rrw4rusty

Hello, The Big Bang supposedly set matter and energy (the four known forces) in ‘motion’ causing ‘events’. A simple example: elements of the electroweak force holds an egg on the surface of a table while the mass of the Earth warps space and accelerates the egg while pulling it towards the center of the Earth. The sun warms the air which causes wind which pushes the egg off the table and it splats on the floor. Or something like that… you get the idea. These events take place because of physics. The longer I study cosmology and quantum physics and despite reading a growing amount of material on the subject… the more that I see… no reason, value, proof or purpose for overlaying what seems more and more like an imaginary construct over the natural procession of events. Perhaps someone can help me out here for I’ve lost my belief in ‘time’. Now wait… there’s more… I’ve read that ‘time’ proceeds slower and faster depending on speed or the warping of space – no, the physical events of the universe proceed at different speeds. I’ve read that physics is transparent to the ‘arrow’ of time – that if the atoms of that spattered egg could be sent back at the exact reversed angle and speed that the egg would come back together, rise to the table edge and roll back to where it started. This is probably mostly a true statement but what physical law would launch those atoms (or does ‘gravity’s force reverse with the so called reversal time’s arrow) and what law of physics would bind the broken shell back together? In fact it seems to me that if ‘time’ did exist, then physics would not exist because if time does exist that means that there is the possibility that it can stop and what physical laws and forces would we have then? None! It means that there is the possibility that times direction can reverse and as discussed above, that means that our physical laws go whacko and broken symmetries can rebind -- not to mention that the 2nd law of thermodynamics is reversed and broken. The physical forces move forward on their own, they don’t need time. However… Every ‘far better mind’ than my own absolutely believes that ‘time’ exists so, I must be missing something. Help me out here. Give me one reason, test, or principle that indicates that there is such a thing as TIME. Cheers, Rusty

I've been reading a lot on quantum physics lately and I'm in absolute agreement with the above. Lets not forget the Higgs field. Concerning the standard model and superstring/m theory, the question is out there: do these exist on 'something' not yet detected or do elementary particles/strings/3branes plus the soup of virtual particles (or the Higgs field) make up the base. IMH view, space bends and you can't bend nothing. As for time... well, see my next thread. Rusty

Oh, that could be. I mentioned what was said on another forum where I made the same posts... one reply said: "Before I read your post, and looked up the original papers, I probably would have said the same thing. Centripetal acceleration (i.e., the force in a non-rotating frame which induces circular motion) isn't the issue here. The issue is whether the centrifugal force (that is, the outward force observed in a rotating frame) is relative or absolute. It is very interesting to me that the answer appears to be that Mach was right, and it's absolute." I'm afraid this only confused me further. :-\ The terms and ideas are too new to me -- I still have to look up everything an then figure out how/if it applies (I thought Mach said it was relative but... what are we talking about?). Too much, too fast. Time for a nap LOL. Rusty Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Iggy, I find this outlook hard to believe... if in some coordinate or frame of reference stars and galaxies were rotating around Earth they would be surpassing the speed of light to say the very least. Now... I want to stress that I'm not trying to make an argument--only to explain my understanding which is very tenuous. I'm not a physicist and I sometimes (LOL) defer to the expertise of those here who are. ;-) Rusty Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged No, absolutely not a metaphor for gravitation. It sure reads like 'it is', not 'it is like'. I wish you could go get it... I should have a working scanner later today. Rusty

Dear insane_alien, The statement that you make to me above was made first in my post (right from Greene's book). I can appreciate a busy person skimming my post (and it was a long one) but I'm beginning to suspect you've 'skimmed' too much. In another post I'm asked whose book this came from, LOL! Obviously my first post wasn't read at all. Certainly I could be mistaken (in fact, given you personally created the shiniest balls in the history of mankind... most probably I am) but as far as I can tell you are contradicting Einstein, Dieter Bill, Jeffery Cohen, Herbert Pfister and K. Braun -- and of course Brian Greene. You seem to be 'wrong' or at least, one of us is confusing the issue in some way. My goal is to understand the reason... whatever the reason is. Obviously given the different and varied replies my original post generated it has been a disputed question. Cheers, Rusty EDIT: Oh, I just upgraded to Windows 7 and my scanner is not yet working.

See original post.

