Slashdot Mirror
Harvard Physicists Make Light Dance
tetrikphimvin and others clued us to the latest work by Harvard's Lene Vestergaard Hau, being published today in the journal Nature. The NYTimes has a good layman's overview of how Hau's team encoded a light beam in a clump of atoms and later reconstituted it elsewhere. The Harvard Gazette offers additional details, a photo, and video links.
Ok, but next time I lead...
If you slow light down wouldnt that also effect the rate of time that the photon experience.
Vista Help Forum
Windows Vista Help Forum
are you going faster than the speed of light? How does this jibe with relativity?
Stop playing Dance Dance Revolution and get back to work! There's nothing in the research contract about getting physical on the job!
Meanwhile, in Russia, light makes physicists dance.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
It's called acid maaaaaan. The lights were dancing, the reds tasted soooo good. Purple had a funky smell to it though...
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
...combine with this and they might have a hit.
I think that they went a little far when saying that Light was Dancing. More closer would be that they stored a 4 centimeter stream of light and then played it back later.
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
Sounds a whole lot like particle entanglement. Any comments with respect to that?
Dance! Dance! Dance!
BALALALALA!
Hope it wasn't the electric slide. ;)
Head asplodes...
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
dancing to pop music with a popsicle in my hand
dancing to lop light with a lopsicle in my wand
dancing to stop light with a stopsicle in my land
mnjam
And I am stumbling over how slowing light down by such a relatively large degree would end up with a reasonably valuable increase of calculation speed. We don't need to slow down electricity to work with it.
Of course, I can comprehend how it may enable physicists to arrive at similar results with less exotic materials and temperatures. Wish I could think of solutions myself. (just a little intelligence envy...)
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
...of Laser Zeppelin shows.
I don't understand all of the technical aspects. But could this be the method of bending light around an object to create a cloak of invisibility? There was some talk a few months back about making light bend around objects and re-appear on the other side thus rendering them invisible if you may recall. Looks like this may be a possibility soon and the only question left now is what to do with my super-evil invisibility powers!
This is about the dumbest "theory" I've ever heard. The fourth dimension is "expanding?" As in, from one moment in time to another, it's getting bigger? Wait a second, did I just say "moment in TIME?" So you're defining time in terms of an expansion over TIME? You are stupid.
it will do the Macarena, and the universe will suddenly stop expanding and collapse in on the dancing light faster than, er...light.
Though the Nature newsbrief doesn't mention her, the lead author and the main experimentalist was Naomi Ginsberg, a PhD student in Lene Hau's lab. You can read the article abstract on Nature's website: http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/nature0549 3
The AFP wire item also gives credit where credit is due:
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1028
Ah come on, all you need is metatime. And then metametatime. And then ....
Hee hee... that's funny, despite the fact that it's wrong.
Frame of reference is an idea that actually had it's beginnings in Einstein's work. The idea being, can a person determine the absolute velocity of [something]. For example, from the frame of reference of the earth, my car goes 65 miles per hour. From the frame of reference of the sun, my car goes 2.9 km/s (because the earth moves that fast around the sun.
Why is this important? Well, Einstein used this to question why the speed of light seemed constant despite your frame of reference. On a ball of rock orbiting the sun at 2.9 km/s, the speed of light is c. On the surface of the sun (which has no orbital velocity in comparison to the earth), the speed of light is still c. From the frame of reference of the center of the galaxy (where the sun has extremely high relative velocity - which I'm too lazy to look up) the speed of light is still c.
Which means that, either the speed of light somehow knows how fast you are going and adjusts itself (which is, of course, retarded) or there is something about spacetime that makes it seem that way. Hence the general theory of relativity was developed to explain it. (Which, in case you are curious, states that the ruler that you are using lenghtens or shortens depending on your "frame of reference")
So, it's actually quite important.
With any luck, they can put these atoms in a phial to be released when all other lights are dark. I know someone who could really use it.
Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
---FourChannel---
You're assuming that the 4th dimension is time. Nobody has ever said that was the case, although many people have ASSUMED it to be true. The 4th dimension is a direction, much like up, down, or sideways, but is orthogonal to all three. See here for a description.
