Farsight

I skimmed this paper the other day and saw enough in it that I recognised to make me want to sit down and study it properly. I also picked up some very negative comments. But even if this paper is flawed, as I speak I think it's pointing in the right direction.

Oh no we don't. Nope. Inflation would eat your dollar. And anyhow, if you're 2500 light years away and you own a planet, who cares.

Actually, our world is composed of 3+1 dimensions. This distinction is important. If you go right back to the original Maxwell, he talked about displacement. You should look into this, along the lines of a different degree and rate of displacement in each direction. I rather suspect this would be an unmeasurable immersive scale-change, unless this difference continued to increase in some particular direction. Such as in a radial direction, Norm!

I've been wondering about this issue of late. My model is telling me that there is something very unusual about high-energy gamma waves with a wavelength less than 10ˉ¹³ metres. This might sound odd, but they appear to be exhibiting the strong force rather than the electromagnetic force. I'd like to look at this some more. Can anybody advise re any measured photons with very high energies? The cosmic "rays" as per Martin's link are relativistic protons.

fredrik, can I say that I now think that there is a very straightforward classical explanation of quantum physics, and this does not involve observers collapsing wave functions or anything similar. I also think that this will become accepted physics fairly soon. How soon, I don't know. And I doubt that I can prove this to your satisfaction. But keep an ear to the ground for developments involving geometry or The Perimeter Institute of LQG.

Or you could think along the lines of Chinatown: Evelyn Mulwray: She's my daughter. [Gittes slaps Evelyn] Jake Gittes: I said I want the truth! Evelyn Mulwray: She's my sister... [slap] Evelyn Mulwray: She's my daughter... [slap] Evelyn Mulwray: My sister, my daughter. [More slaps] Jake Gittes: I said I want the truth! Evelyn Mulwray: She's my sister AND my daughter! ******************************************* Well? Come on fellas. Cat got your tongue? Am I the only one who actually reads articles and scientific papers? Or writes them? Or would you rather run off and hide than apologise for your sneering abuse and admit that I've got a point?

Foodchain: I think Relativity is imperfect, but I don't reject it. In similar vein I don't reject QM. The mathematics works. But we don't understand what it means. The issue with Quantum Mechanics has always been the interpretation of what's actual going on in the subatomic world. I don't reject QM, instead what I reject is the idea that we can never understand what it's telling us, and I reject the weird unprovable stuff like parallel worlds. I'm now adopting the view that the underlying issues are associated with the concept of point particles, and a better interpretation is available by considering "particles" to be extended non-local volumetric entities, saying, in effect: "the wave function is the particle". It means (despite the photoelectric effect and Einstein's Nobel Prize) that the photon really is a wave, and then geometry becomes utterly crucial. I really do think this is the route to combining QM and Relativity. In a way this is "my area", and I'm much more sensitive to it than others. I know what these guys are on about. So whilst people might claim I see what I want to see, in the article, I see Gerard t'Hooft, I see Smolin talking geometry again, I see the picture of the geometrical rotations. And I see four instances of "geometric" in Joy Christian's paper, where I also see this:

Nearly. The time change or "time dilation" is due to the relative speed, and you need some acceleration to get up to speed. Not quite. Acceleration itself doesn't cause the time dilation directly. You can see this if you think of travelling to a start 5000 light years away with the same acceleration and deceleration but bracketing 2500 light years of coasting. To keep things simple, forget about the acceleration and deceleration for the time being. Think about travelling to a star 2500 light years away at a speed of .99c. The equation 1/√(1-v²/c²) tells you that you'll experience a sevenfold time dilation. (Multiply .99 by itself to get .98 and subtract this from one to get a fiftieth, which is roughly a seventh multiplied by a seventh). So as far as I'm and the rest of the universe is concerned it takes you 2525 years to get there. As far as you're concerned, it took you 360 years of your time.

Look at the picture on page 39. That's Christian's non-commutative operation. And what sort of operation is it? Why, it's a rotation. A geometrical operation. If you'd rather believe in spooky action at a distance than openly acknowledge what's actually in the article, or search Joy Christian's paper for geometric, maybe it's time we had a new physics "expert" round here.

