe in indeterminacy,
Or refute that God plays dice in the wind.
Are there many worlds, or only just this one?
And is Schrodinger's cat alive or dead?
Of p and x, can we only know one?
And of Wigner's good friend, what can be said?"
He smiled and said, "no question, no answer,
This above all, science holds to be true,
Love is in the mind of the romancer,
And the kind of love determines the view."
He looked up to the sky, a sky few see,
A sky filled with a child's curiosity."
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
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Bite D. Bait wrote on Oct. 14, 2008 @ 19:25 GMT
Speaking of sonnets, your sonnet reminded me of this one:
I saw you starting for another war,
The emblem of adventure and of youth,
So that men trembled, saying: "He forsooth
Has gone, has gone, and shall return no more."
And then out there, they told me you were dead,
Taken and killed; how was it that I knew,
Whatever else was true, that was not true?
And then I saw you pale upon your bed,
Scarcely two years ago, when you were sent
Back from the margin of the dim abyss;
For Death had sealed you with a warning kiss,
And let you go to meet a nobler fate:
To fight for hearth and home, O fortunate,
To die in battle with your regiment.
--- Maurice Baring (1874 - ? )
matthew kolasinski wrote on Oct. 23, 2008 @ 03:29 GMT
Dear Dr. McGucken,
slowly doing my best to read all the entries here. yours i found a very interesting expansion of Einstein's work. i'm still thinking about it. i see what's happening with the math, thanks for pointing that out. the interpretations of the significances are still rolling around in my head. no comments on that at the moment. i did have a concern about the observations on free will. if you go tying your free will to whatever scientific theory is currently in fassion, you've just thrown away what little of it you may have had to start with.
it's a jail break, man; i'm here to spring ya. ca'mon, let's get movin'. you can finish the equations later...
:-)
matt k.
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Oct. 23, 2008 @ 05:36 GMT
Thanks the words Matt.
Yes--the typical view held by contemporary physicists is that of the block universe. In fact, up until now and MDT, I think pretty much everyone who has embraced Einstein's relativity has embraced the block universe, which pretty much denies free will. How strange that physicists, who strive and work for Truth each day, have renounced free will! Perhaps that is why...
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Thanks the words Matt.
Yes--the typical view held by contemporary physicists is that of the block universe. In fact, up until now and MDT, I think pretty much everyone who has embraced Einstein's relativity has embraced the block universe, which pretty much denies free will. How strange that physicists, who strive and work for Truth each day, have renounced free will! Perhaps that is why there has been so little progress in theoretical physics over the past thirty years. Everyone is just reasoning that it's all fate anyway, and time is frozen, so why try that hard? Why not just write coffeee-table physics books about wormholes/time travel into the past (even though without free will, how could we choose to build a time machine?). Why not just build vast empires out of postmodern math, and hire grad students and postdocs (who get a tiny portion of the funds) to laugh at/snark true theoretical physicists and their free will, logic, and reason?
The great thing about Moving Dimensions Theory is that it allows us to keep all of relativity while also granting us free will and liberating us from the block universe.
Wish I could buy everyone a beer to celebrate our newfound free will! Perhaps now they can no longer argue that string theory and loop quantum gravity are our fate for the next four thousand years, as they are pre-embedded in the future of our block universe.
And too, in addition to exploding the block universe myth and unfreezing time, MDT provides a *physical* model accounting for change, entropy, relativity, quantum mechanics' nonlocality and entanglement, and time and all its arrows and assymetries across all realms. Furthermore, Huygens' principle, which manifests itself in all realms from classical waves to Feynman's many-paths interpretations of quantum mechanics, is given a deeper foundation--a raison d'etre--a fundamental source--and this is the same fundamental source underlying relativity and quantum mechanics' nonlocality and thus QM's probabilistic nature, as the fourth expanding dimension distributes locality.
MDT's great uniter and unifier is a fundamental invariant of the universe that has hitherto been unsung--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt = ic.
Too, too many postmodern theories suggest that we should get rid of time, free will, nonlocality, causality, change, and even space! Yes--too, too many modern theories suggest that we should get rid of *physics* and *physical reality*, so that we can keep funding bureuacracies! Too, too many postmodern physicists have long ago given up trying to explain entanglement, nonlocality, entropy, and time and all its arrows and assymetries with a *physical* model. Too, too many physicists have chosen to ignore Godel's problems with the block universe and time, while losing the sense of wonderment when considering action-at-distance, nonlocality, and the EPR Paradox.
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." --Albert Einstein
Yes--entanglement, entropy, time, nonlocality, Huygens' Principle, relativity--how mysterious are all these! And yet if you ask foundational questions such as *why* entanglement, *why* entropy, *why* time, *why* nonlocality, *why* Huygens' Principle, *why* relativity, the richest, wealthiest establishment in the history of physics, which also happens to be the establishment which has contributed the least (perhaps money cannot buy physics and philosophy?), sends forth anonymous postdocs and grad students to launch the snarky, ad-hominem attacks they perfect under the guidance of their pseudo-physicist political mentors.
But hey--everyone's got to make a living.
Behold MDT--the great unifier and invariant source underlying all these *physical* phenomena--in relativity and quantum emchanics--in statistical mechanics and entropy.
For the first time in the history of relativity, *change* has been *physically* woven into the fundamental fabric of spacetime, with dx4/dt = ic. And that's where change needs to be! For can you name any branch of physics in which change, and time, do not exist? Without change, no measurement can be made.
MDT is unique in that it offers a *physical* model underlying entropy, entanglement, and nonlocality, and too, all of relativity can be immediately derived from its simple postulate and equation.
I expect MDT to bring additional boons for years to come!
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matthew kolasinski wrote on Oct. 23, 2008 @ 07:24 GMT
Hello again Dr. McGuckin,
re:
For the first time in the history of relativity, *change* has been *physically* woven into the fundamental fabric of spacetime, with dx4/dt = ic.
that's part of what i've been considering in the implications. yes. i saw that. was even thinking '∆ as an emergent phenomenon' might be...
bit i don't want to go being presumptuous here, i'm no mega-mind.
still thinking about it.
matt.
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Oct. 27, 2008 @ 19:19 GMT
Hello Matt!
Yes indeed, ∆ (change) is finally fundamentally woven into the fabric of spacetime with MDT!
And too, MDT explains why there is no need to quantize gravity, while also accounting for the Gravitational Redshift!
Please check out & enjoy the attached paper which has figures I could not include in the text here:
MOVING DIMENSIONS THEORY EXAMINES THE GRAVITATIONAL
REDSHIFT, LIGHT CLOCKS, AND WHY GRAVITY IS NOT QUANTIZED:
ALL HAIL THE UNIVERSE’S FUNDAMENTAL INVARIANT: dx4/dt = ic
by Dr. Elliot McGucken
attachments:
MOVING_DIMENSIONS_THEORY_EXAMINES_THE_GRAVITATIONAL_REDSHIFT_MCGCUKEN.pdf
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Oct. 29, 2008 @ 04:21 GMT
Dear John Merryman,
John--above you have been saying something, and I think I finally see what you mean! I finally saw it when you wrote to Doug, in Doug's forum, "You propose something similar to Dr. E's theory of the expanding fourth dimension. As I pointed out to him, if, as he seems to suggest, this expanding wave is light, or represents light, than according to Einstein, light is the...
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Dear John Merryman,
John--above you have been saying something, and I think I finally see what you mean! I finally saw it when you wrote to Doug, in Doug's forum, "You propose something similar to Dr. E's theory of the expanding fourth dimension. As I pointed out to him, if, as he seems to suggest, this expanding wave is light, or represents light, than according to Einstein, light is the constant and gravity is actually shrinking the three dimensional geometric space, relative to this standing wave."
Where did Einstein state this? That's awesome, as it's exactly what MDT states in the attached mini-paper! If you can give me the source for "according to Einstein, light is the constant and gravity is actually shrinking the three dimensional geometric space, relative to this standing wave", that would rock!
John--I think this is what you've been trying to say to me above.
In the attached mini-paper, I show how the gravitaional redshift and the gravitational slowing of clocks both arise from a more fundamental invariant--the fundamental invariant which also happens to define Planck's length and the velocity of light: The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c, manifesting itself as a spherically-symmetric wavefront in our 3D, which has a wavlength of Planck's length. This is the "invariant standing wave!"
Please see the attached mini-paper to see how MDT explains the gravitational slowing of clocks, the gravitational slowing of light, and the gravitational redshift; with simple diagrams superimposing an invariant, standing wave over space which can strecth! with these diagrams, MDT explains why clocks run slower in stronger gravitational fields where space is stretched. It shows that time, as measured on a clock, is also stretched, but only because of an underlying invariant which is never stretched—the expansion of the fourth dimension relative to the three spatial dimensions--which manifests itself as a standing sine wave in the figures. For even though time and space are stretched, the expansion of the fourth dimension remains invariant: dx4/dt = ic. And too, it shows that space is continuous, and all quantization arises from the quantized invariant expansion of the fourth dimension relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt = ic. The invariant wavelength of the fourth expanding dimension, which is Planck's length, chops measurements of space—of time, energy, and momentum—into units of the Planck length, while providing the fundamental wave nature that gives rise to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle in all realms, as well as Hugens' Principle in all realms.
So it is that the absolute invariance of the expanding fourth dimension, whose wavelength and rate of expansion never changes, when superimposed on continuous space that can be stretched by a mass, results in clocks ticking more slowly in stronger gravitational fields.
Yes--entanglement, entropy, time, nonlocality, Huygens' Principle, relativity--how mysterious are all these! And yet if you ask foundational questions such as *why* entanglement, *why* entropy, *why* time, *why* nonlocality, *why* Huygens' Principle, *why* relativity, the richest, wealthiest establishment in the history of physics, which also happens to be the establishment which has contributed the least (perhaps money cannot buy physics and philosophy?), sends forth anonymous postdocs and grad students to launch the snarky, ad-hominem attacks they perfect under the guidance of their pseudo-physicist political mentors.
But hey--everyone's got to make a living.
Behold MDT--the great unifier and invariant source underlying all these *physical* phenomena--in relativity and quantum mechanics--in statistical mechanics and entropy.
For the first time in the history of relativity, *change* has been *physically* woven into the fundamental fabric of spacetime, with dx4/dt = ic. And that's where change needs to be! For can you name any branch of physics in which change, and time, do not exist? Without change, no measurement can be made.
MDT is unique in that it offers a *physical* model underlying entropy, entanglement, and nonlocality, and too, all of relativity can be immediately derived from its simple postulate and equation, as can the gravitational slowing of clocks and light, as well as teh gravitational redshift.
I expect MDT to bring additional boons for years to come!
Thanks for the conversations, and thanks for the reference, John! Would love to see where Einstein states, "light is the constant and gravity is actually shrinking the three dimensional geometric space, relative to this standing wave.""
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
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attachments:
1_MOVING_DIMENSIONS_THEORY_EXAMINES_THE_GRAVITATIONAL_REDSHIFT_SLOWING_OF_CLOCKS.pdf
John Merryman wrote on Oct. 29, 2008 @ 11:05 GMT
Dr. E,
I'm lousy on specific references, as most of the reading I did was decades ago, but it is rather explicit in his need to add the cosmological constant to keep gravity from shrinking space to a point and the fact that his constant is the speed of light. So basically I see your theory as viewing it from the opposite perspective, that the three dimensional space is the constant and...
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Dr. E,
I'm lousy on specific references, as most of the reading I did was decades ago, but it is rather explicit in his need to add the cosmological constant to keep gravity from shrinking space to a point and the fact that his constant is the speed of light. So basically I see your theory as viewing it from the opposite perspective, that the three dimensional space is the constant and light is the expanding fourth dimension of time. My theory is in the middle, that relative to light, space is collapsing, while relative to space, light is expanding. Thus the cosmological redshift is an optical effect cause by the opposite effect of gravity.
Since I have to go to work right now, I'll post two pieces I wrote. The first from Doug Bundy's thread;
"I certainly didn't set out to disagree with the cosmological standard model when I first tried to make sense of it, but one particular observation has led me to where I am now. It is that, "Omega=1."
If, as tests by COBE and WMAP would seem to prove, the rate expansion of space is evenly balanced by gravitational contraction, Lemaitre's Big Bang theory doesn't make sense. If the expansion of intergalactic space is offset by the contraction of gravity, then there is no overall expansion, because these gravitational wells are effectively consuming the expanding space. When this first occurred to me, it seemed some sort of cycle would better explain the situation, where the mass falling inward, expands back out as energy, until it cools and starts to collapse again. This would logically explain why these opposing effects are in overall balance.
It seems quite likely that the cosmic redshift is evidence of Einstein's cosmological constant, which was originally proposed to balance the universe and prevent gravity from causing it to collapse. So I find it interesting that the effect attributed to dark energy has been found to fit the cosmological constant. If space, or the path light travels across it, expands at a constant rate, this would cause redshift to compound, so that the further light travels, the greater the multiplier effect and so the faster the source appears to recede, until it appears to be traveling away from us at the speed of light. Obviously this creates a horizon line over which visible light will not pass, though black body radiation would.
The original understanding of galaxies simply flying away from each other was modified to say that space itself has expanded from an initial point because it would otherwise appear that we are at the center of the universe, given that other, non local galaxies are redshifted so that they all appear to be moving directly away from us. It seems to me the flaw in this logic is that the speed of light should have to increase accordingly, since it is our constant measure of space, but this doesn't make sense. If two galaxies are x lightyears apart and the universe doubles in size, are they 2x lightyears apart? If so, that's not expanding space, but an increasing distance in stable space. If they still appear x lightyears apart, as the speed of light increases along with the expansion, by what measure are we saying the universe is expanding, since no matter how big it gets, everything still appears the same distance apart?
The question of what might cause light to redshift and thus our perception of space to expand is an open question. For one thing, I think that light must effectively travel as waves and it is only when it contacts some sufficiently opposing force that if effectively "condenses" out as a quanta of light, or photon. For one thing, this would explain why light remains so focused when it travels over billions of light years. If it were traveling as discrete particles it would seem the potential for scattering would be much greater and there would be enough instances of diffused light to measure this. It might explain redshift as well. The idea of "tired light" was dismissed for the very reason that light was so clear and if anything had interfered with the photons to slow them, the scattering would be apparent, but if light travels as a wave, the further it expands, the more area it has to cover and this increase in volume would reduce the energy of a wave, but not its focus, as that would quantize out as an individual photon."
This is from Kyle Miller's thread. It repeats somewhat. but expands the point a little more;
"My first clue was learning that the expansion of the universe is effectively balanced, or nearly so, by the force of gravity; Omega=1. Gravity and the expansion co-exist, so if they cancel each other out, it's a complimentary cycle, not a sequential one. Think of the model of gravity as the ball on the sheet of rubber. Where there are not gravitational objects, would the sheet be flat, or would it be pushed the other way in reaction to those areas where there are gravitational wells? Yes, the space is expanding, but it's also collapsing into these wells at the same rate. It's like running up a down escalator. The floors are not actually moving apart because you have to cover more space, since that space is folding into the floors(and being pushed back out as radiation). So light that crosses space is stretched, but it's a front of a wave that is also falling into all the innumerable gravity wells along the way, so it is both stretching and collapsing. (Of course we are only measuring what collapses into our telescopes and that has climbed a long way.) The light is being continually stretched and the further it travels, the more this effect is compounded. The redshift light is further redshifted so that eventually the source seems to be receding at the speed of light and this creates a horizon line over which visible light cannot go, only black body radiation. Thus other galaxies are redshifted directly away from us, proportional to their distance. Big Bang Theory tries to explain why other galaxies are redshifted such that they appear to be all moving away from us and not have our position as the center of the universe by saying that it is space itself which is expanding. The rising loaf of bread analogy. The problem with this argument is that if space is expanding, than our only real measure of space, the speed of light, should increase proportionally. Example; If two sources are x lightyears apart and the universe were to expand to twice its previous size, should they be 2x lightyears apart, or should they still be x lightyears apart? If they are 2x, that's not expanding space, that's an increasing distance of stable space. If they still appear x lightyears apart, as they should if space itself is expanding, than the whole argument is meaningless in the first place, as it wouldn't explain redshift. So yes, our measure of space expands for the light which crosses these enormous distances, but it is effectively an optical effect on that light, just as the bending of light around a gravitational object is an optical effect that causes the source to appear to move from our perspective, not because it does move. I realize I'm going way out on a limb here, if you haven't followed the history of the Big Bang theory and all the questions raised and the logical patchwork required to save it, from Inflation Theory to Dark Energy. Not to mention all the minor fudges required to fit the age of its processes into 13.7 billion years. I must say though, that it is a masterwork of math, but than so were epicycles.
Say the universe is explainable as a convection cycle. Galaxies would be the gravitational vortexes into which matter falls and energy radiates away from. That which falls into the black holes is ejected as electron jets out the poles. On the other side of the cycle is the cosmic background radiation that has traveled over that previously mentioned horizon line and cooled to the point it is only stable to the "dew point" phase transition of 2.7k. Above that and it effectively condenses out as particles. How does radiation condense? Consider that it effectively travels as a wave, yet when we try to measure it, it strikes our sensors as particles/photons. Just as moisture in the air condenses out as drops of water.
Now put it into the relationship of order and energy, as I defined them in terms of the two directions of time; The energy is constantly going onto the future, as the information defining the units of time fall away into the past. Everything is ultimately only the energy, just as time only exists as the present, but as this energy is constantly radiating out as waves and collapsing back down as particles, it creates this dichotomy of the pure energy and the information it creates and which defines it. These are the two directions meeting in the middle. Just as the energy is constantly expanding and gravity is constantly collapsing, it is a simultaneous process."
I'll try putting it in more context after work.
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John Merryman wrote on Oct. 30, 2008 @ 23:47 GMT
An interesting article on the Cosmological Constant;
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg
20026801.500-why-einstein-was-wrong-about-relativity.html
Doug wrote on Oct. 31, 2008 @ 11:32 GMT
Hi Dr. E,
I apologize for taking so long to answer the comment you posted in my forum. My trouble with MDT is right at the beginning. Since the foundation doesn’t make sense to me, it becomes very tedious to wade through all the rest, because I can’t find the faith that it will be worth the effort. Can you understand that?
The trouble I encounter is in trying to understand what you mean by moving dimension. There are 5 dictionary definitions for dimension:
1. A measure of spatial extent, especially width, height, or length.
2. Extent or magnitude; scope. Often used in the plural: a problem of alarming dimensions.
3. Aspect; element: "He's a good newsman, and he has that extra dimension" William S. Paley.
4. Mathematics
a. The least number of independent coordinates required to specify uniquely the points in a space.
b. The range of such a coordinate.
5. Physics A physical property, such as mass, length, time, or a combination thereof, regarded as a fundamental measure or as one of a set of fundamental measures of a physical quantity: Velocity has the dimensions of length divided by time.
The first and the last two are the applicable ones here, I believe, but maybe you have another one that would help more. Taking the first definition, your reference to moving spatial extent, seems appropriate, but, then, since velocity has dimensions of length divided by time, not height and width too, if that is the definition to use, you are referring to scalar motion, as I do, which doesn’t seem to be the case.
In Einstein’s work, the most appropriate definition is probably 4a, but his work doesn’t contradict any of the others either. In your case, you seem to want to use the word dimension as if, instead of a property of something, used as an adjective, it has an existence in it’s own right, used as a noun. If, as Einstein said, x4 = ict is a replacement for time, then the problem is solved, and we can move on from there, but I don’t think this is what you mean, because ict/t = ic = is/t would be even harder to explain, as a dimension of something.
As something that exists and can move, dimension would have to occupy a position in space and time, and a change in that spacetime location would constitute its motion. However, if it’s not something that changes location, then the other possibility is that it grows relative to its unchanging spacetime location, which sort of brings us back to the meaning of changing dimension.
See what I mean? If I can’t get my head around what the concept of a moving dimension is, I can’t entertain how it could be the solution to solving physics challenges. So, if you can help me understand that, I should be able to move to the next step.
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Oct. 31, 2008 @ 16:14 GMT
Thanks Doug & Happy Hallowween,
Tonight I will be dressing up as a cowboy physicist in honor of Bohr and Gamow--please find the photo attached--if you look closely, you can see the dx4/dt=ic onmy shirt. Halloween is a great time of the year where we get to pretend that we live in a parallel universe where tenure for hyping parallel universes/multiverses doesn't exist, but where, instead,...
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Thanks Doug & Happy Hallowween,
Tonight I will be dressing up as a cowboy physicist in honor of Bohr and Gamow--please find the photo attached--if you look closely, you can see the dx4/dt=ic onmy shirt. Halloween is a great time of the year where we get to pretend that we live in a parallel universe where tenure for hyping parallel universes/multiverses doesn't exist, but where, instead, *physical* theories such as MDT are given precedence over bouncing universes, tiny, little vibrating strings, hyperspace, time travel, wormholes, postmodern math, groupthink, tyranny, fiat physics, the 10^99 indecipherable arxiv.org papers, and mysticism. Imagine a parallel universe where we weren't imprisoned in a block universe, where time and progress in theoretical physics were unfrozen, and where simple logic, reason, and math rescued that most bueatiful, subtle damsel in distress--physics. Without such heoric efforts, physics is transformed into the girl in the attached picture. You can tell she was once very pretty.
Regarding your questions about Moving Dimensions Theory, Doug, are you familiar with General Relativity? I would highly recommend:
http://www.amazon.com/Gravitation-Physics-Charles-
W-Misner/dp/0716703440/
http://www.amazon.com/Journey-Gravity
-Spacetime-Scientific-American/dp/0716760347/ (I highly recommend this book Doug! It is writen for laymen and a more general audience & too, my name is in the acknowledgements--the only time I have ever shared a paragraph with Einstein--haha)
You write, "As something that exists and can move, dimension would have to occupy a position in space and time, and a change in that spacetime location would constitute its motion."
This is exactly how Einstein's General Relativity defines dimensions!
Einstein's General Relativity is built upon the fact that dimensions bend, warp, and move. GR is built upon a stage in which the dimensions themselves move. So MDT is nothing all that new--just a little new, in proposing that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c, thusly exposing the universe's hitherto unsung fundamantal invariant-- dx4/dt=ic --from which the following logically and naturally arise:
1) time and its arrows and assymetries in all realms
2) entropy
3) relativity & E=mc^2
4) quantum mechanics' nonlocality, entanglement, and probabilistic nature
5) Huygens' principle in all realms (from Feyman's many-paths to classical waves)
6) the gravitational slowing of light and time and the gravitational redshift
7) free will and our liberation from the block universe circa 2005
8) and finally change is woven into the fundamental fabric of spacetime, where it needs to be, for change pervades all realms of physics, as it is impossible to measure anything without change!
9) Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle
It is simply amazing to me how many modern physicists with Ph.D.'s ignore General Relativity, which is, in fact, built upon moving dimensions. And of course special relativity is but a special case of general relativity, so it is quite amazing how many Ph.D.'s are trained to ignore Einsetin's relativity and quantum mechanics (trained to ignore foundational quaestions and foundational papers such as Einstein's 1912 Manuscript on Relativity), so as to become useful idiots and anonymous snarkers working for groupthink regimes that raise vast amounts of capital for the antitheory masters at the top, who oft attempt to dictate curiosity. But as Wheeler always said, "No question, no answer!" No wonder there has been no progress in theoretical physics for the past thirty+ years!
The very title "Moving Dimensions Theory" was never meant to be all that bold--it was certainly never meant to inspire such emotional fear and hatred (the fact that it does tells you somethig about today's postmodern "physicists"), but rather MDT was a humble salute to one of the world's best-tested, and most miraculous theories--General Relativity. Many say that had Einstein not come up with special relativity, somebody would have, as Poincare and Lorentz and others were pretty much there. But, it was Einstein's lone, heroic, painstaking, exhausting efforts by which General Relativity was born, so it all became Eisntein's Relativity. And again we see how science depends upon not groupthink and communal efforts--upon PR and multi-million-dollar hype--but upon the resolute, immutable *character* and vision of the heroic *individual*!
As you probably know, General Relativity has passed experimental test, after test, after test, from explaining the anomaly in Mercury's orbit, to predicting the bending of starlight by our very own sun. Here is the 1919 photograph offering irrefutable proof that dimensions can bend and move (also attached):
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Eclipse-te
st-of-relativity.jpg
Mass curves space-time, so as the earth revolves about the sun and moves through space, the earth bends and warps the dimensions as it moves through them, streching dimensions at it passes through them, and releasing its grip on the dimensions as it sails on by. Ergo dimensions move.
To deny that dimensions move would be to deny Einstein's Relativity which stands forth as one of the greatest and most revolutionary achievements in physics of all time.
It is interesting that Einstein introduced relativity as a principle--as a primary law not deduced from anything else.
Well, I guess I was dumb enough to even ask, "why relativity?"
And I found the answer in a more fundamental invariance--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt = ic. Change is fundamentally embedded in space-time. And not only can all of relativity be derived from this, but suddenly we have a *physical* model for entropy, time and its arrows and assymetries in all realms, free will, and quantum nonlocality and entanglement. MDT accounts for the the constant speed of light c--both its independence of the source and its independence of the velocity of the observer, while establishing it as the fastest, slowest, and *only* velocity for all entities and objects moving through space-time, as well as the maximum velocity that anything is measured to move. And suddenly we see a *physical* basis for E=mc^2. Energy and mass are the same thing--it's just that energy is mass caught upon the fourth expanding dimension, and thus it surfs along at "c."
On page 37 of "Einstein's Mistakes, The Failings of Human Genius," by Hans Ochanian, we read,
"Einstein acknowledged hid debt to Newton and to Maxwell, but he was not fully aware of the extent of Galileo's fatherhood. In an introduction he wrote for Galileo's celebrated Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, he faults Galileo for failing to produce a general mathematical proof. Galileo regarded relativity as an empirical, observational fact, that is, a law of nature, and Einstein's own formulation of the Principle of Relativity three hundred years later imitated Galileo's in treating this principle as a law of nature and not as a mathematical deduction from anything else."
Well, MDT provides a more fundamental law with an equation: dx4/dt = ic, from which relativity is derived in my paper. And an added benefit are all the other entities dx4/dt=ic accounts for with a *physical* model, from entropy, to qm's entanglement and nonlocality, to time and all its arrows.
At last, we have been liberated from the block universe and frozen time, as well as frozen progress in theoretical physics!
Thanks Doug, and Happy Halloween!
Tonight I will be dressing up as a cowboy physicist in honor of Bohr and Gamow--please find the photo attached.
Definitely get your hands on: http://www.amazon.com/Gravitation-Physics-Charles-W-Misner/d
p/0716703440/
http://www.amazon.com/Journey-Gravity-Spacetime
-Scientific-American/dp/0716760347/ (I highly recommend this book Doug! It is writen for laymen and a more general audience & too, my name is in the acknowledgements--the only time I have ever shared a paragraph with Einstein--haha)
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
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attachments:
comicon_433.87454.jpg,
774pxEclipsetestofrelativity.jpg
Doug wrote on Nov. 1, 2008 @ 14:47 GMT
Dr. E,
Thanks for the response, recommendations and pictures. I hope you had a happy Halloween.
There seems to be a miscommunication on this point of the moving dimension. Einstein clearly identifies x4 with the time dimension. Time changes in every reference frame in such a way that the constant c is invariable in each. However, in your theory you have five dimensions, three of space, one of time and one of something else called the “moving dimension.”
What I don’t understand is what this fifth dimension is, and as I pointed out last time, dimension is an adjective, a property of something else, not a thing in itself. Your response does not address this question. Referring me to Einstein is not helpful, since his theory is four-dimensional, not five-dimensional. So, when I read Einstein, his reference to the fourth dimension, as a means to make Minkowski spacetime Euclidean space-like, makes sense, but it is no help whatsoever in understanding your mysterious fifth dimension.
I can understand the expansion of time relative to the three spatial dimensions, or (dx1, dx2, dx3)/dx4, which then leads to the set of spacetime points, any one of which may be specified by x1, x2, x3, x4, subsequently. But, truly, I am confused with the attempt to attach any significance to the equation x4/dx4, which is what x4/dt amounts to, and the confusion doesn’t come from what Einstein invented, but from what you have invented.
I appreciate your enthusiasm and understand your frustration, but I cannot yet explain your concept of the fifth dimension.
Peace,
Doug
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 1, 2008 @ 15:54 GMT
Thanks for the comment Doug,
Doug, Have you read Einstein's 1912 Paper? You say, "So, when I read Einstein, his reference to the fourth dimension, as a means to make Minkowski spacetime Euclidean space-like, makes sense. . . " Can you please cite Einstein's exact words that you read? Thanks!
No--Moving Dimensions Theory does not suppose five dimensions. No, no, no. Only four. ...
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Thanks for the comment Doug,
Doug, Have you read Einstein's 1912 Paper? You say, "So, when I read Einstein, his reference to the fourth dimension, as a means to make Minkowski spacetime Euclidean space-like, makes sense. . . " Can you please cite Einstein's exact words that you read? Thanks!