I'd mod your troll to something else if it wasn't for the "You are stupid" comment at the end. It's interesting, though, to see such careless disregard for other people's feelings.
Have you ever considered piracy? You'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.
Though this closely resembles copy+paste spam, the theory does sound intriguing, and definitely is one I've never heard of. Any actual physics majors here willing to throw their 2 cents at debunking it?
Ok, it's neat. Really, really neat. But can we dispense with the hyperbolic analogies already?
They did not "slow down" a light pulse. They slowed down the information it happened to be carrying. The speed of light (through a given medium) is constant. They transformed it into another form of energy, and then they transformed it back.
What's interesting and useful is that they did so in a way that allowed them to retain parameters specific to the original light pulse. It's _not_ the same pulse. No magic is involved.
Wow, my car can go more than 5.1 times the speed of light! Warp 5, here I come!
You're assuming that the 4th dimension is time. Nobody has ever said that was the case, although many people have ASSUMED it to be true. The 4th dimension is a direction, much like up, down, or sideways, but is orthogonal to all three. See here for a description.
It has nothing to do with what the fourth dimension IS. The problem is the use of the word "expanding." For something to expand, it must change size between two points in TIME. So the entire concept of expansion is ROOTED in time and cannot be used to EXPLAIN time.
If the expansion is not across time (in other words, we are talking about dx/dw where w is not in temporal units) then what exactly IS it across? We have to continue to postulate dimensions in order to define the term "expansion."
It's interesting, though, to see such careless disregard for other people's feelings.
I called him stupid for spamming Slashdot when he could have just posted a link, not because of his theoretical aspirations.
My hamster, Melvin, is slow when he's cold and "stops" light. Coincidentally, he can then "release" the light when hit with a laser.
It's only a model.
Anybody notice the 2001 date on the webpage? Is that an error at Harvard or is this a really old article?
Seriously. I'd like to see a video of an hour-long full-body orgasm.....
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
heh
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
There, fixed it for ya. You were too smug to notice that you put your words into his mouth, and then accused him of making a flawed definition.
If you can define the term "expansion" without referring to temporality, I'll concede.
I've always liked the word Xenon. In fact, I thought I made it up around age 5 and later discovered it was an actual element, but maybe I subconciously heard it. Anyway -- good to know. I'll keep my eye out for xenon in dark alleys. heh.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
What is time?
Time is an emergent property of the underlying reality that a fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. All our measurements of time are based on the emission and propagation of photons, and all photons propagate by surfing the expanding fourth dimension. So it is that time inherits properties of the fourth dimension, but time is not the fourth dimension.
Too many physicists have extended dimensional properties to the notion of time, rather than realizing that time is an emergent property tied closely to a fourth expanding dimension. Because our notions of time are linked to change, and because all change is linked to the emission and propagation of photons, and because all photons propagate in the expanding fourth dimension, time has naturally been confused with the fourth dimension. Because the fourth dimension is expanding in quantized units, macroscopic objects never make it any deeper into the fourth dimension than a quantum unit.
This explains why although we can move up, down, left, and right, we can't go back to yeasterday, except in the science fiction penned by Kaku, Thorne, and Davies.
Time is an emergent property of a fourth dimension expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
The purpose of physics has ever been to unify diverse physical phenomena with simple postulates, laws, and formulas reflecting the deeper physical reality. MDT unifies relativity and quantum mechanics by positing that they are both emergent properties of moving dimensions. MDT's simple postulate--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions--offers the first satisfactory explanation of the Einstein Podolsky Rosen (EPR) effect and the nonlocal behavior inherent to the math and physical reality of quantum mechanics. Time itself is viewed not as the fourth dimension, but as an emergent phenomena arising from the expansion of the fourth dimension relative to the three spatial dimensions. This logic alleviates a confusion of time with an actual fourth dimension where one can travel back and forth at will, thus addressing Godel's, Einstein's, Hawking's, Barbour's, and Penrose's concerns about frozen time, and accounting for time's relentless arrow, the second law of thermodynamics, and entropy.
