md65536

Technically, I still don't think so. Grammatically, no.

 

Look at it this way: if you're a refrigerator, and you're in a box in a house, are you "in" the house or are you still in the box?

 

Similarly, if you're a human, you're not "in" the house in a functional sense if you're in a box. You can't do anything you would normally do "in" a house, you can't even access the house itself if you're still "in" a box.

[...]

You could dream?! We barely slept, naked outdoors....

You must spend a lot of time naked outdoors, because as long as you're in your own skin you couldn't be in clothes or in a building.

Luckily most of us don't live by such bizarre rules.

Customer: I purchased a laptop here, but when I opened it up there was no laptop in the box.

Service desk: Okay let's see here. <Opens the box, removes a plastic bag from around the laptop...>

Customer: Oh! Well, now there's a laptop in the box! It wasn't in the box when I purchased it.

Ridiculous.

A magician seals an assistant in a black box. The assistant puts a paper bag over her head.

The audience, unable to tell if the assistant is still in the box or not, applauds.

After all your venomous personal attacks, I am way beyond caring whether you take me seriously. You didn't even get the very clear sense in which I just agreed that "clocks in orbit will slow down relative to earthbound clocks."

 

Yes, but it's the specifics that matter.

If your theory also predicts that clocks will slow down, then it predicts some phenomenon that SR also predicts.

If it predicts it accurately enough, then you don't need SR to explanation the phenomenon.

Repeat for everything SR successfully predicts, and if you still have a consistent theory that is different from SR, you might have a chance of overthrowing relativity.

You seem to have a serious need to make me wrong, even where I agree with relativity (if not the language of "time dilation" reifying time.)

My goal is more along the lines of stopping you from being wrong. To be fair, you're free to believe what you want and to never expand beyond that and to judge what is right or wrong; you don't have to care about what I say. Regardless of whether you care, what I'm saying is that I'd prefer it if you stopped repeating your beliefs as if they are facts -- you are misinforming people -- especially when it's been explained time and again that your beliefs are not consistent with reality given the axioms that you've agreed to.

 

I have often disagreed with mainstream science, particularly about how it uses the concepts of time and space with only disdain for the ontology of what they are in the "real world", off the graph or conceptual coordinate system, so to speak. So If you claim that I am in error, explain how so. Repeating as if it is a given that 'time dilates' does not make me wrong. Neither does repeating that no one knows the real, true shape of Earth, because relativity dictates that there are no preferred frames of reference, and it might look like an extremely oblate spheroid from an extreme FOR. We all beat that one to death, but the above argument didn't make me wrong or the Earth just as likely very flattened as nearly spherical.

So if you really need to make me wrong, be specific.

This has all been explained, specifically, before. Please reread your previous posts regarding these topics and then read the many replies that various people have given.

It's fine to disagree with mainstream science. It's fine to state your disagreement (perhaps not repeatedly in science forums). It's not fine, in my opinion, to treat your disagreements as fact and then try to shove it down as many throats as you can.

Would you happen to have a link to a study that was performed on this at different intervals and their outcomes?

I don't know of any study that specifically tested the consistency of reality. All observations and experiments have agreed on reality.

If I understand what you're saying correctly,(not sure), is that time and space have to be proportionate. And the speed limit of information is the speed of light, as far as we know so far. If this is true wouldn't information traveling slower than c ,the limit, proportionately slow down in time. And theoretically anything traveling faster than c, speed up in time. If so anything in between would speed up or slow down in time depending on the speed at which the information was traveling.

I don't know how to describe this correctly. To maintain invariance of c with relative motion, it's not simple proportionality, but instead is described by the Lorentz transformation.

I don't think the invariance must apply to everything. But if you say that all information or energy or even fundamental particles travels at c, then nothing can be slow or at rest, but this is okay because the energy can oscillate at a speed of c. A rock at rest is still made up of particles that are constantly moving.

Good questions. It reminds me of how little I truly understand. Others could give you better answers.

Edit: Come to think of it, a better way of describing this than the way I think about it, is that everything is moving at a speed of c through 4 dimensions. If it is relatively at rest in the spatial dimensions, it must be moving through time at a rate of c. The faster it moves through spatial dimensions, the slower it moves through time, so that the length of the 4-vector velocity is always c.

