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There Is No Single Instant In Time
tekkieRich writes "Some interesting news from the world of physics. Supposedly, in this paper, the author answers some of the major paradoxes (achilles vs. the turtle and Zeno) concerning our understanding of time. 'Impressed with the work is Princeton physics great, and collaborator of both Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman, John Wheeler, who said he admired Lynds' "boldness," while noting that it had often been individuals Lynds' age that "had pushed the frontiers of physics forward in the past."'"
Public release date: 31-Jul-2003
Contact: Brooke Jones
Brooke.Jones@australia.edu
Independent Communications Consultant
Ground-breaking work in understanding of time
Mechanics, Zeno and Hawking undergo revision
Full size image available through contact
A bold paper which has highly impressed some of the world's top physicists and been published in the August issue of Foundations of Physics Letters, seems set to change the way we think about the nature of time and its relationship to motion and classical and quantum mechanics. Much to the science world's astonishment, the work also appears to provide solutions to Zeno of Elea's famous motion paradoxes, almost 2500 years after they were originally conceived by the ancient Greek philosopher. In doing so, its unlikely author, who originally attended university for just 6 months, is drawing comparisons to Albert Einstein and beginning to field enquiries from some of the world's leading science media. This is contrast to being sniggered at by local physicists when he originally approached them with the work, and once aware it had been accepted for publication, one informing the journal of the author's lack of formal qualification in an attempt to have them reject it.
In the paper, "Time and Classical and Quantum Mechanics: Indeterminacy vs. Discontinuity", Peter Lynds, a 27 year old broadcasting school tutor from Wellington, New Zealand, establishes that there is a necessary trade off of all precisely determined physical values at a time, for their continuity through time, and in doing so, appears to throw age old assumptions about determined instantaneous physical magnitude and time on their heads. A number of other outstanding issues to do with time in physics are also addressed, including cosmology and an argument against the theory of Imaginary time by British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking.
"Author's work resembles Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity", said a referee of the paper, while Andrei Khrennikov, Prof. of Applied Mathematics at Vaxjo University in Sweden and Director of ICMM, said, "I find this paper very interesting and important to clarify some fundamental aspects of classical and quantum physical formalisms. I think that the author of the paper did a very important investigation of the role of continuity of time in the standard physical models of dynamical processes." He then invited Lynds to take part in an international conference on the foundations of quantum theory in Sweden.
Another impressed with the work is Princeton physics great, and collaborator of both Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman, John Wheeler, who said he admired Lynds' "boldness", while noting that it had often been individuals Lynds' age that "had pushed the frontiers of physics forward in the past."
In contrast, an earlier referee had a different opinion of the controversial paper. "I have only read the first two sections as it is clear that the author's arguments are based on profound ignorance or misunderstanding of basic analysis and calculus. I'm afraid I am unwilling to waste any time reading further, and recommend terminal rejection."
Lynds' solution to the Achilles and the tortoise paradox, submitted to Philosophy of Science, helped explain the work. A tortoise challenges Achilles, the swift Greek warrior, to a race, gets a 10m head start, and says Achilles can never pass him. When Achilles has run 10m, the tortoise has moved a further metre. When Achilles has covered that metre, the tortoise has moved 10cm...and so on. It is impossible for Achilles to pass him. The paradox is that in reality, Achilles would easily do so. A similar paradox, called the Dichotomy, stipulates that you can never reach your goal, as in order to get there, you must firstly travel half of the distance. But once you've done that, you must still traverse half the remaining distance, and half again, and so on. What's more, you can't even get started, as to travel a certain distance, you must firstly travel half
There Is No Single Instant In Time
Posted by timothy on Sunday August 03, @03:46AM
from the all-is-flux dept.
I've been counting down the seconds until i die and this guy tells me were are no seconds?! geez i dont want to freaking live forever
So, the next paradigm to disappear is the singularity of Black Holes; I never believed in them anyhow...
But, Lynds' is brilliant, if true/not disproofed/widely accepted.
n case the site (or routes to the site) get slashdotted. Here is a mirror.
Not even the people on FARK.com bought into this crap (where it was posted a week ago). The paper is a bunch of crap and doesn't tell us anything either we don't already know, or is in any way usefull.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
A similar paradox, called the Dichotomy, stipulates that you can never reach your goal, as in order to get there, you must firstly travel half of the distance. But once you've done that, you must still traverse half the remaining distance, and half again, and so on. What's more, you can't even get started, as to travel a certain distance, you must firstly travel half of that distance, and so on.
I always thought the reason you could never get started on the way to your goal was the 'trying to get a woman to go some place when you have been ready and waiting for ages' paradox
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
...Is this somehow parallel with how to know the exact location of a particle you must actually move the particle from that location?
If I'm understanding what I'm reading correctly, which I'm probably not, it seems that to locate a specific moment in time you have to be aware of that moment happening which takes time and thus you can't?
Actually, I'll shut up now. I'm probably just sounding stupid.
I probably shouldn't of posted this.
Me and my low self esteem.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
From the article:
--
In contrast, an earlier referee had a different opinion of the controversial paper. "I have only read the first two sections as it is clear that the author's arguments are based on profound ignorance or misunderstanding of basic analysis and calculus. I'm afraid I am unwilling to waste any time reading further, and recommend terminal rejection."
--
I'm not into the scientific journal "scene", as it were, but I expect that's about as insulting as a review can possibly be. So maybe this guy is onto something profound, but more likely it's smoke and mirrors.
I thought the solution to Zeno's paradox is that although you occupy an infinite series of points when you move, they can still sum to a finite distance. The Greeks may not have understood this, but this was all worked out centuries ago. By Cantor or someone.
So the author of this paper is claiming to solve a non-problem - doesn't sound very promising to me. Also, in these days of online preprint archives, why didn't the submitter link to the actual paper?
when slashcode decided to examine it.
The posting act begins when the submit button is pressed, and ends when the database updates it's article index.
All "events" have a beginning and an end. Some of them have a known duration so the delta is not noted, but it still exists.
I don't know what's so revolutionary about that stance, especially from a practical standpoint, other than maybe the "directionless" nature of time. I think that, however, is an oversimplification that fits into the author's little mental framework he wants to construct. I prefer to think of complex intervals as very small closed sets around the approximate instant. There's nothing wrong or counterintuitive about that.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
That means "Time Stand Still" really *is* a completely irrelevant tune... ;-)
Polymorphism -- It's what you make of it.
This seems to me kind of like how you can't just find pi by measuring the circumference or a circle and dividing it by the diameter. I had always thought of this being because there is no such thing as an exact point in space, but maybe I was just misunderstanding or something. It reasons to assume that if there is no exact point in space then there is also no exact point in time.
As to the referee who stated "he author's arguments are based on profound ignorance or misunderstanding of basic analysis and calculus." He needs to understand that math doesn't work if you don't understand the physics behind. Math without physics tells me if I mix a cup of water and a cup of milk I get two cups of fluid. It just aint so.
Ever noticed how time seems to fly past when you're having fun? Or how something boring can drag out for ever? Or even better, how a workday can seemingly be endless, but a week full of them is gone boefore you knew what happened?
While it is a good while since I studied physics, it tells me that while we can make clocks that appers to measure how fast times goes, we move 'along' in time in a more haphazard fashion, slowing and accelerating as we blunder on. Time might be the diminsion thats 90 on the other three (width, depth and lenght), but we have a lot more problems determining both an objects movement in that dimension and the position in it.
In short, while some of the article went over my head (I've just gotten out of bed y'know), I think he might be on to something.
ps: It's sorta scary to see that people whos very job it is to broaden our understanding can be horrible quick to judge ("I have only read the first two sections as it is clear that the author's arguments are based on profound ignorance or misunderstanding of basic analysis and calculus. I'm afraid I am unwilling to waste any time reading further, and recommend terminal rejection."), as that will only slow down the speed we as a society learns about the world around us. Someone might be off the mark, but it's hard to decide from the first two paragrahps they write.
pps: In Terry Pratches well know discworld-series, the classical paradox is about a tortoise outrunning an arrow instead. And off course, the real question is what to do with all the tortoises on a stick the testing of that axiom gives you... ;P
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
The article is either incredibly bad journalism and way over-simplifying the paper, or else it stinks of a hoax.
"Lynds also points out that in all cases a time value represents an interval on time, rather than an instant. "For example, if two separate events are measured to take place at either 1 hour or 10.00 seconds, these two values indicate the events occurred during the time intervals of 1 and 1.99999...hours and 10.00 and 10.0099999...seconds respectively." "
This is stunningly obvious. I learnt the resolution of this, and the tortoise paradox, at age 17 in high school maths classes.
Also, why is the contact for further information an "Independent Communications Consultant"?
OK, I RTFA but i didn't RTFP (paper).
The tortoise vs. Achilles paradox has not really plagued modern physics in that it is not a paradox (anymore - it might have been to the Greeks). The supposed paradox lies in the misconception that an sum with infinite terms will always yield an infinite number. This is obviously not true - As Achilles needs to traverse ever smaller distances he also does that in ever smaller amounts of time.
And the times add nicely up to a finite time - the time when he overtakes the tortoise.
The article claims that this is still a paradox. I think based on the idea in this quote:
> With some thought it should become clear that no matter how small the time
> interval, or how slowly an object moves during that interval, it is still
> in motion and it's position is constantly changing, so it can't have
> a determined relative position at any time, whether during a interval,
> however small, or at an instant. Indeed, if it did, it couldn't be in motion."
Say WHAT?!?
Please tell me why you can't have a well determined position as a function of time and be in motion as well?
He goes on to claim that uncertainties in the values of times is somehow a profound proof that no instant in time exists. Hey, you could say the same thing about the distance the poor fella has to transverse - thus spoiling the whole 'ever smaller distances' thing.
Please enlighten me.
Of course. There's only past and future. A little thought experiment will prove that to you. As everyone knows time can be divided ever finer. Fematoseconds, attoseconds, etc. however fine you go, there's always a past and a future, but no present.
This is true if you postulate time as a continuum. If time is discrete then this does not hold true. Some people working with loop quantum gravity postulates both discrete time and space. See qgravity for more.
(Elegance is not an option)
The lack of a fundamental unit of meaning of any sort was established in the humanities long before it came into vogue in the hard sciences.
And a look at the title of the web site certaily brought to my mind Thomas Kunh's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that I happen to have sitting right next to me here.
EurekaAlert? That's a joke, right?
I read about this in the newspaper and thought "wow this sounds exciting". Then I saw the actual paper. It turns out that his ideas are not fleshed out with any mathematics, so its just a philosphical position that he is taking.
I do think that time is a bit of a mystery, and its possible that that his ideas may be roughly right. It might imply that moments or "moment intervals" were some sort of fractal sets, such that a moment can never be finitely splittable (only infinitely splittable). A mathematical model that accomplished this (within the framework of currently accepted/known physics) would be remarkable.
John McTaggart proposed a similar theory in the "Nature of Existence" - written in 1921. Perhaps if physicists payed more attention to philosophy ...
..."the Achilles and the tortoise paradox, submitted to Philosophy of Science, helped explain the work. A tortoise challenges Achilles, the swift Greek warrior, to a race, gets a 10m head start, and says Achilles can never pass him. When Achilles has run 10m, the tortoise has moved a further metre. When Achilles has covered that metre, the tortoise has moved 10cm...and so on. It is impossible for Achilles to pass him. The paradox is that in reality, Achilles would easily do so." The first snapshot was when Achilles was at 10m, then after another meter (at 11m), etc... If you keep taking increasingly smaller and smaller step, your never going to reach the point in time the Achilles actually crosses the tortoise! DUH!
If someone has been aware of it, my seeming lack of qualification has sometimes been a hurdle too. I think quite a few physicists and philosophers have difficulty getting their heads around the topic of time properly as well. I'm not a big fan of quite a few aspects of academia, but I'd like to think that whats happened with the work is a good example of perseverance and a few other things eventually winning through.
Sorry for the long quote but it highlights something I've been gnashing my teeth over for a while - academia is rarely about real research these days, only chasing research funding - my entire CS Masters was about a program design paradigm with highly esoteric underpinnings and very little mathematical substance - on the other hand it was well funded!
Hence it doesn't surprise me that the research for this important and highly academic topic was done by a non-academic, and he got little or no help from the academic community.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
I'm not into the scientific journal "scene", as it were, but I expect that's about as insulting as a review can possibly be. So maybe this guy is onto something profound, but more likely it's smoke and mirrors.
Having been exposed to that "scene", I can tell you that the referees for papers submitted to academic journals are capable of being quite clueless when they want to be. I've known a number of authors who got comments back from referees which made it quite clear the referees hadn't even bothered trying to understand the paper.
Believe it or not, the whole paper-refereeing scene isn't that much different from the Slashdot moderation system. Referees are chosen more or less at random (from within the community of people who are knowledgeable about the paper's subject matter, and who are willing to read and comment on a paper.) And just like Slashdot, some of them won't take the time to read the paper completely, some won't understand what the paper is really saying, and some will let their own personal biases determine how they vote.
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
Zeno's theories are pretty well-established, you know "Man is walking across a road, if you keep on dividing the time intervals, he'll never get there." This Lynds seems to just be restating the theory with some fancy terms.
... you can try and mark an instant in time, but that instant still represents an interval. The more precise your equipment, the smaller the interval, but the interval can get infinitely smaller.
It isn't a theory, rather a paradox. If you keep dividing the time & distance intervals, the two objects never pass each other. They just get infinitely closer. Hence the paradox. The paradox (and most of science for that matter) makes the assumption that time can be measured in finite bits.
What this guy is saying that there are no moments in time (or rather, there is no basic/smallest unit of time), which is why the two objects pass each other.
When you think about it for a little bit, it makes sense. It's kind of like PI
It's 4am, I've been coding for too long tonight, and can't truly parse the article as well.
That being said, I'd say that perhaps the young man, not being a "classical" physicist, has a fresh perspective on the matter? You know, perhaps he's seeing the forest through some different trees....
Dunno, just a point for discussion.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Oh well - if there's no such thing as time I can spend as long on /. as I like. :)
Video Game cheats, hints a
Oookay... an amateur publishing in a low impact journal.
I must say I agree with the quoted referee but on the other hand I am not suprised that the article got published. Peer review system is breaking down because of the sheer volume of new articles and the low priority scientsts give to reviewing other people's papers.
BOO! TERRO
Correct me if I'm wrong here (IANAM), but didn't calculus solve this problem like, a few hundred years ago?
Just because Shakespeare grew up in a small town and never received any formal education does not stop him from writing Hamlet.
