I’m not saying it’s a proper frame, I’m simply taking a theoretical zero-gravity tensor area of space and saying that here, where there is absolute-zero gravity (not achievable in actuality), if we look at earth orbit vs earth surface, that statement I made would be understandable (I admit the % figures are completely made up for example’s sake).
Really? Then what of the statements that the moon astronauts have “gained seconds on their life” due to the acceleration they’ve experienced, compared to the rest of us.
There are only two ways to argue against this that I know of. One is a kind of solipsism where you maintain that only points infinitesimally distant from you in space and time (i.e. a single point at your present location) are real; any other part of the universe is not real. The other approach is to argue against special relativity itself (you get extra points if you post using a mobile device with a GPS feature that depends on general relativistic corrections to operate properly).
AFAIK, nothing in science definitively rules out time travel. Often an electron will emit a photon and then travel backward in time, which we perceive as a positron. If a subatomic particle can undergo a deflection in its world line and travel back in time, why can’t a human being? I think the main impediment is thermodynamic considerations, related to the boundary conditions of the universe. Also, GR allows metrics with time loops. There may be no macroscopic time loops in our past but it’s possible we could create them in the future.
“Morris, Thorne and Yurtsever pointed out that the quantum mechanics of the Casimir effect can be used to produce a locally mass-negative region of space-time,[29] and suggested that negative effect could be used to stabilize a wormhole to allow faster than light travel” - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casmir_effect"
But “negative gravity” is possible. See wikipedia on the Casimir effect:
“Morris, Thorne and Yurtsever pointed out that the quantum mechanics of the Casimir effect can be used to produce a locally mass-negative region of space-time,[29] and suggested that negative effect could be used to stabilize a wormhole to allow faster than light travel.”
Don’t call something “impossible” just because you lack the imagination or means to do it. The only thing I see from “science” forbidding time travel is the “Chronology protection” conjecture, which looks like mere wishful thinking:
Someone please shoot me. To say “time exists” is to bludgeon language to death. Negative gravity? Time travel? “Locally mass-negative region of spacetime”?? My god, this is not science, it’s not even science-fiction, it’s just fiction…
Clayton, liking Austrian Economics is no reason to make fun of or be ignorant of the inductive sciences like physics.
See von Mises “He who wants to achieve anything in praxeology must be conversant with mathematics, physics, biology, history, and jurisprudence” - http://mises.org/books/ultimate.pdf
If Hawking and Feynman think “time travel” is an appropriate topic for discussion in science, and Clayton doesn’t, I think I know whom I’m going to listen to.
That’s only one interpretation of the Casimir effect, and one I will be quite surprised to find true. I prefer the quantized van der waals forces explanation. Seems far more likely. Could even have something to do with the strong force.
I doubt that the ‘present’ will be leavable. I subscribe to the idea that the past and future do not exist longer exist. The one has passed away, and the other must be produced by the present. There cannot be travel outside the present. Even in SR, to move forward in time can be achieved only by making it appear so: by slowing your own referential time-frame via strong gravity. You could never go ‘back’ to the past, for you merely found a way to advance the present moment without experiencing much time passage in your own frame.
The forum doesn’t like javascript blocks, I’ll tell you that much. It assumes you’re a bot and errors you. I once got locked out of the forum for months, till I figured out it was caused by a cookie it set me. Anyway, now I only get errored out once in a blue moon.
I love to see people’s brains warped thus
Personally I do think negative gravity \ negative mass is fiction, or will be unrealizable.
But then again, we do calculations all day long with the set of imaginary numbers, and they work just fine. Many problems have proved impossible to solve without them.
If negative mass is possible, it exists on a level of reality far underneath even quantum mechanics, which so far we have been unable to manipulate.
We know that gravity itself may be generated at the very lowest of the low levels of reality, far, far, far below quantum effects.
