Re:Is this guy on any of the Kook Lists?
on
Time Doesn't Exist
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· Score: 1
If he's not on a "Kook" list, he should be. Someone asked for credentials: I'm a 3rd-year grad student in Physics. Ideas the guy pretty much neglects. I'm trying to keep this short (believe it or not), so I'm leaving out the details... 1) Speed (i.e. the rate at which things move) is defined with respect to time, and has huge influences on reality. (Compare a bullet you hold about an inch away from your face with one that passes through your fingers towards your face at about the speed of sound. One's safe. The other's not.) Speed is also intimately tied into concepts like momentum, force, and energy. Thanks to Einstein, energy and mass are interchangeable, so mass has to be tossed in as well. If time doesn't exist, then none of these concepts make sense, even in "Platonia". 2) Neither quantum mechanics nor general relativity bypasses time in any manner. Both use it extensively. 3) Modern physical theories treat time & space on a virtually identical basis. The only difference is a single sign that gets changed. 4) Barbour talks about how a spherical wave can leave a straight track in a bubble chamber, but says nothing about how this is simplified in his viewpoint. Standard Quantum Mechanics has an explanation that actually uses time. 5) Barbour says nothing definite about the formation of memories, but only talks about a probability "mist" of states, and relationships between different portions of "Platonia". If there's no time, then it seems like "future" and "past" should be equivalent in our memories - especially when similar situations happen over and over. But it's tough to remember the details of what I'll do tomorrow, even though the broad scope of it won't be much different from yesterday. 6) Barbour mentions absolutely no way in which his ideas can be tested, other than saying in effect "There are ways of testing GR, which includes time, so there must be ways of testing the lack of time." Without some definite experimental tests, his theory's not worth the electricity running my monitor. Does "New Scientist" normally publish this sort of unfounded, hopeless junk?
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If he's not on a "Kook" list, he should be. Someone asked for credentials: I'm a 3rd-year grad student in Physics. Ideas the guy pretty much neglects. I'm trying to keep this short (believe it or not), so I'm leaving out the details... 1) Speed (i.e. the rate at which things move) is defined with respect to time, and has huge influences on reality. (Compare a bullet you hold about an inch away from your face with one that passes through your fingers towards your face at about the speed of sound. One's safe. The other's not.) Speed is also intimately tied into concepts like momentum, force, and energy. Thanks to Einstein, energy and mass are interchangeable, so mass has to be tossed in as well. If time doesn't exist, then none of these concepts make sense, even in "Platonia". 2) Neither quantum mechanics nor general relativity bypasses time in any manner. Both use it extensively. 3) Modern physical theories treat time & space on a virtually identical basis. The only difference is a single sign that gets changed. 4) Barbour talks about how a spherical wave can leave a straight track in a bubble chamber, but says nothing about how this is simplified in his viewpoint. Standard Quantum Mechanics has an explanation that actually uses time. 5) Barbour says nothing definite about the formation of memories, but only talks about a probability "mist" of states, and relationships between different portions of "Platonia". If there's no time, then it seems like "future" and "past" should be equivalent in our memories - especially when similar situations happen over and over. But it's tough to remember the details of what I'll do tomorrow, even though the broad scope of it won't be much different from yesterday. 6) Barbour mentions absolutely no way in which his ideas can be tested, other than saying in effect "There are ways of testing GR, which includes time, so there must be ways of testing the lack of time." Without some definite experimental tests, his theory's not worth the electricity running my monitor. Does "New Scientist" normally publish this sort of unfounded, hopeless junk?