md65536

gamma = 0.5

I mean gamma = 2... I had the reciprocal.

Other than that is my post correct?

Or it doesn't make enough sense???

Obviously I don't do the math enough, but would a Minkowski diagram show the symmetry as it is observed by the twins or by Earth? Or does no one do relativity calculations based on what is seen vs what is calculated?

Suppose both twins A and B leave Earth in opposite directions and each travel for one year (rocket time) with gamma = 0.5 (relative to Earth), then return at the same speed.

My understanding of relativity is that they'll both return to find the earth aged 4 years while they've each aged 2. They remain the same age.

But I can't figure this out in terms of what they'd each observe.

Twin A would see Earth time appear to run slow as she retreated from it, and then appear to run fast as she approached.

Would she not also see the same thing happening to Twin B? Twin B would appear to age slowly (slower than Earth) on the outbound trip, and then appear to age fast (faster than Earth) on the return trip.

However, I realize that to Twin A, her own outbound trip would appear to take 1 year, and the return trip would appear to take 1 year...

yet to Twin A, B's outbound trip would appear to take more than 1 year, and the return trip much less. This is basically because when A reaches her farthest point, she is 2*0.866 light years rest distance from B's farthest point, so she won't see B reach that point for some time (as the light from such an observation will take time to reach Twin A).

Have I just answered my own question? Yes, Twin A will see Twin B appear to be aging at a much faster pace than it will see Earth aging, but only for a fraction of the time?

I trust that it'll work out to A and B aging exactly the same amount, calculated from anyone's perspective.

This is amazing. I don't know what to make of it.

Do you think Verlinde was talking about images and the sounds of words in his paper? Or do you think it is the key to understanding his work, which he perhaps failed to grasp?

Do you think that this really has any relation to an actual physical reality or to our understanding of it? If so, how could you demonstrate its physical reality, or what test could disprove it?

So far all I got out of this is "Some things resemble other things (in shape and/or word sound)". To me, this is completely explainable in terms of how the brain interprets shapes and images, the development of languages, and the statistics of coincidence. None of these need to have any relation to a holographic nature of the universe.

For over half a year I've resigned to labeling myself a crackpot, but I will stop now. I don't have nearly enough imagination for it. I'm way out of that league.

But I see a familiar attempt to put complex ideas into simpler understood ones, which leads to analogies that may seem silly at first but can lead to better understanding after a lot of analysis. I think you have a lot of work to do before this will come near to any useful conclusions, and that you will completely change your understanding of all of these topics several times before that happens. Are you prepared to throw away all of this work several times over in order to truly understand it? If not, I fail to see any useful conclusion.

i didn't calculate it but if they were to intersect at point z would they not have met before their speeds would otherwise imply?

I recently read in Carl Sagan's Cosmos that some of Einstein's early thought experiments leading to special relativity involved imagining such collisions.

See: http://www.american-buddha.com/journeys.space.time.htm and search for "cart" to skip to the relavent bit.

The paradoxes and impossible situations happen only without special relativity.

If information is spread out over a holographic screen then the information will be communicated through sound as well as light photon image. Language represent intelligent interpretation of the holographic information that exists within the screen. Primarily the information is derived due to human interpretation of light photon image as well as the sound produced relative to the light photon.( whether or not sound is part of the quality of light or not? Sound IS 'relative to' light.) Perhaps "sound" is NOT SO independent from light, rather sound is a part of the quality of light.

I don't know what all this is but it's not science.

The holographic principle is about science. You're taking it very far out of context, ignoring the science, and applying thick layers of interpretation (I suppose we all do that to some degree and must allow for it among us amateur scientists in a speculations forum). But I don't think your ideas have any correlation with the holographic principle that you mention in your original post. Misapplying other theories to your own probably does little more than confuse yourself and others. Admittedly I am guilty of it too.

I don't plan to read through all of your posts but I think I've seen enough to say that the holographic principle does not back up your claims.

1)Can any who are familiar with the principles of holography please express their knowledge of these things in the most lucid way possible?

I know nothing but I feel like babbling.

First, I don't think it's advisable to imagine a physical hologram. To do so, you will be imagining a specific 2D surface within a 3D geometrical space. It defeats the purpose of considering 3D geometry as emergent if you're picturing it in terms of 3D geometry.

Instead of imagining a physical hologram, just consider its properties independently of a physical manifestation.