No--Moving Dimensions Theory does not suppose five dimensions. No, no, no. Only four. MDT simply states that given a 4D universe with x1, x2, x3, and x4, wherein x4 is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c, given by dx4/dt = ic, all of relativity will emerge, along with time and all its arrows and assymetries in all realms; quantum entanglement, nonlocality, and probability; the universe's expansion; entropy; and Huygens' principle in all realms. Change itself is finally embedded in spacetime! Change itself is artfully woven into the fundamental fabric of spacetime, where it needs to be!
Let me try to explain it this way, Doug:
Consider a photon emitted from a source. Quantum mechanics describes the photon's propagation as a spherically-symmetric wavefront of probability expanding at c.
Relativity tells us that the photon does not age--it stays at the exact same place in the fourth dimension.
Ergo the fourth dimension is nonlocal--it is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c. Ergo the spherically-symmetric wavefront of probability expanding at c, which describes the photon's propagation, yet represents a locality in the fourth dimension.
This logic fits perfectly with Einstein's 1912 paper, where he wrote x4 = ict, or dx4/dt = ic. As you can see, the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c.
Now, in light of this (no pun intended), is it no wonder that two intially-interacting photons remain entangled? For even though they propagate in opposite directions, they yet remain ageless, and in the same place in the fourth expanding dimension!
And too, the photons remain in the same place in time, although time is an emergent parameter, that we can measure on watches and clocks, that arises because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, carrying matter in the fourth dimension at c, which manifests itself as photons. Hence you can see why E=mc^2--energy is but matter caught upon the fourth expanding dimension.
Doug, Have you read Einstein's 1912 Paper? You say, "So, when I read Einstein, his reference to the fourth dimension, as a means to make Minkowski spacetime Euclidean space-like, makes sense. . . " Can you please cite Einstein's exact words that you read? Thanks!
Would love to see the exact words cited! Thanks! For unless I miss my guess, it seems you are reading someone who has read Einstein, but not Einsetin himself.
Please provide the exact words you read. Thanks for providing a reference to Einstein's exact words, along with the source/book/paper!
In his 1912 Manuscript on Relativity, Einstein never stated that time is the fourth dimension, but rather he wrote x4 = ict. The fourth dimension is not time, but ict. Despite this, prominent physicists have oft equated time and the fourth dimension, leading to un-resolvable paradoxes and confusion regarding time’s physical nature, as physicists mistakenly projected properties of the three spatial dimensions onto a time dimension, resulting in curious concepts including frozen time and block universes in which the past and future are omni-present, thusly denying free will, while implying the possibility of time travel into the past, which visitors from the future have yet to verify.
You write, "What I don’t understand is what this fifth dimension is, and as I pointed out last time, dimension is an adjective, a property of something else, not a thing in itself." No Doug--"dimension" is not an adjective. Dimensions are real. Why do you keep rejecting Einstein's General Relativity wherein he shows just how real dimensions are? Dimensions bend. They curve. Dimensions *move*. It is simply amazing to me how many people--including modern physicists with Ph.D.'s--ignore General Relativity, which is, in fact, built upon moving dimensions. And of course special relativity is but a special case of general relativity, so it is quite amazing how many Ph.D.'s are trained to ignore Einsetin's relativity and quantum mechanics (trained to ignore foundational questions and foundational papers such as Einstein's 1912 Manuscript on Relativity), so as to become useful idiots and anonymous snarkers working for groupthink regimes that raise vast amounts of capital for the antitheory/money masters at the top, who oft attempt to dictate curiosity. But as Wheeler always said, "No question, no answer!" And every, every, every single physicist who has ever advanced physics answered their own curiosity--not some random funders'. No wonder there has been no progress in theoretical physics for the past thirty+ years!
As you probably know, General Relativity has passed experimental test, after test, after test, from explaining the anomaly in Mercury's orbit, to predicting the bending of starlight by our very own sun. Here is the 1919 photograph offering irrefutable proof that dimensions can bend and move:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Eclipse-test-of
-relativity.jpg
Please do not ignore this experimental evidence and all of Einstein's hard, grueling work in developing General Relativity, by stating that "dimension" is an adjective. It is rather insulting, when you think about it, to Einstein. GR demonstrates irrefutably that dimensions are capabale of motion and that dimensions move.
If you really, really believe that "dimension is an adjective," I would encourage you to free your mind by reading about General Relativity, starting with Einstein's The Meaning of Relativity and progressing to:
http://www.amazon.com/Gravitation-Physics-Charles-W-Misner/d
p/0716703440/
http://www.amazon.com/Journey-Gravity-Spacetime
-Scientific-American/dp/0716760347/ (I highly recommend this book Doug! It is writen for laymen and a more general audience & too, my name is in the acknowledgements--the only time I have ever shared a paragraph with Einstein--haha)
MDT supposes four dimensions, wherein the fourth dimension is expanding at c relative to the three spatial dimensions, given by dx4/dt = ic.
MDT simply states that given a 4D universe with x1, x2, x3, and x4, wherein x4 is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c, given by dx4/dt = ic, all of relativity will emerge, and all of relativity from this in my paper.
The time axis in space-time diagrams is a human construct. Hundreds of physicists/science-fiction writers write a lot about the "time axis" in their pop-sci books, but you need to keep in mind that the time axis is a human construct, and that we do not live in a block universe wherein time is frozen. Although they go on and on about time travel and time as a fourth dimension, they never match word and deed, like the ancient Greeks said we must if we are to retain our Honor, and they never travel back in time, nor come up with any practical machine nor method to take us even one second back, and too, they never see how silly a time dimension is, as it implies frozen time. The block universe is also a human construct, which Godel had problems with, and all these problems have been swept under the rug by modern (postmodern) physicists, who have frozen both time and progress in theoretical physics, so as to keep their perpetual-motion money machines pumping away so as to fund groupthink regimes built upon meaningless maths and pop-sci books which are killing the true spirit of science and culture. What is needed are brave new heroes who exalt truth and logic over mere money--and over the titles and tenure mere money buys.
Also, Einsetin never said that time is the fourth dimension in his 1912 paper, but rather he wrote x4=ict, and t and ict are very different things. It is amazing how many physicists have thrown away the ic in front of the t, and gotten tenure while conceiving of time machines they never build, and wormholes they never see, not to mention multiverses and parrallel universes and tiny little vibrating strings in their block universe (which also bounces) wherein funding is an established part of the future which has already happened for the groupthink elite, but you get the point. All the pop-sci books and texts always have those pictures of light cones, which they use to bludgeon curiosity, but what they forget is that photons do not travel in straight lines, but rather quantum mechanics tells us that photons travel as expanding spherical wavefronts of probality in our 3D. And in doing so, photons maintain a locality in the fourth expanding dimension, while propagating through the three spatial dimensions at c.
Those who argue with MDT's postulate that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions are actually arguing with the ageless photon--the fastest known physical entity, which yet remains stationary in the fourth dimension. And yet, the photons keep right on travleing at c--billions upon billions upon billions of them--every second, as they surf the fourth expanding dimension, while yet retaining a locality in time and the fourth expanding dimension. I would not be surprised if photons start protesting all the tenured elite who are trying to freeze them and emprison them in their block universe via groutpthink and centralized-control of curiosity, wherein time and progress in theoretical physics must remain frozen, so as to keep the cash flowing towards communal regimes and anti-theories.
Science is more of an art than a science, and it always seems to advance in manners never before anticipated by the establishment, as Planck stated. One cannot legislate, nor vote on, nor dictate the advancement of science by fiat. "One cannot pray a lie," as Mark Twain once said.
"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck
And again we see the primacy of the honest individual in the classic, epic hero's journey!
"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man." --Joseph Campbell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth
And the Nobel Laureate eocnomist F.A. Hayek agrees!
"The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for “conscious” control or “conscious” planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme—while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the superindividual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." –F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom
Doug--with our newfound freewill provided by MDT, which liberates us from the block universe while llowing us to keep all of relativity, we can become those things we seek!
Now of course we can forgive Einstein for not noting all this in his 1912 paper, as he never quite accepted quantum mechanics' reality, but for all those of us who passed undergrad and grad quantum, and for all of us who use computers which were built upon nonlocality's reality and wave/particle duality--it is time for all of us to admit that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c, and that this fundamental universal invariant gives rise to the time we measure on our watches, which we we also enjoy designating as an axis in diagrams when writing coffee-table physics books that have frozen time so as to write chapter after chapter about time travel.
My paper states that time is not the fourth dimension, but rather it is a parameter that emerges because the fourth dimension is exapnding at c relative to the three spatial dimensions--my paper states thus in the opening sentences/abstract, as well as throughout:
"In his 1912 Manuscript on Relativity, Einstein never stated that time is the fourth dimension, but rather he wrote x4 = ict. The fourth dimension is not time, but ict. Despite this, prominent physicists have oft equated time and the fourth dimension, leading to un-resolvable paradoxes and confusion regarding time’s physical nature, as physicists mistakenly projected properties of the three spatial dimensions onto a time dimension, resulting in curious concepts including frozen time and block universes in which the past and future are omni-present, thusly denying free will, while implying the possibility of time travel into the past, which visitors from the future have yet to verify. Beginning with the postulate that time is an emergent phenomenon resulting from a fourth dimension expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c, diverse phenomena from relativity, quantum mechanics, and statistical mechanics are accounted for. Time dilation, the equivalence of mass and energy, nonlocality, wave-particle duality, and entropy are shown to arise from a common, deeper physical reality expressed with dx4/dt=ic. This postulate and equation, from which Einstein’s relativity is derived, presents a fundamental model accounting for the emergence of time, the constant velocity of light, the fact that the maximum velocity is c, and the fact that c is independent of the velocity of the source, as photons are but matter surfing a fourth expanding dimension. In general relativity, Einstein showed that the dimensions themselves could bend, curve, and move. The present theory extends this principle, postulating that the fourth dimension is moving independently of the three spatial dimensions, distributing locality and fathering time. This physical model underlies and accounts for time in quantum mechanics, relativity, and statistical mechanics, as well as entropy, the universe’s expansion, and time’s arrows."
--http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/238
And yet it--the fourth dimension--moves!
E pur si muove!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_pur_si_muove
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
P.S. Poets from thousands of years ago had a far better grasp on time than modern physicists who want to freeze us in a block universe and command us all to forget time, and space, and physics.
Thousands of years from now, who do you think will be remebered by time? Those who honor it, or those who forget it?
Age carries all things away, even the mind.
Virgil
Age steals away all things, even the mind.
Virgil
All our sweetest hours fly fastest.
Virgil
All things deteriorate in time.
Virgil
But meanwhile time flies; it flies never to be regained.
Virgil
Endure the present, and watch for better things.
Virgil
Time flies never to be recalled.
Virgil
Time is flying never to return.
Virgil
Time passes irrevocably.
Virgil
Too, too many physicists grow up never reading the Epic Poets and Prophets, and thus they lack that heroic honor which is the soul of science--that drive to exalt Truth over Travesty, and significance over semblance.
Best, Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
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Doug wrote on Nov. 2, 2008 @ 00:08 GMT
Dr E,
You wrote:
“Doug, Have you read Einstein's 1912 Paper? You say, "So, when I read Einstein, his reference to the fourth dimension, as a means to make Minkowski spacetime Euclidean space-like, makes sense. . . " Can you please cite Einstein's exact words that you read? Thanks!
Would love to see the exact words cited! Thanks! For unless I miss my guess, it seems you are...
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Dr E,
You wrote:
“Doug, Have you read Einstein's 1912 Paper? You say, "So, when I read Einstein, his reference to the fourth dimension, as a means to make Minkowski spacetime Euclidean space-like, makes sense. . . " Can you please cite Einstein's exact words that you read? Thanks!
Would love to see the exact words cited! Thanks! For unless I miss my guess, it seems you are reading someone who has read Einstein, but not Einsetin himself.
Please provide the exact words you read. Thanks for providing a reference to Einstein's exact words, along with the source/book/paper!”
Yes, I have read the 1912 paper. His exact words are from Chapter 26 of his book Relativity:
“…if we choose as time-variable the imaginary variable (-1)^1/2 ct, instead of the real quantity t, we can regard we can regard the spacetime continuum…as a ‘Euclidean’ four-dimensional continuum…”
But this is explained more fully in Appendix 2:
“WE can characterise the Lorentz transformation still more simply if we introduce the imaginary ct in place of t, as time-variable. If, in accordance with this, we insert and similarly for the accented system K', then the condition which is identically satisfied by the transformation can be expressed thus: 1
That is, by the afore-mentioned choice of “co-ordinates” (11a) is transformed into this equation. 2
We see from (12) that the imaginary time co-ordinate x4 enters into the condition of transformation in exactly the same way as the space co-ordinates x1, x2, x3. It is due to this fact that, according to the theory of relativity, the “time” x4 enters into natural laws in the same form as the space co-ordinates x1, x2, x3. 3
A four-dimensional continuum described by the “co-ordinates” x1, x2, x3, x4, was called “world” by Minkowski, who also termed a point-event a “world-point.” From a “happening” in three-dimensional space, physics becomes, as it were, an “existence” in the four-dimensional “world.” 4
This four-dimensional “world” bears a close similarity to the three-dimensional “space” of (Euclidean) analytical geometry. If we introduce into the latter a new Cartesian co-ordinate system (x'1, x'2, x'3) with the same origin, then x'1, x'2, x'3, are linear homogeneous functions of x1, x2, x3, which identically satisfy the equation The analogy with (12) is a complete one. We can regard Minkowski’s “world” in a formal manner as a four-dimensional Euclidean space (with imaginary time co-ordinate); the Lorentz transformation corresponds to a “rotation” of the co-ordinate system in the four-dimensional ‘world.’”You wrote:“No--Moving Dimensions Theory does not suppose five dimensions. No, no, no. Only four. MDT simply states that given a 4D universe with x1, x2, x3, and x4, wherein x4 is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c, given by dx4/dt = ic, all of relativity will emerge, along with time and all its arrows and assymetries in all realms; quantum entanglement, nonlocality, and probability; the universe's expansion; entropy; and Huygens' principle in all realms. Change itself is finally embedded in spacetime! Change itself is artfully woven into the fundamental fabric of spacetime, where it needs to be!”Then, since three of the four dimensions are space dimensions, the fourth dimension must be time, or the imaginary square root of –1 times ct, with which Einstein replaced the real time variable. Otherwise, ict is the fourth dimension and time is the fifth dimension. We can’t have it both ways, it seems to me. Either there are four dimensions, with real time being the fourth, or, optionally, with imaginary square root of i times ct replacing it, or there are five dimensions, with the fourth being the imaginary square root of i times ct, and the fifth being real time.To tell you the truth, it seems to me that you are the one who is misunderstanding Einstein, not the rest of the world. But then Einstein wasn’t God either, so we don’t have to throw our own brains out the window when it comes to thinking about these things. For instance, what does the word dimension mean with respect to ordinary space? The three spatial dimensions are a means for identifying any location in a volume of space. As such, these orthogonal references serve as independent specifications, the minimum required to specify a location in space. To say they move is nonsensical. It’s a classical case of a position that is so ill-conceived, it’s not even wrong in the sense that it is outside the realm of arguables.Having said that, I think there could be a lot of merit to your work, if you would recognize that was is expanding (increasing) relative to the three space dimensions is time, the imaginary square root of –1 times ct notwithstanding. When you write:“MDT supposes four dimensions, wherein the fourth dimension is expanding at c relative to the three spatial dimensions, given by dx4/dt = ic.”you are saying that the “fourth dimension,” which Einstein clearly identifies above as a substitute for time, has a velocity, as if it were an expanding object and that its velocity is the square root of – 1 times 299,792,458 meters per second.
With all due respect Elliot, I have to ask, “Do you hear yourself?”
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Doug wrote on Nov. 2, 2008 @ 01:10 GMT
Gosh, this editor sucks.
I should have just provided a link to the appendix:
http://www.bartleby.com/173/a2.html
Also, I meant "the square root of -1" not "the square root of i," in the above text.
Sure wish FQXI would provide a preview capability for this forum editor.
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 2, 2008 @ 01:38 GMT
Hello Doug,
I think I have found a source of your confusion--above you write,
"The three spatial dimensions are a means for identifying any location in a volume of space. As such, these orthogonal references serve as independent specifications, the minimum required to specify a location in space. To say they move is nonsensical."
But what happens when a gravitational mass...
view entire post
Hello Doug,
I think I have found a source of your confusion--above you write,
"The three spatial dimensions are a means for identifying any location in a volume of space. As such, these orthogonal references serve as independent specifications, the minimum required to specify a location in space. To say they move is nonsensical."
But what happens when a gravitational mass moves though the above volume of space, or comes clsoe to it? The dimensions themselves stretch and move!
Here is an awesome video, starring David Duchovney playing Brian Greene, in which you can see the dimensions moving!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rocNtnD-yI
Start it at 6:15. When the sun is introduced onto the spacetime at approx 6:22, watch the dimensions move! This is produced by Columbia University, NSF, and one of the world's leading string theorists! Surely they would not mislead us about moving dimensions!
Then watch the Harvard physicist talk, and at around 6:35, you can see that as the earth moves through spacetime, it stretches the dimensions! Ergo dimensions can move!
Then, my favorite part--at 7:20 David Duchovney makes the sun dissapear! And how the dimensions move and then some! Look at the dimensions bending, warping, and moving!
And then, at about 0:36 into this next video, watch the dimensions themselves bend and move as the masses move through them!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxwjeg_r5Ug&feature=rela
ted
And if ths sun ceased to exist, watch what would happen to the dimensions--they would warp, bend, and move!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T884m5_QzWM&feature=rela
ted
And check out the movement of the dimensions around two oribiting stars!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUyrPDmh4rI&feature=rel
ated
As you might know, Joseph Taylor won the Nobel Prize for observing such orbiting stars and finding more experimental evidence supporting the fact that dimensions can bend, warp, and move! I had Taylor for experimental physics at Princeton, but did not know that his middle name is Hooton:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Hooton_Taylor_Jr.
"Taylor has used this first binary pulsar to make high-precision tests of general relativity. Working with his colleague Joel Weisberg, Taylor has used observations of this pulsar to demonstrated the existence of gravitational radiation in the amount and with the properties first predicted by Albert Einstein. He and Hulse shared the Nobel Prize for the discovery of this object."
Again, this is kindof boring after all the cool animations above with David Duchovney, but you can see how the earth would curve spacetime--how it would make the dimensions curve and move, as it revolved about the sun, tramping through spacetime.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime
http://commo
ns.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Eclipse-test-of-relativity.jpg
Pl
ease do not ignore this experimental evidence and all of Einstein's hard, grueling work in developing General Relativity, by stating that "dimensions" cannot bend, warp, and move. It is rather insulting, when you think about it, to Einstein. GR demonstrates irrefutably that dimensions are capabale of motion and that dimensions move.
If you really, really believe that "dimension is an adjective," I would encourage you to free your mind by reading about General Relativity, starting with Einstein's The Meaning of Relativity and progressing to:
http://www.amazon.com/Gravitation-Physics-Charles-W-Misne
r/dp/0716703440/
http://www.amazon.com/Journey-Gravity-Spacet
ime-Scientific-American/dp/0716760347/ (I highly recommend this book Doug! It is writen for laymen and a more general audience & too, my name is in the acknowledgements--the only time I have ever shared a paragraph with Einstein--haha)
Best,
Dr. E :)
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Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 2, 2008 @ 01:46 GMT
P.S. Surely it is now obvious, that after accepting the reality of Einstein's General Relativity, nobody can deny that dimensions can bend and move.
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
John Merryman wrote on Nov. 3, 2008 @ 01:14 GMT
Doug,
All that really exists is an unstable field of energy. Vortices form in it and coalesce this energy, until they become unstable and break down, radiating the energy back out. In this relationship of gravitational collapse and radiant expansion, areas of relative stability arise where the potential for collapse and the potential for expansion settle into some degree of stability. We exist in that middle ground. so the notion of a seemingly static three dimensional coordinate system is an ideal that has its uses, but isn't the fundamental basis of reality.
Dr. E,
Sometimes your radiating energy overwhelms your contracting reductionist logic. Not that it's a bad thing, but it does singe the argument a little.
Your personality type rebelling against the constraints of the scientific status quo might explain why you view time/energy as the expanding fourth dimension from a stable three dimensional space. Remember the reality we think we know doesn't exist, as the energy recording it is a record of events already in the past by the time we perceive them, whether it's light from the computer you are looking at, or the light of a galaxy millions of lightyears away. So this three dimensional reality which we think of as static space is information of events which no longer exist, ie. have collapsed and the only constant is this field of energy manifesting various intensities and densities. That's why it's also logical to say the fourth dimension of this energy field is the constant and the three dimensions of space which collapse.
Then, since all is relative, it's a matter of perspective and they both are true. Expanding energy goes past to future, as the structure of events it records go from future to past.
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 3, 2008 @ 02:03 GMT
Thanks John!
"Rebellion to Tyrants is obedience to God"--Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin
Yes--sometimes it might seem like I am rebelling, but only because I am riding with the Greats against the prevailing postmodern winds, as while Moving Dimensions Theory has no need for string theory nor any other quantum gravity empires, even those based on well-intentioned groupthink, MDT agrees with:
Relativity
Quantum Mechanics
Statistical Mechanics
Galileo
Newton
Einstein
Bohr
Gamow
Wheeler
Minkowski
Boltz
man
Teller
Feynman
Quantum Entanglement
Quantum Nonlocality
Entropy
Quantum Time
Thermodynamic Time
Radiative Time
Psychological Time
All of time's arrows and assymetries across all realms.
It is interesting that Einstein introduced relativity as a principle--as a primary law not deduced from anything else.
Well, I guess I was dumb enough to even ask, "why relativity?"
And I found the answer in a more fundamental invariance--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt = ic. Change is fundamentally embedded in space-time. And not only can all of relativity be derived from this, but suddenly we had a *physical* model for entropy, time and its arrows and assymetries in all realms, free will, and quantum nonlocality and entanglement. MDT accounts for the the constant speed of light c--both its independence of the source and its independence of the velocity of the observer, while establishing it as the fastest, slowest, and only velocity for all entities and objects moving through space-time, as well as the maximum velocity that anything is measured to move. And suddenly we see a *physical* basis for E=mc^2. Energy and mass are the same thing--it's just that energy is mass caught upon the fourth expanding dimension, and thus it surfs along at "c."
On page 37 of "Einstein's Mistakes, The Failings of Human Genius," by Hans Ochanian, we read,
"Einstein acknowledged his debt to Newton and to Maxwell, but he was not fully aware of the extent of Galileo's fatherhood. In an introduction he wrote for Galileo's celebrated Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, he faults Galileo for failing to produce a general mathematical proof. Galileo regarded relativity as an empirical, observational fact, that is, a law of nature, and Einstein's own formulation of the Principle of Relativity three hundred years later imitated Galileo's in treating this principle as a law of nature and not as a mathematical deduction from anything else."
Well, MDT provides a more fundamental law--a hitherto unsung universal invariant--with an equation: dx4/dt = ic, from which relativity is derived in my paper. And an added benefit are all the other *physical* entities dx4/dt=ic accounts for with a *physical* model, from Huygens' principle to entropy to quantum entanglement and nonlocality to time and all her arrows and assymetries.
"Rebellion to Tyrants is obedience to God"--Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin
Doug wrote on Nov. 3, 2008 @ 04:26 GMT
Dr E.
Please don’t recommend any more publications for to me to read. You asked for the ‘exact quote’ and the referenced publication that justified the issue I raised formerly, but then you completely ignored them, when supplied as requested.
So, now, without any response to Einstein’s own words in relation to x4, as quoted by me, you focus on another aspect of the argument,...
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Dr E.
Please don’t recommend any more publications for to me to read. You asked for the ‘exact quote’ and the referenced publication that justified the issue I raised formerly, but then you completely ignored them, when supplied as requested.
So, now, without any response to Einstein’s own words in relation to x4, as quoted by me, you focus on another aspect of the argument, switching from “ict is an imaginary time variable, substituting for the real time variable, in order to make Minkowski spacetime Euclidean space-like,” to the meaning of the word “dimension.”
So maybe I should assume from this that you agree that, as Einstein said, “We can regard the spacetime continuum…as a ‘Euclidean’ four-dimensional continuum,” if we choose the imaginary variable, ict, as the time-variable.
Now that we have identified x4 = ict, as the imaginary time variable, we can inquire as to its dimensionality, which brings us to your latest comment posted above, which is a reply to the following statement I made. I wrote (with added caps for emphasis):
“For instance, what does the word dimension mean with respect to ORDINARY space? The three spatial dimensions are a means for identifying any location in a volume of space. AS SUCH, these orthogonal references serve as independent specifications, the minimum required to specify a location in space. To say they move is nonsensical.”
The reason that I say this is due to the fact that they are abstractions. The axes of a 3D coordinate system are not real. They are abstract constructions, or imagined references, employed for specifying locations in ordinary space, using three numbers. When I say ordinary space, I don’t mean Minkowski spacetime, but the space of a low speed environment such as the one we live and breathe in. Drivers use it, pilots use it, and animals of every kind use it, from the fish of the sea to the herds of the plains, to the flocks of the air.
Now, we can navigate in this 3D space quite well, and with the help of Einstein’s 4D spacetime, we can navigate in it better than ever. But the reason this is so, is because distance between points in 3D cannot be measured without motion and when the motion used to measure distance is high enough, like the speed of the GPS satellites, the effect of the speed on our perception of time and distance is affected.
What it boils down to is that no force is required to maintain a straight course in flat spacetime, but a force is required to maintain the same course in curved spacetime, especially at high speed, but this has to do with the relative motion of mass, not the motion of dimensions. Dimensions are figments of our imaginations. They are useful for thinking about relative locations, but they are not real and cannot move, bend, fold, or mutilate, unless we do it for them.
Don’t let the analogy of the rubber sheet fool you. Dimensions don’t move, objects do.
Dr E.
Please don’t recommend any more publications for to me to read. You asked for the ‘exact quote’ and the referenced publication that justified the issue I raised formerly, but then you completely ignored them, when supplied as requested.
So, now, without any response to Einstein’s own words in relation to x4, as quoted by me, you focus on another aspect of the argument, switching from “ict is an imaginary time variable, substituting for the real time variable, in order to make Minkowski spacetime Euclidean space-like,” to the meaning of the word “dimension.”
So maybe I should assume from this that you agree that, as Einstein said, “We can regard the spacetime continuum…as a ‘Euclidean’ four-dimensional continuum,” if we choose the imaginary variable, ict, as the time-variable.
Now that we have identified x4 = ict, as the imaginary time variable, we can inquire as to its dimensionality, which brings us to your latest comment posted above, which is a reply to the following statement I made. I wrote (with added caps for emphasis):
“For instance, what does the word dimension mean with respect to ORDINARY space? The three spatial dimensions are a means for identifying any location in a volume of space. AS SUCH, these orthogonal references serve as independent specifications, the minimum required to specify a location in space. To say they move is nonsensical.”
The reason that I say this is due to the fact that they are abstractions. The axes of a 3D coordinate system are not real. They are abstract constructions, or imagined references, employed for specifying locations in ordinary space, using three numbers. When I say ordinary space, I don’t mean Minkowski spacetime, but the space of a low speed environment such as the one we live and breathe in. Drivers use it, pilots use it, and animals of every kind use it, from the fish of the sea to the herds of the plains, to the flocks of the air.
Now, we can navigate in this 3D space quite well, and with the help of Einstein’s 4D spacetime, we can navigate in it better than ever. But the reason this is so, is because distance between points in 3D cannot be measured without motion and when the motion used to measure distance is high enough, like the speed of the GPS satellites, the effect of the speed on our perception of time and distance is affected.
What it boils down to is that no force is required to maintain a straight course in flat spacetime, but a force is required to maintain the same course in curved spacetime, especially at high speed, but this has to do with the relative motion of mass, not the motion of dimensions. Dimensions are figments of our imaginations. They are useful for thinking about relative locations, but they are not real and cannot move, bend, fold, or mutilate, unless we do it for them.
Don’t let the analogy of the rubber sheet fool you. In GR, dimensions don’t move, only objects do.
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Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 3, 2008 @ 05:40 GMT
"According to Einstein's general theory of relativity, mass and energy warp spacetime. The undulations then affect the trajectories of passing objects, producing the effects we call gravity. In Einstein's theory, spacetime is a stretchy, dynamical entity." --http://focus.aps.org/story/v14/st13
Spacetime is a dynamical entity in Einstein's theory. Ergo, dimensions move.
Hello...
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"According to Einstein's general theory of relativity, mass and energy warp spacetime. The undulations then affect the trajectories of passing objects, producing the effects we call gravity. In Einstein's theory, spacetime is a stretchy, dynamical entity." --http://focus.aps.org/story/v14/st13
Spacetime is a dynamical entity in Einstein's theory. Ergo, dimensions move.
Hello Doug,
Yes--I am very familiar with your exact quote from Einstein's The Meaning of Relativity, but before addressing it, I wanted to make sure that you actually accepted Einstein's Relativity. Because if you don't accept Relativity, my job will be more difficult, if not impossible.
Dimensions move. Einstein's Relativity is founded upon dimensions that curve, warp, and move. Dimensions curve, warp, and move as masses pass through them.
