Time.

[MiseryStreak]

I have some questions about the multiverses in series theory, do these failed attempts ever actually exist? The reason I ask is if a Universe was created before our current one and its ingredients weren't quite right, so what? Once all of the energy of the Universe has been released it can't suddenly decide, 'Ooh it's a bit chilly this one, I'll go back inside' or 'fk this, there's way too much antimatter, I'm out' etc. The energy has been released and cannot be destroyed so where does it go? Does it all go back into some metaphysical 'fields of potential' cauldron to be used again? As if it doesn't and it remains in the physical Universe, even if it that is as an infinitesimally small point with no extended dimensions, isn't that just this Universe?

I love Brian Greene's books and I am a complete layman in this field, but I too think the multiverses in parallel idea is a crock of st. It's like a get out clause as it can be used to explain away anything that doesn't make sense in this Universe. 'Oh, yeah, I don't know what happened to that particle either I think it must have jumped across to the other place'. I'd love to be proved wrong, but I think it stinks.

Gene, I take it you are not an advocate of M-Theory (as you mentioned your problems with string theory on which it is based)? If not what theory do you follow on the sub-fermion/boson scale nature of the Universe? I've always like strings, oscillations just made sense to me.

I'm still waiting on the biological time dilation hypothesis. I was thinking about it last night and all I could come up with was that a biological organism has processes running in different inertial frames and that the metabolism and ageing process is affected differently than an inanimate object would be. I still don't like the idea though, and I don't see the point of it. What's the problem with a person ageing less when they have been travelling very fast? There is no twins paradox, it was solved without even using GR.

[Gene Vincent]

MiseryStreak said:

I have some questions about the multiverses in series theory, do these failed attempts ever actually exist? The reason I ask is if a universe was created before our current one and its ingredients weren't quite right, so what? Once all of the energy of the Universe has been released it can't suddenly decide, 'Ooh it's a bit chilly this one, I'll go back inside' or 'fk this, there's way too much antimatter, I'm out' etc. The energy has been released and cannot be destroyed so where does it go? Does it all go back into some metaphysical 'fields of potential' cauldron to be used again? As if it doesn't and it remains in the physical Universe, even if it that is as an infinitesimally small point with no extended dimensions, isn't that just this Universe?

I love Brian Greene's books and I am a complete layman in this field, but I too think the multiverses in parallel idea is a crock of st. It's like a get out clause as it can be used to explain away anything that doesn't make sense in this Universe. Oh, yeah, I don't know what happened to that particle either I think it must have jumped across to the other place'. I'd love to be proved wrong, but I think it stinks.

Gene, I take it you are not an advocate of M-Theory (as you mentioned your problems with string theory on which it is based)? If not what theory do you follow on the sub-fermion/boson scale nature of the Universe? I've always like strings, oscillations just made sense to me.

I'm still waiting on the biological time dilation hypothesis. I was thinking about it last night and all I could come up with was that a biological organism has processes running in different inertial frames and that the metabolism and ageing process is affected differently than an inanimate object would be. I still don't like the idea though, and I don't see the point of it. What's the problem with a person ageing less when they have been travelling very fast? There is no twins paradox, it was solved without even using GR.

The hypothesis is that the previous failed attempts would be mostly very short-lived and not like this Cosmos at all, this Cosmos is the result of separation into parts that could sustain themselves and support (co-exist with) the other parts, this requires the fields of probability that actually bring about 'things' to do the same. So the primary element may have needed to lose some of its constituent parts so as to evolve into something that could finally separate and form this Cosmos. If what we call Dark Energy was energy as we know it, the Cosmos we have now would be unstable and fizz into burn out, so the Dark Energy can be seen in this hypothesis as a sort of boiling off of excess energy until the the ingredients were right.

A further point to make, so as to get the image right in your minds eye... we speak of the Singularity as being very small and to us here at this point of time in relative terms it was but if we had been in that singularity it would have been as large as our Cosmos now.

We all live in hope that Mr. Greene will pull something out of the hat in the convolutions of string theory yet, he has in the past and will do in the future, all theoreticians are at times seen as nutters, weirdos and every other disparaging statement you can think of, if you are not for a good part of your life subject to such things then you're not a good theoretician. Without theoreticians their would be hundreds of doors open to investigation and scientists and physicists would be faced with too many choices and scientific investigation of their kind is expensive, so we close and lock many of them of them, to outsider who can say "that's total nonsense" the door was already closed, but we open it, take a look inside rummage about, leave and lock the door and in comparison we're bloody cheap! Physicists close some too as do experimentalists, sometimes they arrive in a room we've closed and we go back and try to make sense of what they have found or more usually refine their investigation to take out the error or anomaly they've conjured up and put it right, Mr. Greene is famous because in the latter function he's one of and perhaps the best around, far far better than me, he is more patient and happy to trawl others work to do this, I'm not built that way, so hopeless at it.