It may take 4+ years of College training to learn most of the existing definitions / derivations / equations. But it only takes a genious to come up with a eureka in physics and philosophy.
For those of you who don't understand the article (myself included), it maybe because the article is just a rather crappy summary of the work. The actuall paper is to be published on the AUGUST issue of "Foundations of Physics Letters". Wait to read it then criticize.
After reading the story, I found this theorically really interesting... And in fact I'm starting to believe he's right ;-)
/.)
... if time is continuous and that there isn't a thing like single points in time (which effectively explain some things), why do you, human, believe that we could measure single points ? Could it be that computers functions even more identically to our brain that we suspected ?
...
... :-)
Ok, let do a computer analogy (hey we're on
I mean, one of the big difference between the brain and computer, is that the computer digitalize the information, it quantify it. I thought previously that the brain functionned more in an analog mode...
But if his hypothesis is right, and if single points in time aren't a "true" reality... and are just a human point of view...
Then the fact that we function like that, is perhaps because our brain effectively "digitalize"/quantify the information, like a computer. Only that the brain "digitalize" better (ie, we don't seem to even see that it is "digitalized", we only see continuous electric signals), but in a deep real way, the brain really function like a computer : to understand the world, it quantify it. So we could have artefacts and loss of the "true" reality
And this would explain why we are then able to quantify things like the movement -- because we accept the error of our "digitalization" of the world.
It's also find an echo on the uncertainty principle of heisenberg
Wouldn't it be a funny thing if we realize that we function like a computer and we approximize the real world, and not only the real world (after all we know that our senses are prone to error), but that this quantification of the world affect deeply the way we consider/understand the universe itself ?
-What experimental predictions does this new model make? i.e. the theory must be falsifiable
-Why is this new model better than current theories? i.e. the new theory should contain as few parameters as possible
For instance, Einstein's papers made some bold experimental predictions - his theory could easily be proved or disproved on the basis of experiment (time dilation, specifically, is easily testable). Further, special relativity completed the unification of electricity and magnetism and accounted for the trouble in detecting the ether - making his theory preferable to old concepts, which could not account for various "coincidences" in Maxwell's equations. If anyone is going to be comparing this guy to Einstein, his theory had better be clearing up some holes in modern physics or making some bold new experimentally testable predictions.
So, has anyone read the actual paper? Does it give an answer to these questions? And is Foundations of Physics Letters a respectable journal? I've never heard of it before in my life.
As for Achilles' "paradox", it took some time for me to understand it, but now it is obvious that the mathematical model used simply cannot account for the time beyond the point where Achilles passes the tortoise. Therefore, in that model, of course he cannot pass it, and time "stops". This not being what we observe in reality, a better model is required; just like Newtonian mechanics not being compatible with electromagnetics, time dilation, etc. but simpler.
I'd have to read the actual paper, but the linked article definitely stinks and points to the guy being a crackpot. One of many...
I just let out the "nastiest,longest, most putrid smelling" of farts in a long time.
So if there were a moment in time that would be it.
Trust me... friends were there they can testify
Not sanitized for your protection, you insestuious clod
Well time need not exist if you imagine an infinite number of parallel universes all of which sucedd each other to give the "illusion" of time.
Wanted : A Signature.
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001197/0 2/Zeno's_Paradoxes_-_A_Timely_Solution.pdf
/. ed
It may not be the same paper that will be published in Foundation of Physics Letter in August. But it is a complete paper on Peter Lynds' discussion on Zeno's Paradox.
Get it before it's
I would have thought that Quantum uncertainty would have made it obvious that time doesn't have definite intervals. It's pretty much the same argument to say that you don't know exactly where something is at a specific 'moment' in time as it is to say that you can't specifically determint the 'moment' at which it was exactly there.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001197/02/ Zeno's_Paradoxes_-_A_Timely_Solution.pdf
:)
Just in case anyone actually wants to read it before commenting.
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Wouldn't now be considered a single instant in time?
What's described in the article all seems pretty straightforward and already well understood. Either the article is outright lying about this "bold paper" being published in the "Foundations of Physics Letters", or august is a really slow month and they needed some amusing filler...
That's just what I was about to say!
"The usual rejoinder to someone who says 'They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Galileo' is to say 'But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.'" (Carl Sagan)
That it is, anyway. But the comments it quotes from other scientists, especially those favorable to the crackp^H^H^H^H^H^Hyoung groundbreaker, point to him restating the obvious, at best. OK, who knows...
Science is mostly about seeing the trees not the forest as as a structure it is already overwhelmingly too large to be comprehended by single individuals.
BOO! TERRO
Doesn't the term unit define a unit in time?
"Derp de derp."
I fail to see how this is different, or if it is different in some subtle way, how this explanation is better than the common Calculus approach to these paradoxes.
This is what comes of racing turtles. *I* race penguins, and they are fast, slippery little buggers quite ahead of their time.
Believe it or not, the whole paper-refereeing scene isn't that much different from the Slashdot moderation system.
Has any referee ever sent a paper back and scrawled on it: "J00 f4gg0t! If I ever meet j00 I will kick your ass!"
I accidentally hit the Post Anonymously button on this one.
Any moderations should be made against this post.
That is, if you can find the time to do so.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
I think I speak for all of us... You be the king
In science the burden of proof is on you. If you can't make your case so that you peers can readily understand the evidence your work will most likely be disqualified with comments like those he got from the referee.
You may be 100% right but if your paper is confusing, uses unorthodox terminology and contains crap figures you can bet that the referee is going to disqualify it. This guy should have co-authored the paper with a professional scientist who knows the proper language and the way to present new ideas. And this attitude is not elitism. Science must be ultraconservative to keep the crackpots out. And unlike the crackpots would like to believe, given enough time and attempts to push a new revolutionary theory through (not by one person but by many) it will eventually be accepted as the proof for it accumulates.
BOO! TERRO
Given the recent decline in the quality of reviews, such a letter would not surprise me.
BOO! TERRO
The Calculus approach is really a summation of an infinite series. Basically that approach breaks the bits of time into infinitely small pieces -- but they are still broken into pieces. The assumption that time can be broken down into an atomic unit is still there. At least, I think that's the gist of what he's saying.
The journal's site is here, though the August (autumn) issue isn't yet available online.
Some significant red flags here. First and most obvious is the wunderkind's lack of training and (presumed) familiarity with established concepts of physics and contemporary research. This isn't a deal-breaker, of course, but it's worth remembering. I'd love to see untrained theorists challenging - successfully - old-guard physicists with some astounding new insights, but I don't think that's happening here.
Wheeler's one-word endorsement - "boldness" - isn't ringing, and the bit about his age (he's 27) is irrelevant.
From a referee: "I have only read the first two sections as it is clear that the author's arguments are based on profound ignorance or misunderstanding of basic analysis and calculus. I'm afraid I am unwilling to waste any time reading further, and recommend terminal rejection." Ouch with a capital 'O'. There's no maths even referred to in this article, either, which I'd like to see.
"Lynds says that the paradoxes arose because people assumed wrongly that objects in motion had determined positions at any instant in time, thus freezing the bodies motion static at that instant and enabling the impossible situation of the paradoxes to be derived." This hasn't really been a problem since quantum indeterminacy.
From a "prominent Oxford mathematician": "A prominent Oxford mathematician commented, "It's as astonishing, as it is unexpected, but he's right." Unnamed source. HUGE red flag.
Within a quote: "Naturally the parameter and boundary of their respective position and magnitude are naturally determinable up to the limits of possible measurement as stated by the general quantum hypothesis and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, but this indeterminacy in precise value is not a consequence of quantum uncertainty." He gives no alternative explanation for the origins of this 'indeterminacy.' Up to this point the article's summary has proceeded along basic Planck/Heisenberg lines. There's really nothing new here, except the (in this article) unsupported assertion of a new form of indeterminacy that's not related to quantum effects on measurement.
"Lynds continues that the cosmological proposal of imaginary time also isn't compatible with a consistent physical description, both as a consequence of this, and secondly, "because it's the relative order of events that's relevant, not the direction of time itself, as time doesn't go in any direction." Consequently it's meaningless for the order of a sequence of events to be imaginary, or at right angles, relative to another sequence of events. When approached about Lynds' arguments against his theory, Hawking failed to respond." Ignores Feynman's 'arrow of time' characterization of antimatter as equivalent to matter moving in time-opposite fashion. Also ignores simple observation that time does, in fact, appear to move in one direction. In a layman's article it would be good to mention Lynds' explanation for this, if he has one. If he doesn't, well... And Hawking 'refused to respond' to whom? To Lynds? To the author? On what questions? In what timeframe? A phone call during dinner from Australia? Red flag.
"Although Lynds remembers being frustrated with Grigson, and once standing at a blackboard explaining how simple it was and telling him to "hurry up and get it", Lynds says that, unlike some others, Prof. Grigson was still encouraging and would always make time to talk to him, even taking him into the staff cafeteria so they could continue talking physics." Seriously big red flag. 'Hurry up and get it'? Sounds like high school bong-water theorizing.
"Although still controversial, judging by the response it has already received from some of science's leading lights, Lynds' work seems likely to establish him as a groundbreaking figure in respect to increasing our understanding of time in physics. It a
That's the scientific community for you. I've noticed myself that if you propose something that is not like anything they know you will always meet people like that. I allways dismiss them because in my opinion a good scientist is open for every new idea and will try to debunk it with reasonable arguments instead of telling you that it's nonsense without giving explanations or even thinking it over.
-- Cheers!
Ah... so the human brain's "frequency" can be changed on the run like that of a P-IV? Excellent. Now, my second question is: how can I overclock my brain?
BOO! TERRO
This article was posted on fark sometime between 0.99999... and 1.0 weeks ago.
(via google cache) http://216.239.37.104/search?q=cache:philsci-archi ve.pitt.edu/archive/00001197/02/Zeno%27s_Paradoxes _-_A_Timely_Solution.pdf
If motion is the definition for the delta in position that is occured in a delta time, you can argue that on a given time T you are on position P and on another given time T' you are on position P'. If you take the snapshot at position P at time T, there seems to be no motion. This is correct, since there is no delta T, so there can't be any motion.
When you define time as something that can't be measured in a single unit, i.e. there can't be a definition for a time T, there always will be motion when you try to reach the time T you otherwise would have defined when time would have been measurable in a single unit
The paradoxes that are tried to be solved are word-games. If you simply use every day highschool physics math, you can calculate exactly when Achilles will overtake the turtle and even the spot. Because the reality is not in sync with the paradox, the paradox contains a flaw. It's thus not about solving some physics problem, but a problem with words that's embedded inside the paradox.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
In my reading of his autobiographical, "Surely you are joking Mr Feynman?" I read some implied criticisms of Wheeler. I remember a chapter from this book where Wheeler and Feynman were going to address a small seminar of big brains at the Institute for Advanced Studies, at Princeton, where Einstein was a fellow. This was while Feynman was still a grad student, and Wheeler was his thesis supervisor. IIRC Feynman was nervous about addressing one theoretical aspect of the problem. Wheeler told him to address all the other aspects of the problem, and he would handle the part that made the tricky bit.
When it came time to give the presentation Feynman gives his portion of the presentation, but Wheeler begs off, saying he isn't quite ready, but he expects to complete a paper about it Real Soon Now.
I guess this is the Institute for Advanced Studies equivalent of "the dog ate my homework".
After the seminar Wolfgang Pauli took Feynman aside, and asked him if he could tell him anything about Wheeler's paper. Feynman said he couldn't, that Wheeler hadn't told him anything. IIRC, Pauli said something like, "He hasn't even told his own grad student about his ideas? That paper will never be written."
And it never was.
At least that is how I remember that chapter.
let me state for the record that my educational background in no way qualifies me to register opinions on the foundations of physics, but niether did Lynd's and look at all the hoopla he's raising.
this line caught my attention:
Lynds' solution to all of the paradoxes lay in the realisation of the absence of an instant in time underlying a bodies motion and that its position was constantly changing over time and never determined. He comments, "With some thought it should become clear that no matter how small the time interval, or how slowly an object moves during that interval, it is still in motion and it's position is constantly changing, so it can't have a determined relative position at any time, whether during a interval, however small, or at an instant. Indeed, if it did, it couldn't be in motion."
well, duh! that's because to determine if something is in motion you need at least two "samples" of information, namely, the positions at times t and t1. an instant in time would be represented by a number with an infinite amount of digits after the decimal place, such as pi seconds. one instant in time is not enough to take two "samples" and thus, not enough to determine whether something is moving relative to the observer. at an instant in time, there is no motion relative to the observer. it's like putting the pause button on the universe.
furthermore, just because it is impossible to determine the position of a moving body at a given instant in time between t and t1, does not mean that at that instant it didn't have a determined position. this is a problem of epistemology disguised as a revolution in physics.
I doubt Lynds will be remembered a la Zeno et al. 2500 years from now for reasking the question of what's divisible and what's not. I'm really quite surprised at the underratedness of this newsitem, for having been out on the press for at least a month now.
. of note: the original paper is not linked to, and the entry was created by Lynds himself.
And isn't "Independent Communications Consultant" just another way to say "we ran out of real material so we just took the next freelance writer's submission?" (ok, i'm sorry, that was flamebait)
here's a link to the sequel to Lynd's paper discussed in the article: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001197/
while i tend to think that open information initiatives like MIT's DSpace (dspace.org) are great and wonderful things, papers that have not undergone rigorous peer review, like this one, tend to bring me back to reality.
but hey, i'm happy he's being published somewhere and that people aren't rudely rejecting him. i can very much believe the claim that the work deals with the philosophical nature of science, but don't go trying to push the mathematics of something like this through a university department.
and time, like the previous 3 dimensions, can be described as being an axis along which one travels in the 4th dimension. if time is not a physical quantity, or at least discretely described, then neither are any of the quantities in the previous 3, and then oh no, what's the use of living? [/rant]
The reason I'm making this post is that I want to point out one thing. Alot of times, when mods, myself included (I metamod about three times a day), come across an article that ranges beyond or above our understanding of a topic, its hard to make a decision as to whether or not something is "informative", like in this article, where I see one post supporting the theory modded informative, and one post criticsing the theory also modded informative. This is physics, people, not YRO. You're either right or wrong in this case. Please do some basic research, please, before modding a post up, just because it sounds intelligent and is well written.
Btw, for all the detractors, this paper was originally published in a European Physics Journal, and most papers submitted to said journals undergo stringent review before being published as fact. This kid is getting supporters in all the right places, and you'll notice that many of his detractors tend to be the type of people who were still arguing the Earth was flat back in the 1800's. Some people just don't want to change, and many of these people are also detractors of Superstring Theory, and are apparently comfortable in dealing with the conflict between quantum mechanics and the theories of general and special relativity.
