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The Nature of Time Essay Contest (2008)
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TOPIC:
What if Time Really Exists? by Sean Carroll
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Sean Carroll wrote on Nov. 24, 2008 @ 09:32 GMT
Essay AbstractDespite the obvious utility of the concept, it has often been argued that time does not exist. I take the opposite perspective: let's imagine that time does exist, and the universe is described by a quantum state obeying ordinary time-dependent quantum mechanics. Reconciling this simple picture with the known facts about our universe turns out to be a non-trivial task, but by taking it seriously we can infer deep facts about the fundamental nature of reality. The arrow of time finds a plausible explanation in a "Heraclitean universe," described by a quantum state eternally evolving in an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space.
Author BioSean Carroll is a Senior Research Associate in theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology. He obtained his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1993, and has held positions at MIT, the Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Chicago. He is the author of Spacetime and Geometry, a graduate-level textbook on general relativity. His research interests include cosmology, field theory, particle physics, general relativity, quantum gravity, quantum mechanics, and thermodynamics.
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John Merryman wrote on Nov. 24, 2008 @ 15:26 GMT
Sean,
If time is eternal, what would be the consequence of space being infinite?
As a consequence of fluctuation([long link]), space expands, but since the universe would be infinite, this would only cause a form of opposing instability and pressure, resulting in the gravitational collapse and atomic spin of mass. Therefore explaining how order arises from chaos, thus creating low entropy states. Which eventually break down and radiate their energy back out, in a convection cycle of expanding energy and collapsing structure?
Hasn't Complexity Theory shown order does arise from chaos anyway?
Regards from the gallery,
JM
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Peter Lynds wrote on Nov. 24, 2008 @ 18:24 GMT
Dear Sean,
I realise that there could be an element of wanting to play devil's advocate in your essay, but with all respect, what if God or the aether really exist? As is the case with those two, there is just no physical or logical reason to invoke the existence of time. Moreover, if time did exist, one can show that a Heraclitean universe and change would not be possible. Lastly, in relation to the idea of time being infinite, you seem reluctant to take on board a certain point!
Best wishes
Peter
Elliot Tarabour wrote on Nov. 24, 2008 @ 19:53 GMT
Sean,
I think it's great that somebody is finally standing up for time. I think the line of reasoning that time is illusory is significantly flawed. My belief stems from the fact that I feel that there is a yet to be articulated semi-radical revision of our view of the fundamental nature of reality which incorporates the flow of information as intrinsic in the fabric rather than as a byproduct or adjunct to that nature. As such I think time is a real and critical element in such a formulation.
Cheers,
Elliot
Peter Lynds wrote on Nov. 24, 2008 @ 21:11 GMT
PS: With my previous comment, I should have probably been more specific in relation to your arguments. For example, if one assumes the existence of time via the Schrodinger equation, through the resulting necessary assumption of the existence of instants in time underlying the equation, it follows that change would be impossible.
FQXi Administrator Anthony Aguirre wrote on Nov. 24, 2008 @ 21:31 GMT
Sean,
A very nice essay, and I agree with much of what you say in it. A few thoughts:
a) Thank you for tracking down this quote of Eddington, however you did it: it is a great statement of the Boltzmann's brain paradox! I will henceforth steal and employ it at every appropriate opportunity.
b) The conclusion of p. 7 is that the basic sensibility of the world requires the universe to have an infinite dimensional Hilbert space. This is an amazing thing: I can pick out a dimensionality that is *as large as I like*, and instantly rule it out via this argument. Doesn't this bother you? That is, we have a case where a physical infinity is qualitatively and observationally different from any arbitrarily large number. This is either amazing, or something is wrong with the argument (though it is not clear to me what, I only have some hunches.)
c) I'm not sure I would really agree that `baby universe' creation via the 'Recycling universe' mechanism (the reverse Coleman-DeLuccia process) should count as creating low-entropy regions while increasing overall entropy. In fact, I'm fairly convinced that this process is precisely what a downward entropy fluctuation in the thermal system of dS would look like. It's not at all clear that it really helps with the B-Brain problem.
Anthony
Member Sean Carroll wrote on Nov. 24, 2008 @ 21:51 GMT
Hi Anthony--
a) I have to give credit to Don Page for the Eddington quote. There are also some great collections of original papers by Boltzmann and contemporaries, which are often surprisingly readable.
b) Yes it is remarkable! Which is why I tried to make the assumptions behind the argument as clear as possible. (There is one fuzzy point I didn't have time space to explore in this essay: the connection between the time parameter in the assumed Schrodinger equation and the time we use in our spacetime description of cosmology.)
c) I'm not sure about this myself, I was just trying to keep options open. You might very well be right. Recycling has the advantage of being better understood than Farhi-Guth baby-universe creation, but it's not clear that it really addresses this problem.
Sean
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Moshe wrote on Nov. 25, 2008 @ 00:46 GMT
Nice essay, I enjoyed reading it. A couple of quick comments:
I see nothing to preclude the possibility that dual time in all of its eternity covers just the period after the big bang. After all we have examples where the boundary time covers only a patch of the dual spacetime (say the case of AdS black holes, where it covers the region outside the horizon). More generally, that dual time is probably not simply related to any clock reading in some semiclassical bulk spacetime.
As for Anthony's question b), this coincides with my prejudice: infinity is not a number, it is a limiting process, and anything which depends on any quantity being strictly infinite should be viewed with suspicion.
Now, if you replace your infinite Hilbert space by a finite one, you'd have recurrences, but by making the Hilbert space larger and larger you'd make them appear later and later. Seems to me that you insert the infinity by demanding that the universe *always* looks like ours for all eternity. We have no evidence for that, and by definition we never will. If we demand that the universe has interesting things going on for the first 15 billion years, or any other finite period of time, we can live with a finite Hilbert space, no?
Anonymous wrote on Nov. 25, 2008 @ 01:00 GMT
I think that the argument that unitarity implies that time must be infinite is *extremely* weak. Unitarity can be stated loosely as "the amount of information at any time [that exists] is the same as the amount of information at any other time [that exists]." Clearly that can be true if time is finite. SC's argument is like saying that the Big Bang [as classically understood] violates the law of conservation of energy, and is therefore incompatible with the Einstein equations. Of course this is wrong. But then the whole argument falls to the ground.
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Member Sean Carroll wrote on Nov. 25, 2008 @ 01:25 GMT
Moshe, I agree with the importance of that loophole, as I alluded to in my answer to Anthony's point b). I probably could have made that clear in the essay, but I was feeling the pressure of the word limit. I would personally bet against the possibility that dual time only covers the post-big-bang universe, because I doubt that the whole universe is Robertson-Walker, and that the BB is a boundary stretching through all of space -- but it's certainly a logical possibility.
About the infinity, I think this is a good example of where "infinite" is very different from "really big." For the simple reason that, by hypothesis, time itself is infinite. If time is finite, you can always make the Hilbert space big enough to avoid recurrences/ergodicity; but if time is infinite, you can't, and the argument goes through. If you like, the assumption that time is infinite is where the importance of infinity enters the argument.
anonymous, I don't think it's unitarity that implies time must be infinite, it's the Schrodinger equation. There is nothing about the wave function that would ever stop it from evolving; it's always just a ray in a Hilbert space, all of which are essentially created equal.
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Peter Lynds wrote on Nov. 25, 2008 @ 01:38 GMT
Hi Sean,
I find your lack of response to my comment/challenge a little bit unfortunate.
Best wishes
Peter
Kaleberg wrote on Nov. 25, 2008 @ 02:28 GMT
On page 4: "and brining to life Friedrich Nietzsche’s image of eternal return": Is that supposed to be "bringing to life", or is the image actually immersed in salt water?
But if you have an infinite dimensional Hilbert space, doesn't that get you all kinds of quantum weirdness? Or, is that what you want?
Greg Egan wrote on Nov. 25, 2008 @ 02:49 GMT
A very interesting essay! Personally I'm not persuaded that our own failure to be Boltzmann Brains tells us anything about the number of observers in the whole history of the universe who *are* Boltzmann Brains (surely that was Hartle and Srednicki's point?) but nonetheless it's an attractive prospect to banish such entities completely.
A few minor typos:
page 2, last sentence of first paragraph:
"by acting the Hamiltonian operator on that state"
page 6, last sentence:
"and brining to life Friedrich Nietzsche’s image of eternal return"
page 8, second-last paragraph (missing reference here?):
"This is a very different scenario from the various forms of eternal cosmologies that feature a low-entropy “bounce” that replaces the Big Bang [?];"
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 25, 2008 @ 02:51 GMT
Hello Sean,
Fun paper and great to see a fan of time here!
"Our conclusion that the Hilbert space of the universe needs to be infinite-dimensional might not seem
very startling; the universe is a big place, why should we be surprised that it requires a big Hilbert space?"
Moving Dimensions Theory can provide an infinite number of dimensions. As the fourth dimension is...
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Hello Sean,
Fun paper and great to see a fan of time here!
"Our conclusion that the Hilbert space of the universe needs to be infinite-dimensional might not seem
very startling; the universe is a big place, why should we be surprised that it requires a big Hilbert space?"
Moving Dimensions Theory can provide an infinite number of dimensions. As the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c, manifesting itself of spherically-symmetric expanding spheres of locality, each tiny sphere of expansion can be considered a brand new, compactified dimension. Have you ever wondered why photons never, never interact? Because each one travels in its own dimension, as photons are but matter surfing the fourth expanding dimension.
Picture every point becomeing a sphere in the fourth dimension, which yet defines a single locality--the very source of Huygens' principle, which pervades of all nature, from Feynman's many paths to Young's double slit to classical wave pools.
http://jac_leon.club.fr/gravitation/images/kaluza-klein.gif
Feel free to use MDT as a *physical* mechanism to provide your theory with the infinite dimensions you need.
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/238
MDT already provides a *physical* mechanism for entropy, quantum entanglement and nonlocality, all of relativity, all the dualities--space/time, mass/energy, and space/time--so you might as well use it too. :) MDT also accounts for the graviational slowing of light and time, as well as the gravitational redshift, while showing why there is no need to quantize gravity, which will save us all a lot of dead-end work. Please find MDT's treatment of the gravitational slowing of light and time attached.
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."
In your essay, you write, "But the proof of the pudding is in the tasting, and right now the best taste we have of quantum gravity comes from string theory."
This is kind of like saying the best taste we have of traveling faster than light comes from the Millenium Falcon in Star Wars. Since string theory has no equations and is not a finite theory of anything, and since quantum gravity exists neither in theory (nobody has one, nor has come close) nor in reality (nobody has ever seen a graviton, nor knows how we might look for one), I guess it makes sense that the best way to taste quantum grvaity (which does not exist) is with string theory (which isn't a theory). But going after what might not exist with what never works in finding what might not exist just doesn't seem fun anymore. Even John Baez is leaving his pursuit of quantum gravity behind ( http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_5.html ), and perhaps the time is nigh for all of us focus on Movindg Dimensions Theory with multi-million dollar initaitves, as MDT provides a *physical* mechanism and model for time and all its arrows and assymetries, as well as entropy, relativity, and quantum mechanics's entanglement and nonlocality.
I enjoyed the sentence, "(Juan Maldacena) discovered that a four-dimensional supersymmetric gauge theory defined on Minkowski space, in the limit of a large number of colors and strong coupling, is equivalent to ten-dimensional supergravity compactified on a fivesphere, with anti-de Sitter boundary conditions at spatial infinity."
