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Experimental Tests for String Theory? Guest post by Anil Ananthaswamy
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FQXi Administrator Zeeya Merali wrote on May. 10, 2010 @ 12:53 GMT
From Anil Ananthaswamy:
One of the joys of writing a book on modern physics, especially cosmology, is that you get to tackle some mind-expanding concepts, such as
string theory and the
multiverse. But when the
book is about extreme experiments and how theory and experiment need to get back in lockstep if physics is to move forward, then string theory presents a peculiar challenge. On one hand, it remains far removed from experimental verification. On the other, it constitutes a significant chunk of physics theory these days, making it hard to ignore.
This was the challenge I faced while writing
The Edge of Physics. How could I write about experiments and yet address string theory? I chose to focus on two ideas that are experimentally relevant, and have some connection to string theory.
The first is the possible discovery of supersymmetry at the Large Hadron Collider. Supersymmetry (SUSY) is an extension to the standard model of particle physics, and it posits that every particle we know of has a partner particle. The symmetry is between fermions and bosons, so that every known fermion has a supersymmetric bosonic partner, and every known boson has a supersymmetric fermionic partner. These supersymmetric particles would have existed in the early universe, and would have decayed soon after the symmetry was broken. Since we haven’t seen any in particle colliders yet, such particles, if they exist, must be very heavy. The LHC is hoping to create supersymmetric particles, if supersymmetry exists at the teraelectronvolt (TeV) energy scale.
What’s this got to do with string theory? Well, most string theory models require the universe to be supersymmetric. So, if the LHC finds SUSY, it would be a boost for string theory. But the universe can be supersymmetric without being stringy – so finding supersymmetry is not a proof of string theory.
Also, if the LHC does not find SUSY, it does not mean the universe is not supersymmetric – it could exist at energy scales beyond the LHC’s reach. So, not discovering supersymmetry at the LHC does not disprove string theory.
The other experiment that is of some relevance to string theory is the precise measurement of the curvature of the universe. For all practical purposes, spacetime seems to be flat, the curvature equal to zero. But the error bars on existing measurements are enough to allow for either a slightly positive or negative curvature. And experiments like the European Space Agency’s PLANCK satellite and the proposed Square Kilometre Array (the world’s largest radio telescope) will measure the curvature of spacetime with great precision. (The photo at the top of this post shows a prototype dish for the Karoo Array Telescope near Johannesburg; the SKA might have 3000 such dishes...)
Again, what’s this got to do with string theory? There’s a controversial prediction from string theory that the curvature of spacetime should be ever-so-slightly negative (an open universe). This comes from the idea of the landscape of string theory, a collection of 10
500 or more vacua of spacetime. Our universe would have emerged through a series of tunneling events, as one vacuum morphed into another, eventually ending up with ours. (Check out this week’s classic article, “
The Universe’s Odyssey?” for more about that.) This process predicts a slightly negative curvature. A measurement of a positive curvature, however small, would cause considerable consternation for this model of how our universe emerged.
Given the preoccupation with string theory (among groups both for and against it), it’s no wonder that almost each and every time I have talked about The Edge of Physics, someone in the audience has invariably asked: What can these experiments tell us about string theory? It’s clear that string theory is not just a significant chunk of physics research, it has also grabbed people’s imagination. Whether we’ll have any answers soon is open to debate.
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Lawrence B. Crowell wrote on May. 10, 2010 @ 22:54 GMT
I have one problem with this. For k = 0 in the FLRW metric space is flat, but spacetime may be curved. A cosmological constant is a Ricci curvature term which defines how spacetime is curved. It means that the flat space on the Hubble frame defines a foliation where points are being slid apart by the curvature of spacetime.
Cheers LC
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Eckard Blumschein wrote on May. 12, 2010 @ 04:06 GMT
Aren't Friedman-Robertson-Walker, and other stuff based on an a priori given spacetime to move within back and forth? Given Ritz was correct with his argument that future events cannot influence the past, shouldn't we be open for really foundational questions?
Eckard
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Lawrence B. Crowell wrote on May. 13, 2010 @ 02:04 GMT
No there is no backwards causality in FLRW spacetime. The equations of motion or the Einstein field equations are second order and so time reversal invariant, but that is different from saying there are closed timelike geodesics or backwards causality.