For me QFT at this moment has much more to offer in explanation, a rich seam that offers new insights.

I'm not really an advocate of a single explanation source, I'm a bit 'pick and mix' as almost all of us are unless writing a book or trying to make a career in the media.

In answer to your last bit, perhaps if you start with the fact that we can't be accelerated for long periods at more than 1g and getting to near light speed will take 10 months for the human on board, then read the piece I wrote on the connection between the passing of time and gravity.

[MiseryStreak]

I can't find that bit, but thanks for answering the other stuff.

Back on track (maybe), isn't time really a half dimension?

I ask that because you mentioned earlier:

Gene Vincent said:

The reason it is so simple is that it is singular, the other three work together and this gives them a myriad of complex characteristics, but time is like a just one of those dimensions all on its own and 'x' without 'y' or 'z' is simple in the extreme.

Time is no different to that.

But each of the three extended spatial dimensions has two directions that it can travel in. In your wire frame field analogy, each is a set of lines or 'wires'. But time has been described as points at planck length intervals on this three dimensional grid, so not like the spatial dimensions at all, as a dimension it has no negative axis.

The arrow of time has only one direction, the spatial dimensions have two. So compared to the spatial dimensions, isn't time really a half dimension?

[Gene Vincent]

I can see what you are saying and it makes a kind of sense, but you either have a dimension or you don't, the individual characteristics are determined by how they have to interact.

The range of an individual dimension is intimately tied to its brethren.

If one of the spatial dimensions had only a left or right (up or down, to and fro) then that would eventually cause a collapse of the Cosmos. (maybe one of the pre-cosmos failures was like that!)

If time went forward and back then it too would cause the Cosmos to collapse. (again that may have happened prior to our successful Cosmos we have now)

But th thought is a good analytical one and you should be commended for it, top thinking!

[MiseryStreak]

I was fully prepared for you to tell me to go and sit in the corner and think about what I've said, so thanks for that!

Interesting about time running backwards, makes me think of this:



Best avoided really...

[Gene Vincent]

The thought alone is uncomfortable.

I enjoyed Red Dwarf.

[pointedstarman]

Have been reading both this and the expansion topics with a mixture of interest and confusion (caused, I have to admit, from ignorance moth than anything else) though I'm trying to get my head around what's being written which, I'm guessing, is the point..

Linking the two I have a question; how does the 'appearance' of new bits of space (I'm not going to pretend any great level of knowledge by using words like quanta etc) sit wrt causality, ie. what 'makes' the new bits come into being?

[Gene Vincent]

pointedstarman said:

...I have a question; how does the 'appearance' of new bits of space (I'm not going to pretend any great level of knowledge by using words like quanta etc) sit wrt causality, ie. what 'makes' the new bits come into being?

It is a good question and one that gets to the heart of causality.

But first we'll deal with the simple matter of something coming into 'being' from nowhere with seemingly no cause.

We are well aware that at the fundamental level sub-atomic particles do spontaneously appear and then disappear becoming nothing again, so we are halfway to creating that extra space, but the huge difference is that what is being created in space is nothing, not a particle just simply a further extent of nothing.

Producing a further bit of empty space, a bit of nothing, when returned to nothing means that a fundamental balance is retained.

But the overall size of the Cosmos has increased.

[pointedstarman]

So a bit of nothing is created then disappears, leaving nothing behind which creates a balance but this process results in a little bit more 'space' being left behind and as a result the cosmos has grown a little more?

[Gene Vincent]

pointedstarman said:

So a bit of nothing is created then disappears, leaving nothing behind which creates a balance but this process results in a little bit more 'space' being left behind and as a result the cosmos has grown a little more?

Yep.

Isn't it fascinating how this Cosmos works.

[pointedstarman]

On a slight tangent, what is the process by which such things are concluded? When reading or watching an item / book / programme on the subject it seems to be primarily mathematicians (sometimes disguised as cosmologists and the like) who come up with these theroies but how? Does someone sit down and write a mathematical formulae that discribes it or is the process more akin to philosophy (which I'm guessing is what Hawking does as I've read he doesn't do much maths in his head)?

[Gene Vincent]

pointedstarman said:

On a slight tangent, what is the process by which such things are concluded? When reading or watching an item / book / programme on the subject it seems to be primarily mathematicians (sometimes disguised as cosmologists and the like) who come up with these theroies but how? Does someone sit down and write a mathematical formulae that discribes it or is the process more akin to philosophy (which I'm guessing is what Hawking does as I've read he doesn't do much maths in his head)?

it is down to individual, for some sitting at a desk resolving formulae and applying them in various convoluted ways is their method, for my mentor Jim, he does his best work after a bit of Mountain climbing, which is ironic considering his main theme in life is gravity, for me I like to drive and drive damned fast, afterwards I have a clear mind.

