Fred Champion

I've been trying to remember anything in the Star Wars movies that gave an indication of climate cycles. Mostly I remember sand and barren landscapes. Did they just avoid the issue? I'll bet if we ever do get around to colonizing other planets we will want to know all about the climate before we go.

My argument for units of the smallest things:

The one most obvious problem with string theory and most other "smallest unit" theories is that the string or unit is presented as changing from one identifiable state to another identifiable state. Any object that presents evidence of its change of state in any way other than simple displacement (changing position) must do so by presenting evidence of reconfiguration of some sort. Any such reconfiguration should be seen as evidence of internal structure, meaning the existence of smaller "stuff" inside the object.

Thus the smallest thing that can be something should be identifiable only by the place it occupies, and the only changes associated with it should be changes in position.

 

I'm familiar with some of the research of this topic and have reviewed several anecdotal reports. Here is a link to an article where you will find additional links to some of the available research. Although I believe in the extraordinary possibilities of our unconscious mind, my impression of the research I've reviewed regarding dream telepathic hasn't been favorable. I felt that the criteria for favorable telepathic hits weren't as rigid as it should be for a reliable scientific study. In such studies, vaguely similar hits were consider acceptable. Even those studies that appear to show solid hits did not account for how the shared conscious experiences, between the dream sender and receiver, influences their dream conceptions. In my view, people who share the same conscious concerns are more likely to have similar dreams about those concerns. This doesn't suggest that telepathy isn't possible but that we have to be more objective in our research approach. I welcome your further thoughts.

The one idea I have had on a model for communication through any sort of collective or shared consciousness is of a large apartment building where each individual has his/her own apartment. Each apartment has a window into the building's atrium. Individuals go to their window and call out and/or try to talk to others. The din would make meaningful communication seem impossible for those not practiced at it, but with some care one might make out certain, especially familiar, voices.

The idea came from considering what mechanism might account for mothers' knowing a child was in distress far away, solving problems while asleep, efficacy of prayer and meditation, and similar experiences. Just one idea.

I am collecting examples of where maths and the physical sciences differ over something.

 

Examples offered would be gratefully received.

 

For instance

 

cos (z) = 3 has no solution in the real world and this fact is of vital importance in creating transistors.

 

However in the mathematical world the equation has complex solutions.

Math and physics differ over almost everything. Math is imaginary; it was/is invented. Physics (all real science) is discovery; we discover only what is real. Math accepts no limits. Physics searches for/defines limits.

Math provides the virtual state of an object. Physics cannot provide the real state of an object because only the current state can be observed. Place (and identity) are all that are observable currently. The first and second derivatives of place, speed and acceleration, as well as all other relative constructs, such as time and position, require multiple observations of the object and its surroundings which cannot be simultaneous. Thus physics provides an approximate history while math gives an exact virtual current state. The key here is the definition of virtual.

Is there any evidence, apart from what I expect may be anecdotal reports, of communication among humans (by some sort of telepathic or esp type method) during sleep? I know this sort of communication while awake has been studied without (I think) any consensus conclusions. I have had what I believe to be that type of experience, getting some information and/or insight while asleep, resulting in problem solving.

I wonder if you have ever considered what life would be like on a planet like Uranus. With the axis tilted almost 90 degrees to the orbital plane, the seasons would be so much different from Earth's. It could be that both winter and summer would be so extreme that the population would have to migrate back and forth over the equator. At the distance of Uranus a complete seasonal cycle would be just about an average lifetime. It would be interesting to see a history of navigation on such a planet (without a pole star).

Good luck

What makes a photon "active"? Is there any such thing as an inactive photon?

I always find this idea to be very odd. How is it a artifact of memory (your, mine, anyone's) that Strange's reply can some time after this post, and my reply comes some time after both of them?

 

If time was not real, why not all simultaneously?

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We accept records of all kinds just as we accept our own memories. We seem to accept some records and "make sense" of them more readily than others. The time stamps on these posts make sense to us and give us the impression of the passage of time. Note that a first-time reader of the thread will have no way to determine whether or not the time stamps were posted correctly. Two pictures of an analog clock (the same or different clocks), whether or not they show the same "time", don't tell us much of anything other than what we may extrapolate from our memory of such clocks.