You state, "Dimensions are figments of our imaginations. They are useful for thinking about relative locations, but they are not real and cannot move, bend, fold, or mutilate, unless we do it for them."
Actually, Einstein's genius was that he treated dimensions as very, very real--as *physical* entities with *physical* realities, and General Relativity was the result.
" ... We are now in a position to see how far the transition to the general theory of relativity modifies the concept of space. In accordance with classical mechanics and according to the special theory of relativity, space (space-time) has an existence independent of matter or field. ..." --Albert Einstein, “Relativity ...” Appendix 5, “Relativity and the problem of space.
Awesome! Einstein states that spacetime dimensions are real! Are you going still going to tell Einstein that, "Dimensions are figments of our imaginations. They are useful for thinking about relative locations, but they are not real and cannot move, bend, fold, or mutilate, unless we do it for them."
I challenge you to find any serious physicist who works with General Relativity who agrees with you. Dimensions move.
Here is an awesome video, starring David Duchovney playing Brian Greene, in which you can see the dimensions moving!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rocNtnD-yI
Start it at 6:15. When the sun is introduced onto the spacetime at approx 6:22, watch the dimensions move! This is produced by Columbia University, NSF, and one of the world's leading string theorists! Surely they would not mislead us about moving dimensions!
Then watch the Harvard physicist talk, and at around 6:35, you can see that as the earth moves through spacetime, it stretches the dimensions! Ergo dimensions can move!
Then, my favorite part--at 7:20 David Duchovney makes the sun dissapear! And how the dimensions move and then some! Look at the dimensions bending, warping, and moving!
And then, at about 0:36 into this next video, watch the dimensions themselves bend and move as the masses move through them!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxwjeg_r5Ug&feature=rela
ted
And if ths sun ceased to exist, watch what would happen to the dimensions--they would warp, bend, and move!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T884m5_QzWM&feature=rela
ted
And check out the movement of the dimensions around two oribiting stars!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUyrPDmh4rI&feature=rel
ated
As you might know, Joseph Taylor won the Nobel Prize for observing such orbiting stars and finding more experimental evidence supporting the fact that dimensions can bend, warp, and move! I had Taylor for experimental physics at Princeton, but did not know that his middle name is Hooton:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Hooton_Taylor_Jr.
"Taylor has used this first binary pulsar to make high-precision tests of general relativity. Working with his colleague Joel Weisberg, Taylor has used observations of this pulsar to demonstrated the existence of gravitational radiation in the amount and with the properties first predicted by Albert Einstein. He and Hulse shared the Nobel Prize for the discovery of this object."
Again, this is kindof boring after all the cool animations above with David Duchovney, but you can see how the earth would curve spacetime--how it would make the dimensions curve and move, as it revolved about the sun, tramping through spacetime.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime
http://commo
ns.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Eclipse-test-of-relativity.jpg
Pl
ease do not ignore this experimental evidence and all of Einstein's hard, grueling work in developing General Relativity, by stating that "dimensions" cannot bend, warp, and move. It is rather insulting, when you think about it, to Einstein. GR demonstrates irrefutably that dimensions are capabale of motion and that dimensions move.
If you really, really believe that "dimension is an adjective," I would encourage you to free your mind by reading about General Relativity, starting with Einstein's The Meaning of Relativity and progressing to:
http://www.amazon.com/Gravitation-Physics-Charles-W-Misne
r/dp/0716703440/
http://www.amazon.com/Journey-Gravity-Spacet
ime-Scientific-American/dp/0716760347/ (I highly recommend this book Doug! It is writen for laymen and a more general audience & too, my name is in the acknowledgements--the only time I have ever shared a paragraph with Einstein--haha)
Einstein's GR is built upon dimensions that stretch, curve, and move.
Everybody supports this--even spcae.com: --http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060124_spacetime_den
t.html :
"While devising his general theory of relativity, Einstein combined the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time into a single useful concept he called spacetime.
Spacetime can be thought of as an elastic sheet that bends under the weight of objects placed upon it. The more massive the object, the more spacetime bends. If the massive object is also spinning, it causes spacetime to not only bend but to twist as well. Scientists call this effect "frame dragging."
Twisted spacetime will cause gas falling into a black hole to move in certain ways. The phenomenon can be roughly compared to the movement of a needle on a record player: as the needle moves along an etched groove on a record, it produces a sound, the exact nature of which is determined by physical deformations in the groove itself."
--http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060124_space
time_dent.html
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John Merryman wrote on Nov. 3, 2008 @ 11:45 GMT
Dr. E and Doug,
You are both right in respect to real vs. projected dimensions. We only describe dimensions as curved relative to their potential. The light of a distant star is curved and bent passing through space affected by gravity fields, as well as by a potential cosmological constant. We say it is "curved" relative to that idealized flat space. When the distant star appears to move in the heavens, as the sun passes in front of it, that doesn't mean that star actually moved, only that the light traveling from it was bent in its passage. So presumably a straight line could be still drawn between the observer and the actual star, but the path of the light is curved away from that straight line. Thus we are in a position to say that "gravity curves space." If there was no idealized straight line, it would be meaningless to say that space is "curved."
Doug wrote on Nov. 3, 2008 @ 14:40 GMT
Thanks John,
You practically took the words right out of my mouth, so-to-speak. Now, when we are talking about the dimension of time, real or imaginary, there is no bending, since there is no idealized straight line to compare it to. In fact, the one dimension of time is a scalar dimension, which means that it has no direction (2^0) in space.
Thus, to say that it is a moving dimension makes no sense, because it’s not the dimension of time that is “moving,” but time itself. That is to say, time is increasing, not its dimension. As a dimension of spacetime, x4 = ict, represents this increasing time, as a radius of an ever increasing sphere, and it happens that ct is the length of this radius, coinciding with the time t at unity.
When Einstein added the imaginary square root of -1 to ct, it enabled him to use it in the Pythagorean theorem-based equation of an “Euclidean” space-like version of Minkowski spacetime, because, when the term is squared, the requisite minus sign appears.
But when Elliot uses it, he takes it out of this context of Einstein’s attempt to help out, and makes it something he will not identify, but calls it “a moving dimension,” not a moving dimension of space, not a moving dimension of time, but just a moving dimension. He then makes this unidentified mathematical object (UMO), which as everyone can see is in reality Einstein’s imaginary time variable, change with the real time variable, coming up with “ic,” as a new elixir of physics.
But, even if time is regarded as a one-dimensional vector, not a zero-dimensional scalar, if i squared rotates a vector by 180 degrees, then i can only rotate it by 90 degrees. So, what is c rotated by ninety degrees?
With all due respect, it makes no sense to me.
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 3, 2008 @ 15:46 GMT
Hello Doug,
First of all please stop ignoring General Relativity which is built upon dimensions that can bend, warp, and move. Just out of curiosity, do you have a degree in physics? Have you ever studied differential geometry? Even if you haven't, you must some day come to terms with the fact that differential geometry desribes how space-time--how dimensions themselves--can bend and...
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Hello Doug,
First of all please stop ignoring General Relativity which is built upon dimensions that can bend, warp, and move. Just out of curiosity, do you have a degree in physics? Have you ever studied differential geometry? Even if you haven't, you must some day come to terms with the fact that differential geometry desribes how space-time--how dimensions themselves--can bend and move, and you also must realize that Einstein used such maths in formulating GR, which is built upon dimensions that can curve and move.
Dimensions are very, very real *physical* entities with dynamical properties. You will find no serious Ph.D. who studies relativity to disagree with this and Einstein's General Relativity, which has been experimentally supported, time, after time, after time. Doug--if the dimensions to not bend and move, how would you explain the anomoly in Mercury's Orbit? How would you explain the bending of light by massive objects, if dimensions did not bend and move? It is time for you to embrace dimensions as *physical* entities with a *reality.*
I can't believe you keep on ignoring all the books, words, and links, above, and all the physicists, including Einstein and J.A. Wheeler and Brian Greene, all who state that dimensions bend, curve, and move in General Relativity. You are making this far more difficult than it needs to be. :) It pains me to no end that you are ignoring the qonderfulwwork of Nobel Laureates including Einstein and Joseph Tayor, but I guess you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
Yes Doug--all the dimensions x1, x2, x3, x4 are the same, but for the fact that x4 is expanding at the rate of c. Now as x4 expands, it does so in a manner orthogonal to our 3D. And in our 3D, it manifests itself as a spherically-symmetric expanding wavefront. What you must realize Doug is that this explains both the agelessness of the photon and its velocity c, as well as its nonlocality! It explains why the photon remains in a *single* locality in the fourth dimension, while propagating through our three spatial dimensions at c. There is no other theory that does so much as this, embracing both quantum mechanical and relativistic phenomena.
Indeed, the fourth dimension itself is nonlocal via its expansion! How else, Doug, would you provide a *physical* model for quantum mechanics' nonlocality and entanglment, while also providing a simple postulate for a *physical* reality underlying time and all its arrows across all realms, as well as entropy, while also providing a foundation for all of relativity? What would your euqation and postulate be? Is not the point of physics to make everything as simple as possible but not moreso? Is not the point of physics to unify disparate *physical* phenomena with simple *physical* models and mathematics?
Consider a photon emitted from a source. Quantum mechanics describes the photon's propagation as a spherically-symmetric wavefront of probability expanding at c.
Relativity tells us that the photon does not age--it stays at the same place in the fourth dimension.
Ergo the fourth dimension is nonlocal--it is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c. Ergo the spherically-symmetric wavefront of probability expanding at c, which describes the photon's propagation, yet represents a locality in the fourth dimension.
This fits perfectly with Einstein's 1912 paper, where he wrote x4 = ict, or dx4/dt = ic. As you can see, the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c.
Now, in light of this (no pun intended), is it no wonder that two initially-interacting photons remain entangled? For even though they propagate in opposite directions, they yet remain ageless, and in the same place in the fourth expanding dimension!
Doug, how else would you explain entanglement and nonlocality?
And too, the photons remain in the same place in time, although time is an emergent parameter, that we can measure on watches and clocks, that arises because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, carrying matter in the fourth dimension at c, which manifests itself as photons. Hence you can see why E=mc^2--energy is but matter caught upon the fourth expanding dimension.
I have more to say, but gotta run!
Hope the above helps!
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
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John Merryman wrote on Nov. 3, 2008 @ 17:55 GMT
Dr. E,
As you are critical of established theory when it seems to have been projected beyond logical support, I hope you won't mind me applying some critical logic to the premise of dynamic dimensionality. It is my conclusion that physical reality and the dimensions we use to reference it, define space, rather than create it.
Big Bang cosmology is based on the assumption that space...
view entire post
Dr. E,
As you are critical of established theory when it seems to have been projected beyond logical support, I hope you won't mind me applying some critical logic to the premise of dynamic dimensionality. It is my conclusion that physical reality and the dimensions we use to reference it, define space, rather than create it.
Big Bang cosmology is based on the assumption that space is created by the expansion of the universe from the singularity. If this is so, why doesn't our most stable measure of space, the speed of light, increase proportional to the expansion of space? Like a rubber band on which units are marked off, our measure of space should grow as the space expands. Yet this doesn't seem to be the theory. It seems to be assumed that if the universe were to double in size, two points x lightyears apart would become 2x lightyears apart. This isn't expanding space! It is increasing distance in stable space.
What seems to have grown out of the three dimensional description of space is that the center point of this coordinate system is zero. While zero might be the point between -1 and 1 on a scale, it really isn't a point, but the absence of any such reference, since adding -1 and 1 would cancel out, leaving nothing. The real zero for geometry isn't the point at the center of the graph, but the blank page. It's the same for cosmology. The initial state isn't a point, LeMaitre's primordial atom, but the vacuum. This vacuum contains fluctuating energy that is collapsing and radiating back out. I can go into how this better explains the observed universe, with the inclusion of a cosmological constant to explain the expansion effect of radiation, but since I've gone into that in various postings already, I've leave the broad range of issues to further questioning.
How to explain entanglement and non-locality; As I've said before, it makes more sense to describe light propagating as a wave and only when it contacts some method of measurement does it coalesce as a quanta. So when two measurements are taken simultaneously and the quanta of light exhibit identical properties, you are essentially measuring the same wave.
Doug,
While I view space, the vacuum as mentioned above, as the basis of motion, I view time as a consequence of it, similar to temperature. While it is possible to describe temperature as a point on a scale, that is because it is an average of motion, not a unit of motion, as time is. This means time cannot be described as a point, since as a unit, that would be the cessation of motion. Such as the temperature of absolute zero would be the cessation of motion.
The unit of reference is that between two frames moving relative to one another. Classically this is between a point of reference and the context against which it moves. While the point goes from past to future frames, the context is a generalized state consisting of much other motion, so this frame is constantly being rearranged and each configuration is being constantly replaced by the next. Thus the arrow for these events go from being in the future to being in the past, like tomorrow becomes yesterday.
Since this motion is happening at the speed of light and there is much of it, our brains process it as units of perspective, much like a movie consists of separate frames, that create the illusion of motion by constantly changing. Otherwise our perceptions would be overwhelmed in a blur of energy. So it is logical that we think of time in terms of quantized units.
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John Merryman wrote on Nov. 3, 2008 @ 18:14 GMT
P.S.
Doug,
What is moving is the energy that is radiating outward and the structure/mass that is collapsing. The energy is constantly radiating from old structure to be eventually included in new structure. Much like the hand of the clock is constantly leaving old units of time and starting to measure new ones, thus going from past to future, as these units go from being in the future to being in the past. So from the perspective of structure, it is energy expanding out, going past to future, while from the perspective of the energy, it is structure that is receding into the past.
Since we exist in that state of relative stability where structure and energy maintain some equilibrium, much structure is carried into the future, as it maintains its energy content, or is replacing it at least as fast as it loses it. When structure loses energy faster then it is replaced, it fades away and recedes into the past. It dies.
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 4, 2008 @ 16:00 GMT
Thanks for the comments John,
You write, "How to explain entanglement and non-locality; As I've said before, it makes more sense to describe light propagating as a wave and only when it contacts some method of measurement does it coalesce as a quanta. So when two measurements are taken simultaneously and the quanta of light exhibit identical properties, you are essentially measuring the...
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Thanks for the comments John,
You write, "How to explain entanglement and non-locality; As I've said before, it makes more sense to describe light propagating as a wave and only when it contacts some method of measurement does it coalesce as a quanta. So when two measurements are taken simultaneously and the quanta of light exhibit identical properties, you are essentially measuring the same wave."
Yes--but *why* nonlocality and *why* entanglement? *Why* wave particle-duality?
All of these entities descend from the nonlocal expansion of the fourth dimension, which distributes locality.
Is it not curious that the maximum velocity of the distribution of locality is the velcoity of light? Ergo I would suspect that the same entity would be responsible for both the maximum velocity of the photon and the maximum velocity of the distribution of locality--a fourth expanding dimension.
And too, MDT's simple postulate provides a bedrock foundation for relativity, entropy, time and all its arrows, inertia, the gravitational slowing of light and time, Huygens' principle, the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle, and other phenomena across all of physics.
All motion rests upon the fourth dimension's fundamental expansion relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic. Every object moves at but one speed through space-time--c. This is because space-time moves at but one speed through every obeject--c. Catch up with the fourth expanding dimension, and you'll be going close to c relative to the three spatial dimensions. Remain stationary in the three spatial dimensions, and you'll be traveling at close to c relative to the fourth dimension. And isn't it cool that the faster an object moves, the shorter it is in the three spatial dimensions? This is because it is physically being rotated into the fourth dimension--the fundamental source of all motion by its never-ending motion, which sets the universe's maximum velcoity at c.
Relativity implies a frozen, timeless, block universe. But as Galileo said, "Yet it moves!" *Why* is this? Because dx4/dt = ic! And the spherically-symmetric expansion that the expanding fourth dimension manifests itself as--this smearing of locality--jives perfectly with the motion of a photon as well as its nonlocal properties, setting its velocity to c independent of the source and rendering it timeless and ageless--stationary in the fourth expanding dimension, which would also explain entanglement with other photons with which it once shared a common origin! And we also get a *physical* model for entropy and time.
You write, "Big Bang cosmology is based on the assumption that space is created by the expansion of the universe from the singularity. If this is so, why doesn't our most stable measure of space, the speed of light, increase proportional to the expansion of space? Like a rubber band on which units are marked off, our measure of space should grow as the space expands. Yet this doesn't seem to be the theory. It seems to be assumed that if the universe were to double in size, two points x lightyears apart would become 2x lightyears apart. This isn't expanding space! It is increasing distance in stable space."
Good question, but I would be careful, as one is not supposed to question the Big Bang Theory!
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
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Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 4, 2008 @ 19:48 GMT
Hello Doug,
Thanks so much for your Nov. 2, 2008 @ 00:08 GMT post in which you quote from Einstein's THE MEANING OF RELATIVITY.
It was great to see, as not only do modern physicists so often neglect foundational questions, but they also neglect foundational papers and works, while embracing and exalting multiverses, mysticism, m-theory, womholes, tiny little vibrating strings which are safe from experimental tests, and time machines which nobody ever seems to have the time to build.
I hope that you have had a chance to read Einstein's work and realize that General Relativity treats dimensions as *physical* entities with dynamical properties.
"CHAPTER XXXII: THE STRUCTURE OF SPACE ACCORDING TO THE GENERAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY: According to the general theory of relativity, the geometrical properties of space are not independent, but they are determined by matter. Thus we can draw conclusions about the geometrical structure of the universe only if we base our considerations on the state of matter as being something that is known." --Einstein's Meaning of Relativity
Particularly, I hope you get to read chapter XXVII: THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM OF THE GENERAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY IS NOT A EUCLIDEAN CONTINUUM
Also read CHAPTER XXVII, "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. The motion of clocks is also influenced by gravitational fields, and in such a way that a physical definition of time which is made with the aid of clocks has by no means the same degree of plausibility in as in the special tehory of relativity."
Well Doug, I hope that you no longer deny the fact that as matter moves through space, it bends and twists the dimensions--and thus the dimensions can and do move.
Einstein himself states, in the Meaning of Relativity: "CHAPTER XXXII: THE STRUCTURE OF SPACE ACCORDING TO THE GENERAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY: According to the general theory of relativity, the geometrical properties of space are not independent, but they are determined by matter. Thus we can draw conclusions about the geometrical structure of the universe only if we base our considerations on the state of matter as being something that is known." --Einstein
One of the fun things that MDT is doing is going on back to the foundational papers and showing how MDT agrees with all of them--with Einstein, Dirac, Newton, Teller, Galileo, Bohr, Schrodenger, Feynman--while so many modern physicists do not agree with the Greats, nor *physical* reality; as physical reality has a tendency to get in the way of fiat empires and postmodern groupthink tryannies.
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
John Merryman wrote on Nov. 5, 2008 @ 00:53 GMT
Dr. E,
I do get the sense your expanding wave is based on the Big Bang model. If that's so, I can understand you're not going to give much credence to my rejection of it, but that's the nature of the game. I certainly didn't set out to argue with it and fortunately I'm not trying to make a living at this, as I realize questioning it is tantamount to automatic rejection. If someone would...
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Dr. E,
I do get the sense your expanding wave is based on the Big Bang model. If that's so, I can understand you're not going to give much credence to my rejection of it, but that's the nature of the game. I certainly didn't set out to argue with it and fortunately I'm not trying to make a living at this, as I realize questioning it is tantamount to automatic rejection. If someone would provide a coherent explanation for what I've missed, I'd certainly drop the subject. It is hard for me to avoid the issue though, when discussing my observation that as a description of motion, the process of time is the events created and being replaced means it goes from future potential to past circumstance, since this understanding of time grew out of trying to understand how the expansion of space can be balanced by the contraction of gravity and still result in an overall expanding universe. Given the various patches required and questions raised by Big Bang theory, from Inflation Theory to Dark Energy, I just can't bring myself to buy it on faith. I think we both accept there are major bugs in modern physics, which current efforts to solve only seem to increase the level of confusion. I do think this does go back to some very basic assumptions, such as that time is some form of fundamental dimension, even if it is variable, along which physical reality travels from past to future. As well as that the geometric absolute is the initial point, rather than empty space. I didn't start with these ideas, only arrived at them after peeling away everything I didn't understand to see what it was based on.
If I may add an additional thought on space as a vacuum defined by its contents, not created by them;
The Michelson Morley experiment was predicated on the assumption that a wave must be transmitted in a medium, yet no evidence for the "aether" could be found. Is a medium really necessary for light to travel as a wave? If you drop a stone in water, it creates a cavity that pushes the water out and this creates the initial wave. The water pushes back into this cavity and collides, creating the next wave and cavity, thus repeating the process and a series of decreasing ripples form. So the actual wave action wasn't just by introducing a force on the medium, but the medium pushing back. Now if you were to release pressure, or energy into a vacuum, the assumption is that there is no medium to transmit this pressure, so it wouldn't travel very far. Take the rock you dropped in the water and throw it into a vacuum. There would be nothing to stop it and it would fly forever. That is presumably what photons do. What if light travels across the vacuum of space, not as individual particles, or as waves in a medium, but as an expanding, entangled sphere of energy? There could well be pulses to it, but they would be like the spectrum of the light, a function of the process of emission. That way, you would have what effectively appears as a wave, without needing a medium to transmit it. Only when it contacts a measuring device would quanta of light be "condensed" out of this unitary field.
While it doesn't make sense to consider empty space to have a rigid geometry, remember that the geometrical properties are determined by BOTH matter and energy. While matter gravitationally contracts, energy effectively expands. A overall sum of flat space exists if these two properties balance out. According to tests by COBE and WMAP, they do. Remember that Einstein first proposed the Cosmological Constant to balance gravity and current measurements of the expansion concur with a cosmological constant. Dark Energy was proposed because the Big Bang assumption was that a geometric reduction of redshift as gravity slowed the expansion from the singularity, yet there is an apparent outward curvature to space so that while its expansion is slowed, it still possesses an inherent expansion rate. Now consider what it would look like if there is only this inherent expansion. Not only would light be increasingly redshifted as it crossed more space, but this effect would be compounded, as already redshifted light would have this previous redshift further expanded, so that eventually the source seems to be flying away at the speed of light and this creates a horizon line. Now according to Big Bang theory, this is because those sources are moving faster, the further back in time you travel, yet according to a Cosmological Constant, this speed is only an illusion of the distance involved, just as gravity fields bending the light of other stars creates the illusion they move around.
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Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 5, 2008 @ 04:19 GMT
"I am not myself apt to be alarmed at innovations recommended by reason. That dread belongs to those whose interests orprejudices shrink from the advance of truth and science." --Thomas Jefferson to John Manners, 1814.
Hello John,
You write, "I do get the sense your expanding wave is based on the Big Bang model. If that's so, I can understand you're not going to give much credence...
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"I am not myself apt to be alarmed at innovations recommended by reason. That dread belongs to those whose interests orprejudices shrink from the advance of truth and science." --Thomas Jefferson to John Manners, 1814.
Hello John,
You write, "I do get the sense your expanding wave is based on the Big Bang model. If that's so, I can understand you're not going to give much credence to my rejection of it, but that's the nature of the game."
I actually was joking above when I stated that one must never question the Big Bang Theory!
"We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor totolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it." --Thomas Jefferson to William Roscoe, 1820.
"The fundamental fact about the Greek was that he had to use his mind. The ancient priests had said, "Thus far and no farther. We set the limits of thought." The Greek said, "All things are to be examined and called into question. There are no limits set on thought."" --Edith Hamilton
Here are some interesting books:
http://www.amazon.com/Big-Bang-Blasted-Lyndon-Ashmore/
dp/1419639226
Against the Tide: A Critical Review by Scientists of How Physics and Astronomy Get Done (Paperback)
http://www.amazon.com/Against-Tide-Critical-Scien
tists-Astronomy/dp/1599429934/
"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." --Albert Einstein
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence." --Einstein
I do not feel obligated to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reasons, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. --Galileo
Thomas Jefferson: Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.
Thomas Jefferson: Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
Thomas Jefferson: Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.
We need more dialogue in physics!
"In every country where man is free to think and to speak,
differences of opinion will arise from difference of perception, and the imperfection of reason; but these differences when permitted, as in this happy country, to purify themselves by free discussion, are but as passing clouds overspreading our land transiently and leaving our horizon more bright and serene."
--Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Waring, 1801.
"Truth and reason are eternal. They have prevailed. And they will eternally prevail; however, in times and places they may be overborne for a while by violence, military, civil, or ecclesiastical." --Thomas Jefferson to Rev. Samuel Knox, 1810.
"Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous such as tiny, vibrating strings, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind." --Thomas Jefferson to James Smith, 1822.
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
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Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 5, 2008 @ 05:34 GMT
We have a new president here in the US!
And is it not time for a new physics?
Imagine if presidents were elected for thirty years, instead of just four! Imagine if all curiosity and questioning of the establishment was squelched and opposed!
Imagine if simple, foundational questions were banned, along with simple, foundational papers of the Past Masters, along with new, simple theories with simple postulates and simple maths--theories which unified physical phenomenon across all realms by recognizing a new universal invariant--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
Science is a democratic endeavor! Imagine if progress in America were frozen for thirty years, and that mavericks were not allowed to change and improve society with new ideas, with courage and honor, with truth and fresh energy! Imagine if elections were canceled for thirty years, and empirical evidence was thrown out the window, along with dissenting voices! Imagine if even the proposition of new ideas was banned by hired mercenaries and postdocs! Then I imagine progress would be frozen in that realm too.
One of the great things about the internet is that it shines a light in dark places, and no longer can ideas be ignored and supressed by anonymous referees. And too, the internet immortalizes all these words and dialogues, as never before. And so it is that we are all now joined forever in MDT's liberation from frozen time and the block universe, as well as frozen progress in theoretical physics. For while the past is no longer real, these words shall always endure, and by our newly-granted free will, we ought choose them wisely.
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
John Merryman wrote on Nov. 5, 2008 @ 11:31 GMT
Dr. E.
I thought you might be joking, that's why I phrased it as a caveat. That said, "the expanding fourth dimension" does sound like an effort to rationalize a singularity based universe. The operative term is "relative to the three spatial dimensions." Which means they are contracting relative to this fourth dimension, so that neither effect is preponderant.
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 5, 2008 @ 18:16 GMT
Can MDT also provide a *physical* interpretation of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the Canonical Communitation relation in quantum mechanics?
From "Hidden Unity in Nature's Laws" by John Clayton Taylor,...
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Can MDT also provide a *physical* interpretation of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the Canonical Communitation relation in quantum mechanics?
From "Hidden Unity in Nature's Laws" by John Clayton Taylor, http://books.google.com/books?id=5niTiZAcS3gC&pg=PA227&lpg=P
A227&dq=born+commutation+relation&source=web&ots=HZsuRDtP6o&
sig=vuNup97fItAHB9bvL89FZRQ1qnw&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&re
snum=1&ct=result
"Max Born in Gottingen, with its great mathematical tradition (going back to Gauss), knew more mathematics than the young Heisenberg. He recognized these arrays as being things, called matrices, well known to mathemticians since their invention by Cayley in England in 1858." --John clayton Taylor
And again we see the ability to recognize a bunch of math as a "thing" with meaning, as a way to advance physics! For Max Born stated, "I personally like to regard a probability wave as a real thing, certainly as more than a tool for mathematical calculations. ... how could we rely on probability predictions if we do not refer to something real and objective? (Max Born on Quantum Theory)"
"Hidden Unity in Nature's Laws" by John Clayton continues, "Heisenberg and Born and his assistant Jordan rewrote everything using the compact notation of matrix theory. I will write one of their equations. Let the symbol x stand for the matrix (a whole array, like the preceding one) connected with the psoition of an electron, and let the symbol p denote a similar matrix connected with the momentum. Then the equation is: (Born-Heisenberg Commutation Relation) xp - px = i*hbar. . . This equation is called a commutation relation because commutation means changing the order of factors multiplied together. It is perhaps the most revolutionary equation in the whole of physics. It is inscribed on Born's gravestone in Gottingen."
http://www.origin-life.gr.jp/3004/3004229/126.jpg
(please find it attached)
Also check out Boltzman's gravestone, with S=klogw!
http://img.search.com/6/63/300px-Zentralfriedhof_Vienna_-_Bo
ltzmann.JPG (please find it attached--did you know that the physicists of his day called Boltzman a crackpot, and that he committed suicide before ever knowing the vast and resounding influence of his theory?)
Sriram Ramaswamy writes in Ludwig Boltzmann and Entropy, (http://www.iisc.ernet.in/academy/resonance/Sept2001/Sept200
1p3-5.html reports) "Boltzmann took his disputes with the energists very much to heart; after one such argument, with Ostwald, he was so upset that he attempted suicide. In general, these disagreements led to his moving around a great deal during his academic career. Until 1869 he remained in Vienna as a lecturer, then moved to a chair in Theoretical Physics at the University of Graz. He returned to Vienna as Professor of Mathematics in 1873, went back to Graz as Professor of Experimental Physics in 1876, where he married Henriette von Aigentler, whom he had met during his earlier stay there. He stayed at Graz until 1890, when he moved to the University of Munich as Professor of Theoretical Physics. He returned, however, to Vienna as Professor of Theoretical Physics in 1894, only to move once again, this time to Leipzig, in 1900. He left Leipzig for Vienna again, in 1902, where his position had been held for him." --http://www.iisc.ernet.in/academy/resonance/Sept2001/Sept20
01p3-5.html
I always picture John Baez hopping on Michio Kaku's time machine with his grad students, reading his tax-funded crackpot index (http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html) to Boltzman and laughing at him, and then hopping back on Kaku's time machine to make it back to some quantum gravity conference in Aspen or Hawaii.