Well Newton dicovered gravity, and Einstein discovered relativity, and it seems Shakespeare was right--brevity is the soul of wit.
Do you not long for the heroic age of physics, whence physics was explained in terms of simple, physical concepts, with simple mathematical equations?
Do you not long for simple postulates reflecting *physical* truth: the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c, with simple equations: dx4/dt=ic, and far-reaching conseuqences, as diverse physical phenomena spanning all realms are united with a simple model?
You write, "When quantizing gravity, spacetime itself becomes part of the quantum description, and time seems to disappear according to the Wheeler-DeWitt equation."
Well, actually, nobody has ever quantized gravity. So how would we know what happens when gravity is quantized?
You write, "But the Schr¨odinger equation, on which this is all purportedly based, is perfectly reversible."
Actually, if one uses the Schrodinger equation to describe radiation, it does not describe a reversible process, as radiation in its simplest case appears as spherically-symmetric waves that are expanding, not shrinking. this is because photons surf the fourth dimension, which is expanding, not shrinking.
wiki pagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon
You write, "But the reason why we ever had access to a low-entropy configuration such as an egg is ultimately because the environment of the Earth is a low-entropy place."
Actually the creation of the egg in the chicken increased the entropy of the universe. I'm not sure I agree that the solar system is a low-entropy place--compared to who's absolute rule/measuring stick of entropy? It might have lower entropy than other places, but does that it make it a low entropy place? It is what it is. What should it be if not what it is? And cans such questions be answered by science?
You write, "But the fact that we ever began with a low-entropy is not natural at all." Did not the solar system and earth evolve from a swirling cloud of dust over billions of years? Was the entropy of the swirling cloud of dust so very low?
All these quotes are great, but are they science?
Is expressing and re-expressing the anthropic principle science? We are here because we are here and if we weren't here we woudln't be, so there must have been a statistical deviation. This is nothing new. Had our parents nver met, nor theirs, nor theirs, nor theirs--what are the chances? We owe our DNA to a vast improbability. OK, now let's move on to asking and answering foundational questions about *physical* reality.
Are tautological witticisms science?
"A universe containing mathematical physicists will at any assigned date be in the state of maximum disorganization which is not inconsistent with the existence of such creatures."
You write, "In fact, entropy can grow both into the far future and into the far past; the overall multiverse can be
completely symmetric with respect to time."
Can entropy really grow into the past?
MDT shows that the past isn't real, as the block universe does not exist.
And if you suppose a block universe, the past is frozen, so its entropy can't change there either.
Have to run! Thanks for the words!
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
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attachments:
6_MOVING_DIMENSIONS_THEORY_EXAMINES_THE_GRAVITATIONAL_REDSHIFT_SLOWING_OF_CLOCKS.pdf
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Hrvoje Nikolic wrote on Nov. 25, 2008 @ 13:04 GMT
Hi Sean,
I've really enjoyed your essay.
However, I have one comment. I think that quantum gravity does not necessarily imply Wheeler-DeWitt equation
H |psi> = 0
For example, even if you do NOT take into account dualities of string theory, it is still true that string theory is a theory of quantum gravity without the Wheeler-DeWitt equation.
Do you agree?
Best,
Hrvoje
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Nov. 25, 2008 @ 14:58 GMT
Hello Hrvoje,
I'm not sure you have noticed, but string theory isn't actually a theory, in the traditional sense, like MDT.
MDT's postulate: The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimension at the rate of c: dx4/dt=ic.
But what are string theory's postulates and equations? Is it not amazing that not even Sean knows string theory's postulates and...
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Hello Hrvoje,
I'm not sure you have noticed, but string theory isn't actually a theory, in the traditional sense, like MDT.
MDT's postulate: The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimension at the rate of c: dx4/dt=ic.
But what are string theory's postulates and equations? Is it not amazing that not even Sean knows string theory's postulates and equation?. That is why, although Sean says string theory gives us the best "taste" of quantum gravity, he doesn't provide us with any of string theory's postulates nor equations, nor does he ever show us how they quantize gravity, because nobody has ever quantized gravity, and because string theory has no postulates nor equations. Not even in Sean's essay, nor in the 10^99 papers on String Theory, all of which reference Ed Witten, who never even majored in physics as an undergrad, but in politics.
Do not take my word for String Theory's failure and not even wrongishness:
The first page of String Theory in a Nutshell states in a footnoted sentence:
THE CASE FOR STRING THEORY:
String Theory has been the leading candidate over the past two decades for a theory that consistently unifies all the fundamental forces of nature, including gravity. It gained popularity because it provides a theory that is UV finite.(1)
The footnote (1) reads: "Although there is no rigorous proff to all orders that the theory is UV finite, there are several all-orders arguments as well as rigorous results at low-loop-order. In closed string theory, amplitudes must be carefully defined via analytic continuation, standard in S-matrix theory. When open strings are present, there are diveregences. However, they are interpreted as IR divergences (due to the exchange of massless tsates) in the dual closed string channel. They are subtracted in the "Wilsonian" S-matrix elements." --STRING THEORY IN A NUTSHELL
So you see, String Theory is not a finite theory, but this is generally kept to the footnotes, when mentioned at all.
A lot of Nobel Laureates have vast problems with String Theory:
""WE DON'T know what we are talking about." That was Nobel laureate David Gross at the 23rd Solvay Conference in Physics in Brussels, Belgium, during his concluding remarks on Saturday. He was referring to string theory. . ." --http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg1882529
3.700
"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
(Imagine doing this for ten dimensions! Or forty! Just to spite Einstein!)
"String theorists don't make predictions, they make excuses." -Richard Feynman, Noble Laureate
"String theory is like a 50 year old woman wearing too much lipstick." -Robert Laughlin, Nobel Laureate
"Actually, I would not even be prepared to call string theory a "theory" rather a "model" or not even that: just a hunch. After all, a theory should come together with instructions on how to deal with it to identify the things one wishes to describe, in our case the elementary particles, and one should, at least in principle, be able to formulate the rules for calculating the properties of these particles, and how to make new predictions for them. Imagine that I give you a chair, while explaining that the legs are still missing, and that the seat, back and armrest will perhaps be delivered soon; whatever I did give you, can I still call it a chair?" -Gerard `t Hooft, Nobel Laureate in String Theory
"It is tragic, but now, we have the string theorists, thousands of them, that also dream of explaining all the features of nature. They just celebrated the 20th anniversary of superstring theory. So when one person spends 30 years, it's a waste, but when thousands waste 20 years in modern day, they celebrate with champagne. I find that curious." -Sheldon Glashow, Nobel Laureate
"I don't like that they're not calculating anything. I don't like that they don't check their ideas. I don't like that for anything that disagrees with a n experiment, they cook up an explanation-a fix-up to say, "Well, it might be true." For example, the theory requires ten dimensions. Well, maybe there's a way of wrapping up six of the dimensions. Yes, that's all possible mathematically, but why not seven? When they write their equation, the equation should decide how many of these things get wrapped up, not the desire to agree with experiment. In other words, there's no reason whatsoever in superstring theory that it isn't eight out of the ten dimensions that get wrapped up and that the result is only two dimensions, which would be completely in disagreement with experience. So the fact that it might disagree with experience is very tenuous, it doesn't produce anything; it has to be excused most of the time. It doesn't look right." -Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate in Physics
"But superstring physicists have not yet shown that theory really works. They cannot demonstrate that the standard theory is a logical outcome of string theory. They cannot even be sure that their formalism includes a description of such things as protons and electrons. And they have not yet made even one teeny-tiny experimental prediction. Worst of all, superstring theory does not follow as a logical consequence of some appealing set of hypotheses about nature. Why, you may ask, do the string theorists insist space is none-dimensional? Simply because string theory doesn't make sense in any other kind of space." --Sheldon Glashow, Nobel Laureate in Physics
Even String Theory's founder, Michio Kaku, has problems with the theory: "The great irony of string theory, however, is that the theory itself is not unified. To someone learning the theory for the first time, it is often a frustrating collection of folklore, rules of thumb, and intuition. (IN OTHER WORDS IT IS NOT PHYSICS!!!) At times, there seems to be no rhyme or reason for many of the conventions of the model. For a theory that makes the claim of providing a unifying framework for all physical laws, it is the supreme irony that the theory itself appears so disunited!!"
Chapter 1. Path Integrals and Point Particles: Why Strings?
" --"Introduction to Superstrings and M-Theory," page 5. -Michio Kaku
"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.
"[String Theory] has no practical utility, however, other than to sustain the myth of the ultimate theory. There is no experimental evidence for the existence of strings in nature, nor does the special mathematics of string theory enable known experimental behavior to be calculated or predicted more easily. Moreover, the complex spectroscopic properties of space accessible with today's mighty accelerators are accountable in only as "low-energy phenomenology"-a pejorative term for transcendent emergent properties of matter impossible to calculate from first principles. String theory is, in fact, a textbook case of Deceitful Turkey, a beautiful set of ideas that will always remain just barely out of reach. Far from a wonderful technological hope for a greater tomorrow, it is instead the tragic consequence of an obsolete belief system-in which emergence plays no role and dark law does not exist."
-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.
MDT delivers an ultimate theory, whereas Loop Quantum Gravity and Sring Theory only sustain a myth of an ultimate theory. And thus we are commanded from on high--from the pinnacles of the ani-theory regimes--to ignore MDT and Nobel Laureates such as Robert Laughlin, F.A. Hayek, Feynman, Einstein, Planck, Glasgow, and others I quote above. Welcome to the dark ages of physics, where progress in physics is frozen in a block universe tied together with tiny, vibrating strings.
I apologize for the length of this post, but I am working on a book: HERO'S JOURNEY PHYSICS & MOVING DIMENSIONS THEORY: FROM COPERNICUS, TO BRUNO, TO GALILEO, TO NEWTON, TO EINSTEIN--AND YET IT MOVES!
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
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Moshe wrote on Nov. 25, 2008 @ 17:25 GMT
Sorry for not reading your reply carefully enough. I'm still confused about the logic though, so with the risk of making the same mistake again: what phenomenological issues prevent us from having recurrences in the asymptotic future? Granted, we haven't seen eggs unscrambling, but maybe that's because we have not been around long enough to sample significantly the Hilbert space.
Member Sean Carroll wrote on Nov. 25, 2008 @ 17:45 GMT
Hrvoje-- Again, I could have been more precise. Even in GR, you don't necessarily get the WdW equation; it depends on your boundary conditions. (And in string theory you can get the equivalent of it.) My only point was that it is a common starting point for many investigations of quantum gravity.
Moshe-- The point is just that most "people like us" will have been around long enough. Given any macrostate you like, including one in which you are absolutely convinced you arose from a low-entropy past with a Big Bang etc, it is extremely likely (in a finite-dim Hilbert space where the state evolves ergodically through a specified torus) that you actually fluctuated out of a higher-entropy past, and that the next observation you do will reveal the thermal equilibrium all around you. All of your memories are completely unreliable, etc.
It's just the Boltzmann Brain argument, but this is a context in which it really works rigorously, not just at a hand-wavy level. If you are evolving eternally in a finite-dim Hilbert space, there is a very well-defined measure on the space of configurations. You have no right to put yourself in a part of the evolution which you deem to be thermodynamically sensible; all you can do is restrict attention to moments in the evolution resembling your macrostate. And the overwhelming majority of those will be thermodynamically crazy.
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Moshe wrote on Nov. 25, 2008 @ 18:56 GMT
OK, that's the part I missed, thanks.