Here are 2 properties of holograms:

1. All the 3-dimensional information is encoded in a 2-dimensional surface. What this means is that all the information you can stuff into a 3-dimensional volume, can also fit on some related surface (usually the surface is a sphere around a volume, I think).

2. Each point on a hologram's surface encodes information from all over the volume.

If you consider a physical hologram for a moment, think about looking at a single point on it while moving your head all around. That single point will show what all sorts of different parts of the 3d image look like, depending on your point of view. That means that information from all over the 3d model being represented, is encoded into each point on the hologram.

What this means is that rather than having a single point in the 3D volume map to a single point on the 2D surface and vice-versa, you have all points in the volume mapping to all points on the surface and vice-versa.

This next part is speculative:

Suppose you could encode all information in the universe on a 2D surface. Also suppose that different observational perspectives could observe a consistent view of that universe. As with a physical hologram, different points of view observing this 2-dimensional surface will observe something that is consistent with the specific 3-dimensional image represented by the hologram. The hologram is 2D but a 3D image with 3D geometry is emergent. If the universe is similar, then 3D geometry can emerge from the way information is arranged in a 2D universe.

A hologram or holographic universe can be 2D but look consistently 3D.

I think it's right. My own conjectures lead to a similar idea... I posted about it in Speculations in the past week or so, but I don't have the math or the vocabulary to express the idea as precisely or sensibly. Thanks for the link to the paper. It should help me a lot.

"Many physicists believe that ... space-time geometry [is] emergent." I believe this is the way to express an idea I've used in all my speculative posts, recently.

I definitely agree with what I've read (skimmed) in the paper.

Then you have the following principle: If the total entropy of a volume is limited by a factor of the square of its radius, yet the total perceivable entropy of a volume is a factor of the cube of its radius, then the more "stuff" you perceive in a given volume, the smaller it's radius must be perceived.

Corollary: If the apparent radius of a volume of space is determined by entropy, then the size of the universe could be determined by entropy.

The fact that the universe is expanding might be due to the way that entropy is increasing.

The fact that the expansion is accelerating, would have something to do with entropy increasing above some "nominal" rate.

As a vague guess: Normal energy interactions would increase entropy at a "normal" fixed rate, while the splitting of particles or energy would increase that rate to a new higher but also fixed rate. More particles may mean more opportunities for energy to split further, increasing not only the rate of change of entropy, but the rate at which the rate of change of entropy is changing.

billions of degrees Kelvin.

A pedantic correction: It's just "billions of kelvin". The kelvin is not referred to or typeset as a degree.

For simplicity's sake and the fact we are here, assume it did happen as such. Being a pragmatist with nothing to accentuate or back up my reasoning, it's quite possible our world sprang from such a nothingness? If so, then wouldn't it be rational to assume it will return to that same nothingness?

To assume something is true you'd want reason to accept it as true, such as consistent observation or logical deduction. The idea that it all came from nothing isn't based on assumptions, but on reasoning and evidence.

It's definitely reasonable to suggest that the universe could return to nothing, but you'd have to provide the reasoning before I'd call it a rational assumption. I don't think "it was like that before so it will return to that state" is a reasonable self-evident argument. That assumes it's not a "one way" process. The laws of entropy describe a one-way process, I think, and seems a more reasonable description of the universe than "it will return to the way it was".

Say you dropped a box of macaroni. It wouldn't be rational to say "These all came from the box, so I assume they will all end up back in the box at some point."

I may be wrong, but... The idea of the universe coming from nothing is that the sum of all energy in the universe is zero... it all cancels each other out. If you assumed it was all brought back together, you might assume it would cancel each other out. But what will annihilate all the spread-out matter and energy if the universe expands to the point of heat death?

A typical interpretation of the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment is that in one reality, the cat will die, and in another it will continue to live a long and prosperous life. If every probabilistic event has each outcome realized in a different reality, the butterfly effect implies that any 2 similar realities would quickly become very different. These could be called divergent alternate realities.

Special relativity can describe a much milder interpretation. If we assume that any cat must at some time die, then relativity of simultaneity tells us that that moment isn't the same for all possible observers. It's possible that for one observer the cat is dead, and for another it is still alive. This is the reality for each observer, however these might be called superficial alternate realities. The details such as timing of events are different in the different reality, but the cat's eventual death and the cause of its death are common. Further, if you bring any 2 observers to the same location and velocity, the description of their separate realities should merge. This might be called convergent alternate realities.