Brian Greene's Treatment-The Time Dimension is Moving Relative to
the Spatial Dimension
As Brian Greene points out in the Appendix to Chapter 2 of The Elegant
Universe, we note that from the space-time position 4-vector
x=(ct,x1,x2,x3), we can create the velocity 4-vector u=dx/d(tau), where
tau is the proper time defined by
d(tau)^2=dt^2-c^-2(dx1^2+dx2^2+dx3^2). Then the "speed through
space-time" is the magnitude of the 4-vector u,
((c^2dt^2-dx^2)/(dt^2-c^-2dx^2))^(1/2), which is identically the speed
of light c. Now, we can rearrange the equation
c^2(dt/d(tau))^2-(dx/d(tau))^2=c^2 to be
c^2(d(tau)/dt))^2+(dx/d(tau))^2=c^2. This shows that an increase of an
object's speed through space, (dx/d(tau))^2)^(1/2)= dx/d(tau) must be
accompanied by a decrease in d(tau)/dt which is the object's speed
through time, which also may be considered the rate at which time
elapses on its own clock d(tau) or the proper time, as compared with
that on our stationary clock dt."
http://physicsmathforums.com/
The Ageless Photon
A photon does not age. No time passes for a photon. This is because although a photon travels with the velocity c, it stays at the exact same place in the fourth dimension as it surfs the expanding fourth dimension. How else, other than with a moving fourth dimension, can we explain that the only way to stay stationary in the fourth dimension is to move at the velocity of c relative to the three spatial dimensions? And how else, but with a moving fourth dimension, can we explain that any object stationary in the three spatial dimensions is moving with a velocity of c relative to the fourth dimension?
Time is an Emergent Phenomena of Moving Dimensions--It is Not a Dimension
Einstein's, Penrose's (and many leading physicist's) mistaken view of "the future being out there" in a block universe arises because physicists misleadingly label "time" the fourth dimension, thus implying that just as we can move anywhere in the three spatial dimensions, such as up and down and back again, so too can we move anywhere in the time dimension, to the past, the future, and back again, implying that both the past and future must exist, as sure as New York and Los Angeles.
But time is not so much the fourth dimension as it is an emergent phenomena that arises because a fourth dimension is expanding at the rate of c relative to the three spatial dimensions in a spherically symmetric manner in units of the Planck length.
Einstein was Right:
Einstein proclaimed that all objects travel through space-time at c. Even though we perceive a ruler along the x axis to be stationary, it is yet traveling through space-time at the fixed speed of c, implying that it is moving through time at the rate of c. Rotate it towards the y axis, and its projection upon the x axis shortens, yet it still appears to be stationary, and it is still traveling through space-time at the rate of c, meaning that it is still traveling at the rate of c through time, as it is stationary in space. Rotate it into the time dimension instead of into the y dimension, and its projection along the x axis still shortens (Lorentz contraction), but now it begins to move through the three spatial dimensions, while maintaining the fixed speed of c through space-time. Again, we see it propagate faster through the three spatial dimensions as it is rotated into the fourth "time" dimension (via a boost) because the fourth dimension is moving relative to the three spatial dimensions.
Simply put, it is not possible to rotate an object into the fourth "time" dimension without that object's velocity through the three stationary dimensions changing. Thus the time dimension itself must be expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. Another way of looking at this is asking, "Why must something always gain a greater velocity through space when it is rotated into the fourth "time" dimension?" If someone can conduct a Lorentz transformation on a ruler, and rotate it into the fourth dimension without its velocity augmenting through the three spatial dimensions, I would very much like to hear about it.
Moving Dimensions Theory explains a lot of physics without growing government bureaucracies, and thus it is generally deemed as unworthy by tenured String Theorists and other government officials.
But MDT explains:
The Collapse of the Wave Function:
The collapse of the wave function is also known as an irreversible process, or a measurement, akin to a photon blackening a grain in photographic film, or a photon being measured in front of one slit or the other in a double-slit experiment, whereupon the interference pattern disappears because the slit is ascertained, the wave has collapsed, and the matter exhibits particulate behavior. Before it was measured, the photon expanded through space as a spherically-symmetric wave front, as it was matter surfing the expanding fourth dimension, which is expanding through space in a spherically-symmetric manner. Until the photon interacts with matter, or a measuremen
Consider a 4th dimension expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions in units of the Planck length at the rate of c.