F. Le Rouge wrote on Nov. 25, 2008 @ 19:36 GMT
Contrary to yours my French opinion is that Time is worshiped as a God in US culture in law, music, movies, science, economy, more than in the German romantic one if it is possible… The difference with Greek religion is that Chronos is not such a positive God.
Subtle Time even enables US Scientists to build highways with space-time blocks to travel until the Infinity or the Big-Bang. Or to predict the Future from Past informations.
(Just tell me WHO is fighting against Time invasion of Physics here in this forum because I am looking for this person for a while.)
I am the only one here to say that the Travel is in Einstein’s Mind, that the ‘wave’ in Quanta Physics has nothing to do with matter, so let me please defend the idea that Time does not exist that you are caricaturing in your essay.
In a few words:
- Saint Augustine is not the best pleader for ‘Present Time’ but the European Middle-age or Aristotle.
- Time ‘does not exist’ for Aristotle in Matter/material things, but he does not deny its existence in the ‘concepts’ at all (‘Physics’, III-VI). Aristotle’s idea is that one must be careful and not give to material things the ideas’ properties that matter does not have. Eternity, Infinity, the ‘Standard conceptual model of Time’ in other words, made basically with a dot and a line or a circle (including both ideas of Infinity in quantity and in distance/time).
- Parmenide and Eleates in general are not sort of French ‘agents provocateurs’ as you are insinuating; they are not far away from Aristotle’s idea that Time is an accident. Difference is that Aristotle wants to avoid binary language to fight against binary language.
- Your mistake, Sean Carroll, is due to this: Infinity, wave, eternity, dots, circles, arrows, music are still part of the reality which is so ‘made of virtuality’ or ‘potentiality’ for you. And this specific opinion, you do loan it to everybody! (Clinton K. Miller on this forum for instance who is trying to strengthen Time too was surprised that one could have another idea about Time than he does.)
- To sum up: Aristotle, saint Thomas Aquinus or K. Marx, to take famous followers examples are denying the utility of Time-concept for sure, but not arguing that time does not exist in ideas or language.
Narendra Nath wrote on Nov. 26, 2008 @ 13:34 GMT
Dear Author,
Your simple view about the reality of Time and the description of all the known processes to be dealt with using Time-dependent Quantum physics treating the Universe to exist in a unique quantum state, appears to signify that only quantum physics can lead us to the reality. The scientific facts about the Universe known do not conform to such a simplification. What about the birth of the Universe via Big Bang and what existed before, is an enigma still. We all know that there is awareness of the humans that crosses beyond the body senses and scientific instruments. A term 'consciousness' has been admitted as a non-physical entity that covers all the different levels of human awareness. Even famous neurologists have seen the neurons in the Supplementary Motor Area of the brain to become active when no activity was expected from within the body senses. A non-physical covering is considered to surround the SMA, to understand the neuron activity due to external interactions that leave an impression in this covering permanently even after the death of the human concerned. Thus, it appears that the universe and things therein, including the humans need to concern themselves with such an entity 'consciousness' and the same is not open to model on current scientific knowledge.
In my own essay, i have mentioned some aspects that indicate non-constancy of the Physical constants and also possibility of force-field strengths variation with time, in order to understand the Universe from its birth itself. Currently, the tendency to project the Physics evolved in past few hundred years to explain all the observed facts seen about the universe evolution( WMAP data)appears to be insufficient!
Kevembuangga wrote on Nov. 26, 2008 @ 18:03 GMT
I am curious of your opinion about some other weird speculations by Carlos Rodriguez on the "nature" of (space)time and reality:
Are We Cruising a Hypothesis Space?
Matthias wrote on Nov. 26, 2008 @ 20:27 GMT
so is
he a Boltzmann Brain?
I don't quite see why "we" shouldn't be the fluke among flukes - given infinite time there will be infinite Brains.
George Musser wrote on Nov. 26, 2008 @ 21:18 GMT
Sean, I'm a little confused by how the duality argument bears on the frozen-time problem. In what sense is time really part of the quantum description in the bulk? How do we know that the time parameter in the bulk is not just the time parameter on the boundary? That is to say, do the dynamics truly generate a internal notion of time or are we still just presuming time from the outset?
Does assuming the validity of the Schrödinger equation beg the question (of eternal time)?
George
P.S. The analogy of two straight lines, with a point of closest approach, is very elegant.
Member Sean Carroll wrote on Nov. 27, 2008 @ 00:29 GMT
George, it's probably not a good idea to think in terms of "bulk" and "boundary" here. I'm not proposing some specific duality between the complicated real-world spacetime and a dual theory; I'm just using the successful examples of duality to motivate the idea that there exists some description of the universe that takes the form of an ordinary time-dependent quantum system. As Moshe points out, there is an additional assumption that "time" in our universe is at least somewhat related (although it might only be approximate) to the time parameter in the quantum-mechanical theory.
The assumption is that the Schrodinger equation is right, but that certainly implies that time goes forever.
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Brian Beverly wrote on Nov. 27, 2008 @ 08:09 GMT
I want to thank you for writing a straightforward essay despite having impressive credentials. I have found a correlation, the more impressive the credentials the harder and more intelligent sounding the author made their essay. The less impressive the credentials the more references there are to energy being anything except a conserved number. I'm going to give you one of my restricted votes since you have written a clear and straightforward essay. I agree with you that time does exist; however, I believe your approach can be made more rigorous. I know you have an idea that is probably right but I want your mathematics to lead to deeper insight and not frustration.
When discussing real time try to avoid equations with imaginary numbers. A Hilbert space by definition is an infinite dimensional space. In quantum mechanics a finite number of the terms have non-zero coefficients. It may seem like splitting hairs but it is an important distinction. A Hilbert space is also a mathematical fantasy that helps with calculations it is not physically identical to the universe. Explaining time by only focusing on the time evolution of the wavefunction without including collapse is not possible. Entropy can only be measured after the wavefunction collapses. In equation 5 obtaining an infinite TAUab is only possibly if 2pi is divided by zero. Lastly, infinite eigenvalues with the same E means infinite degeneracy for everything in the universe.
Having written that I do know that you are smarter than me and an FQXI member. This is why I have been hesitant to comment on your essay and other members. I only ask that you please avoid wrath in your reply because we are on the same side.
Narendra Nath wrote on Nov. 27, 2008 @ 15:10 GMT
Dear Sean Carroll,
i am requesting you to see my post of yesterday, Nov., 26. Of course it is certainly your choice to ignore response to the same.
Cristi Stoica wrote on Nov. 28, 2008 @ 21:28 GMT
Dear Sean,
I salute your well written essay defending the reality of time.
I have two questions about the infinite dimensionality of the Hilbert space, which you consider to be required for conciliating the idea of a Universe undergoing unitary evolution with the observed level on entropy.
1) Let us consider a Universe with a finite number of particles at a given time. If a particle evolves influenced only by its interaction with a finite number of particles (all others), wouldn't it stay within a finite dimensional Hilbert subspace of the (possible infinite dimensional) particle's Hilbert space? Therefore, if the system starts with a finite number of interacting particles, the total Hilbert space, as a tensor product of finite dimensional Hilbert spaces, should be finite dimensional.
2) Since the time period increases exponentially with the dimension of the Hilbert space, which, in turn, increases exponentially with the number of particles, isn't it possible that even a finite dimensional Hilbert space be enough?
In this case, the Universe will have a finite period, although very long.
Best wishes,
Cristi Stoica
Dimi Chakalov wrote on Dec. 2, 2008 @ 05:54 GMT
How can you talk about the Heraclitean time (footnote 4), and not address the issue of 'elementary timelike displacement', as created (?) by the so-called dark energy? Five years ago, in your astro-ph/0310342, you were musing on "a problem, a puzzle, and a scandal." Regarding the latter, may I suggest to check out some well known, since 1918, facts
here.
J. Smith wrote on Dec. 2, 2008 @ 19:56 GMT
Dear Sean,
it seems that you ignore the discussion about the intrinsic unobservability of the quantity time, and how do clock work.
The point is exacly to recognize that there is no real time meters, because the definition is self-recursive, and to find a way to break such recursivity, or to show how you can do without time. Starting with the assumption that time exists and hoping that further consistency works reminds to the description of the solar system with the epicycles: it works very well but it assumes very wrong principles...
John
Member Sean Carroll wrote on Dec. 3, 2008 @ 18:08 GMT
Cristi-- Even if it were possible to describe a system with a finite number of particles using a finite-dimensional subspace of an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space, that doesn't necessarily mean that the subspace would be spanned by a finite number of *energy eigenstates*. If it were, then the evolution would be identical to that of a finite-dimensional Hilbert space.
And an exponentially large number is still not good enough -- compared to infinity, even a large number is still small.
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Cristi Stoica wrote on Dec. 4, 2008 @ 12:15 GMT
Dear Sean,
You are definitely right, if we represent the states in terms of energy eigenstates, there is a probability of 0.(9) to need an infinite dimensional eigenbasis.
Cristi Stoica
“Flowing with a Frozen River”,
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/322
Michael Silberstein wrote on Dec. 6, 2008 @ 00:17 GMT
Dear Sean,
Very clear essay. My concerns are addressed to you and all other wave function (Hilbert space) fundamentalists. I know you want to table this question for the most part and explore a toy QM model but one can't resist asking: whence spacetime? Starting with infinitely dimensional Hilbert space, how are you going to derive spacetime (GR, Lorentz invariance, etc.). Furthermore, how are you going to explain the illusion that we live in a 3D world? My understanding is that those background independent models of QG that do "recover" spacetime either assume a global notion of time or causality (the light-cone structure). In either case, why isn't this cheating? And of course in order for your Heraclitean view to prevail, background independence is essential otherwise you just have a "quantum-block" world of the sort defended by Saunders and other Oxford-Everettians who are likewise wave function fundamentalists. So obviously, the Everett move alone doesn't entail the fundamentality of time and change, on the contrary, the most sophisticated Everettians (on this branch anyway) are block-worlders.
I get that somehow duality and de Sitter space are part of your answer here, but I don't fully follow the logic, how exactly do these two answer my questions? I look forward to your reply.
Cheers,
Michael
Tevian Dray wrote on Dec. 8, 2008 @ 06:46 GMT
An elegant argument that infinite time requires an infinite dimensional Hilbert space. This really brings home the difference between "infinite" and "arbitrarily large".
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Dec. 8, 2008 @ 18:04 GMT
Hello Sean,
I was hoping for a bit of a dialogue, but too, the lack of dialogue will be useful to historians of science in understanding and characetrizing why our era has seen no progress in theoretical physics, despite unprecedented funding and resources.
Never before have so many been paid so much to advance physics so little. Indeed, future historians will see that overfunding...
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Hello Sean,
I was hoping for a bit of a dialogue, but too, the lack of dialogue will be useful to historians of science in understanding and characetrizing why our era has seen no progress in theoretical physics, despite unprecedented funding and resources.
Never before have so many been paid so much to advance physics so little. Indeed, future historians will see that overfunding tends to lead to sociological constructs that exalt consesus building rooted not in logic, reason, and physics--not in foundational questions; but in fashion and politics which obscure the foundational spirits, papers, and questions.
So it is that the Anthropic Principle and tiny, little vibrating strings are exalted over *physical* contemplations and questions, *physical* principles, and *physical* models such as MDT: the fourth dimension is expanidng relative to three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt=ic. For the first time in the history of relativity, change is woven into the fundamental fabric of spacetime; and a deeper physical invariant is shown to underly relativity and quatum entanglement and nonlocality, in addition to time and all its arrows and assymetries, and entropy, as well as Huygens' and Heisenbergs' principles.