Cheers LC
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John Merryman wrote on May. 13, 2010 @ 09:53 GMT
When the future becomes more past, it adds additional lenses through which events further in the past are both distorted and clarified, much as gravity fields distort and magnify the light of more distant sources.
Anyone willing to bet that no matter how carefully it's measured, the universe will continue to be flat?
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Eckard Blumschein replied on May. 15, 2010 @ 20:50 GMT
Dear John Merryman, I appreciate the chance for hopefully forcing you and many others to rethink an understandable but inappropriate metaphor. You will certainly admit that your metaphor of lenses through which one can see a less blurred picture of the future refers to a brain, not to light. Having a second sight means being clairvoyant in the sense of making a correct guess. Does this have something to do with physics? No, not even if a prediction is made on the solid basis of physical laws. You know there is no Laplacian demon. The future is always more or less open. How much does not matter in principle. Conversely, there is absolutely no way in reality to influence what has got history. We all are trained to foresee something that does not yet exist. Be honest: Is there really an observable future?
I say no, and I conclude from that: Future spacetime is unphysical science fiction.
Increasing distance corresponds to increasing elapsed time. Both are not negative in reality. While the light cone of past can be meant to denote reality as well as fiction, the light cone of future definitely belongs only to fiction.
Regards,
Eckard
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John Merryman replied on May. 16, 2010 @ 00:17 GMT
Eckard,
I was not talking about the future, but the past.
My point is that the past is not physically real. No, we cannot go back and change what happened, but these events are constantly receding ever further into the past and since there is no god-like perspective in which all events exist in some pure form, than any subjective perspective of these events is constantly changing, due to the further passage of time. For me, from a strictly physical perspective, the past is not the narrative series of events leading up to the present moment, but all evidence of prior moments existing in the present moment and from that view, it is like entropy, constantly breaking down and falling away, to be replaced by new forms.
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Georgina Parry replied on May. 16, 2010 @ 22:37 GMT
Eckard,
You said ."I say no, and I conclude from that: Future spacetime is unphysical science fiction." I agree there is no observable future only prediction or imagination.
We do experience relativity though. So that which is one persons future may be another's past. Thinking of a thunder storm. The far observer hears the thunder in the near observer's future. The near observer heard it in the far observer's past. Therefore to model this experience there must be a span of time including both future and past. Distant objects are seen in the past but as they are approached the time difference between observer and observed object decreases until they are in the same now.
It takes time to move towards an object. So the distant village that I see (past image of it) may be half an hours walk away whereas the the wall of my room a few seconds away. Objects are experienced as temporally separated. The problem is when this experience is considered to represent existential material substance in space rather than just a mental construct. If objects actually exist spread throughout time there must be countless copies of each object, if each time space has its own version. Where does the energy and substance come from to allow for replication of multiple copies of every object distributed through time? As you have said, "space-time is unphysical science fiction." It is a model based on temporal experience not existential spatial reality.
In spatial reality there is no future and no past only now and a changing configuration of substance within it. The past and future are imaginary realms. The past is the record of change only. It can not be physically altered in any way that could effect now. The future likewise does not have physical existence and can not have any influence on the now.The results of sub atomic scale experiment should not be expected to fit with relativity, because these experiments are not concerned with human experience of reality but what is happening in objective unobservable space. In my opinion.
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Eckard Blumschein replied on May. 17, 2010 @ 11:47 GMT
Georgina, Who agrees that there is no observable future should also admit that there is no future spacetime. Since I am no physicist, I had not yet any reason for dealing with what worries people with respect to the theory of relativity.
Nonetheless I perhaps understood how Galilei and Einstein meant relativity.
Moreover, I refer to a single process. Your arguments do not convince me. I maintain: There is nothing between my past and my future.
Eckard
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Eckard Blumschein replied on May. 17, 2010 @ 22:19 GMT
John, You wrote: "... the past is not physically real." Why does presentism deny that the past is quite different from the future? I am aware of these arguments:
- The far past is unknown as is the far future.
- The laws of physics are invariant against time-shift.
- Einstein was a presentist.
Common sense is more prudent. For instance it understands
- that historical facts and influences from the past do not depend on how well they they are known,
- the realism of the past is not anchored in the laws but in the one-sided peculiarity that all influences arose from the past,
- the late Einstein admitted that "the problem of the Now worried him seriously".