I am suggesting that since higher speed clocks in orbit slow down in rate of "ticking" (internal dynamic of their physical process) compared to surface clocks, the internal physical dynamic of human aging also probably slows down, so they would "age' more slowly than the rest of us on Earth.

If you can show that your theory predicts that clocks in orbit will slow down relative to earthbound clocks even close to how precisely and accurately special relativity predicts it, I will try to take your theory seriously.

Please be specific about how I have made errors. For instance, calling "strawman" does not defeat an argument. The debate would require an explanation as to how the argument is specious, i.e., how exactly it is a fallacious, 'strawman' argument.

(Perhaps a new thread on "Owl's Errors" as a new topic.)

Please reread the many replies to your many repeated erroneous posts. The specifics about how you have made errors are all there.

I don't think a new thread is needed. There are already several threads repeating the same things.

I think so. Time is the concept that motion (everything moves) 'takes time', not that it creates something called time or, as above "detects" time.

Nor does a ruler create distance. Nor does a ruler "detect" distance. It still measures distance and can define a distance. A clock measures time and can define it.

 

except that there is no standard time speed

The invariance of c can define a standard, and ensures that different observers don't see random or arbitrarily different rates of time passing on different clocks. This standard ensures that various different observations made from different points in spacetime are all consistent with each other.

Please review all your previous posts in various threads and note the various errors you've made that have been pointed out many times already.

Hi.

How can the exterior (as in a yard) ambient light just after sunset be focused/directed to a photosensor in order to delay its action that turns on some lights at night ?

The sensing device is not adjustable for threshold of operation.

 

I have several plano-convex and bi-convex lenses; from 1" to 6" diameter. With a defined light source as the sun disc, focusing it to the photosensor is no problem -when coaxial- but with diffuse light it is another story.

 

Suggestions, please ?

I wanted to do the same thing and I solved the problem electronically.

The photosensor is probably a photoresistor. The more light that shines on it, the lower the resistance. All you have to do is lower the resistance, and that should have the same effect as shining more light on it.

The way I did this was to add another photoresistor in parallel. It's very quick and dirty but it worked adequately for me. I happened to have a few lying around. If you don't, you might try using a normal resistor, but I'm not sure how effective it would be. Or a variable resistor, or even a combination of several of these. Another photoresistor should be better because it behaves like the one that's already there (I suppose it's like doubling the surface area of the original photoresistor).

I also had the additional photoresistor outside of the main box so it could be tweaked by orienting it differently.

But the black line has a very peculiar property:

since no interaction can happen in zero time, no interaction can happen between the elements of the black line. The black line is a "dead body", meaning that there can be no direct bindings beween its elements.

But its elements are simply events. The "no direct binding" simply means there's no (instantaneous) information transfer between events at different places on the black line, which means there can be no causal relations between such events. The "direct binding" is essentially a causal connection. Having a mutual "direct binding" between two events would mean that it's possible to have each event cause the other event, which of course is paradoxical.

It's already been established that the light cone (blue lines) represents the immediately perceived "now", which is also the immediate causative now (providing your "direct binding" between an observer and a distant object).

In SR I think the interpretation would be:

- Nothing can interact instantly (including the 'now' instant) over non-zero distance.

- Any influence an object has on an observer (a "binding"?) involves information from a past state of the object.

In your interpretation it might be:

- There is no immediate causal connection between distant objects. Objects are interactively connected only through past events.

"Binding" is a misleading word because you're really only speaking of information transfer and interaction. Two particles can be connected in other ways, such as through quantum entanglement, and be "bound" in that way to each other at 2 different points on your black line. But there is no possible way to transfer information between the particles at those points. They are connected, but not in the essential way that we're talking about here; they're not causally connected.

There is no more fundamental definition or deeper understanding. If you find one, publish it immediately.

That's what the thread is trying to figure out.

It's certainly helpful to realize that it's not a solved problem. We could even ask "Is there even a possible unknown greater meaning to time still to discover?"

If there's a "simple, deeper meaning" it's not going to be found simply in any likely way. But it's still worth contemplating.