Seems I must loose faith in books by apparent experts or some self-proclaimed experts on this forum--heck of a choice. Perhaps I can post the pages of the book and see if I've mis-interpreted what I've read or if Greene is just wrong. Later today I'll scan them in. Rusty

Hello again! So, after 300 years the answer to why water climbs up the sides of a spinning bucket and why astronauts can seeming have gravity in a rotating compartment has been worked out mathematically using general relativity. It’s called frame dragging. It seems spacetime is dragged around by spinning objects. This is what makes an object falling into a spinning neutron star spiral around following the twisted contour of spacetime as it falls while from the neutron star’s frame of reference the object is falling straight down toward it. In one way the answer was everything I wanted it to be! I wanted rotation to be relative so that instead of the space ship’s compartment rotating to provide gravity, something else could be happening making it ‘seem’ like the compartment was rotating (in a relative way). Strangely enough, the answer provides for this! If a massive hollow sphere were rotating and a bucket of water standing still (from a distant observer) were placed within that sphere—the water would climb the sides and take on the same concave form it would if the bucket of water were spinning! Ergo my astronauts would have gravity without a spinning compartment! But, of course there’s a catch… ask me how massive that sphere has to be to mask out the universe outside of it and cause the stationary bucket of water to appear to be spinning. According to Greene, an experiment is being planned to detect the ‘frame dragging’ effect of the Earth’s rotation (he gives no further information on this experiment—perhaps someone out there has heard of it). Extremely sensitive gyroscopes will be placed in orbit and aligned at stars and, if the experiment works, that is, if the calculations are correct, after a year the gyroscopes will tilt a tiny bit. How tiny? We barely have the ability to measure the effect! Greene goes on to say that if the sphere were massive enough, that is if the sphere were as missive as the entire universe, it would not matter which was rotating, the sphere or the bucket! But I’m writing science fiction so the shape, the charge, the exotic material of that my hollow sphere is made of and the field placed around it will cause it to drag spacetime around far far more then the mass of my anti-grav sphere would otherwise! Cheers, Rusty

Hi, I first searched the web for/and joined over half a dozen science forums because a specific question had bothered me for a long time. That first post is here: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=44928 (I had already belonged to a few science forums so it won’t be my very ‘first’ post everywhere). I thought the question was certainly a easy one: it was basically ‘if motion is relative why isn’t rotation relative’ (I was looking for a cleaver way to explain artificial gravity for my latest sci-fi book). I was dumbfounded by the responses I got—everyone had a different answer! People (scientists, students, forum administrators ) were arguing with each other it! My God hadn’t anyone ever asked this question before (as it turned out, everyone had, starting with Sir Isaac Newton!)?! No doubt someone had the ‘correct’ answer – it would take some searching to tell. Since that post back in Oct 2009 I have plowed through 4 popular (and recommended) quantum physics books to bone up on the latest. It was in the book I’m reading now (The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by B. Greene) that I finally got the answer to that post. In fact the book starts out with my very question only its presented as a spinning bucket of water -- and doesn't give the answer until the end of the book. In the 17th century Sir Isaac Newton’s answer was: The absolute position, accelerated motion is not relative… space is an entity. During that same period, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz answer was: The relational position, all aspects of motion are relative… space is not an entity. In the 18th century, Ernst Mach’s answer was: The relational position, accelerated motion is relative to the average mass in the universe… space is not an entity. (Fewer matter, less effect). In the 20th century, Albert Einstein’s answer was (at first): The relational position, space-time is an absolute entity… space and time are individually relative. According to Greene, in 1912 Einstein offered the first part of the true and complete answer. In 1965 Dieter Bill and Jeffery Cohen refined Einstein’s answer and, in 1985 German physicists Herbert Pfister and K. Braun completed the solution. The answer is everything I wanted it to be and everything I didn’t want it to be! Next post… Cheers, Rusty

And we're not already at 'the deep end of the pool', lol?? I wonder if you are using the word dimensions loosely. The so called 4 dimensions--up/down, side to side, forward/back, and time--are all the 'dimentions' we have within the realm or the standard model and the 'Many Worlds' interpretation is definitely a part of the standard model. Higher dimensions and/or dimensionsdimensions beyond the four 'standard' ones are, to my knowledge, aspects of string, superstring, and M-Theory (and perhaps other non-standard model theories like LQG). Cheers, Rusty

Janus, What are these numbers? i.e. 10%c = 1.005 What is 1.005? Say I'm traveling for 10 years at 10%c, how do I use 1.005 to calculate subjective time. May I ask yefow did you come by these numbers?

