Physics looks for new Einstein as nature rewrites laws of universe

Times Newspapers Ltd. ^ | September 9 2001 | Jonathan Leake

[betty boop]

Very interesting. Bump for a bit later.... Thanks for the post, telos. best, bb.

[Alamo-Girl]

Nonetheless, the distance between two particles can increase due to the stretching of the space between them, and general relativity places no restriction on how fast the stretching can occur.

Yesssss!

As Einstein said in Relativity: "There is no such thing as an empty space, i.e. a space without field. Space-time does not claim existence on its own, but only as a structural quality of the field."

To the discussion, I would add that the perception of a Big Bang may be the unfortunate result of the selection of four coordinates from a higher dimensional dynamic - i.e. one including time.

PDF on Higher Dimensional Shock Wave and

PDF on Space-Time measurements in Kaluza-Klein Gravity

[Moonman62]

The photons haven't changed at all; it just that frequency depends on point-of-view.

Perhaps I should reform my question. Where did the energy go from the redshifted photons of the cosmic microwave background?

[ksen]

In particular, that doesn't fit into anything I've ever heard of. I suspect your author doesn't know what an "event horizon" is all about. I respectfully suggest that you get another source of information on the subject.

Thanks for your response. To paraphrase an earlier post of yours,"I think the lack of clarity is my fault." I will bring the book in tomorrow and post the author's own words and let him speak for himself.

The only reason I bring it up in this thread is because it also dealt with the speed of light.

Thanks again,

-ksen

[Physicist]

debits on the left and credits on the right ;^)

In accounting as in politics, to be sure. :-)

I'll keep an eye out for the book.

[js1138]

Anybody know what the prize is for getting "Physicist" to cry "Uncle!"? An fun-filled one week, all-expense paid vacation with medved and G3K?

Second prize is TWO weeks.

[Physicist]

LOL! But seriously, 186,000 x 186,000 = a really big number. How do we accurately measure the output number? After all, everything close is blown to hell and back. How do know that E doesn't really = m x 185,000^2???, or 187,000^2. (Those are really big numbers, too.)Sign me, parsifal the curious?

Don't be spooked by the size of the number. The accuracy is determined by the number of significant digits you carry; the decimal places are just along for the ride. (I take it you've never used a slide rule.)

And after all, "186,000 miles per second" is really just a choice of units. When I do calculations for work, the speed of light = 1, and is unitless. All you have to do is measure time in the same units you use to measure length. If you set h-bar = 1, you can measure everything in units of energy (or inverse units of energy). The unit choice c = h-bar = 1 is often referred to as "God's units". Time and space are conveniently measured in units of GeV^-1.

[longshadow]

Once the space has come into existence, photons would presumably be restricted to travel at c, within the existing space. But at the "frontier" it's different.

The photons are ALWAYS restricted to c, even during the inflationary phase. I believe that's why Guth talks about "causal discontinuity" during the inflationary phase; space is expanding faster than the photons can get "there," hence such regions of space are causally disconnected from each other (until a light-like world-line is capabable of connecting the points to each other).

Another way to look at the inflation is this: hypothetically, take two points that start out 1 mile apart. Now turn on your trusty Guth TURBO Spacetime Inflator™, and set the inflation factor to 1,000,000, and the duration selector to "1 second", secure your goggles, and press the "activate" button.

Wooooosh! snap, crackle, pop.........

Your two points are now 1,000,000 miles apart, apparently traveling 999,999 miles in ONE second, i.e., FTL. These two points are momentarily causally disconnected (until photons emitted at their respective locations just before you inflated space reach the opposing point AFTER space was inflated.)

Now repeat the experiment with a piece of matter located at each of the two points, with no relative velocity with respect to each other (they are just sitting there, fat, dumb, and happy on the two points, not going anywhere.)

Wooooosh! snap, crackle, pop.........

The two pieces of matter are still sitting on the sdame two points, but are now 1,000,000 miles apart, having apparently "traveled" 999,999 miles in one second, i.e., FTL.

Now, after you shut off the Guth TURBO Space Inflator™, what is the relative velocities of the two pieces of matter with respect to each other? This is the key point...... The relative velocity is ZERO. The two pieces of matter were never subjected to any "force" and hence they never had any relative velocity, even during the inflation. If they had any relative velocity DURING the inflation, conservation of Momentum would require that they continue to move apart AFTER the inflation stopped! But they don't, hence, they didn't acquire any momentum during the inflation. Hence their velocity was NOT affected by the inflation!

Thus, it is possible, via Inflation, to have matter displaced spacially over a time and distance that would appear to imply FTL velocities, when there is in fact NO velocity at all on the part of the matter.

The same argument applies to photons substituted for the chunks of matter; thus light does not exceed "c" during the inflation.

Hope that helps. BTW, the same arguments apply to the ongoing expansion of the Universe; distant galaxies appear to be receding because space is expanding. Beyond the Hubble limit, objects would seem to be moving away from us at FTL speeds, but they are not in any danger of getting a Cosmic Speeding Ticket -- space is expanding, and they are just going along for the ride.

The above is subject to revision and extension by our resident "cosmo-nerds," in case I screwed up things...

