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FQXi FORUM
May 22, 2013

ARTICLE: Video Article: The Destiny of the Universe [back to article]
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Eckard Blumschein wrote on Aug. 21, 2011 @ 22:10 GMT
This article led me to Discover Magazine (Kalmbach Publishing). A Beyond Einstein Section sparked my interest: "Is the Search for Immutable Laws of Nature a Wild-Goose Chase?" Editors of more serious journals including Phys. Rev., nature, Science, and PNAS will perhaps prefer a more factual style. The reason for me to look into "Back from the Future" was to learn more than revealed in the article about the three steps in the mentioned laser experiments. I cannot even confirm an attempt to present possibly convincing data in a style I am used to accept.

Admittedly I am not familiar with Yakir Aharonov and the effect he is renowned for, "in which particles can be affected by electric and magnetic fields, even in regions where those fields should have no reach". Doesn't this assume that particles behave like points rather than spatially extended wave fields? Anyway, I would prefer abstaining from speculations and from questions that lack any basis for a convincing answer.

What about the mentioned three steps, I wonder if they do not overlap. I see the solution to "mysteries" not in boring wild guesses but in hard work that does not shy back from examination of really foundational issues including FOM.

Eckard Blumschein

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Wilhelmus de Wilde wrote on Aug. 22, 2011 @ 15:39 GMT
Incredible interesting subject Julie,

Our perceptions become awareness and then we become conscious of the universe around us and the causality that is fabricating our life-line. This causality seems logic when you look into the past, and the only thing we can do until now is evaluating the past, in doing so we can create expectations about possible futures, probabilities that can become realities. In the double slit experiment there is a final moment to decide to open or close the second slit (maybe a Planck-time duration), this is the very moment that or the particle form (one slit) or the wave form (two slits), if we assume that it takes place at the very last moment (Planck time) at a distance of the Planck length before the screen, then our wave/particle enters for that little moment a non-causal universe, where both the “realities are present, in our life line it does not matter if there is one slit or if there are two, it is the momentum action that is the the decisive following point in our life-line, that is constituted of one of the probabilities of the non causal universe inside the Planck-scale. The same counts in my opinion for the laser experiment, our intention is to amplify the results even if in the “past” (step 1) we WERE not aware of the multiplication, but is this third step is a causal logical step is what I wonder. In theory all the futures are possible and existing, so also the one in which step 3 leads to the amplification is already a reality, thiunk of this a little further and it counts for the whole history of our universe and so accounts for all the constants that we think that are so peculiar (see my essay. Testing Times arrow can only be accomplished in our 4D causal deterministic universe, we can observe only one aspect of the infinite possibilities of time’s arrows .

Keep on thinking free

Wilhelmus

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Pentcho Valev wrote on Aug. 23, 2011 @ 05:02 GMT
Superimposing absurdities and wasting huge money in the process. Davies & Company should first solve the expanding/static universe dilemma. If they had discussed this dilemma in a biased way, that would still be normal. But if they add backward causation to the already sufficiently absurd accelerating expansion, and if they don't even mention the arguments for a static universe, and if FQXi pays for that - this could only mean that theoretical physics is dead, perhaps irreversibly.

Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com

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Eckard Blumschein replied on Aug. 23, 2011 @ 23:36 GMT
Dear Pentcho,

Yakir Aharonov has been an internationally established Professor and member of FQXi. Even if his strange idea of backward causation did not find general recognition, there might be several FQXi members with similar putatively foundational ideas, and the effort to provide experimental support was published in PRL.

If you consider dealing with what you called absurdities a wast of money, I would like to remind you of bestselling literature that is appealing to laymen, not just Harry Potter but already science fiction by Jules Verne and to some extent some books by Paul Davies.

Incidentally, I do not expect much of interest to me from the announced panel discussion with Davies on the topic time. Nonetheless, I see it a challenge to provide alternative arguments. Admittedly, this is often not easy.

Read my essay 833 as to get aware of my attitude: Time will tell what was really foundational. I do not exclude that there are still fallacies in seemingly proven most basic tenets of mathematics (FOM) and its careless interpretation.