Another thing I'd like to point out are some of the problems this guy has had getting this paper to light, and receiving the help he deserved from memebers of academia, because of his lack of academic credentials. This is, to a degree, still going on right now. People need to realize that this guy is taking a lot of flak from various experts simply because he doesn't meet their academic pedigree.
Some "experts" need to be reminded that once upon a time someone wrote a very special paper, also widely denounced, also widely refuted for a while. And that person wasn't a department head at a prestigous university, nor was he being funded by wealthy patrons to run his own lab. He worked at a patent office.
Mod Points: Helping you keep your opinion to yourself.
The thing is, you might "solve" Zeno's paradox as much as you want by referring to examples, but most attempts at attacking Zeno's paradox via "logical" examples doesn't do anything to explain it, but merely points at motions and declares the matter solved.
Look at your answer again - you just restated the paradox
If you keep taking increasingly smaller steps, you will never reach your goal.
That is the core of the paradox: During the race, you will always have an infinite number of "half-distances" left.
Yet, the paradox as stated is correct in stating that to move from point A to B (provided they are not the same :), you have to cover every "half-distance" in between - an infinite number of them.
So how do you prove that covering an infinite number of half distance is possible to do in finite time?
That's where the aforementioned limits of infinite series comes in.
Today, this is pretty basic maths, but it had people stumped for a proof for more than two thousand years.
There are actually 3 states.
#1. Runner gaining on turtle.
#2. Runner and turtle at the same point.
#3. Runner ahead of turtle.
Now, because we don't have a smallest unit of distance or a smallest unit of time, our graphs of #1 show an curve with the asymptote being #2.
This is a "paradox" only because we can conceive of time divisions of hundreds of thousanths of millionths of billionths of a second and fractions of an inch that are just as small.
It wasn't possible to tell when, exactly, he passes the turtle because it assumed that time could be divided small enough and that objects were discrete enough.
The paper has been published in Foundation of Physics Letters. This journal doe not have a good reputation. The Editor in Chief of the Letters is listed as a member of the infamous AIAS. Read here and here. and links therein. In particular read this paper. Chances are that indeed the "Zeno paper" is a disinfo paper. ark
This should have been the: Why-Didn't-I-Think-Of-That-Dept. Doh!
What a crappy paper. Even this single line doesn't tell us ANYTHING about Hawkings position on this matter, but somehow makes him look bad. Good thing he didn't even care to respond.
Heck, I even have this feeling that the author of this page is somehow reffering to Hawkings diability in responding vocally. What a shame.
Zeno's paradox is no paradox, if you understand elementary mathematics like the convergence of series. Any undergrad maths student is able to comprehend this.
It's pretty strange that somebody who fails in basic maths should have developed a new theory of Einstein level. Well, and for any knee-jerk physicist reactions: Einstein did understand math very well. Although we wasn't able to create the needed mathematical theories (Riemannian geometry and affine connections) himself, he had to rely on Riemann and Cartan for this.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
With this theory, I can now safely ignore my alarm clock tomorrow. In fact I won't set it at all. I will simply mathematically contract my working week to zero, and expand my weekend to 168 hours.
I only hope my boss 'gets' the article.
Sounds like "Thief of Time" by Terry Pratchett to me... in that book a guy tries to build a clock that will run on the 'tick' of the universe -- absolute time if you will. However, in building it he manages to stop time short, effectively, as Pratchett puts it, 'sticking an iron bar between the cogs of time'
Because it seems to unify micro and macro world?
--
www.soundclick.com/bands/6/northwestmusic.htm
That hasn't been a paradox in years, not since
people learned how to sum an infinity series.
Say the archilles is running at 1meter per second
and is 1 meter behind the tortoise who is moving at 1/2 a meter per second, then
v = D/T for that total, and for any given length
of time,
D_total = D_1 + D_2 + D_3 + D_4...
T_total = T_1 + T_2 + T_3 + T_4...
D = 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8... = 2
T = 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8... = 2
So archilles passes the tortois after 2 seconds
just as he should. Of course poor zeno who never
learned to sum series or break out of loops is stuck counting ever smaller freese frames in
an infinite regression, like the famous oozalum bird. But that doesn't bother our athlete or his
slow foe, or nature one iota.
A man is walking a distance of 100 miles at 5 mph. We take a snapshot a 1 second, then at 1.1 seconds, then 1.11 seconds, etc... Does the man reach his goal: yes. But do we ever get a snapshot of him reaching his goal: no. Does that imply he never gets there: NO IT DOES NOT.
Just because you read each page of a book slower than you read the page before, such that you practically never reach the last page doesn't mean the last page doesn't exist, nor does it imply a paradox.
"Stating the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men." - George Orwell.
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
This seems in a way similar to the way chaos theory deals with all of its measurments Coastlines are of indeterminate length depending on the length of your ruler, temperature is very dependent on the area sampled, thus positions of things in time vary greatly based on the "length" of your time ruler. Not suprising, but very important I think to have chaos type thinking moving into how we deal with time.
You have the tortoise, you have Achilles, and you also have a rock which is between Achilles and the tortoise. In order to move 'infinitely close' to the tortus, Achilles needs to pass the rock, which is (say) 3 meters behind the tortoise. But doesn't the paradox also apply to Achilles and the rock? Doesn't it apply to all pairs of objects?
Of the paradox had any validity at all, then no motion whatsoever could ever happen. Obviously that's not the case.
At some point, Achilles is on the other side of the tortoise, whether or not he ever has the same position is irrelevant.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Since my first post which was a joke got moderated troll, i will help the moderators out by posting the quite obvious links one gets when they type the name peter lynds into google.
The source that everyone keeps getting this article from is a self published online journal, meaning noone has read it or reviewed it, the author just submitted it himself.
There is a certain anti intellectualism that runs through slashdot sometimes that i find disturbing.
I will concede that it might, just might be legit, but the markers are all there for a hoax.
No need to wait. Here is his follow-up paper, which focuses on Lynds's so-called resolution to Zeno's paradoxes.
You have to understand that these are the people who have spent a lot of their time trying to understand how to seperate the sound from noise, you can't blame them for being bitter and tactless. Trust me when I say that listening and correcting crackpots gets old really quick, especially when the time could have been used in far better ways.
You should read sci.research.new-theories and you'll see what I mean.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that a mathematical physics model can accurately explain Zeno's paradox as well as a philosophical explanation can.
This is going to be a bit long, so bear with me.
First of all, as others have said here, the solution to Zeno's paradox has been discussed at length and largely agreed to be this.
The idea here is that you can have a functon that describes distance covered over some arbitrary time interval. The point is that you must be able to describe a time interval.
Our amateur physicist is claiming that in fact you can't describe an arbitrary time interval because there is no such thing-- there is only an infinite set of time and that once you pick an arbitrary interval out of that set, you're not talking about a moving object but rather an arbitrary point in space as well. That is, you can't pick out an arbitrary point or interval in time and still be talking about motion or distance outside of that interval, and, in the case of Zeno's paradox, you have to 'unfreeze' time to watch the race continue, in which case your runner is back to having to cover an infinite distance.
What I'm saying is that physics has described a mathematical, theoretical solution to the paradox. What it has not done is provide a solution which is intuitive to the spirit of the paradox.
Now, you might be thinking to yourself that the mathematical solution is a very intuitive solution-- after all, if I go to watch a race between a tortoise and Achilles, I'm sure to see Achilles leave that turtle in the dust, and now it's nice that I have a physics solution that explains what I see. You'd be correct! But here's where I make my claim, and I know it's very strange.
A sentence in the article that caught my eye the most is this one:
"There's no such thing as an instant in time or present moment in nature. It's something entirely subjective that we project onto the world around us. That is, it's the outcome of brain function and consciousness."
We're taught from all directions in Western society that math and physics and the sciences are objective, and things in the humanities are subjective. I suggest that the opposite is true, for certain technical definitions of subjective and objective.
My claim is that it is the sciences which are subjective descriptions of the world, and that subject-less, non-located descriptions are objective. Science relies on measurement and mathematics to get anywhere, but measurement and math are subject dependent. You cannot measure what you cannot experience. Yes, that includes your instruments.
In the case of this amateur phyisicst's work, he is making a claim about the world that attempts to describe things from a non-subjective perspective. His claim is essentially, I think, rather intuitive and obvious. His claim is just that it is us, as subjects, we project time intervals on a universe in which they may not really exist-- that is, time is not objectively quantifiable because objective quantification implies no people around to do the quantification, which means that there aren't any physicists to use mathematics to describe their reality.
While to most philosophers this sort of claim is routine, most physicists and mathematicians are aghast at the suggestion that their science is essentially dependent on the experience they have as subjects. I think that even though some physicists are starting to take note of this, it won't do much to hurt physics (nor should it), nor will it invalidate arguments and proofs which already deal with Zeno's paradox (nor should it). What I hope that it will do, however, is make some of the more arrogant physicists who have a large chip on their shoulder (Hi, Alan Sokal!) understand that they are not the keepers of objective world views, and that the work they do is just as subjective as any other human endeavour.
Regards,
Edward
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/information.html
Here is the paper (in PDF format)
So how do we define "now"?
Omnis amans amens
Hmm.
When I take a photo of some moving objects, ain't I getting a snapshot of their positions at one instant of time?
Thought this would a good thread to post some
x xx.lanl.gov/abs/hep-ph/0307345
other recent physics news...
1. The've just found a pentaquark state.
The rule in quark theory and QCD (the theory of
the 'color' force that binds quarks), is that
quarks always come in triplets or quark anti-quark pairs. Haven't never seen a free quark, theres always been a little nagging doubt that
quark are real. So that fact that they have found
a suprisingly (for QCD resonances) long lived state that can only be make of 5 quarks, the Z+ at 1540Mev, which made of two up quarks, two down quarks and an anti-strange
quark. It was previously predicted by QCD, and is a classic example of the exception proving the rule.
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/hep-ex/0307088
http://
Dark Matter, after 10 years of searching theres
finally for faint experiment signals that dark
matter exists. This was been found because two experiments looking for collisions between WIMPs
and cold crystals have found significantly more
signal when at time of the year then the earth
is moving against the motion of the galaxies
spiral arm, than when its moving towards it.
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0307403
Yep, couldn't agree more. Lately I submitted a review paper and the reviewer commented 'that there was nothing new in the paper and that everything could be found in the literature'!
Read the article, please. The article refers to this paper: "Time and Classical and Quantum Mechanics: Indeterminacy vs. Discontinuity"
You linked to a follow-up paper that focuses on Lynds's so-called solution to Zeno's paradoxes. By the way, what is the point of linking to the Google cache when the original PDF is still available?
To the best of my understanding time is a two different things, a coordinate on a 4 dimentional plane used to map a specific spacial anomily at any given momemt(moment being subjective and relitive)the second being a mesurement of liniar existence in a human mindset. What they seem to be doing in this article is nitpicking on simple constants such as they fact that units of mesurement can be broken down infinately, all he is doing is creating a need for a more complicated mapping/update which can be already extrapolated through deviding the mean locations of the object by two larger time units (second #1 divided by second #2 will give location of object in seconds #1.5 through mean change in latitude\longitude) whup didly do! anyway time to pretend to work enough rambling for me, and yes my spelling is poor, I know this.
Whats A sig anyway
It seems pretty clear to me that the zeno paradox is not a paradox at all but just our inability to intuitively solve maths with infinite terms. It reminds me of those visual illusion drawings that cause our brains to make sense of things in a missleading way. Check it out.
At the same time, this does not disprove his paper since the article, is not well writen enough to be useful in determining the validity of this work.
Liberty.
The attached picture has a young man eating noodles, or something similar. The article is not actually printed, but references to how wonderful it is are printed, without proof. These paradoxes have been explored (though perhaps not refuted per se) using this guy's thoughts many times over by now.
At one point in time Einstein was an unqualified patent clerk. Many years later, he is finally awarded a Nobel prize, because one of his three main discoveries was finally within the certain appraisal of his peers.
Interestingly, at no point in time were Einstein's qualifications equal to his peers'. He managed to pass the Achilles' Academy at a non-instant of time.
I don't understand this concept of indeterminate relationship. It strikes me that his claim boils down to saying that time and motion are not possible unless you regard the set of physical relationships as constituting an uncountable infinity.
But what is the big deal with that? R is uncountable on an open interval, but it still retains a fully ordered relationship.
Zeno's paradox functions because it forces you to analyze time as if it could be mapped onto a countable set (halving interval N).
That said, I don't regard time as a well defined physical quantity. Einstein proved long ago that time does not function as a simple ordering relationship. Yet the only reason I can see that we use the abstraction of time is to suggest that physical ordering relationships exist.
I tend to view physics as having a trinary logic: true, false, and ungrantable. A foundation for physics which was formally non-predictive (lacking a human interpretation of time) would certainly belong to the last bucket, for as long as time remains a proxy of human purpose.
The mistake that people often make is that they assume that the scientific community is a democracy. Well, it's not. If anything it is a meritocracy. If you come from a no-name group and/or have no established academic trackrecord you will find it hard to have your papers accepted. You will have to work ten times harder in order to convince the referees to accept your paper. It's tough, but fair.
BOO! TERRO
But I have Karma to burn ;)
/. crowd a useful source of information on the entire subject of time (so that this article isn't entirely pointless), I would like to point out the Scientific American issue entirely devoted to the subject. Specifically, the September 2002 Special Issue _A Matter Of Time_ was excellent, and I would highly recommend reading the same to anyone interested in the scientific, or physilogical basis of time. For those of you that have a subscription to the Scientific American Archive (either personal or through your college) heres the direct link to that issue.
So getting back to the topic. From the comments that are here so far it seems that the article and conclusions are of questionable origin and merits, so in an effort to give all the
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
Your post is nonsensical. How can you speak of non-simultaneous observations and at the same time (no pun...) refer to time as a subjective illusion? Are you talking about "the flow of time in one direction"?
There can be no useful distinction between what is "really real" and what models seem to match our sensory data. For example, in string theory you use multi-dimensional membranes where different vibrational harmonics represent different elementary particles. Is this just a practical mathematical model or do these membranes really exist? The question is meaningless. "Das Ding an sich", as postulated by Kant is meaningless.
In quantum mechanics particles and energy can interact over small distances of time (see the Heisenberg uncertainty principle), just as they interact over small distances of space. Also in the theory of relativity time and space are handled almost identically by the equations with the speed of light, c, being just a convertional factor between distances in time and distances in space (almost like converting between meters and feet).