With these definitions and an acceptance of special relativity, convergent superficial alternate realities are a fact of nature. But are divergent alternate realities also real?

We are then interested in determining the furthest extent to which alternate realities can diverge. We might do this by separating the properties of the universe into two categories: those that change depending on how they are observed (subjective), and those that don't (objective, absolute, or invariant).

Subjective aspects of reality:

time

distance

Invariant aspects of reality:

c

causality

Causality is a significant property in the Schrodinger's cat experiment. If indeed it is invariant, then it is possible for the experiment to be viewed with multiple superficial outcomes by multiple observers, but the state of the cat (dead or alive) as determined by the causal connection between events, would be convergent among different realities. It would either remain alive, or eventually die by the same causes in all realities.

Schrodinger's experiment relies on quantum phenomena translating to real-world events. Using the above interpretation, however, we can find a disconnect between the two: At the particle scale, we might describe reality according to subjective properties, but then as we back out to a human scale we may inadvertently switch to including an invariant property.

Much of the nature of particles is subjective. If distance is completely observer-dependent, then particle location, velocity, and even size can be subjective. Particles will be observed differently by different observers. It is possible that 2 observers do not even have the same particles in their respective realities. Yet, if causality is invariant, then particle interactions that cause other observable events must be invariant across multiple realities. Ie. causal relations must be realized in all realities regardless of how they may be differently observed.

Both quantum mechanics and special relativity can be interpreted as requiring alternate observational realities. They do not require the more extreme interpretations of parallel universes in which we each live out an infinite number of wildly different lives. Since causality is shown to be invariant in special relativity, it is likely that such wild interpretations where causality is subjective, are false. Occam's razor would suggest that parallel universes are unlikely. However, there may be other evidence for parallel universes that I'm not covering.

In summary, it is possible that the physical details and makeup of different alternate realities are very different, and yet that all realities converge on a single consistent description of the universe.

In that regard I have a request. Will you permit me to put this paper on the Science Forums website? My sole desire is to solicit comments. (It's okay, I am thick skinned.) If you wish to see the paper before hand, I can e-mail it to you. If you so decide then, how would I go about doing it and in which section of the Forum?

Why not just post a link? There's nothing against that... no need to axe permission. The closest applicable rule I can see is

7. Advertising and spam is prohibited. We don't mind if you put a link to your site in your signature, but don't go around making dozens of threads about it.

Well it's over my head, but...

As you mentioned, time is relative. If part of the universe is expanding away from you at a certain speed, that will affect the rate at which clocks tick in that area, as observed by you. The solar system for example is not expanding such that things are moving away from each other at a rate approaching c. So time anywhere in the solar system, viewed from anywhere else in the solar system, would not change much over a billion years due to expansion of the universe. It has expanded at most a light hour or whatever it is, in its history. Time as we know it... all clocks on Earth (including natural pre-man ones) should not be different over a billion years due to relativistic velocity of expansion.

Also... relativistic velocity only slows down clocks. At relative rest is their fastest; motion toward or away from a clock will slow it. So if expansion is increasing, time (at the furthest reaches of the universe relative to us) is slowing, not increasing its rate.

A smaller universe in the past should allow for greater density of matter and probably greater gravitational differences, which according to GR would mean slower time in the past (when viewing an area that's in a strong g field from an area with a weaker field).

If the entire universe is expanding, the solar system would have been smaller in the past (as would Earth, the galaxy, everything), and I'm not sure what kind of effect, if any, that would have on time within the solar system, viewed from within the solar system. Also not a physicist!

If the theory of parallel universes is true then I realized that within this infinite vast sea of universes there is an infinite number of universes in which are exact copies of our universe. So the matter of these universes could be identical to our universe yet you cannot have exact copies in terms of consciousness because if that was true we would experience an infinite number of lives rather than just one. So consciousness has the ability to be individual yet matter cannot be individual so consciousness is not just a random event developed by matter it has its own laws of physics in some sense.

I don't follow your reasoning that matter and consciousness must behave differently regarding alternate universes.

Why would one consciousness experience what a copy experiences? Aren't they separate? And if not, why would matter be separate from its copies? Wouldn't you assume that matter on Earth would "experience the gravitational pull of an infinite number of Earths" or something?

There is probably some interpretation of QM that will let you develop these ideas further, but personally I think the entire idea of parallel universes is unnecessarily complicated and likely false.

