Posted on 12/20/2001 5:17:16 AM PST by Father Wu
Artificial wormholes are the way to do this. We just need some neg-matter or some way of generating neg-matter's effects.
THAT is a question with a ponderously long answer! Ten seconds into it you would forget this question as other more profound heresys arise. If you are sincerely interested, I would not mind a dialogue on the subject.
I beg to disagree: Newton's laws describe reality well, but not perfectly well. And the inaccuracy happens to be greater at greater speeds.
Here we must respectfully disagree. When dealing with an exactitude (like mathematics) "not perfectly well" is not good enough. Einstein's theory (assuming it is true) is not only relevant at great speeds, but also slow speeds. It is simply that the difference between Einstein's answer to a problem involving a slow speed is indestinguishable from Newton's unless you carry the calculation out to 20 decimal places. But that difference counts.
I believe that any valid physical law must be true at ALL conditions, not just a narrow subset of conditions to be valid in general.
As of yet we don't understand how it applies to physical laws. That is yet to be understood, harnessed and applied for man's benefit. That's the purpose of technology advancement, research and development.
My further point was that the basic misunderstanding we are dancing with here is the basic thing that must be resolved one way or another for your future to be realized.
No one knows, of course. I just wanted to mention that the scientists need not add dinmensions one at a time. Your remark reminded me of a model (in statistical mechanics) from long ago that calculated the behavior of a system in... 27 dimensions (yes, there were reasons for the choice of that number). You may also hear a statement along the lines, "We know this phase transition occurs above eleven and below six dimensions. What happens in between is an open question."
So, one need not assume that the next "big" change in paradigm, if it affects the dimensionality at all, will add just one dimension.
Especially when you're dealing in Quantum measures, where 20 decimal places is not unusual. Newtons laws were a representation of the best knowledge at the time. Einstein refined them to fit all situations.
On another note: what does it provide as evidence? A lot of little Heisenbergs running around?
I haven't been able to make the connection to The Matrix very well. But I do know other people that said the movie helped them understand the concepts better.
Where I and they do agree is on The Matrix is in the metaphor of being controlled by an external authority. Wielding the metaphors around in my mind enough to see how we can out-compete government.
LOL!!!
I wish I could say check back in a week, but twenty or thirty years is probably more like it. :)
Nobody claims that the coordinates must be written (x,y,x,t) with time being the fourth in the tuple. One could use (x,t,y,z), of course. It was always my understanding that people referred to time as the fourth dimension as the one added by the relativity theory, prior to which time was known but considered independent.
To make a statement that an n-dimensional being in an (n+1)-dimensional world cannot detect the (n+1)st dimension is rather strong and requires support. How do we detect a particle's spin without having one ourselves?
I knew Catholic schools were strict, but this is something else altogether.
A: Fish.
Physics takes as postulates the following.
1. There is energy of a particle, T, associated with its motion, called kinetic.
2. There is energy of a system of particles, U, associated with interactions among them, called potential.
3. Whenever a system of particles evolves, it does so in a way that make the total vaiation of the quantity (T-U) minimal (this is Hamilton's Principle of Least Action).
Conceptually, that's it. In applications, one has to exhibit the form of the potential energy U, which is system-specific, of course. There is no empirical evidence at odds with this structure.
Which part of it qualifies as nonsense?
This is merely a difference in the semantical meaning of the words.
As far as I know, all physicists view the "truth" about reality as a limit. Very much like zero is a limit of the 1/n, that is,
1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, ....
The limit is zero, but no term of the sequence is zero. The truth is, similarly, the limit of our model building. No theory claims to have attained it.
Returning to the question at hand, I believe that we do agree, but have used different words to describe it. We currently beleive in the relativity theory --- just one term of the sequence, not the ultimate truth; Newton's theory departs from it more the greater the speed of the bject. In fact, Newton's theory is competely valid in the limit of speeds approaching zero -- in the sence of the limit.
Yes, that was worded too strongly, I should have used "readily perceive" instead of detect.
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