Thus both our best physics models of the world and our subjective understanding of time wants to treat it like a separate real dimension (not a SciFi dimension that you walk through, but a mathematical dimension - a separate orthogonal axis). What further criterions for something "existing" can you have?
The flow of time seems to be purely an illusion though.
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
by the lack of brilliance that this guy shows us in his paper. I thought everyone knew that a so-called "instant in time" was taking that 1/t as t approaches infinity. It's no more than a concept. That's why we call it a "continuum". All of these "big ideas" about relative states of matter that cause micro states to relate to macro systems are dealt with by relativistic theories. That's it, no more time to waste on this. And yes, I'm still not disillusioned with NTP services just yet. Bozos.
I'm not sure what the big deal is about Achilles and the Tortoise anyhow. The "paradox" comes from stating the problem in a way that seems paradoxical, not anything inherent in reality. All you have to do is ask another question, "How long does it take Achilles and the tortoise to get to the finish line?". If Achilles gets there faster then he passed the tortoise.
This dude is NOT claiming that the standard solutions to these paradoxes aren't right. He's saying that they are mathematical tools that provide the right answer by using infinitesmals, convergent series, etc. He then claims that despite the usefulness of these tools, the world does not work in this way. This guy's setting forth an alternate way to resolve these paradoxes without depending on the "infinitesmal" idea. Of course, his way happens to chuck calculus and much of analysis, etc., out the window as well, at least as a tool for use in physics. Still, he's just trying out a different conception of the problem of motion. He shouldn't be castigated for this, as long as he follows it through in a rigorous way (which he hasn't done in his paper). What he needs to do, though, is find a physical problem that standard methods *don't* work with, and show that his conceptualization does better. This is what earned Einstein (relativity) and Feynman (path integrals) their true geek-laurels. He does mention that one reflection of this quality of time would be the fact that you can't precisely determine *any* time-dependent quantity. Seems like something testable here somewhere, perhaps. I'm not up on the research, but does anyone know if there has been related work in the area of quantum time?
W = (-president)^1/2
Can't you just do a proof by contradiction?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Of course, today we know that matter is not infinitely divisable, but that was Zeno's point! You cannot have a continuous function in real life and divide it into discrete segments! In fact, 'poor Zeno' was well ahead of his time, not only arguing against infinitely divisible, but also touching on Relativity! His 'stadium' paradox of two bodies of objects passing each other essencially begs the solution of Special Relatively.
In the archilles paradox, the runner will always have further to go. If time and space can be divided into discrete slices, then the runner will have to transverse an infinite number of slices to get to his destination, which is impossible. Infinity isn't a number, it's a position which is unreachable through finite additions. Therefore, the runner cannot overtake the tortoise, because he has to go through and infinite amount of 'time-slices' to get there. The solution in the article is that time is continuous; there cannot be a discrete slice of time, only a duration of time between two points.
The problem is that you are locked in to thinking about time and motion in a particular way (the result of a mix of tradition and neurobiology). But the real block to understanding what he is talking about is that it is mind-bogglingly simple. People don't get it because they assume that if it were a simple idea then they would have thought of it themselves. Special Relativity is a perfect example of this phenomenon. If you ask the right questions about light and its relation to time and motion, you can derive the basic theory in 15 minutes using simple geometry and algebra. Nobody before Einstein bothered to ask those questions.
This paper is really not very remarkable when viewed from the perspective of Buddhist philosophy, although I am not aware of anyone else using Buddhist concepts to address Zeno's paradox. One of the fundamental concepts in Buddhism is the principle of impermanence -- everything is in a state of constant flux. There is no such thing as a static quantity or permanent, unchanging object. There is a story from Zen Buddhism about a master who told his student that you can never step in the same river twice because the river is always in motion and always changing. Every time you step in the river, it will be physically different from the last time you stepped in it. The student responded that, folloing the master's logic, it is impossible to step in the same river once. The river will change its physical configuration while you are stepping, not just in between steps. If this concept is applied to the moving arrow in Zeno's paradox, it is impossible to determine the arrow's position at any given time because it will always move while you are in the process of making the measurement. It is only possible to make an absolute measurement of the position of a moving object if time is frozen. Without an absolute measurment of position, you can never say exactly how far the arrow has to travel before it is half way to the target.
The problem with Zeno's paradox is that it is not dealing with motion at all. It is dealing with series of stationary arrows. We have all been duped into believing that it is a paradox of motion because we represent moving objects on paper as a series of stationary objects. We have been confusing the representation with physical reality for thousands of years.
I wouldn't let the bozo (pictured in the article) near my grandfather clock.
...
Just *what* does the imbecile think he's doing? Bloody vandal.
The real questions in physics are
Do Quantum Mechanics charge more by the hour than Classical Mechanics?
Do they work weekends?
Can they fix my TV?
siggy played guitar
The 'solution' seems a little obvious, too. I mean, I see where he's coming from, but the solution, seems, well, odd for something of such proclaimed import. The paper seems to be saying that you cannot take an instance of time in real life, just a specific interval.
Unless I'm missing something, that's something that's really quite obvious- I mean, exact measurement is obviously impossible in the real world. Everything's going to have an error ratio. Besides, Planck specifically put a lower limit on the duration of time possible to observe. Infinitely divisible reality is a discredited ancient greek theory, and something that Zeno's paradoxes specifically discredit.
I personally can't see any difference between Zeno's implication that time and space cannot be infinitely divided, and this new paper that seems to just proclaim what Zeno was implying all along.
Yes! In order to quantify time, you must be able to stop it and look at it as an instance. But it is a constant flow, not a series of instances. Simple if you can admit static math can not handle this.
When you think about it for a little bit, it makes sense. It's kind of like PI ... you can try and mark an instant in time, but that instant still represents an interval. The more precise your equipment, the smaller the interval, but the interval can get infinitely smaller.
That's just because we measure time in numbers. Numbers are infinitely large and infinitely small.
When millions disappear from earth, it's not aliens, it's the rapture.
Well in order to solve Zeno's paradox etc. the classical way, you have to suppose the validity and applicability of calculus, especially the summing of inifite series. At the same time, calculus is ensured by its application to physics. There's no way (except philosphy) around this interdependency.
This guy seems to have found a way around the use of the infinitely small quantities calculus deals with. So his approach might be valuable in giving a different approach to the mathematics behind physics, and therefore yielding a new perspective on physics. The article doesn't say that he's getting different results, only the means of getting there is different.
So this might well provide physics with a new set of tools to solve problems, just as Newton's and Leibniz' introduction of infinitesimal calculus did.
Disclaimer: I'm a physicist and I was always wondering why nobody had ever suggested a mathematical approach to physics different from the usual calculus. So I'm kinda sympathetic with this.
So here's how I see it:
This guy is doing the same thing Wolfram is doing, which is trying to construct a new set of rules which govern physics. The reason there is any resistance is because physics (especially classical) is quite simple and beautiful. People are unwilling to budge from their comfortable mindsets.
The thing is, there can be many ways of interpreting physics. I like to think of the universe as a chess game. It has its rules, but in the context of our universe, there are infinite implementations. A rook in the game can NEVER tell whether it is on a physical chess board or in a computer program or just an R on a page. In the context of the chess game, the rules (physics) for the rook will be the same.
As long as Mr. Wolfram and Mr. Lynds can make predictions as accurately as the current model of physics, they should be taken seriously. If they can make better predictions, or predict things that generally accepted physics cannot, then we should start questioning what we think we know more.
Physics: Making the universe open source.
Terry Bisson has already explored this area with a funny bit of short fiction.
This is off-topic, but Shakespeare did have a formal education and a pretty good one at that. Here's a link
I agree that most people with a technical background will feel somehow disturbed by this concept of non finite time. Time is something that most civilisations have held dear for millenia as it provides a backbone of structure to the orderly progression of our society and lives. Even our languages have large parts of them devoted to time. What occured to me though, is that all our measurments of time are based on events and sequences thereof - Sunrise, midday, sunset, the arms of a clock moving around a dial, etc. For us, it seems, we have no concept of time itself.
An interesting collolary can be found in the Hopi language of the Hopi indians. As far as I can tell, their language has no concept of time as we know it in ours and seems to perceive everything in their worldview as in a constant state of change.
and for more mind breaking arguments about time and the rest of reality you might want to read
"Fabric of Reality" by David Deautsch
Time isnt a succession of instants? This is not a problem for physicists, it is a question only of the word time. It is undeniable that a thing is in one place at one moment, and later at another. Time is the seperation between events, and this seperation does exist, as evidenced by these letters appearing sequentially rather than all in one point. It seems that while this person has managed to get his paper noticed, he has no understanding whatsoever of what an "instant" actually is. Of course things appear motionless in an instant- take away height and depth and you have noting left but everything being made up of single lines. Does this mean that the individual lines do not exist? They exist as part of the whole, and are meaningless by themselves, but they exist.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
If there's no such thing as a moment, doesn't that suggest that we aren't, in fact, trapped in a computer simulation?
> a known effect in physic is that the observator modify what he observes ...
It depends on how you define "system". We do not know *anything* about the rules governing an observer outside our universe.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
You're incorrect. The philosopher who said "You never step in the same river twice" is Heroclitus, a Greek philosopher. Thats why the phrase "Heroclitian flux" refers to the very Heisenburg-esque fact that you change things by interacting with them. Frankly, you sound unfamiliar with the tenets of Zen buddhism, since most of their koans [i.e. meditative stories/poems] are not phrases with actual meaning (such as "you can never step in the same river twice) which can be discovered, but in fact phrases or stories without meaning. The koans are employed by Zen buddhists to become more comfortable with the lack of reason in the universe, and thus come closer to the meditative state of nirvana.
"Stumble before you crawl"
Einstein on Time
"People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."
"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us "universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
This "paradox" only considers one half of the equation. They cut space in half, but mke no mention of time. To move one meter in one second (from point A to point B) you must fist move half a meter in half a second, and before that one quarter of a meter in one quarter of a second.....
Now that you put time in, it makes sense and is not a paradox at all.
They are logical constructs of our consciousness.
The notion of time and space dimensions as real number lines (or rays to be more accurate) from 0 to infinity is just a model that has served science well so far to explain most phenomena. Remember that real numbers = rational numbers + irrational numbers where the latter are expressible as limits of infinite progressions of sets constructed from rational numbers (Dedekind's theory of real numbers.)
It is entirely possible that a theory that excludes irrational numbers and considers time or space dimensions as derived in some fashion only from rational numbers may be able to resolve the singularity and divergence problems that crop up in physics theories.
0.(9) == 1.
... really simple math.
A 0 followed by an infinity of 9s is equal to 1
typical man
No, he's saying that nothing occurs "at" an instant of time, rather it occurs "within" an interval of time.
Nothing occurs instantaneously; some time must elapse during the occurance.
Clear, Dark Skies
One of the basic tenets of modern physics is that time is a dimension like all other dimensions. If this guy is right, that you cannot determine your position in time, then that's a fundamental difference between time and other dimensions!
Or is this simply some sort of extension of the Heisenberg principle?
Clear, Dark Skies
Thank you for summing up a 2000 year old theory of physics for us.
Clear, Dark Skies
Just quickly scanning it, two things seemed suspicious (apart, obviously, from the content):
bla
> Much to the science world's astonishment, the work also appears to provide solutions to Zeno of Elea's famous motion paradoxes, almost 2500 years after they were originally conceived by the ancient Greek philosopher.
Zeno's paradoxes were solved three hundred years ago using calculus. Interested readers should refer to basic high school or college physics.
> In doing so, its unlikely author, who originally attended university for just 6 months, is drawing comparisons to Albert Einstein
Drawing comparisons of a college drop-out to Albert Einstein? Why does that remind me of this guy?
> This is contrast to being sniggered at by local physicists when he originally approached them with the work, and once aware it had been accepted for publication, one informing the journal of the author's lack of formal qualification in an attempt to have them reject it.
They all laughed at Albert Einstein. They all laughed at Columbus. Unfortunately, they also all laughed at Bozo the Clown.
> A number of other outstanding issues to do with time in physics are also addressed, including cosmology and an argument against the theory of Imaginary time by British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking... Another impressed with the work is Princeton physics great, and collaborator of both Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman, John Wheeler, who said he admired Lynds' "boldness", while noting that it had often been individuals Lynds' age that "had pushed the frontiers of physics forward in the past."
The theory isn't any more credible by spouting big names. This is getting more laughable than Alex Chiu now.
> In contrast, an earlier referee had a different opinion of the controversial paper. "I have only read the first two sections as it is clear that the author's arguments are based on profound ignorance or misunderstanding of basic analysis and calculus. I'm afraid I am unwilling to waste any time reading further, and recommend terminal rejection."
Well duh.
> Lynds says that the paradoxes arose because people assumed wrongly that objects in motion had determined positions at any instant in time, thus freezing the bodies motion static at that instant and enabling the impossible situation of the paradoxes to be derived.
Crap. Measuring the precise position of an object in motion does not freeze the body. In classical mechanics this can be trivially done by measuring the velocity and integrate to get the position. Even in quantum mechanics, the collapse of a wave function does not mean that the object does not move. This guy is having trouble with his high school physics.
> Lynds' solution to all of the paradoxes lay in the realisation of the absence of an instant in time underlying a bodies motion and that its position was constantly changing over time and never determined. He comments, "With some thought it should become clear that no matter how small the time interval, or how slowly an object moves during that interval, it is still in motion and it's position is constantly changing, so it can't have a determined relative position at any time, whether during a interval, however small, or at an instant.
Thanks for redefining velocity for us. He needs to understand the concept of infinitestimal time.
> Indeed, if it did, it couldn't be in motion."
It appears that his whole argument is philosophical. To mean anything in physics he needs to at least present a theoretical model that would be consistent with existing theories and previous experimental results. I highly doubt that his paper would offer any, other than crap.
> Lynds also points out that in all cases a time value represents an interval on time, rather than an instant. "For example, if two separate events are measured to take place at either 1 hour or 10.00 seconds, these two values indicate the events occurred during the time intervals of 1 and 1.99999...hours and 10.00 and 10.0099999...seconds res
The planck length (taken by combining planck's constant, the gravitational constant, and the speed of light so that the units cancel out nicely) is the smallest length possible in this universe. There is no smaller unit of distance (or, at lengths such as this, space is discontinuous). Likewise, the time it takes a photon to cross a distance equal to one planck length is the planck time, and it is the smallest unit of time possible (i.e. - time is discontinuous). This is not news. See this blurb for a little more info.
If I remember correctly, about 3 years ago, my school English teacher made a morning assembly about this exact same subject to a class of 17yr olds, and brought up exactly the same points as this paper seems to be. I for one understood it perfectly, and it seems that this paper doesn't raise (m)any new points.
