M-Theory is a theory which 'combines' the five superstring theories

[Canute]

Philosophy, like mathematics, seems to me to be free to think of space and time as infinitely divisible. Physics seems to find otherwise. Why is this?

Wow, some question. This is how I see it. The only thing that can be infinitely divisible is a continuum, since something that is quantised is not infinitely divisible. But, as I mentioned earlier, Leibnitz argues that a continuum, a thing with no parts, cannot have physical or temporal extension. This seems correct. So assuming that the fabric of reality is a continuum gives rise to a contradiction. On the other hand the assumption that it is quantised also gives rise to contradictions, as Zeno and more recently Lynds have argued, and as the continual um-ing and ah-ing on this matter among physicists and philosophers suggests. So I wonder if you're right to say that there is any difference between philosophy, mathematics and physics in this respect. It seems to me that they're all in the same boat, faced with a metaphysical question that has only two unreasonable answers. Since for mathematics (excepting GSB), philosophy (of the academic kind) and physics there can be no other option than that spacetime is quantised or not-quantised there is no way around this problem.

However, if, as I suggested above, we make use of the idea of nonduality, complementarity, superposition and other bits and pieces from modern physics then we can create a model of the universe that is consistent with the scientific evidence, with Schrodinger and Eddington's mystical views, with Spencer Brown's view, and with the cosmology of the 'mystical' religions.

Before physics advanced past Newton this view or model of the universe was totally inconsistent with physics. But we now know that classical physics is totally inconsistent with reality. The new physics is far more consistent with reality and far more consistent with the 'nondual' or 'mystical' description of the universe. To me it seems unreasonable to call this convergence a coincidence.

To be clear - in this other view the universe has two aspects, by one of which it appears to be quantised, one by the other of which it appears to be a continuum. I noticed that Stephen Ward in the Encyclopedia Britannica writes "In psychology a difference in aspects is a difference in things." This is very true. However it is not necessarily true outside of psychology, and may be as untrue for spacetime as it is for wavicles. Lee Smolin mentions this problem in his book, or a closely related one, and suggests that the 'hypothesis of duality' may be the solution, the hypothesis that a difference in aspects is not a difference in things. He is clearly unaware that this is what mystics have been asserting for the last five millenia.

You say that philosophy and mysticism have been less good as guides to exploring unknown physics than has mathematics. This is undoubtedly true. However this does not seem to imply anything for which is the best way of understanding reality, or the best way of resolving issues like the nature of spacetime, which is a metaphysical issue as far as anybody yet knows. But mathematics is also a good guide to exploring metaphysics and mysticism, so I'd agree that mathematics (and for similar reasons music) is a good way of exploring reality. Of course, to a mystic the idea that there is any better guide to reality than direct experience would seem mistaken.

But that does not rule out the possibility, so it seems to me, that philosophy and mysticism will ultimately play a role in our physical understanding of the universe.

When I read your earlier posts I gained the impression that you were a Buddhist, Taoist or similar. But in fact you take the scientific view. Perhaps this is an indication of how close the two views are becoming as physics develops. My mistake. But I'm impressed that you can consider mysticism capable of making any contribution to our understanding of the universe at all. It's a bigger concession than even most philosophers would make. The very mention of it enrages many people.

"Mystical statements, so it seems to me, reduce to the simple affirmation, "I saw it."

This is a slight misunderstanding. Mystics do not rely much on their physical senses for knowledge. They cannot, for solipsim is unfalsifiable so such knowledge cannot be certain and so cannot be knowledge. (Mystics take an absolutist view of knowldge - either one knows something or one doesn't). But if by 'seeing' you mean experiencing then in a way you're right.

What we need in physics is tangible objects that behave consistently when placed in controlled situations. Mysticism and philosophy rarely provide anything like that.

Quite so. Mysticism is about transcending the subject/object divide, and is the view that at a deep level of analysis there is no such thing as tangible objects. Many physicists now hold the same view, with events taking the place of objects. For example - "From this new point of view, the universe consists of a large number of events." (Lee Smolin, Three Roads to QG - his emphasis). Again we see physics becoming increasingly consistent with the nondual description of reality.

That is not to say that mysticism and philosopy have nothing to offer. It is only that we cannot appeal to them as authorities. I personally have found much of value in the Tao Te Ching, and in other "religious" studies. And it is not uncommon, especially in the popular science genre, to give a knowing nod and wink to the role inspiration plays in the scientific process.

Yes, it is common for physicists, or at least for popularisers of physics, to confuse mysticism with inspiration. Paul Davies's 'The Mind of God' is a classic. He heads a section 'Mysticism' and then drones on about inspiration and other irrelevances, not mentioning mysticism at all. I have great respect for Davies as a physicist and writer, but if he wrote about science with an equivalent lack of rigour he'd never have been published. Apparently in science it is acceptable to decide on the plausibility of Buddhist cosmology before finding out anything about it, or even instead of doing so.