It explains a helluva lot, is all I'm saying.
Moving Dimensions Theory Can Unify GR & QM:
By offering an underlying reality from where both branches of physics emerge--an underlying reality of a fourth dimension expanding relative to three spatial dimensions, MDT unifies relativity and quantum mechanics not with indecipherable mathematical mythologies, but with a simple postulate. MDT explains quantum mechanical effects such as wave-particle duality, the EPR effect, and the quantization of light and energy, as well as the two postulates of relativity: the speed of light is constant in all inertial frames and the laws of physics are the same for all inertial observers. MDT also explains relativistic effects such as time dilation and length contraction. The beauty of Moving Dimensions Theory is that it explains properties of quantum mechanics and relativity in the deeper context of a unified framework, opening a door to a deeper physical reality--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
The Purpose of Physics
The purpose of physics has ever been to unify diverse physical phenomena with simple postulates, laws, and formulas reflecting the deeper physical reality. MDT unifies relativity and quantum mechanics by positing that they are both emergent properties of moving dimensions. MDT's simple postulate--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions--offers the first satisfactory explanation of the Einstein Podolsky Rosen (EPR) effect and the nonlocal behavior inherent to the math and physical reality of quantum mechanics. Time itself is viewed not as the fourth dimension, but as an emergent phenomena arising from the expansion of the fourth dimension relative to the three spatial dimensions. This logic alleviates a confusion of time with an actual fourth dimension where one can travel back and forth at will, thus addressing Godel's, Einstein's, Hawking's, Barbour's, and Penrose's concerns about frozen time, and accounting for time's relentless arrow, the second law of thermodynamics, and entropy.
This is but a brief treatment of a much larger project.
The General Postulate of Moving Dimensions Theory:
The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
The Specific Postulate of Moving Dimensions Theory:
The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c in quantized units of the Planck length.
From this postulate arise all observable phenomena in quantum mechanics and relativity, including the following:
The Constant Velocity of Light:
Light travels with constant velocity of c, because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c. Light, or energy, is matter rotated completely into the expanding fourth dimension, orthogonal to the three spatial dimensions. No matter how fast a spaceship is traveling, when it turns its lights on, the light can only propagate as fast as the expanding fourth dimension can carry it.
The Constant Velocity of Light in All Inertial Frames:
The velocity of light is always measured relative to the velocity of time, and the velocity of time is always measured relative to the velocity of light. This tautology assures us that the velocity of light will always be the same for all observers in all inertial frames, as the velocity of light is being measured relative to the velocity of light in that frame. However, as demonstrated by experiments, time and light travel slower close to gravitational masses, when measured from distant frames.
What is Time?
Time is an emergent property of the underlying reality that a fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. All our measurements of time are based on the emission and propagation of photons, and all photons propagate
As Brian Greene points out in the Appendix to Chapter 2 of The Elegant Universe, we note that from the space-time position 4-vector x=(ct,x1,x2,x3), we can create the velocity 4-vector u=dx/d(tau), where tau is the proper time defined by d(tau)^2=dt^2-c^-2(dx1^2+dx2^2+dx3^2). Then the "speed through space-time" is the magnitude of the 4-vector u, ((c^2dt^2-dx^2)/(dt^2-c^-2dx^2))^(1/2), which is identically the speed of light c. Now, we can rearrange the equation c^2(dt/d(tau))^2-(dx/d(tau))^2=c^2 to be c^2(d(tau)/dt))^2+(dx/d(tau))^2=c^2. This shows that an increase of an object's speed through space, (dx/d(tau))^2)^(1/2)= dx/d(tau) must be accompanied by a decrease in d(tau)/dt which is the object's speed through time, which also may be considered the rate at which time elapses on its own clock d(tau) or the proper time, as compared with that on our stationary clock dt."