It doesn't seem to be particularly "interesting" or even "news".
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001197/0 2/Zeno's_Paradoxes_-_A_Timely_Solution.pdf
...unless you're at least a post-graduate student. IMHO, some part of the academic criticism that Lynds is receiving is caused by snobbery and people being too lazy to read his work.
But my gut feeling is that it's nothing special; I haven't read the paper but the eurekalert.org article didn't inspire much confidence: spelling and grammatical mistakes, unnamed sources, drooling headlines, and reams of physics buzzwords.
As an adolescent geek I came up with dozens of new "theories"... none of which were well-informed, let alone scientifically testable. I admire the guy's perseverance, but I can't blame people for being skeptical.
Incidentally, this was in the local papers several weeks ago, with healthily skeptical comments by a couple of local academics. I am an under-graduate maths student at Victoria University, and I know of two lecturers there who specialise in time, but neither were named in the eurekalert.org article--IIRC, they weren't particularly welcoming of the paper.
I'm really astonished that I have yet to hear anyone dealing with this work to refer to Henri Bergson's "Essay concerning the immediate data of consciousness".
In what was his doctoral defense [well, the equivalent], Bergson, a French geometrician working at the turn of the twentieth century, provided precisely this response to Zeno's paradox, with almost the same level of detail. It's nice to see someone doing more work with it, but shouldn't there be better recognition of one's forebears? Isn't peer review supposed to accomplish that?
Larsal
There is no evidence that Shakespeare attended Stratford Grammar School. It is something assumed by people because whoever wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare must have had an education.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
The Quantum Machine states:
"BREAKING NEWS: LYNDS AFFAIR MAY BE A SOCIOLOGICAL EXPERIMENT (AS ORSON WELLS AND THE WAR OF THE WORLDS) AFTER ALL (news story in development)"
For whatever that's worth. Maybe an actual news story will develop there. For now, there's no content. Much like Lynds' paper, which is here.
What about taking a picture with my digital camera? Surely, that is a single instant?
But no: a camera shutter is actually open for fractions of a second - so what I am really capturing is a very small duration of time - during which I allowed photons to hit my S40's photo-receptor. No cameral captures an "instant."
I think this could make for some very interesting courtroom defenses in cases where a photograph of a supposed event is key evidence!
If you read the post, I referred to the project in the past tense.
And err, no you can't have your money back.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
then the runner will have to transverse an infinite number of slices to get to his destination, which is impossible
As the other repliers have pointed out, this statement is wrong in the Zeno case. A sum of inifinite series can either converge or diverge. In the Zeno case, the geometric series 1/2^n as n->infinity converges* (thus it doesn't go to infinity to become a paradox in the first place). No fancy new physics is or EVER was necessary to resolve the Zeno paradox, only simple calculus. As with the aether, there is no paradox in the mathematics. The paradox only appears in the (incorrect) human interpretation based on (incorrect) intuition. Galileo said "Without the help of [Mathematics] it is impossible to conceive a single word of it, and without which one wander in vain through a dark labyrinth." *By the ratio test, the limit of the absolute value of Asub(n+1)/Asub(n) is 1/2. Since 1/2 is less than 1, the series converges. See Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences, Boas, page 12.
Have you read the story surrounding "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity"? This physicist submitted a paper full of complete nonsense to a social science journal, and they actually accepted it! He later reveals his hoax in a later paper. Needless to say, the original journal did not publish it.
My money is on Achilles.
Time is not Quantised.
There, that's a nice, neat summary.
Which if true has all sorts of interesting implications. The argument appears to be that if time was quantised - as all other things, like space, energy etc appear to be - then the Universe could be described by a single n-dimensional vector containing all information. (ie a longgggg list of numbers describing where everything is, but not where it's going as rate-of-change derivatives aren't possible if time is quantised.). It would be "stuck" in this position, if you like. Alternately, if derivatives were allowable, everything would be predictable, with no uncertainty. Heisenberg Uncertainty means continuous unquantised time.
He may be right, he may be wrong, but this is interesting enough either way to be worth study.
Zoe Brain - Rocket Scientist
Feynman's presentation was of a classical theory he and Wheeler were proposing of charged particle interaction that included and made use of the advanced wave solution to the electromagnetic wave equation (waves that propagate backward in time). Einstein reportedly said (paraphrased - too lazy to look it up in Feynman's Surely You're Joking... ) "The theory is certainly crazy, but not crazy enough." Wheeler was supposed to provide the quantized version of the theory. Although he never did, Feynman (obviously a cabable quantum theorist) also never quantized the theory so maybe Wheeler sould be cut some slack. A discussion of the theory and it's possible current relevance (it can be used to address the instantaneous information exchange mystery of quantum theory) can be found in John Gribbin's Schrodinger's Kittens .
To avoid being completely off-topic, Wheeler's comment about the Lynds "theory" didn't address his ideas at all. After reading the Zeno follow-up article I don't see how his ideas revolutionize anything. That "points" in spacetime may only be a mathematical fiction doesn't seem to alter their usefulness in physics anywhere except possibly when physics tries to squish all of spacetime into a single point (singularity). But it seems to be mostly accepted that this consequence of General Relativity is more a demonstration of why it is not a correct theory then an acceptable physical prediction of the behavior of nature.
some kid philosophizing about stuff without any understanding of chaos theory. if you know your chaos you know the entire subject of this paper is a non-issue.
bite my glorious golden ass.
Theories about Relativity and Quantum effects that we consider "scientific" today were once only someone's philosophycal divagations. Remember Einstein got the ideas first, and completed the math much later. Proofs of his ideas came years or decades after.
In the borderline of physics there is metaphysics. The only way to advance science is to make explorations into the latter, and that, by definition, can only be done, by phylosophyzing.
-- Juanco
Position is relative. There is no "absolute" x/y/z coordinate (0.0 0.0 0.0) - you must have a point of reference.
So ... if your reference point is exactly (0,0,0) then (which it is by definition) then you've just measured something with an exact position.
-rickWhat is the difference between dividing time into discrete seconds and dividing it into sequential halves? It all seems artificial. Does the universe care about what a second is?
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
...the truth of this.
Time is a concept we impose on nature in order to order it (nature) to our understanding and utility: time "happens" when a human notices movement of objects. The natural universe has no need for measuring itself using the human perceptual concept we call "time."
In other words, nature doesn't use our concept of time, only we use our concept of time: it's a perceptual issue we humans impose on nature, not a state imposed on us by the natural universe.
Try this on for kicks: instead of using the word "time" replace it with the phrase "motion perceived and measured over distance." This is our human concept of time, in it's bare essence.
As for the paradoxen (heh), humans love to stumble over their own their own logics and words. Indeed, most human philosophers have excelled at defining reality and then stumbling over their own definitions.
The zen master knows the ineffability of the universe and is greatly aware how much his perceptions _alter_ what is real. This is true of all our means of perception, hence the instruments we build to extend our means of perception.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
Well, the real reason is that the literal translation of "black hole" means something obscene in Russian. Perhaps someone knowledgeable in Russian slang can tell us what...
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
The only way they can be in the same position is if the atoms of archillies are in the same position as the atoms of the tortoise, in which case they would actually have to be the same atoms (otherwise they will not be at the same position in space, there would be a distance of space between the two).
So when, exactly, would the two be at the same position in space? Not only can they not be physically in the same position, but your measurements of them being in the same place cannot be taken at the same time, because it is impossible to observe two bits of matter at the same time with the same equipment (the electrons that move in the circuits from the observational device to the recording device create a lag, for example).
Its fine to mathematically solve the problem, but when observing the scenario in real life, you'll probably find its not quite that simple.
the archilles and turle and all the TIME related stuff is (age old) propaganda.
:) :) so to speak SOLID. for molecules this might be interesting.
;)
...
:)
consider a really stupid society (two tousand or more years ago). how to make them work and not go hitting woman on the head and dragging them to their cave (and getting the girl for yourself)?
invent a paradox, so to speak a program that runs on gray matter (sic). if you get them to think about this in a language (say greek) it will compile and run!!!
now you get all this user time, because the user/slave doesn't trust his own instict but a program.
we do not speak any language when we are born. we have to learn it and then we can't forget it! (if we are confronted with it all the time.)
the beautiy is that the language itself doesn't not allow for a solution!
consider it same like the law we use today. it origins are from the roman (i just believe this. david hume would have me on a plater!)
same applies to language. it's an invention and the syntax/grammer/etc. has stayed the same because our society is still the same. humans have yet to undergo a revolution to percive time differently/correctly.(?)
also: time is the same for everybody. our heart goes around 55-80 bps (beats per second). we percieve it the same.
all this said, why are we bother about these paradoxes?
do we ACTUALLY believe we can miss something? did nature construct us STUPID?
i don't (don't want to) believe so. we are acctually very beautiful creatures and this (the form; just think about a hand!) gives me strength to believe it is correct.
like one philosopher said "language is a game" (Wittgenstein).
what acctually botherrs me more is the origin of life. i believe it started in the ocean at very deep depths. like the canyon around the philipin islands. the pressure at 11 km below seasurface should be very interesting.
i was just imagining that at these depths water must feel very newtonian
it's not frozen (?) and still liquid. dark and very little/no radiation -adding- what happens when a neutrino decaise their?
it is difficult to relais (communicat) to someone how i percieve the world in a language that has certain attributs
the eskimos have 10 (more?) words (not attributs)
for snow. its seems we IMPHESIZE on what helps us survive
maybe it's the "i don't want to die" that makes these physicists/philosopher think so much about TIME.
maybe their LIBIDO (Freud) is abit over a healty limit
more beer! less talk! more games!
Really, this is a fake, to begin with Zeno's paradox was answered long ago, can't remember by whom or what not, but this is a logic problem, or rather Zeno's logic was shite, it's got nothing to do with physics. I did this in formal logic at uni (i.e. Maths), as for the rest yeah it may all sound impressive but if you are Aunt Mabel who left that little back woods school after repeating Grade 6 three times but really. It's either the rantings of someone who's just lost their marbles, or a clever (well not really all that clever) hoax.
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
The number #1 problem with this paper's credibility is that it's being published in "Foundations of Physics Letters". In the past decade, FPL has degenerated into a "junk" journal that publishes all sorts of crackpot science papers.
For example, the following FPL papers were co-authored by the infamous pseudoscientific crackpot Lt. Col. Tom Bearden, and describes a supposed invention that extracts energy from the vacuum and violates conservation of energy!
M. W. Evans, P. K. Anastasovski, T. E. Bearden et al., "Explanation of the Motionless Electromagnetic Generator with O(3) Electrodynamics," Foundations of Physics Letters, 14(1), Feb. 2001, p. 87-94.
M. W. Evans, P. K. Anastasovski, T. E. Bearden et al., "Explanation of the Motionless Electromagnetic Generator by Sachs's Theory of Electrodynamics," Foundations of Physics Letters, 14(4), 2001, p. 387-393.
"Foundations of Physics Letters" has destroyed its credibility publishing this sort of junk, and is no longer taken seriously by anyone in the physics and engineering community.
I think paradox is a misnomer in these cases.
It's actually quite easy to realize why Achilles 'never' catches up to the tortoise: the paradox draws our attention away from the passing of time.
In any given instant, Achilles makes up a certain amount of distance, and the tortoise moves further off by a little bit.
But the trick in the paradox is that at each 'iteration' of the paradox, a shorter amount of time is passing.
Why a shorter amount of time? Because both Achilles and the tortoise are traveling at a constant (but different) speed, and each 'iteration' has Achilles less ground than the iteration before.
If you do the math, the increments of time between each iteration sums up to equal exactly the time when you would expect Achilles to pass the tortoise.
In other words, the paradox is just a trick - break up the time leading up to the fast Achilles passing a slow tortoise into infinite slivers of time, each sliver slightly shorter than the previous one.
The paradox occurs when we assume each sliver of time is the same amount, and that an infinite amount of them results in an infinite amount of time.
Just a trick, nothing more.
Art, Science, & Technology, ....
.... I do not believe time is correctly understood or measured when identified/measured using planetary motion (or flow stuff) as the yards stick. Gravity, space, and time would distort according to the properties of the field. Go to "black-hole", quasar, pulsar, ... -exstreams- and you would (I expect) end up with some extremely wonderfully interesting qualities in any field that would be hard to predict/expect. Oh, weird yep, considering particles (-/+/...) as a discontiguous field (why not) when there is something that appears to bind them together across space. A measured point as reference is not the substance/item/field/...time, and a measure does not in anyway define/identify the material/item quality, and if the measure is linear (or missing a dimension) then it has little real value, sort of like a Rembrandt canvas without the paint.
.... Anyway, everything to me is weirdly wonderful, and totally accidental (if random, not) then predictable (like the boiling C&V soup analogy for the universe (both within and beyond our guessing).
I am not a physicist. I have for many years now considered time as another field, sort of like gravity which is noticeable and measurable when there are particle(s) distorting the field. Time (for me) has some unique qualities like gravity, space,
Cataclysmic events from super-nova to cosmic-burst would create some odd time-field instabilities, that at our present level of S&T we just create some good and some SWAG about reality. I believe, time permeates every dimension, but I am not so sure about particle or gravitational fields. However, the interaction of the fields, across dimensions, at these events
It dang sure is as exquisite as anything in that-thar fancy Louvre Museum in Paris, France. Only if we could but see the beauty of a breathtaking equation.
OldHawk777
Reality is a self-induced hallucination. (and that is why I can say the BS above as a layman on reality).
HAVE FUN!
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Both of those paradoxes result not from anything fundamental about the universe, but from simple mistreatment of math.
... ad infinitum. Therefore Achilles will never catch the turtle.
;)
Let's look at achilles and the turtle, for the moment. This paradox goes along the lines of:
"Achilles and a turtle are having a 100m race. Achilles runs 10 times as fast as the turtle, but the turtle gets a 10m head start.
By the time Achilles gets 10m, to where the turtle started, the turtle will have gone 1m. By the time Achilles gets the extra 1m, the turtle will gave gone another 0.1m. By the time he gets 0.1m, the turtle will till be 0.01m ahead
There are a few ways to get around this:
1) Just let Achilles go 11m
The turtle will have gone 1.1m, and Achilles will be ahead. This simply avoids thinking too hard about the moment when they pass.
Apply a little Calculus, which _loves_ quotients of increasingly-small numbers. This will, of course, tell you that Achilles is passing the turtle at a rate of 9m/s (assuming that the first 10m took achilles 1sec). Perhaps what this means is that a snapshot in time is really useless unless you can also encapsulate the way things are _changing_ at that moment. And that doesn't really sound like news either.