I was disappointed to see recently that Lee Smolin takes the same aproach. For five thousand years, at least since the Upanishads, mystics and meditators have been arguing, ubiquitously and often in the face of ridicule, that naive realism is false and that spacetime is a conceptual construct. Then Smolin writes this -

"When we imagine we are seeing into an infinite three-dimensional space, we are falling for a fallacy in which we substitute what we actually see for an intellectual construct. This is not only a mystical vision, it is wrong."

This is pathetic scholarship in my opinion, and now that the mystical literature is so widely available it is unnacceptable from a professional. Mystics argue that to imagine that we are seeing into an infinite three-dimensional space is irrational, and about as wrong as it's possible to be.

I am glad that Peter Lynd has found in favor of temporal quanta

Is that a slip of the pen? Lynd comes down strongly against the idea of temporal quanta, and therefore also of spatial quanta. (I think his papers are on the Cern site by the way).

What you say about quantisation seems incorrect to me. Some theories require or assume quantisation, and some require or assume a continuous field, geometry or whatever. The question of which view is correct has not yet been resolved as far as I know. My prediction is that it never will be.

Essentially all these approaches are trying to fit geometry to what is known of spacetime, and the goal is to find the formalism which will pull the great white rabbit of the universe as we know it out of the black hole hat.

Many would argue that no formalism will ever manage this trick. Even Hawking accepts that Godel showed us that reason has its limits, and that physics as a formal mathematical scheme, and by implication any other such formal scheme, has inevitable limits.

My goal is more modest. I merely wish to catch a glimpse of reality as it may be without the clouds of obstrefucation. I want to remove the scales from off mine eyes, lift the mystic veil from the face I had before the mother was born, take a clean inspiration, get a glance, with Paul Erdos, of the pages of The Book.

More modest? I suppose that was tongue in cheek. But I agree with your approach. Aristotle concluded that true knowledge is identical with its object, in which case self-knowledge is the only knowledge we can have. All this string-theory stuff is just conjecture, and always will be. I recommend meditation, the empirical approach.

I'm glad to hear you already know Spencer Brown. Very few people seem to have heard of him. I can't follow his mathematics in detail, being very much into meta-mathematics but hardly able to count my change. However, I have spoken to him and confirmed that my view of his work is correct as far as the meta-physical or ontological interpretation of it is concerned.

Thanks for the welcome. Btw since last posting I spotted your discussion elsewhere of your life in the wilderness. I'm very envious. England's too small a country for any wilderness to have survived, and we made the mistake of starting the industrial revolution. My apologies if there's too much philosophy and not enough physics in my responses, I'm used to coming at all this from a different angle.

Canute

 

[Spin_Network]

Hi Mike2

As selfAdjoint said, modern physics does have much to say about how particles came out of the original fire. Symmetry breaking does have something to do with it, but as I recall it usually speaks in terms of forces rather than particles. I think the evidence is strong that particles as we know them in the standard model are not fundamental. There must be, it seems to me, some underlying geometry of spacetime which leads to our observations.
[QUOTE/END]

Richard, this recent paper will be very benificial to your inquisiteve line of thinking, a real gem to explore.

http://arxiv.org/abs/math-ph/0507016

 

[Mike2]

http://arxiv.org/abs/math-ph/0507016

In which he writes:
"It is necessary also to elucidate whether the total number of
microworld scales is principally limited or not, i. e., whether this
penetration to the depth of the microworld by the high-energy physics
cannot/can be continued up to its infinitesimally small scales."

If particles are extended objects such as strings, then no it does not extend to the infinitely small. If particles are point singularities, then maybe.

This would also suggest that the universe is infinite, always larger scales. This would deny its development from something more basic because a larger scale would have always existed before that.

 

[nightcleaner]

Hi Canute

You said: "I also feel that the discontinuity between reality and the mathematical description of reality is shown by this argument. Any argument for reifying fluxions or infinitessimals ends up as a reductio ad absurdam demonstration that the idea contradicts reason. Physicist Peter Lynds has reached this conclusion, and has recently published a couple of papers arguing that the idea of points in time or 'instants' is incoherent."


Quote:
I am glad that Peter Lynd has found in favor of temporal quanta


Is that a slip of the pen? Lynd comes down strongly against the idea of temporal quanta, and therefore also of spatial quanta. (I think his papers are on the Cern site by the way).

Ok, I should have looked before throwing down ink. I took the idea that there are no infinitesimals to mean that limits have to be set so that we do not go on dividing down to zero. In other words, there has to be a smallest length measure, and it has to be of some size, hence not infinitesimal.

Anyway, I think we are both saying that reality eludes either approach...that of continuity, in which there is no limit to how small a space can be, and quanta, in which the smallest space and time are set to be some amount greater than zero. The first approach leads to infinite energies, and the second approach leads to the absurdity of a material aether and hence a preferred reference frame. Neither approach is entirely satisfactory, but each approach may be useful in some particulars.

