Astronomers Deal Blow To Quantum Theories Of Time, Space, Gravity

Space Daily ^ | Huntsville - Mar 28, 2003 | Editorial Staff

[Charles H. (The_r0nin)]

The laws of physics are time-symmetric.

I believe you are incorrect. The laws of macrophysics (mechanics) are time-symmetric. Several quantum mechanical operations have recently been proposed as non-time symmetric (such as K-meson decay). At this point, I am reaching the edge of my expertise (the last time I took a physics course... double-majored physics/math for a while... was several years before the experiments quoted), but several experiments at CERN (see this) and elsewhere have suggested that certain weak force interactions violate charge and parity invariances, which means they must have an equal-sized time variance to balance out the CP violations, in order to remain CPT invariant.

Either way, both CPT invariance and time invariance tend to be premises in order to hypothesize further, as opposed to confirmed fundamental laws. But universal time invariance is most certainly not accepted to the point of saying that "the laws of physics are time symmetric" ...

[Gothmog]

Time travel is real -- I constantly travel forward through time.

[Gothmog]

Deja vu all over again.

[longshadow]

causality placemarker (this placemarker is here cuz I want it to be)

[Charles H. (The_r0nin)]

So the apple falls due to space/time curature?

Yes. That is the most basic application of Einstein's theories (among others...Einstein didn't do all the work!).

Imagine a large trampoline. Now put a bowling ball on the trampoline. The surface of the trampoline will curve downward under the bowling ball, and the surface of the trampoline will bend to a lesser extent in the area surronding it. Now put a marble on the trampoline near the bowling ball. The curvature of the surface of the trampoline will cause the marble to accelerate towards the bowling ball. If you couldn't see the trampoline, you might think that the bowling ball was somehow attracting or pulling on the marble (which is how Newton conceived of the motion in his Laws). But, once you can see the trampoline, you will realize that the marble is simply following the curvature of the trampoline. That is Einstein's great realization.

Likewise, if you were to roll the marble past the bowling ball, the path of the marble would be deflected by the indention in the trampoline's surface. You could view this as some force pulling on the marble, if you couldn't see the trampoline. But, upon seeing the trampoline, you would realize that the marble was simply following a straight line... it's the curved surface that caused the path to change!

The motion of the apple is "downhill" in the sense that its path is curved by space-time towards the Earth. We perceive that "path change" as falling. This is basic (well, intermediate) physics.

[The Lake City Gar]

Ummmmm....

Anybody want to dumb this down for the Homer Simpson like amongst us? Not ME, mind you...I'm just thinking of others. Yeah, that's it!

[freedom9]

You posted . . .
"Think carefully, because space-time curves due to the presence of mass/gravity... "

Then you posted . . .
"Gravity is due to space-time curvature."

(Seems to me you can't have 'em both)

Is it possible that energy is just simply attracted to energy?

[Charles H. (The_r0nin)]

Does this sharpe view of a here-to-fore blurry universe take into consideration Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle?

Actually, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is best understood as a mathematical limit: you cannot measure the position of a particle and the momentum to a degree where the product of the uncertainty of the particle's position and the uncertainty of the particle's momentum is less than Planck's constant. So if the effect you are looking for is greater than Planck's constant, the equation does not apply. But I'm not sure how this equation relates to the article. Dealing with general non-mathematical restatements of fundamentally mathematical equations always leads to trouble...

[Charles H. (The_r0nin)]

Actually, mass causes the curvature, but gravity is the effect we see from the curvature (the gravity part after the slash in the first statement was the remainder of something I typed and then incompletely deleted).

As for "energy attracting energy," this is demonstrably not the case. Massless particles (photons, probably neutrinos, etc.) do have energy, but not mass. This is why cosmologists have been fighting over whether neutrinos do have mass, because it would explain part of the composition and gravitational effects we see in galaxies, despite the fact that we don't see the mass to cause them. So energy does attract other energy, but only when both energies are in the state that we call "matter" and have mass (remember that Einstein's famous equation establishes the convertability of matter and energy: E=mc²)...

[Matchett-PI]

"My personal prediction of the next Big Fall will be that of the Big Bang, or at least the relation of redshift to cosmic distance, and the vindication of Halton Arp and his long published observations that have yet to be explained within current cosmological models." ~ StopGlobalWhining

Big Bang theory in doubt?
17/03/2003 08:35 - (SA)

Alabama - Images of galaxies four billion light years away threaten to rip apart modern theories about space and time.

The rays of light that have travelled half way across the universe may force astrophysicists to completely re-think their ideas about the Big Bang which gave birth to the cosmos.

They suggest that time does not flow in incredibly small but finite and measurable bits, or "quanta", as most scientists believe.

Instead of time being made up of many individual moments, like grains of sand running through an hour-glass, it appears to move in a seamless, continuous flow. If this proves to be the case it will cause consternation in the world of astrophysics.

Concerns

One of the biggest problems concerns the Big Bang. It implies that in the first instant of creation the singularity or "point" that became the universe had infinite temperature and density - something cosmologists have strenuously tried to avoid.

According to current theories, time should be divisible into 20 million trillion, trillion, trillion Planck intervals. The shortest possible spatial measurement, "the Planck length", is the distance light can travel in one Planck interval - about 0.000000000000000000000000000000001 centimetres (10 to the power of minus 33).

Scientists say time and distances smaller than Planck scales are "fuzzy" because in a fundamental way they cannot be measured.

The theory allows for Planck-scale fluctuations in time and space which translate o minute variations in the speed of light. However these variations would only be evident in light that has travelled a great distance.

In a similar way, a sprinter running one percent faster than his opponents might win a 10 metre race in a photo finish, while a one percent faster marathon runner will finish hundreds of metres ahead of the rests of the field.