Sriram Ramaswamy writes in "Ludwig Boltzmann and Entropy", "Boltzman took his own life in 1906 while on holiday with his wife and daughter at Duino (near Trieste, now in Italy). It is said that he was driven to suicide partly because of a fear that his ideas were not accepted by the community, that the battle against energism was lost. It is clear, though, that his genius was recognised even by those who disagreed with him: he couldn't otherwise have quit so many positions and still have managed to get new ones at will. I wonder whether our system would have dealt so kindly with him." --http://www.iisc.ernet.in/academy/resonance/Sept2001/Sept20
01p3-5.html
Boltzman, we salute ye, and wish we were there to agree with ye, as the well-funded establishment can be a most cruel, arrogant beast, even while being wrong or not even wrong! I would give anything to see what Boltzman and Bruno say to Baez when they run into one-another in Hades, with the great Achilles and Odysseus watching on--with Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Virgil, Dante, Copernicus, Born, and Einstein all watching on. Will Baez still laugh at Boltzman and the rest of the crackpots? Either way, I bet he won't find quantum grvaity--not even in Hades.
But back to explaining the commutation relation with MDT!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commutation_relations
"In physics, the canonical commutation relation is the relation between canonical conjugate quantities (quantities which are related by definition such that one is the Fourier transform of another), for example: between the position x and momentum p in the x direction (p(x)) of a point particle in one dimension, where [x,p(x)] = xp(x) − p(x)x is the so-called commutator of x and p(x), i is the imaginary unit and is the reduced Planck's constant h / 2ð. This relation is attributed to Max Born, and it implies the Heisenberg uncertainty principle."
How amazing that xp - px = ih!
What can this mean?
Wikipedia writes, "The most striking property of Heisenberg's infinite matrices for the position and momentum is that they do not commute. His central result was the canonical commutation relation:
[X,P] = XP - PX = ih/2ð and this result does not have a clear physical interpretation." --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle
Well, let us try to grant XP - PX = ih/2ð a physical interpretation via MDT!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum_operator
http://en.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Position_operator
http://scienceworld.wolf
ram.com/physics/PositionOperator.html
Basically, xp represents a measurement of momentum followed by a measurement of position.
And px represents a measurement of position followed by a measurement of momentum.
And there are other interpretations too. . .
http://books.google.com/books?id=5niTiZAcS3gC&pg=PA227&lpg=P
A227&dq=born+commutation+relation&source=web&ots=HZsuRDtP6o&
sig=vuNup97fItAHB9bvL89FZRQ1qnw&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&re
snum=1&ct=result#PPA228,M1 continues--Hidden Unity in Nature's Laws By John Clayton Taylor continues "This commutation relation is the real place where Planck's and Bohr's quantization rules. Nor is it in some modification of the classical laws of motion. It is at an even deeper level. It tells us something about the mathematical properties of the mathematical objects in terms of which everything is forumlated. No equation like this had appeared in science before. . . another remarkable thing about the Heisenberg-Born fomula is that it mentions the square root of minus one, i. All direct measurements, of lengths or times or masses whatever, are made in terms of ordinary real numbers. i was an invention of mathematicians, but here it is appearing in one of nature's most basic laws. . . It is ironic that Heisenberg's resolution to mention only observable things should have ended up with such an abstract mathematical equation, involving matrices and imaginary numbers . . . Trying to convince the sceptical Einstein of the correctness of his new quantum theory, Heisenberg pointed out that he had tried to remove the unobservable notion of absolute time in 1905. Einstein, irritatingly, replied, "A good trick should not be tried twice.""--Hidden Unity in Nature's Laws By John Clayton Taylor.
Haha! "A good trick should not be tried twice."
And is it not awesome that "i" shows up both in relativity and Heisenberg's/Born's communtation relation?
x4 = ict (relativity)
xp - px = i(hbar) (qm)
And c shows up in relativity, alongside i, while h shows up in quantum mechanics, alongside i!
Well, MDT accounts for the i in x4 = ict via the physical invariance of the expansion of the fourth dimension relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c, which is perpendicular to the three spatial dimensions, so that dx4/dt = ic.
So how does MDT account for the i in xp - px = i(hbar)?
Tune in next time on the Dr. E show!
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
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attachments:
max_bornes_gravestone.jpg,
Zentralfriedhof_Vienna__Boltzmann.jpg
Doug wrote on Nov. 6, 2008 @ 13:22 GMT
Dr. E,
I would really appreciate it, if you wouldn’t post, or copy, your defenses of MDT in my forum. The forum for discussing MDT is here, not in other forums.
As for your insistence that dimensions move, it still seems non-sensical to me, in spite of your attempts to leverage the concepts of geodesics in your argument. Perhaps we will have to agree to disagree on that point.
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 6, 2008 @ 15:48 GMT
Hello Doug,
I wasn't posting a defense of MDT in your forum.
I was posting a defense of Einstein and General Relativity. I posted it there because I never heard back from you here.
It puzzles the will that your essay has garnered so many votes, when you don't even accept the foundations of Einsetin's General Relativity--one of the towering monuments of physics, which pervades...
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Hello Doug,
I wasn't posting a defense of MDT in your forum.
I was posting a defense of Einstein and General Relativity. I posted it there because I never heard back from you here.
It puzzles the will that your essay has garnered so many votes, when you don't even accept the foundations of Einsetin's General Relativity--one of the towering monuments of physics, which pervades and governs the very universe:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relat
ivity
Are there really that many people who reject both the beauty of the theory of General Relativity, as well as physical reality?
If you are going to talk about time, space, and geometry, sooner or later you are going to have to accept the *physical* reality of General Relativity, which blends time, space, and geometry in a manner that has been empirically verfied over, over, and over.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity
Eins
tein's General Relativity is founded upon a physical reality in which the *physical* dimensions can bend, warp, and move.
Your essay begins with, "The only observed relationship of time to space is a reciprocal relation, in the equation of motion. However, it seems absurd to think of space, defined as a set of points satisfying the postulates of geometry, as the inverse of time."
Now, if you are going to talk about time, space, and *geometry*, it makes little sense to refute Einstein's General Relativity--a well-tested *physical* theory which is built upon the fact that dimenions bend, warp, and move.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativit
y
I hope that you get a chance to read Einstein's work "The Meaning of Relativity" and realize that General Relativity treats dimensions as *physical* entities with dynamical properties.
"CHAPTER XXXII: THE STRUCTURE OF SPACE ACCORDING TO THE GENERAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY: According to the general theory of relativity, the geometrical properties of space are not independent, but they are determined by matter. Thus we can draw conclusions about the geometrical structure of the universe only if we base our considerations on the state of matter as being something that is known." --Einstein's The Meaning of Relativity
Particularly, I hope you get to read chapter XXVII: THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM OF THE GENERAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY IS NOT A EUCLIDEAN CONTINUUM
Also read CHAPTER XXVII, "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. The motion of clocks is also influenced by gravitational fields, and in such a way that a physical definition of time which is made with the aid of clocks has by no means the same degree of plausibility in as in the special tehory of relativity."
Well Doug, I hope that you no longer deny the fact that as matter moves through space, it bends and twists the dimensions--and thus the dimensions can and do move.
Einstein himself states, in the Meaning of Relativity: "CHAPTER XXXII: THE STRUCTURE OF SPACE ACCORDING TO THE GENERAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY: According to the general theory of relativity, the geometrical properties of space are not independent, but they are determined by matter. Thus we can draw conclusions about the geometrical structure of the universe only if we base our considerations on the state of matter as being something that is known." --Einstein
One of the fun things that MDT is doing is going on back to the foundational papers and showing how MDT agrees with all of them--with Einstein, Dirac, Newton, Teller, Galileo, Bohr, Schrodenger, Feynman--while so many modern physicists do not agree with the Greats, nor *physical* reality; as physical reality has a tendency to get in the way of fiat empires and postmodern groupthink tryannies.
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
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John Merryman wrote on Nov. 6, 2008 @ 16:50 GMT
According to the general theory of relativity, the geometrical properties of space are not independent, but they are determined by matter. Thus we can draw conclusions about the geometrical structure of the universe only if we base our considerations on the state of matter as being something that is known." --Einstein
Dr. E,
Does that mean idealized flat space isn't a valid concept? Would that mean a perfect circle is equally invalid? So does that mean such ideas as pi are not valid? It seems the whole of mathematics is impossible without the platonic ideal.
Doug wrote on Nov. 6, 2008 @ 17:00 GMT
Dr. E,
Please don’t put your words into my mouth. I didn’t say that I “don't even accept the foundations of Einsetin's (sic) General Relativity,” you said that.
I’m just trying to make the point that it’s not the dimensions of spacetime that “bend and move,” as you say, because that concept fits into the category of “not even wrong,” given the English language.
The warping, bending and moving of locations in spacetime are a result of the effects of acceleration, and the equivalence of acceleration and gravity. It does not posit the warping and bending and moving of dimensions, which, like direction, are only properties used to describe magnitudes.
In English, we can say that we bend, warp, and move, or in general, that we change, the “dimensions” of some physical object, but what we really mean is that we change the magnitudes of the units of length, width and height, which define the shape of the object. We don’t warp, bend or move the three dimensions, x, y, z, which are established relative to some origin on the object and used to define the spatial extent of x, y and z magnitudes, defining the shape of the object.
In general relativity, Einstein uses Mach’s principle, as he called it, defining mass in its interaction with other masses, leading to the conclusion that there is no privileged reference system. I completely concur with this conclusion: There is no privileged reference system that would enable us to measure the change of the locations of isolated objects. The only meaning of the measure of distance is the difference between locations that is occupied, or that is occupiable to some degree of probability, by some physical object.
However, this concept has nothing to do whatsoever with a claim that we can define a change of the “location” of dimensions. Dimensions don’t have locations. They are an abstraction that enables us to give a name to the independent spaces, or degrees of freedom, in a physical system. To speak of their “motion” is not even wrong. It’s intellectual confusion, in my opinion.
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 6, 2008 @ 17:32 GMT
Doug--you are ignoring Einstein: Einstein's General Relativity is founded upon a physical reality in which the *physical* dimensions can bend, warp, and move.
Einstein wrote, "According to the general theory of relativity, the geometrical properties of space are not independent, but they are determined by matter."
You are refusing to watch, listen, think, read, and understand;...
view entire post
Doug--you are ignoring Einstein: Einstein's General Relativity is founded upon a physical reality in which the *physical* dimensions can bend, warp, and move.
Einstein wrote, "According to the general theory of relativity, the geometrical properties of space are not independent, but they are determined by matter."
You are refusing to watch, listen, think, read, and understand; preferring word games.
Einstein wrote, "the geometrical properties of space are not independent, but they are determined by matter."
Einstein wrote, "the geometrical properties of space are not independent, but they are determined by matter."
Einstein wrote, "the geometrical properties of space are not independent, but they are determined by matter."
And this is backed by empirical evidence:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relat
ivity
As a mass moves through space, it warps and bends the dimensions. The dimensions move around it.
I hope that you get a chance to read Einstein's work "The Meaning of Relativity" and realize that General Relativity treats dimensions as *physical* entities with dynamical properties.
"CHAPTER XXXII: THE STRUCTURE OF SPACE ACCORDING TO THE GENERAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY: According to the general theory of relativity, the geometrical properties of space are not independent, but they are determined by matter. Thus we can draw conclusions about the geometrical structure of the universe only if we base our considerations on the state of matter as being something that is known." --Einstein's The Meaning of Relativity
Here is an awesome video, starring David Duchovney playing Brian Greene, in which you can see the dimensions moving!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rocNtnD-yI
Start it at 6:15. When the sun is introduced onto the spacetime at approx 6:22, watch the dimensions move! This is produced by Columbia University, NSF, and one of the world's leading string theorists! Surely they would not mislead us about moving dimensions!
Then watch the Harvard physicist talk, and at around 6:35, you can see that as the earth moves through spacetime, it stretches the dimensions! Ergo dimensions can move!
Then, my favorite part--at 7:20 David Duchovney makes the sun dissapear! And how the dimensions move and then some! Look at the dimensions bending, warping, and moving!
And then, at about 0:36 into this next video, watch the dimensions themselves bend and move as the masses move through them!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxwjeg_r5Ug&feature=rela
ted
And if ths sun ceased to exist, watch what would happen to the dimensions--they would warp, bend, and move!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T884m5_QzWM&feature=rela
ted
And check out the movement of the dimensions around two oribiting stars!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUyrPDmh4rI&feature=rel
ated
As you might know, Joseph Taylor won the Nobel Prize for observing such orbiting stars and finding more experimental evidence supporting the fact that dimensions can bend, warp, and move! I had Taylor for experimental physics at Princeton, but did not know that his middle name is Hooton:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Hooton_Taylor_Jr.
"Taylor has used this first binary pulsar to make high-precision tests of general relativity. Working with his colleague Joel Weisberg, Taylor has used observations of this pulsar to demonstrated the existence of gravitational radiation in the amount and with the properties first predicted by Albert Einstein. He and Hulse shared the Nobel Prize for the discovery of this object."
Again, this is kindof boring after all the cool animations above with David Duchovney, but you can see how the earth would curve spacetime--how it would make the dimensions curve and move, as it revolved about the sun, tramping through spacetime.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime
http://commo
ns.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Eclipse-test-of-relativity.jpg
Pl
ease do not ignore this experimental evidence and all of Einstein's hard, grueling work in developing General Relativity, by stating that "dimensions" cannot bend, warp, and move. It is rather insulting, when you think about it, to Einstein. GR demonstrates irrefutably that dimensions are capabale of motion and that dimensions move.
If you really, really believe that "dimension is an adjective," I would encourage you to free your mind by reading about General Relativity, starting with Einstein's The Meaning of Relativity and progressing to:
http://www.amazon.com/Gravitation-Physics-Charles-W-Misne
r/dp/0716703440/
http://www.amazon.com/Journey-Gravity-Spacet
ime-Scientific-American/dp/0716760347/ (I highly recommend this book Doug! It is writen for laymen and a more general audience & too, my name is in the acknowledgements--the only time I have ever shared a paragraph with Einstein--haha)
You are refusing to watch, listen, think, read, and understand; preferring word games, and yet, I have faith that you might grasp the fact that dimensions can bend, warp, and move!
"According to Einstein's general theory of relativity, mass and energy warp spacetime. The undulations then affect the trajectories of passing objects, producing the effects we call gravity. In Einstein's theory, spacetime is a stretchy, dynamical entity." --http://focus.aps.org/story/v14/st13
Spacetime is a dynamical entity in Einstein's theory. Ergo, dimensions move.
view post as summary
Doug wrote on Nov. 6, 2008 @ 20:26 GMT
Dr. E,
To me, it seems as if you listen only to yourself, repeating to yourself what you want to be true. Try listening to what I am saying, please.
I don’t have any problem with Einstein’s theory, because I understand it, as far as the geometric concepts of warping, bending and moving the fabric of spacetime go (Shall I repeat that? I think I will.)
I don’t have any problem with Einstein’s theory, because I understand it, as far as the geometric concepts of warping, bending and moving the fabric of spacetime go.
What I have a problem with is your use of Einstein’s concepts to justify your confused notion that the DIMENSIONS of spacetime are warped, bent and moved. Notice that, no matter how hard you try, you will not be able to find Einstein saying that the DIMENSIONS of spacetime are warped, bent or moved.
Now, I’ve tried to articulate WHY this difference between your concepts and Einstein’s concepts arise, but apparently you are not interested in discussing those arguments, but continue to repeat yourself over and over again, insisting that there is no difference between Einstein’s concept of dynamic spacetime, and your concept of dynamic dimensions.
Ok, if that’s what you prefer to do, so be it, but please lay off me. Quit trying to make a case for my rejection of Einstein, based on my rejection of MDT. They are not the same, in spite of all your valiant efforts to make it so.
John Merryman wrote on Nov. 6, 2008 @ 22:24 GMT
Doug,
I think Dr. E is right in the extent to which modern physics is based on the assumption that the essential dimensions of space are defined by the motion of matter and energy. That is why they can argue space(and time) are created at the singularity and expand from there. I think that foundational logic is flawed and is the cause of much confusion in physics today, but the edifice isn't going to crumble anytime soon. Remember that epicycles lasted for fifteen hundred years. Suffice to say, you are just going to get a knot on your head if you beat it against that wall.
John Merryman wrote on Nov. 6, 2008 @ 22:26 GMT
Correction; Make that "the essential dimensions of space are created by the motion of matter and energy."
Doug wrote on Nov. 6, 2008 @ 22:43 GMT
John, yes they go from 0D (a point) to 3D (a sphere), but that's not the issue. What is the issue is that Elliot uses dimensions in the same way one would for bounded objects; that is, one can speak of changing the dimensions of an object, i.e. alter its shape, but in that case its understood that it's the magnitude of the dimensions that are changed, i.e. so much of x, so much of y, so much of z, according to taste. But in an unbounded spacetime continuum, how do you specify a change in the dimensions?
You can't and that's the whole point. Especially, when the motion you specify isn’t really motion at all, but a quantity of imaginary time per quantity of real time!
Geesh!
John Merryman wrote on Nov. 6, 2008 @ 23:31 GMT
Doug,
"The fourth dimension is the time variable, whether real or imaginary. It increases, or progresses, but not in relation to itself. In expands (moves) in relation to the three space variables, "
If space expands, than wouldn't the speed of light increase proportionally?
Say two points are x lightyears apart and the universe doubled in size, would they be 2x lightyears apart, or, since C is our most stable measure of space, would they still be x lightyears apart, since the measure expands along with the space measured? If they are 2x lightyears apart, that's an increasing amount of stable space, not expanding space. If they are still x lightyears apart, how can we really say space is expanding, all things being relative.
The idea of expanding space is based on the redshift of distant galaxies, but the theory built around that has required some drastic patches, such as Inflation Theory. According to tests by COBE and WMAP, the expansion and the collapse of gravity are equal, as close as can be measured, resulting in flat space as we observe it, so the "expansion" of space is balanced by the contraction of gravity. It seems far more likely to be some process of energetic expansion and gravitational collapse cycling around an equilibrium of flat space.
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 6, 2008 @ 23:32 GMT
Doug,
This is getting ridiculous. You write, "But in an unbounded spacetime continuum, how do you specify a change in the dimensions?" With differential geometry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_geometry
h
ttp://www.etsu.edu/math/gardner/5310/notes.htm
Doug--you are arguing with Einstein, General Relativity, all the experimental tests supporting general...
view entire post
Doug,
This is getting ridiculous. You write, "But in an unbounded spacetime continuum, how do you specify a change in the dimensions?" With differential geometry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_geometry
h
ttp://www.etsu.edu/math/gardner/5310/notes.htm
Doug--you are arguing with Einstein, General Relativity, all the experimental tests supporting general relativity, and *physical reality*.
Just out of curiosity, do you have a Ph.D. in physics? Or a masters or undergrad degree in physics?
I challenge you to find one serious Ph.D. physicist who agrees with you that dimensions are not *physical* entities which do *not* bend, warp, and move.
Doug--you are ignoring Einstein and trying to refute GR with no reason: Einstein's General Relativity is founded upon a physical reality in which the *physical* dimensions can bend, warp, and move.
Einstein wrote, "According to the general theory of relativity, the geometrical properties of space are not independent, but they are determined by matter."
You are refusing to watch, listen, think, read, and understand; instead preferring word games.
Einstein wrote, "the geometrical properties of space are not independent, but they are determined by matter."
Einstein wrote, "the geometrical properties of space are not independent, but they are determined by matter."
Einstein wrote, "the geometrical properties of space are not independent, but they are determined by matter."
And this is backed by empirical evidence:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relat
ivity
As a mass moves through space, it warps and bends the dimensions. The dimensions move around it.
I hope that you get a chance to read Einstein's work "The Meaning of Relativity" and realize that General Relativity treats dimensions as *physical* entities with dynamical properties.
"CHAPTER XXXII: THE STRUCTURE OF SPACE ACCORDING TO THE GENERAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY: According to the general theory of relativity, the geometrical properties of space are not independent, but they are determined by matter. Thus we can draw conclusions about the geometrical structure of the universe only if we base our considerations on the state of matter as being something that is known." --Einstein's The Meaning of Relativity
Here is an awesome video, starring David Duchovney playing Brian Greene, in which you can see the dimensions moving!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rocNtnD-yI
Start it at 6:15. When the sun is introduced onto the spacetime at approx 6:22, watch the dimensions move! This is produced by Columbia University, NSF, and one of the world's leading string theorists! Surely they would not mislead us about moving dimensions!
Then watch the Harvard physicist talk, and at around 6:35, you can see that as the earth moves through spacetime, it stretches the dimensions! Ergo dimensions can move!
Then, my favorite part--at 7:20 David Duchovney makes the sun dissapear! And how the dimensions move and then some! Look at the dimensions bending, warping, and moving!
And then, at about 0:36 into this next video, watch the dimensions themselves bend and move as the masses move through them!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxwjeg_r5Ug&feature=rela
ted
And if ths sun ceased to exist, watch what would happen to the dimensions--they would warp, bend, and move!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T884m5_QzWM&feature=rela
ted
And check out the movement of the dimensions around two oribiting stars!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUyrPDmh4rI&feature=rel
ated
As you might know, Joseph Taylor won the Nobel Prize for observing such orbiting stars and finding more experimental evidence supporting the fact that dimensions can bend, warp, and move! I had Taylor for experimental physics at Princeton, but did not know that his middle name is Hooton:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Hooton_Taylor_Jr.
"Taylor has used this first binary pulsar to make high-precision tests of general relativity. Working with his colleague Joel Weisberg, Taylor has used observations of this pulsar to demonstrated the existence of gravitational radiation in the amount and with the properties first predicted by Albert Einstein. He and Hulse shared the Nobel Prize for the discovery of this object."
Again, this is kindof boring after all the cool animations above with David Duchovney, but you can see how the earth would curve spacetime--how it would make the dimensions curve and move, as it revolved about the sun, tramping through spacetime.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime
http://commo
ns.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Eclipse-test-of-relativity.jpg
Pl
ease do not ignore this experimental evidence and all of Einstein's hard, grueling work in developing General Relativity, by stating that "dimensions" cannot bend, warp, and move. It is rather insulting, when you think about it, to Einstein. GR demonstrates irrefutably that dimensions are capabale of motion and that dimensions move.
If you really, really believe that "dimension is an adjective," I would encourage you to free your mind by reading about General Relativity, starting with Einstein's The Meaning of Relativity and progressing to:
http://www.amazon.com/Gravitation-Physics-Charles-W-Misne
r/dp/0716703440/
http://www.amazon.com/Journey-Gravity-Spacet
ime-Scientific-American/dp/0716760347/ (I highly recommend this book Doug! It is writen for laymen and a more general audience & too, my name is in the acknowledgements--the only time I have ever shared a paragraph with Einstein--haha)
You are refusing to watch, listen, think, read, and understand; preferring word games, and yet, I have faith that you might grasp the fact that dimensions can bend, warp, and move!
"According to Einstein's general theory of relativity, mass and energy warp spacetime. The undulations then affect the trajectories of passing objects, producing the effects we call gravity. In Einstein's theory, spacetime is a stretchy, dynamical entity." --http://focus.aps.org/story/v14/st13
Spacetime is a dynamical entity in Einstein's theory. Ergo, dimensions move.
view post as summary
John Merryman wrote on Nov. 6, 2008 @ 23:35 GMT
Correction; The quote I meant to paste on that last post was;
"yes they go from 0D (a point) to 3D (a sphere), but that's not the issue."
John Merryman wrote on Nov. 6, 2008 @ 23:37 GMT
Dr. E,
Energy and mass move. Dimensions are imaginary.
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 7, 2008 @ 00:26 GMT
No John,
Dimensions are real, physical entities with a *physical* realtity! Read any book on spacetime physics and general relativity, and you will see this to be true! Einstein's GR gives spacetime a *physical* reality!
"CHAPTER XXXII: THE STRUCTURE OF SPACE ACCORDING TO THE GENERAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY: According to the general theory of relativity, the geometrical properties of...
view entire post
No John,
Dimensions are real, physical entities with a *physical* realtity! Read any book on spacetime physics and general relativity, and you will see this to be true! Einstein's GR gives spacetime a *physical* reality!
"CHAPTER XXXII: THE STRUCTURE OF SPACE ACCORDING TO THE GENERAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY: According to the general theory of relativity, the geometrical properties of space are not independent, but they are determined by matter. Thus we can draw conclusions about the geometrical structure of the universe only if we base our considerations on the state of matter as being something that is known." --Einstein's The Meaning of Relativity
Everyone should read Nobel Laureate Physicist Robert Laughlin's A DIFFERENT UNIVERSE, p. 121:
"How Einstein came to conclude that space was a medium is fascinating story. . . He then made a second, masterful guess about the specific relation between mass and curvature known to us today as Einstein's Field Equations. These respect relativity and thus contain the same paradoxes of simultaneity found in the original version of relativity. For this reason they are more accurately described as a relation between stress-energy and the curvature of four-dimenionsal space-time. Their prediction that space can ripple in addition to strecthing is a consequence of its obeying relativity, a symmetry of motion. It is consistent with our physical intuition . . we have obvious similarities between Einsteinian gravity and the dynamic warping of real surfaces, leading us to describe space-time as a fabric. Bright young students inevitable pick up on this and ask the professor what moves when gravitational radiatiation propagates. They receive the answer that space-time itself does." --Robert Laughlin, A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down
“If Einstein were alive today, he would be horrified at this state of affairs. He would upbraid the profession for allowing this mess to develop and fly into a blind rage over the transformation of his beautiful creations into ideologies and the resulting proliferation of logical inconsistencies. Einstein was an artist and a scholar but above all he was a revolutionary. His approach to physics might be summarized as hypothesizing minimally. Never arguing with experiment, demanding total logical consistency, and mistrusting unsubstantiated beliefs. The unsubstantial belief of his day was ether, or more precisely the naïve version of ether that preceded relativity. The unsubstantiated belief of our day is relativity itself. It would be perfectly in character for him to reexamine the facts, toss them over in his mind, and conclude that his beloved principle of relativity was not fundamental at all but emergent—a collective property of the matter constituting space-time that becomes increasingly exact at long length scales but fails at short ones. This is a different idea from his original one but something fully compatible with it logically, and even more exciting and potentially important. It would mean that the fabric of space-time was not simply the stage on which life played out but an organizational phenomenon, and that there might be something beyond.” –A Different Universe, Reinventing Physics From The Bottom Down, Robert B. Laughlin, Winner of the Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the fractional quantum Hall effect.
The dimensions are real, physical entities.
Wormholes, tiny, little vibrating strings, little loops, the block universe, multiuniverse, parallel universes, frozen time, and quantum gravity are unreal. Yet they get hundreds of millions of funding.
And thus Einstein would indeed be horrified to see so many railing against that which is real, while exalting the unreal. Is it any wonder progress in physics has ground to a halt, up until MDT unfroze both time and progress in physics, while liberating us from the block universe.
It is interesting that Einstein introduced relativity as a principle--as a primary law not deduced from anything else.
Well, I guess I was dumb enough to even ask, "why relativity?"
And I found the answer in a more fundamental invariance--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt = ic. Change is fundamentally embedded in space-time. And not only can all of relativity be derived from this, but suddenly we had a *physical* model for entropy, time and its arrows and assymetries in all realms, free will, and quantum nonlocality and entanglement. MDT accounts for the the constant speed of light c--both its independence of the source and its independence of the velocity of the observer, while establishing it as the fastest, slowest, and only velocity for all entities and objects moving through space-time, as well as the maximum velocity that anything is measured to move. And suddenly we see a *physical* basis for E=mc^2. Energy and mass are the same thing--it's just that energy is mass caught upon the fourth expanding dimension, and thus it surfs along at "c."
How else would one unify and explain so much about our *physical* reality?
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
view post as summary
John Merryman wrote on Nov. 7, 2008 @ 01:04 GMT
Dr. E,
"Imaginary" wasn't the word I was looking for. Dimensions are information.
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 7, 2008 @ 01:25 GMT
Sapcetime is a real, physical entity which can bend, twist, and contort, and hence dimensions are real entities with *physical* properties.
Here's some cool feedback on MDT!
http://imaginingthetenthdimension.blogspot.com/2008/11/t
enth-dimension-polls-archive-23.html
":One of my most popularly viewed blog entries in the last couple of months here has been "Moving Dimensions and Synchromysticism", in which I talk about the mind-bending work of Jake Kotze, and the mind-bending Moving Dimensions Theory (MDT) of Dr. Elliott McGucken, the brief summation of which I will quote again here:
The only way to stay stationary in the fourth dimension is to move at the speed of light. Ergo the fourth dimension is expanding at the rate of "c" relative to the three spatial dimensions.