In many ways Galileo had it easy, because at least the Inquisition in his day wasn't posing as physicists interested in science.
And Max Planck had it easy too, as he noted, "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."
But in Plancks' time, the opponents were generally a generation of successful scientists who had risen to the pinnacles of their profession via science--not by politics. So today's non-opponents of MDT are anti-theorists bolstered by state-funded crackpot indexes and anthropic principle politics--"we have tenure/funding because we are smarter than you because if we weren't smarter than you, we wouldn't have tenure/funding. Ergo we are smarter than you," is what they announce at their lavish conferences, reformulating the anthropic principle to fit the latest "flavor of the week" of their unchanging anti-theory regimes, which have frozen physics in a block universe.
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 now, they are even willing to forget time, space, reason, words, dialogue, physics, and physicists--to keep their perpetual motion funding apparati moving--even as time remains frozen. And thus, despite hundreds of millions 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 a fair amount 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, nor bouncing universes--all of which grace the cover of Scientific American as sycophant students are trained to call true physicists seeking *physical* models and *physical* truths crackpots. And the Greats themselves--Nobel Laureates--both living and dead, have spoken out against such pseudo-science and snarky mathematical handwaving, which has become a religion that has replaced physics, thusly bringing progress to a halt.
"Books on physics are full of complicated mathematical formulae. But thought and ideas, not formulae, are the beginning of every physical theory." --Einstein/Infeld, The Evolution of Physics
Instead of classical, rugged physics on the higher plain of physical reality, we get communal, political 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, 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 the philosophy of 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 machines 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, except that it is even more dangerous, as at least Galileo's Inquistion weren't claiming sience's throne.
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.
It would be one thing if quantum gravity/string theory were smashing successes--then, naturally, Rovelli/Carol et al. would all be busy partying like rock stars and flying to conferences and awards ceremonies in Aspen and Hawaii. But with the utter failure of the anti-theory regimes, for decade after decade, surely they ought have a few moments to assess the great and natural success of the brand new directions proposed by MDT.
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." --Albert Einstein
But I realize, that with tenure and titles to worry about in thier aging anti-tehory regimes; perhaps before commenting on MDT, they are all waiting for a confession, so as to make the theory "safe" for discussion in polite circles. I even thought of emailing Ed Witten and asking him to come out with a press release in which he states that the M in M-Theory stands for Moving Dimensions.
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, Heisenberg's Uncertainty 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 teh cause of all time and motion, 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 Theorists 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 unfroze 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 in this mulitverse--this subset of the landscape--that the Gods of the Anthropic Principle granted us, while declaring that we should receive infinite funding for our fortitude in service to teh Lords of the Landscape.
I also swear and promise to adopt and observe entirely all the penances which have been or may be by this Holy Office of 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 M-Theory, this 8th day of December, 2008, in this parallel universe.
I, Dr. E, have abjured as above, with my own hand."
And as I'm walking away to serve out my house arrest and exile form the academy 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
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
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T H Ray wrote on Dec. 10, 2008 @ 14:02 GMT
Sean, I fully agree with your conclusion of time evolution in an infinite dimensional Hilbert space and the relation to quantum mechanical unitarity.
I want to suggest an alternative, however, to your statement:
"Think of two particles moving on straight lines in an otherwise empty three-dimensional space. No matter how we choose the lines, there will always be some point of closest
approach, while the distance between the particles will grow without bound sufficiently far in the future and
the past."
I think that the distance between the two points is bounded in the past by a 1-dimension information channel, and grows without bound in the future. I realized this in replying to another entrant, Ryan Westafer:
"Suppose one draws a squiggly vertical line to represent a singularity. Curved lines drawn over the top and bottom of the singularity form a convex-lens shape (gravitational lensing). Label the area left of the singularity, "present," and the area to the right of the singularity, "past." If the past is assigned a negative value and the present a positive value, the singularity would be the zero-valued future. The past area is empty; information from the past is channeled along the 1-dimensional edges of the "lens;" the present area is filled with events. An observer from the present cannot look back into the past without staring into the future of the black hole event horizon. Connecting with my own theory:
Because we live in a 10 dimension event space, which as I calculated and explained is identical to the 4-dimension horizon, our only access to the past is in the one-dimensional time parameter. The asymptotic lines trailing to the right where the "lens" closes (but not quite) is the d >= 11, n-dimension Hilbert space. The "emptiness" of the past space is handled analytically in my mathematical model by calculation in the complex plane for reasons that I think should be obvious--the 2-dimensionality of the information channel (the surface of the lens' edge) is a negatively valued space, and the ratio of two negative complex numbers is real and positive."
The reference is to my essay, "Time counts." Note that I agree with Maldacena holography, as you mention, that finds equivalence between a complete theory of quantum gravity in 10 dimensions and quantum field theory in 4 dimensions. I construct from first principles the identity between the 4 dimension horizon and the 10 dimension boundary.
All best,
Tom
Dimi Chakalov wrote on Dec. 10, 2008 @ 21:29 GMT
Sean:
To quote from your essay (p. 9), you take "a very reasonable, if far from unimpeachable, set of assumptions -- a quantum state evolving in time according to the conventional Schrodinger equation with a time-independent Hamiltonian", and set your goal (p. 4) as "it is worth our effort to pursue their ramifications and see where we end up."
I have a simple suggestion. Five years ago, in your arXiv:astro-ph/0310342v2, you were musing on the “smooth tension” of the "dark energy", and acknowledged "a problem, a puzzle, and a scandal".
To clarify what kind of "time" may be implied in the set of assumptions in your recent essay, try to embed the “smooth tension” into some Cauchy surface, as explained in your graduate-level textbook "Spacetime and Geometry".
If you fail, I hope you will have a much better idea of "where we end up" with your essay, and how to fix your problems.
Good luck.
Dimi Chakalov
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Dec. 21, 2008 @ 19:04 GMT
Hello Sean,
I think Lee Smolin has some words of wisdom regarding the nature of physical theory, and I was wondering what you might think of them. Smolin's words seem to harken back to those of Galileo/Einstein--the traditional heroes who advanced physics by rugged ingenuity.
In a table inthe attached paper, I present a table which shows how MDT adheres to the more heroic...
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Hello Sean,
I think Lee Smolin has some words of wisdom regarding the nature of physical theory, and I was wondering what you might think of them. Smolin's words seem to harken back to those of Galileo/Einstein--the traditional heroes who advanced physics by rugged ingenuity.
In a table inthe attached paper, I present a table which shows how MDT adheres to the more heroic principles underlying all successful *physical* theories.
In light of the recent tragic failures of the anti-theory regimes, which has brought physics to a standstill and exiled physicists and *physical* theories from the academy, I think it would be healthy to discuss what physics *ought* strive for in the future, so as to get it on a better path--so that we can join the greater journey on that higher road that we see by standing on the shoulders of giants--not by ignoring them and their philosophies.
Lee Smolin states in a BBC video, "We've forgotten how audacious science is and how it rages sometime -- how the ideas that turn out to be true are so often outrageous... we've forgotten the lessons of the people like Einstein, who come from the outside but have exactly the right insight and right idea." --http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bLwqnIfLRA&feature=related
BBC Hard Talk
"Openness, the inclusion of different points of view, like in anything else, is essential to progress." --Lee Smolin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bLwqnIfLRA&feature=related BBC Hard Talk
This contest has demonstarted that too, too many established professors and researchers refuse to partake in collegial dialogue, and this grates against the spirit of greats such as Wheeler, Einstein, and Galileo. Well-funded, tenured professors have time to administer crackpot indexes on their univeristy's servers, but no time to talk about physics and physical reality.
"I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him." --Galileo Galilei
"Curiosity is more important than knowledge." --Einstein
Lee Smolin also says that a theory should "come in a coherent whole--it should start with a beautiful principle, like the principle of indeterminacy of quantum mechanics or the principle of relativity, and there then should be a beautiful equation that flows out from that principle to a myriad of consequnces." --Lee Smolin, BBC Video
MDT's beautiful principle: The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c with a wavelength of the Planck Length.
MDT's beautiful equation: dx4/dt=ic
MDT's myriad of consequences: all of relativity, time and all its arrows and assymetries, entropy, quantum nonlocality and entanglement, wave-particle/space-time/mass-energy duality, the gravitational slowing of light and time, and the single velocity for all entities through spacetime--c.
The resounidng silence from the establishment on MDT (after having promised to read the paper) has lead me to believe that they see nothing wrong with MDT, as unlike LQG and Sring Theory, MDT passes Dr. Smolin's criterion for a good theory (please see the attached paper). And too, MDT predicts all of relativity along with quantum nonlocality and entanglement, as well as entropy, by proposing a novel, deeper feature of our *physical* reality. (Please see the table in the attached document.)
Soon these comments will be frozen for all time, while the fourth dimension yet marches on at the rate of c!
Well, Best Wishes for the New Year!
I look forward to sending you & anyone a copy of my book, HERO'S JOURNEY PHYSICS & MOVING DIMENSIONS THEORY: FROM HERACLITIS, TO PLATO, TO ARISTOTLE, TO COPERNICUS, TO BRUNO, TO KEPLER, TO GALILEO, TO NEWTON, TO PLANCK/EINSTEIN/BOHR/BORN--AND YET IT MOVES! Unifying relativity, quantum mechanics, entropy, and time's arrows and assymetries with a new universal invariant: dx4/dt=ic."
Eppur si muove!
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
"Books on physics are full of complicated mathematical formulae. But thought and ideas, not formulae, are the beginning of every physical theory." --Einstein/Infeld, The Evolution of Physics
I promise that my upcoming book will be filled with thought and ideas, just like the atached paper:
Moving Dimensions Theory & Hero’s Journey Physics
Overcoming the Tragic Anti-Theory Leviathans that No Longer Teach Foundational Papers nor Ask Foundational Questions
By Dr. E (The Professor in Black)
“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.” –Galileo Galilei
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: “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.”
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attachments:
Moving_Dimensions_Theory__Heros_Journey_Physics.pdf
amrit wrote on Dec. 23, 2008 @ 16:25 GMT
Dear Sean, yers time exists, time is a "coordinate of motion".
yours amrit
attachments:
3_In_The_Theory_of_Relativity_Time_is_a_Coordinate_of_Motion__Sorli_2009.pdf
Philip Gibbs wrote on Dec. 29, 2008 @ 14:39 GMT
The existance of a photon or any other single harmonic oscillator is enough to prove that hilbert space is infinite dimensional
[a,a*] = 1
Take the trace of either side to show that this cannot have any finite dimensional representations.
Narendra Nath wrote on Jan. 2, 2009 @ 07:48 GMT
i often wonder who can quantify 0 and infinity. To me these two are mere 'elative'nature. The experimental observations (facts) decide when we can take a physical parameter to be 0 or tending to 0. The same is true for 'infinity'. Purely,the significance comes with data and not on purely mathematical considerations. Does it appear proper to say that time can have an infinite range just because time-dependent Schroedinger equation so demands to maintain the sanctity of 'sia'. The physical reality comes only from the product 'sia-sia*'. The very duality of wave/particle nature comes from the necessity of'uncertain' space/time picture. The reality can only be provided through the multiplicity of events and probablistic considerations as individual event can no longer be persued with classical determinacy.
May be i am just repeating background already well known. mathematics of quantum physicshthen explains the significance of multiple events probalistic reality in measurement, in contrast with classical individual event study.