(* Or both, of course.)
But then as regards scientific understanding, I only have a couple of science A-Levels, a maths degree, a brother who works with particle physics to advise me, and a reasonable background knowledge of science. Has anyone read the paper itself, or feels otherwise better qualified to judge?
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
If all events occur in a continua of time, what about certain quantum events which are supposed to be instantaneous:
eg electron drops an energy level and emits a photon. If time is continuous, must there exist a point where the electron is at a non-quantum energy state and the photon is half emitted?
My brain hurts.
Watashi wa chikyubutsurigakusha desu.
Why do physicists smoke so much pot?
It might be best to remember that a paradox is an apparent contradiction and therefore, not a real contradiction, whether in theory or in science.
As a physicist, I find Lynd's paper provides nothing new, nothing insightful and in summary to be of no significance.
Forgot to take off the Karma bonus.
But also it's after dinner and I'm feeling like less of a pompous ass and wondering what semiotics you were thinking of. I assume it's something to do with programming, right.
I'm interested to know. As you can see from my analogy to Newton, it's not that I'm anti-semiotics. I love Jakobson and all those crazy structuralists. I was just pushing my agenda, but I'm interested to know where you're coming from?
...see a possible relationship between what this guy is saying and Seth's notion of time? Something like - all possible states exist simultaneously and are alive. There is both independent existence AND wholeness without paradox. The entire system not only portrays constant growth, but IS growth itself. This bit of weirdness relates manifest reality to consciousness (uh...I think...). Seth says consiousness creates reality but - of course - they create each other...like the Escher print - two hands drawing each other.
I want to be alone with the sandwich
the famous oozalum bird
The what?
All i can find on Google are a bunch of brief mentions that it was a plot device in a British movie, with no mention of infinite regression.
What's the bird do?
Thanks
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Anyone who's built a simple Kalman filter knows that we've had the tools to deal with uncertainty of an object's position for years. Only, engineers don't usually call it that, rather we refer to uncertainty as "noise". Great stuff, just one more thing to feel smug about.
The only person in the Achille paradox who has any trouble with the hare passing the tortoise is the idiot who keeps trying to measure half the distance between the two.
My M.S. advisor submitted a paper some years back about using crystal morphology, size, and depth of formation relationships to try and answer some questions about the formation of that particular mineral (dolomite if anyone cares to know...it's very hard to explain how it forms at lower temperatures). One of the referees was also a fellow who also works on dolomite formation, but all work he does involves some fairly high level geochemical analysis. Simply put, the guy just could not understand the paper. This is probably because he didn't *want* to understand a paper using techniques other than the ones he was familiar with. The other two referees loved the paper, but this other guy basically drew a big red X through each page and said it was bullshit.
Well, my advisor didn't take too well to that, so he just pulled it from review for that journal instead of completely re-writing it, and submitted it to another journal that gladly accepted it.
Project Steve
I just read this version of Lynds' theories:
7 /
. html
. html
s onal/anw/Research/ Hack/
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/0000119
and think he's wrong because he fails to realize that Zeno's paradox is not about the features of the underlying physical world, but about the ones of the mathematical models used to represent it.
Zeno's paradox has a purely mathematical solution for the same reason that it can be shown that 1=0.999... (BTW, That 1=0.999... could be used to argue that there _are_ instants of time in the physical world, using reasoning like the one in Lynds' paper).
The links bellow were discussed before in Slashdot. They talk about how different models (axiomatic theories) may produce very different mathematical systems:
Model theory:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ModelTheory
Set theories:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/SetTheory
Hackenstrings:
http://www.maths.nott.ac.uk/per
Finally, here's a quote from what a friend told me once while we where inifinitally arguing about 1=0.999...
> If you make even a slight change in the assumptions underlying a
> mathematical theory at the outset, you end up with a different theory:
> in a different mathematical world. Anything is possible in matehmatics
> - if you have a sufficiently rich set of axioms defined over an
> infinite field. That's why I told Chris, that we weren't talking about
> the same thing. He was, perhaps intuitively, unwilling to accept the
> assumptions (even
> definitions) we were, equally intuitively, trying to impose. All in all,
> whether 0.99... really equals 1.0 depends on a lot of very subtle and
> elusive decisions that one must make to even render the comparison
> meaningful.
-- Juanco
Same here. IANAP, but I always understood the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to be "you can either know the position pretty well, or the movement pretty well, but not both at the same time". Maybe its just my skewed perspective, but to me talking about momentum has always meant talking about time. Momentum is mass-motion. Motion is distance-time. So momentum is mass-distance-time. If you know the position then you don't know the mass-time very well. Assuming we are talking about a 'known' lump of stuff, then the mass is (relatively) constant, so its the time that goes fuzzy. (of course the time could be constant and the mass goes fuzzy, but that's for another discussion). This is the way I understood the whole Uncertainty mess from my earliest pop-sci readings.
Einstein basically said that space and time are linked. If that is true then Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle MUST mean that time is not discrete.
So to me, it just looks like this guy is pointing out something that was implicit in the theories already, but that the physicists had failed to really notice yet.
Its a classic case of not being able to see the forest for the trees.
I.V.
"These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon
I like this idea, because it's one more step to deconstructing the idea of time. Personally, I don't think that there is such thing as time - it's some sort of model that we humans have come up with to explain change in our environment. I don't think we have the mental capacity to really comprehend what is really happening, and the notion of time has been easy enough for us to understand that we've accepted it as the correct model. But in reality, time doesn't exist. What happened in the past is no longer reality - it only exists in our memories (and film, and tapes, and hard drives, etc.). It was reality, but only for an instant. Time is not a dimension, because as a dimension it is full of "exceptions" to the rules we have for other dimensions. You can't go back in time. You can't go forward in time. You can't stay at the same time. You can't have a negative amount of time. And how fast are we moving through time?
When you consider all of that, it makes sense that there are no discreet instances in time. Why, for there to be discreet instances, there would have to be some real way to measure time - and to do that, you'd need to measure it once, go back, and measure it again. How would you even measure it the first time? Stand there with a stop watch, click, it, then click it again? "How long was that one, Bob?" "Three seconds, Phill!"
I firmly belive that time is a construct designed by humans as a "close enough" explanation, but there is something out there that is way beyond our comprehension. I'd tell you what that was, but I have no idea, and you wouldn't understand, anyway.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001197/
fool, he is saying that since you cannot take a single moment in time, that paradox never can exist since you would have to be able to make a single measurement at a precise moment in time...but non such moment exists since time is just a relative measurement of events.
basically, GR, QM, and Cosmology...including Super Strings will have to all be refigured to take this into account since they were all based on the assumption that a specific moment in time can be captured and that time has a progression forward as if it were a stream. but time has no progression, all time is is a relative measurement between events in the universe. I wonder if this now makes "time" travel possible!!!.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
There is that instant when the change in time approaches zero..
That's close enough for some people. Course it sucks to be dividing by zero all the time.
and what his theory of time is doing is basically exactly what solving an infinite series does, but it makes it more meaningful. solving the infinite series is telling you implicitly that there is no moment in time.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I see it now.
Lynds, Hammond, Abian, and Plutonium.
Sorry if I'm ignorant of physics or math, but I could never understand why the turtle problem was a paradox.
;) .
I've always had an issue with comparing the distance the runner ran with the distance the turtle ran, as behind the lines a smaller and smaller amount of time was being used. Basically, the premise of the whole problem was being changed repeatedly and thus a nonsensical answer was produced (as the timeframe decreases toward zero causing the runner never to reach the turtle).
In my own personal reality (YRMV), time flow (at least in my admittedly subjective opinion) does not appear to decrease to a halt as I approach objects. This, in my experience, has not been dependent on whether I or anyone else nearby sees the situation, not that I often try to run past turtles
Perhaps things would be different near a black hole, or if I were to try to catch up with a turtle flying a near light speed (wow, what an image, a special Super Mario creature?). IANAS (I am not a scientist)
Could someone please enlighten me in not too difficult jargon what was special about the paper in regards to the runner/turtle problem? Why is this Einstein caliber?
If time is not quantized, then does Wolfram's "the universe is a giant comp00ter" (oversimplification) still have merit?
[o]_O
This guys 'solution' to Zeno's paradox is silly - and unnecessary.
You can produce a version of the paradox that doesn't rely on time at all - and hence any special properties of time can't be used to resolve it.
Draw two straight lines on a piece of paper. One of them (drawn with a red pencil) starts in the bottom-left corner of the page and slopes from left to right such that it is 1cm further to the right for every 1cm it heads up the page. The other line (drawn in blue) starts off 10cm to the right of the red line and slopes from left to right much more gently such that it is only 1mm further to the right for every 1cm it heads up the page.
Now, you know that if the paper is long enough and more than about 12cm wide, the red line will reach the right hand edge of the page a shorter distance up the paper than the blue line does.
However, Zeno should argue that 10cm up from the bottom of the page, the red line is 10cm further to the right - but the blue line has moved 1cm to the right so it's at 11cm from the lefthand edge. When (at 11cm up the page), the red line is 11cm from the lefthand edge, the blue line is 11.1cm from the edge...and so on.
By Zeno's argument, the red line can never cross the blue line.
All I've done is replace the temporal dimension with a spatial one...every other argument still applies.
Personally, I've never seen Zeno's paradox as a paradox. With modern mathematics, it's simple to sum the infinite series of tiny time steps that the story subjects us to in order to arrive at the time at which Achilles reaches the Tortoise - then you can apply the paradox in reverse to show that Achilles can comfortably make it to the finish line first.
www.sjbaker.org
There are two interesting problems that calculus presents, when talking about an instance in time.
Lets say we have two identical objects one moving "a bunch" faster in respect to each other...
And lets say we have two instances in time, i and i+1.
At time i the objects are very near to each other. The first problem, is that what distinguishs the faster one from the slower one? Is velocity somehow an attribute of the object that you could somehow measure?
Now mark where the object is somehow, and move to time i+1. Here object A moves this far
@.@
and object B lets say moves this far
@.......@
The problem is that the object has moved this huge distance through space, without EXISTING in the middle parts.
This paper solves both of these problems by stating, you can never have an "instance" in time. That reality is continuos and not discrete. That there is no such thing as i and i+1 that these are inappropriate constructs in the universe (even if satisfying enough to build a discipline called calculus around).
An instance really means that passage of time = 0. And what he states is that it is NEVER 0 and what ever you think is an "instance" the objects are actually still moving at the speed they are moving, even if that speed is infinitely small. (as opposed to a classical "instance" where everything is frozen).
He also states that if the universe was indeed discrete in couldn't function, because at the smallest level objects would not know how and where to move in space from instant to instant, and that the universe would become "frozen".
It will be interesting to see how Hawkings replies to this.
If space and time are one, and you can't precisely pinpoint a position, why would one be able to pinpoint a time?
Disclaimer: I only have a pop understanding of this stuff.
http://www.phy.cuhk.edu.hk/course/phy2002/forum/me ssages/300.html
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
previous links to the paper seem not to be to the one to be published. try this one
I go to school to a well known physics department with a very strong theoretical tradition, and it is now one of the leaders in several branches of physics. And I have just one question: how is what the author says different from the old Zeno's paradox solution, or calculus? His claims truly read like a layman, reading layman books, probably smart, and interested in physics, but without any clue of what physics really is. I know a lot of /. are very fond of layman book, and I am too, but keep in
perspective that they give a very simplified version of the real science.
After all, they are motivated by sales (even Hawkins says so in his book).
It is very fun to talk about black holes after reading A Brief History of Time,
but General Relativity is very hard subject in itself no matter how many cool
books you read. Everyone should ponder on these phylosophical subjects, but I
find his claims old, derivative, and uninteresting.
And now, for some karma, here is a layman link to the Quantum Zeno effect.
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
Well, if you believe in the Heisenberg uncertainty principle then there is an endpoint less than infinity.
but that doesn't mean moments in time become meaningless. Stephen Wolfram has done research on cellular automata that model physical systems having discrete transitions between states ( so time is effectively a discrete interval though it would be wrong to assign meaning to the length of the interval; the interval IS the moment of time ).
But Zeno's "theories" are obviously wrong. The man walking across a road will get there. Even Zeno really knew this. Here we have a theory that tries to explain why he will not get there! There's actually growing evidence that your statement but the interval can get infinitely smaller is wrong and the the interval can not shrink beyond a certain quantum size. The quantum interval is quite small, and makes time seem continuos in our normal macroscopic viewpoint, but it avoids the problems of singuarities and other paradoxes of the quantum world. It makes sense too: consider the smallest units of any theory, strings, super strings, or whatever; could there be any concept of time shorter than it takes one of these to do something?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Lynd could not be drawing attention for "solving" Zeno's paradox or Achilles and the Tortoise. The problem with those "paradoxes" is in the language not the physics. The langauge has you doing subtraction successively. This is not how you describe motion. When you move, you add to the magnitude of your translation. The correct way to approach the problem is to do an infinite sum ( a geometric series where r = 1/2 ). This series converges and is greater than unity. So covering distance is not prohibited by having to move through all those tiny fractions. This is first year calculus stuff.
Please, before you get too carried away with the logic puzzle, step back and think about the physics.
Hey, don't pick on Sokal; he's a high school chum of mine
Remember, there's a whole class of people out there who firmly believe the laws of physics come into being as we conceive them, and that the universe would not exist if our consciousness hadn't come up with it. Lynds is close to that class.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
I keep reading how the idea he uses (sorry, I've only wrapped my mind arount the article, not the paper so far) has been discounted because the Achillies paradox and such have been proven by modern mathematics via the summing of an infite series.
.sig seems appropriate in this discussion as a nice disclamer.
Am I the only one who remembers the saying that lim S n = 2 as n approaches infinity means that it *approaches* 2, not ever *reaching* 2? Shouldn't that mean that the paradox still exists? If it never actually reaches 2, then Achillies is still splitting the difference until the end of time (pun intended). A mathematical proof like this that ignores its own definitions, is no proof in my mind. Zeno seems to be ahead of his time because he stated the problem with using limits as if they were hard values in proofs before mathematics were ever able to solve infinite series summations.
I'm not saying he's right, but discounting him because the paradox has been mathematically proven doesn't make sense to me, especially since I don't agree with the "proof". As I see it, the "proof" actually proves that the paradox still exists. I'm no mathematician, but I've studied enough to be aware of this basic assumption. My
Someone please shoot down my logic, since I'd like to know that the hours I spend at work are actually measurable or else my boss will wind up paying me nothing for the zero length of time I can be measured to work.
on a side note, with all the geek discussions, shouldn't Slashcode include support for subscript/superscript?
