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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
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
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.
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 ...
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
Oh well - if there's no such thing as time I can spend as long on /. as I like. :)
Video Game cheats, hints a
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 ?
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...
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.
That's quite a comparison you make there. For one thing, there is a difference between a unit of meaning as it is used in the humanities and a unit of time. A big difference. In the arts, they're talking about an objective reference point for values and ideas within the human mind and reflected in our view of the universe. This paper refers to a unit, or more specifically a moment, as a specific point of existence in the (in his view non-existent) flow of time of the universe irrespective of humans, though obviously perceived by us.
Also, as someone else mentioned, from what I can tell this paper is basically just philosophy anyway, which falls under the humanities.
[insert witty quote here]
"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...
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!"
"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."
The only reason you can't determine pi to high level of accuracy by measurement is that in practice there will be inaccuracies in your measurements and in the shape of the circle. measurement issue. In principle, given perfect circle-making and measurement techniques, your accuracy is only limited by the Planck length (1.6 x 10-35m).
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
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 brain can't monitor the world continuously so it "samples" it's enviroment every, say, 1/50th of a second. However if something threatening is happening it will sample more often, say every 1/100th of a second. This would be why time seems to slow down in an accident. Conversely it samples less often when it's not threatened, ie when you're enjoying yourself, so time seems to go faster.
I don't remember it saying anything about why boring things seem to take so long, maybe it's just the contrast between the "fun" sampling rate and the "normal" sampling rate.
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
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
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.
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.
This should have been the: Why-Didn't-I-Think-Of-That-Dept. Doh!
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'
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.
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.
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/information.html
N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT). Your pineal gland will release it when you're near death. It can also be synthesized and smoked/injected (only *not* - it is now illegal because governments like to control all measures of our freedom, including what substances we put in our bodies, not to mention what we see and hear all the time, what we are lead to percieve as truth... but that's something else entirely), causing the user to transcend space and 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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Terry Bisson has already explored this area with a funny bit of short fiction.
> 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.
but there is only a problem if time is discretized while space is not. That seems highly unlikely (especially in view of relativity which tells us that what is time from one perspective is space from perspective).
If space is also discretized then Achilles cant take the required infinite amount of small steps.
But yes, if they both are discretized then Newtons infinitesimal approach to the equation of motion etc. is wrong. But guess what - that is actually the case and has to be taken into account when doing path integrals in Quantum Field(*). This is a relatively old thing (20-50 years) - nothing new there (but a field with a lot of unanswered problems).
(*): very hardcore stuff - but also very fundamental! For discussions about these fundamental things ordinary quantum mechanics does definitely not suffice. Its like discussing curvature of space using only Newtonian mechanics.
Three concepts may help explain this:
Time is a measure of the "distance" between two instants.
Instants occur only when you make the point of noticing them.
Memory/history is an ordered seies of instants.
If you are too busy, caught up in the flow of things, to notice time and form an instant that you can remember, then time really passes quickly. In physics, we usually deal with a series of states of a system sampled at set instants and use the "laws of Physics" to explain what happened in between. What we do not normally do, or may not have achieved yet, is to grasp the continuum of the evolution of the state of the system - like being caught up in the asymptotes and infinite series presented in the Achillies vs tortise paradox only to miss the fact that Achillies blew by the tortise. As others have eluded to, there isn't enough time to notice all the instants posed by the paradox and its infinite series arguments.
It will be interesting to see where this new perspective takes us.
-- Instant Karma's gonna get you! [320848 = 2*2*2*2*11*1823]
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."
Just quickly scanning it, two things seemed suspicious (apart, obviously, from the content):
bla
...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.
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
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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
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...
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.
HERE
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
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)
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."
Time and Classical Quantum Mechanics: Indeterminacy vs. Discontinuity
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.
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.