Brian Beverly wrote on Jan. 21, 2009 @ 00:59 GMT
Does it make sense to order imaginary numbers?
(...[-itn,...,-it2,-it1,0,it1,it2,...,itn]...)
The mathematical axioms tell us that complex numbers can not be ordered.
Order Axioms:
1) A number can not be less than itself
2) x > y, x < y, or x = y
3) if x > 0 and y > 0, then xy > 0
4) if x < y, then for all z, x + z < z + y
5) if x < y, then for all z, xz < yz
set x = i and y = 2i and z= 2 + i
1) makes sense
2) i < 2i makes sense
3) a bit tricky:
0 = 0 + 0i and i = 0 +1i therefore i>0 and 2i>0
(i)(2i) > 0 ---> -2 > 0 FALSE!
4) 2 + 2i < 2 + 3i (complex # is of the form a + bi)
5) This is the key axiom!
xz = what exactly? xz or x*z (* is complex conjugate i*=-i)
If we distribute xz as we do for real numbers then axiom 5 is false. If we take the complex conjugate x*z then axiom 5 is true.
Quantum mechanics relies on C* algebra which is ordered. What is the big idea of C* algebra? C*C, multiply a complex number by a complex conjugate and you end up with a real ordered/countable number.
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Feb. 15, 2009 @ 19:00 GMT
Hello Sean! Hope all is well! I was wondering what your take might be on Lee Smolin's most recent comments-- reflecting his epic change of heart & mind--that time is indeed now real.
What do you make of this?
It is great that Lee is coming around and seeing time as a *physically* real entity. MDT goes a step further in seeing time as a *physically* real entity that emerges...
view entire post
Hello Sean! Hope all is well! I was wondering what your take might be on Lee Smolin's most recent comments-- reflecting his epic change of heart & mind--that time is indeed now real.
What do you make of this?
It is great that Lee is coming around and seeing time as a *physically* real entity. MDT goes a step further in seeing time as a *physically* real entity that emerges because of a more fundamental, universal, hitherto unsung *physical* invariant--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c:
In January 2009 Smolin wrote at The Edge, "THE LIBERATION OF TIME: I would like to describe a change in viewpoint, which I believe will alter how we think about everything from the most abstract questions on the nature of truth to the most concrete questions in our daily lives. This change comes from the deepest and most difficult problems facing contemporary science: those having to do with the nature of time." --http://www.edge.org/q2009/q09_9.html
On Thu Jan 25, 2007 11:07 am, I used the word "liberate" in writing, "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 Brain Green and Paul Davies would 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. 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." --http://www.groupsrv.com/science/about204630.html
In January 2009, Smolin writes "There is also no past. The past only lives as part of the present, to the extent that it gives us evidence of past events. And the future is not yet real, which means that it is open and full of possibilities, only a small set of which will be realized. Nor, on this view, is there any possibility of other universes. All that exists must be part of this universe, which we find ourselves in, at this moment."
--http://www.edge.org/q2009/q09_9.html
In January, 2007, I wrote, "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. 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. "
All of this was posted in an amazon.com forum on 11/13/2006 for Lee's Book: The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of Science, and What comes Next:
http://www.amazon.com/Lee-Smolins-Great-Book-Dimensions
/forum/Fx1FYSVRZO4ARYG/Tx3BGVHQPRMS4OD/1
/ref=cm_cd_dp_tft_tp
?%
5Fencoding=UTF8&s=books&asin=061891868X&store=books
"Lee Smolin's Great Book : A Dialogue with Lee Smolin / Moving Dimensions Theory"
Over the years I have shared several emails with Lee, Including this one from 9/26/07--I have yet to hear back, but now that he thinks time is real, perhaps he might find some :):
to lsmolin@perimeterinstitute.ca
date Wed, Sep 26, 2007 at 11:56 AM
subject Hello Lee: The Curious Nature of the Photon, Einstein's Annus Mirabilis, and Moving Dimensions Theory
Hello Lee,
Hope all is well with you--just bought a second copy of TTWP to read while in the server room, recovering some lost data. :) Loved it even more the second time around.
If you ever get a moment, would be grateful for any comments on MDT.
Keep up the great work!
Elliot
INTRODUCTION TO MDT
As the hallmark of Moving Dimensions Theory is a simple postulate reflecting an underlying physical reality, let us begin with the simple postulate:
The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
That is it. This postulate underlies relativity--length contraction, time dilation, and the equivalence of mass and energy. It underlies quantum mechanics--wave interference, tunneling, entanglement. It underlies statistical mechanics--entropy and time's arrow.
The great power of Moving Dimensions Theory is that the simple postulate, representing an underlying physical reality, explains curious physical phenomena in every realm-from relativity, to quantum mechanics, to statistical mechanics. MDT accounts for quantum entanglement and relativistic length contraction. It accounts for entropy and action-at-a-distance. MDT unifies all of time's arrows, and it shows that all the curious dualities-wave/particle, space/time, and mass/energy, derive from the same source. MDT resolves both the paradox of Godel's block universe/block time and the Einstein, Rosen, and Podolsky paradox.
MDT--a simple sentence brought forth by a single individual--is what physics ought to be all about--descriptions of physical reality that unify and explain physical phenomena with simple, concise underlying physical models. And, as MDT predicts relativistic length contraction, entanglement, the constant velocity of light, and wave interference, it is one of the best-tested theories of all time, in addition to being a most fundamental theory regarding the emergent nature of time.
The Curious Nature of the Photon, Einstein's Annus Mirabilis,
and Moving Dimensions Theory
As the contemplation of the photon lead to both quantum mechanics and relativity, let us also begin the presentation of Moving Dimensions Theory by contemplating the photon. Einstein's revolutionary 1905 papers included one devoted to the photoelectric effect—which considered the quantized nature of the photon—and a paper devoted to the electrodynamics of moving bodies—which considered electromagnetic radiation, relativity, and the wave properties of the photon as embodied by Maxwell's Equations. Another 1905 paper discussed statistical mechanics in the form of Brownian Motion, and Einstein's final three-page paper that year commented on the equivalence of mass and energy, as denoted with his famous equation, E=mc 2. Moving Dimensions Theory underlies and unifies all of Einstein's 1905 papers with its simple postulate—the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
Consider the emission of a photon in free space. One second later, the photon has equal probability of being found anywhere upon a sphere with a radius of 186,000 miles, as the velocity of light, c, is 186,000 miles per second. If we covered the surface of said sphere with detectors, one, and only one, would click. And the photon, although having traveled 186,000 miles through space, will not have aged one iota, for time stops at the speed of light. The photon will have traveled 186,000 miles through the three spatial dimensions, and yet it will not have moved one iota in the fourth dimension. And there lies our first clue to moving dimensions theory. For how can a photon propagate 186,000 in the three spatial dimensions, and yet not budge an inch in the fourth dimension, unless that fourth dimension is expanding, right along with it? Ergo, the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. A photon, as we shall see time and again, is matter surfing the fourth expanding dimension.
Consider two interacting photons that are directed to propagate in opposite directions, as in experiments conceived by Bell 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 for all intents and purposes. This "spooky action-at-a-distance," as Einstein called it, is not so spooky in the context of Moving Dimensions Theory, for MDT states that although separated by 372,000 miles, the photons are yet in the exact same place in the fourth dimension, as the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. So it is that quantum phenomena on the photonic level, as well as relativistic phenomena on the photonic level, are both accounted for with simple elegance via MDT: the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
Another paper Einstein penned in 1905 was devoted to Brownian motion and statistical mechanics. Drop a thimbleful of food coloring in a pool. The laws of statistical mechanics dictate that there is a high probability that the coloring will spread throughout the entire pool, and never again reassemble in a localized region. That all systems tend towards random disorder is a fundamental law of physics and condition of physical reality, and this too can be accounted for by Moving Dimensions Theory. As the fundamental motion of the universe is the expansion of the fourth dimension relative to the three spatial dimensions, two photons originating from a common origin will harbor a vast probability of being found at great distances from one another one second later—distances far greater than the distance that separates them at their emission. This is because each one has an equal probability of being found anywhere upon the surface of a spherically-symmetric wave front of probability, corresponding to the wave front of the fourth expanding dimension. Recall our system of detectors placed everywhere upon the surface of a sphere with a radius of 186,000 miles—each photon has an equal chance of being found at any detector after one second after they were emitted at a common origin, and chances are that the detectors will be farther apart than the distance of zero that defines the separation between photon's common origin. Hence entropy. Entropy arises because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. All particles undergoing thermal vibrations interact with photons, and all photons reside in the fourth expanding dimension, dragging all of entirety into random disorder.
Yet another paper published by Einstein in his "Miraculous Year" (annus mirabilis), was devoted to the equivalence of mass and energy. Think about the fascinating physical reality implied by Einstein's most famous equation—E=mc2. A kilogram of gold or lead or feathers sitting on a desktop is the same thing as 9x10 16 joules of energy—an exorbitant amount of energy—enough to power, or to destroy, a major city. How is it that a stationary mass possesses such a great energy? It is because the mass, which is stationary in the three spatial dimensions, is yet propagating through the fourth dimension at the rate of c. This is because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. Matter surfing the fourth expanding dimension appears at photons. Furthermore, as noted earlier, the photons will propagate at the rate of c through the three spatial dimensions, and yet they will never age—they will stay in a fixed place in the fourth expanding dimension. The primary invariant is c—all matter and/or photons—be it propagating through space or time, or some combination thereof, always, always moves at the rate of c. To be stationary in the three spatial dimensions means to propagate at the rate of c through the fourth dimension. To be stationary in the fourth dimension means to propagate at the rate of c through the three spatial dimensions. Ergo the fourth dimension is expanding at the rate of c relative to the three spatial dimensions. Most objects share motion between space and time, but the overall velocity of propagation through space-time is fixed at c— this primary invariance can never change, and this reality arises because of the deeper physical reality of Moving Dimensions Theory.
And so it is that Moving Dimensions Theory underlies and unifies the papers Einstein Published during his Annus Mirabilis—his "miraculous year." I highly recommend Harvard University Press's Einstein 1905: The Standard of Greatness by John S. Rigden, about wcich Publisher's Weekly writes, "The year 2005 will be the centenary of Einstein's annus mirabilis, when he published the five papers that marked him as one of the greatest scientists of all time. Washington University professor Rigden (Hydrogen: The Essential Element) sits readers down in front of his white board and explains what Einstein said in each of these papers, what was significant in them and how the scientific community reacted (not very well, in most cases—for a while). Einstein started off with a bang: in March he proposed that light was not a continuous wave, but was made up of particles. In April he finished what became his dissertation, on how to determine the size of molecules in a liquid (that may not sound very exciting, but this is one of Einstein's most cited papers). In May he wrote his paper on Brownian motion, and then in June came the summit of his achievements that year: the paper proposing his principles of relativity and the consistency of the speed of light (commonly known as the Special Theory of Relativity). Finally, almost as an afterthought, in September came the three-page paper that unleashed his now-famous equation, e=mc2, upon an unsuspecting world. Rigden writes with a rare felicity, free of jargon and with everyday metaphors that Einstein himself would no doubt have appreciated."
I encourage everyone to read Einstein's and Bohr's and Heisenberg's and Dirac's original papers, and contrast their majestic elegance, eloquence, reason, and logic to the snarky death threats and crackpot indexes manufactured by today's "best and brightest," and the accompanying silence from their established elders—the founders of string theory's oppressive regime and hand-waving, reason-subjugating, PBS miniseries. The future book on Moving Dimensions Theory will look back to the giants of yesteryear with deep honor and reverence, so that tomorrow's physics might advance in the spirit of simple Truth and Beauty. Every effort will be maintained to demonstrate that true physics is marked by grace and simplicity, as opposed to obfuscation and bullying. Moving Dimensions Theory is an idea whose time has come, and ideas are bulletproof.