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
Since somethings don't change (Einstein Rosen condensate or a black hole) they are technically "outside of time". Hence: time is a perceptual strategy, not a physical property.
Zeno's paradox is wrong simply because it is a false dilemma - it assumes that time exists in the first place.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
"There Is No Single Instant In Time"
No, really? And I suppose next you'll tell me that the speed of light in a vacuum for all observers is the same number.
This hasn't been news for a century or so now. Move along.
While you are correct that an integral is a summation of an infinite amount of zero size slices, it does not assume that time (or whatever you are integrating) can be broken into atomic units.
In fact, calculus exists presicly *because* mathamaticians don't make that assumption. For simple surfaces you can can replace an integral with a very large sum and get an approximation, but the integral takes into account for the fact that the surface really can't be broken down into peices.
That said, calculus has nothing to do with having an instant of time. In current physics there are infinite instances of time. In fact, between any two instances, there are also infinite instances and so on. Time is still continuous however.
If you want to compare with relativity, what Einstien said was that you can't properly look at a point in spacetime without some other point as reference. This fact can also be described with calculus and is actually very similar to not having any instance of time.
As for your second criticism, there is much more to Zen than koans. Koans are intended to be a teaching tool. Some teachers use them and others do not. They are by no means a universal feature of Zen practice. More important are the Zen sermons and anecdotes, which in general are completely comprehensible and are often easier to understand than many of the historical Buddhist sutras. The account of the river is a good example of this because it illustrates the concept of impermanence in a few sentances, whereas the canonical sutras can go on for pages and pages discussing the same concept in a much more confusing manner.
If the whole distance/time issue becomes moot, does this allow us to talk our way out of speeding tickets that much easier?
Actually from my experience in geology, you typically know who is refereeing the paper. In fact, when you submit a paper, sometimes you also give a list of people (aside from people directly involved in the research or former advisors, etc) that would be appropriate to review the paper.
Project Steve
Merry F-ing August Fools Day. This is the special day where people who know Calculus make sport of people who don't. May the tradition live on!
No, but they've sent back plenty of "Score -2: J00 f4gg0t!" ratings.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
I'll agree it looks neat and tidy on a Feynmann diagram, but think about how the world would look to the anti-particle for a moment.
You are having a problem with anthropomorphizing antimatter (and matter). The equations of motion of the universe are time-symmetric (excepting a few violations of CPT invariance); it doesn't make any difference whether the 'particles' are moving forward or backward in time. It is not, for example, any less difficult to imagine 'matter' (or even 'matter' quarks but not 'matter' leptons!) moving in the negative time direction rather than antimatter. The really important part,
which way would entropy go?
is the real answer. The direction we associate with 'positive' time is that direction where the entropy of the uiverse increases, since that is also necessarily the direction in which effect succeeds cause.
[H]ow would the photon know what charge it's originater had?
Photons, both 'normal' and 'virtual' have intrinsic spin 1. The spin of the virtual photon flux can then distinguish the direction toward a negative (or away from a positive) charge.
Oh, and with those popular charged black holes, how whould the virtual photons carrying the force escape?
Remember that virtual photons are everywhere, not just in the black hole. The force carriers inside the black hole would not be able to escape, but the field of photons passes in a uniform fashion across the event horizon as the curvature of spacetime reduces enough to permit them to escape. Since there is a continuum all the way toward 'singularity', local communication of the field happens all the way from the singularity to the outside even though no photon can make it all the way out from the inside.
Religion is the opiate of the masses. The wealthy smoke the real stuff.
How do you measure something without numbers?
have we become so very statistical, that it's good physics due to his age?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
No, atomic implies discrete, that which cannot be broken down further. Atomic and infinitely smaller pieces is contradictory.
/h
Now, if it were that there was a discrete, atomic unit of time, that could not be broken down any further, then all measures of time would have to be integer multiples of that atomic unit. Actually, I believe that is the current belief, but I remember my profs waving a dismissive hand to the question of what that means to differentialbility of functions if the domain were changed from real numbers to a discrete domain, according to calculus some functions would work, and others would not --you can't just assume it, because non-discrete real number system is the the basis, check the definition of the derivative... Intergration as well, but no-one could point me to a proof that everything still works if time is discrete.
Also, calculus is based on the definition of the derivative
f'(a) = lim (f( a+h ) - f( a))
h->0
Some things are sums, some aren't, integration has a fair amount of sums involved, but those are anti-derivatives -- so you really can't get away from the derivative. You can do a fair amount of calc. w/o seeing a sigma, but not without a dx.
Then there was right and left hand derivatives... if time is discrete, and you have a function of time,like motion, f(t) and a is 1q (quanta) then how can you approach from the left? Seems like you couldn't do it since the domain would be t>=1.
If I can't take the 1st derivative at a=1, then how can I take the 2nd derivative at a=2? if time is discrete? I never got a good answer for that.
Zeno's paradox has a simple solution: an infinite sum of k*(1/2^n) CANNOT yield any information about a moment past 2k. Thus Zeno's paradox can predicty the difference in distance for a time f(n)=Sum(k=0-->n of k*(1/2)^n), but f(n) has a range of [k,2k). But it IS possible to exceed that range and consider the situation at time 2k (when the Tortoise moves along) Why did it need to be reviewed?
This is proof (theoretically) that the world is analog, that is, it's infinitely divisible, in which case there can be no Matrix.
An infinite series goes on an on and on but never reaches its limit (only in engineering) (ala Zeno). We cannot render a perfect curve. We can only represent discrete elements approximating the curve. We approach perfection, but never arrive. You need an infinitely powerful computer to render reality perfectly. Since reality is perfect and not discrete, then we cannot be inside a computer, because a computer cannot be infinitely powerful. Is God a computer? Geez, right back where we started. Drat!
Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy.
I mean, come on, "boldness"? What a lame way to rate a scientific discovery. Is it valid? Does it makes sense? These are the questions that matter. But I guess in a field so advanced beyond the understanding of the layman, the only comparisons that can be made are ultimately nonsensical.
To be clear, it does not follow from the observation, even if true, that we can not "measure" an object's exact position, that it has no well-defined position. "An item is in motion if it is changing position -- but if you can measure it's exact position, then it isn't changing position." The Arrow pardox suggests we conclude from the observation that at an instant of time an arrow "in motion" appears to be no different than a stationary arrow, that there is no difference between an arrow "in motion" and a stationary arrow. This conclusion does not follow. The conclusion may be true, but it does not follow from this observation alone. Further, there seems to be no reason that at some instant, without context, we should expect there to appear to be a difference between an arrow in motion and a stationary arrow.
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
Forgive my ignorance, but if there is a basic unit of time that would seem to imply that it could never be cut in half, thus you couldn't simply keep cutting a time frame in half infinitely, as you'd eventually get to the point where the situation becomes binary (either you're at tA-1 or you're at tA). Zeno's paradox seems to only work when there isn't a basic time unit, not the other way around. Am I missing something?
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
The thesis is fairly simple: don't confuse your conceptualization for the thing with the thing itself. Our models are representations of reality, not the reality represented. The arrow flies and hits the target--the divisions of time and space between are in your mind. They make it easier for us to model the world, but they are not the world.
Now, if we can only get economists, psychologists, and political scientists to understand this...
"v = D/T for that total, and for any given length
of time,"
this is circular reasoning. You can't define 'for any given length of time' for to do so implies a starting point and ending point and that can only be if time has discreet units -- which is the point you're trying to prove.
If we assume that there is an instance of time - Achilles/turtle run is not a paradox. You can apply either calculus or Conway's subreal nubmber algebra and calculate the the exact INSTANCE when Achilles and the turtle are lined up. If there is not a single point on the time dimension then Achilles will be always be either behind of or in front of the turtle. They cannot line up, because the math tell us that they are lined just in one single point on the time dimension. So, how can Achilles pass the turtle if he cannot ever line up with it? Achilles vs turtle is a paradox only within Peter Lynds' framework.
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
Just raise the taxes on crack.
From what the article says, I've been thinking the same thing for a long time. You can never have a precice moment in time. The units we measure are human-made. Certain measurment devices are more accurate than others. Nothing is completely accurate, but what we have is good enough for all practical purposes.
Take a picture with a camera. When you look at the photograph, you are imagining a precice moment in time, but in reality, the camera shutter was open for an infinitely measurable ammount of moments.
In our terms, the film has captured a few milliseconds of data. But it's actually an infinitely measurable ammount of time, because we can break it down even further into picoseconds, nanoseconds, and numbers we don't eve have words for..
That's what I got from the article. And it's nothing new to me..
When it's discovered that the FOOBAR-300295 chip accidentally measures all speeds as 3E11, major advances will finally be made.
Space ships will be able to go faster than light by *gasp* continuing to accelerate. We'll be able to speak with family members on Mars through a loop of particles moving faster than light, by dropping a packet on one end to be picked up on the other.
You pitiful Earthlinks will also discover, by process of elimination, that the electron tastes like Grape-Aid.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Einstein was working as a patent clerk after earning his PhD in physics.
There's something of a difference.
HERE
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
What happens in the time between t and t + 10^(-2.547*10^1000000)? Does the universe change at all?
If time is indeed a continuum, and that is a big if, in that short time we couldn't even "see" what is happening because light would appear stationary - the speed of growing grass.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Can you understand change as a concept without using the concept of time?
"Fighting terrorists with millitary might is like killing a mosquitor on your Dad's forehead with a rifle."
Time is not quantized
"Fighting terrorists with millitary might is like killing a mosquitor on your Dad's forehead with a rifle."
So it's not one single instant. It's a first time and then a repost and then another repost and then a slashback.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
Zeno's Paradox of the Arrow
A reconstruction of the argument
1. When the arrow is in a place just its own size, it's at rest.
2. At every moment of its flight, the arrow is in a place just its own size.
3. Therefore, at every moment of its flight, the arrow is at rest.
Aristotle's solution
* The argument falsely assumes that time is composed of "nows" (i.e., indivisible instants).
* There is no such thing as motion (or rest) "in the now" (i.e., at an instant).
Some have remarked that those who criticize the paper due to the age or lack of training of the author ignore the fact that Einstein was young and out of the mainstream when he published his special relativity paper. However, the differences between the two works are striking. Not only did Einstein propose a completely new concept of time, he made very bold predictions which were at odds with accepted theories of the time. For instance, if two clocks are synchronized, and one is sent in a space ship and travels near the speed of light and returns, Einstein predicted they would be out of sync, whereas classical physics predicted they would still be in sync. Also, the famous E=mc^2 equation predicts not only that matter can be converted to energy and vice versa, but also tells quantitativly the conversion factor (c^2). Classical physics predicted that matter and energy were separetly conserved. Both have been experimentally verified in favor of Einstein.
Lynds' paper, on the other hand, makes no predictions at all and doesn't even make any statements about the nature of time at odds with currently accepted views.
As far as Zeno's "paradox" is concerned, it had been solved long ago. The "paradox" simply arises from the fact that a bad cooridate system for the time axis is chosen. Any physical problem can be made impossible by a poor choice of coordinates. The time coordinate in the Achilles and Tortoise problem simply runs out at the point where they meet. In such a system the problem can be solved up to the point where they meet (but not beyond) by summing an infinite series, but with a more reasonable choice of time coordinate, the problem is trivial to solve and extend beyond the time where Achilles passes the tortoise.
Motion can also be understood, even pre-relativity, by imagining object not in a 3 dimensional space, but a 6 dimensional phase space, which has both position and momentum coordinates. Nothing to see here folks, just move along.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Yep right movie. The bird is supposed to fly round and round ever faster until it disappears
up its own arsehole.
Before we define what time can and cannot be, we still need to determine exactly what time IS. But, instead of posting a rather lenghty argument on why this is, let me just give you a couple examples to think about:
1) If time is outside of the human mind (that we experience it and do not "create" it in our own perceptions), then would there be time if nothing changed? And if not, wouldn't that be single instance in time?
2) If time was inside the human mind, then do coporeal objects really have to abide by our "rules" of time? (I wrote a small essay about this for a final exam... specifically about Kant... explaining this in more detail, but I hope others who have taken philosophy or read Kant can relise what I am talking about, and furthermore some of the flaws of Kant).
No need for Planck time. Zeno is like a magician who leaves out important details.
Achiles does in fact pass the turtle. there's nothing that says Achiles has to travel short distance. Crry out Zeno's little joke to infinity and you'll find the place where Achiles and the turtle meet. Though these are infinite steps, the time that Achiles and the turtle take to finish them becomes infinitely small so the total time it takes for Achiles to meet the turtle if finite.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Right. So could I just as well theorize that distinctions we use to deliniate objects are every bit as arbitrary as time? In my mind, they are just convenient abstractions about the 'nature' of things based on how we perceive them; I think perhaps what this guy is arguing is that we need to be more mindful of extrapolating overmuch from such fundamentally imperfect abstractions. The litmus test will be if he can create a division of science that requires no measurement, and in fact is completely free from human preconception. Douglas Adams, where are you in our time of need?
- Bachelorhood is the father of necessity.
Actually, there's no reason why light couldn't pass the "event horizon." It's just that light emitted from within the event horizon doesn't have enough energy to completely escape the black hole.
This is not true. Any photons emitted at the event horizon in a directly outward direction will stay on the event horizon, and those emitted in other directions will travel toward the center. Any photons emitted in any direction inside the event horizon will travel toward the center. Any light that does happen to be outside the event horizon has no obstructions to "completely escaping", although it may be severely redshifted depending on its proximity to the event horizon.
A black hole is more than just a place with a high escape velocity. The associated curvature of spacetime ensures that events inside the event horizon cannot affect events outside. You may want to read something like MTW (especially chapter 33) to get a non-pop-science view of relativity.
"Your notation sucks!" -- Serge Lang (1927-2005)
My point exactly. For as long as anything is measured in numbers, there will always be an infinite number of smaller pieces.
When millions disappear from earth, it's not aliens, it's the rapture.
He's hardly the first to postulate that "time is relative" (sorry :-) )
There are much more thoroughly thought out and soundly grounded works that preceed this paper (such as the distance-time premise of Keith Maxwell Hardy).
Lynds' work is a nice critical piece, but it does not propose a working testable hypothesis.
http://www.comcity.com/distance-time/
"The distance-time premise is that distance and time are joined together in nature, possessing dual characteristics of distance and time. This premise contrasts with traditional views which separate time and space. The premise of distance-time may be proven wrong if distance or time can be measured independently. However, if any measurement is accomplished by particle motion, then an independent distance or time measurement has not been achieved since particles travel across distance and time jointly.