On the level of records or theories we can, in principle, go back and trace the history of some influences that contributed to what is observable now. Mathematically speaking, an unlimited diversity of past influences are integrated.
I see it a matter of taste whether or not one calls past events real if only one admits that they were already real, and consequently there is a growing past spacetime that is bound to reality while future spacetime is always mere guesswork.
Eckard
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John Merryman replied on May. 17, 2010 @ 23:53 GMT
Eckard,
I think you are viewing it from an inherently objective framework, while I'm taking a subjective perspective. As I said, past events cannot change, but there is no objective perspective, since the very function of perspective is necessarily subjective. Now I'm not saying there is not an objective reality, just that here can be no way to model it that is not subjective and reductionist. As Stephen Wolfram put it, it would take a computer the size of the universe to model the universe.
Then there is the matter of just what is "real." Reality does not consist of a series of snapshots, where every particle has its place, as that removes the energy of the motion that is the basis of reality. It is this very fact that everything is in motion and therefore transitory, which creates "reality" in the first place.
So, yes, the past is an endless stream of mutating events and effect, leading up to our current equally evolving situation, but our conscious grasp of it is fleeting at best and this lack of real knowledge is a fundamental fact that should be acknowledged. It is not only the far past which is unknown, but so much of the recent past which is quickly lost to any record. Thus so much of the past we can at best say; 'Well something must have happened.' But actually reverse engineering even a small portion is difficult at best.
What I'm arguing against is the spacetime notion that all information is preserved, except that falling into blackholes and even that is recorded on the boundary, since all these events exist on the time dimension. My argument is that there is only energy/motion and time is the configurations of this medium going from future potential to past circumstance. Tomorrow becoming yesterday, as opposed to traveling the fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow. So, information is constantly being erased, as new is recorded and even if you were to try to go back and reconstruct past events, that in itself would be a recreation of information that would require the requisite destruction of whatever information the energy required for this function had been storing.
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Anonymous replied on May. 18, 2010 @ 00:37 GMT
Eckard,
You said "Who agrees that there is no observable future should also admit that there is no future spacetime." Yes I do admit that. It only exists in the model and has no existential reality, imo.
You said "I maintain: There is nothing between my past and my future." Well if one regards the past as a mere record and the future imaginary there is nothing to be between. There just is what is, always now. That makes sense to me anyway. Although it may not be how you were thinking about it.
Re what I have said about relativity. I offer my -own- way of looking at things for consideration. They may be considered either a useful way of regarding those matters or not. Showing some insight into the matter or being erroneous. I can only see my ideas from my own perspective. I do not have the benefit of being able to regard them through another's eyes. (Unless they enlighten me as to how they see them.) I have noted your skepticism.
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Georgina Parry replied on May. 18, 2010 @ 01:44 GMT
Eckard,
that previous post Anonymous is me.
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Georgina Parry replied on May. 18, 2010 @ 03:10 GMT
Eckard, All,
When I said that relativity would be unchanged but considered differently I said that because I regard relativity to be a model that works.It has been experimentally tested and passed the tests. As I do not regard relativity to be broken, I do not believe it can be fixed by tinkering with it. There would therefore have to be another model to stand along side. With a different perspective or way of describing the universe. To do what relativity can not.
Accepting that future space-time is physically unreal is just the start of it. The past is also existentially unreal although records of it and reflected or emitted EM radiation can provide (past) data from which processes can be determined and predictions made. That means it is existentially unreal in a different way to the future's existential unreality. The experienced present is also physically unreal. Being a patchwork of temporally separate images and sounds formed into a singular present experience. All of historical time, past present and future is not existentially real. In my opinion physics is happening in timeless perpetual non relativistic now. But at the macroscopic scale is observed and experienced within relativistic space-time.
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Eckard Blumschein replied on May. 18, 2010 @ 15:46 GMT
John,
You wrote "the very function of perspective is necessarily subjective". The a-priori given block spacetime indeed arose from a subjective (divine) perspective. My reasoning asks for the possibilities from the object's perspective. E.g., I imagine being a sensory organ. It is definitely impossible for any sensory organ to really perceive what does not yet exist. Accordingly the appropriate border of integration for a frequency analysis of measured data is the value zero of the time that has been elapsed since the beginning of the interval under consideration. Being restricted to real-valued past data, nature outperforms complex-valued analysis.
