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geordief

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Everything posted by geordief

  1. How do you measure the time in that situation? How do you know what has occurred in the muon? Is it not by the use of a beam of light? (apologies if I am wrong -I am just prodding ) Are there any situations where time can be physically counted (not inferred) without a beam of light being used at some point in the process?
  2. Ok I will counter that "even if" is actually ambiguous and can (also) be understood as accepting the truth of the phrase that follows. I am fairly sure I have heard it used that way but accept now that that is not how you used it.
  3. Apologies for truncating your quote (for my benefit) .Still for my purposes I still think my interpretation was close to what you were saying (that is the majority view amongst physicists in your opinion, isn't it ?) I would guard against that "cherry picking" if I could but I am not so confident in my intellectual abilities (I am very indisciplined in that regard and there is really little hope for me) When I was younger ,my father gave me a copy of "How to think" by C.E.M. Joad which I was quick to dismiss. A lifetime of intellectual indiscipline has reinforced that decision and I have now come to the point where a change of heart would be ineffective By the way this is the 5th or 6 th draft (all very different) so I have attempted to (over-?) address your point. Edit :thanks for the editing Swansont -I am just getting used to the layout
  4. Is light(em radiation) not the only method of measuring distance in a vacuum? Do distances (in the space-time sense) have any meaning if not measured in a vacuum?.
  5. I of course accept your criticisms Ophiolite . Perhaps ,though you have answered my question in the main when you say "the majority of physicists doubt their reality, " Whatever about my own lack of rigour I am glad that this seems (if you are right) to be the prevailing view. I would find it unsettling otherwise. PS your "Do you know the equations well enough to say this is what happens?" was a rhetorical question perhaps , since I said towards the end of my post " do I simply have my lack of proper scientific/mathematic education to blame for my blinkered vision? " -which concedes that point , I think.(although that might have come across as false modesty instead of being ,perhaps an overestimation of my capabilities) The Mobius strip , yes I have heard of it. I don't follow what you mean by "what number comes after 12 ?". I am also unclear as to what would constitute "two separated parts of a mathematical object." but perhaps I understand your overall meaning.
  6. (just as a warning all my ideas here are second hand in that I have mostly gleaned them from the internet and the likes of Scientific American over the years) I do have a fairly specific question (I hope) concerning the title of my thread . I have become accustomed to the idea that the "fabric of space-time" is a misnomer and that we are really talking about an analogy. Space-time ,as I think I have learned is a mathematical model of the universe and the universe itself is ..the universe. Anyway ,when I come across the idea that the "fabric of space-time" can be "torn" to the extent that even "wormholes" can (theoretically ) be formed my wish is to disbelieve this possibility as an example of the analogy being carried too far and ..........really this sounds only like science fiction to me. I prefer to believe that ,under those and like conditions what really happens is ...we don't know because the equations have run out. I very rarely seem to come across this view point (or bias?). Do I share a respected view with the scientific community or do these ideas of worholes and "tears in the fabric of space-time" actually have a "respected" following ( and do I simply have my lack of proper scientific/mathematic education to blame for my blinkered vision -which might not be a first ? ) Or have I just created a false dilemma somehow?
  7. Thanks . Yes that is very easy for me to understand. I look forward to learning about dark matter in my lifetime
  8. Well(hopefully to clarify) my inclination is to "believe" that light is not fundamental but everything I have read leads me to feel that a universe without light (em radiation) is is an absurdity. I would like this not to be the case (for the absurdity to hold water) but I know that what I like does not count.
  9. Does that loosely fit in with my idea that , without light the space between "things" would no longer exist ?(so light would be entirely fundamental to our understanding of "separateness" (of course I do not follow your maths or even your follow up)
  10. Is it as stark as that? After all have I not heard of scenarios close to what is termed the Big Bang where light had not formed ? ( or have I misheard /misunderstood and are they saying that light was simply trapped in the initial conditions that they think existed around then and so there was no time in the past yet theorised when light did not exist?)
  11. Practically and theoretically. Please correct me if I am wrong * but all "distances" (except in the special case of frames of reference that do not move with respect to each other or are subject to important gravitational fields **) can only be calculated (in a way that all observers can agree upon) when we take into account the nature of light and its propagation. So is this a bedrock of our physics or is it incidental *** ? Do distances between things actually exist at all unless we perform an experiment (which always requires light ) to measure them ? (ridiculously) Would they "collapse" upon themselves without the presence of EM radiation to "justify their existence" ? If EM radiation did not exist would some other phenomenon present itself to fulfill the role "vacated" by it? * I may of course be making /compounding many errors(please take my embarrassment as a given) ** any other exceptional circumstances? *** It is hard to find antonyms for fundamental
  12. what happens to a tsunami as it bends around a coast? Suppose it approaches an island from south to north.Does the South bear the brunt of the wave? Do the effects tend to lessen as the wave flows around the island? I seem to remember that the West Coast of Sri Lanka was very badly affected even though the wave approached from the East when the Christmas Tsunami struck. Would that have been down to local conditions magnifying the wave in particular area is the wave as well able to attack from the rear as from the front?
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