[betty boop]

[telos:] I have faith the pursuit of truth will lead to God.

[Storm Orphan:] At which point we will tranq him, tag his ear and release him back into the wild to monitor his migration and mating habits.

LOL Storm Orphan! The joke’s hilarious; but at bottom, it still involves a category error. I know you really don’t think you can find God running around on all fours somewhere within the space-time continuum -- not necessarily because you appreciate the problems of transcendence, which can be dicey; but because you don’t believe there’s any such thing as transcendence, let alone God.

IMHO, you seem to hold as true the ancient Sophist formulation, “man is the measure.” That is, what man can see from his own little narrow perspective, contingent on his position within space and time, and his finite nature as a part of the Whole which he can never see “whole” or entire, is all there is and all that there ever could be….

So with man as the measure of the “god problem,” the reasoning might go something like this: God is not a datum of immanent experience. Immanence is all there is. Therefore, God does not exist. Case closed.

Yet somehow, the human mind is so constituted that God is “thinkable”; yet God can never really be an object of cognition. The trouble in thinking about God is that the human mind, in order to think, has to intend objects. That’s the way the dianoetic mind is set up: We have to “objectivize” God to think about Him at all.

But if we are interested in the truth of God, we must never allow ourselves to fall into the error of thinking He is really an object among other objects, here in space-time reality. Or that He is somehow bound by His Creation – what is infinite and eternal cannot be bound by our little categories of space and time.

But please do enjoy your safari, Storm Orphan! Best, bb.

[workinprogress]

Just a bookmark to get back to later... but I'm glad to see the usual suspects here :-)

[RightWhale]

186,000 miles per second

I saw 1 foot per nanosecond recently. Seems like a convenient unit choice. Like 1 lightyear per year.

[longshadow]

I saw 1 foot per nanosecond recently. Seems like a convenient unit choice. Like 1 lightyear per year.

I suppose those are more convenient units of measure than my personal favorite: furlongs-per fortnight.....

[Physicist]

I saw 1 foot per nanosecond recently. Seems like a convenient unit choice.

It's an excellent choice for visualization, one that I use all the time myself. For a cocktail-napkin calculation, however, 10 nanoseconds per 3 meters is more useful.

[RightWhale]

Saw 1 foot per nanosecond in the book "Time Travel in Einstein's Universe" [I think that is the title], by J. Richard Gott, an astrophysicist.

[PatrickHenry]

...my personal favorite: furlongs-per fortnight...

Ya gotta think big. Really big! I have a cosmic viewpoint. My basic unit of length is one radius of the universe, or one "R". My unit of time is the current age of the universe, or one "U". So for me, light travels one R per U (ignoring inflation). Makes things simple.

[Oberon]

At the conference Hawking dismissed the idea of a series of big bangs on the grounds that it extended into the infinite past and so could never have a beginning.

That's a laughable notion. One would presume that Hawking has no problem with infinities in space, so why should his cosmology stumble over an infinity in time?

Or, to put it another way, our current cosmology (for this universe, at least...in itself a curious notion...) traces back to a singularity of infinitely dense, infinitely hot matter at time T=0. What makes this idea any less metaphysical than the idea of the existence of a time T=-1 femtoseconds?

[PatrickHenry]

Now turn on your trusty Guth TURBO Spacetime Inflator?, and set the inflation factor to 1,000,000, and the duration selector to "1 second", secure your goggles, and press the "activate" button.

This bothers me. You could use that machine for two-way travel, and thus exchange information FTL. Bummer. Otherwise, I think you're on the right track. Or at least you're on the same track as Guth.

[longshadow]

You could use that machine for two-way travel, and thus exchange information FTL

Yeah, but can you imagine what the electric bill would be each time you use it?

Seriously, how can you use the Turbo Space Inflator to transmit information FTL? I don't see how that would work....

[parsifal]

"I take it you've never used a slide rule.)"- I resent that remark! If you extend the middle bar and use the outside bar for a handle, they make dandy spit-ball propulsion devices. So there!

And after all, "186,000 miles per second" is really just a choice of units.

I understand that point but this is where I get confused:

E= the energy output right?

M= the mass of mat'l being blown up, right?

C^2= a mutiplier, which when applied to "M" makes a real big number(amount) which expresses the amount of energy you have (output).

So how do you check the math? If for example I theorize I get 10mpg, I could calculate output thusly: Distance(output)=Mass(gallons) x 10. Therefore if I had a 12 gallon tank, I could calculate an output of 120 miles. I could test that, sample that, and do all sorts of calculations. Right? I would know if my mileage were 9.5 or 10.5 instead of 10.

So how do you test the output of a nuke? How do we know E dont' = M x .975the speed of light ^ 1.988???

[PatrickHenry]

Seriously, how can you use the Turbo Space Inflator to transmit information FTL? I don't see how that would work....

Darn, you're forcing me to think. Ok, begin with two observers, A and B. Inflate! Now A has gone FTL out to where observer C is located. He gets info from C. Now, Inflate! Observer A has now zipped back to where observer B is located, and gives him info about C that has arrived FTL. That's what I had in mind. But with all that inflating, I suspect A and B could never locate each other again. If they could, causality is in trouble.