The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. Moving Dimensions Theory accounts for the aetherless aether.
This simple postulate offers a physical model underlying and unifiying:
RELATIVITY:
1) length contraction
2) time dilation
3) the equivalence of mass and energy
4) the constant velocity of light
5) the independence of the speed of light from the velocity of the source
QUANTUMN MECHANICS
1) action at a distance
2) wave-particle duality
3) interference phenomena
4) EPR paradox
THERMODYNAMICS
1) Time's arrow
2) Entropy
STRING THEORY'S MANY DIMENSIONS / KALUZA/KLEIN THEORY
1) a fourth expanding dimension can be interepreted as many dimensions, each time it expands
THE UNITY OF THE DUALITIES
1) wave/particle duality
2) time/space duality
3) energy/mass duality
4) E/B duality
GENERAL RELATIVITY
1) Gravitational redshift
2) Gravity waves
3) Gravitation attraction
THE SPACE-TIME BACKGROUND
1) quantum foam
2) the smearing of space and time at small distances
3) Hawking's imaginary time
PARADOXES
1) MDT explains away Godel's Block Universe
2) MDT unfreezes time
3) Resolves Zeno's Paradox
ONE GETS ALL OF THIS FROM A SIMPLE POSTULATE:
The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions in a spherically symmetric manner, in units of the Planck length, at the rate of c.
--dr. e's email to lsmolin@perimeterinstitute.ca
date Wed, Sep 26, 2007 at 11:56 AM
subject Hello Lee: The Curious Nature of the Photon, Einstein's Annus Mirabilis, and Moving Dimensions Theory)
I also sent other emails regarding Moving Dimensions Theory, including one sent on 4/19/07 which was cc'd to a dozen other physicists.
Lee writes at The Edge, "The view that time is real and truth is situated within the moment further implies that there is no timeless arbiter of meaning, and no transcendent or absolute source of values or ethics. Meaning, values and ethics are all things that we humans project into the world. Without us, they don’t exist."
Yes--while time is real, I will yet agree with Einstein over Lee--Einstein writes, "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."
Yes--I will have to stick with dx4/dt=ic from here on out to eternity, just as Ludwig von Boltzman has s=klogw on his tombstone and Max Born has xp-px=ih on his.
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
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Gaetano Barbella wrote on Mar. 17, 2009 @ 07:17 GMT
Sono l’autore di un E-Book edito a dicembre scorso dalla Macro Edizioni dal titolo “I due Leoni Cibernetici” e sottotitolo “L’alfa e l’omega di una matematica ignota, pi greco e la sezione aurea”.
Riporto l’indirizzo informatico che è questo: http://www.macroedizioni.it/libro.php?id_libro=1474&PHPSESSI
D=112db27d7afaa901eaae76c25cabcb4d.
Questo E-Book lo presento sul mio sito a questo indirizzo: Il geometra pensiero in rete.
Cordiali saluti,
Gaetano Barbella
John wrote on Apr. 7, 2009 @ 14:58 GMT
Well, time does exist. See
Horwitz, L.P. (2005) On the significance of a recent experiment demonstrating quantum interference in time. http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0507044
Rodney Bartlett wrote on Jan. 30, 2011 @ 12:55 GMT
Dear Dr. Carroll,
Here's a post that tries to comment on FQXi's 2008 essay contest (The Nature of Time) as well as its 2010 essay contest (Is Reality Digital or Analog?)
We have to wonder if the Large Hadron Collider was worth all the time and money it took to build. It won't find the Higgs boson. It may well "prove" that strings exist but this will only deceive the world because...
view entire post
Dear Dr. Carroll,
Here's a post that tries to comment on FQXi's 2008 essay contest (The Nature of Time) as well as its 2010 essay contest (Is Reality Digital or Analog?)
We have to wonder if the Large Hadron Collider was worth all the time and money it took to build. It won't find the Higgs boson. It may well "prove" that strings exist but this will only deceive the world because strings are only a tiny fraction of matter's true composition. Perhaps it would have been better to spend the money buying several million desktop computers for scientists to develop and refine theories with.
ALTERNATIVE TO HIGGS BOSON
An important step might be to think of "... the grand design of the universe, a single theory that explains everything" (words used by Stephen Hawking on the American version of Amazon, when promoting his latest book “The Grand Design” – coauthored with Leonard Mlodinow, Bantam Books, 2010) in a different way than physicists who are presently working on science's holy grail of unification. The universe’s underlying electronic foundation* (which makes our cosmos into a partially-complete unification, similar to 2 objects which appear billions of years or billions of light-years apart on a huge computer screen actually being unified by the strings of ones and zeros making up the computer code which is all in one small place) would make our cosmos into physics’ holy grail of a complete unification if it enabled not only elimination of all distances in space and time, but also elimination of distance between (and including) the different sides of objects and particles. This last point requires the universe to not merely be a vast collection of the countless photons, electrons and other quantum particles within it; but to be a unified whole that has “particles” and “waves” built into its union of digital 1’s and 0’s (or its union of qubits – quantum binary digits). If we use the example of CGH (computer generated holography, which is reminiscent of the holographic simulation called the Holodeck in “Star Trek: The Next Generation”), these "particles" and "waves" could be elements produced by the interaction of electromagnetic and presently undiscovered gravitational waves, producing what we know as mass and forming what we know as space-time. Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves, and measurements on the Hulse-Taylor binary-star system resulted in Russell Hulse and Joe Taylor being awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1993 for their work, which was the first indirect evidence for gravitational waves. The feedback of the past and future universes into the unified cosmos's electronic foundation would ensure that both past and future could not be altered. (Our brains and minds are part of this unification too, which must mean extrasensory perception and telekinetic independence from technology are possible.)
* For more information on the universe's proposed electronic foundation, please see my article and postings at
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/814
as well as my replies to Dr. Israel Omar Perez at
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/817
STRINGS ARE ONLY PART OF MATTER'S BASIS
Space and time only exist in our experience. They are emergent properties, like wetness and mind. We experience wetness because it emerges from the building blocks of the hydrogen and oxygen atoms which make up water. We experience mind because it emerges from the building blocks of neurons composing the brain. And we experience space-time since it emerges from the building blocks making up the universe. These units are a combination of electromagnetic pulses (forming a cosmic computer which includes randomness and thus the potential to escape rigid preprogramming, and have a small degree of free will) as well as a cosmic hologram (this is produced by the interaction of electromagnetic plus gravitational waves and combination of the holographic aspect with the electronic aspect unifies general relativity with quantum physics). Every physical and nonphysical part of the universal hologram would be a receptor for the downloading of data from the cosmic computer which not only exists in the hyperspace of the large-scale universe but also in the hyperspace of each subatomic particle. (In other words, the holographic universe or spacetime we know is a screen for displaying data from the 5th-dimensional computer).
It might be helpful to visualise time as the playing of a CD or video tape. The entire disc or tape obviously exists all the time. But our physical senses can only perceive a tiny part of the sound and the sights at any fraction of a second. I believe space and time are infinite, so it might be more accurate to visualise time as that HUGE number - in this case, of CDs or tapes - which some versions of string theory propose (at a minimum, 10 exponent 500). My essay - http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/814 - tells you how to travel to the future, how to return home, and how to travel into our past. Neither future nor past can be altered (a blow to our belief that we have the free will to shape the future) and my explanation of travel to the past requires re-interpretation of the concepts of "multiverse" and "parallel universes". It also requires the ability to travel billions of light years INSTANTLY. This sounds like pure fantasy, but I outline an approach based on electrical engineering, General Relativity, and Miguel Alcubierre's 1994 proposal of "warp drive" that makes it logically possible.
These unbelievable things are made believable if you read my essay (along with its postings and replies) as well as the little books I've written (listed in the essay's Endnotes). But if you don't have time to read all that (I don't think I do!), here's a little picture that tries to summarise everything in a few lines -
My essay suggests the universe is a Mobius loop and is contained in, or unified with, each of its particles (relying on physical senses or 21st-century scientific instruments would make this statement ridiculous). Then each fermion and boson would also be composed of the 3 spatial dimensions, the 4th dimension of time, and the 5th dimension of hyperspace. Detectors like the Large Hadron Collider would be unable to "see" the time and hyperspace components of particles but could only see the small (maybe 5%) 3 spatial dimensions (the time and hyperspace components would be what we call dark matter), erroneously assuming particles are those tiny fractions of a Mobius loop that physics calls strings. "Dark matter" would exert a gravitational influence because both time and hyperspace, being parts of a curved Mobius loop (whether of quantum or cosmic scale), would push objects together in the same way Einstein's curved space-time pushes objects together. We can speak of the HST now - no, not the Hubble Space Telescope but Hyperspatial SpaceTime. We can visualise the Mobius loop as composed of a hyperspace computer which generates information on how things change from one undetectably tiny fraction of a second to the next (we call this time, and it's comparable to the frames in a movie) and transmits the data (transmits dark energy?) to the insignificant portion of length, width and depth that makes up subatomic particles ... and the universe.
That's the end of my one-paragraph summary. Now for some extra thoughts that popped into my head -
Preceding the Big Bang (which created this local section of the infinite, eternal universe ... or if you prefer, this subuniverse of the megauniverse) there would have been no space, matter or time in this subuniverse and all would have been hyperspace. No transmissions of dark energy (creating time and space/matter) would have occurred - therefore the dark-energy content of the universe would have been zero, increasing to the present 72% as more and more matter was created. How is matter created? Perhaps as cosmologist Alan Guth once suggested -
"You might even be able to start a new universe using energy equivalent to just a few pounds of matter. Provided you could find some way to compress it to a density of about 10^75 (10 exponent 75) grams per cubic centimeter, and provided you could trigger the thing ..."
At the time the Cosmic Microwave Background was emitted (less than a million years after the big bang), results from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe say the dark-energy content of the universe was negligible. Space/matter has been increasing since the big bang so transmissions from hyperspace (dark energy) which create them are increasing while the volume of the Mobius loop occupied by time/hyperspace (dark matter) has been shrinking as a result - according to the WMAP satellite, from 63% when the CMB was emitted to 23% today. Why isn't dark energy increasing at the same rate dark matter is decreasing? It must be because, as stated earlier, both time and hyperspace exert a gravitational influence, thereby mimicking space and matter to a degree. This mimicry causes the dark matter between the start of the CMB and the present to decrease by only about 40% while dark energy increases in the same period by about 70%.
My essay tells you how to travel into the future, how to return home, and how to take a trip into our past. Regarding travel beyond our start and into the past ... it can’t be denied that these paragraphs imply the possibility of humans from the distant future time-travelling to the distant past and using electronics to create this particular subuniverse's computer-generated Big Bang. An accomplishment such as this would be the supreme example of “backward causality” (effects influencing causes) promoted by Yakir Aharonov, John Cramer and others. However, realising that we live in a cosmic-quantum unification with zero-separation and recalling Isaac Newton’s inverse-square law and what it says about the force between two particles being infinite (does infinite mean 10 ^ 500, the HUGE number of universes proposed by some versions of string theory?) if the distance of separation goes to zero means there's still room for God (as Creator) because God would be a pantheistic union of the megauniverse's material and mental parts, forming a union with humans in a cosmic unification.