I agree "Time is what clocks measure". It's simple, precise, and accurate.

In the unlikely event that the result of the experiment is validated and a neutrino has actually exceeded c, then relativity does get tossed out.

I agree that this is unlikely -- exceedingly unlikely -- because the result of the experiment is a discrepancy in the distribution of measurements from what was expected, which is what the OPERA team reported. The result of the experiment isn't that a neutrino exceeded c (though that is one of the simplest interpretations of the result). This means there's a possibility that the results can be validated and no neutrinos exceeded c.

It will have to reduce to the same formulas that exist in relativity.

Any new observations that disagree with relativity will probably only do so due to some peculiar aspect that doesn't apply to existing observations (and so doesn't invalidate them), such as m^2 < 0 as you suggested.

If relativity doesn't work, a new theory would be needed.

Relativity would still be an accurate model, it just wouldn't have a "range of validity" that applies to the new observations.

So it could be that in the future, relativity is "thrown out" the same way that Newtonian gravity was. That is: Not at all. It's just that its range of validity doesn't apply to everything.

That said, if relativity implies that something is impossible but it turns out that it is possible, then there are more problems with the theory than just limited range of validity. I agree with DrRocket that relativity would have to be thrown out (or completely overhauled).

However I don't think anyone has anything to worry about here. Wondering about this now is like asking "What would it mean if this strange thing I just saw was actually something impossible?"

What if it's found that one of the neutrino flavors has m^2 < 0? I don't see how that tosses relativity.

Would this allow v > c? Could it allow a violation of causality, without actually breaking relativity?

I think the perihelion precession was first noticed in the mid 1800s. The light-bending observation happened in the other order... i think.

Oh that's right, I must have been thinking of the observations of deflected starlight during an eclipse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity#Deflection_of_light_by_the_Sun

So yes, I think that if the OPERA observations are correct and a "paradigm shifting" theory explains it, this could be part of something like a "perihelion of mercury" moment. But do we consider that "moment" to be when the observations are made, or when there is a theory that predicts it?

The experiment would be done very accurately, but the measured time range is too short.

How accurately can we measure the starting time? Are there any time lag to detection from the neutrino starting point to the time recorder?

Unless the scientists have missed something or made an error, the measurements are precise to within 10 ns. A list of the various uncertainties is shown here: http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/09/are_we_fooling_ourselves_with.php

If and when the result is confirmed - when other experimenters have replicated the results; will this not be seen as a "perihelion of mercury" sort of moment?

I don't think so, because the "perihelion" observations confirmed the predictions of an existing theory, whereas in this case there is no contending theory (to my limited knowledge) that predicted the OPERA results. The OPERA observation is not confirming any expected previously made prediction.

Say for example we had a viable theory that unified quantum mechanics and relativity, and that that theory could predict the OPERA results. Then it could be a similar kind of moment. Purely speculatively, that could still happen. If the OPERA results are not due to error, there should be some theory that will explain the results, and that theory might be revolutionary the way that relativity was. Even then there's still the difference in the order that the theory and the confirming observations happened in, compared with the "perihelion moment".

MD - I like Ethan's blog and his explanations of his four scenarios are easy to grasp; but the received neutrinos do 'look' to the naked eye to be fitting to a pulse shape (this could be a bit of academic paper legerdemain but I really hope not).

 

I think a (hidden to experimenter) selection of particles from the front section of a bell shaped distribution could also have a bell-shaped distribution - it's a curve that appears in nature all the time; but the pulse shape in CERN is irregular and jaggedy - and the built up set of readings at OPERA seems to match that irregular jaggedy shape. I cannot see how (without the pulse shape being a simple shape that occurs naturally) the neutrinos in the first section of the pulse are accurately mimicking the shape of the whole pulse. And both pulses seem to match the build up neutrino readings - so a lucky coincidence is less likely

 

Secondly I believe the length of the pulse generated at CERN was accurately repeated at OPERA - if the speed up is caused by a only a leading edge being detected then the pulse length should be shortened (changed) and I don't think it was.

