Posted on 03/09/2016 6:07:00 PM PST by MtnClimber
When Max Born addressed the South Indian Science Association in November 1935, it was a time of great uncertainty in his life. The Nazi Party had already suspended the renowned quantum mechanics physicist's position at the University of Gottingen in 1933. He had been invited to teach at Cambridge, but it was temporary. Then, the Party terminated his tenure at Gottingen in the summer of 1935. Born took up an offer to work with C. V. Raman and his students for six months at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. While there, he found that his family had lost its German citizenship rights. He was stateless and without a permanent home. And then, there was this uncertainty about two numbers. The scientific world had been coming to terms with two numbers that had emerged after a series of discoveries and theories in the previous four decades. They were unchanging and they had no units. One, the fine structure constant, defined the strength of interactions between fundamental particles and light. It is expressed as 1/137. The other, mu, related the mass of a proton to an electron. Born was after a unifying theory to relate all the fundamental forces of nature. He also wanted a theory that would explain where these constants came from. Something, he said, to “explain the existence of the heavy, and light elementary particles and their definite mass quotient 1840." It might seem a little bizarre that Born worried about a couple of constants. The sciences are full of constants—one defines the speed of light, another quantifies the pull of gravity, and so on......... But the weird thing about such constants is that there is no theory to explain their existence.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.scientificamerican.com ...
True. Think about how gravity influences and thus, distorts every measure of mass on earth. When Astronauts are in space, they float, bounce and drift. The amount of oxygen in the air may also effect the physical distribution and affects of measurement.
LOL!
There is a book on this called "The Closing of the Muslim Mind". The 11th century was the tipping point for any sort of advancement in the muslim world, that's when they determined that science was anti-allah and they condemned themselves into eons of crawling in the dirt for scraps until their oil gave them the funds to start exporting their backwards and dangerous philosophy of anti-rational obedience or death. If they are allowed to triumph and western science and technology falls under their boot it will make the 500 year dark ages look like a short and hopeful period.
My view is that with China becoming the big hog at their oil trough (that fun country with mafia business practices and 1.5 billion expendable people to enforce them) the muzzies are in for another dark period.
Well, if that cat hating Schrödinger is to believed, it all depends on the observer.
Which could mean, the the one true constant in the universe, is change. Even if other aspects of the universe are fixed, from a certain point of view, change is always there.
But what do I know. It’s not up to me anyway. Or maybe it is.
Crudely put in the form of a brief internet chat board posting:
Imagine a 2-dimensional universe (well, 2D as far as the inhabitants can imagine) existing on the surface of a balloon. (Go read “Flatland” and “Sphereland” and “Planiverse” right now if you haven’t. Ok, at least go order them from Amazon.com when you finish reading this post.) An inhabitant shoots an arrow, and it goes out of his “solar system”, and continues on traveling, on and on. Eventually it will go around the balloon, and come back and strike him in the back of the head.
Now raise the dimension of the given universe from 2D to 3D (ours). Same idea. In theory, if you shoot that arrow into space, it should go “around” the universe (existing on the surface of a 4D balloon), and eventually come back to you from the other direction. Likewise, the photons bouncing off the back of your head should go “around” the universe, and eventually come back to your eyes - so you could, in oversimplified theory, see the back of your own head.
Of course, the reality is probably a lot more complex, but that’s the basic idea. One of the first complications (sheer staggeringly huge size aside), is that the “balloon” our universe may exist on seems to be expanding - it started really small, then (a la “Big Bang”) started expanding really fast, and is still expanding. So long as it’s expanding slower than the speed of light, and the speed of your arrow, your arrow may take a long time but it should still come back to you. Actual shape remains in debate, seeing as we’re trying to see evidence of higher-dimensional shapes in something several billion light years wide and billions of years old, and doing so with quarter-inch pupils attached to two-pound brains on a small planet in a mere 200-million-mile-radius orbit - so pardon us while we still don’t have the answer exactly nailed down.
Fun to think about though. Good insightful question, which starts you off into the fascinating realm of cosmology.
“I would venture to say no, the constants of physics do not remain ‘constant’ or unchanging.”
Is there the _slightest_ evidence that those constants aren’t?
Love, Curley Howard
As you know, all matter is subject to molecular change. The resulting form of atomic structures may appear to be static to our naked eyes, but all physical matter is in a constant state of motion. The protons, neutrons, and electrons are never full at rest. The rate and pace of such motion varies greatly depending on the matter, the environment and even the instrument performing the observation. I.e. Water becomes Ice which later become steam which later becomes separated by mineral concentration.
The outcome of the flight of an imaginary Arrow is unknowable.
However, if an arrow were launched into space, the arrow would not travel through a void. It would encounter particles and dust. These would act on the arrow. Over time it would scour and pit the surface and erode it away, wood first, later metal. It might erode, with time, into its consitutant atoms.
Gravity, as far as we know, acts on all things. At some point it would act to capture the arrow—if it had not yet been scoured to particles— and pull it toward a galaxy, a sun, a planet. It might become a satellite around a Sun. It might land on a planet and become part of its mass, it might dissipate and become part of a dust cloud....
The outcome of the flight of an imaginary Arrow is unknowable.
However, if an arrow were launched into space, the arrow would not travel through a void. It would encounter particles and dust. These would act on the arrow. Over time it would scour and pit the surface and erode it away, wood first, later metal. It might erode, with time, into its consitutant atoms.
Gravity, as far as we know, acts on all things. At some point it would act to capture the arrow—if it had not yet been scoured to particles— and pull it toward a galaxy, a sun, a planet. It might become a satellite around a Sun. It might land on a planet and become part of its mass, it might dissipate and become part of a dust cloud....
Oops! Duplicate post. Sorry, I was caught in a time loop! (ButI managed to escape!)
Your point? Those sub-atomic particles exhibit constants. “Constants” in this context doesn’t mean “static” i.e. “not moving”, it means some key numbers expressing relationships between objective measurements are ALWAYS the same numbers, to whatever precision you care to measure/calculate to (and if the number seems to change, further analysis shows you made a mistake, and the universe did not change).
There was an intelligent race in another solar system that were honest and full of virtue. Their scientists devised a rocket ship to explore the next planet in their solar system. They selected the brightest among them to explore the next planet. The rocket ship launched on a beautiful pink morning and was working as expected after one month into the three month travel. Then an arrow hit the space ship and it exploded. The civilization took this as a message from their creator and never tried another rocket ship launch.
“This also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change.”
That just makes it possible to still use the program if you have to run it in Indiana: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill
(Sorry - I can never pass up an opportunity to pick at Hoosiers or Cheeseheads)
Invariant is not the same as constant.
Also, with the discovery of gravity waves and relativity, it has been proven there is no such thing as Time.
There are theories about up to 29 or more dimensions. What we understand as "Time" is not what it really is. Just like what we understand as "gravity" is really acceleration relating to the "bending" of "Time"
human expressions of what we think we are detecting but at another level are something fundamentally different and amazing.
I love this kind of stuff.
"The Tao you seek is not the true Tao."
What is really amazing is the pretzels the libs twist themselves into trying to avoid stating the obvious: there IS a designer.
Sure they are. I had the list of them right over there...wait, over there...um, over there?....nope. Dammit, Heisenberg!
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