An observer crossing a black hole event horizon can calculate the moment they've crossed it, but will not actually see or feel anything special happen at that moment. In terms of visual appearance, observers who fall into the hole perceive the black region constituting the horizon as lying at some apparent distance below them, and never experience crossing this visual horizon.

http://en.wikipedia....n_event_horizon

And moving in the opposite direction is impossible... "In 1958, David Finkelstein identified the Schwarzschild surface as an event horizon, 'a perfect unidirectional membrane: causal influences can cross it in only one direction'."[1] So in my analogy it's impossible to escape the universe completely, as I described it. In fact in my analogy I assume some kind of equivalence between the outside and inside of an event horizon (as a boundary between 2 universes, one might say), which then must be incorrect if it's one-directional.

So then it's impossible to compare what would be seen outside, vs inside the EH?

Still, can we say anything about an observer who was always inside the EH? Outside, we calculate there is a singularity at r=0. Inside, might this not be a singularity?

I googled it up, and found that what I'm describing is a "coordinate singularity"... a singularity that can disappear with a change of coordinates.

It appears that the answer is "no":

"What happens at r = 0? In the Schwarzschild metric, the expressions 2M/r approach infinity as r approaches 0. This is a real, physical singularity, not a coordinate singularity."[2]

However I'm not fully convinced, because most of the stuff I came across says something like "No one knows what would be seen inside the event horizon" etc, so it could still be a coordinate singularity within the EH.

Also, the singularity is a point singularity only for non-rotating BHs (otherwise it's a ring singularity), and it's likely that all BHs rotate.

Also, the singularities are expected to not be real phenomena, but rather "The appearance of singularities in general relativity is commonly perceived as signaling the breakdown of the theory. ... It is generally expected that a theory of quantum gravity will feature black holes without singularities."[3]

I can still think of 2 alternatives that would let my idea be true (one where the singularity is a coordinate singularity that disappears inside the EH and one where the singularity remains), but I find no evidence to suggest they have any basis in reality.

Refs:

1. http://en.wikipedia....hole#Golden_age

2. http://members.cox.n.../black_hole.htm

3. http://en.wikipedia....ole#Singularity

If you have two particles A and B, both A and B have a certain uncertainty in position. Would there then not be uncertainty for the distance between A and B?

Wouldn't it be that the more precisely the distance between A and B is known, the less precisely the change in distance between them is known, and vice versa?

Is it valid to determine this using the coordinate system of A, so that the position of B is expressed relative to A while A is fixed (relative to itself at least), and the distance between the two is equivalent to the position of B?

1) all energy travels at all times with a speed of c.

2) there is a limited number of possible locations within a given volume (ie. quantization of location)

But you're saying time and distance aren't fundamental, and then listing fundamental things that are related. How can you speak about speed and volume in fundamental aspects if time and distance aren't fundamental?

EXACTLY! So if we were to list all fundamental aspects of the universe, and time and distance were not defined on there, but everything else was (the definition of speed, volume etc), then I'm suggesting that you could come to any correct conclusion about time and distance, as we observe and/or understand it, based on that.

Then if you gave these rules to an advanced AI that had no understanding of time and space, but was able to deduce things, it could deduce things like "I get it! Things appear smaller the farther you are from them!" or, as I'm suggesting: "I get it! Spacetime must curve!"

Or to put it another way, my conjecture is this:

If you listed everything that is true about the universe, and then one by one removed every statement that could be logically deduced from the other statements (ie you reduced it to fundamentals), you would eventually be able to remove the definition of time and space, as their definition would be completely specified by other more fundamental truths.

I'm saying they need not exist, even as concepts, independent of the rest of the universe. As real as they are to us, they may just be "semblances" or something, of an underlying nature of the universe.

I think things like speed and volume would have to be definable in terms of other things (entropy maybe) for this to be correct.

Okay sorry I've rambled too long now trying to make precise the ethereal philosophical aspects of the conjecture, and my thoughts and words aren't precise enough to do this.

You said this before:

 

If you're going to approach objective reality as objectively defined, what is the point of even bringing up "observation-dependence," "perceptual conceptualization," etc.? If all you mean is that objective physicality determines subjective perception, why raise the issue? As far as I can tell you're not making any defensible claims about subjectivity, only objective material relations.

I'm separating "observed reality" ie "reality" (subjective, observationally dependent, relative, etc) from "underlying physical nature of the universe" (objective, absolute, ??? yet unknown or at least not yet well understood... speculative!).