I suggest that the state of any object is dependent upon interactions with its surroundings not the passage of time. If we could isolate an object completely from its surroundings, there would be no change it its state. Isolating an object completely is physically impossible of course, but the "thought experiment" should demonstrate that there is no agent called "time" acting on the object. Do we not consider all reactions to be the result of some action? Where is the reaction from time? It is not there because there is no actor which we would call "time".

If we were to have no memory how could we have have any concept of the meaning of "simultaneous"? We would recognize only the current state, the present. A person with Alzheimer's disease may be the closest, albeit imperfect and probably unprovable, example I can think of. Non-sentient entities, objects, don't (as far as we know) have memory. It seems reasonable to me to believe that objects experience only their current state and thus time is not a factor in their existence. Is there any characteristic of any object which is dependent upon time and not upon interactions with the objects surroundings? Are not all increases in entropy the result of interactions among objects, and not the passage of time?

Thanks for the links. Very interesting. My thoughts are not based on advanced study of physics. I just can't get interested in a an activity where I don't accept the basic premises.

I believe time is an artifact of memory, not a real thing. All the fancy math doesn't show me any evidence of a physical existence of time. Therefore, theories and "proofs" which are dependent upon acceptance of a connection to time don't interest me. I believe what Einstein was really saying was that no object and be seen moving faster than the speed of light. This is not the same thing as saying that no object can move faster than the speed of light.

I believe space is a thing, or rather a volume filled with things. I expect there is a smallest unit of some sort of stuff which can be something. I could accept that this smallest unit is a unit of space. I expect that everything we experience is a manifestation of the motion of these units of space or larger constructs formed by groups of those units moving together. Tornadoes are made of air.

The most interesting part about the jets at black holes is that both jets direct material away from the black hole. If this were some sort of pumping action similar to what I expect for magnetism then there should not be two outflows. Something different is happening, and I don't accept any sort of "other universe" theme. I have been interested in gyroscopes for most of my life. Very strange behavior and not particularly well explained either.

The notion of light as a particle is nuts to me. I accept it as a wave moving through the stuff of space. The notion that light could be produced inside a black hole doesn't seem right. If we accept the tearing apart of things entering a black hole wouldn't there be a point at which the dis-assembly was so complete that there would be no object capable of producing light? And of course, if the space stuff were being dragged into the black hole, that might prevent light from moving away. At the very least, wouldn't we see some sort of distortion?

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I don't think we do understand the mechanism of producing the electric force or magnetism. Sure we can produce electricity, but do we understand what makes a chunk of iron with many of its atoms aligned in a particular way behave as a magnet? There must be something at the molecular level, or lower, happening.

That's enough of speculations for now.

 

OK. So you don't know what the word dimension means in physics. It helps to know that.

 

The simplest, informal description is the number of pieces of information you need to define an event in space-time. ...

 

The important point about these dimensions is that they are "orthogonal"; in other words you can't express one of them in terms of the others.

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When you say the information needed to define an event, as used in physics, aren't you really saying the information required to describe our observations of an event? If we limit physics to describing what we observe, then your definition is quite adequate.

What then are we to do if we want to describe our experience of a thing and not just relate what it appears to be? What I have tried to get across is that the one thing we experience with all physical things is volume; there is no other "dimension" inherent in an object. The volume of an object, and the exclusive occupation of that particular volume, is the basis for displacement which is the basis for all physics.

The identification of an object, which is our most basic and limited description of that object, depends not at all on the position of that object relative to any other object. The event we describe by identification of the object is our recognition of the object's existence. Any other information about our observations of the object are relative.

I think I have said all I need to say about this. I give you and others the last words. Peace.

 

Make your mind up. You were talking about dimensions, not physical objects:

 

 

But, based on that comment, it seems you don't know what "dimension" means, anyway. So your opinions on the subject are pretty much moot.

My posts have been consistent. I have posted only about physical objects and the physical world.

The term "dimension" can be used in a variety of ways, the length of a line in mathematics, the color of a woman's hair, the canon of a religion, and many others.

Since you don't like my assertion that volume is the only dimension inherent in physical objects and in the universe they comprise, please let us know what the three dimensions you and some others seem to believe are actually inherent in the universe.

The first thing that suggested the idea of gravity as a flow to me was when I watched an automatic swimming pool cleaner do its thing. It was connected to a small hose and powered by water pressure. It sucked in water and debris all around its perimeter at low velocity and moved about by emitting a higher speed very narrow stream offset just a bit from the hose connection. It wandered around the pool in an apparently random pattern.