Can we accept a reality in which internally consistant logical systems conflict? Evidently so. In fact, when applied to the visual field, we use the conflicts between the evidence of our left eye and the evidence of our right eye to give us a sense of depth. Can we do something similar with the continuous/discrete conflict?



Wilderness notes: I had a productive day today at the cabin. The mosquitoes (I hear that you call them gnats in England) are in a huff about the weather, which has been alternately too hot and too cold for their likeing. I only saw one today and I swatted it before it could bite me, so you see I am not much of a Budhist after all.

I went down into the swamp to dig up some mud to cool person the walls of my cabin. I found arrowroot growing there, an edible plant, and I had not seen it there before so that was nice. The mud in the swamp is a mix of clay and humus and fine roots, and it compresses into a ball, dries hard. It is fun to push it into the chinks between the logs, squishy and smooth.

The cabin was chinked with moss when I built it thirty years ago, and I have had to push more moss in from time to time, but overall the moss has been a very good chinking material. Only it gets thin and the wind blows through. Mud is good but you don't want to put it on too soon after building, because the mud hardens, then the logs settle and push the mud out again. But after thirty years I think my cabin is done settling. I hope to be snug this winter.

Living in a cabin in the woods is idyllic in many ways, but it has some drawbacks. It can be a lonely life. I rarely see anyone in the woods. But on the other hand, neighbors still stop their vehicals when they meet on the road, turning off the engine for a chat. Last week I saw my neighbor to the west this way, and he wanted to talk about string theory!

It isn't really wilderness you know, but there are plenty of trees, rocks, animals. Lakes and streams, swamps and hills. There are maybe not more than a handful of roads between my cabin and Hudson Bay, which is hundreds of miles to the north. Last night a black bear raided my kitchen again. I think he was surprised by the cornstarch, and he didn't have much use for the popcorn kernals either, and he retreated before finding the cooking oil. Bears love cooking oil. If it is old and rancid, so much better.

But the really productive part was that I dug in my boxes and found my copy of Mandlebrot on fractals. Didn't find Weinberg, but Guth was there and also Smolin. Smolin has a chapter titled something para "The universe is process, not things." I have the book in my truck and will try to get into it more tomorrow. CDT predicts that spacetime is fractal at small scales. Makes perfect sense, actually. Mandlebrot talks about how dimensionality changes with scale in his introduction. Also finished chinking the east wall on the outside.

Well tomorrow the townfolk are having their summer festival, known here as "Heritage Days." There will be a parade and booths downtown. The parade is a big event. They have to go around twice, so everyone gets a chance to watch it once and be in it once. (Stole that from Garrison Keilor, but it is too true to be interrupted by facts.)
I plan to make another day in the woods.

Thanks Canute. Come to Minnesota some day and I will show you what is good and what is bad about living rough.

Richard.

 

[nightcleaner]

Richard, this recent paper will be very benificial to your inquisiteve line of thinking, a real gem to explore.

http://arxiv.org/abs/math-ph/0507016

Thanks, Spin Network. I'll take a look. R.

 

[Canute]

Hi Canute

Ok, I should have looked before throwing down ink. I took the idea that there are no infinitesimals to mean that limits have to be set so that we do not go on dividing down to zero. In other words, there has to be a smallest length measure, and it has to be of some size, hence not infinitesimal.

Hmm. I hadn't thought of looking at it that way. But I think this is not what he's arguing. Rather, he's arguing that time is continuous. If it is then there are infinitessimal 'instants' of time, but only as conceptual constructs, useful for mathematical purposes but not real things.

Anyway, I think we are both saying that reality eludes either approach...

It seems so. I don't know why physicists don't just accept this antimony as a fact of reality and start from there.

Can we accept a reality in which internally consistant logical systems conflict? Evidently so.

Quite. We couldn't do QM without accepting this. On the other hand we do it very reluctantly. Metaphysics is caused by the non-acceptance of such conflicts, and look at the progress philosophers have made as a result.

Thanks Canute. Come to Minnesota some day and I will show you what is good and what is bad about living rough.

I have a friend who lives in a garden shed in the woods near me. No services at all and not even a mobile phone. Hard work in a way, but the most sensible lifestyle of anyone I know.

Do you know the Zen master and poet Ryokan. Japan's most revered poet. From your own writing I'd say you'd really enjoy him.

Cheers
Canute

 

[selfAdjoint]

Hmm. I hadn't thought of looking at it that way. But I think this is not what he's arguing. Rather, he's arguing that time is continuous. If it is then there are infinitessimal 'instants' of time, but only as conceptual constructs, useful for mathematical purposes but not real things.