After billions of years, the faster components of a light wave would be far enough ahead of the slower components to make the beam's wave front noticeably distorted, or blurred.

Two astrophysicists from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, tested the theory of quantum time by looking for this blurring in Hubble Space Telescope images of galaxies at least four billion light years away.

Taken by surprise

Dr Richard Lieu and Dr Lloyd Hillman were taken by surprise when they did not find it. Instead each image showed a sharp, ring-like interference pattern around the galaxy. Not finding the expected blurring suggested that time was not a quantum function and flowed fluidly at intervals infinitely shorter than Planck units of time.

The findings were released in the online "Astrophysical Journal Letters". Dr Lieu said: "If time doesn't become 'fuzzy' beneath a Planck interval, this discovery will present problems to several astrophysical and cosmological models, including the Big Bang model of the universe."

The Big Bang theory supposes that at the instant of creation, the quantum singularity that became the universe would need to have infinite density and temperature. To avoid that sticky problem, theorists invoked the Planck time.

They said if the instant of creation was also a quantum event, when space and time were both blurry, then you don't need infinite density and temperature at the start of the Big Bang.

"If time moves along like business as usual even at Planck scales, however, you have to reconcile the Big Bang model with an event that isn't just off the scale, it's infinite," Lieu said. - Sapa-DPA

Astrophysical Journal Letters

2003 March 10 Volume 585, Number 2, Part 2
Posted electronically 2003 February 19

The Phase Coherence of Light from Extragalactic Sources: Direct Evidence against First-Order Planck-Scale Fluctuations in Time and Space

Lieu & Hillman, ApJL, 585, L77
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ApJ/journal/contents/ApJL/v585n2.html

====

Astrophysical Journal Letters

2002 April 1 Volume 568, Number 2, Part 2
Posted electronically 2002 March 12

Planck-Scale Spacetime Fluctuations -
The Effect of Planck-Scale Spacetime Fluctuations on Lorentz Invariance at Extreme Speeds

Lieu, ApJL, 568, L67
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/ApJ/journal/contents/ApJL/v568n2.html

Big Bang Theory in Doubt?
http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,6119,2-13-1443_1334160,00.html

[seams2me]

Cub Scout Astronomy Belt Loop BUMP

[Joe Hadenuf]

The conclusion, if true, is going to cause decades of dogma to be tossed out the window.

I have always thought that the physicist 800 years from now, with get quite a kick out reading today's accepted theories. They haven't scratched the surface......

[PatrickHenry]

I have always thought that the physicist 800 years from now, with get quite a kick out reading today's accepted theories.

What's your point? That we will learn a great deal more in 800 years than we know now? Of course we will. Nevertheless, the writings of Aristotle, Galileo, and Newton are still in print, and we still read them with appreciation of how brilliant they were in their day. No one today, with our superior knowledge, snickers at their efforts. Most assuredly, no one in their own time snickered at them with the expectation that their work would eventually be superseded. I think the same is true of our scientific work today.

[AMDG&BVMH]

Re: "You can't fault the math in quantum theory just the bizareness of the interpretation"

Totally agree with that statement :)

I'll keep my ears open re the pilot wave.

[Joe Hadenuf]

LOL....Don't be so defensive..I am not trying to demean any past discoveries.

I only stated that scientist in distant future will surely find some of our current accepted theories regarding cosmology humorous. I am confident of this.

[AMDG&BVMH]

Re: "But causality is always a one-way street, flowing from cause to consequence. I have no support on this in any of the physics literature, nor do any of the truly knowledgeable people on this board agree with me, but I regard causality as the principle "arrow" of time, and the only one which gives time what we perceive as its direction -- from past to future."

This sounds profoundly sensible to me. Hence, "elegant". Time is progression/process of the material entity. It is easier to visualize in biological processes, but non-living matter also has progression. The progression is due to causality: something is happening to/within the entity because of some causal action. Hence, time as we know it is continually resulting from causality. Yes, I think you have it. But then who am I? ;)

This is the problem Einstein and Schroedinger (there were a few others) had with the prevailing concensus of the interpretation to apply to QM. It was doing away with causality: the link between cause and effect. Quantum actions were not "caused" but "randomly occurring" fluctuations and etc. The free lunch business . . . Well, they never accepted that, even if they did not "win" the argument. So Einstein and Schroedinger would approve of getting casuality firmly back into the picture. Maybe your theory is the way it will happen . . .

Besides, even if all practicing physicists don't agree, isn't this more in the realm, at present anyway, of metaphysics, i.e. interpretation of the physics? And the interpretation is not the physics. The physics, the equations, work, whatever you say about them?

[Servant of the Nine]

Do not panic.

This aplies only to Quantum gravity / space / time.

Quantum effects will continue to operate sort of reliably in the electromagnetic spectrum for the time being. Your apliances will continue to function as well, or poorly, as ever.

So9

[Servant of the Nine]

AwC'mon. God runs unix.

God is a real programmer.
He writes Machine Code and runs it on the bare metal.

Operating Systems, especially Unix, are Demonic in origin.

SO9

[Servant of the Nine]

Yes. But causality is always a one-way street, flowing from cause to consequence. I have no support on this in any of the physics literature, nor do any of the truly knowledgeable people on this board agree with me, but I regard causality as the principle "arrow" of time, and the only one which gives time what we perceive as its direction -- from past to future.

That is only because causality is defined to give a consistent arrow and a consistent rate to the passage of time.

SO9

[JoeSchem]

Does this mean that that guy who says he traveled in time actually did?

As the time traveller once said, "I'll get back to you on that!"