Regards,

Eckard

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Pentcho Valev replied on Aug. 24, 2011 @ 04:10 GMT
Sorry Eckard but I find detrimental any activity within a DEDUCTIVE science if the fundamental axioms remain suspicious:

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_detail
s.php?id=5538

Paul Davies: "Was Einstein wrong? Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 is the only scientific formula known to just about everyone. The "c" here stands for the speed of light. It is one of the most fundamental of the basic constants of physics. Or is it? In recent years a few maverick scientists have claimed that the speed of light might not be constant at all. Shock, horror! Does this mean the next Great Revolution in Science is just around the corner?"

Is the Great Revolution in Science still around the corner or the money now comes from another corner? That is the fundamental question.

Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com

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Eckard Blumschein replied on Aug. 24, 2011 @ 14:45 GMT
Speaking of the next Great Revolution in science will be understood as attribution of Great Revolutions perhaps to G. Cantor and also to Einstein. Even B. Russell praised Cantor's set theory: "The solution of the difficulties which formerly surrounded the mathematical infinite is presumably the greatest achievement of which our age has to boast!"

When Wilhelmus wrote "incredible interesting subject" I see him in company with the many who are potential readers of most sensational stories.

I am not sure whether I understand you Pentcho correctly. Do you support the idea that c is not the maximal speed of light? FQXi and in particular Paul Davies seem to be open for dealing seriously with almost any deviation from mainstream physics on certain conditions. Shouldn't we highly appreciate this attitude?

The 2nd FQXi contest asked what is ultimately possible in physics. My credo was: There are very few indispensable preconditions for successful science. Perhaps the foremost important one is to assume objective reality and causal relations no matter whether or not we may completely reveal it. In other words, there is no room for mysticism and mere speculations in science.

Wasn't the Aharonov-effect called the seventh world wonder of quantum physics?

While I agree on that funding is fundamental to researchers who benefit from it, I do not see physics based on axioms. I am suggesting to look for logical flaws in deductive science. Isn't this a necessary and comparatively cheap activity?

Eckard

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John Sulman wrote on Aug. 24, 2011 @ 18:16 GMT
As Eeckard suggests, it need not cost anything more than time to look for logical flaws in deductive science. Likewise I agree that physics should not be based axioms, particularly if derived from mathematics without regard to causes.

Mathematical constants are ratios between idealised values, most often stated in irrational numbers, whereas physics deals in ratios between quantities with integral values which seldom coincide with idealised constants. The result is a battle between opposing forces creating instability as the standard condition, though fortunately there is a self-regulating tendency among all interacting forces to keep chaos within bounds to allow steady development.

Because of this equations in physics can have no universal validity in numeric terms. They can only express dimensional equivalence which tells a very different story from standard theory.

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Pentcho Valev replied on Aug. 24, 2011 @ 18:44 GMT
John Sulman wrote: "As Eeckard suggests, it need not cost anything more than time to look for logical flaws in deductive science."

We can start right now (the procedure is called REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM).

Premise: The speed of light is independent of the speed of the light source (Einstein's 1905 light postulate).

Conclusion 1: Arbitrarily long objects can be trapped inside arbitrarily short containers:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/
SR/barn_pole.html

"These are the props. You own a barn, 40m long, with automatic doors at either end, that can be opened and closed simultaneously by a switch. You also have a pole, 80m long, which of course won't fit in the barn. Now someone takes the pole and tries to run (at nearly the speed of light) through the barn with the pole horizontal. Special Relativity (SR) says that a moving object is contracted in the direction of motion: this is called the Lorentz Contraction. So, if the pole is set in motion lengthwise, then it will contract in the reference frame of a stationary observer.....So, as the pole passes through the barn, there is an instant when it is completely within the barn. At that instant, you close both doors simultaneously, with your switch. Of course, you open them again pretty quickly, but at least momentarily you had the contracted pole shut up in your barn. The runner emerges from the far door unscathed.....If the doors are kept shut the rod will obviously smash into the barn door at one end. If the door withstands this the leading end of the rod will come to rest in the frame of reference of the stationary observer. There can be no such thing as a rigid rod in relativity so the trailing end will not stop immediately and the rod will be compressed beyond the amount it was Lorentz contracted. If it does not explode under the strain and it is sufficiently elastic it will come to rest and start to spring back to its natural shape but since it is too big for the barn the other end is now going to crash into the back door and the rod will be trapped IN A COMPRESSED STATE inside the barn."