 

my money is still on a systematic error in the details of the experiment - there is a miscalculation or delay on when they believe the neutrinos start their trip ie they start 60ns before expected (or finish it later). But the guysngals at OPERA know the set up better than anyone and they havent been able to spot it - and I doubt anyone else will be able to.

Disclaimer: This discussion is over my head.

Is it possible that the irregular shape can be described with (essentially constructive) interference of several simpler (bell-shaped) curves, each showing the same apparent temporal offset?

To violate causality, it would have to be possible to determine the shape of a pulse of incoming neutrinos before the neutrinos defining the shape of the pulse arrived. I think that if an irregularly shaped pulse (consisting of many regular "sub-pulses") arrived, where each of the sub-pulses was detected near the leading edge of the sub-pulse, but still completely within the larger (taller, but not wider) source sub-pulse, then it might be impossible to detect the shape of the irregular pulse (ie. to detect the length and intensity of any sub-pulse section of the whole pulse). I suppose the question is, if you made the source pulse more distinct, say a square wave with short durations, what would the detected pulse look like? I suspect that it would look smoothed for some reason, still like bell-curves. But I also suspect that somehow those curves would still fit within the curve of the source pulse, at least to the degree that any information could be extracted before the actual information-carrying neutrinos arrived.

Anyway, the blog post mentions that OPERA is planning an experiment (with results "in the next few weeks") that could rule out this and another explanation. That's #3 and #2 respectively, of this list:

1. There was a systematic error in their measurements, and their measurements are simply systematically off by 60 nanoseconds (or thereabouts).
2. The errors are much larger than they claim, and they're not actually measuring the arrival time of these neutrinos to their claimed accuracy.
3. There's a bias in the detection of their neutrinos, and the pulse shape of the arriving neutrinos doesn't match the pulse shape of the things that created them. Or...
4. They really did break the speed of light, and the laws of physics don't work the way we think they do, and in your face, Einstein!

The list seems ordered by likelyhood, and it would be rational of me to also suspect #1 or #2 over #3, but I guess I just want it to be #3.

Doesn't the OPERA result (if verified) only show that the "group velocity" of the neutrino density exceeds the speed of light?

The oft-quoted-by-me Starts With A Bang blog has a write-up explaining the possibility of something similar to what I was describing, but with a lot simpler circumstances:

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/10/a_test_for_neutrinos_put_up_or.php

Of the 4 possibilities (listed in the link) of explaining the results, the one I was describing is this:

3. There's a bias in the detection of their neutrinos, and the pulse shape of the arriving neutrinos doesn't match the pulse shape of the things that created them.

I imagined the reason for this happening must be something weird like quantum entanglement, but Ethan explains how this can happen simply by having the pulse shape of the neutrino source a lot bigger than the pulse shape of the receiver (which it is because most neutrinos are not detected). In this case, the smaller detected pulse shape can be offset in time (either toward the past or future), yet it may still fit completely within the larger transmitted pulse shape. (Or something... I didn't actually read it yet! )

As a psychologist

What certification, degree, or license do you have? I ask this as it would back up your claim of expertise.

Real physical events only happen within the sphere of the present moment: that would be in your abstraction, the black horizontal line.

That line in 2D is a hyperplane in 4D, not a sphere.

The 4D light cone, if we view it in 3 spatial dimensions, is a sphere whose radius changes at the speed of light. The past cone looks like a sphere that shrinks to a point at "you are here", and the future cone looks like a sphere that grows with time. The intersection of a hyperplane "instant" with the light cone is a sphere. The intersection of the black "present" hyperplane and your light cone is a degenerate sphere with radius 0... it is a point. This point is the intersection of the two "nows" that michel123456 was asking clarification on: The black unobservable, uninteractable distant simultaneous now, and the blue causal, perceived now. That it's a point might be interpreted as that in the misnomer "sphere of the present moment" we can only observe or affect things at a distance of 0; interactions across any greater distance would require more than just an instant.

The events you speak of are not causally related to you. Since the correct geometry can give a lot of meaning to this, I'll restate your quote as how I think it's supposed to be:

"Real physical events only happen on the hyperplane of the present moment: that would be in your abstraction, the black horizontal line."