Yawn. This is undergraduate level. Notice that the argument relies on the concept of "tau" which is the "proper time." So we are describing measured time in terms of proper time. Who cares -- Einstein figured this out almost a century ago. Just because Greene writes it in a book doesn't make it new, and it is not saying what you seem to think it's saying. Now you get to explain what "tau" is, in terms that do not include the notion of time. Good luck.
Consider a 4th dimension expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions in units of the Planck length at the rate of c.
And then you use the word "rate" which blows the whole damn thing out of the water. Please stop spamming us with irrelevant math.
http://physicsmathforums.com/
Unlike String Theory, Moving Dimensions Theory is rooted in logic and reason, and it comes complete with a postulate: THE FIRST POSTULATE OF MOVING DIMENSIONS THEORY: 1. The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
More specifically, the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions in units of planck length at the rate of c. I look forward to feedback and insights regarding its logic. Moving Dimensions Theory http://physicsmathforums.com/ Questions Addressed by MDT: Why is the speed of light constant in all frames? Why are light and energy quantized? How can matter display both wave and particle properties? Why are there non-local effects in quantum mechanics? Why does time stop at the speed of light? How come a photon does not age? Why are inertial mass and gravitational mass the same thing? Why do moving bodies exhibit length contraction? Why are mass and energy equivalent? Why does time's arrow point in the direction it points in? Why entropy? Why do photons appear as spherically-symmetric wavefronts traveling with the velocity c? Why is there a minus sign in the following metric? x^2+y^2+z^2-c^2t^2=s^2 What deeper reality underlies Einstein's postulates of relativity? What deeper reality underlies Newton's laws? What underlies the laws of Inertia? Why does general relativity fail at short distances? Why does quantum mechanics dominate at short distances? Why have so many great minds, Einestin, Godel, Wheeler, Hawking, and Penrose called for a new conception of time? If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it. --Albert Einstein If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. --Isaac Newton Max Planck, the father of quantum theory, felt that the pioneer scientist must have "a vivid intuitive imagination, for new ideas are not generated by deduction, but by artistically creative imagination." An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: What does happen is that the opponents gradually die out. --Max Planck Moving Dimensions Theory (MDT) Today I am writing regarding Moving Dimensions Theory-a deeper model for explaining diverse phenomena in both quantum mechanics and relativity. The General Postulate of Moving Dimensions Theory: The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. The Specific Postulate of Moving Dimensions Theory: The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c in quantized units of the Planck length. Relativistic, classical, and quantum mechanical phenomena, as well as time itself, are emergent properties of this fundamental principle. Newton's laws, the principle of Inertia, Einstein's postulates, and the inherent wave-particle duality of QM may be explained with this model. A FEW YEARS BACK A few years back, while surfing a towering wave on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, a beautiful thought occurred to me. Suppose the wave I was riding represented a coordinate in a dimension. Then although I was approaching shore, I was not moving in this dimension. The dimension itself was moving with me-I was surfing the dimension. In a flash I saw that that is why photons never age-they are moving along with the fourth dimension, and thus stationary relative to it. In another flash I saw that that is why a photon's space-time interval is represented by a null vector, or a 0, no matter how far it travels. Indeed Einstein stated that an object's velocity through space-time was always c-even stationary objects are traveling at the velocity c through time! How could this be, were it not for a fourth expanding dimension, which matter could surf as photons, giving rise to our notion of time? And so it is that Moving Dimensions Theory was born as the wave crested and crashed about me, thundering on down, as I fought to remain surfing amidst the foam, facing
Indeed, I would welcome some well-reasoned debate.
In this day and age of unprecedented hype, hand-waving, and hoaxes in theoretical physics, Dynamic Dimensions Theory rocks the universe with a simple postulate.
The simple postulate is:
The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimenions. -Moving Dimensions Theory
The object of science is to unify formerly disparate phenomena within a deeper framework, and Moving Dimensions Theory unifies both Quantum Mechanics and Relativity with a simple framework.
For instance, both the results of the double-slit experiment and length contraction of relativity are suddenly understood in the profound context of Moving Dimensions Theory.
