Personal notes

I don't recall time ever being referred to as a "spatial" dimension. It is a different type of dimension, inextricably linked to a number of spatial dimensions. Also, it IS possible to move backward through time, according to relativity, it is simply that the amount of energy necessary to even send a light wave backward in time one second is ridiculously prohibitive (something along the lines of the total energetic output of the sun for an entire year).

Relativity only delves into four dimensions, three spatial, one temporal. M-Theory posits many more spatial dimensions, curled up so tightly as to be inaccessible, and probably indemonstrable.

We also speak of time as being "subjective" in Realativity theory, but I don't think that is an accurate description. I think Brian Greene explained it best when he stated (paraphrased) that everyone moves through time/space at exactly the same rate, lightspeed. The faster you move through the spatial dimensions of time/space, the slower you move through the temporal dimension.
 
Agnosticus_Caesar said:
I don't recall time ever being referred to as a "spatial" dimension. It is a different type of dimension, inextricably linked to a number of spatial dimensions. Also, it IS possible to move backward through time, according to relativity, it is simply that the amount of energy necessary to even send a light wave backward in time one second is ridiculously prohibitive (something along the lines of the total energetic output of the sun for an entire year).

Relativity only delves into four dimensions, three spatial, one temporal. M-Theory posits many more spatial dimensions, curled up so tightly as to be inaccessible, and probably indemonstrable.

We also speak of time as being "subjective" in Realativity theory, but I don't think that is an accurate description. I think Brian Greene explained it best when he stated (paraphrased) that everyone moves through time/space at exactly the same rate, lightspeed. The faster you move through the spatial dimensions of time/space, the slower you move through the temporal dimension.
Click to expand...
I said that I believed it could be, not necessarily that it is. What we do not understand about the universe is infinitely more than what we do understand and creating certainty from such a limited view will more often than not simply create mistakes of tremendous magnitude.
 
Agnosticus_Caesar said:
I don't recall time ever being referred to as a "spatial" dimension. It is a different type of dimension, inextricably linked to a number of spatial dimensions. Also, it IS possible to move backward through time, according to relativity, it is simply that the amount of energy necessary to even send a light wave backward in time one second is ridiculously prohibitive (something along the lines of the total energetic output of the sun for an entire year).

Relativity only delves into four dimensions, three spatial, one temporal. M-Theory posits many more spatial dimensions, curled up so tightly as to be inaccessible, and probably indemonstrable.

We also speak of time as being "subjective" in Realativity theory, but I don't think that is an accurate description. I think Brian Greene explained it best when he stated (paraphrased) that everyone moves through time/space at exactly the same rate, lightspeed. The faster you move through the spatial dimensions of time/space, the slower you move through the temporal dimension.
Click to expand...

M theory and string theory are certainly amazing frontiers in physics, and I think that once the test for 11 dimensions predicted by string theory come to fruititon (which may be relatively soon), that test will bear a shitload of fruit.

That being said, Quantum theory doesn't regard time as a "temporal" dimension and more than it regards other observable realities in classical physics as analagous to the very small. Quantum tunneling, wave/particle duality, superposition and entanglement are all quantifiable, scientific, mathematical quantum truths, all observed, all ideas that can't be explained in any capacity whatsoever by classical physics. Time seems to change from a classical linear instrument into a quantum counter intuitive, non-linear instrument when approaching the Plank scale.
 
Watermark said:
Beefy + Pot = Physics
Click to expand...

LOL No, only the first post here was I high. I actually have very limited access to weed as I really don't know anybody on this Island. I've stumbled across it a couple of times, but I'm not really a stoner. I smoke weed now maybe once or twice a month, if that.

But I'll tell you this much, once you start to look at the implications of quantum mechanics and the bizarre things that are so counter intuitive and abstract with regard to the fundamental building blocks of everything there is, everything, you start to realize that there are no absolutes, and that reality is not real. Life, matter, time, disconennection, seperation, these are all illusions.

Time is an illusion.

"People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."
-Albert Einstein

Seperation is an illusion. Bells theorem paved the way for scientific testing to demonstrate the phenomenon known as entanglement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement

Elementary particles are not really point particles, or little peices of mass, but particles and waves, depending on how you look at them.

http://www.hotquanta.com/wpd.html

All of this leads to the contemplative nature of science, and what means what. Our reality, our being, our very nature itself, is highly illusory.
 