If you will, imagine a number of these things in the pool at the same time. I think it possible that the low pressure area around each unit could cause them to tend to clump together as they came close to one another. If this clumping were to happen I expect the faster narrow streams could cause individual units, or even groups of units, to rotate and probably some random motion in the clump preventing a static state.

The second thing that suggested this idea was a picture of a black hole. It showed what appeared to be a very narrow stream of something being emitted from both poles. As i remember it, one explanation for the streams was that the black hole had reached some particular or critical size and/or couldn't continue to absorb material at the rate the material was presented. I don't remember whether this was thought to be a transient condition.

I have had some experience with pumps and fans of various types. The lines shown by iron filings in a magnetic field show exactly what one would expect for the field generated by pumping a fluid or a gas in an otherwise static environment.

The push, or displacement, seems to be the only force we understand well. I just don't see an objection, other than the source of the energy, to gravity and magnetism (and perhaps other forces) being manifestations of displacement. In fact the thing that gets our attention with both gravity and magnetism is displacement and/or the potential for displacement. This connection seems way too obvious to be ignored.

Happy New Year

This is getting nuts!!

 

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3. There is absolutely nothing special about the common use of the word "volume".

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"Common use" is an interesting term. Perhaps you could provide us with another term for that portion of the universe occupied by individual physical entities such that we can put it into common use in place of "volume"? I think this term, or one which can replace it, is important, somehow, in the definition of matter and in what at least some believe is the basic thing that allows us to distinguish one entity from another.

Can you provide an example of a physical entity that does not occupy a volume?

How about a physical object that has only area and no volume, or one that has only length with no volume?

How about a physical entity that can merge with another physical entity in such a way that the two together occupy the same, or less, volume that either occupies by itself and still maintain their separate identities?

Xerxes,

 

The seven planes in the matrix setup stacking the cannon balls as Janus did in #16 of the parent thread are not at nice right angles to each other. So I am not sure how you are using the various plane describers. The three square planes are at right angles to each other but the rows and columns of spheres are not at right angles to the rows and columns on the next square plane. And the four hexagonal planes are not even at right angles to each other. Seems to be more of a 60 degree thing going on.

 

Regards, TAR

Certainly it is a 60 degree thing. The basic construct is an equilateral triangle. A geometry for this configuration would include a definition of the "right" angle or "perpendicular" as 60 degrees not 90 as in a cubic configuration. Note also that the labels for the 3 cubic coordinate axes, commonly x,y,z, would be replaced with labels for each of the 7 coordinate axes formed by the intersections of the 7 planes.

Fred Champion,

 

 

Yes I find that working with clay things work out and I have not found pi to more than a couple of decimal places. That is , when a soap bubble takes on a spherical shape, there is not a computer required to figure Pi to a million places. There is something about the configuration that is automatic. That continuous thing, the sine waves and smooth curve of a thrown ball, or the path of a rock tied to a string and swung around your head.

 

The circle, does not require Pi to be. It is a ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle. There should be a reason for this ratio. That is all I am suggesting. That this ratio means something.

 

Regards, TAR

Well of course the ratio we call pi means something. The meaning is defined as a mathematical ratio, not a physical ratio. There is no physical meaning. Circles, arcs, paths, sine waves, other sorts of smooth (continuous) curves and straight lines, and ratios are mathematical concepts, not physical entities.

Mathematical constructions may take on whatever form is consistent with the math system used. Physical constructions are consistent with the current state of the physical environment. The most widely adopted math uses continuous concepts to describe and approximate (to a useful degree) observed physical conditions and behavior. Physical constructs are not continuous and are in no way dependent upon any mathematical description.

Mathematics doesn't "do" anything. If we write every known symbol and equation in every configuration we can think of on a blackboard and then sit back and contemplate our efforts, what will happen? No amount of conjuring or number of incantations will bring forth activity from all that "math". The chalk may eventually lose adhesion and drop off and the blackboard may eventually crumble onto the floor but the math will have had no effect on anything. There is no magic in it.

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From seemingly the simple question of why 3 dimensions and not another number to questions about why 1/137-ish is of prime important to all matter. Really recommended and asks lots of the same questions you have asked about pi; no answers yet unfortunately for any of these "why" questions.