The famous equation E=mc2 is presented in a deeper context, finally accounting for the deeper physical reality that gives massive energies to small masses seemingly at rest.
Godel's paradox of block-time is resolved, and action at a distance and quantum entanglement are explained within MDT's simple framework.
The arrow of time and entropy--the second law of thermodynamics--are accounted for, and time dilation is explained.
MDT is a theory so revolutionary that it may be banned from the academy for years, as health benefits and tenure are far more important than truth, logic, and reason in today's postmodern academies.
And at last time is explained as a phenomenon that emerges from a deeper physical reality.
THE GENERAL POSTULATE
OF DYNAMIC DIMENSIONS THEORY
The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
THE SPECIFIC POSTULATE
OF DYNAMIC DIMENSIONS THEORY
The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c in units of the Planck length, giving rise to time and all classical, quantum mechanical, and relativistic phenomena.
A PROOF OF MDT
The only way to stay stationary in the fourth dimension is to move at the speed of light through the three spatial dimensions. Ergo, the fourth dimension is expanding at the rate of c relative to the three spatial dimensions.
MDT IN BRIEF
Without further adieu, allow me to present the beauty and elegance of MDT by showing both its simplicity and far-reaching ability to account for and answer fundamental questions. All of the below will be elaborated on throughout the book.
Questions Addressed by MDT:
Why does light have a maximum, constant speed independent of the source?
The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. A photon is momenergy that exists orthogonal to the three spatial dimensions. It is carried along by the expanding fourth dimension. So no matter how fast the source is moving when the photon is emitted, the photon travels at the rate with which the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. Thus c is always independent of the movement of the source.
Why are light and energy quantized?
The fourth dimension is expanding in a quantized manner relative to the three spatial dimensions. Light and energy are matter rotated completely into the fourth expanding dimension, and as it expands in a quantized manner, light and energy are thus quantized.
Why is the velocity of light constant in all frames?
Time is an emergent phenomena that arises because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. The flow of time is inextricably wed to the emission and propagation of photons. In all biological, mechanical, and electronic clocks, the emission and propagation of photons is what determines time. The velocity of light is always measured with respect to time, which is inextricably linked to the velocity of light. This tautology ensures that the velocity of light in any frame, measured relative to the velocity of light in that frame, will always be the same.
How can photons display both wave and particle properties?
What is wrong with this statement?
...I do feel strongly that this is nonsense! ...I think all this superstring stuff is crazy and is in the wrong direction. ... I don't like it that they're not calculating anything. ...why are the masses of the various particles such as quarks what they are? All these numbers ... have no explanations in these string theories - absolutely none! ... -Richard Feynman in Davies and Brown, Superstrings, Cambridge 1988, pp. 194-195.
"Consider a 4th dimension expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions in units of the Planck length at the rate of c."
I never said that the fourth dimension is time, though scince fiction writers have sometimes supposed that.
http://physicsmathforums.com/
Are New Ideas Important in Physics?
String theorists don't make predictions, they make excuses.
--Richard Feynman
An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: What does happen is that the opponents gradually die out. -Max Planck
String theory is the Enron of physics, and like Enron, it is but the tip of the iceberg of the widespread group-think decline. Where Enron and Worldcom and Global Crossing lied to plunder pensions and investors, String Theory lies to plunder tax and tuition dollars. With millions of NSF dollars at stake, and billions more in the way of tax and tuition, fashion and group-think are now held superior to logic and reason in physics. And as in all totalitarian systems which hold themselves above logic, reason, truth, justice, and practicality, the worst are promoted, while the best are exiled. The group-think sycophants get the postdocs, while the indie physicists must forage on their own.
Are new ideas important in physics as prominent physicists so often proclaim? If so, then why are young scientists with new ideas based in logic, reason, and reality, so often castigated, impugned, and crucified while those who quietly, passively, and uncreatively accept the nonsensical, none-physics, crackpot mythologies of String Theory and M-Theory rewarded with vast salaries, health benefits, TV shows, book deals, and tenure?