The rod (ruler) measurement has been traditionally seen as a measurement of distance separate from time. However, the location of every part of the rod is communicated by photons that traverse distance and time. Therefore, rod measurements are dependent on particle motion. They are not a measurement of distance separate from time. Furthermore, the difference between locations of physical bodies is always communicated by particle motion across distance and time. For instance, if I try to determine the difference of position between the earth's and the moon's surfaces, I may use a light beam or rocket. Yet, both are groups of particles which cross distance and time and move between the earth and the moon. Therefore, I would not achieve measurements of distance independent of time. Consequently, all measurements of distance by an observer in nature are made across a period of time.
Traditionally, the clock measurement also has been seen as a measurement of time separate from distance. However, clocks use particle motion in order to measure. The traditional clock has spindles which sweep across the face of the clock, crossing time and distance together. Also, a digital electronic clock requires electrons to move across time and distance jointly. These clocks do not achieve measurements of time independent of distance.
In the previous examples, measurements of distance or time, which are independent of each other, were not achieved. Therefore, the distance-time premise remains valid. However, traditional theories, such as relativity, do not use particles to define distance and time, and they do not satisfy the distance-time premise; instead, they always separate time from distance."
Man, I was twelve when I realised that Zeno's paradox wasn't a paradox at all; sure, you have to travel all those half-distances, but you do that at increasing speeds, with the limits reaching 'unlimited' speed for an infintessimle distance (space-time being so closely linked means that you don't break the speed of light over supersmall distances [no v>c at the planck lenght]...granularity at work).
All this guy did was say 'hey, this zero thingy, which was a mathematical construct to begin with, doesn't exist for ranges of time!'.
Wow...I could have impressed Wheeler at the age of 12...whoop-dee-do.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Yes.
Furthermore, it's obvious that physical objects do indeed move through exact points in space by merely observing the following:
Let's assume that our ability to measure an object's position is limited to "delta", and that we measure an object's position at position A= 0 meters +/- delta, and also again at position C= 2 meters +/- delta. Although our ability to actually measure the object's position at point B= 1 meter is limited by +/- delta, it is quite clear that the object did in actual fact have to pass through a position corresponding to precisely 1 meter whether we were able to measure it or not, simply because the body must pass through all intermediate positions in going from point A to point C.
-- Ron
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
The same river twice type parables are mainstays of Lao Tzu and Taoist thought in general (not buddhism). Therefore, Zeno's paradox has been "solved" for thousands of years. The problem is that scientists never bothered to realize that.
That depends on your perspective.
I could have 1 cup of water. You can break that into smaller and smaller cups of water, but eventually you will end up with bits of matter that make up water, instead of water itself.
"Stating the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men." - George Orwell.
Perhaps, but an intelligent man would do more than just his first duty.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
In our Universe you can?t take something without giving something.
:p
If you cut the distance between two points, then the speed should be doubled, neh?
Anyway, it?s late, I?ve been drinking, and I know that ?speed? is not the right terminology.
It's a good thing the world sucks or we'd all fall off.
Time and Classical Quantum Mechanics: Indeterminacy vs. Discontinuity
What do you call a couple of PhD's who are both trying to screw in a lightbulb?
Answer: A pair 'a docs.
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/search.py?recid=624701i ck add to basket and follow instructions)
(cl
although can one really waste something that is so indeterminate?
when recording the beginning of the event has the lower limit of when your eyes take notice of the readout plus or minus a variation due to reaction-time delay. The act of reading the time also requires both tolerances and has a beginning and end. We can keep regressing, if you like. ^_^
(it's tired, I'm not quite lucid, forgive the language if rough - the ideas are there and that's what matters)
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
there aren't an infinite number of points between A&B, there's at least as many as there are planck-lengths distant and there's an upper limit involving the number of possible configurations of the object's quantum state within that time. You could enumerate all of them, then figure out how long it takes to pass through a subset, and there you are with a finite rate, in a rough, slipshod, roundabout way.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
and effect.
Quanta has no friends.
There weren't any instances to begin with. You can record a time to within a degree of certainty.
This has always been a limitation. Whether anyone really believed you could say "It is exactly 1 o clock right now" is foolish. Simultaneity isn't real either, as time is always effected by your reference frame.
So there is no "right now", so I don't see how even contemplating an exact instant itself is useful!
I always consider time of occurance an approximation, and his instance fuzziness work doesn't really specify a scale, and I submit it's pretty damn small (sub-room-temperature-instrument detectable).
I mean, is he claiming time when used as a physical dimension is subject to same limitation as quantum spatial dimensions when compared to the abstract, rate-based-notion of time? Well congratulations!!!! You're the FIRST person to think of THAT!
Maybe scientists who don't work in those fields need to be reminded of the inherit uncertainty in all physical parameters (time included), but this guy is not Einstein (because then I'm Bose)
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Wherea he's arguing there's no such thing as something happen 'precisely' at a certain moment.
Cars are a certain length. Any distance they cover on the road is, by defination, at least the length of the car. That doesn't mean we can't precisely measure the exact position they started the trip.
Of course, we can't measure the exact position 'the car' started the trip, because the start of 'the car' is a fuzzy boundary of moving atoms. So maybe my analogy works better than I thought it did, in that the start of any 'event' might be not be an exact moment.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Time Flies like an Arrow.
Fruit Flies like Bananas.
The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
The problem with claiming Einstein as a misunderstood genius from outside the scientific establishment is that his ideas were widely and rapidly accepted by the scientific mainstream. Examine the famous 1905 volumes 17-18 of Annalen der Physik: many people feel that any of the four unrelated papers Einstein published in these volumes would have been sufficient to net him a Nobel Prize.
Clearly, special relativity was the most controversial of the four ideas, but it was taken seriously enough that immediate plans were made to test its predictions. It is true that there was much argument about the validity of special relativity, but this argument actually tended to be mostly among the less distinguished scientists and "science popularizers".
This whole line of development is in sharp contrast to Lynds, who as far as I know has not proposed a testable scientific theory that makes realistic predictions. If he were to do so on such an important subject as the flow of time, and if his theory made sense, I feel pretty confident that the theory would be widely publicized, and the tests quickly performed.
0=1
Just as with any other post on /. on groundbreaking physics there should be a reference to John Baez' index for rating potentially revolutionary contributions to physics. I wonder how much points this guy is going to score.
A lot of you have responded in a similar fasion as I have about what time actually is. I've studied quantum physics, cosmology, and spacetime theories for years now, and I given a lot of thought to what the right answer is to time. I really believe that there is no such thing as time. It is a perception of energy. I believe that in the universe, the different levels of energy that are among us (the energy of a car, the energy in our brains processing information) is what gives us the perception of a "time flow". I believe that we see things the way we do because our brains, which is you (no soul, nothing metaphyiscal), have a certain level of running energy that stays relatively consistent. Ever since we are born, we view different levels of energy (different things happening in our world) which we get used to the rate of (we adapt to our surrounding levels of energy) giving us a normal perception of the world. We adapt to this primally, and see it as a flow. We imagine this river of time that doesn't exist, and is only bounded by our certain amount of matter and energy, which happens to be our whole being (our brains). Now I have stayed up all night, so excuse any redundancy, or poor explaination. I believe that in reality, if you were to say time exists, this second right now is just as real as the second 100,000,000,000 years from now. This concept may be more helpful: Say you have a computer program that bounces a ball around the screen. When you run that program, it takes "time" for it to bounce in all possible ways, until the "time" comes when the program is ended. I don't see reality as a ball bouncing, taking time to bounce from one place to another. I see reality as actually just the code, and the equations which give the ball those directions, and those values of how much energy to have in going in a direction. But, as we obey the laws of energy in this universe, our rate of energy judges things we see (in comparasin with what energy levels we see normally) as relative to other levels of energy, as they are either "quicker", or "slower". I'm too tired to explain other factors that go into it but I hope I got the idea across.
A tortoise challenges Achilles, the swift Greek warrior, to a race, gets a 10m head start, and says Achilles can never pass him. When Achilles has run 10m, the tortoise has moved a further metre. When Achilles has covered that metre, the tortoise has moved 10cm...and so on. It is impossible for Achilles to pass him. The paradox is that in reality, Achilles would easily do so. A similar paradox, called the Dichotomy, stipulates that you can never reach your goal, as in order to get there, you must firstly travel half of the distance. But once you've done that, you must still traverse half the remaining distance, and half again, and so on. What's more, you can't even get started, as to travel a certain distance, you must firstly travel half of that distance, and so on.
The 'flaw' of this 'paradox' is that this is a method of approximation by stepwise refinement. It can never be expected to produce a definitive solution.
The proof is in the technological pudding. MMMM solder flavored swirl with silicon jimmies! J.E.L.L.O.
Eat at Joe's.
Article: "It also seems likely to make his surname instantly associable with Zeno's paradoxes and their remarkably improbable solution almost 2500 years later." With a 2,500 year head start? He'll never catch him, obviously!
> *I* race penguins
Well, since there are no turtles to present you with a paradox, you must be the one with the One True Solution. Praise the penguins!
Mr. Lynds might be benefitted by reading this article referred to yesterday on /. The part of particular interest being "Misconception #3: Comparing Infinite Quantities".
My point is that although this won't conflict with physical laws, time do flow forward for all matter.
Causality is always the same direction, but the sign of the momentum of a particle in the time direction is independent of causality. (So an observer comprised of antimatter agrees with a matter observer on which direction is "after" and which is "before.") Any forces acting inside a composite particle react in a causal way, of course. A fundamental particle (like a lepton, a gauge boson and, likely, a quark) has indeterminate direction in the time coordinate of itself; only the relative phase can be determined (thus the separation between 'matter' and 'antimatter' leptons and quarks). It is then impossible to get the intrinsic directions of the particles on their worldlines, so all you determine at the end is that both particles obey causality.
As to the black hole photons, you need to understand that the photon that reaches the outside will not be the same one that originates inside. The question of the interface, though, is made finite because the proper time of a photon's lifetime motion is identically zero, no matter how far it must move. It is precisely this reason that allows charge to be detectable from the outside of the black hole, while other things cannot (e.g., baryon number cannot be determined because the force carriers, primarily pions, are massive and cannot move at the speed of light).
Religion is the opiate of the masses. The wealthy smoke the real stuff.
MAC | A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Is it just me or is this "discovery" just simple quantum mechanics? From Heisenberg we know that:
delat E x delta t >= hbar/2
So, given that any event involves an energy transfer we either know nothing about the energy (i.e nothing about the event ever taking place) or else the time can never be exactly specified.
I always understood this to be one of the basic tenets of quantum theory: there is no longer any exact coordinates or exact times: everything is fuzzy when you look in enough detail.
As for the paradox with quantum mechanics there isn't one: the man's position is "uncertain" once you get beyond a particular accuracy. i.e. you just cannot keep dividing the distance up for ever because it is meaningless beyond a certain point.
Oh god here we go again. This is the whole "varied sizes of infinite" logic relative to Time-Space arguement (Think Get Smart). Don't historians have anything new to argue about (Wait...)? Lets kill arguments like this till we can find the atom of time where the infinte can longer be divided into equal whole parts..err... wait... that will never....
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
I don't know if this guy is right or wrong, but calling him names in the absense of reasoned and responsive arguments isn't science, it is kindergarten.
Such methods might keep crackpots with wild new unsubstantiated theories out of science, but it will also help to keep those with wild old unsubstantiated theories in.
I haven't read everything but I can identify with the person who said "...I'm afraid I am unwilling to waste any time reading further, and recommend terminal rejection."
... } adds up to only 1. The basic idea here is that you can add an infinite number of positive numbers and the result can be a finite number.
Either I can't grasp what Lynds is talking about, or I've already come across too many ideas I don't accept, and it's impossible to continue and try to understand concepts that use those ideas as a base.
What bothers me about this is that he is inventing interesting ideas that solve various time paradoxes, when the paradoxes can already be solved with understanding instead of invention. Whether or not his ideas are true doesn't matter -- It's like trying to explain the Achilles and the tortoise paradox using General Relativity: It's not needed and it only detracts from an understanding of the paradox.
As for whether or not his ideas have merit, they will need to be shown to explain more than a paradox that is already explained with classical physics.
As for Lynds' theories...
Suppose an object is travelling a distance 1m from position 0 to 1 in some time interval. There is no time t for which the object is at position 0.5. However there must be an interval t0-t1 where the object is clearly behind 0.5 and some time t2-t3 where the object is past 0.5. For any such intervals, t2 > t1 according to Lynds. This seems to imply that there is some time interval during which the object is superpositioned behind and in front of 0.5m. I tried to derive a contradiction but couldn't. His theories might help marry macroscopic and quantum uh, stuff...
Recently I got stuck on the Achilles paradox and thought it through instead of researching it. So, here I'll post what I came up with, and hope that someone reads it and finds something new in it. I am not a mathematician, and the stuff below could use some serious cleaning up and development.
-----------
The paradox goes something like this:
A tortoise and a hare are racing. The tortoise is ahead but the hare is running twice as fast and is catching up.
Hypotheses:
H1: The hare will take some time t to cover the distance between itself and the tortoise, but during that time the tortoise will have moved.
H2: By induction on H1, the hare will never catch up to the tortoise.
This is a paradox because we know that the hare will catch up. So, clearly there must be something wrong with either our observations (H1) or the conclusion (H2).
The simple solution to this paradox is that H2 requires us to redefine the meaning of "time", and we unwittingly ambiguously refer to both this redefined time, and to "our" normal perception of time, and thus H2 is an incorrect conclusion. The not-so-simple solution, if you allow for such a redefinition of time, is that the hare does indeed never catch up to the tortoise.
This is all a matter of perspective though. Let us call the perspective described in the hypotheses as the "observer's" perspective, and the real-world view where the hare does catch up to the tortoise we will call "our" perspective.
If this doesn't make satisfactory sense, I hope to explain it away until it is as simple enough to understand as the "infinite sum of halves" trick, which is simply that the sum of 1/2^n for all n in { 1, 2, 3
This trick is the key to figuring out the paradox, but it is also what makes it so complex.
Anyway, back to the paradox. H2 states that the hare will "never" catch up. By our understanding of "never" and the passing of time, this means that there is no instant in time T for which the hare has caught up. We can choose any time (eg. one year from now) and the hare will not have caught up. In other words, the sum of all times t from H1 is unbounded. But it should be intuitively clear from the sum of halves trick that this is wrong.
During time interval t(i) the hare moves a distan
Well, it is simle: The time is only exist in human mind! So, there is no time at all! Peter is right!
There is only one good solution: The simpliest!