Best wishes,
Rodney Bartlett
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Rodney Bartlett wrote on Feb. 2, 2011 @ 03:23 GMT
I know I can't submit another essay. I don't plan to - these are just some comments that came to mind after thinking about my essay. They don't seem very relevant to the topic "Is Reality Digital or Analog?" but writing them has given even more satisfaction than writing the essay, and I'm in the mood to share them with the whole world. So if you've got time to read them...
view entire post
I know I can't submit another essay. I don't plan to - these are just some comments that came to mind after thinking about my essay. They don't seem very relevant to the topic "Is Reality Digital or Analog?" but writing them has given even more satisfaction than writing the essay, and I'm in the mood to share them with the whole world. So if you've got time to read them ...
---------------------------------------------------------
----------------
I fully realise that my essay doesn’t sound like science at all. I can appreciate that many readers think it belongs to science fiction and fantasy. It does have saving graces though. I’m amazed at how well it fits in with the discoveries of the Microwave Anisotropy Probe and with string theory, culminating in the LHC’s experimentally verified strings and my prediction of antistrings. Having said that, I must say this – it’s very strange that the scientific world is so obsessed with mathematics (admittedly, my essay did dabble with it when offering a version of E=mc2 to suit the digital world - but I kept it very simple ... so simple it might be regarded as wrong). Math seems to be regarded as infallible, even though it leads to mistakes. The (partial) mistake I have in mind is string theory. I don't deny that there certainly is value in the theory, and in maths, but logic reveals shortcomings. Let me explain, after first writing a short section describing an unconventional approach to unveiling unification and offering an alternative to the Higgs boson that relies on gravitational waves.
ALTERNATIVE TO HIGGS BOSON
An important step might be to think of "... the grand design of the universe, a single theory that explains everything" (words used by Stephen Hawking on the American version of Amazon, when promoting his latest book “The Grand Design” – coauthored with Leonard Mlodinow, Bantam Books, 2010) in a different way than physicists who are presently working on science's holy grail of unification. The universe’s underlying electronic foundation* (which makes our cosmos into a partially-complete unification, similar to 2 objects which appear billions of years or billions of light-years apart on a huge computer screen actually being unified by the strings of ones and zeros making up the computer code which is all in one small place) would make our cosmos into physics’ holy grail of a complete unification if it enabled not only elimination of all distances in space and time, but also elimination of distance between (and including) the different sides of objects and particles. This last point requires the universe to not merely be a vast collection of the countless photons, electrons and other quantum particles within it; but to be a unified whole that has “particles” and “waves” built into its union of digital 1’s and 0’s (or its union of qubits – quantum binary digits). If we use the example of CGH (computer generated holography, these "particles" and "waves" could be elements produced by the interaction of electromagnetic and presently undiscovered gravitational waves, producing what we know as mass and forming what we know as space-time. Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves, and measurements on the Hulse-Taylor binary-star system resulted in Russell Hulse and Joe Taylor being awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1993 for their work, which was the first indirect evidence for gravitational waves. The feedback of the past and future universes into the unified cosmos's electronic foundation would ensure that both past and future could not be altered. Our brains and minds are part of this unification too - which must mean extrasensory perception and telekinetic independence from technology are possible, despite modern science's objections to these phenomena which appear to be based on non-unification.
* For more information on the universe's proposed electronic foundation, please see my article and postings at
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/814
STRINGS ARE ONLY PART OF MATTER'S BASIS
Space and time only exist in our experience. They are emergent properties, like wetness and mind. We experience wetness because it emerges from the building blocks of the hydrogen and oxygen atoms which make up water. We experience mind because it emerges from the building blocks of neurons composing the brain. And we experience space-time since it emerges from the building blocks making up the universe. These units are a combination of electromagnetic pulses (forming a cosmic computer which includes randomness and thus the potential to escape rigid preprogramming, and have a small degree of free will) as well as a cosmic hologram (this is produced by the interaction of electromagnetic plus gravitational waves and combination of the holographic aspect with the electronic aspect unifies general relativity with quantum physics). Every physical and nonphysical part of the universal hologram would be a receptor for the downloading of data from the cosmic computer which not only exists in the hyperspace of the large-scale universe but also in the hyperspace of each subatomic particle. (In other words, the holographic universe or spacetime we know is a screen for displaying data from the 5th-dimensional computer.)
It might be helpful to visualise time as the playing of a CD or video tape. The entire disc or tape obviously exists all the time. But our physical senses can only perceive a tiny part of the sound and the sights at any fraction of a second. I believe space and time are infinite, so it might be more accurate to visualise time as that HUGE number - in this case, of CDs or tapes - which some versions of string theory propose (10 exponent 500). My essay tells you exactly how to travel to the future, how to return home, and how to travel into our past. Neither future nor past can be altered (a blow to our belief that we have the free will to shape the future) and my explanation of travel to the past requires re-interpretation of the concepts of "multiverse" and "parallel universes". It also requires the ability to travel billions of light years INSTANTLY - no doubt many readers will instantly dismiss the essay because their preconceptions "know" this simply isn't possible. It indeed sounds like pure fantasy, but I outline an approach based on electrical engineering, General Relativity, and Miguel Alcubierre's 1994 proposal of "warp drive" that makes it logically possible.
My essay explains why the universe is a Mobius loop and how it is contained in, or unified with, each of its particles (relying on physical senses or 21st-century scientific instruments would make this statement ridiculous). Then each fermion and boson would also be composed of the 3 spatial dimensions, the 4th dimension of time, and the 5th dimension of hyperspace. Detectors like the Large Hadron Collider would be unable to "see" the time and hyperspace components of particles but could only see the small (maybe 5% of the whole) 3 spatial dimensions (the time component would be what we call dark matter), erroneously assuming particles are those small fractions of a Mobius loop that physics calls strings. "Dark matter" would exert a gravitational influence because time, being part of a curved Mobius loop (whether of quantum or cosmic scale), would push objects together in the same way Einstein's curved space-time pushes objects together. We can speak of the HST now - no, not the Hubble Space Telescope but Hyperspatial SpaceTime. We can visualise the Mobius loop as composed of a hyperspace computer which generates information on how things change from one presently undetectably tiny fraction of a second to the next (we call this time, and it's comparable to the frames in a movie) and transmits the data (transmits dark energy) to the insignificant portion of length, width and depth that makes up subatomic particles ... and the universe.
Preceding the Big Bang (which created this local section of the infinite, eternal universe ... or if you prefer, this subuniverse of the megauniverse) there would have been no space, matter or time in this subuniverse. No transmissions of dark energy (creating time and space/matter) would have occurred - therefore the dark-energy content of the universe would have been zero, increasing to the present 72% as more and more matter was created. How is matter created? Perhaps as cosmologist Alan Guth once suggested -
"You might even be able to start a new universe using energy equivalent to just a few pounds of matter. Provided you could find some way to compress it to a density of about 10^75 (10 exponent 75) grams per cubic centimeter, and provided you could trigger the thing ..."
At the time the Cosmic Microwave Background was emitted (less than a million years after the big bang), results from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe say the dark-energy content of the universe was negligible. Space/matter has been increasing since the big bang so transmissions from hyperspace computer (dark energy) which create them are increasing while the volume of the Mobius loop occupied by time/hyperspace (dark matter) has been shrinking as a result - according to the WMAP satellite, from 63% when the CMB was emitted to 23% today. Why isn't dark energy increasing at the same rate dark matter is decreasing? It must be because, as stated earlier, both time and hyperspace exert a gravitational influence, thereby mimicking space and matter to a degree. This mimicry causes the dark matter between the start of the CMB and the present to decrease by only about 40% while dark energy increases in the same period by about 70%. If we were dealing with a simple and ordinary loop, this similarity would cause dark matter and dark energy to be more or less equal and if there was any difference in their amount of decrease/increase, it would be in the same direction. But we’re talking about Mobius loops which are like strips of paper that have been twisted 180 degrees before the ends are joined. This causes their variation to go in different directions (one increases, the other decreases) and the amount of variation is quite significant (+72%, -40%). My guess is that the real-life twist occurs in the temporal segment of the loop, enabling a traveller in time to go in different directions i.e. into the future or into the past. To replenish dark matter in billions of years, we merely have to extend Guth's proposal by using the knowledge of that time to create more matter.
A real-life Mobius is by no means a featureless loop, however. If, contrary to our impressions, the universe is unified with each particle it’s composed of; the WMAP satellite’s findings must apply to the quantum world. The figures 72%, 23% and 5% would not only describe the present universe’s content of dark energy, dark matter and ordinary matter but also any particle’s content of space or ordinary matter (5%), time or dark matter (23% - time is considered to be dark matter here because dark matter is regarded as ordinary matter invisible to us since it’s present in another region of the dimension we call time, just as most of a sphere is in another dimension and consequently appears as a dot when first entering Edwin Abbott’s 1884 exploration of other dimensions called “Flatland”), and hyperspace (72%: the transmissions from the hyperspace computer create space and matter, cause expansion of space on cosmic scales where there are no forces to overcome the expansion as there is in matter, and are known as dark energy – creating more matter causes that matter’s repelling gravity to bring about accelerating expansion).
Look at a picture of a Mobius (thanks to the repeating scales of fractal geometry, the apparently empty interior and exterior of the Mobius universe would actually be the same as the visible loop). Imagine the space/ordinary matter to be situated immediately counterclockwise (perhaps on the bottom of the loop) to the hyperspace segment and the time/dark matter portion to be immediately counterclockwise to the space/ordinary matter (time/dark matter would, moving clockwise, be next to the hyperspace segment).
The hyperspace transmissions flow directly into space/matter (all motion - “flow” and “transmissions” – are actually comparable to individual frames in a movie but are spoken of in everyday terms of motion for convenience, like saying the sun rises and sets) and are responsible for the large and unimpeded 72% increase, since the CMB was emitted, of dark energy. This flow rate of 72% also enters the time/dark matter section adjacent to hyperspace … but the loop’s twist seems to be in the time section. If we were to cut the loop lengthwise with scissors, previously varying the number of half-twists results in things such as two rings linked together or a knotted ring. So we get barriers to motion and blockages. Returning to the normal loop and twist, matters are less drastic and motion is merely slowed, resulting in a 23% flow rate.
If we lived in a non-unified universe of materialism, this is how things would remain (dark matter would have increased so today’s content would be a low 23%). On p. 179 of “The Grand Design” by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow (Bantam Press, 2010) it’s stated “One requirement any law of nature must satisfy is that it dictates that the energy of an isolated body surrounded by empty space is positive …”
The only problem with that sentence, in an “everything is everywhere and everywhen” universe, is the word isolated. There can be no such thing as isolated in our cosmic-quantum unification. Page 179 also says “… if the energy of an isolated body were negative … there would be no reason that bodies could not appear anywhere and everywhere.” Does this mean you and I (plus all things in time and space) are a union of both positive and negative energy, able to display both separateness/solidity (isolation) as well as the potential to appear anywhere and everywhere? Dark matter, not being entirely positive, would be anywhere and everywhere as well as having decreased so today’s content would be a low 23% (which is what WMAP says is the case).
If everything is a union of positive and negative energy, every matter particle and force-carrying particle would be too. And the strings the Large Hadron Collider might detect (being the parts of particles’ Mobius loops it could see since those parts would be space/ordinary matter) might come in both positive and negative varieties. In 1928 English physicist Paul Dirac (1902-84) proposed that all negative energy states are already occupied by (then hypothetical) antiparticles (particles of antimatter). Building on this results in proposal of strings and antistrings.