This idea is easily related to my way of visualizing the dimension, I believe, and gives us an intuitive way to understand the quandary of why the speed of light doesn't change, no matter what direction in space you travel, and no matter whether you're traveling forward or back in time. Bravo, Elliot McGucken!" --http://imaginingthetenthdimension.blogspot.com/2008/11/ten
th-dimension-polls-archive-23.html
And at:
"about time's arrow, one paper by McGucken points out that the fourth dimension in relativity is not time. it actually reads: x4=ict. that's different. we don't seem to actually have a word for what "ict" is. it imparts movement. expansion. it appears that time in this emerges naturally from this expansion. apparently so does light. it's lovely. myself, i have to try to picture this stuff happen, visualize the actual process. it occurs relative to the three primary dimensional vectors of space. it's a bit of an ethereal image for me, still thinking about it, but it seems this could also accommodate a directional tendency."
--http://fqxi.org/community/forum/category/10
And check out http://physicsmathforums.com
John Merryman wrote on Nov. 7, 2008 @ 02:56 GMT
Dr. E,
I really do try addressing your points, to the best of my ability, but it does seem at times that you are in your own echo chamber.
Our individual lives are like bubbles. Some times we paint pretty pictures on the walls, cause they are more comfortable then what's outside. Sometimes we just try keeping them patched together as long as possible, yet we are just food for the beast. Sometimes it's a world of chaos and muck and all we know is what gets stuck to our outside. Sometimes we really do live in beautiful places and all we really want to do is keep that bubble clear as possible, so we can see the world. If you are one of those people, you're riding the wave.
Dimensions are information. Energy goes past to future. Information goes future to past, like the face of the clock going counterclockwise. Receding into the past.
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 7, 2008 @ 04:39 GMT
Thanks John, :)
When you think about it, it's actually all the string theorists and quantum gravitationists and wormholers and multiversers who are living in an imaginary bubble, funded by hundreds of millions, tenure, and titles--all for naught.
Such is the human condition--bubbles need groupthink, so the more, the merrier.
"Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
"For a totalitarian regime, the ideal citizen isn’t a chest-thumping Nazi, but rather the man for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (meaning the reality of the experience) and the distinction between true and false (meaning the standard way of thinking) doesn’t exist any more."
- Hannah Arendt
"The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong."--George Bernard Shaw
The more people who believe in a theory that has no experimental evidence, the more likely it is to be wrong.
"“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.”
--Galileo Galilei
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
John Merryman wrote on Nov. 7, 2008 @ 11:45 GMT
Dr. E,
That's nature. When Darwin was developing the theory of evolution, the competing theory was Catastrophism. What is referred to by Stephen Jay Gould as Punctuated Equilibrium. That rather then change happening as a steady and continuous process, it tend to happen in bursts, where the system tends toward equilibrium and occasionally stagnation, until a disruptive event or tipping point comes along that totally disrupts the system and new patterns and structures emerge from the chaos, then settle into their own rhythm and the process starts over again. In a way, they are both true, as change, like everything else, can be both analog and digital. That said, it's no surprise the establishment should prefer the evolution model over the revolution model.
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 7, 2008 @ 18:33 GMT
Yes John,
"That said, it's no surprise the establishment should prefer the evolution model over the revolution model."
The establishment "prefers" the evolution model, but they're always seeking funding for the "revolution" model, while laying claims to its fruits, after doing away with the rugged, individualist spirit by which it is born.
The establishments corrupts...
view entire post
Yes John,
"That said, it's no surprise the establishment should prefer the evolution model over the revolution model."
The establishment "prefers" the evolution model, but they're always seeking funding for the "revolution" model, while laying claims to its fruits, after doing away with the rugged, individualist spirit by which it is born.
The establishments corrupts yesterday's physicists, poets, and prophets; twisting Einstein's relativity until it gives tenure for time machines, and then that same establishment places today's Galileos under house arrest, burns today's Bruno alive, drives today's Boltzman to suicide, and sentences today's Socrates.
One has to wonder, if today's leaders who exalt and snark in String Theory, quantum gravity and other anti-theories, were at Gelileo's hearing or Socrates' trial, would they have spoken out for Galileo or Socrates? Or would they be too busy cutting deals for TV Shows, coffee-table books, radio shows, and other forms of "popularizing science" which have actually *replaced* science with groupthink anti-theory regimes. Do they ever stop to think that it was during their era--during the massive popularization of science--that all progress in theoretical physics ground to a halt? Did Einstein, Feynman, Bohr, and Heisenberg focus first and foremost on their myspace page, and then on advancing physics? Unless I miss my guess, I think they put physics first.
The budget for public relations (PR) alone for today's anti-theories dwarfs the budget for MDT. With that massive funding the antitheorists can hire postdocs and grad-students for pennies in today's down-economy, and fund the destruction of indie-physics and indie science, snarking the outsiders, while coordinating secretive hyping campaigns via email, for this year's antithoery--E8, E9, or E10.
Well, the funny thing is, they have contributed not one iota to physics; and instead have bent, warped, and twisted Einstein's, Bohr's, and the Founding Fathers' work, so as postulate time machines they never build, wormholes they never see, tiny, vibrating stings they never find, and multiverses which pop into existence just long enough for them to get tenure, but which disappear before experimantalists can get tenure.
Well, thanks to fqxi.org for this wonderful forum and the concept of the essay contest! Surely this is a format superior to arxiv.org, whose 10^99 indecipherable papers, mosytly written to satisfy the bean-counters on the tenure committees, hasn't exactly lead to any advancements in physics. . .
Max Born wrote, "All great discoveries in experimental physics have been made due to the intuition of men who made free use of models which for them were not products of the imagination but representations of real things."
And yet, today, the quantum gravity regimes have rejected simple physical models along with the belief that the math ought represent *real* things. And thus, despite hundreds of million in funding, there is no quantum gravity. There is no graviton, nor any consistent theory of quantum gravity. Instead, there are literally an infinite number of string theories, and fair about of loop-quantum theories, none of which quantize gravity in any finite, consistent way; let alone in any way that makes predictions that can be tested. There is no proof whatsover for tiny, vibrating strings, nor atoms of space and time, nor twistors, nor tiny, little loops, nor multiverses, nor hyperspace, nor parallel universes. And the Greats themselves--Nobel Laureates--both living and dead, have spoke out against such pseudo-science and antitheories, which have become a religion.
And a religion, which does not acknowelegde that it is a religion, is a most dangerous tool. And the antitheorist;s grad-students are trained to use it so as to snark and destory any new ides, and rewarded in cash for doing so. Is it no wonder physics has ground to a halt, and that culture is daclining? For when the Truth ends, the worst rise to the top, and when the worst get on top, they recreate science in their own image--as a snarky, politizied tyranny which claims to be against snark and tyrants, while embodying such entities.
Instead of rugged science and open, honest debate, we get communal efforts which end up opposing progress in physics, as they oppose the individual heroic spirit by which all higher physical truths are ultimately apprehended.
Science is more of an art than a science, and it always seems to advance in manners never before anticipated by the establishment (who are to busy with their lucrative TV shows and book deals to botehr with the hard work advancing science takes), as Planck stated. One cannot legislate, nor vote on, nor dictate the advancement of science by fiat. Do not take my word for it.
"One cannot pray a lie," as Mark Twain once said.
"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck
And again we see the primacy of the honest individual in the classic, epic hero's journey!
"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man." --Joseph Campbell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth
And the Nobel Laureate eocnomist F.A. Hayek agrees!
"The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for “conscious” control or “conscious” planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme—while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the superindividual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." –F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom
Along comes a scientist who agrees with Einstein and Max Born and Planck. Along comes a physicist who agrees with Wheeler, and Feynman, and Glasgow, and Godel, and Bohr, and Gamow--wishing that he could watch old Westerns with Bohr and Gamow. Along comes a scientist who agrees with Nobel Laureate Robert Laughlin and Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek, with Newton and Dirac, with Heisenberg and Minkowski, with the great mythologist Joseph Campbell. Along comes a scientist with simple theory that has a simple postulate and equation from which all of relativity may be derived; from which entropy naturally arises, and which accounts for time and all its arrows and assymetries across all realms, while also providing a *physical* model for entanglement and nonlocality, as well as a *physical* model for Huygens' principle and the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle. Not only does the multi-billion-dollar physics establishment ignore it, but they have so much funding, that they can hire grad students and profesors to snark the theory, so as to defend their perptual-motion NSF money mahcines and religions of wormholes, time warps, quantum gravity, multiverses, tiny, vibrating strings, and geometric mysticism/PR/hype, which Moving Dimensions Theory has no need for, as it concerns itself with physics and physical reality--with logic, reason, and simple postulates and equations that represent a hitherto unsung universal invariant--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c.
What we have here is a modern-day Inquistion.
Check out:
http://www.jklarsen.com/myblog/index.php?blog=6&title=co
nfession_of_galileo_galilei&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
Where it is reported: "In 1633, physicist Galileo Galilei was brought before the Roman Inquisition. Tried on "vehement suspicion of heresy," Galileo was forced to swear that he "abjured, cursed and detested" the errors of his work, which extended the findings of the Polish astronomer Nicholaus Copernicus that the Earth Moves."
Now I have postulated that the fourth dimension expands relative to the three spatial dimensions, and not one person in the entire quantum gravity regime has ever, ever, taken the time to comment on my theory. It's not like MDT is a secret, so their silence puzzles the will. Carlo promised to look at my paper above, but he has not yet commented on it.
I realized that perhaps before commenting on MDT, they are all waiting for a confession.
Well, here is my confession, based on Galileo's, which can be enjoyed here:
http://www.jklarsen.com/myblog/index.php?blog=6&title=c
onfession_of_galileo_galilei&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
I, Dr. E, son of the late Vincenzio Galilei of Florence, aged 70 years, tried personally by this court, and kneeling before You, the most Eminent Antitheorists and Reverend Lord Cardinals of M-Theory Multiverses, Inquisitors-General throughout the Quantum Gravity Republic against heretical depravity, having before my eyes the Most Holy Gospels of an Elegant Universe, Not Even Wrong, and The Trouble With Physics, and laying on them my own hands; I swear that I have always believed, I believe now, and with Ed Witten's help I will in future believe all which the Holy Quantum Gravity and M-Theory Church doth hold, preach, teach, and hype to the press, including E-8 and next year's E-9 anti-theory.
But since I, after having been admonished by this Holy Office entirely to abandon the false opinion that the fourth dimension expands relative to the three spatial dimensions, and that quantum mechanics' entanglement, nonlocality, entropy, relativity itself, time and all its arrows and assymetries across all realms, the gravitational slowing of clocks and time, Huygens' Principle, probability, and all the dualities (space-time, wave-particle, mass-energy) derive from this simple principle of MDT and its equation dx4/dt=ic, and that I was neither to hold, defend, nor teach in any manner whatever, either orally or in writing, the said false doctrine; and after having received a notification that the said doctrine is contrary to the Holy Writ of Hyperspace, I did write and cause to be printed a blog and forum in which I treat of the said already condemned MDT doctrine, and bring forward arguments of much efficacy in its favour, without arriving at any solution: I have been judged vehemently suspected of heresy, that is, of having held and believed that the fourth dimension's expansion is the universe's fundamental invaraint, and that the block universe does not exist and time is not the fourth dimension, but that time is a parameter that emerges because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c, that change is and ought be woven into the fundamental fabric of spacetime with dx4/dt=ic, and that the fourth dimension, like the earth, does move.
Nevertheless, wishing to remove from the minds of your Tenured Eminences and all faithful LQGers and String Theorist this vehement suspicion reasonably conceived against me, I abjure with sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I curse and detest the said errors and heresies, and generally all and every error and sect contrary to the Holy Quantum Gravity Regimes, and I am ready to foregt time, forget space, and forget physical reality, while embracing multiverses and tiny, vibrating stirngs. And I swear that for the future I will neither say nor assert in speaking or writing such things as may bring upon me similar suspicion; and if I know any heretic who speaks out against tiny, vibrating branes, anti-theories, or atoms of space and time, or one suspected of heresy, I will denounce him to this Holy Office of Time Travel, or to the Inquisitor of Wormholes and Ordinary of the place in which I may be, which will of course be in the block universe, which MDT falsely liberated us from, while falsely grangting us free will and free thought, as it falsely froze time. I hereby remit all future free will, as I return to the block universe with the hopes of receiving the funding that is a part of my pre-Ordained future, as a member of the Quantum Gravity Church.
I also swear and promise to adopt and observe entirely all the penances which have been or may be by this Holy Office of Tiny, Little, Loops imposed on me. And if I contravene any of these said promises, protests, or oaths, (which Ed Witten forbid!) I submit myself to all the pains and penalties which by the Sacred Canons of String Theory and other Decrees of D-branes general and particular are against such offenders imposed and promulgated. So help me God and the Holy Warped Passages/The Trouble With Physics/10^99 indecipherable arxiv.org papers--which I touch with my own hands.
I, Dr. E, aforesaid have abjured, sworn, and promised, and hold myself bound as above; and in token of the truth, with my own hand have subscribed the present schedule of my abjuration, and have recited it word by word. In America, at the Convent della Minerva, this 30th day of October, 2008, right before I go shopping for my Halloween costume in this parallel universe where physicists do not get tenure for studying parallel universes.
I, Dr. E, have abjured as above, with my own hand."
And as I'm walking away to serve out my house arrest after this confession, I turn to the crowd that had gathered to hear me read it and smile.
And I say, "And yet it--the fourth dimension--moves! Eppur si muove!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_pur_si_muove
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Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 7, 2008 @ 19:32 GMT
Moving Dimensions Theory is the most-discussed and viewed theory in Dr. Michio Kaku's Forums:
http://www.mkaku.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=28
MDT is also way up there in his String Theory Forum:
http://www.mkaku.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=40
Rock on!
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
Brian Beverly wrote on Nov. 8, 2008 @ 11:12 GMT
Dr. E, I have nothing but respect for someone who has gained a lifetime's worth of knowledge and wisdom. I am sorry for the recent loss of Dr. Wheeler. Please excuse my young naivete but I have some questions:
Why did you not prove your essay thesis with a derivation?
Why do you never mention the derivation of the speed of light using the electric and magnetic constants?
In your derivation of X4 = ict why do you multiply by dx infinitesimals and ignore a dx^2 on the L.H.S. rather than writing it as dX4 = icdt and integrating?
Why do you only write X4 = ict then list phenomena and explain them with only the phrase, "which results because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions"?
If any arbitrary vector in some vector space is a linear combination of basis vectors then how does a changing 4th dimension effect the vector space?
I thought relativity was a change in bases?
Why do you assume a continuous theory when quantum mechanics is discrete?
How did you derive a continuous theory of everything without the mathematics of Cantor?
How do you explain the temporal and spatial derivatives of the Schrodinger equation? I thought it was the requirement that psi(x,t) = Aexp[i(kx - wt)] | E = hbar w | P = hbar k must yield the classical energy equation E = p^2/2m.
Why do you even mention the non-relativistic Schrodinger equation but never mention the Dirac equation?
Why do you mention that light has a probability of being found in some large circle? I thought QED showed these probabilities cancel each other out.
Why do you never mention pure states, eigenvalues or entropy when discussing entanglement?
If a part of the universe is expanding at c how do you explain non-locality? I thought this would just create event horizons.
Why do you mention the absolute rate of c changing as a cause for an accelerating and decelerating universe? I thought the speed of light was a constant.
If everything I have spent precious time and money learning is wrong, then should I drop physics and go to law school? I'd be sad, the laws of man are not as cool as the laws of nature.
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 8, 2008 @ 15:51 GMT
Brian, were it not for MDT's *physical* model, how would you explain time and all its arrows and assyemtries across all realms, entropy, quantum mechanics' nonlocality and entanglement, all of Einstein's relativity, and the universal appearance of Huygens' Principle across all realms? How would you account for the gravitational slowing of clocks and light, as well as the gravitational redshift? ...
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Brian, were it not for MDT's *physical* model, how would you explain time and all its arrows and assyemtries across all realms, entropy, quantum mechanics' nonlocality and entanglement, all of Einstein's relativity, and the universal appearance of Huygens' Principle across all realms? How would you account for the gravitational slowing of clocks and light, as well as the gravitational redshift? What *physical* model do you, Brian Beverly, propose, that would *physically* unify all these entities?
And please don't say, "tiny vibrating strings," nor "little loops."
Brian--how else would you weave change into the fundamental fabric of spacetime, where it needs to be, as without change there can be no measurement, and thus no physics? How would you unfreeze time while unifying the dualities and liberating us from a block universe, while provding a universal invariant underlying relativity?
And please don't say, "wormholes," nor "multiverses," nor "tiny, little vibrating strings," nor "little loops," nor "spacetime atoms," nor "M-theory." Don't even say, "quantum gravity," even though they trained you to do so, threatening bankruptcy and banishment, if you spoke otherwise.
Behold MDT--the great unifier and invariant source underlying all *physical* phenomenon--in relativity and quantum emchanics--in statistical mechanics and entropy.
For the first time in the history of relativity, *change* has been *physically* woven into the fundamental fabric of spacetime, with dx4/dt = ic. And that's where change needs to be! For can you name any branch of physics in which change, and time, do not exist? Without change, no measurement can be made.
MDT is unique in that it offers a *physical* model underlying entropy, entanglement, and nonlocality, and too, all of relativity can be immediately derived from its simple postulate and equation.
I expect MDT to bring additional boons for years to come!
Thanks for the questions Brian. Below please find my answers.
"Why did you not prove your essay thesis with a derivation?"
I do. Consider a 4D universe: x1, x2, x3, x4, where x4 is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c described with dx4/dt = ic. Ergo relativity. In my paper I show that this can be given as the motivation for substituting ict for x4. All of relativity arises because of this. Please see Einstein's 1912 Manuscript for more. The essays are limited to 5,000 words, but still I showed how Einstein's Relativity derives from a deeper principle--the fourth dimension is expanding rletaive to the three spatial dimensions at c, or dx4/dt=ic. Consider a 4D universe: x1, x2, x3, x4, where x4 is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c described with dx4/dt = ic. Ergo relativity.
"Why do you never mention the derivation of the speed of light using the electric and magnetic constants?"
Again, the paper is limited to 5,000 words. It is not a physics textbook--it is an essay. I could put this in a longer paper. Or perhaps you would like to write a paper: "Moving Dimensions Theory and the derivation of the speed of light using the electric and magnetic constants."
"In your derivation of X4 = ict why do you multiply by dx infinitesimals and ignore a dx^2 on the L.H.S. rather than writing it as dX4 = icdt and integrating?"
On the L.H.S we have (dx4/dt)dx4. Now dx4/dt=ic, so we substitute ic for dx4/dt.
"Why do you only write X4 = ict then list phenomena and explain them with only the phrase, "which results because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions"?"
I offer detailed *physical* descriptions of all the phenomena that can be expalined with a *physical* model of a fourth expanding dimension given by dx4/dt=ic. Please read the entire paper and stop making false accusations.
"If any arbitrary vector in some vector space is a linear combination of basis vectors then how does a changing 4th dimension effect the vector space?"
How does a changing dimension affect the vector space in General Relativity?
"I thought relativity was a change in bases?"
Relativity is a lot of things.
"Why do you assume a continuous theory when quantum mechanics is discrete?"
General relativity is continuous, as far as we know. And MDT stipulates that while the three spatial dimensions are discrete, the fourth dimension's expansion mainfests itself as a spherically-symmetric wavefront expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions with a wavelength of the Planck Length.
"How did you derive a continuous theory of everything without the mathematics of Cantor?"
Is this John Baez, by any chance, or one of his well-funded grad students with some free time? MDT did not derive a continuous theory of everything. MDT fully supports all of quantum mechanics. Quantum Gravity does not exist--neither in nature nor theory--as far as we know. While you go on and on, attacking the non-funded MDT, you give the myths/hoaxes of quantum gravity--which are funded by hundreds of millions of dollars to create chiny youtube videos that attract legions of young, daring fanboys and mercenaries--a free pass. Perhaps you are working for them? Again, please read the MDT paper, and you'll see I state: "The above equation physically accounts for quantum mechanics’ action-at-a-distance and relativity’s length contraction, as well as entanglement and the equivalence of mass and energy. Diverse dualities—wave/particle, time/space, and mass/energy—all originate from this same principle. The model accounts for the gravitational redshift and the gravitational slowing of clocks, while showing why there is no need to quantize gravity as no physical entities are transferred in gravitational alterations of energy. The theory provides a physical model for time and its arrows—time is not the fourth dimension, but rather a phenomenon that emerges because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions in units of the Planck length. As the measurement of time is inextricably wed to energy, which is the propagation of photons, and as photons propagate as matter surfing the fourth expanding dimension, time inherits properties of the fourth dimension in relativity’s mathematics, but time, as measured on our watches, recorded in our memories, and perceived in radioactive decays and entropy, is not the fourth dimension."
"How do you explain the temporal and spatial derivatives of the Schrodinger equation? I thought it was the requirement that psi(x,t) = Aexp[i(kx - wt)] | E = hbar w | P = hbar k must yield the classical energy equation E = p^2/2m."
I have no idea what the point of this question is. MDT fully supports all of quantum mechanics.
"Why do you even mention the non-relativistic Schrodinger equation but never mention the Dirac equation?" The paper was limited to 5,000 words, and it covers Einstein's Annus Mirabilis, entropy, time and all its arrows and assymtries across all realms, quantum mechanics' nonlocality and entanglement, all the dualities--space/time, wave/particle, mass/energy--and all of Einstein's Relativity; as well as Huygens' Principle, Big Bang Theory, and Einstein's original papers. The paper also presents a hitherto unsung universal *physical* invariant from which all these physical phenomenon arise--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the trhee spatial dimensions at the rate of c. If the paper were 5001 words, I would have mentioned "Dirac," too. Yes--I know that Dirac's Relativistic QM treats time and space on more equal footing, and MDT also has insight into this.
"Why do you mention that light has a probability of being found in some large circle? I thought QED showed these probabilities cancel each other out."
Do you have a degree in physics? Until a photon is meausred, in the simplest case, it expands as a spherically-symmetric probabilistic wavefront.
Indeed, the fourth dimension itself is nonlocal!
Consider a photon emitted from a source. Quantum mechanics describes the photon's propagation as a spherically-symmetric wavefront of probability expanding at c.
Relativity tells us that the photon does not age--it stays at the same place in the fourth dimension.
Ergo the fourth dimension is nonlocal--it is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c. Ergo the spherically-symmetric wavefront of probability expanding at c, which describes the photon's propagation, yet represents a locality in the fourth dimension.
This fits perfectly with Einstein's 1912 paper, where he wrote x4 = ict, or dx4/dt = ic. As you can see, the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c.
Now, in light of this (no pun intended), is it no wonder that two intially-interacting photons remain entangled? For even though they propagate in opposite directions, they yet remain ageless, and in the same place in the fourth expanding dimension!
And too, the photons remain in the same place in time, although time is an emergent parameter, that we can measure on watches and clocks, that arises because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, carrying matter in the fourth dimension at c, which manifests itself as photons. Hence you can see why E=mc^2--energy is but matter caught upon the fourth expanding dimension.
I expound on all this in my paper:
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/238
Now the amazing thing about the fourth expanding dimension is that it actually distributes locality! Finally we have a *physical* model for nonlocality, which turns out to be the same physical model underlying all of relativity and entropy--underlying time and its arrows, while weaving change into the fundamental fabric of spacetime, unfreezing time and liberating us from teh block universe! O happy day! Moving Dimensions Theory, which postulates that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimension at c, provides a most powerful *physical* model underlying relativity, quantum mechanics, entropy, entanglement, nonlocality, and time and all its arrows across all realms.
Note how nonlocal entanglement only occurs for two objects that where intially interacting. So it is that all nonlocality must have a local origin. And the expansion of the fourth dimension, which begins as a single point but then distributes locality in a spherically-symmetric manner in our 3D at the rate of c, accounts for this--think Huygens' Principle, which underlies quantum mechanical (Feynman's many paths) and classical wave behavior. And suddenly we see that MDT also offers a *physical* model behind the *why* of Huygens' principle, as well as entropy, and time and all its arrows and assymetries! And as nonlocality walks hand-in-hand with quantum mechanics' probability, we have a *physical* raison d'etre for qm's probabilistic nature!
Postmodern physicists write a lot about the "Time axis" in their papers and coffee-tabel books, but you need to keep in mind that the time axis is a human construct, and that we do not live in a block universe wherein time is frozen. the block universe is also a human construct, which Godel had problems with. Also, Einsetin never said that time is the fourth dimension in his 1912 paper, but rather he wrote x4=ict, and t and ict are very different things. It is amazing how many physicists have thrown away the ic in front of the t, and gotten tenure while conceiving of time machines they never build, and wormholes they never see, not to mention multiverses and parrallel universes and tiny little vibrating strings in their block universe wherdin funding is an established part of the future which has already happened, but you get the point. All the pop-sci books and texts always have those pictures of light cones, but what they forget is that photons do not travel in straight lines, but rather quantum mechanics tells us that photons travel as expanding spherical wavefronts of probality in our 3D. And in doing so, they maintain a locality in the fourth expanding dimension.
Those who argue with MDT's postulate that the fourth dimension ise expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions are actually arguing with the photon. And yet, the photons keep right on travleing at c--billions upon billions upon billions of them--every second, as they surf the fourth expanding dimension, while yet retaining a locality in time an dthe fourth expanding dimension. I would not be surprised if photons start protesting all the tenured elite who are trying to freeze them and emprison them in their block universe, wherein time and progress in theoretical physics must remain frozen.
Now of course we can forgive Einstein for not noting all this in his 1912 paper, as he never quite accepted quantum mechanics' reality, but for all those of us who passed undergrad and grad quantum, and for all of us who use computers which were built upon nonlocality's reality and wave/particle duality--it is time for all of us to admit that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c, and that this fundamental universal invariant gives rise to the time we measure on our watches, which we we also enjoy designating as an axis in diagrams when writing coffee-table physics books that have frozen time so as to write chapter after chapter about time travel.
"Why do you never mention pure states, eigenvalues or entropy when discussing entanglement?"
Again, the paper is 5,000 words long. I assume the readers generally know what pure states, eigenvalues, and entropy are. If not, they will likely be familiar with the physical reality described by entropy. As one of John Baez's quantum gravity grad students finally realizing that quantum gravity was a postmodern hoax to enrich boomer physicists at the expense of physics and young physicists' careers, perhaps you could write a paper: "Moving Dimensiosn Theory and Entanglement: pure states, eigenvalues, and entropy"
"If a part of the universe is expanding at c how do you explain non-locality? I thought this would just create event horizons."
I'm not sure the universe is expanding at c. MDT simply states that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c.
"Why do you mention the absolute rate of c changing as a cause for an accelerating and decelerating universe? I thought the speed of light was a constant."
Yes--c does seem to be constant--doesn't it? But as you know, thre are a lot of VSL theories out there. Perhaps one could make use of MDT, if VSL turns out to be right.
"If everything I have spent precious time and money learning is wrong, then should I drop physics and go to law school? I'd be sad, the laws of man are not as cool as the laws of nature."
Yes Brian, I am sorry that you are now becoming liberated from the block universe and frozen time. You will have to finally cowboy up now and leave wormholes, tiny little vibrating strings, multiverses, time travel fantasies, and parallel universes behind. It is time to read the foundational papers--Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, and Dirac. You will have to find your own way now, independent of spacetime atoms, bouncing universes, time machines, and quantum gravity youth camps. Yes indeed--you write, "the laws of man are not as cool as the laws of nature," and that is exactly why physics has ground to a halt--for it has replaced the laws of nature, such as MDT, with the laws of man and their snarky bureuacracies which pen millions of indecipherable papers so as to drown out the lone voices of reason. String theory, loop quantum gravity, multiverses, the landscape, hamsters, geometric mysticism, E8, and snarky quantum grvaity regimes, which have made a most profitable religion out of consistent, hand-waving failure, are on their way out, as they are all based on pseudo-laws made by men who placed the bottom line over the higher ideals.
Moving Dimensiosn Theory liberates us from both frozen time and the block universe.
Brian, were it not for MDT's *physical* model, how would you explain time and all its arrows and assyemtries across all realms, entropy, quantum mechanics' nonlocality and entanglement, all of Einstein's relativity, and the universal appearance of Huygens' Principle across all realms? What model do you, Brian Beverly, propose, that would *physically* unify all these entities?
Or have you come here not to create, but to destroy, so as to please your elders/funders/God-Kings of coffeee table phsysics books which make the unreal--wormholes, time travel--tiny, little, vibrating strings--real, while exiling the real--MDT's hitherto unsung universal invaraint--the fourth dimension is expanidng relative to the three spatial dimenions?