Conclusion 2: A bug can be both dead and alive:

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/Relativ/bug
rivet.html

"The bug-rivet paradox is a variation on the twin paradox and is similar to the pole-barn paradox.....The end of the rivet hits the bottom of the hole before the head of the rivet hits the wall. So it looks like the bug is squashed.....All this is nonsense from the bug's point of view. The rivet head hits the wall when the rivet end is just 0.35 cm down in the hole! The rivet doesn't get close to the bug....The paradox is not resolved."

If the conclusions are absurd, then the premise is false.

Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com

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Pentcho Valev replied on Aug. 25, 2011 @ 20:41 GMT
Why did experiments fail to refute Einstein's 1905 false constant-speed-of-light postulate? Imre Lakatos has given the answer:

http://bertie.ccsu.edu/naturesci/PhilSci/Lakatos.html

"Lakatos distinguished between two parts of a scientific theory: its "hard core" which contains its basic assumptions (or axioms, when set out formally and explicitly), and its "protective belt", a surrounding defensive set of "ad hoc" (produced for the occasion) hypotheses. (...) In Lakatos' model, we have to explicitly take into account the "ad hoc hypotheses" which serve as the protective belt. The protective belt serves to deflect "refuting" propositions from the core assumptions..."

In the absence of any protective belt, the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment UNEQUIVOCALLY refutes the hard core of Einstein's special relativity and confirms the hard core of Newton's emission theory of light. Already the first element of the protective belt - the ad hoc length-contraction hypothesis advanced by Fitzgerald and Lorentz - reversed the situation: the Michelson-Morley experiment started to support the assumption that the speed of light is independent of the speed of the light source.

Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com

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Pentcho Valev replied on Aug. 26, 2011 @ 04:28 GMT
In the presence of a gravitational field, the protective belt is called "gravitational time dilation". However the VARIABLE speed of light predicted by Newton's emission theory of light cannot be camouflaged so efficiently as in the field-free situation:

A light source on top of a tower of height h emits light with frequency f and speed c (relative to the source). The light reaches an...

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John Sulman wrote on Aug. 25, 2011 @ 11:20 GMT
My apologies to Eckard Blumschein for the excess of 'e's in spelling his name. My fingers go at different speeds when using the shift key!

In picking up my approval of the economy in seeking logical flaws, Pentcho Valev demonstrates the flaw in using mathematical theory to resolve a physical problem rather than examining physical causes.

Only waves travel at speeds relative to the background around that of radiation, particles of matter can only vibrate at a comparable speed which is regulated by the ratio of locally available energy to mass at any point constituting a photon. Sufficient energy to accelerate a solid object to such speed could induce a change of phase shrinking it to small fraction of its former size, rather more than the Lorentz Contraction!

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Wilhelmus de Wilde wrote on Aug. 25, 2011 @ 15:13 GMT
I read an article from Yonatan Sivan and John Pendry " Time Reversal in Dynamically Tuned Zeo-Gap Periodic Systems (Physical Review letters 106, 193902 (2011), it is about to efficiently time-reverse ultrashort electromagnetic pulses, time reversal eliminates any distortions or scattering that occored at earlier times, regardless of the medium the pulse has propagated through. Are we talking about the same object ? is it not quite sensational Eckard?

keep on thinking free

Wilhelmus

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Eckard Blumschein replied on Aug. 25, 2011 @ 18:05 GMT
A time-reversed pulse evolves as if time runs backwards: as if! They used a switchable crystal mirror. This is an old hut to those who are familiar with waves.

Eckard

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Wilhelmus de Wilde replied on Aug. 26, 2011 @ 14:29 GMT
Thanks Eckard

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Lawrence B. Crowell wrote on Aug. 28, 2011 @ 02:33 GMT
I have given one of the author papers a quick reading, which I hope to follow up with a more thorough reading. The basic concept is that quantum mechanics is blind to space and time. A quantum wave function has a representation in space or spacetime, but the wave function is a distribution over a Hilbert space. It is not something intrinsic to space or spacetime. As a result the configuration of a quantum system in the future can be nonlocally associated with some configuration in the past.

Cheers LC

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Pentcho Valev wrote on Aug. 29, 2011 @ 06:24 GMT
http://www.phys.uconn.edu/~gibson/Notes/Section6_3/Sec6_3.ht
m

Professor George N. Gibson, University of Connecticut: "However, if either the source or the observer is moving, things change. This is called the Doppler effect. (...) To understand the moving observer, imagine you are in a motorboat on the ocean. If you are not moving, the boat will bob up and down with a certain frequency...