This is also separate from "imaginary" (illusive ie. inconsistently observed or strictly conceptual).

I don't even know enough of what I'm saying to make defensible claims. The more I write to try to suss it all out, the more confusing it will probably be. It's just a vague idea that's based on conjectures about time and spacetime curvature. It's there that I should focus, where it should be possible to evaluate the conjectures mathematically if I can figure out how. I should leave the philosophy where it is: just a vague idea of the nature of existence, that will always involve flexible interpretation of the science. I can't make any claims about whether or not my philosophical outlook is right.

This is not related to the conjecture about spacetime curvature, but: My other conjectures, which lead to this one, also leads to an idea that the universe can be described completely as a thermodynamic system with topology but without geometry. No distance or time, possibly as little as 2 dimensions (or even less, maybe fractional), a singularity. This is usually what I'm thinking of when I speak of an "underlying physical nature of the universe". Some weird inconceivable thing that doesn't make sense in our understanding of reality, because it involves removing all the things that define perception (or result from perception), ie involves removing much of what makes up our reality as we perceive it.

Ok, I misunderstood you as referring to perception as a basis for the very fact of distance. I don't think perception is defined by the speed of light as much as it is by the ocular lensing. If you change the lens on a camera, distances appear differently. Objective ideas about distance are based on extra-perceptual science. Sensual, empirical observation is one thing but measurement requires going beyond visual estimation of distance. I don't think there's any necessary consense, though, whether universal or otherwise. You can experiment with this by getting some people together to estimate the distance to various objects. You will probably get divergent estimates, proving that perception does not accurately conform to objective measurement.

No you were right... I was referring to perception as a basis for the fact of distance. But not in any "imaginary, anything goes" type of way. Only in a very real way.

For example, if you take a wooden table, you would say that it is solid. And that is reality... it is solid. Depending on how it is perceived, it appears solid (if the wavelength of light used to observe it is blocked by it). The "underlying reality" is that it is made up of tiny particles and is mostly empty space between them, but the perceptual reality which depends on how it is perceived, is that it is solid. That your hand can't pass through the table is real, but not fundamental: It can be traced back to an effect of the fundamental forces (which of course would be considered fundamental). That stuff can't pass through a table "depends"... neutrinos can. Obviously, the impenetrability or solidity of a table is not a fundamental aspect of the universe.

If you change lenses on a camera, it changes the appearance of distances, but it doesn't change the actual distances. However, if you are moving relative to something, you can change its actual length (this is only noticeable at velocities approaching c). The length of something is real, but its actual value depends on how it is observed.

You can get different people to estimate the length of a meter stick, and due to errors in perception, they will observe 1m and think it is something else.

With perfect perception (which I'm assuming in these posts -- I'm talking about the nature of reality rather than the nature of human thought and sensing), you would perceive 1m.

However, another perfect perceiver may measure 0.5m depending on relative velocity or differing gravitational field.

The reality is that that meter stick actually IS 1m or 0.5m depending on the observer. Those are both "real distances". But distance isn't fundamental. The closest you can get to an absolute distance is rest distance in the absence of gravity. It could be that this actually is fundamental. I don't think it is but I can't rule it out.

Perhaps I'm not using the word "perceived" properly... Does it imply an element of human interpretation? I've been using it as if it didn't.

I was thinking about how time and space is consistent no matter how it is observed (related to this post: http://www.sciencefo...rves-spacetime/).

As an example, suppose you could shrink the universe down to a very small size. It would continue to function consistently with the relationship between time and space being determined by the value c. You may see the universe as small, but others who may perceive it differently may see it as immense.

I think this is exactly what would happen if you were to somehow "step outside" the universe. You would perceive it as small (as a black hole, I believe), while others inside it would see no change in space or time.

If you shrunk it this way and could peer inside, you would necessarily see that time seems sped up*... as light still travels at c, a lot more can happen with smaller distances. And yet, the universe would be consistent for all observers, including you outside and everyone inside.

However, if you were to shrink the universe to a singularity, you would "lose track" of its time... I think its time would become undefined to you. Would it still be possible to have a consistent understanding of the universe?

As a leap of logic, one might say that if you perceived the universe as a singularity, then it no longer exists consistently for you. If that is true, then there is no way you can perceive information about it. If the universe is viewed as a black hole singularity, then it is at the event horizon that you are no longer able to make observations of it. So would that coincide with the size of the universe? Inside the event horizon, it is observable and thus has size and thus time and is consistent, and outside the horizon it is sizeless and thus unobservable and inconsistent.

