Posted on 12/08/2013 8:32:23 PM PST by Carbonsteel
The likelihood of life on other planets is "very high," a planetary scientist told a House committee in a hearing some Democrats chided as evading U.S. issues.
"The chance that there's a planet like Earth out there with life on it is very high," Massachusetts Institute of Technology planetary science and physics Professor Sara Seager told the House Science Committee.
"The question is: Is there life near here, in our neighborhood of stars? We think the chances are good," she said, answering a question from Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas, who asked: "Do you think there's life out there, and are they studying us? And what do they think about New York City?"
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
lol. good one. Way to catch me serious.
That does not compute.
Yes, it does.
The fundamental idea that you're not grasping is that we do not live in a four dimensional vector space in which (x, y, z, t) are independent variables. There is an additional requirement, which outlaws an entire region of spacetime, which is that the quantity:
(ct)2 -x2 -y2 -z2 ≥ 0.
Equality in this equation holds only for massless particles, which travel the shortest distance paths.
The geometry of our universe requires that this quantity is the same for all observers in every inertial frame. Events lying outside of a hyperspatial spacetime "light cone" [for which (ct)2 -x2 -y2 -z2 < 0] cannot be causally related. This includes quantum events connected by so-called "entanglement."
For all observers, events originating outside of this light cone would appear to come from the future, a phenomenon which has never been observed.
A good explanation, with pictures, can be found here: http://www.phy.syr.edu/courses/modules/LIGHTCONE/lightcone.html
The wiki article is also good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_cone
This is why I keep telling you guys that superluminal velocity is impossible [I taught this subject in college for years.] The "light barrier" is not the same kind of barrier as the "sound barrier," the latter of which is not really a barrier at all. The "warp drive" of science fiction fame is a drive that needs to change the geometry of the entire universe: what it needs to "bend" or "warp"is the shortest distance between two points, which is (ct)2 -x2 -y2 -z2. However, in doing so, anyone using the "warp drive "would also become a time-traveler as well.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem.
Name one.
bflr
You want to believe in BS, fine.
But you're not going to get away with calling it science.
Sorry Professor, but after that insult, I stopped reading.
Trying to understand, are you saying that massless particles (photons) and quantum events (entanglement) exists only outside of our hyperspatial spacetime "light cone"/referance frame?
Yes, with our current understanding of the universe that is true.
How much would you have wagered at any point in human history that our current understanding of the universe is true, accurate and complete?
Well, it’s a fundamental idea, and you don’t grasp it. So you’ll continue to post nonsense.
No. for two different reasons.
First: Lorentz invariance is true in all inertial reference frames, not just the one we arbitrarily assign to ourselves at any given moment. For example, it is typical, but not always true that a frame of reference in which we believe ourselves to be at rest is the most convenient to do calculations. In a laboratory where you are accelerating particles at each other at near lightspeed, it's usually more convenient to pick a frame of reference in which the center of mass of the colliding particles is at rest. In both of those frames (ct)2-x2-y2-z2 is the same. So, the choice of an (inertial) frame of reference doesn't matter. That's a good thing. It means that physical laws don't change from one observer in motion with respect to another.
[In this particular example, everybody measures the same distance [sqrt((ct)2-x2-y2-z2)] in spacetime, but there are other quantities, like the four dimensional momentum that have the same property.]
Photons are not outside of the light cone. Massless particles define the absolute boundary of the light cone. That's where it gets its name. They travel on the "null" plane, or surface of the cone. And, they must always travel there, as long as they're massless.
Second: You have to be very careful with entangled quantum states. There is virtually nothing you can say that is intuitively correct, except Bell's Theorem, to wit:
No physical theory of local hidden variables can ever reproduce all of the predictions of quantum mechanics.
What does this mean in careful laymen's terms? It means there isn't another quantity like energy or angular momentum or classical electromagnetic field or distance that we can measure locally that's allowing entangled quantum states to simultaneously collapse when one of them is measured.
Again, being very careful, one interpretation is there is another nonlocal dimension which is not like space or time through which entangled quantum states could communicate.