Philosophers don't seem to be able to let go of this old idea of infinitesimals, which mathematicians abandoned two hundred years ago. Please do read up on basic measure theory. I have no problem in amgining a temporal continuum, or a spacetime on, for that matter. Then how you look at it is another problem; if you really need to look at an instant you can do a Dedekind cut.

Others, please don't post on nonstandard analysis and its definition of inifinitesimals; that contributes nothing to this intuitive issue.

 

[nightcleaner]

Hi Canute

I am reading Mandelbrot again, "The Fractal Geometry of Nature." He has a chapter, 5, "How Long Is the Coast of Britain," in which he discusses the idea of length. I have shamelessly repeated his discussion in other places on this board, having forgotten where I first found it. But one must work within one's own limits.

Mandelbrot explains that the measured length of a coastline depends upon the length of the stick used to measure it. This idea is easily accessible. A stick a kilometer long will cut across many bays and inlets, while a centimeter stick will have to trace the curve of every point and boulder. The same coastline, measured with a centimeter stick and a kilometer stick, will have wildly different "lengths."

In fact, it is easy to see that the measured length quickly goes to infinity as the stick gets small.

No one, in England anyway, is likely to doubt that the coast of Britain is a real object. It may please some nationalists that the coastline of their country is infinitely long, but it is a nuisance to geometers. Mandlebrot goes on to show that a similar problem affects measurements of area, volume, density, pressure, and temperature. Suddenly our notions of science are on shakey ground.

I said:
"Can we accept a reality in which internally consistant logical systems conflict? Evidently so."

You replied:
"Quite. We couldn't do QM without accepting this. On the other hand we do it very reluctantly. Metaphysics is caused by the non-acceptance of such conflicts, and look at the progress philosophers have made as a result. "

When I read the Tao Te Ching, a very old book, I have to wonder if philosophers have made any progress at all. And when I compare my swamp to the streets of any major city, I can lump the scientists and mathematicians in with the philosophers and still have cause to wonder. Of course, the manicured and pampered hostess of a garden party will feel perfectly justified in thinking her lifestyle superior to that of a druid living, literally, under a tree, but the druid can consistantly think that blue skin and witchetty grubs have the advantage. Somewhere in the middle, I wonder which way to go, or if it might be better to go have a nice nap.

Thank you for mentioning Ryokan. I remember that name, and I am sure I would remember the poetry, if I saw any of it. Somewhere in my boxes in my cabin there are books which would surely have his work. But it is a hot, humid day in the woods today, and my plans do not include digging in the attic for books.

Lets see if I can remember anything at all. Umm, well there is the one hand clapping Koan. And, am I a poet dreaming of being a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming of being a poet? I can't seem to remember any haiku. Then there was something about some drunken poets on the deck of a boat which carries us away from the shores of this life. One one side, the boat was labelled "heaven", on the other side, it was labelled "hell". Was it Wu Wei and Bashan? Something like that.

Do you know the contemporary American poet, Gary Snyder? The real work: chop wood, carry water. He studied for a while in a monestary in Japan. He tells a story about an interview with his Zen master in which Gary suggested that the monks should run a hose from the well to the gardens, so as to make it easier to water. "Mr. Snyder," the monk said. "Who told you we want to make life easier?" Chop wood carry water, the real work.

Actually, I suspect that existence is contradiction. There is only one thing, and all our little being, all our definitions, all our words and diagrams and fine machines, are false representations. I don't have an exact quote, but a friend attributes to Einstein the idea that being, separate from the whole, is a delusion of consciousness.

Well the locals are gathering for their Heritage Days Parade and celebration. I rather admire the simple energy of the thing. Old men in straw hats carry lawn chairs to claim their strategic positions along the boulevard. Matrons with covered casseroles stream from kitchens to decks. Youngsters ride horses up and down the street, which has been blocked off to traffic so the floats can assemble. Atheletic girls jog past my window, shiney convertibles with the tops down line up, dogs bark.

I am sitting here at my friend's table, using her telephone line. She has already fled the commotion, gone to Duluth to look for paint and linens for her new house. She is moving away from here in a month or two, as soon as the gods of property transfer are legally satiated. I don't know yet what I will do after that for internet access. Maybe have to steal Wi-Fi from the parking lot outside of a local business traveler's motel, or take a job as a night auditor. There is no telephone, electricity, plumbing or emergency services at my cabin. Nor, to be true, do I want any.

I will find some way to continue. Or not.

Be well,

Richard.

 

[arivero]

When I read the Tao Te Ching, a very old book, I have to wonder if philosophers have made any progress at all.

I am not sure how do you read the TTC, so I can not tell you. Strings, and M-theory, are slightly our from the line of research of TTC, that favours the use of a duality between matter and nonmatter. Such duality is orthodoxy in mathematics (vectors and covectors for integral calculus) and quantum field theory (point particles separated by spatial plaquettes), and the simple fact of being able to formulate with precision such theories is already an huge advancement on the TTC line.