This might also relate to the idea that what is unobservable does not exist. The reality that may be defined within a singularity is not defined outside of it.

Apologies if this is just a mess of meaningless thoughts. Does anyone follow my reasoning, or have related thoughts? Or am I skipping so far over the details (both in my mind and in this post) that all that's left is nonsense?

* Edit: I may have that backwards? This gets me every time.

Why not just say that distance is a "social fact," to use Durkheimian language? Is social consensus a sufficient basis to define dimensionality objectively? Or is your whole point that social consensus is due to the objective nature of the retina?

I don't know, at least not clearly enough to make such statements. I don't think the retina or humanity has any effect on reality.

I might try to say instead that "distance is not fundamental in the universe".

My followup about the holographic principle seems to assume that c -- a fixed speed of all energy in the universe -- is fundamental.

Time and distance can be an illusion or a social fact or real or unreal or whatever, but the main important fact is that however they may be perceived, they are always defined by a fixed relationship between time and distance.

The original conjecture then goes something like this: Time and distance are perceptual effects consistent with these "fundamental aspects of the universe":

1) all energy travels at all times with a speed of c.

2) there is a limited number of possible locations within a given volume (ie. quantization of location)

3) the total entropy of a volume is limited by the surface area around the volume (consequence of 1 and 2?)

4) ???

Thus, you can say what you want about time and space, define them as concretely or as abstractly as you want, but in any way you do, the above fundamental aspects must hold. The conjecture referred to by the title of this thread is that if you have a definition of time and space defined by the above aspects, and it is consistent, then you have spacetime curvature due to mass energy.

In a sense, "what time and distance are" doesn't matter as much as the fundamental aspects matter.

Time and distance are simply an expression of the universal consensus of those aspects. So I would say more than social facts, they are universal facts, but consequential rather than fundamental ones. They are defined as a universally consistent perceptual measurement, but that definition defines a local perception that depends on the observer. Hahaha, if you are not confused then that makes one of us who isn't!

Or in other words... the nature of time and space lies somewhere between an arbitrary perceptual conceptualization of a universe, and an underlying absolute physical reality of the universe. Time and space are defined by the observer and depend on how they are observed, but only to the extent that they are consistent with the fundamental reality they represent.

Edit:

4) What is not consistent is not observable

5) What is not observable does not have a defined existence

6) Reality is consistent (consequence of 4 and 5?)

Hey, this just might be the best "crazy new theory" I've seen on the whole forums.

Thanks!

You've really stumbled upon some good philosophical questions here. You may care to partake in some readings on the topic of Philosophy of Science. There are readings on questions like "does it really matter if what we perceive and what reality is is different?" In short, the answer really is no, because if something is unmeasurable, then it doesn't really matter if it is there or not -- its effects are unmeasurable after all.

I have some differing philosophical ideas but nothing clear enough to be worth presenting, yet. Edit: But then I went and wrote out those ideas anyway, in later posts below. :S

Blah blah blah, yada yada yada, and you have yourself a different description of the holographic principle, which to paraphrase suggests that the total entropy of a volume is proportional to the surface area around that volume.

To try to be a bit more precise...

Suppose you have a certain number of energy quanta at a single location at time 0, and then examine them at a time t.

Their max speed is c, so you should find that all the energy is contained within a sphere of radius c*t.

Assuming the quanta can interact or be accelerated, or just that they may bounce off things, we would expect that the total number of possible places for any quanta of energy would be related to the volume of the sphere (each quanta may be anywhere within the sphere).

However, the only way to get to a particular point on the surface of the sphere is to travel there at c in a straight line. Conversely, if a particle travels in a straight line (no bouncing) it will end up at the surface of the sphere at time t. Therefore, if you find a particle anywhere else inside the volume, that means it bounced (or otherwise diverted), and that means that there is some place on the surface of the sphere that can't be reached by any particle (unless we allow that 2 particles can travel the same path at the same time and diverge, which I guess we must assume is impossible. We might assume that 2 quanta at the same location after time 0 can be considered a single quantum).

The main thing that affects where these quanta of energy end up, is an assumption that they all travel at c (whether they consist of photons, or as matter made up of oscillating energy that might be considered "energy that bounces several many times within time t"). If the energy could travel at arbitrary speed <= c, they could end up anywhere in the volume and thus the entropy would be proportional to r cubed. But since they travel at a fixed speed, there is only one place a quanta could be at time t, depending on the direction it was traveling when it left the initial location...

