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The Many Directions of Time
http://www.stanford.edu/~afmayer/ ^ | 1 February 2006 | Alexander Franklin Mayer

Posted on 02/05/2006 1:48:11 PM PST by ckilmer

Alexander Franklin Mayer Theoretical Physicist and Cosmologist

1 February 2006

Welcome!

For a number of months now at Stanford University (Physics), I have been quietly working on a book entitled The Many Directions of Time, which I anticipate will go to press in 2006. Here you will find a preview of related 'digital lectures' that have been created to appeal to a wide global audience including topic experts as well as students, amateur astronomers and scientific professionals of all varieties.

The Introduction (17 PowerPoint slides) will take you less than 10 minutes to go through and should convince you that the larger body of work (Lectures 1 and 2) are very much worth your while to investigate.

The lectures are based on a single underlying idea that drove the insights they contain: that time is not a single dimension of spacetime but rather a local geometric distinction in spacetime. While this may seem very esoteric, it is actually quite simple.

Not too long ago, people thought the Earth was flat, which meant they thought that gravity pointed in the same direction everywhere. Today, we think of that as a silly idea, but at the same time, most people today (including most scientists) still think of spacetime as if it were a big box with 3 space dimensions and 1 time dimension. So, like gravity for a flat Earth, the single time dimension for the 'big box universe' points in one direction, from the Big-Bang into the future. A lot of lip service is given to the idea of "curved spacetime", but the simplistic 3+1 'box' remains the dominant concept of what cosmic spacetime is like.

Imagine that 'the arrow of time' in the Universe, like gravity on Earth, is pretty much the same everywhere, yet also different everywhere relative to everywhere else. That means that the 'arrow of time' points in different directions in spacetime depending on where you are, so time has a geometry just like space has a geometry. 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'. You will know what these are after you read the lectures.

My pending personal URL is alexandermayer.com, which currently redirects to this Website. The draft release was on 27 December 2005.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: crevolist; darkmatter; mayer; space; time
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To: ckilmer
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

61 posted on 02/05/2006 4:39:35 PM PST by capitalist229
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To: PatrickHenry
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.
62 posted on 02/05/2006 5:01:12 PM PST by VadeRetro (Liberalism is a cancer on society. Creationism is a cancer on conservatism.)
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To: PatrickHenry
..... "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....

63 posted on 02/05/2006 5:09:26 PM PST by longshadow (FReeper #405, entering his ninth year of ignoring nitwits, nutcases, and recycled newbies)
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To: VadeRetro

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


64 posted on 02/05/2006 5:10:39 PM PST by longshadow (FReeper #405, entering his ninth year of ignoring nitwits, nutcases, and recycled newbies)
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To: inquest
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...
65 posted on 02/05/2006 5:13:05 PM PST by timer
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To: longshadow
e e cummings stole my theory!!??
66 posted on 02/05/2006 5:16:52 PM PST by VadeRetro (Liberalism is a cancer on society. Creationism is a cancer on conservatism.)
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To: RightWhale
"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...

67 posted on 02/05/2006 5:30:34 PM PST by NicknamedBob (And then I sat down and I wrote this report, ‘cause I knew that you’d want all the facts.)
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To: timer

That made up physics is getting the topic nowhere.


68 posted on 02/05/2006 5:32:48 PM PST by RightWhale (pas de lieu, Rhone que nous)
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To: NicknamedBob

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.


69 posted on 02/05/2006 5:36:40 PM PST by RightWhale (pas de lieu, Rhone que nous)
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To: capitalist229

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


70 posted on 02/05/2006 5:38:16 PM PST by RightWhale (pas de lieu, Rhone que nous)
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To: RightWhale
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.

71 posted on 02/05/2006 5:47:09 PM PST by Don Joe (We've traded the Rule of Law for the Law of Rule.)
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To: Don Joe

A useful thought, thanks.


72 posted on 02/05/2006 5:49:34 PM PST by RightWhale (pas de lieu, Rhone que nous)
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To: RightWhale

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.


73 posted on 02/05/2006 5:50:25 PM PST by NicknamedBob (And then I sat down and I wrote this report, ‘cause I knew that you’d want all the facts.)
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To: RightWhale
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.
74 posted on 02/05/2006 6:17:03 PM PST by NicknamedBob (And then I sat down and I wrote this report, ‘cause I knew that you’d want all the facts.)
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To: RightWhale
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.

75 posted on 02/05/2006 6:20:28 PM PST by inquest (If you favor any legal status for illegal aliens, then do not claim to be in favor of secure borders)
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To: NicknamedBob

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


76 posted on 02/05/2006 6:20:30 PM PST by RightWhale (pas de lieu, Rhone que nous)
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To: Ultra Sonic 007

ping!


77 posted on 02/05/2006 6:20:38 PM PST by ImaGraftedBranch ("Toleration" has never been affiliated with the virtuous. Think about it.)
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To: RightWhale

You sound like a modern public school teacher.


78 posted on 02/05/2006 6:24:08 PM PST by NicknamedBob (And then I sat down and I wrote this report, ‘cause I knew that you’d want all the facts.)
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To: inquest

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


79 posted on 02/05/2006 6:26:02 PM PST by RightWhale (pas de lieu, Rhone que nous)
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To: NicknamedBob

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


80 posted on 02/05/2006 6:27:56 PM PST by RightWhale (pas de lieu, Rhone que nous)
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