tim.tdj

Hi Koti Thank you very much indeed for all your help. I have just one more question: If I was to create a RAID 1 array with four hard drives and I was to use the btrfs file system, do you think that this would be pretty bulletproof against data corruption or can you see any potential flaws in this set-up?

Hi Koti Thank you. Do you know if there are any circumstances whereby an error (such as a single bit flip) can develop on a hard drive without the hard drive detecting it? Or do all of the latest hard drives use mechanisms such as checksums to detect errors?

Hi Koti Thank you very much for your reply. I was not actually meaning the other way round. Can RAID 1 systems detect all types of errors that can occur on a disk or are there some types of data error it can't detect and therefore wrongly think it is the correct data?

Hi Koti You seem to be implying that the RAID 1 system can always detect if it is attempting to read data from a bad sector and if this is the case, it will get the data it was attempting to get from the other disk instead. Am I correct?

Hi Koti Thank you very much for your reply. It has just occurred to me that a hard drive in a RAID 1 array can possibly remain "functional" in the array even when it has some bad sectors and that file corruption due to bad sectors can spread when RAID 1 arrays are rebuilding after a hard drive has been replaced. Is this true?

Hi Everyone I have read that RAID 1 arrays work in such a way that when a file is copied to a RAID 1 array, it is copied to all of the hard drives in the array simultaneously. In other words, it is not copied to just one of the hard drives and then copied from this hard drive to the others. I have also read that if a bad sector occurs on one hard drive in the array, the resulting data corruption can spread to the other drives. What I don't understand is how both of the above statements can be true at the same time because how can the corruption spread if data is not being copied between the hard drives in the array? Thank you very much. Kind regards Tim

Hi Swansont Thank you very much indeed for all your help. I will have a look at the Khan videos.

Hi Swansont If this is not the place where non-experts such as myself can communicate with experts such as you in order to explore ideas such as mine to find out how plausible they are then can you point me to another forum on the Internet which serves this purpose? The fact is that, because of events in my life beyond my control, I do not have any direct access to academic expertise. Such access is the privilege of the few. Without the support of academic expertise, it is very difficult for me to develop my ideas and to verify that they make sense to the scientific community. I find this deeply frustrating because I am insatiably curious about this sort of thing. Just watching scientific documentaries and reading science articles in magazines and on the Internet is not enough for me. Sometimes when I am listening to the scientists speaking on these documentaries or when I am reading what they have said in the articles, I often want to ask them various questions. Sometimes I have sent them very polite emails asking them the questions I wanted to ask them but the vast majority of the time, I have never received a reply. Can you understand my frustration? I would, however, like to point out that I am actually deeply appreciative and grateful for the time that you and your colleges on this forum have all given me with this with your expertise. Thank you very much indeed for this.

Hi Swansont Thank you very much for your reply. I fully realise that what I have proposed is not a sharply defined model and I have no way of obtaining any evidence that it is correct. I am merely exploring a possibility. I expect that many important scientific ideas have emerged as a result of, at first, taking the first few tentative humble baby steps which is what I am doing here with this analogy. The "spinning coin" in my metaphorical analogy is only meant to represent a piece of information or mechanism which gives information to the entangled particles at either end. It is not meant to represent an actual particle which can travel through the wormhole.

Hi Eise Thank you very much for your reply. After reading what you have said and also reading about the "wormholes" or "gravity channels" mentioned by other people in this thread, I think that I may have managed to combine what you have said and the "wormholes" into a metaphorical analogy about what I think may be going on. I hope you don't mind me speculating here. Firstly, I get the impression that the most important concept that you mentioned was the conservation laws. Here is my metaphorical analogy: Imagine that there is a coin spinning fast in such a way that the axis of its spin is exactly half way along a "wormhole" between two entangled particles. When one of the two particles gets "measured", the coin stops spinning and gets sliced along its edge and the "head" of the coin emerges from one end of the "wormhole" and the "tail" of the coin emerges from the other end. Hence the correlation. This therefore preserves the laws of conservation. One remaining problem with this is that according to Einstein's relativity, absolute simultaneity does not exist. This means that there will be times when both particles are measured close enough together in time that there is disagreement as to which of the two particles was measured first. I think that the solution to this is to ask the following question: "Which particle was measured first from the perspective of the wormhole?" Another way of putting this is as follows: "From which end of the wormhole was the "spinning coin" measured first?" How plausible do you think my metaphorical analogy is? EDIT: Can you see any problems with it?

Hi Eise Thank you very much for your reply. However, I'm afraid I don't understand it. As I see it, if two things (A and B) are correlated then at least one of the following three statements is true: 1. A causes B. 2. B causes A. 3. Something else causes A and B. What you are saying (correct me if I am wrong) seems to suggest that in the case of quantum entanglement, none of the above three statements are true. Have I misinterpreted you? Hi Itoero Thank you very much for your reply. Sounds like a very interesting idea.