Likewise, the opposite "objective" relationship to the future is restricted. One cannot prepare or plan the past. Corrected mathematics provided, unilateral Laplace transform must not include past time.
I suspect, the idea of an remote observer and the strive of as much abstraction as possible caused a lot of confusion in physics and even already in mathematics. I vote for the ability of returning to reality.
Eckard
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John Merryman replied on May. 18, 2010 @ 16:48 GMT
Eckard,
All the complication and contradictions of understanding what it is we are part of can lead to some interesting conclusions. These models really just seem to build on themselves, as the group keeps adding whatever seems to fit, until they become unbalanced, the structure falls down and we have to start picking up the pieces again.
Guess I've been reading too much financial news lately.
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Eckard Blumschein replied on May. 18, 2010 @ 21:35 GMT
Georgina,
"I regard relativity to be a model that works." In 1905 E. published his basic and plausible idea, which obviously works. In 1909 he disagreed with Ritz. Later on he at first incorporated Minkowski's idea of an a-priori given timespace including past and future, and then he added a general theory. Do these extensions also work without problems?
I consider future timespace as unreal as is negative distance or negative frequency. Being an EE, I am familiar not just with complex calculus but also with correct interpretation after return to reality.
Eckard
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Eckard Blumschein wrote on May. 13, 2010 @ 23:16 GMT
When predictions may become more real, they nonetheless remain uncertain and open to possibly unseen influences, in principle. Do not blur the distinction between the always open system of reality, which evades complete knowledge of all possible influences, and any model of it, being always limited to known influences. When this distinction seems to be problematic then the reason can be ascribed to imprecisely defined events.
One cannot measure and predict the same value of a quantity at a time. When Minkowski united past and future along a common time scale, he just followed the bible "from eternity (minus infinity) to eternity (plus infinity). God's point of view is unphysical in so far as God is not restricted to see what already happened but He anticipates anything while physics can only measure and store data from the past.
Accordingly, physics has to get aware of the necessity to distinguish between either an observing point of view that is restricted to what is the past relative to the moment of consideration or an abstract and therefore unbound arbitrarily chosen point of view. Spacetime assumes the latter.
In order to get rid of arbitrary choices and confusing imaginary time, one may consider squared distance instead of x^2+y^2+z^2 and equal it to squared ct. Negative distance is as unphysical as is negative elapsed time.
This reasonable restriction does not imply that one also may take advantage from time to come. It is just a different consideration. Claiming to unite past and future, spacetime fails to correctly describe reality.
In daily life, we also need two values of time, an arbitrarily agreed reference and the very moment relative to it. For the number of birthdays I already celebrated, it does not matter when Christ was born. Those who prefer to judge on the basis of mathematics should be warned: Many details in mathematics have been adapted to our traditional understanding of time. That's why my seemingly simple arguments are overly foundational.
LC, I consider pure oscillations mere approximations and strictly speaking as unphysical as the sin function from -oo to +oo. I guess, even the earth will not for ever rotate as it presently does. I agree that we must not conclude from time reversal invariant equations that the reality is anticipatory. To my understanding tho world is not made of equations even if the bible says in the beginning was the word. Incidentally, I do not see differential equations the primary ones.
Eckard
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Georgina Parry replied on May. 14, 2010 @ 05:28 GMT
Well, said Eckard. These are important ideas that need to be more widely appreciated.
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Jason Wolfe wrote on May. 14, 2010 @ 06:43 GMT
Eckard,
I also agree with you. Your comment that God is not limited by events that have already occured is very interesting. Some would mistake this to mean time travel; but that would be an incorrect interpretation. God does span time in a way that cannot be logicaly explained. To say that God anticipates is more reasonable. I think all you'll find here is a mind-bender.
Anyway, your ideas are good.
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Eckard Blumschein replied on May. 14, 2010 @ 16:33 GMT
Zeh quoted from Dukas and Hoffman an utterance by Einstein: "For us believing physicists, the division into past, present and future has merely the meaning of an albeit obstinate illusion".
I agree with Zeh in that this is a 'divine world picture'. However, I do not see it based on relativistic spacetime but the other way round spacetime is based on nothing but the divine world picture of a block universe. Those who believe in the latter will perhaps be unable to purify the fertile principle of relativity from futile attempts to incorporate what I consider Minkowski's mistake. Maybe, M. died because he felt being not entirely correct.