The late professor J.A. Wheeler--"the last notable figure from the heroic age of physics lingering among us — a man who could claim to be the student of Bohr, teacher of Feynman, and close colleague of Einstein"--was a very, very humble man, considering his massive accomplishments; and very kind to give me the time of day, with that eternal twinkle in his eye, which shines on, even though he has departed this world. So often it is that the
Greats have Great Humility, and Benjamin Franklin's thirteenth, and most important precept, was "Humility: Imitate Scorates and Jesus."
I remember Wheeler clenching his fist one day while looking out the window of his Jadwin Hall office, and stating that "today's world lacks the noble," and then turning and smiling and saying, "and it's your generation's job to bring it back." I was just a twenty-year-old junior, nodding silently and anxiously in agreement, and those words have stayed with me and meant more and more over the years, as they seem to explain so much about postmodern life--our disregard for the classical eternities and Einstein's 1912 Manuscript (which I get the feeling nbody here has yet read, or is going to read), and our arrogance that has lead to the current financial crisis/wealth transfer to the top, the breakdown of the family, and the resounding lack of progress in physics, other than the progress that has been made by deconstructing the classics, which tends to work better in realms that do not require empirical evidence.
I also remember standing in PJ Peebles' office that year, when I had him for quantum mechanics, and asking him, "when a photon is emitted from a light bulb, do we really not know where it's headed? Is it really just a probabilistic wave expanding at the rate of c?" "Yes," he said. And that stuck with me, because this is what quantum mechanics telles us. And relativity tells us that the ageless photon stays in the exact same place in the fourth expanding dimension. Ergo the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. dx4/dt = ic. It really is that simple, and yet the world yet refuses to see. But the world shall.
It was many years later that I wrote that equation down, but somehow I sensed it that year, walking between Peebles' and Wheelers' offices. Somehow I sensed the block universe did not exist, and I knew that someday I would rise to free time and liberate us from frozen time and frozen theoretical physics.
Legend has it that Einstein eventually came up with relativity because he so often contemplated what it would be like to catch up with light--a pursuit which began in his childhood. I often wonder, had Einstein known that light actually propagates as a spherically-symmetric probabilistic wavefront at the rate of c--had he actually known quantum mechanics--would he have seen that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt=ic?
What's really funny to me is not that people try to refute MDT, but that they try to refute the timeless, ageless photon, free will, quantum entanglement, nonlocality, entropy, time and all its arrows and assymetries, simple math, elegance, relativity, and novel physical theories that come with a postulate and equation.
MDT: The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic
What's even funnier to me is that while refuting the obvious, profound, and simple, people stubbornly want to hold onto the block universe, time travel into the past, wormholes, tiny little vibrating strings and loops that make different colors of light travel at different c's, hyperspace, and other complete and unadalturated mythologies which don't make logical sense, and which have no empirical basis whatsoever. I have often made the joke that parallel universes, which are supposedly always popping in and out of existence, exist just long enough for theoretical physicists to get tenure, but disappear before the experimentalists can get tenure.
And yet, I maintain that physics ought be about *physics.*
Hundreds of years from now someone will read these words and know that one lone cowboy stoop apart the madding crowd to state what he sees, to state what he saw.
Both Einstein and Minkowski wrote x4 = ict, but they never saw that this naturally implied dx4/dt = ic. All of relativity is right--it's just that change is now forever wedded into the fundamental fabric of spacetime with dx4/dt = ic. I know they will ignore this and continue to raise tens of millions for mytholgies, while training grad students in the art of sycophancy, thuggery, and anonimity, and picking the best to reward with a few pennies now and then from their millions, as senior citizen physicists dictate the questions, banning those who wer eborn with their own curiosities, like Einstein, Newton, Bruno, Galileo, and every other scientist and artist who has ever contributed to art and science.
And Einstein's Relativity may be derived from dx4/dt= ic, which represents a more fundamental invariance of this universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. Einstein introduced relativity as a principle--as a law of nature not deduced from anything else, and well, I guess I was dumb enough to ask, 'why relativity?' And I found the answer in a more fundamental invariance--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt = ic.
And not only can all of relativity be derived from this, but suddenly we are liberated from the block universe and time and progress in theoretical physics are unfrozen. And change is seen in a most fundamental equation that *weaves* change into the very fabric of space-time, where it needs to be, as change pervades every realm of physics and all acts of *physical* measurement. And suddenly we have a *physical* model for entropy, time and its arrows and assymetries in all realms, free will, and quantum mechanics' nonlocality, entanglement, and wave-particle duality. The fourth expanding dimension distributes locality, fathering time. MDT accounts for the constant speed of light c--both its independence of the source and its independence of the velocity of the observer, while establishing c as the fastest, slowest, and only velocity for all entities and objects moving through space-time, as well as the maximum velocity that anything is measured to move. And suddenly we see a *physical* basis for the dualities--for space/time, wave/matter, and energy/mass or E=mc^2. Energy and mass are the same thing--it's just that energy is mass caught upon the fourth expanding dimension, and thus it surfs along at "c."
The biggest tragedy of postmodern physics is not that it doesn't accomplish anything, but that it has banned the asking of foundational questions, without which, nothing can be accomplished.
MDT asks, and *answers*, the following, all with its simple postulate and equation:
What is the *physical* reason for length contraction? What *physical* entities of this universe give rise to length contraction? What deeper *physical* reality dictates that any moving object must be foreshortened in the direction of its motion? What is *physically* going on on a deeper level? There must be some *primary* cause--some universal invariant--for length contraction, time dilation, entropy, entanglement, nonlocality, and time and all its arrows and assymetries, and all the dualities--space/time, mass/energy, and wave/particle.
And then, as time went on, I found I was able to answer a wide array of foundational questions with: "Because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimension: dx4/dt = ic." And I went back to Einstein's original words in his 1912 Manuscript and found that he had never quite provided a deeper motivation for setting x4 = ict, other than that it works! Well, x4 = ict because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
And this small recognition of a primary universal invariant answered an abundance of questions with a *physical* model. And when diverse questions spanning all realms of physics are answered by a common *physical* model, surely that points the way towards unification!
One reason I think String Theory and Loop Quantum Gravity have not made much progress is because they have not been asking the fundamental questions I enumerate below. Rather, a system is set up where grad students and postdocs apply for grants to work on questions asked by the people with the funding, who while not ebing successful at physics, have been quite successful at science fiction and raising funds. Max Planck, Joseph Campbell, and F.A. Hayek all tell us why this does not work:
"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck
And again we see the primacy of the honest individual in the classic, epic hero's journey!
"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man." --Joseph Campbell
In King Arthur's Court, is was dishonorable for a knight to follow another knight into the woods, but rather they had to find their *own* path, like Dante did.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth
And the Nobel Laureate economist F.A. Hayek agrees!
"The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for “conscious” control or “conscious” planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme—while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the super-individual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." –F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom
So it is that in asking my own questions, I had to find my own way through the woods. And in Arthurian Legend, which Joseph Campbell oft talks about, it is dishonorable to follow someone else's path through the forest, but instead, one must blaze one's own trail. Dante starts off alone in this dark woods in the Divine Comedy, and Morpheus tells Neo, "there is a difference between knowing the path and walking it." "I can tell you of the way, but you must find it and walk it on your own."
Could you ever imagine Eisenstein working on something he wasn't naturally curious about? The Greats were never sycophants, but that is exactly who today's funders surround themselves with. Pete Woit blogged aboutthe sycophancy in American academia.
Here are some of the questions that are answered with Moving Dimensions Theory's simple postulate and equation: "because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic."
I know it is a crime to ask such questions, another crime to answer them, and yet another crime to answer them with a simple postualte and equation, as postualtes and equations represeting hitherto unsung *physical* realties have been outlawed, and the top grad students and postdocs are regularly sent forth to detroy them, while wearing masks, in the dark of night, for all sycophants must eventually transform into anonymous cowards,as the Nobel laureate economist hints at in his two chapters "The End of Truth," and "Why The Worst Get on Top."
But, yet, the fourth dimension moves. "E pur si muove!" as Galileo atated. We have been liberated from frozen time and the block universe! Ergo I have free will, and I shall use it to both ask and answer foundational questions in physics via MDT's simple elgance and beauty.
Below are some of the questions that are answered with Moving Dimensions Theory's simple postulate and equation: "because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic."
0. Why time? Why time’s arrows and asymmetries?
0.1 Why relativity? Why the principle of relativity? What deeper physical reality underlies relativity?
0.2 Why entanglement and nonlocality?
1. Why is light’s velocity a constant c? Why relativity's postulates?
2. Why is light’s velocity c independent of its source?
3. Why is it that nothing can travel faster than c?
4. Why does a photon, which travels at c, not age?
5. Why does a photon’s spherically-symmetric probablistic wavefront define simultaneity—a locality in the fourth dimension?
6. Why are energy and mass equivalent? Why E=mc^2?
7. Why do all of time’s arrows point in the same direction—towards dissipation, decoherence, and entropy?
8. Why do so many physicists say time is the fourth dimension, when Einstein never said x4 is time, but instead said x4 = ict?
9. Why can matter can appear as energy or mass?
10. Why is it that when matter appears as pure energy, it propagates at c through space?
11. Why does all matter have particle—local—and wave—nonlocal—properties?
12. Why does all energy have particle—local—and wave—nonlocal—properties?
13. Why is it that when matter appears as stationary mass it propagates at c through the fourth dimension?
14. Why is it that when matter appears as energy, it propagates at c through the three spatial dimensions?
15. Why is it that to move at c through space is to stand still in the fourth dimension?
16. Why is it that to move at c through the fourth dimension is to stand still in space?
17. Why is it that all objects move at but one speed through space-time—c?
18. Why is the universe expanding?
19. Why does radiation expand outwards, but not inwards?
20. Why do we see retarded waves, but not advanced?
21. Why is it that entropy imitates the general motion of all radiation and the universe’s expansion—a spherically-symmetric expanding wave?
22. Why is it that Huygens’ Principle, which underlies all reality ranging from QED to Feynman’s many-paths, to classical physics, state that every point of a spherically-expanding wavefront is in turn a spherically-expanding wavefront?
23. Why are all photons described by a spherically-expanding wavefront propagating at c?
24. Why is it that two initially-interacting photons remain entangled, no matter how far they travel apart?
25. Why is it that two initially-interacting photons remain the exact same age, no matter how far they travel apart?
26. Why is it that Young’s double-slit experiments show that both mass and energy have nonlocal wave properties?
27. Why is it that the collapse of the wave function is immediate in the photoelectric effect, and all other experiments?
28. Why is there no way for an object to gain velocity without being reduced in length via relativistic length contraction?
29. Why does a photon trace out a null vector through space-time? How can movement across the universe describe a path of zero length?
30. Why does time’s arrow point in a definitive direction?
21. Why does entropy increase?
32. Why do moving clocks run slow?
33. Why is time travel into the past impossible?
34. Why does free will exist?
35. Why is it that time is not frozen—-how come the block universe does not exist? Why do we have free will?
36. Why does a photon’s probabilistic wavefront travel at c?
37. Why is the velocity of quantum entanglement c? Why is it that only initially interacting particles can yet be entangled? Why is it that they must first share a common locality or origin, in order to share an entangled nonlocality when they are separated?
38. Why is it that in Schrodinger's equation, the first derivative with respect to the fourth dimension is proportional to the second derivative with the respect to the three spatial dimensions? Any change in position in the fourth expanding dimension is an acceleration in the three spatial dimensions.
39. Why is it that a photon emitted from the sun is red-shifted as it travels away? It's wavelength appears longer as it is measured against space that is less-stretched. A photon inherits the local geometry of the space-time where it was emitted.
40. Why do clocks in gravitational fields run slow?
41. Why are photons red-shifted as they move away from massive objects, and blue-shifted as they move towards them?
42. Why the conservation laws? Why does an object maintain its rotation in space-time, unless acted upon by an exterior force?
43. Why is the velocity of every object through space-time c?
44. Why is it that the only way to stay stationary in the fourth dimension is to move at c through the three spatial dimensions?
45. Why is it that the only way to remain stationary in the three spatial dimensions is to move at c relative to the fourth dimension?
46. Why does a photon have zero rest mass, and how does zero rest mass imply the velocity of light? None of the object’s matter exists in the three spatial dimensions, but only in the fourth expanding dimension.
47. Why time's arrows?
48. Why time's asymmetries?
49. Why entropy?
50. Why is there an i in x4=ict?
51. Why is the velocity of light both independent of the velocity of the source and the velocity of the observer?
52. Why are light, time, and measurement so fundamentally related?
53. Why the - sign in-front of x4 in the space-time metric? What is different about x4?
Well, MDT answers all theses questions, and more, with a simple physical postulate and equation: "The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions or dx4/dt = ic."
Over the years, MDT has provided a *physical* model that answered these and other questions, unifying diverse fields and physical phenomena in a common, simple principle.
Now as MDT unfreezes both time and progress in theoretical physics, it will be opposed by many. Furthmore, as MDT explains away wormholes and time travel into the past, which have never been seen but yet form the foundations of many modern religions adhered to by geometric mystics and soothsayers, it will be opposed even more. As MDT provides a simple equation and postulate that hearken on back to the heroic age of physics, instead of presenting indecipherable math that can be used to raise massive funding for some groupthink Matrix/corporate-state/MTV show, it will be opposed even more, by those in The Matrix who have nothing to gain by simple truth and beauty, and so much to lose--their illusions of grandeur.
I think all the questions started back in the late eighties/early nineties with "why length contraction?"
Why does an object become foreshortened in the direction of its motion? Why is it that the only way for something to move is to become shorter in the direction of its motion?
When I wondered about this, as when I pondered all the above questions MDT answers, I tried to envision the *physical* structure of space-time and reality that would account for the behavior. For ultimately physics is about physics, and sometimes, a mathematical equation comes forth which supports the physical reality--in this case of a ofurth expanding dimension: dx4/dt= ic.
And here is how it worked out while contemplating the physical reality underlying relativistic length contraction.
Consider a ruler--it gets shorter as it moves due to length contraction.
But wait, does not a ruler also appear shorter as it rotates? Consider a ruler at the end of a football field, parallel to the field goals. As it rotates, it will appear shorter and shorter to us, as we stand at the other end of the field, looking on. Have you ever noticed this illusion, as a rotating radar on a distant ship looks like something that keeps contracting and expanding? It is hard for us to tell it is rotating--rather we might actually guess that it is actually getting physically shorter and longer.
These youtube videos almost illustrate this rotating radar effect:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd6ZxHk2-zA&feature=re
lated
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMlsmqWSo8A&feature=rela
ted
And I saw that relativistic length contraction is a rotation of sorts. The ruler is rotated out of our three spatial dimensions. But what is it rotated into? It is rotated into the fourth dimension. But why, when this happens, does the ruler always, always propagate in the direction of its foreshortening? Well, it is because the fourth dimension--the dimension which the ruler is being rotated into--is moving! Thus relativistic length contraction is always, always accompanied by a change in velocity.
Rotate something into the fourth dimension, and it gains a translational velocity. Give something a translational velocity, and it will appear foreshortened in our three spatial dimensions. All because the fourth dimension is expanidng relative to the three spatial dimensions or dx4/dt = ic.
Then, right after I pondered length contraction, the - sign in the space-time metric puzzled me. Why does x4 have a - sign in-front of it? How is x4 different from the three spatial dimensions? What is a photon telling us by defining a null vector? A photon can cross the universe, and yet not travel at all? Ahaha! For in the fourth dimension, it has not moved, as the fourth dimension has been moving with it, just as a surfer stays with the wave they ride. This brings de Broglies' pilot waves to mind...
Well, that's some of the story behind MDT. A very early version of it appeared in my 1998 dissertation:
http://elliotmcgucken.com/dissertation.html
And I am forever indebted to J.A. Wheeler, through whom I first encountered not only these questions, but the courage to ask them. Wheeler always used to say, "I want to know what the show is all about, before it's out." And not only were foundational questions allowed and encouraged in his office, but one could not enter nor leave without naturally asking them. His Great Spirit has moved on, and while the past is no longer real, the immortal soul is, as Socrates concludes:
"I think Socrates, said Cebes, that even the dullest person would agree, from this line of reasoning, that the soul is in every possible way more like the invariable than the variable.
And the body?
To the other.
Look at it in this way too. When soul and body are both in the same place, nature teaches the one to serve and be subject, the other to rule and govern. In this relation which do you think resembles the divine and which the mortal part? Don't you think that it is the nature of the divine to rule and direct, and that of the mortal to be subject and serve?
I do.
Then which does the soul resemble?
Obviously, Socrates, soul resembles the divine, and body the mortal." --The Phaedo
For some reasons I wrote a lot of sonnets that first year in grad school--often during quantum mechanics. At the end of the semester, when the professor was passing out the exams, he looked at me and said, "You will do very well on this! You took many notes!" I guess he thought I was taking notes the whole time. I've never been much of a class learner, but I made up for it by staying up late, reading the quantum texts. It wasn't always efficient, but here're some of the poems I wrote in quantum mechanics--I sent them to Wheeler during that first year of grad school:"
"cxl.
Now suppose we have a hole in a slate,
A photon from a source passes on through,
And it darkens a grain on a film plate,
To say it went through the hole would be true.
Several photons pass through, we wait a bit,
And quite a simple pattern we do see,
A bright spot directly behind the slit,
Fading away as you move outwardly.
We choose to add an additional slit,
The photon seems to have a decision,
It must choose one of them through which to fit,
For photons are not allowed to fission.
But now there are fringes, common to waves!
In this manner, can particles behave?
cxli.
What's seen is an interference pattern,
Which is common to every type of wave,
On the vast ocean or from a lantern,
This is the way every wave does behave.
Though you think particles blacken the spot,
Between the source and plate light is a wave,
As to its whereabouts we can say not,
Such is the way reality behaves.
These ghostly facts are true of all matter,
Electrons and protons and you and me,
We're but empty waves that somehow matter,
Striving to comprehend reality.
Wavy winds blow, our consciousness is lit.
It makes up our mind, our minds make up it.
cxlii.
"The question is to be or not to be,
Whether it is nobler within the mind,
To believe in indeterminacy,
Or refute that God plays dice in the wind.
Are there many worlds, or only just this one?
And is Schrodinger's cat alive or dead?
Of p and x, can we only know one?
And of Wigner's good friend, what can be said?"
He smiled and said, "no question, no answer,
This above all, science holds to be true,
Love is in the mind of the romancer,
And the kind of love determines the view."
He looked up to the sky, a sky few see,
A sky filled with a child's curiosity."
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
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Brian Beverly wrote on Nov. 13, 2008 @ 04:42 GMT
Your response hints of paranoia:
"Is this John Baez, by any chance, or one of his well-funded grad students with some free time? you give the myths/hoaxes of quantum gravity--which are funded by hundreds of millions of dollars to create chiny youtube videos that attract legions of young, daring fanboys and mercenaries. Perhaps you are working for them?"
I have been won over through their million dollar campaign for the minds of darling fanboys. My mission is to bury your ideas or steal them to make myself famous. Come on Elliot drink the punch, we just want to eat your brains.
If you must rant let it out in your forum.
Best,
B^2
P.S. I am only a superposition of the anti-theory elders ;)
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 13, 2008 @ 17:31 GMT
Thanks Brian,
Well, it is funny times that we live in in this realm of physics, in which the young are taught to approach physics, by their snarky antitheory elders, from the exact opposite direction that Einstein approached it,
Albert Einstein, "The mere formulation of a problem is far more often essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or...
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Thanks Brian,
Well, it is funny times that we live in in this realm of physics, in which the young are taught to approach physics, by their snarky antitheory elders, from the exact opposite direction that Einstein approached it,
Albert Einstein, "The mere formulation of a problem is far more often essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science."
MDT asked its own foundational *physical* questions, listed above, and it resulted in a new *physical* equation representing a hitherto unsung universal invariant--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt=ic. MDT answers such foundational questions as *why* relativity, *why* entanglement, *why* time and all its arrows and assymetries, *why* nonlocality, *why* the dualities (wave/particle, space/time, mass/energy), *why* free will, *why* is time not frozen, *why* entropy, *why* no block universe, *why* is time travel into the past impossible, and *why* the gravitational redshift and slowing of light and time?
"Truth is treason in an empire of lies, and poetically speaking that truth is called ranting." --Dr. E
As a *physical* theory with a simple mathematical equation, MDT is the kind of theory which hasn't been seen for awhile in the realm of physics. And in the absence of *physical* theories over the last thirty+ years, with simple postulates and mathematical equations representing *physical* truths, legions of antitheory bureaucracies have grown. They are the richest institutions of *physics* throughout all history, and they have to spend their money on something, so they spend it on PR, hype, trips to swanky conferences in Aspen and Hawaii, and groupthink youth camps, where they recruit those who lack physical curiosity for their regimes, where curiosity is dictated from the top from the Ministry of Curiosity.
You can tell who they are by the fact that they never want to discuss *physical* theories nor *physical* realities, but only snark and engage in sociological games, applying their elders' crackpot indexes to protect their elders' funding, and building communal consensus around meaningless math instead of pursuing rugged, independent character and *physical* law on the mountaintop of *physical* reality. It would have been cool to see you responding to the responses I made to your earlier questions, which I responded to (even though you filled them with snark and ill-intent and non-sequitirs and red-herrings) with answers representing the *physical* reality that MDT presents--the hitherto unsung universal invariant of a fourth dimension expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c: dx4/dt=ic -- but then again, I felt that you hadn't really thought much about your questions before asking them, nor really read my paper, as it seems that in this era of grade inflation and dumbing-down, physics students are no longer trained to read nor think in that classical, epic sense; but merely to engage in sociological assaults and random groupthink drivel, for that is how their elders gained tenure. You're familiar with the deconstructionist movement, I take it. Well, it wasn't contained in the humanities departments, and that is probably why you have never read one foundational paper in physics, nor Homer, just like many, many English majors will never read Blake, nor Shakespeare, nor Melville. Had you read a foundational paper, Brian, you would have seen that they were written by and large in beautiful, eloquent prose--poetic words expressing *physical* concepts and *physical* reality. It is a well-funded postmodern myth that physics must be about meaningless math, and that those who use words alongside equations to express deep physical ideas are crackpots.
Where you crossed the line was mixing the late J.A. Wheeler's name with your cheeky, ignorant, callow snark--in your snarky tone that reminds me of all too many anti-theorists these days, who couldn't hold a candle to the Heroic Spirits who furthered physics by good-will, humility, cheerfullness, and a genuine, shared sense of a common, exalted journey, where we were all going after the truth of *physical* reality together. They gifted us physics--the heroic spirits showed us that new ideas take courage, self-reliance, independent thought, the exaltation of the higher ideals over the bottom line, principle over PR, and rugged dedication to one's faith in the Truth, come hell (Bruno was burned alive) or high water (Boltzman was drowned by is contemporaries' snark and ignorance). They were heroes all--some were burned alive for their bold ideas, some were placed under house arrest, some were exiled from academia, some were driven to suicide. And to thank them all, John Baez created his crackpot index. "And yet it moves!" They always said, as they walked away from the Inquistion.
But riddle me this Batman--who has contributed more to physics, art, science, and philsophy--Baez or "crackpots" such as Boltzman, Bruno, Socrates, Dante (who wrote the Inferno in exile), Einstein, and Galileo?
Contrast the mean-spirited, snarky, arrogant tone of Baez's crackpot index and words to Einstein et al.'s exalted, humble, kind, humanitarian tone:
Albert Einstein, "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."
Albert Einstein, "The world we have made as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far creates problems we cannot solve at the same level of thinking at which we created them."
Albert Einstein, "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."
Max Planck, the father of quantum theory, felt that the pioneer scientist must have " a vivid intuitive imagination, for new ideas are not generated by deduction, but by artistically creative imagination."
It is by intuition that we discover and by logic we prove.
--Henri Poincaré, Mathematician
Isaac Newton, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
Yes--we must stand upon the shoulders of giants to see further, as the greatest mathematicians and physicists stated; and yet, Brian, the foundational papers in physics have been banned from the academy, along with Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare. Imagine building a new academy, which taught the Greats while encouraging innovation and creativity--while encouraging good-will, cheerfullness, and civil debate rooted in logic andd reason, as opposed to snark, arrogance, and deconstruction!
And so it is that you criticized the use of words and prose, and demanded only math, like your elder antitheorists might, as thought and ideas have been divorced from their antitheory regimes. Well, you will find no better mechanism for expressing ideas than words and prose, and it saddens me that your generation is being taught to ignore the prose of the foundational papers (Bohr, Faraday, Einstein), while exalting in snark-a-lark and cheeky games--like all too many of the antitheory elders, who have brought progress in physics to a halt, replacing it with anti-theories founded upon snarky, indecipherable math and handwaving, which neglects the *physical* reality, *physical* models, and physics that MDT exalts.
The great irony, which you must admit, is that while String Theory and LQG and your theory don't have any actual equations representing *physical* concepts, MDT does: dx4/dt=ic.
Well, no man is an island, and physics has ever been advanced by cordial conversation in the context of rigorous honesty and a humble acknowledgement of empirical facts. Einstein and Bohr disagreed often, but yet they had a deep respect for one-another, and I highly recommend the perusal of their conversations (which are penned in prose)! Where would be be without the disagreements between Einstein and Minkowski, between Bohr and Einstein, and between Pauli and just about everybody? Contrast their exalted dialogues to the snarky, underhanded dialogues in the modern string-LQG wars, and the perhaps even more troubling complete *lack* of dialogue for topics and approaches transcending those two groupthink "theories" which might not even be successful theories after all, but only twin towers of the quantum gravity myth, built on the blind faith that two must always be one.
"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck
And yet today's science is dominated by "communal" theories bolstered by multi-million-dollar media teams. More money is spent on Kaku's PR and Baez's plane tickets than MDT. Indeed, more money is spent on Baez's crackpot index, which is hosted on the servers of a taxpayer funded univeristy, than is spent on new ideas such as MDT, or a site devoted to foundational papers in physics. And thus I propose that Baez replace his cracpot index with foundational papers in physics, for all of their writers were classic rebels.
Is it any mystery physics has ground to a halt, as snark and anti-theries are funded as opposed to physics, as snark and antitheories are better suited to building cash-cow groupthink regimes, than is physics? And again, their theories aren't really theories. They are often merely "not even wrong," and always "in their infancy," even as they tehmselves prepare for retirement, with a rich pension purchased by the the exile of physics and physicists from the academy.
Planck wrote, "Eine neue wissenschaftliche Wahrheit pflegt sich nicht in der Weise durchzusetzen, daß ihre Gegner überzeugt werden und sich als belehrt erklären, sondern vielmehr dadurch, daß ihre Gegner allmählich aussterben und daß die heranwachsende Generation von vornherein mit der Wahrheit vertraut geworden ist."
Translation: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
Once upon a time new theories were opposed by established scientists and established science. But today, new theories are mostly opposed by established bureaucracies and established bureaucrats, which have done little, if anything, to advance or contibute to actual science. So it's more akin to Galileo standing before the Inquisition.
A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man." --Joseph Campbell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth
And the Nobel Laureate eocnomist F.A. Hayek agrees!
"The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for “conscious” control or “conscious” planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme—while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the superindividual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." –F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom
Along comes a scientist who agrees with Einstein and Max Born and Planck. Along comes a physicist who agrees with Wheeler, and Feynman, and Glasgow, and Godel, and Bohr, and Gamow--wishing that he could watch old Westerns with Bohr and Gamow. Along comes a scientist who agrees with Nobel Laureate Robert Laughlin and Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek, with Newton and Dirac, with Heisenberg and Minkowski, with the great mythologist Joseph Campbell. Along comes a scientist with simple theory that has a simple postulate and equation from which all of relativity may be derived; from which entropy naturally arises, and which accounts for time and all its arrows and assymetries across all realms, while also providing a *physical* model for entanglement and nonlocality, as well as a *physical* model for Huygens' principle and the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle. Not only does the multi-billion-dollar physics establishment ignore it, but they have so much funding, that they can hire grad students and profesors to snark the theory, so as to defend their perptual-motion NSF money mahcines and religions of wormholes, time warps, quantum gravity, multiverses, tiny, vibrating strings, and geometric mysticism/PR/hype, which Moving Dimensions Theory has no need for, as it concerns itself with physics and physical reality--with logic, reason, and simple postulates and equations that represent a hitherto unsung universal invariant--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c.
What we have here is a modern-day Inquistion.
Check out:
http://www.jklarsen.com/myblog/index.php?blog=6&title=co
nfession_of_galileo_galilei&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
Where it is reported: "In 1633, physicist Galileo Galilei was brought before the Roman Inquisition. Tried on "vehement suspicion of heresy," Galileo was forced to swear that he "abjured, cursed and detested" the errors of his work, which extended the findings of the Polish astronomer Nicholaus Copernicus that the Earth Moves."
Now I have postulated that the fourth dimension expands relative to the three spatial dimensions, and not one person in the entire quantum gravity regime has ever, ever, taken the time to comment on my theory. It's not like MDT is a secret, so their silence puzzles the will. Carlo promised to look at my paper, but he has not yet commented on it.
I realized that perhaps before commenting on MDT, they are all waiting for a confession.