I would very much like to discuss my new theory here, but I am forbidden from even mentioning its name, as the String Theorists and other fashionistas do not approve of theories with postulates based in logic and reason. And so their multi-billion dollar myth is perpetuated at the expense of logic, reason, and physics.
But time is on our side. And what is time? I am not allowed to say, as my theory is banned for the moment.
The current state of physics has several Prominent Physicsists and Great Thinkers spinning in their graves:
The world we have made as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far creates problems we cannot solve at the same level of thinking at which we created them. -Albert Einstein
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by the age of eighteen. --Albert Einstein
The mere formulation of a problem is far more often essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science. --Albert Einstein
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. --Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein's three rules of work:
1. Out of clutter, find simplicity.
2. From discord, find harmony.
3. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. --Albert Einstein
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious--it is the source of all true art and science. -Albert Einstein
Science and art belong to the whole world, and before them vani
I'd mod your troll to something else if it wasn't for the "You are stupid" comment at the end. It's interesting, though, to see such careless disregard for other people's feelings.
As a followup to this comment, the continued spamming behavior of this user (who has now posted the same crap about 5 times) coupled with his inability to grasp the concept that a "expansion" necessarily must be described in terms of a TEMPORAL VARIABLE, puts him firmly in the set of people who's feelings I feel justified in disregarding.
Okay, I was initially going to bat for you(not because of your copy/pasting, but because the theory sounded interesting) but now this is entirely stupid and avoid the actual question asked: If the time dimension is expanding, under what metric? As expansion in space-time is scale relative to time, how can the space dimension expand any if time is no longer a factor(being time itself as it were)?
If asked a question, you do not post an unformatted clipboard copy of the entire FAQ page. That just shows that you are completely clueless on the subject and are letting the linked-to page do the arguing for you(and badly).
Well, to be fair, it's entirely possible that this fourth dimension is expanding relative to some other metric which is not temporal, but that merely shifts the mystery to this new dimension. What point is there in "explaining" the flow of time if we can only do so in terms of another concept which is equally mysterious?
Unfortunately, the poor guy has been misguided by the "Whoo, mystical" style of Greene's writing. It's a good style if you want to sell books, I guess... Greene is talking about basic concepts in Minkowski space, none of which are particularly hard to deal with, and none of which address the true nature of time.
So, for a photon, there is no time (the gamma becomes infinite). Big deal. It's weird, but accept it and move on, so you can do some actual physics.
I just ran out of mod points, but I definitely found this informative.
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
http://physicsmathforums.com/showthread.php?t=2388
/ / / / /
Feynman Lectures to Brian Greene & Kaku & Witten & String Theorists
Feynman Lectures to Brian Greene & Kaku & Witten & String Theorists
Feynman has this to say to Kaku & Brian Greene et al,
"But this long history of learning how not to fool ourselves--of having utter scientific integrity--is, I'm sorry to say, something that we haven't specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope you've caught on by osmosis.
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.
I would like to add something that's not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you're talking as a scientist. I am not trying to tell you what to do about cheating on your wife, or fooling your girlfriend, or something like that, when you're not trying to be a scientist, but just trying to be an ordinary human being. We'll leave those problems up to you and your rabbi. I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen." --Richard Feynman, "Cargo Cult Science"
http://physicsmathforums.com/showthread.php?t=2388
8. The Worldline of a Photon--Stationary in Space-time = Moving Through Space
ct|
|
|
|
|
|/_______________
x
Also, if we trace the path of a photon on a space-time diagram, the only way for a photon to remain stationary in space-time is to move at the speed of light.
Think about this.
In order to stay stationary in space-time, the photon must propagate through space with the velocity c. It must keep up with the expanding fourth dimension in order to have zero net movement through space-time.
The null vector, which represents a vector of zero length in space-time, can only imply zero movement through space-time. Even though a photon moves through space at a velocity equal to c, it stays stationary in space-time. Is it not strange at first that in order to remain stationary in space time, a photon moves through space? This is because the fourth dimension itself is moving relative to space.