However, with lack of simultaneity you could also say that the present moment can be simultaneous with anything outside of your light cone (past and future). The "fuzziness" of the black line can extend right to (the sharp outer edge of) the blue line. I think. So you might also say "Real physical events only happen (now) outside of the cone of what is immediately observable." ??? Or something... -- But for simplicity this can be ignored and we can speak of your "now" as the straight black line without fuzziness (a hyperplane). We can ignore the fuzziness and variability of "now" by saying it applies only to other different frames of reference.

but what is the meaning of time im eluding, then? i thought it was a measurement or change... there is nothing specific about that.

The answer to that is the answer to the thread and I don't think anyone knows.

"Time is (a measurement of) change" is also insufficient, because things can change slowly or quickly (the same amount of change can correspond to different amounts of time), and also it can't be "Time is (a measurement of) rate of change" because the same rate of change can be maintained over different amounts of time.

I don't think "change" is the essence of time. Entropy might be. The constancy of the speed of light certainly is related (but if time is defined based on light, it might be cyclical because distance is already defined based on time). If change is expressed in terms of the passing of information across distances, then a definition of time based on change might work.

Personally, I think (so please disregard this as anything more than just an idea) that "time is distance" is true, but as I mentioned distance is based on time. Also, the assumption of isotropic propagation of light makes it false. But if light was anisotropic and time and distance were equivalent, then a non-cyclical definition of time would be defined using something other than distance. My guess would be: Time and distance are emergent measurements of causality's consistency. Or instead of that, maybe something that even makes sense.

The person asking this question wanted the simplest definition of time, not the most clear in the eyes of a child.

 

If they wanted the simplest definition of the word "naked mole rat" I would give them;

 

"A warm-blooded vertebrate animal of a class" aka mammal

Making something more defined or definite means to specify it more precisely, but you're doing the opposite and specifying it more generally.

I think you're literally undefining "naked mole rat" here, and undefining time with "A to B" (both by removing the meaning of time, and by not being specific about what A and B are).

Meanwhile a definition like "time is what clocks measure" specifies it precisely, but doesn't say much about its meaning, which is essentially what the thread is seeking.

That said, "simplest" and "most precise" might be mutually exclusive, in which case the simplest definition would only have to be precise enough to still be considered a definition at all.

FMPOV, the above is irrifutable facts.

The problem is that you'd have to back up those claims with irrefutable evidence.

The question was 'what is the simplest definition of time'. It seems this is an insufficient definition if it has so many interpretations?....

It would be insufficient even if it wasn't left up to interpretation. As in, "time is the difference between two points in time" or "time is the progression from one point in time to another" or something.

"A to B" would leave time still undefined even if it was clarified that it was referring to times. If we allow such meaningless cyclical definitions, then the simplest (non)definition would be "time is time." Either way you'd need time to be predefined for the statement to have meaning.

On the other hand it could be interpreted in different ways that already have predefined meaning, such as "Time is the distance between two events". I don't think this definition would correspond to other accepted definitions, such as "Time is what clocks measure".

Isn't that distance?

If they're points in space, yes.

If they're points in time, no.

If they're events it could be a spacetime interval which I believe can be decomposed into a spatial and a temporal component.

I've had similar thoughts:

Humans desire to know where they come from. Most cultures have creation myths. We tend to explain unknown things in terms of known things. So for example, we see that humans have the ability to create things, so when we imagine a creator it is easiest to imagine it in terms of something already known to be able to create. So I figured that humans imagined the concept of a creator having a human form.

At the time I thought it was a revolutionary idea but it's been thought of before. I recently read the notes in the liner of Jethro Tull's album Aqualung:

1 In the beginning Man created God;

and in the image of Man

created he him.

Their message with this album is that organized religion creates the image of a god that they envision, and then distorts that image in all sorts of ways for all sorts of reasons.

I would agree that we don't have a good understanding of the nature or even questionable existence of gods, but that we as humans have always made assumptions about the unknown based on the known, and that humans are the most god-like known thing.