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RAY OLIVER - RAYOLIVERESQ wrote on Sep. 28, 2011 @ 01:35 GMT
Professor Aharonov's theory that the future affects the past is an interesting adaptation of quantum physics. After many years of thought and notations, which was first generated for me by reading Wheeler-Planck theories on Black Holes in space in 1969, I reached my own cosmological interpretation of the genesis of known and unknown sub atomic structures of our known and unknown universe. It is what I call, "TIME, SPACE & RELIGIOSITY" (c)oliver. I agree that time and space are finite. Rather than a model of an expanding universe, it is am "imploded" universe within a vacuum, a Big Bang, which created everything for a few seconds and ended all existence as we now know, within a few seconds or a millisecond. Everything we know to exist, was created and ENDED within that millisecond. However, the creation of time and space places us in a slow component of time, in between the beginning and end. Our known universe is a slow moving slide show of what happened from beginning to end, after that millisecond phenomenon. What is observed as an "expanding universe," appears to be an expansion from within the matrix of time and space. However, what appears to be an expansion is the "constriction" of everything after the implosion within a vacuum. Time & space are finite. Time, space & matter were created on implosion, with the matrix of what was created being stretched in a constriction (expansion from our observation) and had ended within a few seconds after the Big Bang. Time and space are the slowest components of what was created and quickly ended. We are the slow moving components now in between the beginning and the end. We are like a time lapse video of inside a light bulb which blows out when you turned on the light switch. The phenomenon took a second. What happened inside the bulb, within that moment of blast of light is taking millenia to play out for us, because of "time and space" lapses within it. I'd appreciate comments on my theory. google: rayoliveresq

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Author Frank Martin DiMeglio wrote on Dec. 10, 2011 @ 23:53 GMT
Balanced attraction and repulsion that involves balanced and equivalent inertia and gravity is the requirement of fundamentally unifying gravity and electromagnetism. Both gravity and inertia must [necessarily] be at half strength/force for such a union to occur. This is required of quantum gravity as well. This can only be done by making space equally (and both) visible and invisible. Opposites must be combined, included, and balanced. Gravity enjoins and balances invisible and visible space. Space must be contracted/flattened and stretched/expanded in an equivalent and balanced fashion.

Mathematics cannot fundamentally and ultimately combine, include, and balance opposites. That is obvious. The ultimate understanding of physics combines, balances, and includes opposites. Do you agree or disagree? Dreams fundamentally combine and include opposites. Dreams generally and fundamentally unify physics.

Gravity and inertia are both fundamental to distance in/of space. The visible AND YET INVISIBLE (equivalency and balancing) of inertial/gravitational space in dreams even allows for vision, as this is evident in the invisible and visible space of/inside the body/eye while waking. (Vision begins invisibly inside the body/eye.) HALF GRAVITY AND HALF INERTIA ARE EQUALLY (AND BOTH) VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE IN DREAMS in keeping with the middle distance in/of space and middle force/energy. Indeed, the space [as a whole/generally] IS semi-visible/semi-invisible in dreams. The space in dreams is equally (and it is both) visible and invisible.

This is the fundamental and general unification of physics in/as dream experience.

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Author Frank Martin DiMeglio wrote on Dec. 26, 2011 @ 02:19 GMT
Gravitational and inertial equivalency and balancing (both at half strength energy/force) is required of any fundamental unification in physics. It is so fascination that, in dreams, this is inseparable from combining, including, and balancing larger and smaller space as the same space -- FUNDAMENTAL INSTANTANETY! Indeed, the space is entirely inertial and gravitational -- in keeping with balanced and equivalent attraction and repulsion -- in an equivalent and balanced fashion. Accordingly, the space is both, and it is equally, visible and visible -- and it may or may not be touched in keeping with such fundamental middle strength force/energy (and inertial and gravitational equivalency and balancing). The space is both potential and actual in keeping with instantaneity and the fact that the space is equally (and it is both) visible and invisible. (Remember that vision begins invisibly inside the BODY/EYE.) VICTORY!

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Michael Haddid wrote on Nov. 12, 2012 @ 13:07 GMT
Very recently there have been unexpected advances in understanding dark energy. In fact if the claim of the Egyptian Scientist M. S. El Naschie is correct, then there is no more a mystery regarding dark energy. El Naschie’s solution is disarmingly simple and was presented at two conferences which were almost entirely devoted to his work. The first was held in Bibliotheca Alexandrina early October...

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