Hi, Does anyone know of any good audio lectures on the web (of course free!) on either the standard model, string theory or M-Theory or QLG? Thanks for any help you can offer! Rusty

Hello again ajb! Thank you for replying. I understand and concur with your last 2 paragraphs. The rest flies over my head a bit. I was hoping to avoid getting into the different types of branes as Greene does in his Nova The Elegant Universe videos. The audience of my project is the same as that series. Ergo, you look at what all brane types can do, select the interaction you wish to discuss and remove the brane's type specification. It looks like you are saying that, yes strings on other branes 'could' exist amount the strings on our brane (the bulk?). Whither this would be 'common' or 'rare' would be nice to know. When asked where these parallel universes were, Kaku said 'right in your living room'. This led me to believe that some strings on some type of branes, within some context, existed within and around each other. As for 'colliding': assuming that Kaku's statement was true then I had to assume that the definition of colliding could be something other then 'touching' or, there could be a natural repulsion holding them apart so that even mixed brane strings would see like those wavy vertical sheets that are shown which I assumed was a logical view (and not a physical view). Thanks so much for your help! Rusty

Thank you swansont. So the key is to first question is to look up orthogonal universes and the answer to the second question is that atoms flit (or flutter or zip) between all the universes. r

Hi! Are M-Theory’s ‘other’ branes (that is, not ours) thought to physically exist 'elsewhere'… that is, in another universe somehow ‘next’ to ours… i.e. not mingled within our physical space. Or, do these 'strings on other branes' purport to exist within our space – that is, intermixed with the strings on our brane? Or... all of the above. It would seem that this would be… one way or the other. Or, is the answer is neither… and is it one of those ‘things’ which is expressed in the mathematics but, is beyond what mortal man can imagine, envision or understand, LOL. It can be that way if you don't know the math. Thanks any help! Rusty

Hi! In my plodding efforts to understand some of the weirder aspects of quantum physics there are two questions I’ve been researching that I am not locating answers for… or, lol, perhaps I’m not recognizing the answers. Hopefully someone can help. I've seen videos depicting the ‘Many Worlds Interpretation’ of quantum physics which show T-Rex stomping through your living room because the K2 Event didn’t take place in that parallel universe, you know the hype you see on the MWI. While probably, no one ‘really’ thinks this is what’s happening, the interpretation somehow assumes other universes are right here with us and in our space that we cannot see or interact with. 1. Concerning MWI, does the interpretation explain ‘why’ we cannot see these other universes? I mean there must be otherwise we’d see them. Perhaps separate timelines? If the atoms of these parallel universes are right here with us… there must be something different with the atoms or particles which ‘hide’ them from us. 2. Finally, again concerning the MWI, when these parallel universes split off (when the particles or waves split off on all these different probability waves) does the MWI indicate what these parallel universes are suppose to be made of? Newly created atoms, some kind of shadows of our (the original) atoms or particles or, the same atoms some how in another timeline??? I hope these questions make sense? Thanks any help you can give me, Rusty

I'm glad you took some time to think about it before replying, LOL. I'm not at all sure, you'd have to ask the scientists who performed the test and I don't remember off hand who it was or where I read about it. My impression was that the other forces could not come into play in the situation they had set up. My impression is that there is not much doubt about the virtual particle pairs appearing out of nothing and returning just as quickly. To me this seems like radiation from parallel universes, many worlds or other mem'branes' but that's just my own very unscientific impression. Rusty

Hi, My latest animation project has shown how big (or small) subatomic particles and strings are in relationship to each other and how much empty space exists in the quantum world. Now I need to move on to membranes and here there’s a practical problem. First I’ll show the ‘logical view’ the familiar brane stack… waving vertical sheets with a different world on each one. Then I’ll show the physical view of the brane… a very very thin and very very long ‘thing’ floating next to me saying that this is what the membrane really looks like. They I’ll say that everything we can see and interact with has the ends of its strings attached to the same membrane. At this point in the animation I will single out four strings: one in my eye; one in a wall 10 feet away, one in my pool, and one in the sun. Then I’ll show the long thin brane snaking around to each one so they can connect their ends to it. Then I point out that really everything has godzillions of strings and the brane will start to snake to everyone of them basically painting everything. Then I’ll say that’s ridiculous and make all of that vanish. Here’s where I need help. How exactly do string theorists see this working? My thought is that the ends of each string dangle into the 11th dimension and there in that dimension they find our brane. Inside the 11th dimension we see the long, thin brane and all the strings in our universe connecting to it but outside the 11th dimension we see our universe with strings were they should be and nothing snaking around to each one. But this is just a wild guess… help me out here. Thanks, Rusty Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedNo one has any idea how membranes are actually suppose to connect to all the string ends?