Depending on your definition of "god", humans may fit that description. For example, a conscious being who is aware of all my thoughts and actions and judges me for what I do... this describes my conscious mind. Or, if you describe god simply as "a giver of life" you might interpret it such that the sun fits your definition of god. It may be only that we assume that a god must be human-like, that we think it foolish for ancient civilizations to call the sun a god, when really it need not be more than just an admiring name for what it really is.

The God that many major religions describe typically has both human and super-human properties, that define something that must be more than just a human.

But I think it would make more sense if you phrased ideas and vague or conditional thoughts as such, rather than stating them as absolute facts.

There are 3 guards, and you can ask one of them a question that can be answered with the guard pointing to one door.

[...]

One guard is insane...

Since no one's answered here's what I had in mind:

I don't know if both the question and the answer are logically and semantically "bullet proof" but if not, I think it should be possible to fix it so that it is. ???

In case that last variation made sense, then continuing the theme...

5-door insane variation:

Assume a similar set up to the last variation, but now there are 5 guards (you don't know which is which) and 5 doors.

One guard always tells the truth.

One guard always lies.

One guard is insane and consistently alternates (as described above).

One guard is a duplicate of one of the above 3 guards (but you don't know which).

One guard alternates between acting like each of the above 4 guards (alternating for each evaluatable atom in your question), in an unknown but consistent order. Assume that it remembers whether the insane guard was last truthful or dishonest, and acts appropriately.

What would you ask?

Grenade?

Does a grenade correspond with danger, not in meaning but in terminal sound of the two words?

I'm having a discussion with several folks about the results of a head on collision of two similar vehicles that have about the same weight and crush properties. I stated that if both vehicles collide head on, at 60 MPH, the impact force and damage to each vehicle would be roughly the same as hitting a solid unmoveable object at 60 MPH, because each vehicle absorbs roughly 50% of the damage.

 

They claim that because both vehicles are traveling at 60 MPH, their combined speed of 120 MPH would increase the damage to twice what it would be if the vehicle hit a solid object at 60 MPH.

 

How can I explain this to them?

Another way to think about it or explain it is that the head-on with each traveling 60 MPH would be like a car traveling 120 MPH slamming head on into a stationary car (in neutral). This would be softer than hitting say a wall (lower deceleration over a longer period of time compared to say brick wall), and the total mass of 2 mangled car should continue moving at half speed (60 MPH -- lower overall deceleration compared to say a brick wall).

If you explain it using the example of a 120 MPH car hitting a movable stationary car, it's clear to see that this isn't the same as hitting an immovable obstacle. With the former your velocity changes by 60 MPH; with the latter it changes 120 MPH.

To clarify a vague idea that I'd posted earlier in this thread:

Doesn't the OPERA result (if verified) only show that the "group velocity" of the neutrino density exceeds the speed of light? Only the amplitude of the probability of detecting a neutrino has been measured and/or interpreted to be exceeding c. In this case, the actual neutrinos would be traveling at slightly less than c, but the probability of detecting them would travel faster. Essentially this would mean that a signal of sparse neutrinos would become easier to detect just before a dense group of neutrinos arrives.

If this is so, then it doesn't necessarily violate relativity. It is already known that a group velocity can exceed c without violating relativity. http://en.wikipedia..../Group_velocity

Also, it would still be impossible to use this to send information faster than c (because you can't determine the changing probability of detecting a neutrino based on a single detection of a neutrino. For 2 or more positive detections, I don't know how the probability would be calculated, but I'll note again that the determination of v > c is based on a best fit of a graph consisting of a lot of neutrino detections over relatively long times, and certainly as the timescale and number of detections decreases the certainty of a change in probability amplitude also decreases. My contention would require that it is theoretically impossible with the OPERA setup to detect a change in the probability amplitude within 60 ns after a measurement (detection of a neutrino)... so that a "dense group of neutrinos" would still arrive before you could detect any change in the probability that it is coming. I have no idea how this would be determined).

Still, this would be considered revolutionary maybe?, because it would demonstrate something like the wave function of some matter being affected by other remote matter. But I don't think it would invalidate any accepted theories that I know of.

This is all speculation and I only know slightly more about what I'm talking about than I did before, which still isn't a lot, but I'm still betting that this is the cause of the OPERA results (admittedly mostly because "I want to believe").