In fact, nature is almost purely illusory. We can only, as regular people, observe a thin slice of reality, the reality that we can see, feel, touch, visualize, empirically understand.... This reality is very real to our field of observation, and thus, we are compelled as people to embrace it is all there is. But that fallacious at the ground scale.

At the ground scale, there are no certainties, there are no absolutes, there are no empirically inherent facts, there's only chances. And the human race is not fond of "chances". We desire absolutes. And in that respect, as well as a multitude of others, we are imperfect.

Perfections, absolution, casualty, distinction, these are all things that classical physics relied upon. Cause and effect, everything is a reaction...

Quantum mechanics shows that there is an inherent randomness to the universe once you near the Planck scale. Things don't need to have a cause to have an effect. Atoms can decay spontaneuosly for no apparent reason. Electrons, alpha particles, muons, nutrinos, even 60 atom lattices can behave in ways that defy common knowledge, common sense, and any classical physics that we know.

Richard Feynman, one of the most brilliant minds of all time, a great ambassador to the sciences, a professer at CalTech, and an author of the best selling physics lectures of all time, Feynman often quoted Wheeler when he said "If you claim to understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics."

There is a great divide between what we can understand, and what we can only try to understand. But the attempt at understanding the unimaginable is proving to be the most fascinating, mind churning process of all time.

Are we getting close to understanding the universe? Are we close to unifying the Em,s,w and G forces? I think not. I think it is maybe an effort in which we don't understand the true goal yet.
 
I get condemned as Nihilist when I say things like that Beefy. Well not quite like that but sort of along those lines. About reality not being reality, just a subjective sharing enabled through our sense (all of us are limited by our stunted shared perceptions).

Nice point about scientists and philosophers coming together (again).
 
Diuretic said:
I get condemned as Nihilist when I say things like that Beefy. Well not quite like that but sort of along those lines. About reality not being reality, just a subjective sharing enabled through our sense (all of us are limited by our stunted shared perceptions).

Nice point about scientists and philosophers coming together (again).
Click to expand...

When you apply philosophy and quantum physics, Nihilsm is only a rudimentary conclusion. Nihilsm precludes the bueaty and profound intelligence that make quntum studies what it is. That is not to say that physics means there is a god, or diety, or whatever Western name one wishes to apply to the unknown, nor does it mean there is not a diety.

It simply says that this universe that we all live in and know, this beautiful gift that we couldn't exist without, is beyond wonder, and trying to solve the puzzle as to how it works is a fascinating feat, wheter or not it is a puzzle we can ultimately understand.
 
I was driving in the city earlier today, behind a bus. It was going slowly and I just pottered along behind it, no hurry. I stopped at a red traffic light, the bus had gone through the intersection on a green light but I was held back by the red light. People were walking on the crosswalk. I remember thinking, "why invent a God?" Why invent an easy answer to the big question? It takes all the wonder out of it. "

I suppose inventing a God makes us humans feel special. The God who made the entire universe (whatever that is) is looking down on us and is interested in every single one of us and what we do and what we think and how we're going. Every single one of us.

In this whole universe a God knows that I need to clip that bloody toenail on my left foot and I'll probably do so after I have a shower because it's a bit easier. And God knows right now if I'll have a shower and clip my toenail before I go to bed or if I'll just have a shower and go to bed without my clipping my toenail. I don't know but God knows. And He knows exactly what's going everywhere else in the universe as well. He knows if an ant is going to break its leg before the ant does. He knows every single ant in the world.

From time to time I also have this cartoon strip running through my head. A bunch of boffins in white coats sitting dejectedly around a large table. They're looking worn out but also a bit jaded and somehow disappointed. No-one is looking at each other, they're just staring at the empty table, not really looking at it of course. One of them speaks.

"Well that's it then. We know everything now." And he sighs gently.

One by one they get up, slowly, lethargically and troop towards the door. The first one opens the door and walks out, others follow, the penultimate leaves the door open because the boffin who spoke is still sitting at the table. The last boffin gets up and walks over to the door, he turns and looks at the room still with a dejected look on his face. He reaches for the light switch and flicks it off and the room is dark. Silently he wallks through the door and closes it gently behind him.