Moving Clocks Emit Less Photons = Moving Clocks Run Slow
As an object accelerates through space, it is rotated more and more into the expanding fourth dimension. Less wave fronts of the expanding fourth dimension, which can carry away photons, are allowed to pass through it. Thus a moving clock will run slower, as all clocks are based on the probabilistic emission and propagation of photons, and as a moving clock catches up with the expanding wavefront of time, the chance that a photon will be emitted without being reabsorbed is diminished. Simply put, the faster a clock propagates, the more likely it is to reabsorb a photon, and as an object ceases to emit photons, it ceases to age, as all aging, be it the unwinding of a clock spring, the oscillations of a quartz crystal, or biochemical reactions, are inherently related to the emission of photons.
A Photon Preserves its Fourth Dimension Geometry as it Propagates: Gravitational Redshift
The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
I never said that the time dimension is expanding.
Again, the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
Time is an emergent property of this underlying reality.
In Moving Dimensions Theory, General Relativity concerns itself with frozen snapshots of the space-time continuum. The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, and GR freezes the expansion, and investigates the relative curvature in different regions. The fourth dimension is seen as just that--a fourth dimension on equal par with the three spatial dimensions, but it only ever runs a Planck's length deep. Macroscopic time is oft confused with the fourth dimension, but it is an emergent property of a fourth dimension expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions in units of the Planck length. Time inherits aspects of the fourth expanding dimension, but it is not a dimension in the sense that we can not freely go back and forward in it, but for at distances equal to the Planck time, as the past and future do not exist; as was once supposed by Einstein's block universe and the pleasant science fiction masquerading as physics that concerns itself wormholes and time machines.
Hawking's imaginary time is the frozen fourth dimension, which is orthogonal to the three spatial dimensions and hence the i--which implies emergent orthoganality when one is solving equations. The frozen time only ever runs the Planck length deep, for as soon as a point in the fourth dimension has expanded as a spherically-symmetric wavefront to a sphere of Planck-length radius, every point on that sphere expands again. The rate of this expansion of the fourth dimension is c--the velocity of light.
http://physicsmathforums.com/
String theory is representative of what has been playing out in numerous arenas--on Wall Street (Enron, Worldcom, pension-raiding), in literature (Frey, rampant plagiarism, plotless, storyless hype), in government (those who promise to cut taxes and raise them). What it comes down to is the destruction of truth, freedom, and the individual by elite fools with ambitions overshadowing their talents. Want to be the next Einstein or Shakespeare or Bill Gates? Sign up for our pomo-hipster MBA/JD/Ph.D. program! The pomo academy must destroy common sense in order to hawk their product. You too can be Brian Greene with a PBS mini-series, but only if you buy Michio Kaku's textbook on String Theory, which opens with:
"The great irony of string theory, however, is that the theory itself is not unified. To someone learning the theory for the first time, it is often a frustrating collection of folklore, rules of thumb, and intuition. (IN OTHER WORDS IT IS NOT PHYSICS!!!) At times, there seems to be no rhyme or reason for many of the conventions of the model. For a theory that makes the claim of providing a unifying framework for all physical laws, it is the supreme irony that the theory itself appears so disunited!!" -Chapter 1. Path Integrals and Point Particles: Why Strings? "Introduction to Superstrings and M-Theory," page 5. -Michio Kaku
"If Einstein were alive today, he would be horrified at this state of affairs. He would upbraid the profession for allowing this mess to develop and fly into a blind rage over the transformation of his beautiful creations into ideologies and the resulting proliferation of logical inconsistencies. Einstein was an artist and a scholar but above all he was a revolutionary. His approach to physics might be summarized as hypothesizing minimally. Never arguing with experiment, demanding total logical consistency, and mistrusting unsubstantiated beliefs. The unsubstantial belief of his day was ether, or more precisely the naïve version of ether that preceded relativity. The unsubstantiated belief of our day is relativity itself. It would be perfectly in character for him to reexamine the facts, to
Harvard Physicists Make Light Dance
It's about time those stuffed-shirts had some fun. And being it's just a "light" dance, they won't even break a sweat.
Have you read my journal today?
turn up the beegees again :))
I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change.