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So many people seem to be absolutely convinced that the universe really is physically 3-D. Not so. 3-D is actually three plane geometry. The universe has only one physical dimension which is what we call volume. Physical volume cannot be reduced to physical "area" nor to physical "length". Area and length are wonderful and useful concepts but are not physical things.

Why a geometry of 3 planes or 3 "dimensions"? Because 3 orthogonal planes is the minimum number required to describe the physical dimension of volume, and is the simplest to visualize.

Most of us have studied (I expect) other systems of geometry such as spherical and cylindrical. I have reminded that it is possible to set up 4, 5, 6 and 7 plane geometries in addition to the common 3-D. The 7 plane is more interesting because it is symmetrical.

"Why" is usually not a good question; we usually can't get a satisfactory answer.

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An expanding universe is one that is also cooling down. This follows the ideal gas laws. A contracting universe would heat up.

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Does this mean that space should be considered a gas? Gasses are particles; is space?

If space is/behaves like a gas, wouldn't we see objects moving faster with less "drag", and light moving slower, in less dense regions? The gas idea seems to give support for a wave model of light.

Yes, I should have not have said pi is an imaginary number. I should have just said it is imaginary. I was/am responding to TAR's inquiry into what pi "is" and why it is. I take the "is" in his inquiry to refer to some possible real physical presence and/or significance as opposed to the obvious and well known relationship in the imaginary world of mathematics.

Any attempt to construct a circle in the real physical world will require placing real physical objects adjacent to one another (in a line) at a constant distance from a center. Whether these objects are bits of graphite, drops of ink or individual atoms really doesn't matter; they will, as all physical objects do, have volume and occupy that volume to the exclusion of all other objects.

Even if the objects thus placed are chosen to be the smallest possible physical objects, when we zoom in on a section of the line we will see the individual shapes do not present a smooth curve. The distance between the centers (or any other consistent place on the shape) will be a straight line (in the case of spheres, one diameter). Those lines will present as a polygon.

As Imatfaal posted: "Calculus is the limit - and is smooth and continuous." For TAR's inquiry we must add that calculus is part of the imaginary world of mathematics and the real physical world is not smooth nor is it continuous and remind that objects in the real physical world are discrete things which occupy volume, not imaginary points. Thus there "is" no pi in the real physical world and I hope my explanation of why is adequate.

 

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This is pure Euclidean Geometry and not remotely alternative.

Spheres do not actually fill space very well and don't even have an immediately/easily provable densest packing state.

 

What are the 7 planes associated with a Tetrahedron - their are four faces and yet you claim there are another 3 planes intrinsic to the object (another 4 I could understand). * read your followup - a triangular bi-pyramid has 6 faces not 7

 

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To me the sphere is the closest thing we can get to present a unit of volume and thus are the best thing to use in real world constructs in place of an imaginary point. Is there something better?

You're right about the triangular bi-pyramid; it was presented as a reference to visualize two joined tetrahedrons. In a larger volume of many tetrahedrons, the plane where the two tetrahedrons are joined in the triangular bi-pyramid would not be lost.

One additional note to my last post. It is obvious that a tetrahedron by itself presents 4 planes, not 7. It is when we add a second tetrahedron (and others) to fill a solid that we realize the 7 planes. See triangular bipyramid.

I don't like quoting myself but I feel like I must say again: "The evidence we have is that the distance between us and those stars which we believe to have been the farthest away from us (13 billion years ago) was increasing and that the distance between us and those stars we believe to be closest to us (millions, not billions, ago) was decreasing." The most recent evidence we have seems to indicate that the expansion of the universe may have stopped and we may be in a contraction phase.

I am no expert in this area. All I know is what I've read. Can anyone explain why we should accept 13 billion year old data and ignore data that is only a few million years old?

The ideal smooth sphere you reference is imaginary. Construct a physical object using uniform building blocks. That object will have volume. Volume is the one and only real physical dimension of real physical objects.

You were already on the path to an alternate geometry when you were using spheres to construct objects. I think the sphere is a good choice for the smallest basic physical building block because it seems to be the most efficient way to segregate one volume from another and it is totally uniform. The traditional 3-D (actually 3-plane) geometry of vertices set on orthogonal axes (the centers forming a cube) may be modified by adding one, two, three or four more physical planes. You will find that the tetrahedron forms an entirely satisfactory physical geometry of 7 planes. Note that this is the traditional way of stacking cannon balls.

