Ground-breaking work in understanding of time

Eurekalert ^ | July 31, 2003 | Brooke Jones

[boris]

The End of Time by Julian Barbour.

[Nebullis]

Is this a dupe?

Oh no, a double post.

[VadeRetro]

What I get about his math is that he doesn't like points in time, which seems to mean that he doesn't like calculus, which among other things gets you around the implied divide by zero in concepts like "instantaneous velocity," a ratio with a zero in the divisor. He seems to disallow such usages.

Which would mean that time isn't a dimension like the other dimensions, except that, since time won't reduce to exact points, neither do length, width, depth? At least, I think he's saying that.

[Drawsing]

I have always wondered about this and I think it is addressed in this article. How can I ever touch anything if the closer I get the denominator of the fraction of the distance between my finger and the object keeps getting bigger. In other words my finger is a half inch away from the object. Then it is 1/4 inch then 1/8 then 1/16 etc... for infinity since numbers are infinite...or are they?

[js1138]

It seems to be a separate article from a different source.

[Nebullis]

The End of Time by Julian Barbour.

Yes! Maybe a better formulation. But this is not unique.

[Fiddlstix]

Bump

[js1138]

It'll be interesting to see how he gets around QM. I'm sure the book peddlers are licking their chops. New-age books on QM are getting stale.

[alnitak]

You can read his solution to Zeno's paradoxes here.

[js1138]

That was a fast read.

[VadeRetro]

It'll be interesting to see how he gets around QM. I'm sure the book peddlers are licking their chops. New-age books on QM are getting stale.

One way or other this guy's going to spawn 100 cults. More if he's right than if he's wrong, but the Wheeler quote on top of the initial criticisms and his outsider status mean he's already guaranteed 100.

[js1138]

No humor intended: I'm not getting anything at that link.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

I tried to find the article but it looks like its not on the net yet. I found this,

"Boosts in an Arbitrary Direction and Maximal Causal Velocities in a Deformed Minkowski Space".

[alnitak]

Odd. It worked in the preview. If this doesn't work just google for Peter Lynds (the web section of google). He has an apostrophe in the filename, that might be affecting things for your browser.


http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001197/02/Zeno's_Paradoxes_-_A_Timely_Solution.pdf


http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Peter+Lynds%22&btnG=Google+Search&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8

[Socratic]

"I can't honestly say I'm surprised; this sort of petty stupid thing is so sadly common among people who are supposed to be looking for the truth."

I also ran into a similar experience with a Physics professor. The previous day's dicussion led me to derive that different wavelenghts of light moved at different speeds when affected by gravity. My hypothesis was that distant galactic objects, when viewed from earth, were actually showing different views of the object at different times because of the various wavelengths involved in their observation. I thought some sort of correction for the gravity distortion could provide a more accurate understanding of the actual view as perceived on Earth.
After a couple seconds of thought he said their was little galactic matter between the objects and Earth, thus the effect would be negligible. - Instant dismissal.
I still hold my view. Given the great distances involved, and the fact that those most distantly observed objects (i.e. oldest) were part of a more compact universe, with a greater mutual gravitational interaction, any slight variation in speed and angular displacement between different frequencies WILL produce an observable fuzziness. Whether one can mathematically or practically adjust for the distortion {gravity corrected slices of different frequencies "assembled" in a computer?), is still something I don't know. But one thing is certain; I was given the academic bums-rush!

[ecomcon]

I understand it as impacting relative measurements that involve time; motion. Not quantization per se.

[Socratic]

"To a layman like me, Lynds seems to be saying that time and space aren't quantized. In other words, quantum theory is blown out of the water????!!!?? That would be hugh."

It may be that he is saying that even the most macroscopic processes are quantized. Instead of moments in time, perhaps we should think of constantly changing vectors (this would still preserve the notion of causality and still allow for quantum uncertainty).

[js1138]

See you and raise you one google:

http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:AP2Udx6uxwkJ:philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001197/02/Zeno%27s_Paradoxes_-_A_Timely_Solution.pdf+%22Peter+Lynds%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

[Libertarianize the GOP]

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/bump-list

[VadeRetro]

Your link works for me. Well, sort of. He spends a lot of time on what the solution to Zeno's paradoxes is not. By the time he's trying to say what it is, it still looks to me like he's saying what it's not.

But I'll give it a more careful read later.