As scientists, Hawking and Feynmann are merely describing phenomena and their causal relations. But the very problem with modern science is the ridiculous language chosen to discuss mere phenomena. For example, scientists will say something like “there are many, parallel universes” or “there are 26 dimensions that are all curled-up” and other such nonsense (and journalists only make it worse). In the case of many-universes, scientists don’t even realize they are committing a petitio principii, a philosophical mistake so elementary that it’s embarrassing to even have to point it out. In the case of the Universe having all these “hidden” dimensions, scientists forget to keep the mathematical dimensions in proper perspective - human science has three spatial dimensions and human geometry is Euclidean. The formal mathematics that may be piled on top of this in order to explain the phenomena within the three-dimensions of Euclidean, perceptual space are all fine and wonderful but the mathematical dimensions should never be confused with the three dimensions of perceptual space.
Modern science needs to overcome its obsession with the “counter-intuitive”, oohing-and-aahing the public with a picture of a Star Trek universe, filled with “wormholes”, “black holes”, “teleportation” and other, fictional nonsense. It’s great for the History channel. Not so good for progress.
But acceleration is not a frame invariant. We can tell when a frame is accelerating or it is not and that is how “the universe knows” who’s clock is moving slower. The paradigms of SR are only applicable when acceleration is 0.
Let me say it another way that will maybe help clarify the problem with modern science.
What is the most powerful telescope/microscope? Nope, not Hubble. No, not the Very Large Telescope in Chile. No, not the Large Hadron Collider (this is nothing more than a giant microscope!) The most powerful microscope/telescope is the human brain itself. The human brain builds extensions to the human body in order to increase its resolving power. But even more powerful than the raw resolving power is the power of inference, our capacity to invent conceptual descriptions (formal models) of microscopic/telescopic phenomena - it is this power of inference that guides our quest to build more and more powerful resolving devices.
But what we are ultimately describing are not the phenomena “way out there” or the phenomena “way down there”… we are describing the numbers on the screen. That’s it. To “observe” the “shadow” of the Higgs boson, the LHC performed a high-energy particle collision and then looked for a number on the output that was in the expected energy level for the boson. What is really being observed is not “a boson”, but its effect - the number on the screen. The rest is just wild imagination.
Well, frankly, I have never accepted either of those conjectures. You’re talking theoretical explanations now, not stuff we know for sure to be true. We do know SR is true. I don’t think you should conflate conjectures with observable reality.
Also, I laugh every time string-theorists get disappointed. I’ve always thought that was particularly bunk.
And what would that be, explicitly? I don’t accept the many-universes conjectures, but am interested in your critique of it.
I agree. A fourth physical dimension (not time) actually would mean… well it’s hard to explain, but I’ll refer you to Dr. Quantum and the Flatland story:
Between the lay reader and the pro, there’s is an incredible amount of misunderstanding. I’ll say that much.
At the same time, I’m still wrapping my head about the idea that there cannot be a hidden variable in the entanglement phenomena and how we know there cannot be.
But you see popular misrepresentation of this all the time, like in Mass Effect 3 and other stories which purport to use entanglement to pass message faster than light, the idea being you somehow control which way an entangled quanta comes out on one end and the other entangled quanta will then be forced to come out the same way in some far off place.
But that’s not how it works in reality at all. In reality, the outcome is already decided at the moment they’ve been entangled–at least that’s my understanding. The difference is, there’s no way to know what state the entanglement will decay into until you actually go to measure it, and at that point when you decay its state the end-state is revealed, and both entangled particles will reveal the same state.
Some of that explanation may reflect my persistent bias towards ‘hidden variable’ understandings of entanglement tho But what definitely can’t be done is passing info faster than light using entanglement such as in the fiction.
As I already said, there is no doubt that the mathematics of SR describe the physics of the world. The problem is that the mathematics of SR do not necessarily imply a speed-limit of light.
The point of explaining phenomena is to eliminate possibilities. Any explanation that invokes all possibilities is a non-explanation in disguise - it is begging the question.
As Ron Garret explains in the YT video linked above, entanglement is causality.