 

[nightcleaner]

Hi arivero

I read the TTC in translation by Gia Fu Feng and Jane English, with lovely full page pictures and caligraphy. But I don't know how to read the Chinese ideographs.

I am working on reading the mathematical formulations for quantum theory. It is a very beautiful and elaborate structure, obveously crafted with skill and pride of workmanship, but remains mysterious, to me, in operation. For example, there is indicial notation. Penrose informs me that the upper indices represent vectors, and the lower indices represent covectors, but I have less notion of what that means than I have of form and emptyness. I don't have the Tao or the Penrose book in front of me, so I can't go into more detail now, especially since fire engines and ambulances decorated in tinsel and flags are lining up on the street in front of this house. A golf cart overflowing with clowns just drove by. I am afraid I cannot bear any more of this happiness. I am of a mind to go look for a quiet corner in a dark cafe.

But I am thankful for this great fellowship here and will return as often and as soon as possible.

Oooops. They are starting to throw candy to the epsilons. I really have to go.

Richard.

 

[selfAdjoint]

For example, there is indicial notation. Penrose informs me that the upper indices represent vectors, and the lower indices represent covectors, but I have less notion of what that means than I have of form and emptyness.

You comfortable with the idea of a vector? Something you can add, subtract and multiply by a constant? You can set up a basis and write every vector as a sum of basis vectors times constants. The individual products, constant times a basis vector are the components of that vector in that basis. All square?

Now imagine a linear function that maps vectors into the constants (which are nearly always either the real numbers or else the complex numbers). Take the set of all such functions. You can add them, subtract them and multiply then by constant (c*f(v) = f(c*v) ). So they act like vectors! They are called covectors. If your vector space has basis vectors $$e^1, e^2,$$ etc. then the functions $$e_1,e_2,$$ defined by $$e_i(e^i) =1$$ and $$e_i(e^j) = 0$$ for $$i \ne j$$ form a dual basis of the dual vector space containing the covectors. As I have indicated the covectors (linear functions from the vector space to the constants) have lower indexes and the ordinary vectors have upper indexes.

An important case of dual vectors is the derivatives. The partial derivative $$\partial / \partial x$$ acts on a vector and produces a number: $$\partial v/ \partial x =c$$. And it is linear, so the derivatives form a dual vector space to the vectors.

 

[Canute]

Nightcleaner

Nothing to add but chat really. I also like the Jane English version of the TTC. There are a number of dire translations about, but this one gets the meaning and the music. Some translations seem to have been done by people who don't realize what Lao-Tsu was saying.

The wonderful thing about the Tao, taken as fundamental, is that it is neither a background nor not-a-background, a useful concept for science given the current stalemate on this issue.

Hope you mange to sort your connection.

Philosophers don't seem to be able to let go of this old idea of infinitesimals, which mathematicians abandoned two hundred years ago.

Could you expand a little? I fear I may be misunderstanding the current mathematical notion of infinitessimals. Are they considered real or conceptual these days?

You say you can imagine an extended temporal or spatial continuum. Perhaps so, but you must admit this doesn't show the idea actually makes sense. I would argue that it doesn't, but don't have a knock-down argument yet.

Regards
Canute

 

[rain.w]

The wonderful thing about the Tao, taken as fundamental, is that it is neither a background nor not-a-background, a useful concept for science given the current stalemate on this issue.

I have a strong feeling that the current pure mathematics/theoritical physics is
representing/constructing the thoughts of ancient philosophy such as Tao and YiJing,
and this seems be a "philosophy-science" duality also?

 

[Canute]

Hello Rain.w- welcome to the forum. I also hold this view.

 

[arivero]

OK I was refraining for it, but given the ambiance it seems I should sell here my own references:
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0309104 Democritus as Taoist (see also http://dftuz.unizar.es/~rivero/research/0309104fn.html )
http://arxiv.org/abs/math/9904021 On the section of a cone
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0006065 Rhythmos, Diathige, Trope

the last one is in Spanish, but you can get a smaller English version selecting v1 of the same article.

Mathematicians can understand duality in the sense of De Rham, expanding on the explanation of selfAdjoint. One needs a cycle and a cocycle in order to get an integral.

 

[marcus]

http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0309104 Democritus as Taoist
.

you say the atomist tradition that led to John Dalton should be called
"neo-atomism" (idea of matter consisting of types of identical atom, in integer proportions)
and that Democritus did not has this idea, so did not begin the neo-atomist tradition

where does this tradition, that led to Dalton, begin? how far is it traced back?

 

[arivero]

where does this tradition, that led to Dalton, begin? how far is it traced back?

I'd say, at some point between Aristotle and Epicurus, when the property of "size" is moved from space to the atom. It is the main tradition preserved; it is used by instance by Copernicus in comparing the relative sizes of Earth and Solar System "as an atom to the whole body". And it is surely the one that Gassendi receives, but I can not tell for sure because I have not read him.