How bloody bored is God eh?
 
"God" has been hijacked and used as a political tool by large institutions for thousands of years.

My "God"? Everything - the whole universe is "god". Its the only thing that makes sense to me. Some grumpy old jackass with too much time on his hands condemning people to hell for pissing him off, testing his subjects through torture, and reigning pestilence on mankind? I don't want that kind of god. He seems like a dick.

My god's kick-back; he couldn't care less about whether I'm picking my nose or not.
 
Sometimes when I'm travelling in the outback and it's a clear night it's great to get outside and go and lie down in the scrub and look up at the stars. It's good to lie down because usually if it's night-time and I'm somewhere in the outback I've been drinking beer all night and I lie down before I fall down, looking at the stars.

But it's incredible, the sky is literally littered with stars. And I lay there and think, look at those stars, look at those suns, they must have planets and those planets must have some form of intelligent life on them....and then I think, what if they don't have intelligent life..or any life at all? What if out there in that stupendously-sized universe there's nothing but rock and gas? What if this is it? What if this is the only planet with any life on it?

It's about then it all gets too much for me so I get up and go in and drink more beer and then go to bed.
 
Yes he does..........

Beefy said:
"God" has been hijacked and used as a political tool by large institutions for thousands of years.

My "God"? Everything - the whole universe is "god". Its the only thing that makes sense to me. Some grumpy old jackass with too much time on his hands condemning people to hell for pissing him off, testing his subjects through torture, and reigning pestilence on mankind? I don't want that kind of god. He seems like a dick.

My god's kick-back; he couldn't care less about whether I'm picking my nose or not.
Click to expand...



That is why he gave man the intelligence to invent Kleenex!:cool:
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Beefy said:
"God" has been hijacked and used as a political tool by large institutions for thousands of years.

My "God"? Everything - the whole universe is "god". Its the only thing that makes sense to me. Some grumpy old jackass with too much time on his hands condemning people to hell for pissing him off, testing his subjects through torture, and reigning pestilence on mankind? I don't want that kind of god. He seems like a dick.

My god's kick-back; he couldn't care less about whether I'm picking my nose or not.
Click to expand...

*was picking nose as this was read*
 
I was thinking the other day about teleportation technology, and how that would work. It would have to rip every molecule out of an area, throw it to another area, and then create an exact replica of you at that other area. Then I got to thinking, wouldn't you have been literally destroyed in that process? So, basically, you'd be dead, there would be no continuance of your thoughts, except there would be another object far off that would act exactly like you would.

Then again, maybe every moment in our lifetime is like that. You exist for a moment, and in another moment everything is copied and goes on and theres another thing that goes and does what you were planning to do. Over and over again. No true continuance, just a bunch of frames in which more things happen. So you've really been destroyed and recreated an infinite amount of times since birth, and you simply have an illusion every moment that this is a continuance of the last moment.

In fact, there is a time in physics, plank time. You can't measure anything below that. Maybe that's the frames reality is divided into, with everything being recreated again every new planck time?
 
Watermark said:
I was thinking the other day about teleportation technology, and how that would work. It would have to rip every molecule out of an area, throw it to another area, and then create an exact replica of you at that other area. Then I got to thinking, wouldn't you have been literally destroyed in that process? So, basically, you'd be dead, there would be no continuance of your thoughts, except there would be another object far off that would act exactly like you would.

Then again, maybe every moment in our lifetime is like that. You exist for a moment, and in another moment everything is copied and goes on and theres another thing that goes and does what you were planning to do. Over and over again. No true continuance, just a bunch of frames in which more things happen. So you've really been destroyed and recreated an infinite amount of times since birth, and you simply have an illusion every moment that this is a continuance of the last moment.

In fact, there is a time in physics, plank time. You can't measure anything below that. Maybe that's the frames reality is divided into, with everything being recreated again every new planck time?
Click to expand...

Planck time, Planck energy, Planck space, quanta... All very interesting topics.

Time is an illusion. Smoke some pot and think about it.
 
Time isn't an illusion but it's not an objective construct, it's subjective, relative and to be manipulated.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top