Eckard
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Eckard Blumschein wrote on May. 14, 2010 @ 22:40 GMT
Because I am just a bit familiar with the antennas, I was impressed by an exhibition that demonstrated how much is known with high precision at least about our solar system. If there are still important huge "white areas" to be discovered then perhaps in the very foundations of science. Less hype but readiness to critically and carefully reconsider even Nobel price awarded attitudes would perhaps be more appropriate.
Why does e.g. Schulman see an alternative between symmetry in QM but asymmetry in the large? Isn't there a necessity to categorically distinguish between either reality's one-sided restriction or divine freedom to arbitrarily manipulate the abstracted timescale at will? I see IR+ not necessarily a part of IR. IR * can be mapped on IR and vice versa.
Admittedly, one must not blame the physicists for ignoring the fact that reality is something quite different from canonical theory, no matter how well the latter seems to fit. Every intelligent human tends to benefit from tolerating speculative mingling of reality with possibility. Share holding is funny.
Given we realize that the notion timespace originates from an untestable and perhaps misleading belief. What if any harmful consequences will this correction imply to the principle of relativity?
Eckard
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Georgina Parry replied on May. 15, 2010 @ 06:25 GMT
Eckard,
I don't think there will be a harmful consequence for relativity.It will still work, as it does now. It will still give good predictions of what will be observed at the macroscopic scale. It will just regarded differently. (Hopefully as a model of experience rather than underlying physics.)
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John Merryman wrote on May. 17, 2010 @ 02:39 GMT
Eckard,
There are implicit and explicit aspects of relativity that would need to be reconsidered. Rather than being a "persistent illusion," the present would be the totality of reality. Rather than spacetime being a geometric presence which tells matter and energy how to move, this dimensional coordinate system would be one more reductionist map. While time would be removed to a second order effect of motion, similar to temperature, the vacuum of space would be the equilibrium state for this motion.
There would be a range of conceptual changes as well. Effects, rather than objects, would be more readily understood as fundamental.
Viewing time as an effect of motion, rather than a dimension to be traversed, will have a fundamental effect on humanity's relationship with nature. By and large, western thought is based on this linear motion of objects against context, whether literally or figuratively. "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God." sets this whole linear construct in motion. Our religions are, in their most fundamental structure, if not the goals they seek to attain, fundamentally narrative constructs. Not only the stories they tell, but the beginning to end singular history that binds people into one unit. Even now, the Big Bang theory attempts the same unification of all stories into one. What Relativity tried to do, was one final effort to braid the broad tapestry of multiple, interlocking, but differing relationships into one construct,one large, but fraying rope. Though the forces pulling against it left it bent and twisted, such that even the present being physically real had to be rejected.
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Georgina Parry replied on May. 17, 2010 @ 09:04 GMT
John, Eckard,
John,
you said "There would be a range of conceptual changes as well. Effects, rather than objects, would be more readily understood as fundamental."
I think that is a very important point. It is relevant to how the Universe is perceived too. It is said in general parlance that -everything has a beginning and an end. This is generally considered to apply to the universe too. However within nature many processes occur that are cyclical and do not have such an apparent beginning and end. Nitrogen cycle, water cycle, Kreb's citric acid cycle, life cycle etc. Although the individual constituents within the cycle alter, the cycle itself is continuous. It would therefore perhaps be more appropriate to think of the objective Universe as cyclical process rather than an object.
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John Merryman replied on May. 17, 2010 @ 09:45 GMT
Georgina,
Probably more importantly, cycles within cycles and along side other cycles, all binding everything together, as opposed to some overarching cycle, because we keep trying to isolate one particular entity or process and ignore the mass effect. Much like in Barbour's essay, where he still tried to isolate out the most efficient motion as the basis of time, while it is all motion, creating an infinite variety of clocks, that creates the overall effect of time.
Another example of the western focus on the object as fundamental is in the assumptions behind particle colliders, LHC, etc, where they try discovering the context as some deeper field of particles, the Higgs, by crashing particles into each other. It's sort of like trying to understand automobiles by crashing them into each other.
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Georgina Parry replied on May. 17, 2010 @ 10:04 GMT
John,
OK I agree. Isolating one overarching process would not entirely explain the whole. Though all of the internal cycles, as you described, could still be viewed as forming or being formed from a holistic, cyclic, super process. Rather than an object.