This is one hypothesis, and there are some problems with this. But there are some problems with every alternative explanation, because at the end of the day, you arrive at a very interesting paradox, which is at the heart of why you have to be careful with entangled states: however the entangled states are "keeping in touch" with each other, they cannot impart any information to each other except the nature of their quantum states.
Now this sounds weird, because something is being communicated. And the answer is, there is but it's not "news you can use." It's quantum mechanical information, and it can't be used to affect local reality outside of the entanglement. [this is a statement accessible to laymen on very thin ice.]
There is actually a famous theorem called The No Communication Theorem which says that not only can't quantum information be used to transmit superluminal messages, it can't, in fact, be used to transmit classical information at any velocity at all.
This is head-scratching stuff for the best physicists in the world.
Here is a very bad analogy: bad because it doesn't describe the physics, but good because it describes how two events with spacelike separation could be correlated. Suppose you and two friends are each two light seconds away from each other, at the corners of an equilateral triangle. Two of you are listening to a baseball game broadcast in a city at the center of the triangle, the other is not. When McCutchen hits a homerun, you both fire off fireworks. Your friend will see both of your fireworks at the same instant of time [two second later,] which seems like a superluminal communication. [Because he doesn't know you're listening to the game, he thinks there should be at least two light seconds between one fireworks and the other. One should take four seconds to reach him.]
So the "Second" short answer is: some quantum entangled states may transmit strictly quantum information in a spacelike way [that is, outside the light cone.] But they do not transmit any information that you and I can use in that way.
Now, if you want to argue that the Earth is not round, you'll be mistaken, but you can (I guess) be satisfied with the answer that you will get no argument about that from me.
For example: the moon is about 1 light second away. If I fire off a rocket -- or even a laser -- toward the moon at 9:00:00.5 AM and see a dust cloud on the moon at 9:00:01 AM, the event of shooting and the event of dust-cloud cannot be inside of each others light cones. [Hence they are spacelike separated.] They both happened. But there is no frame of reference in which an observer would claim that one caused the other.
Equilateral triangle again, A)Laser, B)moon, C)observer.
All one light second apart.
A) laser fires, C)observer sees laser fire 1 light second later, B)Puff of dust on moon after 1 light second from laser firing, C) observer sees puff of dust from moon 1 light second later from his position, but 2 light seconds from when he observed laser firing.
I would think an order has been established as to which happened first by the observer.
Looking at them as separate events could not establish a time line, but looking at both events establishes a time line.
Cause and effect in their proper order.
In my experiment, it is impossible for the laser firing to cause the dustup on the moon, even when the person seeing the event is moving near the speed of light.
The logic of causality becomes impossible if superluminal velocities are possible. To observers in some of the FTL frames, it would be possible to see the dust on the moon in your scenario before the laser is fired on earth. In some FTL frames, the light from the laser appears to never reach the moon.
Yeah, and simple manners are a fundamental skill you're sorely lacking. So you'll keep on insulting people, then wonder why you get flaming responses.
"First there was nothing and then it exploded". Given nothing what is the probability of something?
You can argue with straw men all day long, but you won't be arguing with physicists or cosmologists with an argument that silly, because none of them would pay the slightest attention to a remark that betrays so much ignorance.
Second, the laws of quantum mechanics permit the creation of matter ex nihilio. Strangely, I thought this was what Christians believe God did.
So your argument amounts to saying: "My God is powerful enough to create the universe from nothing, but he is not powerful enough to create the law that allows it."
In which case, your God is not God. The laws of the universe preexist Him.
My God isn't just a bigger Zeus. He's a God who created the universe with nothing more than His Law.
There was nothing insulting about the original post. I said you did not grasp a fundamental concept, and it’s clear that you don’t. You even said so yourself in what I replied to: “does not compute.” When you are presented with the known facts of our universe, and you say they don’t make sense, what other way is there to interpret that other than that you do not understand something basic?
It has to, otherwise the space age belongs to the fricking evolosers and atheists.
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