The other tradition is darker, but the insight for recovering the word "indivisible" (atom) in the geometric process comes from Galileo, according a partly preserved exchange with Cavalieri.

 

[Spin_Network]

Then what do you mean by singularity. My understanding is that a singularity is where you have infinite value only at one particular point. So if the whole universe consisted of only one particular point, then there is no comparing the value of a field with another point which does not exist yet.

I wonder how you would mark the differences between manifolds of slightly different differential sizes. It seems to me that if you don't have things like particles or strings yet, then there would be some sort of invariance with size, no means of distinguishing the quality or value of empty but growing universes. What's this called, conformal invariance? You'd have to know which point was the starting point and which points in the differential region were not the singualar point. But I think that the idea of a manifold growing from a singularity is that after it grows, you can no longer tell which point is the center. It seems then that you have some other invariant properties such that each point is just as likely to be the center as any other point. The laws of physics are the same at every point in space; there is then no preferential frame of reference for any measurable thing. And if that is so, then how do you even measure the size of the universe as it grows? Maybe that is why it may seem that space is broken into portions of the plank volumes. Below such scales there is no distinctions that can be made, no "measureable" observables.

Looks like a reformation?:http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0508045

good paper!

 

[Mike2]

Looks like a reformation?:http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0508045

good paper!

Thanks, that was interesting. I'll have to keep it for reference.

My point, however, was that if there is no particles in the universe, then it becomes impossible to measure how big the universe is. Size then becomes an arbitrary coordinate system on a manifold. Nor is time something that can be measured because it becomes impossible to say how long things have been as they are if there are no things (particles). So it is impossible to say if the universe bounced or banged or emerged. It would seem that at a time before particles (if such ever existed) physics was invariant with respect to a metric and was invariant with respect to bangs and bounces, etc. Or can you suppose a continuous field (not a particle field) whose density is physical?

 

[mykingdomforapurpose]

distance has been shown to be arbitry when we transformed the five sting theories and realized they where all the same. there is a sixth older equation that we can also transform to the string theories and it used an 11 dimention frame work. these transformations led to the brain theories where the 10D string theories are all interchangable even with an 11D frame. so scientists felt the 10D frames where small parts of the 11D. distance was found arbitry when you calculate stings of diffrent length travling in circles. the longer the string the more it winds onto the circle and then travling on the same size cicle covers a massive amount of extra distance.

when considering spacetime backgrounds i use the projector model. where the projector is the stings/brans and the picture is our universe. its a good representation as it alows a universe with no real anything that we can still explore. the vibrations of all those stings crate one cohesive picture and that is all of us, everything projected as one picture. now layer the projections so that there is a picture of everything that will ever happen, like a storybook of all that will ever be. time is the dimensional reality of turning pages. the information is all there, everything has already happened but as you read you get this sensation of moving through the book and things seem to happen as you turn the pages. alas no.

 

[rain.w]

when considering spacetime backgrounds i use the projector model. where the projector is the stings/brans and the picture is our universe. its a good representation as it alows a universe with no real anything that we can still explore. the vibrations of all those stings crate one cohesive picture and that is all of us, everything projected as one picture. now layer the projections so that there is a picture of everything that will ever happen, like a storybook of all that will ever be. time is the dimensional reality of turning pages. the information is all there, everything has already happened but as you read you get this sensation of moving through the book and things seem to happen as you turn the pages. alas no.

Oh, mykingdomforapurpose, I just hold the same view! except I prefer the term "layer model" to your "projector model". I think every layer emerged along the time line means a new/extra dimention above the previous layer...

 

[janusz]

How can gravity be both a curved spacetime and a particle moving through spacetime simultaneously? If gravitons are particles moving through a background spacetime, then where did the background come from? Even if it doesn't matter what the background is (it still results in the same physics), you still seem to need a background in order to calculate the particle properties. Where did that background come from? Is there a 5th force which does bend the background spacetime? If it doesn't matter what the background is in order to obtain the particle properties, then the particle properties cannot depend on the background, so the background, likewise, cannot be influenced by the particles, right?

I have similar problem,particle as a point of relation to expanding space is not passive .Matter seems to be negative and contractive but spacetime positive and repulsive coming from within a particle.Is it possible that this repulsive and expanding force is the source of gravity and string of energy is balancing portion of energy on the framework of the spacetime?
Why movement curve the spacetime in the direction of movement longitudinal mass,time and length?
Why term for acceleration on the line and gravity for spherical acceleration?
What about violation speed when speeding body reaching light speed and need constant acceleration to keep the same speed? In empty space just once given the speed stay invariant- is it for certain value mass a limit?Does inertia has limit in the speed closed to the speed of light?
Why exist term background in physics,where every thing is strictly interactive? Is it this background in within us, the atom enlarged is ghostly place?
Why time is always presented as the line,to have chance to write sf? What about it curl up with dimension and time as flat surface,rubber sheet grabbing particle in movement ,speeding to light limit and stretching its fabric to cumulate violation of time,imagine atomic clock with radioactive uranium still ticking whereas its brothers twins from radioactive family long ago decayed.I can imagine sheet of paper and passing the pencil,but pencil is not existent only the hole changing properties,in human minds the pencil represent history and the future but is illusive.
Space time energy must be positive--because it is coming - potential difference?
Never background.otherwise we are mostly background.Thank you.
Janusz Melbourne Australia