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Peter Jackson replied on May. 17, 2010 @ 13:10 GMT
Hi Guys, and Georgina
I couldn't let your lovely conceptual insight about cycles within cycles pass without also pointing out the touchstone of where Einstein finally arrived at in 1952, which you may remember Georgina;
"It is now certain that 'space' is actually infinitely many spaces in relative motion"
in a UFT he was searching for the link between Reality and Locality that Bohr had originally stolen, and Bohm and Bell had later hidden. If we consider that Maxwells equations are actually local, i.e. they work in each reference frame but give us no interaction, then the 'fields within fields' analogue of your 'cycles' is given real physical meaning. Consider em fields within em fields within em fields, all in relative motion. (i.e. the LHC magnets, within the earths field, within the heliosphere etc etc.)
Einstein was really only considering these 'spaces' as reference frames, but what if he's looked away from the chasm between him and Copenhagen and closer the other way, to local physical reality?
Let me know what you think of this proposed new law of physics; EM waves can only travel at 'c' within and with respect to all local em fields".
Peter
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John Merryman replied on May. 17, 2010 @ 16:14 GMT
Georgina, Peter,
"could still be viewed as forming or being formed from a holistic, cyclic, super process."
"EM waves can only travel at 'c' within and with respect to all local em fields".
This is why I think of space as an equilibrium state. Several points: If time is simply an effect of motion, than what determines C? A moving clock is slowed relative to its velocity. If space is an equilibrium state and not just a creation of measurement, it would explain this.
Where does centrifugal force come from? If an astroid is spinning is a complete vacuum, how would we know it is spinning, since there would be no outside references to observe, yet there would presumably be centrifugal force. What, other than space as equilibrium state, would explain this?
After it was observed that all other galaxies, outside the local group, are redshifted as though they are moving directly away from us. So rather than make the assumption that we are at the center of the universe, Big Bang theory was changed to say this expansion is of space, not in space. The problem I keep pointing out with this is that light speed is assumed to still be magically stable. If space is expanding, then lightspeed should increase proportionally, otherwise it's still just increasing distance in space, not expanding space. Now Big Bang theory assumes space is just a measure between objects, so if we say they are moving apart, we can say space is expanding, but lightspeed is a measure and it doesn't change. So by that measure, space is stable and the Big Bang theory crumbles.
Then there is the idea of vacuum fluctuation. What is the vacuum, if not an equilibrium state?
As I pointed out to Eckard earlier, geometry thinks of the centerpoint of the graph as zero and the three dimensional spatial coordinate system, along with one for time/motion, is built up around this centerpoint, but, as he says, it is arbitrary. There could be any number of coordinate systems, not only defining sequential spaces, but the same space. Just as we all use ourselves as centerpoints to define a joint space. So what is space? Einstein's local fields are these coordinate systems and they are not existing in some completely relative relationship, but in some deeper equilibrium.
What if we have a temperature of absolute zero. There is no motion, but everything doesn't collapse into a zeropoint, as that would produce pressure and energy and no longer be absolute. The absolute can only be empty space. It is not a medium, like an aether, or fluctuation, but neither is it a zero point. It is an equilibrium state.
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Georgina Parry replied on May. 18, 2010 @ 11:42 GMT
John,
you said "The absolute can only be empty space. It is not a medium, like an aether, or fluctuation, but neither is it a zero point. It is an equilibrium state." I am not clear how this arises from your discussion of absolute zero. Whether absolute zero can be obtained is not known due to experimental limitations. It has only been possible to reach near absolute zero. Also due to measurement limitations it may not be possible to ascertain whether absolute zero has been reached, even if colder temperatures could be obtained. Maybe it is physically unachievable. Why can not near stationary medium (within "that" space) allow near stationary substance within it, just as well as empty space? Could a medium not also be considered to be in a state of equilibrium?
Peter,
You said "I couldn't let your lovely conceptual insight about cycles within cycles pass without also pointing out the touchstone of where Einstein finally arrived at in 1952, which you may remember Georgina; "It is now certain that 'space' is actually infinitely many spaces in relative motion""
I am glad that you appreciated the concept. John mentioned the importance of various internal cycles. I agreed with him. I had not heard the quote by Einstein before. Thank you for that, interesting. I think this also may tie in with the idea of space as a complex chaotic system ( formed from numerous cyclic processes at the same and different scales) rather than a relatively simplistic mechanical system. A new Law is a bit hasty. Also since we already use constant c giving an example of what it is constant in relation to does not really seem to add much. Or am I missing something?
