The Many Directions of Time

http://www.stanford.edu/~afmayer/ ^ | 1 February 2006 | Alexander Franklin Mayer

[capitalist229]

What does this have to do with the eleven dimensions (and parallel universes) needed to unite gravity and quantum physics into a single theory ?

Have they observed enough high energy neutrinos yet to prove it ?

BUMP

[VadeRetro]

I hope he didn't steal my theory of time. I was going to revolutionize everything in a few days as soon as I got the time to put some of my ideas down in ones and zeroes.

[longshadow]

..... "Affiliate"......

an interestingly vague job title. I wonder what it means. I'm guessing that "student" and "professor" are excluded as possibilities. Maybe he's a lab technician. Somebody has to keep all those inclined planes in good working order....

[longshadow]

"Time is the because with which some dolls are stuffed." - ee cummings

[timer]

You're right, right whale is wrong. "time" is delta KE which is mass which is the temporary imbalance between matter wavelength and particle velocity : t=dKE=m=(W>P or WP)of your hand throwing the baseball as a resistance, which is what TIME is : W>P or over running matter wave FORCE in newtons of waveforce. Thus deceleration and gravity(weight)are the same thing : over running MATTER WAVE ENERGY(wavelength). Aliens that zap you with their remotes in aductions have known this for billions of "years"...but try getting a physicist to even talk about matter waves...it's like pulling teeth without painkillers and rusty pliers...watch them squirm...

[VadeRetro]

e e cummings stole my theory!!??

[NicknamedBob]

"What can possibly have led this physicist to guess that time is geometrical at all?"

This statement:

"The novel idea that there are an infinite number of time dimensions in the Universe revolutionizes gravitational theory and much of modern science with it. A number of outstanding scientific mysteries are definitively solved, including observations that lead to the concepts of 'dark energy' and 'dark matter'."

He's searching for conditions that explain the currently inexplicable. This is the equivalent of leaving a constant in your formula which absorbs all the discrepancies of your calculations.

Intuitively, I think it helps to explain the incredible size of the Universe, in comparison to its relatively young age. Now, if I can just have someone explain the explanation...

[RightWhale]

That made up physics is getting the topic nowhere.

[RightWhale]

Seems the way we think of time is supposed to be analagous to the way we think about distance. Now, consider that just because we can put a geometry on cartesian coordinates doesn't mean there is anything geometrical about space, or time. All this neat ink on paper linework hasn't got us anywhere near FTL travel. We need a new ideogram, Einstein had his 100 years with no result.

[RightWhale]

String theory has run into a kind of foggy, mucky swamp lately. Progress just isn't happening like it was hoped.

[Don Joe]

Quote this: time is not a necessary dimension in physics.

Eternity is not "infinite time"; eternity is the absence of time. Time is a constraint placed upon the temporal creation. It has a beginning, and an end. (It has a beginning of logical necessity -- think it through an you (the Royal 'You') will see the logic -- unless it is cyclical, which is less of a rational construct than an eternity sans time, in which "yesterday, today, and forever" are all "at once".)

So, having agreed :) that time does have a beginning, it only makes sense that this beginning occured within the context of a "timeless" eternity.

[RightWhale]

A useful thought, thanks.

[NicknamedBob]

Our traveling faster than light will turn out to be the equivalent of cartoons showing the two-dimensional image lifting off of the page to move through a three dimensional reality.

If the author's thesis is correct, entities at opposite ends of the Universe could be moving in opposite directions of time. Regardless of that, however, each would still be moving away from the center.

Essentially, in Cartesian coordinates, we would draw our diagrams from left to right of increasing time, and they would draw theirs from right to left. But we will never run across these backward-travellers, because we would never reach them.

[NicknamedBob]

My physics requires time to be ongoing everywhere at the same rate, except for gravitational slowing, and independent of other effects.

This is the kind of thinking that allows the programming of spacecraft operating millions of miles from Earth, to turn at the appropriate time, as they are passing a body in real time, to capture images to be sent to Earth at a later time, from stored instructions received at an earlier time.

We thus operate under the conception that time is passing there at the same rate it does here, and that all instructions have to be sent in advance, clocked down, and acted upon at the appropriate instant if the spacecraft, which is passing the body in question now, will act now to capture the image. We then learn of the success of our activities later.

Now, if we are ever to be able to operate outside of the constraints of time, and therefor space, we will have to be able to develop a means of knowing, with mathematical precision, (the proverbial ontological certitude), that the things we perceive in our imaginations are exactly as they are at a distance. The map then becomes the territory, and Science then becomes indistinguishable from Magic.

[inquest]

The only definition is that it is conserved, and that is a law.

That's a consequence of the definition, not the definition itself. The scientific definition of energy is the capacity to do work, and work is defined as a force applied through a given distance. And force is defined as that which causes mass to accelerate, and that means time has to be a factor.

[RightWhale]

Math is the problem. There is no particular reason why reality should conform to math.

[ImaGraftedBranch]

ping!

[NicknamedBob]

You sound like a modern public school teacher.

[RightWhale]

That's one of the many faces of energy. Mechanics is not the whole story anymore.

[RightWhale]

Yes, I taught high school. Wasn't recently, though.