My essay tells you how to travel into the future, how to return home, and how to take a trip into our past. Regarding travel beyond our start and into the past ... it can’t be denied that these paragraphs imply the possibility of humans from the distant future time-travelling to the distant past and using electronics to create this particular subuniverse's computer-generated Big Bang. An accomplishment such as this would be the supreme example of “backward causality” (effects influencing causes) promoted by Yakir Aharonov, John Cramer and others. However, realising that we live in a cosmic-quantum unification with zero-separation and recalling Isaac Newton’s inverse-square law and what it says about the force between two particles being infinite (does infinite mean 10 ^ 500, the HUGE number of universes proposed by some versions of string theory?) if the distance of separation goes to zero means there's still room for God (another bit of scientifically objectionable science fiction?) because God would be a pantheistic union of the megauniverse's material and mental parts, forming a union with humans in a cosmic unification.
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Rodney Bartlett wrote on Feb. 7, 2011 @ 02:56 GMT
According to the Community Ratings, my essay in the 2011 Essay Contest is sliding further down the ratings each day. But I'm having more luck with a science journal called General Science Journal - comments of mine inspired by the essay (which are nearly 20,000 words long and include comments about "The Nature of Time" as well as "Is Reality Digital or Analog?") were published in the Journal on Feb. 6 and may be viewed at http://gsjournal.net/ntham/bartlett.pdf
Mark N. Cowan wrote on Feb. 17, 2011 @ 16:08 GMT
I didn't have time to submit my essay for reality but the approach of theoretical sociophysics would lay out four layers of time: the changing state of the universe, physics understanding this change as the underlying character of temporal sequence, timing and tempo and then with the emergence of behaviourally modern humans a new kind of causation where humans can frame the changing world around...
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I didn't have time to submit my essay for reality but the approach of theoretical sociophysics would lay out four layers of time: the changing state of the universe, physics understanding this change as the underlying character of temporal sequence, timing and tempo and then with the emergence of behaviourally modern humans a new kind of causation where humans can frame the changing world around them as 'time'.
Reality from this point of view emerges from a very specific interaction of placetime - meantime - spacetime. Meaning is 'spin down', time is 'spin up' and through this method we can understand time at a fundamental level as 'temporal capacity' and spacetime function providing the potential enabling the possibility of future, with placetime providing direction through it's stored knowledge. If this is correct then the whole world of science, indeed human knowledge could be missing a measure, and a powerful one at that.
Using Buckminster Fuller's notion of 'energy slaves' rather than refer to human population as almost 7 billion, if we take the 'nature's eye' view then if all humans got up tomorrow and lived a 24 hour day to American standards then the natural world would experience our single species as over one trillion humans. We pump 90 million tonnes of carbon pollutants into the atmosphere each and every day and exhibit a very unnatural weight on the natural, and possibly even cosmic layers of reality.
So when David Lindenmayer writes an environmental awareness book called 'On Borrowed Time' and we have unprecedented flooding in some parts of Australia, for the critical of thought we have to ask the question, coincidence or connection? Humans place a framework on the system of change all around us and call this time. However, the deeper understanding is to go below this and try and understand the layers of tempo and timing and the rate at which the fundamental, cosmic-level change occurs. This is difficult while we don't have laws for these interactions but if we can be aware that humans are impacting on the timing and tempo of the natural world and are beginning to fracture nature's aggregate then more and more we'll see plants appearing weeks earlier than they should do, more flash and unpredictable weather and possibly worse as nature's timing comes under more threat.
Carl Sagan wrote that it was perhaps the fate of all technological societies to destroy themselves. Only last year Stephen Hawking suggested that humans should seek out a new planet to inhabit. Paul Ehrlich says that we already require between 1.4-1.5 planet earths to sustain our current needs and with almost 40% of the world's population in India and China developing at pace the human 'load' on the planet is only going to become more strained. James Lovelock, author of Gaia theory thinks that we're looking at finishing this century with one billion people. This is pretty stark stuff from learned scientists.
As long as the physical (and the natural) sciences continue to 'miss' this measure of time as 'temporal capacity' as culture torques on nature, and meantime torques on spacetime then they'll miss:
(1) the understanding that it is real, and
(2) that we could do something about it.
The double slit experiment tells us something quite revealing about the human field of experience. Theoretical sociophysics says that all around us is a sea of potential, of information still 'in formation' yet when it enters the human field of experience it collapses into meaning, which has a causal weight on attention/mind. Understanding this state of 'in formation' to 'formation' (meaning) is crucial because the more meaning we create in the social world of humankind the more time (spin up) has to emerge/be generated to enable social reality. As times move slowly we are not aware of this, but the truth is that 'times' are changing so fast that perhaps this situation is required to generate a window of awareness so that we can connect important epistemological dots and understand that time is real, that it is enabled by real processes and that human industrial activity can put real pressure on those processes.
In 2011 it's worth taking a moment and thinking about why we want to learn anything about how the world around us works. Is is just knowledge for knowledge's sake or do we really want to join the dots and connect the clues even though that means having to reach out to neighbouring fields in the natural and social sciences? I think we're missing the measure of duration, and time as temporal capacity. I hope I'm wrong.
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Russ Otter wrote on Nov. 15, 2011 @ 21:47 GMT
Connections
The binding of existence
This is a story, built upon knowledge, intuition, and speculation. In the end, it is built upon some known theoretically successfully tested truths, and some unknowns conveyed in a formula that I consider trumps any objections – as we ponder the scope of existence. First we know of existence, by way of our self-awareness, coupled with scientific...
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Connections
The binding of existence
This is a story, built upon knowledge, intuition, and speculation. In the end, it is built upon some known theoretically successfully tested truths, and some unknowns conveyed in a formula that I consider trumps any objections – as we ponder the scope of existence. First we know of existence, by way of our self-awareness, coupled with scientific knowledge. Second by way of the unknowns i.e., “Infinity”, that must incongruously play with us (self-aware-finite creatures), in some connected manner.
This Second irascibly indefinable thing called “Infinity”, simply stumps our “finite” minds every time, when we attempt to figure out its mathematical infinities. As it must. As if it did not stump our efforts to understand it, it would become defined, and anything defined, is “Finite.”. So we have an absolute conundrum that operates our existence. But we are still connected, in a union, both finite and infinite, through the known attributes we have scientifically tested to be true. As without “Infinity”, there can be no “Finite.” And remember Infinity, has no bounds, no time, no space, no beginning and no end.
This is plainly contrary to finite logic, but Infinity simply is contrary. Always has been. And always will be. But it is also the very milk of our very finite existences… We are Connected… Our actions matter, as I will soon explain – in summary.
INFINITY: Irascible and fundamentally a necessary fickle fact. An argument that no mathematics or thought equation can defend against… To challenge this premise is to supersede infinity’s very nature. It will never ever happen.
Therefore we are circumscribed to live within, the physics - largely of Newtonian and Einstein’s mathematics. I would caution to note: that these finite mathematics are subject to change that currently work fairly well for our finite existence as we mathematically calculate how to penetrate and maneuver the Stars, or add 2 plus 2 to equal 4. But they do not work to unravel Quantum Mechanics (in total), and the cache of oddities, such as “Superposition’s”, whereby subatomic particles are in several places at one time, until they are interrupted by measurement. Or do these current finite mathematics explain “Entanglement”, which allows for two subatomic elements to be millions of miles apart, however if one changes its state of “spin” or “electrical” charge the other particle millions of miles away responds instantly. Yes, this violates the concept of the speed of light as the fasted method of action in the Universe.
As Einstein called “Entanglement” Spooky, but none the less real. This seemingly violates the speed of light. But hold on, the Speed of Light travels, Entanglement implies “Connection”. Or what is known as Local action.
Space is the key to this thought equation. Since space is “Infinite” to the “Finite” Observer. Space in this context is also in union with waves – as well as particles. However waves may connect all things instantly, just as waves may allow for “Superposition’s.”
The answer is simply that: This makes us both Local and Non-Local at the same time. Waves and or theoretical “Strings” perhaps in some union – connect our space and possibly time in ways we do not fully comprehend. If true, our infinite extended connections are observed from a finite realm only. It might be important to note here: That simply no distance is allowed in an Infinite realm, as infinity is immune to classification, therefore it is all things and no things at the same time. Make sense? It usually should not, as finite logic has a difficult time with this both intuitively and implicitly mathematically. Make sense yet?
Probably not, as this means that “Everything is Nothing and Nothing is Everything.” Hence there are no real “infinites” to calculate in an Infinite realm. But this last statement is a clear oxymoron, as it should be, as infinity does not have mathematics or anything defined based in or of it. As this would imply a finite realm. It is simply infinite, and does not apply to our finite realm of mathematics.
Mathematics is purely the purview of the finite.
When I said there are really no infinities in the infinite realm. I meant it. But to us, within the finite realm or finite conscious state, as observers, Infinities are what - infinity, space and time are made of. Once again, the ultimate and infinite conundrum. However, how does this allow for the stuff of existence, such as “us”, or cars, and trees and so on to exist? Well we do need infinity to have a finite realm, as I said.
That is the puzzle? That must never be answered technically, nor can it, again from a finite perspective or finite observer. This mind trap we are caught in trying to view infinity - would seem to drive one mad to think that Infinity, Space and Time have no beginning or an end.
But get use to it.
Infinity is indelible. Terms like “time” and “space” are non-words to describe Infinity correctly, as Infinity never had a beginning or an end. The space and time word terms we use within the realm of Infinities definition, or lack thereof, could not and do not exist. Unlike the finite world, which has an Alpha and Omega. (Dust to Dust, Evolution, and Space to move to, and a length of Time that life gives us to observe.
And – That is that…
We are here by way of connections of an indefinable Infinity, which has always been, and will always be. Make no mistake about it. This will provide us and others forever to give sentiency a journey to discover anew. New science from physics to health, coupled with new modes of life, new cultures to come. Save an Asteroid impacting the Earth, or a Super-Volcano taking us to our end of time as sentient beings. But others will arise, no doubt by way of times finite arrow.
The finite with a beginning and end is necessary, to find hope. Just imagine living for eternity without end. That proposition, would invoke a person to lose goals, have no new hopes, and actually impart a crazy madness of hopelessness. As you would be in the ultimate Trap, or Jail forever, if self-aware. What would be the point? One would ask themselves… And therefore, Life and Death, are necessary.
Dust to Dust and then perhaps? Take your best shot at a faithful guess! The options are many, the realities may be few. No one really knows. No one…
Plainly beyond us, the Infinite and Finite will ebb and flow, and new existences will arise through an endless connection to everything for all time…
Essential Points:
1. The Science is: That Infinity is incomprehensible to any complete understanding and, the Finite is limited to understanding all things, perhaps itself and certainly infinity. The connection between the finite and the infinite operate as if Everything is Nothing and Nothing is Everything… Have fun with that analogy! As for me, it holds true, as it confirms to me that cognitive logic eventually meets the illogic of Infinity. This lets us clearly know we will never actually know honestly and truthfully the great questions of life: As to know “ALL” or “Truth” would be to actually define a place and a time, which can only be finite. And that would defy the rules of Infinity, which cannot be technically ever defined. Otherwise it is no longer infinite; it would then become as a mere canvas with parameters. And Infinity is incomprehensible. End of Story – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow… In other words Forever!
2. The Moral is: That Legacies matter. Build a good one. The Butterfly Effect is always on… And that is what really matters.
All the best in our journey’s, Russ Otter
www.otterthink.blogspot.com
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