Well, here is my confession, based on Galileo's, which can be enjoyed here:
http://www.jklarsen.com/myblog/index.php?blog=6&title=c
onfession_of_galileo_galilei&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
I, Dr. E, son of the late Vincenzio Galilei of Florence, aged 70 years, tried personally by this court, and kneeling before You, the most Eminent Antitheorists and Reverend Lord Cardinals of M-Theory Multiverses, Inquisitors-General throughout the Quantum Gravity Republic against heretical depravity, having before my eyes the Most Holy Gospels of an Elegant Universe, Not Even Wrong, and The Trouble With Physics, and laying on them my own hands; I swear that I have always believed, I believe now, and with Ed Witten's help I will in future believe all which the Holy Quantum Gravity and M-Theory Church doth hold, preach, teach, and hype to the press, including E-8 and next year's E-9 anti-theory.
But since I, after having been admonished by this Holy Office entirely to abandon the false opinion that the fourth dimension expands relative to the three spatial dimensions, and that quantum mechanics' entanglement, nonlocality, entropy, relativity itself, time and all its arrows and assymetries across all realms, the gravitational slowing of clocks and time, Huygens' Principle, probability, and all the dualities (space-time, wave-particle, mass-energy) derive from this simple principle of MDT and its equation dx4/dt=ic, and that I was neither to hold, defend, nor teach in any manner whatever, either orally or in writing, the said false doctrine; and after having received a notification that the said doctrine is contrary to the Holy Writ of Hyperspace, I did write and cause to be printed a blog and forum in which I treat of the said already condemned MDT doctrine, and bring forward arguments of much efficacy in its favour, without arriving at any solution: I have been judged vehemently suspected of heresy, that is, of having held and believed that the fourth dimension's expansion is the universe's fundamental invariant, and that the block universe does not exist and time is not the fourth dimension, but that time is a parameter that emerges because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c, that change is and ought be woven into the fundamental fabric of spacetime with dx4/dt=ic, and that the fourth dimension, like the earth, does move.
Nevertheless, wishing to remove from the minds of your Tenured Eminences and all faithful LQGers and String Theorist this vehement suspicion reasonably conceived against me, I abjure with sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I curse and detest the said errors and heresies, and generally all and every error and sect contrary to the Holy Quantum Gravity Regimes, and I am ready to foregt time, forget space, and forget physical reality, while embracing multiverses and tiny, vibrating stirngs. And I swear that for the future I will neither say nor assert in speaking or writing such things as may bring upon me similar suspicion; and if I know any heretic who speaks out against tiny, vibrating branes, anti-theories, or atoms of space and time, or one suspected of heresy, I will denounce him to this Holy Office of Time Travel, or to the Inquisitor of Wormholes and Ordinary of the place in which I may be, which will of course be in the block universe, which MDT falsely liberated us from, while falsely grangting us free will and free thought, as it falsely froze time. I hereby remit all future free will, as I return to the block universe with the hopes of receiving the funding that is a part of my pre-Ordained future, as a member of the Quantum Gravity Church.
I also swear and promise to adopt and observe entirely all the penances which have been or may be by this Holy Office of Tiny, Little, Loops imposed on me. And if I contravene any of these said promises, protests, or oaths, (which Ed Witten forbid!) I submit myself to all the pains and penalties which by the Sacred Canons of String Theory and other Decrees of D-branes general and particular are against such offenders imposed and promulgated. So help me God and the Holy Warped Passages/The Trouble With Physics/10^99 indecipherable arxiv.org papers--which I touch with my own hands.
I, Dr. E, aforesaid have abjured, sworn, and promised, and hold myself bound as above; and in token of the truth, with my own hand have subscribed the present schedule of my abjuration, and have recited it word by word. In America, at the Convent della Minerva, this 30th day of October, 2008, right before I go shopping for my Halloween costume in this parallel universe where physicists do not get tenure for studying parallel universes.
I, Dr. E, have abjured as above, with my own hand."
And as I'm walking away to serve out my house arrest after this confession, I turn to the crowd that had gathered to hear me read it and smile.
And I say, "And yet it--the fourth dimension--moves! Eppur si muove!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_pur_si_muove
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Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 13, 2008 @ 17:49 GMT
Progress on the MDT front!
I realize that proposing a new physical invariant--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to three spatial dimensions at c: dx4/dt=ic--is no small endeavor, but what's really funny is that in this era of antitheory regimes, an added beast to battle, in addition to the commonly slow acceptance from the establishment, is the novel beast of today's anti-theory...
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Progress on the MDT front!
I realize that proposing a new physical invariant--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to three spatial dimensions at c: dx4/dt=ic--is no small endeavor, but what's really funny is that in this era of antitheory regimes, an added beast to battle, in addition to the commonly slow acceptance from the establishment, is the novel beast of today's anti-theory regimes' general rejection of classical truth, physics, foundational papers and methods, eloquent prose, the giants whose shoulders we ought stand upon, honor, logic, humility, kindness, and *physical* reality; and their accompanying exaltation of ad hominem attacks and namecalling, which keep the cash-cows of their rich antitheory regimes alive while physics dies.
Planck wrote, "Eine neue wissenschaftliche Wahrheit pflegt sich nicht in der Weise durchzusetzen, daß ihre Gegner überzeugt werden und sich als belehrt erklären, sondern vielmehr dadurch, daß ihre Gegner allmählich aussterben und daß die heranwachsende Generation von vornherein mit der Wahrheit vertraut geworden ist."
Translation: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
Once upon a time new theories were opposed by established scientists and established science. But today, new theories are opposed by established bureaucracies and established bureaucrats, which have done little, if anything, to advance or contribute to actual science. So it's more akin to Galileo standing before the Inquisition, as their regimes are built upon Godless religions of this week's flavor of quantum gravity, tiny, vibrating strings, bouncing universes, multiverse magazine covers, parallel universe PR, and time machines which nobody has the time build--religions which have rejected the foundational papers and prose penned by physics' true prophets and poets.
But we press on regardless! For honor, for courage, for physics, we march!
Moving Dimensions Theory is the most-discussed and viewed theory in Dr. Michio Kaku's Forums:
http://www.mkaku.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=28
MDT is also way up there in his String Theory Forum:
http://www.mkaku.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=40
Rock on!
Here's some cool feedback on MDT!
http://imaginingthetenthdimension.blogspot.com/2008/11/t
enth-dimension-polls-archive-23.html
":One of my most popularly viewed blog entries in the last couple of months here has been "Moving Dimensions and Synchromysticism", in which I talk about the mind-bending work of Jake Kotze, and the mind-bending Moving Dimensions Theory (MDT) of Dr. Elliott McGucken, the brief summation of which I will quote again here:
The only way to stay stationary in the fourth dimension is to move at the speed of light. Ergo the fourth dimension is expanding at the rate of "c" relative to the three spatial dimensions.
This idea is easily related to my way of visualizing the dimension, I believe, and gives us an intuitive way to understand the quandary of why the speed of light doesn't change, no matter what direction in space you travel, and no matter whether you're traveling forward or back in time. Bravo, Elliot McGucken!" --http://imaginingthetenthdimension.blogspot.com/2008/11/ten
th-dimension-polls-archive-23.html
And at:
"about time's arrow, one paper by McGucken points out that the fourth dimension in relativity is not time. it actually reads: x4=ict. that's different. we don't seem to actually have a word for what "ict" is. it imparts movement. expansion. it appears that time in this emerges naturally from this expansion. apparently so does light. it's lovely. myself, i have to try to picture this stuff happen, visualize the actual process. it occurs relative to the three primary dimensional vectors of space. it's a bit of an ethereal image for me, still thinking about it, but it seems this could also accommodate a directional tendency."
--http://fqxi.org/community/forum/category/10
And check out http://physicsmathforums.com
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
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FQXi Administrator Kavita Rajanna wrote on Nov. 14, 2008 @ 16:00 GMT
Hello all,
FQXi currently has no way of verifying which of the comments posted are by the author. In future contests, we will make sure to have a method by which we can clearly see when the essay author is making a comment. Given that we cannot accurately determine who has posted the comments above, we have let them some of them stand.
In the meantime, we ask that you keep in mind the Community Forum terms of use (http://fqxi.org/community/forum/intro) and avoid language that is vulgar, offensive, inflammatory, or extremely lengthy. We have removed some comments that are excessively so -- not in any attempt to censor vigorous debate, but to protect forum readers from excessive irritation while maintaining a productive atmosphere.
Best,
K Rajanna
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 14, 2008 @ 17:12 GMT
Thanks K Rajanna,
Yes--a detractor was appropriating my identity, posting things I did not post, and also copying things I posted and reposting them under "Dr. E," while throwing in some libel, ad hominem attacks, and defamation for good measure. In a way, the posts and methodologies proved how the poster was out of ammuntion, as are so many in today's anti-theory regimes, which I oft...
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Thanks K Rajanna,
Yes--a detractor was appropriating my identity, posting things I did not post, and also copying things I posted and reposting them under "Dr. E," while throwing in some libel, ad hominem attacks, and defamation for good measure. In a way, the posts and methodologies proved how the poster was out of ammuntion, as are so many in today's anti-theory regimes, which I oft criticize, thusly incurring their wrath. Their snarky posts, which are all to common thorughout the internet, could be of use in a historical context--shedding light on the fallen, diminsihed intellectual atmosphere of our day and age, but on the other hand, such posts don't serve much purpose in advancing physics.
A cool thing to do would be to allow people to register their identities.
Well, basically all the ideas supporting MDT above, rooted in logic and reason and physics, I support!
For some reason prose, as well as simple mathematical equations, expressing deep, *physical* concepts has been forced out of fashion. You're not even allowed to talk about such entities without the sycophantic anti-theory attack dogs being sent forth. The anti-theory elders, and their favorite grad-students, rush forth with reems of snarky, indecipherable math and fraudulent handwaving, en route to building PR-based consensus across a group that is large enough to show up on the NSF's and other foundations' radars, and then the fun begins--the creation of perpetual-motion funding and PR machines, all for the non-theories of the anti-theorists; while the foundational questions, and foundational papers, are pushed aside and labeled as "crackpottery." And of course, physics grinds to a halt, as the groupthink elders kill the goose that lays the golden egg--the rugged individual with their private passion and curiosity, who strives to stand upon the shoulders of giants, as did Newton, Einstein, Norn, Bohr, and Dirac; always believing in *physical* reality above politics. Such individuals do not necessarily bring instant cash and PR and magazine covers to the elder anti-theorists and the supremely rich in money (and poor in physics) institutions that they captain, and thus sycophants are generally preferred.
But a new day is dawning with MDT!
A new, simple, bold, postulate, and mathematical equation, dx4/dt=ic; celebrating a hitherto unsung universal invariant, underlying and unifying physical phenomena across relativity, quantum mechanics, and statistical mechanics--the fourth dimension is expanding at c, relative to the three spatial dimenions!
It's all about the Hero's Journey, really; as physics must always be rooted in the lone truth seeker's moral mythology:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth
"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man." --Joseph Campbell
Albert Einstein agreed about the value of this "mysterious adventure," guided by curiosity: "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."
Imagine a book titled, AND YET IT MOVES: HERO'S JOURNEY PHYSICS: Finding Moving Dimensions Theory in Foundational Papers and Foundational Questions.
Also, imagine an institute which posted and encouraged discussion of the foundational papers!
Thanks again K Rajanna.
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
"Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever."
dx4/dt=ic
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Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 14, 2008 @ 17:38 GMT
P.S. that is Einstein's quote: "Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever." --Albert Einstein
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 19, 2008 @ 21:45 GMT
This is also posted in Doug's forum, but not everyone makes it over there, so I am posting it here too:
Thanks Doug,
You write, "What string theory did, though, was find a way to use the concept of vibration (i.e. motion) to overcome the problem with the particle concept. As Einstein said, it would be enough to understand the electron. The electron as a point particle is enigmatic, while the electron, as a vibrating string is not so much, at least in as much as the infinities are concerned."
Yes--I'll give you that--string theory at least tried to weave motion into the fundamental fabric of our universe, but where String Theory failed, MDT succeeded, by weaving change and motion into the fundamental fabric of spacetime: dx4/dt=ic.
The fourth dimension expands at the rate c, as a spherically-symmetric wavefront with a wavelength of Planck's length, alleviating us of the problems of point particles, and determining the following:
1. The value of Planck's constant.
2. The velocity of light.
3. The wave/particle nature of all matter/energy.
4. The maximum/minimum/only velocity of the universe.
5. The quantum nature of all matter/energy (comes from the wave-like expansion of the fourth dimension)
6. Nonlocality/entanglement--the fourth expanding dimension distributes locality, fathering time
7. Time and all its arrows and assymetries
8. Entropy
9. Huygens' Principle
10. Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle (comes form the fact that the fourth dimension itself has a wavelike character with a wavelength of the Planck Length, thusly limiting all measurements to an accuracy on the order of the Planck Length).
11. All of relativity is readily derived from MDT, as MDT provides the deeper, fundamental motivation for replacing x4 with ict in a 4D universe.
To keep this message short, attached please find figures which also show how MDT accounts for the gravitational redshift and slowing of light and time, while illustrating the fundamental universal invariant--the constant, wavelike expansion of the fourth dimension--that sets the velocity of light as well as the value of Planck's constant.
What's not to love about MDT's massive unification based on a simple/novel *physical* model and maverick concept which weaves change into the fundamental fabric of spacetime, while liberating us from frozen time and the block universe, granting us free will?
attachments:
4_MOVING_DIMENSIONS_THEORY_EXAMINES_THE_GRAVITATIONAL_REDSHIFT_SLOWING_OF_CLOCKS.pdf
physics nick wrote on Nov. 20, 2008 @ 02:17 GMT
great paper dr. e.
i like the focus on a novel physical mechanism, the fourth expanding dimension, which gives rise to a broad range of phenomena in our physical reality, spanning all fields.
a simple postulate and equation with broad, far-reaching consequences.
heroic, indeed!
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 22, 2008 @ 19:15 GMT
thanks physics nick!
this competition has been great fun, like everyone meeting up at a great big showdown/poker game.
We've got our gamblers and bluffers, our highwaymen and mercaneries, our kid cowboys and hired guns, our veteran gunslingers and well-funded outlaws stacking the decks in the back rooms, and those of us strangers in town with no chips to our name, and our only...
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thanks physics nick!
this competition has been great fun, like everyone meeting up at a great big showdown/poker game.
We've got our gamblers and bluffers, our highwaymen and mercaneries, our kid cowboys and hired guns, our veteran gunslingers and well-funded outlaws stacking the decks in the back rooms, and those of us strangers in town with no chips to our name, and our only friends our horse and peacemakers, and physical reality. And while everyone who plays honorably wins honor, there is but one hand that will win that higher honor of truth and beauty.
This contest reminds me of a toby keith song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q85rPq1u9sc
We got winners, we got losers
Chain smokers and boozers
And we got yuppies, we got bikers
We got thristy hitchhikers
And the girls next door dress up like movie stars
Hmm, hmm, hmm I love this bar
We got cowboys, we got truckers
Broken-hearted fools and suckers
And we got hustlers, we got fighters
Early birds and all-nighters
And the veterans talk about their battle scars
Hmm, hmm, hmm I love this bar
[Chorus:]
I love this bar
It's my kind of place
Just walkin' through the front door
Puts a big smile on my face
It ain't too far, come as you are
Hmm, hmm, hmm I love this bar
I've seen short skirts, we got high-techs
Blue-collar boys and rednecks
And we got lovers, lots of lookers
And I've even seen dancing girls and hookers
And we like to drink our beer from a mason jar
Hmm, hmm, hmm I love this bar
Yes I do
I like my truck (I like my truck)
I like my girlfriend (I like my girlfriend)
I like to take her out to dinner
I like a movie now and then
But I love this bar
It's my kind of place
Just trollin' around the dance floor
Puts a big smile on my face
No cover charge, come as you are
Hmm, hmm, hmm I love this bar
Hmm, hmm, hmm I love this bar
We got divorcees and a big bouncer man
An old jukebox and a real bad band
We got waitresses and we got barflies
A dumb-ass and a wise-guy
If you get too drunk just sleep out in your car
Reason number 672 why
Hmm, hmm, hmm I love this bar
Play it on out boys
Beer-thirty's over
Got to take it on home
Hmm, hmm, hmm I love this bar
I just love it
MDT, by treating physical reality as *real,* has found the mechanism for time and its arrows that Feynman had been seeking: "Now if the world of nature is made of atoms, and we too are made of atoms and obey physical laws, the most obvious interpretation of this evident distinction between past and future, and this irreversibility of all phenomena, would be that some laws, some of the motion laws of the atoms, are going one way – that the atom laws are not such that they can go either way. There should be somewhere in the works some kind of principle that uxles only make wuxles, and never vice versa, and so the world is turning away from uxley character to wuxley character all the time – and this one-way business of the interactions of things should be the thing that makes the whole phenomena of the world seem to go one way.
But we have not found this yet. That is, in all the laws of physics that we have found so far there does not seem to be any distinction between the past and the future. The moving picture should work the same going both ways, and the physicist who looks at it should not laugh.
(The Distinction of Past and Future, from The Character of Physical Law, Richard Feynman, 1965)"
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E Prati wrote on Nov. 23, 2008 @ 20:48 GMT
In order to develop a theoretical framework capable to account the Nature of Time, one can only start with a-temporal principles, wording and reasoning. In particular, one recognizes that the following concepts and words make direct or implicit use of the concept of time itself, so they must be avoided:
-propagation
-expansion
-time dimension, time arrow or direction
-before, after
-consecutive
-propagator
-evolution, Hamiltonian evolution
-motion
-period, periodicity, frequency
-Planck time
-speed of light, speed
-reversibility, irreversibility
-to increase/to decrease
-change
Any derivation of time which makes use of at least one of those concepts or definitions, cannot consistently explore the Nature of Time.
"Traveling back.." contains for sure a very interesting idea, but in my view the whole paper is affected by the critical use of the temporal concept of expansion and evolution, particularly attributed to the fourth dimension. It is not clear in terms of what such expansion is occurring, and consequently with respect to what, time is also expanding (it goes linearly with x4).
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 23, 2008 @ 21:19 GMT
Thanks E Prati,
Your problem is actually with the tautological definition of time that Einstein noted--a seeming paradoxical, circular definition which MDT resolves by postulating that dx4/dt = ic is a fundamamental invariant--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, and t, or dt, is an emergent parameter that we measure on our watches and clocks, as timeless, ageless photons surf the fourth expanding dimension, giving rise to the oscillating change in our clock's cicuitry, which we tune to mark the propagation of time in seconds.
Please see MDT in the context of simple, tautological light clocks in the attached figure.
Our definititions of time are based on measurement, which is based on the propagatin of energy, which propagates at c, which is defined in units of m/s (distance/time)! So it is that the time measured on our quartz crystal watches and on our computers, which depends on the emission and propagation of photons, which propogate at c, which is measure in m/s or distance/time, is tautologically defined!
The great thing about MDT is that it also accounts for this tautology, with a deeper fundamental invariant--the fourth dimension is expanding at c--which sets the velocity of light to c, the maximum and minimum and only velocity through spacetime to c, while also weaving into the fabric of spacetime the fundamental rate of change--c. MDT postulates that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c.
“My solution was really for the very concept of time, that is, that time is not absolutely defined but there is an inseparable connection between time and the signal [light] velocity.” –Einstein
So it is that time rests upon the velocity of light, which of course is defined by units of m/s or distance/time, and this tautological definition and paradox is nothing new.
MDT takes the paradox head on and blows the tautological fog away, exposing a new fundamental universal invariant which weaves change into the fabric of spacetime for the first time in all of history, liberating us from frozen time and the block universe, while providing a physical mechanism for entropy and quantum entanglement and nonlocality--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c: dx4/dt=ic.
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
attachments:
5_MOVING_DIMENSIONS_THEORY_EXAMINES_THE_GRAVITATIONAL_REDSHIFT_SLOWING_OF_CLOCKS.pdf
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 24, 2008 @ 00:58 GMT
The fundamental fact about the Greek was that he had to use his mind. The ancient priests had said, “Thus far and no farther. We set the limits of thought.” The Greek said, “All things are to be examined and called into question. There are no limits set on thought.” –Edith Hamilton
Chris Kennedy wrote on Nov. 25, 2008 @ 15:32 GMT
Dr. E,
I posted a reply on my thread.
CJ
Narendra Nath wrote on Nov. 26, 2008 @ 06:49 GMT
Dear Dr. Elliot, my first post on your essay. Let me start by saying that i personally could not digest yours and Dr. Merryman long posts on others essays. The same is the situation on your own essay too, while i could not have the privilege of your comments. You have a tremendous wealth of information both in Physics as well as the big personalities involved.But the points lie in brevity, relevance and clarity in expositions. Let me come to your essay and your view that Mathematical relations 'live' for ever! It is not correct if these are based on improper precepts and concepts after due analysis of observed data. Let me take your x^4=ict relation. What will happen to t if c is not a constant. Data exists that measured the value of c coming from a distant 12 billion years away object. It was found to be higher than the normally accepted value. In my essay, i have ventured to postulate what will be the situation for creation closure to 13 billion years back. The value of c can be far greater. Thus, the Physics of that time can not be discussed on the basis of 'c' constancy. Also, if there are multiple universes, one can not accept that fastest transmitting agent there will have the same value as in our universe. How will you then justify this mathematical relation.?
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 26, 2008 @ 14:45 GMT
Thanks Chris! I posted a reply to your reply in your forum.
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/308
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 26, 2008 @ 14:57 GMT
Thanks Narenda!
You write, "Let me take your x^4=ict relation."
It is actually written x4=ict, and it is not my relation but rather it is Einstein's and Minkowski's. All that I am doing is noting what it really signifies--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c, or dx4/dt=ic. Ergo all of relativity, quantum nonlocality and...
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Thanks Narenda!
You write, "Let me take your x^4=ict relation."
It is actually written x4=ict, and it is not my relation but rather it is Einstein's and Minkowski's. All that I am doing is noting what it really signifies--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c, or dx4/dt=ic. Ergo all of relativity, quantum nonlocality and entanglement, entropy, and time and all its arrows and assymetries across all realms.
You write, "What will happen to t if c is not a constant?"
On page 9 of the MDT essay, I write, "The Cosmological Arrow of Time: As all motion derives from the fundamental motion dx4/dt=ic, the universe’s general motion is expansion. If the absolute rate of c changes, the rate of expansion of the universe will appear to change. Hence an accelerating/decelerating universe."
If there are multiple universes, then I hope we are living in the one where time and progress will be unfrozen in theoretical physics, and it will soon be acknowledged that we have been freed from the block universe by MDT's natrual elegance and simple beauty, so that we might be able to ask and answer our own questions, as opposed to the non-questions shouted down from the top of the anti-theory regimes, where curiosity has been commandeered and centralized; and where in order to raise funding one must work on the anti-theories that ask the wrong questions so as to never find any answers and perpetuate the bureaucracy that opposes natural, individualistic curiosity, questions, and approaches; as progress in physics comes to a halt,.
"I believe there is no philosophical high-road in science, with epistemological signposts. No, we are in a jungle and find our way by trial and error, building our road behind us as we proceed." --Max Born (1882-1970) German Physicist. Nobel Prize, 1954.
Science is more of an art than a science, and it always seems to advance in manners never before anticipated by the establishment, as Planck stated. One cannot legislate, nor vote on, nor dictate the advancement of science by fiat. "One cannot pray a lie," as Mark Twain once said.
"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck
And again we see the primacy of the honest, rugged individual in the classic, epic hero's journey!
"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man." --Joseph Campbell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth
And the Nobel Laureate eocnomist F.A. Hayek agrees!
"The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for “conscious” control or “conscious” planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme—while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the superindividual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." –F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom
Well, thanks for the exalted dialogue Narendra!
With our newfound freewill provided by MDT, which liberates us from the block universe while allowing us to keep all of relativity and quantum mechanics, we can become those things we seek!
Best,
Dr. E :)
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Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 26, 2008 @ 19:41 GMT
Just found this quote from Plato:
"I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning."
It is hanging in the Boston Museum of Science, and it seems to agree with Albert Einstein, Galileo, and Max Born:
http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/2008/04/12/plato-mathema
tician-quote/
"I personally like to regard a probability wave as a real thing, certainly as...
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Just found this quote from Plato:
"I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning."
It is hanging in the Boston Museum of Science, and it seems to agree with Albert Einstein, Galileo, and Max Born:
http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/2008/04/12/plato-mathema
tician-quote/
"I personally like to regard a probability wave as a real thing, certainly as more than a tool for mathematical calculations. ... how could we rely on probability predictions if we do not refer to something real and objective? (Max Born on Quantum Theory)"
Max Born wrote, "All great discoveries in experimental physics have been made due to the intuition of men who made free use of models which for them were not products of the imagination but representations of real things."
"Gradually the conviction gained recognition that all knowledge about things is exclusively a working-over of the raw material furnished by the senses. ... Galileo and Hume first upheld this principle with full clarity and decisiveness." --(Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions)
To reject *physical* intuition and replace it with the nonsensical block universe MDT does away with seems to go exactly against the spirit by which physics has ever advanced, according to Galileo, Einstein, and other noble physicists.
It seems a preposterous conclusion that quantum mechanics, which works so very well, must be thrown out and reformulated for something which MDT shows there is no need for--the block universe.
"In the long run my observations have convinced me that some men, reasoning preposterously, first establish some conclusion in their minds which, either because of its being their own or because of their having received it from some person who has their entire confidence, impresses them so deeply that one finds it impossible ever to get it out of their heads. Such arguments in support of their fixed idea ... gain their instant acceptance and applause. On the other hand whatever is brought forward against it, however ingenious and conclusive, they receive with disdain or with hot rage - if indeed it does not make them ill. Beside themselves with passion, some of them would not be backward even about scheming to suppress and silence their adversaries. I have had some experience of this myself. ... No good can come of dealing with such people, especially to the extent that their company may be not only unpleasant but dangerous."--(Galileo Galilei)
"my dear Kepler, what do you think of the foremost philosophers of this University? In spite of my oft-repeated efforts and invitations, they have refused, with the obstinacy of a glutted adder, to look at the planets or Moon or my telescope." --Galileo Galilei
We must forver keep physical reality in the front and center, along with logic and reason and *physical* intuition--otherwise progress in physics will grind to a halt, as it has for the past thirty years.
"But before mankind could be ripe for a science which takes in the whole of reality, a second fundamental truth was needed, which only became common property among philosophers with the advent of Kepler and Galileo. Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world; all knowledge of reality starts form experience and ends in it. Propositions arrived at by purely logical means are completely empty as regards reality. Because Galileo saw this, and particularly because he drummed it into the scientific world, he is the father of modern physics -- indeed, of modern science altogether." --Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions
Math can be very pretty, but Einstein reminds us that physicists ought pursue *physics,* founded in a physical reality--“Mathematics are well and good but nature keeps dragging us around by the nose.”"
"It is anomalous to replace the four-dimensional continuum by a five-dimensional one and then subsequently to tie up artificially one of those five dimensions in order to account for the fact that it does not manifest itself." –Einstein to Paul Ehrenfest. Just think what Einstein would have said about entire parallel universes we cannot see!
With an heroic spirit, MDT takes us back to origin of modern physics--to the original papers on relativity and QM, and it humbles itself upon that mountaintop. And when it comes on down, off the shoulders of relativity and QM's giants, MDT presents us with a fundamental view of reality that conforms to all experimental evidence, while not only resolving the paradoxes of the non-locality of the EPR effect and seemingly frozen time in Godel’s block universe, but also unifying the resolution of both physical curiosities within a simple physical postulate--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt = ic. In a sense, this is the first theory to predict QM's nonlocality and entanglement, by postulating that the fourth dimension is inherently nonlocal via its expansion--an empirical fact that the timeless, ageless, nonlocal photon agrees with, as the photon surfs the fourth expanding dimension. And not only does MDT predict this, but it also provides a *physical* model for entropy and time and all its arrows and assymetries throughout all realms. And finally, all of relativity may be derived from MDT's simple postulate, as it is in my paper--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions--dx4/dt = ic. A postulate and an equation representing a novel *physical* feature of our universe--a fourth expanding dimension--and the natural, subsequent prediction of all of relativity, qm's nonlocality, entropy, time's arrows and assymetries in all realms, and quantum entanglement.
I don't believe in mathematics.
Quoted in Carl Seelig. Albert Einstein.
Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics, I assure you that mine are greater. --Einstein
Geometry is not true, it is advantageous. --Jules H. Poincare
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
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Venerando wrote on Nov. 26, 2008 @ 19:53 GMT
Appreciated Dr. E.
Is it correct to say the following?
If dx4/dt=ic and E=mc^2 then dx4/dt = i(E/m)^(1/2)
And that this would be the proportion of space-time expanded due to the amount of Energy-mass implied? What other interpretation could be possible to give it?
Also, I would like a criticism about my essay "Time Traveling by Simuverses", at least the physics related point “1-Nature of time in the architecture of the universe”. If it is deserved, and if possible.
Thanks in advance.
Venerando.