Hi, Now that my science fiction book is finished, I’ve been toying with an idea for an animation I’m thinking of doing. One of the things I want to show is the real comparative sizes of subatomic particles (including strings) and how much empty space there is at the atomic and subatomic levels. People don’t have a good understanding of this – in fact, most representations have given people the wrong idea. I do not want numbers. Numbers are great but they do not give a layperson any kind of feel for size especially with atoms wrongly being represented as compact objects in textbooks and elsewhere. So, I’ve been researching this angle and what I’ve come up with so far is: • If an atom were the size of our solar system, a string would be the size of a tree (perhaps this depends on which theory? If so I want the smallest and the average). • If an atom were a mile in diameter it’s nucleus would be the size of a marble. Actually, I found several comparisons that all seem a little different. Like… • Imagine the atom as the size of a professional baseball stadium (in 3D). The size of the nucleus would be about the size of a baseball in proportion. Ants would be far too big to represent as the electrons. • That an atom is 99.9999% empty space. I’d like any consensus on the above that I can get. What I don’t yet have is how the size of a quark fits into all this. I understand that this one is not so easy but I need something. Anyone? I assume that in most string theories (if not all) that ALL particles are based on strings and that a string's vibration determines what type of quark or Leptons or other particle (gluons) you get (is this correct?). So it sounds like one string per quark or Lepton, therefore 3 strings per hadron. Correct? As always, any help is greatly appreciated! Rusty

Hi, Thank you for all the informative replies. It sounds like a level of stability had been reached when there were 5 string theories but when M-Theory attempted to tie them together, strings slipped back into roller coaster mode -- string theory was again 'all over the place'. 10\500 theories sounds like the total number of values and combinations of values for a lot of variable parameters (moduli?). It sounds like string theory is floundering once again and, perhaps, that there is a mass exodus of scientists from the once popular field. Perhaps I'm over or under stating the current situation. Rusty

Hi, What follows may be complete BS and, if so, I’m sure all of you will tell me about it. Newton described gravity with mathematics. Einstein described relativity with mathematics. Quantum Mechanics was described with mathematics. String Theory is described with mathematics… elegant, balanced, anomaly free (at one time anyway) mathematics that ties relativity, quantum physics and gravity together. It’s the first theory that does so. If you only look at mathematics… relativity, quantum mechanics and M-Theory are all mathematically correct (or, if not ‘completely’ correct, then to a significant degree). However, we’re told that strings do not – indeed cannot make predictions that can be tested. But… is that really true? Isn’t it true that String Theory by its very nature should predict everything around us… predict Quantum Mechanics, predict relativity and everything else. However, if it does any of this, none of it counts. It doesn’t count because all these things have already been predicted and tested during the verification of relativity or quantum physics or other sciences or theories. Lets toss out strings and say instead ‘the big question mark’ (B?). Hasn’t science piled up right against the B? on all sides? No matter what the B? turns out to be… if we’ve predicted and tested everything right up to the edges of B?... there may not be much left to predict or test. I wonder – and this is perhaps an impossible hypothetical example – but if String Theory had come first and relativity and quantum physics had come afterwards… if String Theory would have had lots to predict and test while one of the other theories or, at least parts of another theory, would have been left out in the cold with nothing left to predict and test? That perhaps puts the chicken before the egg but you see what I mean. If we took away that rule that says that ‘the things that have already been predicted and tested by other sciences can’t be used’, what would we see? Well, probably we’d see lots to confirm string theory but… that is because these ‘already predicted and tested’ items were used to construct string theory in the first place. Perhaps no matter what theory is found to fill in that last blank between relativity and the quantum world, it will find itself in the position where there is nothing left to predict and test – a classic ‘catch 22’ position. Cheers, Rusty

Hi! When quantum mechanics was established it allowed us to do things that we could not do before. What would string theory allow us to do? Lets say that string theory was confirmed -- tests showed the projections string theory made were correct and now string theory was accepted. What would it allow us to do that we can't do now? What good would it do us? Thanks, Rusty

Not even Edward Witten?

This is not how I imagined the extra dimensions to be and this is the first time I've heard anything like this. If correct, it begs the question, what is the 11th dimension of M-Theory for the video shows how we run out of dimensions at 10? Thanks, Rusty Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I meant that the questions in my OP are related to M-Theory. I'm trying to understand M-Theory a little better without involving the 'math'. I understand that it is possible that some aspects of the theory need the 'math' for understanding. Also that understanding other theories is needed in order to understand M-Theory. And finally, that almost no one completely understands M-Theory. I just want progress as far as possible. r

Indeed. And the 'sci-fi' answer is whatever is most interesting while being plausible! Sci-fi writer, Rusty

God how I wish I knew the 'math'! r