Hi Swansont and Strange Thank you both very much for your replies.

Hi Swansont Thank you very much for your reply. So I guess that we do not currently have the means to answer this question. Do you think we ever will be able to answer it or do you think that there is some sort of fundamental barrier that will always be in the way of the answer?

Hi Everyone I would firstly like to start by saying that I fully understand why us humans are not able to use quantum entanglement for FTL communication. It is because we can't force an outcome without breaking the entanglement and we can't detect as soon as a measurement has been made at the other end. My question is this: Does quantum entanglement mean that the Universe itself has privileged access to a means of FTL communication for its own administrative purposes? (I can't see how quantum entanglement would work otherwise.) Thank you very much Kind regards Tim

Hi Swansont Thank you very much for the clarification.

Sorry, I misunderstood. Yeah, I agree with you that the idea of everything that we have ever experienced being prewritten into the Universe is a very radical idea because it is all so complicated and intricate. It might be the result of mathematics which are way more complicated than the mathematics that produces the Mandelbrot Set. It implies we are living inside mathematics. Anyway, remember that as I mentioned previously, I am being a devil's advocate about the SpaceTime Block concept as I don't personally believe in it. I might be wrong though.

What we perceive might be misleading . "Reality" at the most fundamental level might be be much closer to the representation I mentioned than what we perceive. I don't know if the analogy of ink on paper can be extended this far. The events prewritten into the SpaceTime Block (if that is really what the Universe is) would be an integral part of the SpaceTime Block, they would not be separate from it. I agree that the SpaceTime Block is a pretty radical idea.

Hi Studiot The timelines themselves are not outside time. The hypothetical perspective i mentioned from which we are viewing it is outside time. It is like looking at a piece of paper with a graph with an x axis and a t (time) axis. By looking at the piece of paper, we are outside the time represented by the t axis because we can see the whole of the graph at once. Your two particles would be represented by two lines of different lengths drawn on the piece of paper I mentioned above which represent the different lifespans of the two particles. This drawing does not change. The debate the scientific philosophers are having is whether the Universe at the most fundamental level is like the unchanging piece of paper with unchanging timelines predrawn on it or the Universe is as we perceive it (we perceive it changing).

Hi Studiot Very interesting reply. From the perspective outside of time (I am being a devil's advocate here because I don't actually believe in such a perspective), this can be seen as two time lines (one for each particle) where one line is shorter than the other. From the perspective outside of time, these lines do not change.

Hi Swansont Thank you very much. You have made it somewhat clearer. What you seem to be implying (correct me if I am wrong) is that the CMB is not as much of a fundamental entity as I am thinking it may be. (I expect that you can probably see why it is very tempting to view the CMB as being the basis for a preferred reference frame.) I think that we basically need to wait until more laws of physics are discovered and then run tests on the newly-discovered laws of physics to see if a preferred reference frame emerges. I am guessing there is not much else we can do to answer this question until then.

I already fully understand what you have said here and that that it applies if there is no external indicator telling you whether or not you are at rest. However, it seems to me (perhaps wrongly) that the CMB can be used as an external indicator because I am theorising that you are absolutely at rest if you can't detect a cosmic dipole. Can you explain why I might be wrong?

The fact that we can be either moving or stationary relative to something as fundamental as the CMB seems to suggest to me that a preferred frame does exist. Is there something I am not understanding here? If yes, I would be very grateful if you could explain it to me.

I think that provided that you humbly accept that your beliefs and opinions might be wrong, there is no harm in having them. In various documentaries, I often see eminent scientists expressing their beliefs and disagreements with each other. It is all part of a healthy scientific debate. Science dies if this stops. I might be wrong but I think that the cosmic dipole might be evidence for a preferred frame.

Hi Eise In my reply to Swasont earlier in this thread, I mentioned that for the sake of impartiality, I have actually been doing a certain amount of devil's advocacy in this thread. My previous reply to you was such an example so I actually agree with what you are saying. On various science documentaries, I have seen some very eminent scientists speaking about the SpaceTime Block as being a static object when viewed from a perspective outside of time. I suppose therefore the question is, does such a perspective really exist? Hi Eise Since my reply to you a few minuets ago, I have looked more closely at this particular part of your reply and have dome some more thinking about it. What you say here assumes that there does not exist a "special" or "preferred" reference frame. I know this is somewhat controversial but I personally believe that a "special" or "preferred" reference frame does actually exist. I might be wrong though.

Hi Studiot Thank you very much for your reply. Very interesting question. I think I define change to be any alteration whatsoever (however small) of the relationship between at least two subatomic particles. In your example, the man and his clothing are all large macroscopic objects consisting of gazillions of subatomic particles. So each shirt or each tie may look the same but they each consist of a unique pattern of subatomic particles. Also, the processes of washing and changing them entails a huge amount of change.