 

[janusz]

All the difference in the world between particles flying around in a curved, fixed, background space on the one hand, and particles causing the spacetime to bend, while it causes them to curve in their paths. Background independent means that the space is in the foreground, taking part in the physics, and dynamically altering and being altered.

At this point this forum look like dead,cold desolated place.I went through the threads and I noticed that I could be placed into the class of "discovery channel" in which i not to be classified.I came to the forum with the bunch of weird question,with the quest to complete or build the view of my Universe.
Just for example in the book Universe in the nut shell - S Hawking maybe 20 times spoke about his contribution to the science .My contribution can be only if I hold the answer provider for the minute in the spacetime of his PC and protect him this way from the car crash next minute.So I'm expecting nothing accept good answer.I love Einstein imaginary world and I'm not going demolish anything in the system,just get alight dark patches in my mind regarding this world.
In the Universe in the nut shell - author describing the world two mixed ways; classical when he say in the one line that gravity bend the light in the black hole vicinity and relativity way in the next line then curvature of the space bend the light hence a confusion of light having mass.This is contribution of the great master Jedi to my building workbench.And it is tones of other examples .
Having 45 years 20 years ago I switched myself to the relativity mode and I found myself having gaps in understanding it and only that's why I'm here...
I come back to the thought experiment I have given before but from different perspective.My kids asked me why the same 1 kg of sugar weights on Jupiter more? Say - my answer in relativity mode sounds like this; because the curvature of the Earth give this 1kg mass or acceleration 1g on the Moon roughly 1/4 g and in the spacetime between Earth and Moon 1kg of white sugar for instance has its own curvature of spacetime of let's guess of 0.0000157g.OK? So I told kids one made bad investment by putting all package on the moon.They asked why it is still the same 1kg.
Let's say another thought experiment,atom of hydrogen and speed it up keeping its matter property.When it reach the speed closed to speed of light the relative length increase ,is not the illusion for hydrogen atom ,it lives in different universe and other dimension flatten,so it is long like galaxy -time tick,1 second taking to travel through the Galaxy,still it needs the travel for the rest of Universe to complete the trip.In that speed takes maybe 100000years.Lets speed it up then.We come according to Einstein that even the whole energy of the Universe we put into expenses to defeat of the resistens and still it did not get into the speed of the light.We couldn't flatten enough width,height and time to having only length like the light has...loose characteristic of matter.
At first our atom does not need extra energy it works with inertia but in the certain point the spacetime became resistent and we have to invest more and more energy to push it forward.It can change into energy itself but in the thought experiment I want to preserve the characteristic of the matter or rather curvature of space? Where is this resistent barrier for mass of the atom of hydrogen?
Another example is the light in the spacetime,its travels having only length with no time characteristic so should theoretically come back everytime,constantly and coming within background radiation,where is the rest? It disperse in the expansion,it means for me {sorry} some of the grains of the space are not touched by traveling light beam,when come from A point to B on the remote areas of the Universe it not finishing in the B because B has been replaced by pop up fresh B2 =C. ,so in this case light behave like having curvature - little bit of time? - and too can't escape of the system .
And the last question ;in the theoretical physics string is the lowest part of the matter so the next step down is the space itself,expanding ,dynamic not stagnant space within the matter.Is it possible to create mathematical model of the hatching point or grain of the spacetime 3 dementional with expanding like umbrella surface of penetrating time with the dynamic,oscillating ring of the string on it,grains emits another grains? Passive grains and active grains?
There is no point of the rest in the universe,all matter have the curvature,spacetime is manipulated by movement and masses.
Why to close the picture this expansion is not a reason for gravity,why we talk about vacuum and on other hand that skillfully we explain 11 dimension and not seeing beauty of our magnificent 4 in theory of relativity.
Movement like negligence of the grains,and spherical acceleration as negligence of the grains in rescistance for expansion and very closed to it resistance to speeding matter violation speed ending inertia?
Thank you
Jan Maszczyszyn - nobody Melbourne Australia

 

[selfAdjoint]

I come back to the thought experiment I have given before but from different perspective.My kids asked me why the same 1 kg of sugar weights on Jupiter more? Say - my answer in relativity mode sounds like this; because the curvature of the Earth give this 1kg mass or acceleration 1g on the Moon roughly 1/4 g and in the spacetime between Earth and Moon 1kg of white sugar for instance has its own curvature of spacetime of let's guess of 0.0000157g.OK? So I told kids one made bad investment by putting all package on the moon.They asked why it is still the same 1kg.