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 28, 2008 @ 15:42 GMT
Thanks Venerando,
I enjoyed your paper, but I am yet convinced that the block universe is a human construct--an artefact from glossing over the fact that Einstein never said the time is the fourth dimension, but rather he wrote x4=ict, implying MDT's central postulate of a fourth expanding dimension.
As Moving Dimensions Theory unfreezes time and liberates us from the block universe, it doesn't really support time travel into the past. However, it grants us free will while also providing a *physical* model underlying entropy, quantum nonlocality and entanglement, and all of relativity, as well as Huygens' Principle and the velocity of c, and time and all its arrows across all realms.
Not bad for one simple postulate and equation: The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c: dx4/dt=ic.
The attached figures/paper show how Moving Dimensions Theory also accounts for the gravitational slowing of light and time, while setting constants such as c (velocity of light) and h (Planck's constant).
Enjoy!
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) :)
attachments:
9_MOVING_DIMENSIONS_THEORY_EXAMINES_THE_GRAVITATIONAL_REDSHIFT_SLOWING_OF_CLOCKS.pdf
Mark Stuckey wrote on Nov. 28, 2008 @ 23:50 GMT
Dr. E,
On p 4 you write,
“Although having traveled 186,000 miles through space, the photon will not have aged one iota, for time stops at the speed of light. It will not have moved one iota in the fourth dimension.”
Choosing the direction between source and detector as the dimension labeled by x1 means ds^2 = dx4^2 + dx1^2 and, as you rightly observe, ds^2 = 0 for a photon, i.e., proper time lapse = 0 along a null path. Since dx1 is not zero, how can dx4 be zero?
Thanks,
Mark
P.S. Sorry if you already answered this above, I didn't read all the posts.
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 29, 2008 @ 02:14 GMT
Thanks for the question, Mark,
I am not sure how well the math will copy in this form, so please see the attached PDF document for an answer to your question above.
Note that in the above, Einstein never says that time is the fourth dimension. Rather he states that x4 = u = ict. Let us write the following:
Where s is the invariant interval. Then
If we take the distance in space as:
Then
We know that a photon does not age. When a photon has traveled a distance ƒ´r, then ƒ´s = ƒ´r, or
And ƒ´x4 = 0.
In other words, the photon has not moved at all in the fourth dimension. Anything that travels the speed of light remains stationary in the fourth dimension, as ƒ´s = ƒ´r. Ergo, the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. An object can travel the velocity of light through space in the x direction, the y direction, or z direction; or some combination thereof, but the only way it can ever travel the velocity of light in the x4 dimension is to remain completely still in the three spatial dimensions. It is possible to remain at rest relative to the expanding time dimension, but it is difficult to measure this, due to the principle of relativity which rests upon a tautological relationship between the measurement of time and velocity of light. This principle of relativity arises form a deeper universal invariant¡Xthe fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the velocity of c, or dx4/dt=ic, providing a physical model for time and all its arrows and asymmetries across all realms, nonlocality, entanglement, entropy, dark energy, Huygens¡¦ pervasive principle, and Heisenberg¡¦s Uncertainty Principle, while setting both c¡Xthe velocity of light, and h¡XPlanck¡¦s constant, as the fundamental wavelength of x4¡¦s expansion is the Planck length.
An inertial frame is a frame that is defined by an object keeping its velocity components through space and time constant. An object which accelerates in the three spatial dimensions slows down in the expanding fourth dimension. And vice versa.
I am not sure how well the math will copy above, so please see the attached document for an answer to your question above.
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
attachments:
Photons_Remain_Stationary_in_the_Fourth_Expanding_Dimension1.pdf
Chris Kennedy wrote on Nov. 29, 2008 @ 16:51 GMT
Dr. E,
Thanks for the link. I have posted another reply on my thread.
CJ
Mark Stuckey wrote on Nov. 29, 2008 @ 23:14 GMT
Dr. E,
I've ck'd your appended file and find that your calculations are not consistent with relativity. I don't know what theory you're using, but it's not relativity. Let me explain.
You're consistent with relativity in that ds^2 is the invariant interval, but you're inconsistent when you conclude dr^2 = ds^2 for a photon. The relativistically correct expression follows from ds^2 = 0 for a photon, i.e., photons follow null worldlines. The relationship between r and x4 for a photon is therefore dr^2 = -dx4^2. That gives dr^2 = -(i)^2*c^2*dt^2, i.e., dr/dt = +/-c (duh). So, according to special relativity, the photon's worldline has a component in x4, contrary to your assertion.
Are you trying to introduce a new theory, distinct from relativity?
Thanks,
Mark
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 29, 2008 @ 23:59 GMT
Thanks Mark,
MDT agrees 100% with all of relativity. In fact, relativity is derived from MDT in my paper. The postulate that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c is a necessary and sufficient condition for the derivation of all of relativity.
You have to agree with the fact that a timeless, ageless photon does not move through time, but...
view entire post
Thanks Mark,
MDT agrees 100% with all of relativity. In fact, relativity is derived from MDT in my paper. The postulate that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c is a necessary and sufficient condition for the derivation of all of relativity.
You have to agree with the fact that a timeless, ageless photon does not move through time, but only through space.
As you know, there is but one velocity for every object through our 4D spacetime--c, and a photon's motion occurs entirely through the three spatial dimensions, while it remians stationary in the fourth dimension. I quote Brian Greene commenting on this below.
I basically asked the question, "What if we approach the invariant interval from the photon's frame?" Surely the photon is not moving through the fourth dimension, while also propagating at c through the three spatial dimensions, as if it were also moving through the fouth dimension it would have to travel faster than c.
Now we all know that photons do not age. Ergo a photon does not move through time. All of a photon's motion is through space.
A timeless, ageless photon remains stationary in time. It remains stationary in the fourth dimension, while propagating at c through space.
All of a photon's motion is through the three spatial dimensions.
None of the photon's motion is through the fourth dimension.
A photon does not age.
Of course time passes for us in the lab frame, and we will agree that time has passed while a photon travels, as our watches tick.
But no time passes for the timeless, ageless photon. Ergo, in the photon's frame, the photon has not moved in time. And thus the photon has not moved in the fourth dimension.
As Brian Greene points out in the Appendix to Chapter 2 of The Elegant Universe, we note that from the space-time position 4-vector x=(ct,x1,x2,x3), we can create the velocity 4-vector u=dx/d(tau), where tau is the proper time defined by d(tau)^2=dt^2-c^-2(dx1^2+dx2^2+dx3^2). Then the "speed through space-time" is the magnitude of the 4-vector u, ((c^2dt^2-dx^2)/(dt^2-c^-2dx^2))^(1/2), which is identically the speed of light c. Now, we can rearrange the equation c^2(dt/d(tau))^2-(dx/d(tau))^2=c^2 to be c^2(d(tau)/dt))^2+(dx/d(tau))^2=c^2. This shows that an increase of an object's speed through space, (dx/d(tau))^2)^(1/2)= dx/d(tau) must be accompanied by a decrease in d(tau)/dt which is the object's speed through time, which also may be considered the rate at which time elapses on it's own clock d(tau) or the proper time, as compared with that on our stationary clock dt.
Ergo the faster an object moves through space, the slower it moves through time; but all objects always move at c through the four dimensions; and light has all of its movement through space, and thus is can have none of it through the fourth dimension.
In An Elegant Universe, Brian Greene almost characterizes Moving Dimensions Theory’s deeper reality:
“Einstein found that precisely this idea—the sharing of motion between different dimensions—underlies all of the remarkable physics of special relativity, so long as we realize that not only can spatial dimensions share an object’s motion, but the time dimension can share this motion as well. In fact, in the majority of circumstances, most of an object’s motion is through time, not space. Let’s see what this means.” Space, Time, and the Eye of the Beholder, An Elegant Universe, Brian Greene, p. 49
Right here Brian almost grasps MDT. But time is not a dimension. Time is an emergent phenomenon that arises because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c. Let’s rewrite Brian’s paragraph with MDT's insights:
“Einstein found that precisely this idea—the sharing of motion between different dimensions—underlies all of the remarkable physics of special relativity, so long as we realize that not only can the three spatial dimensions share an object’s motion, but the fourth dimension, which is moving relative to the three spatial dimensions, can share this motion as well. In fact, in the majority of circumstances, most of an object’s motion is through the fourth dimension, not the three spatial dimensions. Let’s see what this means.” Space, Time, and the Eye of the Beholder, An Elegant Universe, Brian Greene, p. 49
Most objects are traveling far less than c through the three spatial dimensions. Thus most objects are traveling close to the rate of c through the fourth dimension. To be stationary in the three spatial dimensions implies a velocity of c through the fourth dimension. Ergo the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. To be stationary in the fourth expandning dimension, as is the timeless, ageless, nonlocal photon, implies a velocity of c through the three spatial dimensions. Ergo the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
dx(4)/dt = ic
Brian Greene continues:
“Motion through space is a concept we learn about early in life. Although we often don’t think of things in such terms, we also learn that we, our friends, our belongings, and so forth all move through time, as well. When we look at a clock or a wristwatch, even while we idly sit and watch TV, the reading on the watch is constantly changing, constantly “moving forward in time.” We and everything around us are aging, inevitably passing from one moment of time to the next. In fact, the mathematician Hermann Minkowski, and ultimately Einstein as well, advocated thinking about time as another dimension of the universe—the fourth dimension—in some ways quite similar to the three spatial dimensions in which we find ourselves immersed.” Space, Time, and the Eye of the Beholder, An Elegant Universe, Brian Greene, p. 49
What Greene misses is that the time measured on your watch—the ticking seconds—is not the fourth dimension, but it is a phenomenon that emerges because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. The time measured on a clock or watch relies on the emission and propagation of photons, be it in the context of an unwinding clock spring or an oscillating quartz crystal, or even the beating of a heart. And photons are matter that surf the fourth expanding dimension. As time is so inextricably wed to the emission and propagation of photons, and as photons are matter caught in the fourth expanding dimension, our notion of “time” inherits properties of the fourth expanding dimension. But the fact is that time emerges from a deeper physical reality—a fourth dimension that is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
Brian Green continues on, heading off in the wrong direction that just misses the central postulate of MDT:
“Although it sounds abstract, the notion of time as a dimension is actually concrete.”
But it is not. Can you move to where your watch reads three seconds back in time? Or can you move to where your watch reads an hour back in time? We can walk left or right. We can climb up or down. We can move forwards or backwards. But we can’t move through time like we can through the three spatial dimensions. This is because time, as measured on our watch, is not the fourth dimension, but it is a construct we have devised which is based on the fundamental fact that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, governing the emission and propagation of photons, by which time is known and measured on our watches.
Brian Green continues on,
“When we want to meet someone, we tell them where “in space” we will expect to see them—for instance, the 9th floor of the building on the corner of 53rd Street and 7th avenue. There are three pieces of information here (9th floor, 53rd Street, 7th avenue) reflecting a particular location in the three spatial dimensions of the universe. Equally important, however, is our expectation of when we expect to meet them—for instance, at 3 PM. This piece of information tells us where “in time” our meeting will take place. Events are therefore specified by four pieces of information: three in space and one in time. Such data, it is said, specifies the location of the event in space and in time, or in spacetime, for short. In this sense, time is another dimension.”
But again, time is different from the three spatial dimensions. Time is inextricably wed to our sense of the past—the order stored in our memory, long with our ability to imagine and dream of future events. The present is where we put our dreams into action. However, the time defined by past, present, and future is not a dimension akin to the three spatial dimensions, but rather it is a phenomenon that emerges because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
MDT agrees 100% with all of relativity. In fact, relativity is derived from MDT in my paper.
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Mark Stuckey wrote on Nov. 30, 2008 @ 02:33 GMT
Dr. E,
“You have to agree with the fact that a timeless, ageless photon does not move through time, but only through space.”
I disagree, as I stated before, ds^2 = 0 for a photon, that is invariant meaning dr^2 = -dx4^2 in all frames for photons. So, dr and dx4 can vary from frame to frame, but the only frame in which dx4 = 0 is in the frame that dr = 0, and that frame is of no interest to us (it’s the photon’s ‘rest’ frame). You’re confusing coordinate time (contained in x4) with proper time (what the object’s clock moving along the worldline reads). Proper time equals coordinate time for observers at rest spatially. Otherwise, they are not equal.
Your derivation of the magnitude of u = c (which follows from the fact that proper time is the parameterization along time-like curves) is based on ds^2 = -c^2*d(tau)^2. You include a step where you divide by d(tau)^2, therefore that calculation is not relevant for photons since d(tau)^2 for photons is zero. In fact, the magnitude of u along the photon’s null path is zero.
Hope this helps,
Mark
Myke wrote on Nov. 30, 2008 @ 03:42 GMT
In 50 words, or less, please explain how your 4th dimension is motivated? Thanks...
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 30, 2008 @ 06:25 GMT
Thanks Mark,
I yet stand by my contention: "You have to agree with the fact that a timeless, ageless photon has no velocity component through the fourth dimension, but only through space."
Sure, as a light propagates our watches tick, but both teh velcoity of light and our ticking watches are powered by a fourth expanding dimension.
Here is a proof that photons remain...
view entire post
Thanks Mark,
I yet stand by my contention: "You have to agree with the fact that a timeless, ageless photon has no velocity component through the fourth dimension, but only through space."
Sure, as a light propagates our watches tick, but both teh velcoity of light and our ticking watches are powered by a fourth expanding dimension.
Here is a proof that photons remain stationary in the fourth dimension:
a) a photon travels at c through the three spatial dimensions, for all observers
b) if a photon had any velocity component in the fourth dimension, then its velocity would be greater than c through 4D space-time
c) nothing can travel faster than c through our 4D space-time
d) ergo a photon's velocity in the fourth dimension must be 0
Another similar proof:
a) a photon travels at c through the three spatial dimensions, for all observers
b) if a photon had any velocity component in the fourth dimension, then its velocity would be greater than c through 4D space-time
c) a photon travels at c through 4D spacetime
d) ergo a photon can have no velocity component in the ofurth dimension
One last proof:
a) the only velocity through our 4D space-time for all objects is c
b) if a photon, which is always measured to travel at c through the three spatial dimensions by all observers, had any velocity component in the fourth dimension, then its velocity would be greater than c through 4D space-time
c) ergo a photon can have no velocity component in the fourth dimension
d) ergo a photon's velocity through the fourth dimension is 0
I went back to Einstein's Relativity tonight, and you were mostly right Mark in saying, "You're consistent with relativity in that ds^2 is the invariant interval, but you're inconsistent when you conclude dr^2 = ds^2 for a photon. The relativistically correct expression follows from ds^2 = 0 for a photon, i.e., photons follow null worldlines. The relationship between r and x4 for a photon is therefore dr^2 = -dx4^2. That gives dr^2 = -(i)^2*c^2*dt^2, i.e., dr/dt = +/-c (duh). So, according to special relativity, the photon's worldline has a component in x4. . ."
But yet, as we have just shown above, it is impossible for a photon to have any component of its velocity in the fourth dimension x4. Otherwise it would travel faster than light through our 4D space-time.
Now when we consider the invariant interval for light,
0 = ds^2 = dx1^2 + dx2^2 + dx3^2 + dx4^2 where x4 = ict
the t above is not a device which measures a photon's velocity through the fourth dimension, which is 0. Rather, the t above is what is measured on our watches in our frame, and x1,x2,x3 represent the distances measured in our frame. So as this time passes on our watches in our frame, we can easily conclude that the photon is "moving through time," and since many confuse time with a fourth dimension, they can conclude that "a photon is moving through the fourth dimension." But as we have proven above, it is quite impossible for the photon to have a velocity component in the fourth dimension. Rather we are witnessing a photon travel at c as t ticks on our watch, but the fact is, the photon is staying at but one place in the fourth expanding dimension.
The only way to stay stationary in the fourth dimension, in fact, is to move at c through the three spatial dimensions, as does the photon.
The t in the equation:
ds^2 = dx1^2 + dx2^2 + dx3^2 + dx4^2 where x4 = ict
is an emergent parameter which arises because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, carrying the momenergy of the photons in our local watches' and clocks' unwinding springs and quartz crystals and circuitry, which exists in the foruth expanding dimension.
Because the velocity of light is measured relative to time, and because time is inextricably wed the propagation of energy, which propagates at c; the velocity of light is always measured relative to the velcoity of light in all frames, and this tautological, symbiotic definition of light and time means that c is thus measured to be the same to for all observers, and this velocity c is set by a more fundamental universal invariant-the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c.
Consider the timeless, ageless photon.
Relativity tells us that it stays in the same place in the fourth dimension. Again--the proof:
a) the only velocity through our 4D space-time for all objects is c
b) if a photon, which is always measured to travel at c through the three spatial dimensions by all observers, had any velocity component in the fourth dimension, then its velocity would be greater than c through 4D space-time
c) ergo a photon can have no velocity component in the fourth dimension
d) ergo a photon's velocity through the fourth dimension is 0
Quantum Mechanics tells us that a photon's motion is described by a spherically-symmetric probabilistic wavefront expanding at c.
While staying in the same place in the fourth dimension, a photon is also manifested as a spherically-symmetric probabilistic wavefront expanding at c.
Ergo the fourth dimension is expanding at c, distributing locality as a spherically-symmetric wavefront.
Hence entanglement, as two intially-interacting photons yet share a unique locality in the fourth expanding dimension, which distributes locality. Hence quantum mechanics' nonlocality.
Einstein already demonstrated that dimensions can bend, warp, amd move in General Relativity, and MDT extends this fundamental *physical* principle in a simple and natural manner--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c, or dx4/dt=ic.
No other theory comes close to uniting entropy, entanglement, and relativity in a simple *physical* model, which celebrates a fundamental *physical* universal invariant, while providing a physical mechanism for time and all its arrows and assymetires across all realms.
Why does radiation manifest itself as expanding spherical wavefronts, but not as contracting ones? Because dx4/dt=ic--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
"According to Einstein's general theory of relativity, mass and energy warp spacetime. The undulations then affect the trajectories of passing objects, producing the effects we call gravity. In Einstein's theory, spacetime is a stretchy, dynamical entity." --http://focus.aps.org/story/v14/st13
Spacetime is a dynamical entity in Einstein's theory. Ergo, dimensions move.
So it is that MDT is small extension of something we already knew! The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c, in units of the Planck length!
With an heroic spirit, MDT takes us back to origin of modern physics--to the original papers on relativity and QM, and it humbles itself upon that mountaintop. And when it comes on down, off the shoulders of relativity and QM's giants, MDT presents us with a fundamental view of reality that conforms to all experimental evidence, while not only resolving the paradoxes of the non-locality of the EPR effect and seemingly frozen time in Godel’s block universe, but also unifying the resolution of both physical curiosities within a simple physical postulate--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt = ic. In a sense, this is the first theory to predict QM's nonlocality and entanglement, by postulating that the fourth dimension is inherently nonlocal via its expansion--an empirical fact that the timeless, ageless, nonlocal photon agrees with, as the photon surfs the fourth expanding dimension. And not only does MDT predict this, but it also provides a *physical* model for entropy and time and all its arrows and assymetries throughout all realms. And finally, all of relativity may be derived from MDT's simple postulate, as it is in my paper--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions--dx4/dt = ic. A postulate and an equation representing a novel *physical* feature of our universe--a fourth expanding dimension--and the natural, subsequent prediction of all of relativity, qm's nonlocality, entropy, time's arrows and assymetries in all realms, and quantum entanglement.
The great thing about Moving Dimensions Theory is that it allows us to keep all of relativity while also granting us free will and liberating us from the block universe.
Best & thanks for your words and insights!
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
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Mark Stuckey wrote on Nov. 30, 2008 @ 15:35 GMT
Dr. E,
I'll try one more time to explain why you're not doing SR.
“Relativity tells us that it stays in the same place in the fourth dimension. Again--the proof:
a) the only velocity through our 4D space-time for all objects is c
b) if a photon, which is always measured to travel at c through the three spatial dimensions by all observers, had any velocity component in the fourth dimension, then its velocity would be greater than c through 4D space-time
c) ergo a photon can have no velocity component in the fourth dimension
d) ergo a photon's velocity through the fourth dimension is 0”
a) is only true for time-like worldlines, photons follow null worldlines.
b) confuses four-velocity with three-velocity. A photon’s 4-velocity has magnitude zero, its three-velocity is c, therefore it must have a component in x4. Just look at M2, the photon's path is at 45 deg!
c) & d) only apply in the rest frame of the photon, not in general. ds^2 = 0 for a photon is what you must satisfy, not necessarily dx4 = 0 (good thing, that's an impossible frame for us to occupy!).
It’s as if you’re trying to map the time-like realm of M4 into E4 such that the null cone becomes three space and you’ve gotten rid of the space-like realm of M4. Is that right? If so, you’re not doing SR, but it might be interesting.
Mark
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 30, 2008 @ 16:20 GMT
Thanks Mark!
It's fun waking up to see an informed rebuttle.
Please read Brian Greene who refers to Einstein on page 50 of an Elegeant Universe, "Here's the leap: Einstein proclaimed that all objects in the universe are always traveling through spacertime at one fixed speed--that of light." Egro all objects travel at c through spacetime at the speed of light, including light, for if...
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Thanks Mark!
It's fun waking up to see an informed rebuttle.
Please read Brian Greene who refers to Einstein on page 50 of an Elegeant Universe, "Here's the leap: Einstein proclaimed that all objects in the universe are always traveling through spacertime at one fixed speed--that of light." Egro all objects travel at c through spacetime at the speed of light, including light, for if all objects travel at one fixed speed through space-time at the speed of light, how could light travel at any other speed other than the velocity of light.
Here is the passage in Greene's An Elegant Universe:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/sitbv3/reader?asin=0393058
581&pageID=S020&checkSum=SnkcwiUHFdGzyu9TGO5bJrIZynDqD6MxeRE
jPv5dsGM=
The book has been read by literally millions, and vetted by countless experts. Is there something in the passage that seems wrong to you?
In light of what Brian Greene and Einstein state, I am going to have to stick with my contention: a) the only velocity through our 4D space-time for all objects is c
Here it states that "For photons the four-velocity is not defined since dx*dx=0 , i.e. there is no frame in which a photon is at rest." http://www.mth.uct.ac.za/omei/gr/chap2/node2.html
This also states that for photons the four velocity cannot be defined: http://books.google.com/books?id=qhDFuWbLlgQC&pg=PA52&lpg=PA
52&dq=photon's+four+velocity&source=web&ots=tbfFNlyaWA&sig=8
4KUmU3QSpV_ttYSk6j9GP--F2c&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=
7&ct=result
Ergo it appears that we cannot say that a photon's four velocity is zero.
Nor can we conclude, in any way shape or form, that a photon travels at any speed other than c through our the 4D of our spacetime.
Photons define c and c defined photons.
One of the central postulates of relativity is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postulates_of_special_relati
vity
Light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c that is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body.
Relativity tells us that the photon stays in the same place in the fourth dimension. Here's a proof:
a) the only velocity through our 4D space-time for all objects is c (stated by Brian Greene/Einstein)
b) if a photon, which is always measured to travel at c through the three spatial dimensions by all observers (a postulate of relativity), had any velocity component in the fourth dimension, then its velocity would be other than c through our 3D space.
c) ergo a photon can have no velocity component in the fourth dimension
d) ergo a photon's velocity through the fourth dimension is 0
Well relativity is indeed subtle, and I think you may be letting certain interpretations of subtle math try to trump the physical reality.
But I will have to stick with Einstein/Brian Greene and the physical reality of the photon, which stays in but one place in the fourth expanding dimension!
How else would one provide a *physical* model for quantum mechanics' nonlocality and entanglment, while also providing a simple postulate for a *physical* reality underlying time and all its arrows across all realms, as well as entropy, while also providing a foundation for all of relativity? What would your equation and postulate be? Is not the point of physics to make everything as simple as possible but not moreso? Is not the point of physics to unify disparate *physical* phenomena with simple *physical* models and mathematics?
Consider a photon emitted from a source. Quantum mechanics describes the photon's propagation as a spherically-symmetric wavefront of probability expanding at c.
Relativity tells us that the photon does not age--it stays at the same place in the fourth dimension.
Ergo the fourth dimension is nonlocal via its expansion--it is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c. Ergo the spherically-symmetric wavefront of probability expanding at c, which describes the photon's propagation, yet represents a locality in the fourth dimension.
This fits perfectly with Einstein's 1912 paper, where he wrote x4 = ict, or dx4/dt = ic. As you can see, the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c.
Now, in light of this (no pun intended), is it no wonder that two initially-interacting photons remain entangled? For even though they propagate in opposite directions, they yet remain ageless, and in the same place in the fourth expanding dimension!
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
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Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 30, 2008 @ 16:23 GMT
Hello Myke,
You write, "In 50 words, or less, please explain how your 4th dimension is motivated? Thanks... "
Well, in its simplest case, MDT is motivated by the photon, as was quantum mechanics and relativity.
Throughout all this, the photon has been my best friend, providing clues as to the nature of the fourth expanding dimension via both its behavior in quantum mechanics...
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Hello Myke,
You write, "In 50 words, or less, please explain how your 4th dimension is motivated? Thanks... "
Well, in its simplest case, MDT is motivated by the photon, as was quantum mechanics and relativity.
Throughout all this, the photon has been my best friend, providing clues as to the nature of the fourth expanding dimension via both its behavior in quantum mechanics and relativity.
I would recommend that you read one of the books on Einstein's Annus Mirabilis, as he was motivated by the photon in both his conetemplations on quantum mechanics and relativity! While he won a Nobel for his work on the photoelectric effect/quantum mechanics, he never won a Nobel for his work on relativity. How ironic that he never quite accepted quantum mechanics. . .
http://www.amazon.com/Einstein-1905-Greatness-John-Rigden/dp
/0674015444/
Consider the timeless, ageless photon.
Relativity tells us that the photon stays in the same place in the fourth dimension. Again--the proof:
Relativity tells us that the photon stays in the same place in the fourth dimension. Here's a proof:
a) the only velocity through our 4D space-time for all objects is c (stated by Brian Greene/Einstein)
b) if a photon, which is always measured to travel at c through the three spatial dimensions by all observers (a postulate of relativity), had any velocity component in the fourth dimension, then its velocity would be other than c through our 3D space.
c) ergo a photon can have no velocity component in the fourth dimension
d) ergo a photon's velocity through the fourth dimension is 0
Quantum Mechanics tells us that a photon's motion is described by a spherically-symmetric probabilistic wavefront expanding at c.
While staying in the same place in the fourth dimension, a photon is also manifested as a spherically-symmetric probabilistic wavefront expanding at c.
Ergo the fourth dimension is expanding at c, distributing locality as a spherically-symmetric wavefront.
Hence entanglement, as two intially-interacting photons yet share a unique locality in the fourth expanding dimension, which distributes locality. Hence quantum mechanics' nonlocality.
Einstein already demonstrated that dimensions can bend, warp, amd move in General Relativity, and MDT extends this fundamental *physical* principle in a simple and natural manner--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c, or dx4/dt=ic.
No other theory comes close to uniting entropy, entanglement, and relativity in a simple *physical* model, which celebrates a fundamental *physical* universal invariant, while providing a physical mechanism for time and all its arrows and assymetires across all realms.
Why does radiation manifest itself as expanding spherical wavefronts, but not as contracting ones? Because dx4/dt=ic--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
"According to Einstein's general theory of relativity, mass and energy warp spacetime. The undulations then affect the trajectories of passing objects, producing the effects we call gravity. In Einstein's theory, spacetime is a stretchy, dynamical entity." --http://focus.aps.org/story/v14/st13
Spacetime is a dynamical entity in Einstein's theory. Ergo, dimensions move.
So it is that MDT is small extension of something we already knew! The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c, in units of the Planck length!
With an heroic spirit, MDT takes us back to origin of modern physics--to the original papers on relativity and QM, and it humbles itself upon that mountaintop. And when it comes on down, off the shoulders of relativity and QM's giants, MDT presents us with a fundamental view of reality that conforms to all experimental evidence, while not only resolving the paradoxes of the non-locality of the EPR effect and seemingly frozen time in Godel’s block universe, but also unifying the resolution of both physical curiosities within a simple physical postulate--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt = ic. In a sense, this is the first theory to predict QM's nonlocality and entanglement, by postulating that the fourth dimension is inherently nonlocal via its expansion--an empirical fact that the timeless, ageless, nonlocal photon agrees with, as the photon surfs the fourth expanding dimension. And not only does MDT predict this, but it also provides a *physical* model for entropy and time and all its arrows and assymetries throughout all realms. And finally, all of relativity may be derived from MDT's simple postulate, as it is in my paper--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions--dx4/dt = ic. A postulate and an equation representing a novel *physical* feature of our universe--a fourth expanding dimension--and the natural, subsequent prediction of all of relativity, qm's nonlocality, entropy, time's arrows and assymetries in all realms, and quantum entanglement.
The great thing about Moving Dimensions Theory is that it allows us to keep all of relativity while also granting us free will and liberating us from the block universe.
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
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Narendra Nath wrote on Nov. 30, 2008 @ 16:55 GMT
Dear E,
I finally got your response. Sorry, the universe expansion rate of acceleration/decelleration is determining the effect of dark energy component , as per ccosmology. The non-constancy in the value has not bee