Relativity

Is time quantized? In other words, is there a smallest unit of time that could not be divided into a smaller unit? Kind of like the atom used to be considered the most elementary fundemental particle, does time have a fundemental counterpart? Faf, any comments?

What do people like me do at 1:40AM? Read science articles of course! While browsing a collection of old physics articles Nature had a special on, I came across one of particular interest. http://www.nature.com/physics/lookingback/einstein/einstein.pdf Einstein himself explains how he came up with general relativity.

There was an article in CNN back in June about scientists testing the theory relativity. Any ideas on what these "new theories involving gravity and particle physics" are? I havn't heard anything about any recent theories contradicting relativity. Here is a link to the CNN article. CNN no longer carries it on their page, so here is google's cache This was already confirmed on GPS satellites where the clocks frequencies were downshifted 44.47 parts in 10^12. . Silly scientists.

This is kind of paraphrased from the current issue of scientific american. Quantum indeterminsm implies that for a particular quantum state there are many alternative futures or potential realities. Quantum mechanics supplies the relative probabilities for each observable outcome, although it won't say which potential future is destined for reality. Take for example an electron hitting an atom and bouncing off. The electron will bounce in one direction of many possiblities, and it is impossible to predict in advance what outcome in any given case will be. But when a human observer makes a measurement, one and only one result is obtained; for example, the elect…