It isn't the curvature of the Earth (that sphere we live on) that makes the acceleration, it's the curvature of the spacetime near the earth. This makes the shortest path for the Kg. of sugar curved (it's just straight down in 3-space, but curved when you include the time dimension, which is experienced in 3-space as acceleration). And aren't your kids right? What we want from a Kg. of sugar is a certain amount of sweetenig power, not what it shows on a spring scale. This is why the metric Kg is better than the avoirdupois pound; it is a measure of mass, which is the same on the Earth, Moon, and Jupiter, and even in free fall, while the pound is a measure of force which is not constant even on Earth (lighter at the equater than at the poles due to centrifugal force).

Let's say another thought experiment,atom of hydrogen and speed it up keeping its matter property.When it reach the speed closed to speed of light the relative length increase ,is not the illusion for hydrogen atom ,it lives in different universe and other dimension flatten,so it is long like galaxy -time tick,1 second taking to travel through the Galaxy,still it needs the travel for the rest of Universe to complete the trip.In that speed takes maybe 100000years.Lets speed it up then.We come according to Einstein that even the whole energy of the Universe we put into expenses to defeat of the resistens and still it did not get into the speed of the light.We couldn't flatten enough

The atom in its own rest frame does not notice any dilation effects. Its physics is just as good as some observer who sees it as traveling fast. All inertial frames see the same physics internally, is one of the two postulates of relativity.

And the relativistic effect on length is to shrink it. If two observers see each other moving with 86% of the speed of light, they will measure each other's lengths as half of their own.

 

[praveen27net]

Membrane Theory

hai all,
actuall i am computer sciec student , but i am interested in knowing abt 11 th Dimention and M-theory . Can anybody gives me right link to know abt it thoroughly.

 

[the blob inc]

i think vectors are wrong

 

[janusz]

It isn't the curvature of the Earth (that sphere we live on) that makes the acceleration, it's the curvature of the spacetime near the earth. This makes the shortest path for the Kg. of sugar curved (it's just straight down in 3-space, but curved when you include the time dimension, which is experienced in 3-space as acceleration). And aren't your kids right? What we want from a Kg. of sugar is a certain amount of sweetenig power, not what it shows on a spring scale. This is why the metric Kg is better than the avoirdupois pound; it is a measure of mass, which is the same on the Earth, Moon, and Jupiter, and even in free fall, while the pound is a measure of force which is not constant even on Earth (lighter at the equater than at the poles due to centrifugal force).
So,where the curvature of Earth starts? I meant something else,spacetime as the entity,as the third observer.I have given this primitive example to form my question about space as a frame not a background...



The atom in its own rest frame does not notice any dilation effects. Its physics is just as good as some observer who sees it as traveling fast. All inertial frames see the same physics internally, is one of the two postulates of relativity.

And the relativistic effect on length is to shrink it. If two observers see each other moving with 86% of the speed of light, they will measure each other's lengths as half of their own.

And again,the spacetime as the third observer supplying the mater of framing of dimension and in the case of accelerating atom having not enough power to push the time into the reality of the atom.For the spacetime is it atom stretched half way trough Galaxy?
Thank You very much for your time .

 

[CJames]

As I recall, the idea of the big bang came from the observation that the universe we can see is expanding. It seems logical that if you could follow the paths of all the particles in the universe back in time, you would find that they had a common origin, a single point, at which space and time all the universe we know occupied a singularity. It isn't practical to actually follow all the particles back in time, but we can do calculations to show what might result.

There was some argument at first about whether the particles would actually come to a singularity. Maybe they just came into some close region of points, not actually a single point. But IIRC this argument was resolved in favor of the singularity. Gravitational forces would become immense, and no surface irregularities could endure. The universe, run backwards, would have to collapse into a perfect sphere, which would then have to collapse into a single point.

There are two definitions here of singuarity. Basically a singularity is just something that starts pumping out infinities. Physicists don't like singularities and usually interpret them as meaning something isn't quite complete, as do pretty much all other sciences.

In any case as I know it the current model of cosmology is something like this. The universe is infinite in space and time. That is, it will never collapse again, and it has no measureable size. I don't think this is totally confirmed, but I was under the impression that measurements of the cosmic background radiation had lead to this conclusion. The singularity that the universe supposedly sprang from, which is ultimately something that needs to be explained away, is infinite in size and density, rather than infinitely small and infinitely dense.

On the other hand, it is still possible that the universe is closed and will eventually collapse again. In this case the original singularity was in fact a point. However do NOT think of the universe after this as being spherical. The universe has no center and no edge. Instead, think of this model of the universe as though it were the SURFACE of a balloon, except 3-dimensional rather than 2-dimensional. I realize some of this may be over your head and for that I appologize.