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John Merryman replied on May. 18, 2010 @ 16:43 GMT
Georgina,
No, absolute zero isn't feasibly attainable, since any measuring device would presumably have some atomic structure and therefore motion. The same would apply to any "stationary" substance. Effectively they would likely collapse to a gravitational point, but my argument has to do with the relationship between space and the matter/energy/ activity occupying it. The extent of my argument is that it isn't simply a measure of relative positions, or such things as centrifugal force would have to depend on rotation relative to a range of reference points to determine the spin, as opposed to an equilibrium of space. As well as the idea that space is expanding, because Big Bang theory requires it, but overlooks the stability of C giving the lie to it. It's easier to just measure something, than consider all the implications entailed and space is more of an implication than something which can be measured, since only what occupies space can be measured.
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Georgina Parry replied on May. 18, 2010 @ 22:46 GMT
Eckard,
I have not said that there are not problems.I had not previously heard of Ritz, the disagreement is interesting. I do not like Minowski space-time.I really do not want to dispute with you over why relativity is an imperfect tool.I agree that the whole of space-time is a "God's eye" view. Thought within space-time is the subjective view of an observer. I think it is significant that we do both realize that there are problems. Even if we have discovered them in different ways and regard the problems from different viewpoints. We are in agreement on the unreality of future time-space. That is surely good.
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Eckard Blumschein replied on May. 19, 2010 @ 06:18 GMT
Dear Georgina,
Yes, "God's eye view" can perhaps be blamed for some confusion. Naive set theory has likewise gained rather general acceptance while no application has been found for aleph_2 within more than a century. What does global mean, what does local mean?
Anyway, I appreciate you encouraging support.
Best,
Eckard
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Ubermensche physicist wrote on Aug. 4, 2010 @ 23:08 GMT
A 4-dimensional space could be represented as the average of a 6 dimensional space and a 2-dimensional space.
6 dimensional space would be quantum mechanical and gravito-electromagnetic, insofar as it would involve a further division of the three dimensions BY HALF.
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Anonymous wrote on Aug. 4, 2010 @ 23:26 GMT
U.P. -- dimensions may be fundamentally/mathematically multiplicative as well. The space could be 3D as well (2x3=6)
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FAST FRED wrote on Aug. 5, 2010 @ 18:23 GMT
An averaging of space (in 6 dimensions/directions) constitutes and averaging/balancing of attraction and repulsion, and of energy and gravity.
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The Lightbringer wrote on Aug. 5, 2010 @ 18:32 GMT
FAST FRED, Anonymous, U.P. -- excellent. This accomplishes an averaging/balancing of distance in space (as well) as a function of balanced attraction and repulsion. It explains gravitational/electromagnetic expansion and contraction.
Constancy of energy, repulsion, inherent attraction, variability/mutability of forms -- it has it all.
We would be incapable of growth and becoming other than we are if we were unable to comprehensively represent and integrate the forces/understandings of physics.
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FAST FRED wrote on Aug. 5, 2010 @ 18:43 GMT
Lightbringer, correct. The gravitational middle level of feeling/energy grounds it and centers it.
The proportionate reduction of BOTH GRAVITATIONAL FEELING AND THOUGHT PUTS THIS FUNDAMENTAL FORCE OF LIFE/NATURE RIGHT AT THE CENTER OF THE BODY (Think growth of the baby!) AND IN KEEPING WITH THE NATURE OF DREAMS AS WELL.
DiMeglio leads physics. Sorry that he has knocked so many of you out of the game/ring.
String theory is exploring the nature of dreams insofar as it has/can have any legitimacy. Again, sorry folks. Don't shoot the messenger (DiMeglio).
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Anonymous wrote on Aug. 5, 2010 @ 19:10 GMT
Lightbringer, this is superb, and fundamentally important, you said: "We would be incapable of growth and becoming other than we are if we were unable to comprehensively represent and integrate the forces/understandings of physics."
Keep up the great work. Don't worry about the others who you are defeating and proving wrong and incompetent here.
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