Where's the experimental evidence for moving through time? There isn't any. But look, I do get special treatment: I'm no loony. And shame on you for coming out with such an ad hominem. For your information, Brian Greene, String Theorist, wrote the book referred to in the OP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fabric_of_the_Cosmos Any comments anybody? http://www.amazon.co.uk/Trouble-Physics-String-Theory-Science/dp/0713997990

See the bottom of page 38: Yes, the article then moves on to Loop Quantum Gravity, but search the internet on "Loop Quantum Geometry" or look for recent papers from Lee Smolin. There was one on about the 7th October that caught my eye, but I can't find it now and must dash: http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%22loop+quantum+geometry%22 http://arxiv.org/find/grp_physics/1/au:+smolin/0/1/0/all/0/1

Note that the motion of the clock's components through space speeds up. The clock does not "move faster through time". I am right about this, Swanson. Whatever Brian Greene says, and whatever you think is the mainstream view. Or what's it to be? No criticism of String Theory is permitted, and any challenge to any utterance by some String Theorist must be censored, because String Theory is mainstream? Ho hum.

There is no "speed of time". A body and its subatomic elements move through space. The notion of a body moving through time is an abstraction that has no basis in experimental fact. If Brian Greene begs to differ, I'll put money on the table. When "time dilation" occurs (and this is an experimental fact) what's actually happening is that the subatomic elements of the body are moving more slowly through that body's local space.

Read the article. Or be an shining example: don't read the article, just insult somebody who offers information that doesn't fit your preconceptions.

Read the article. Or be an shining example: don't read the article, just insult somebody who offers information that doesn't fit your preconceptions.

No. Classical will overtake quantum mechanics. Here's an example of what I mean, an article from last week's New Scientist. Quantum Entanglement: Is spookiness under threat? In a nutshell it says Quantum Physics perhaps isn't so spooky after all, and the answer lies in geometry. I share that view. The link is just a stub I'm afraid, but the full article is worth reading.

No. Classical will overtake quantum mechanics. Here's an example of what I mean, an article from last week's New Scientist. Quantum Entanglement: Is spookiness under threat? In a nutshell it says Quantum Physics perhaps isn't so spooky after all, and the answer lies in geometry. I share that view. The link is just a stub I'm afraid, but the full article is worth reading.

Look up Electron-positron annihilation where you see that an electron and a positron usually annihilate to produce two photons. In a way you can consider these photons to be more fundamental "particles" than the leptons, but it's wrong to think that the electron or the positron is divisible into photons or anything else. Also look up pair production. PS: Collider experiments will be futile. It doesn't work like that.

Hmmn. I provide a simple and coherent exposition of magnetism, but my material gets kicked into pseudoscience whilst this junk does not. Ridiculous.

I am serious. I do write my ideas up in precise language, but because there's currently a paucity of mathematics to complement those ideas, nobody reads them, and then folk claim they're "vague" and "have no content" or are "unproven". I do know the answer to this. But sadly others don't want to know. So here we are again in pseudoscience.

It was this one: http://space.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19626241.300&feedId=space_rss20 Sorry that link is just a stub, you need a subscription to see it all. It was the main feature, and included Lawrence Krauss and others.

Yes. Time dilation, as evidenced by various clock experiments and the GPS clock frequency adjustment. We know that time dilation is actually measured. We can thus be confident that we will observe it within other more difficult experiments such as the "twins paradox" and the "hammer and the nail" aka "the train and the tunnel". We can then be confident that events A and B can suffer from a simultaneity reversal and can be deemed to occur in sequence B A by some suitable oberver. This means that the "time" between A and B is subjective rather than objective, so time isn't something real that you can travel through, and it isn't something that's actually "flowing" from both A to B and from B to A. It's not like that. I demand evidence before I am of the opinion that some theory or model looks correct, and I keep an open mind about any further evidence that will further shape my view. You demand no evidence before you "believe" in something, and then you won't listen to evidence of the contrary. Spot the difference? No, I do not believe that we move forward in time at all. And you can't show me any evidence that we do. We move through space. Not time. We employ our motion through space to derive an abstract dimension called time, which is a dimension in that it is a measure. But if offers no freedom of movement, and we can not in fact move through it. I'll say it again: we move through space.

Ah, so you can't show me any evidence? Of course you can't. There isn't any. But fine. You believe what you like. You cling on to that faith. Would anybody else like to show me some evidence for possible time travel? Forwards or backwards? No? Because you can't. There isn't any. Don't you get it yet? Has the penny still not dropped after all this time? I demand evidence. You can't give it. Do I have to spell it out? Time travel is crackpot.

No. The "false vacuum" is a hypothesis that makes no verifiable prediction and cannot be proven. Personally I think there are major issues with the concept but let's leave that to one side. Saying that electrons attempt to achieve the lowest possible energy state is potentially confusing. They don't attempt anything, and the statement applies to an electron atomic orbital. But then again, it applies to any system. That's how things work. Energy tends to spread.

Anybody see the Black Holes article in the October 6th edition of New Scientist? It rather reminds everybody just how much talk surrounding black holes is conjectural. And it vindicates what I said in Black Holes Explained.