Anenome: I subscribe to the idea that the past and future do not exist longer exist.
It sounds like you haven’t considered or answered the Rietdijk-Putnam Argument. In that case, your uninformed opinion adds little to the discussion.
Anenome: At the same time, I’m still wrapping my head about the idea that there cannot be a hidden variable in the entanglement phenomena
Non-local hidden variables are not ruled out. In particular, in the perfectly valid Bohmian interpretation of quantum mechanics, particles possess “beables” rather than observables and they have precise positions, momenta, and trajectories. Particles are coordinated by the so-called pilot wave.
Clayton: In the case of the Universe having all these “hidden” dimensions, scientists forget to keep the mathematical dimensions in proper perspective - human science has three spatial dimensions and human geometry is Euclidean.
No. I refer you again to Mises’s “The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science”:
"praxeology is not geometry. It is the worst of all superstitionsto assume that the epistemological characteristics of one branch of knowledge must necessarily be applicable to any other branch. In dealing with the epistemology of the sciences of human action, one must not take one’s cue from geometry, mechanics, or any other science… The assumptions of Euclid were once considered as self-evidently true. Present-day epistemology looks upon them as freely chosen postulates, the starting point of a hypotheticalchain of reasoning."
Clayton: What is really being observed is not “a boson”, but its effect - the number on the screen. The rest is just wild imagination
Wrong again. It sounds like, when you encounter something you don’t like, you childishly adopt some kind of idealism to dismiss the unliked thing. But we know bosons are real because we can manipulate them. See this analysis of Mises’s and Hoppe’s neo-Kantianism. http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae10_2_4.pdf
“The fact that we can act on existing entities—be those our own organisms or entities external to us—implies that we can know something about those entities, enough to act on them. The fact that some of our actions are successful—i.e., the means utilized have indeed achieved the ends aimed at—means that some of the knowledge of external reality we used has indeed beencorrect.”
It sounds like you haven’t considered or answered the Rietdijk-Putnam Argument.
The argument makes a huge leap, from perception to ultimate reality, that I cannot accept. It’s not epistemologically sound. The perception does not determine reality, only apparent reality. Actual reality is still there, even if its perception has been distorted by space or speed.
And Penrose’s modification seems extremely confused.
I simply argue that apparent planes of simultaneity are artifacts of perception. Actual simultaneity is perfectly possible and objective, if not objectively perceivable.
Anenome… so whose plane of simultaneity matches your idea of the “real” universe? You, or someone travelling at a different velocity? Which reference frame will you choose as the privileged one (arbitrarily, untestable, and in violation of the principles of relativity, and in violation of Occam’s Razor)?
Since the Earth is continually undergoing acceleration, you almost certainly do not have a plane of simultaneity matching the universe at any given time. Consequently points distant from you in space must also be distant in time to lie in the “true present” and be real, according to your ideas. At one moment, points in the direction of one constellation and in your distant future are “real”, while points in the direction of another constellation and in your distant past are “real”. 6 months later, when the Earth is in a different position in its orbit, it will be the opposite.
GR’s general covariance says that the laws of physics remain valid under any coordinate system. But what if the real coordinate system in the universe is one attached to my fingertip, and all the other coordinate systems only apparently work?
Clayton, I showed that Mises was perfectly tolerant of non-Euclidean geometry. He did not embarass himself and AE by attacking commonly-accepted physics. (GR is now several decades older than in Mises’s time and yet it still withstands experimental assaults.)
Probably you are not as lucky as Mises and do not have a mathematician/physicist as a brother. It might help reduce your childish rage against the inductive sciences if you cracked open a math book every now and then.
Rather than dropping ad hominems and taking pot-shots, why not quote a specific claim (I’ve made plenty) with which you disagree, state why you disagree, and we can go from there?
And who is “intolerant” of non-Euclidean geometry??
But what definitely can’t be done is passing info faster than light using entanglement such as in the fiction.