Back to the circle question. Any attempt to construct a real physical circle will produce a polygon. You know that "the area under the curve" in calculus can be gotten by inspection to greater and greater accuracy by counting smaller and smaller squares but even the smallest squares will not align to produce a smooth curve. In the same way, using a uniform physical building block to attempt to construct a physical circle requires both a radius and a circumference of a whole number of those building blocks (or spheres).

One interesting consequence of this type of construction is that not every radius will produce a closed polygon. Start with a sphere as the center and lay on spheres at one sphere diameter away from the center. The result is a construct which when measured from the center of each sphere to the center of its neighbor is seen to be a hexagon. I leave it to you to attempt polygon construction with radii of 2 or more.

I guess my basic point is that I find it disingenuous for any observer to say that such-and-such "is" happening when the observations are based on light emitted millions and even billions of years ago. I we were to observe a man chopping wood on a planet a million light years away I would laugh at anyone who would say that the man is still chopping wood today. No, I can only accept that what we see way out there is what "was" happening.

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When Newton said apple is pulled down to earth it is simply assumption only. In my view apple is not

being pulled down but pushed down towards earth. This is the basic theory.

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If we know what exactly gravity is, we can start thinking in this angle and methods of overcoming it.

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psreddy.

Well now, at the risk of some criticism I will say that I agree with the above statements except for the bit about Newton making only an assumption; his idea was indeed based on observation.

I suggest to you that the only force we know and can explain really well is the "push" caused by one object attempting to displace another. It seams reasonable to me that both magnetism and gravity may be the manifestation of some sort of "push". The magnetic field especially seems to indicate a "pump" at the center of the magnet with a flow emitted at one pole and reentering at the other.

In the gravitational field "flow" appears to be in one direction only. I suggest that it may not be exactly so. It could be that the net effect is one directional but that there is bidirectional flow. We know gravity is a weak force. That weakness may be the result of bidirectional flow, perhaps a wide or general flow in and a narrow or focused flow outward with the focused flow impacting objects only momentarily and not always "head on".

Fodder for your fertile imagination.

From your post #63:

"I do not have the understanding of solid geometry and calculus it would take to figure if the length of the diamond's side is exactly r, when measured on the surface of the sphere, but it would be "neat" if it was, and would have implications as to what Pi is. That is, as to "why" Pi is. Just one of the things I care about figuring out. If it has already been figured out fine, I am just looking for the answer, one way or the other."

Pi is an imaginary number. The result of attempting to describe the imaginary circumference of an object by the length of a line used to scribe that circle. The radius may be a real physical construct; a circle won't be.

Not only a strawman but utterly incomprehensible as well. Well done.

I assume you comment is (at least partly) tongue-in-cheek. You are right of course. So to make the task somewhat simpler we eliminate photos and provide other objects.

We present the actual rubber duck in the photo and a cast iron frying pan. The task is to determine the parameters for moving the two objects about in time. In addition to all the characteristics of the objects which are usually found, we ask for some "time component" of the objects. The objects are certainly dissimilar in many respects, but if time is a thing that acts upon or is present in each of them perhaps a "coefficient of time" can be found.

 

Well, we can use all of that information. And that is how people came to the surprising conclusion that expansion appears to be accelerating. Apart from that, they all tell a consistent story.

 

(And, of course, the red-shift data is not the strongest evidence for the expanding universe. There was debate about alternative models for decades after that was first seen.)

I'm more confused than ever. If expansion "is", not "was", accelerating it seems to me that what we should see is the stars closest to us moving away at a faster rate than those farthest away. How does what we see support this?

What observations do we have other than the red shift?

 

And yet the timestamps and ordering of posts in this thread would appear to prove you wrong.

 

 

Currently, yes.

One of the classic ways a question regarding determination of time is asked is to present the observer with two pictures of a clock. He/she is told that the clock in each picture is the same clock, taken by the same camera, that both the clock and the camera were operating correctly, had not been accelerated, and there were no modifications or other operations done to the clock or the camera, and there is no attempt to fool the observer. He/she is then asked to find evidence of the existence of time by examining the photos.

Many may complain that the clock in both pictures shows the same time and thus it is impossible to determine much of anything from the photos.

The scientists among us will see that the fact that the photos are pictures of a clock is a red herring. They are correct; we will provide them with a picture of a clock and a picture of a rubber duck and ask them to find evidence of time. Obviously, little information about the clock or the rubber duck can be gained from the photos. It is the photos that must be examined.