Don't be fooled by Mr. Hawkings words, we don't do numbers, at this level we think in terms of geometry not numbers as you might think of them.

[pointedstarman]

The question that imediately occurs to me then is how is a theory proven if it is effectively the product of philosophy? I'm aware of the process of using observation to prove a theory but when you get to the levels where you're right on the boundaries of what is understood proving by observation can, I would think, be pretty difficult?

[Gene Vincent]

It can take years.

Theorists long ago satisfied themselves of the presence of the Higgs and moved on.

Some of what I am doing now may be proved or disproved in perhaps 10 years time, or longer, but the maths 'works' so unless something new comes along that overturns the present model then we go on. The model is strong and is getting stronger almost every day.

[Kenzle]

Gene Vincent said:

It can take years.

Theorists long ago satisfied themselves of the presence of the Higgs and moved on.

Some of what I am doing now may be proved or disproved in perhaps 10 years time, or longer, but the maths 'works' so unless something new comes along that overturns the present model then we go on. The model is strong and is getting stronger almost every day.

No physical theory has ever been proven. It is not possible. Theories can only be demonstrated to be wrong. Sure, some theories are good theories and others are poor. Measuring the magnetic moment of the electron to 12 decimal places and showing that it agreed with the predicted value of QED showed that QED is a (very) good theory but it doesn't prove it is 'correct', merely useful.

Demonstrating that a theory is internally consistent or that it does not contradict another theory does not mean it is correct.

[Gene Vincent]

Kenzle said:

Gene Vincent said:

It can take years.

Theorists long ago satisfied themselves of the presence of the Higgs and moved on.

Some of what I am doing now may be proved or disproved in perhaps 10 years time, or longer, but the maths 'works' so unless something new comes along that overturns the present model then we go on. The model is strong and is getting stronger almost every day.

No physical theory has ever been proven. It is not possible. Theories can only be demonstrated to be wrong. Sure, some theories are good theories and others are poor. Measuring the magnetic moment of the electron to 12 decimal places and showing that it agreed with the predicted value of QED showed that QED is a (very) good theory but it doesn't prove it is 'correct', merely useful.

Demonstrating that a theory is internally consistent or that it does not contradict another theory does not mean it is correct.

That's a quaint idea, but one that has been discarded and nowadays only paid lip-service to, thank goodness.

The reasons are obvious I think as to why we only cast a quick eye over the viability of a good and working theory today.

The image of the striving monk-physicist lives on in peoples minds and seems imprinted indelibly.

[Kenzle]

It has certainly not been 'discarded'. In the context of pointedstarman's question concerning how a theory can be proven if it is 'effectively the product of philosophy', i feel my answer is more useful than yours ('it can take years...').

Part of the problem with physics over the last 20 years is how far theorists have raced ahead of experiment. People feel that string theory is just as valid as QCD or that n=11 supergravity is a 'correct' theory (well, they used to). Keeping the 'quaint idea' of what makes a good theory at the forefront of our thinking is all that we sometimes have to keep us on the right path and not go down blind alleys chasing mathematically beautiful, but incorrect, and ultimately fruitless theories.

[Gene Vincent]

You are confusing hypothesis with theory.

Sugra was not a theory, it was always an hypothesis and is much of string 'theory' or M-'theory', many things are misnamed, simply starting your hypothesis with tried and tested theories and the extemporising does not give your lovely bit of 'Jazz Theorising' the clout of a theory.

It is not a 'problem' to be 20 years in advance of the white coated army, they need Generals with a plan.

[IainT]

Gene Vincent said:

It is not a 'problem' to be 20 years in advance of the white coated army, they need Generals with a plan.

Spoken like a true adherent to Sheldonism.

[hairykrishna]

Gene Vincent said:

Kenzle said:

Gene Vincent said:

It can take years.

Theorists long ago satisfied themselves of the presence of the Higgs and moved on.

Some of what I am doing now may be proved or disproved in perhaps 10 years time, or longer, but the maths 'works' so unless something new comes along that overturns the present model then we go on. The model is strong and is getting stronger almost every day.

No physical theory has ever been proven. It is not possible. Theories can only be demonstrated to be wrong. Sure, some theories are good theories and others are poor. Measuring the magnetic moment of the electron to 12 decimal places and showing that it agreed with the predicted value of QED showed that QED is a (very) good theory but it doesn't prove it is 'correct', merely useful.

Demonstrating that a theory is internally consistent or that it does not contradict another theory does not mean it is correct.

That's a quaint idea, but one that has been discarded and nowadays only paid lip-service to, thank goodness.

The reasons are obvious I think as to why we only cast a quick eye over the viability of a good and working theory today.

The image of the striving monk-physicist lives on in peoples minds and seems imprinted indelibly.

The scientific method has been 'discarded'?