... That part may make some assumptions about determinism that are not quite true. Regardless...

Anyway, the point of this is that each of these quanta of energy can either 1) end up on the surface of the imaginary sphere and "fill that spot" at time t, or 2) if not then the quanta is within the sphere and there is an "empty spot" on the sphere where it would be if it had traveled in a straight line. Thus, for each quanta within the sphere, no matter how many we begin with, there is a point on the surface of the sphere that maps uniquely to that quanta. If you want to end up with more quanta inside a sphere than there is room for them on the surface of the sphere, you cannot do so by having all the quanta start at the same place and the same time.

Yada yada yada Big Bang

In all spacetime diagrams speed is an angle.

How do you get that speed is an angle?

According to your diagram with c as an angle you get tan( c ) = T/D (opposite over adjacent).

I think you want that c = D/T... a speed... the distance D that light travels in time T, such that c = tan( pi/2 - theta ) where theta is the angle you currently label as c.

Or simply c = tan( theta ) if you use the angle off of the time axis rather than the distance axis.

The tangent of an angle is not an angle.

In this diagram, speed is a ratio. I don't know enough about spacetime diagrams, but if they do represent speed with a proper angle, I don't think this diagram corresponds to them (as you do to get eq 4).

In Minkowski diagrams, the vertical axis is "ct", which is the same units as the distance axis, so uh... well I dunno, but I guess you can do different things with it and have it make sense, where the same thing wouldn't make the same sense with your diagram.

"Evaporation typically involves an energy input."

 

And it is an essential part in the movement of water though a tree. However, here it does not aid in the movement. (I did get one machine to drip, and then submerged it in water. It continued to drip for 10 days.)

Evaporation can use energy to extract liquid from a capillary, freeing it to draw up more liquid. If your device is indeed cycling through the same energy states (which I don't think it is but it could be), this could allow it to do so.

"I think that it is very unlikely that you can break a law of science without first understanding it enough to know where (and only IF) it can be broken."

 

What I meant by this... perhaps I should clarify -- I'll restate it:

It is VERY UNLIKELY that you can

1. set a goal of breaking a well-established law of science,

2. undertake that goal without understanding the law you're trying to break, and

3. succeed.

Or in other words: It's very unlikely that you can design a device specifically to break laws that you don't understand, and have it work.

PERHAPS if you understood the law and came up with a theoretical way to circumvent it (ie. to falsify it),

MOST LIKELY you'd still be wrong, but you might not be. It happens and it will continue to happen... it is part of scientific process.

However, laws that are confirmed by hundreds of years of experimental confirmation tend to very rarely be false.

PERHAPS if you already HAD a device which SEEMS to break the laws of physics (say if you had a device that ran on 2 car batteries and unexpectedly kept running after you removed them),

even then it is very unlikely that it breaks existing laws of science, or requires new ones. It is more likely that there is some explanation that you're missing.

I don't want to discourage you from trying to do the impossible, but there's a fine line between attempting something new without knowing exactly what you're doing, and devoting your time to a hopeless project (like a PMM) while refusing to understand it. (To your credit, you are attempting to understand it, despite refusal to accept the key principles that would let you understand it.)

Yes, conservation laws are falsifiable. Your device could be considered an experiment which supports the well-known conclusion: They are not false.

I'm sorry this experience has been an unpleasant one for you.

No, the apologies are mine. Discussion can always be beneficial though my negativity may not. And you seem to be committed to truly understanding your device; it should not be my concern what route you take to get there.

My guess is that the fluid part of the ferrofluid evaporates, leaving a greater concentration of suspended solids, and so they act more like a collection of solids than a fluid.

Evaporation typically involves an energy input.

Stable state. The capillaries are saturated with ferrofluid and surrounded by ferrofluid at their bases.

 

Cycle. The ferrofluid spikes out of the capillaries. The ferrofluid breaks off and drips. The ferrofluid moves to the strongest part of the next magnet and joins the ferrofluid there at the base of the other capillary.

 

Stable state. The capillaries are saturated with ferrofluid and surrounded by ferrofluid at their bases.

 

(That is, of course, assuming that I'm right in that as the fluid is pulled out of the capillary that more fluid will move into the capillary (thus keeping it saturated) due to cohesion. I'm open to the discussion. Why would more fluid not move into the capillaries at their bases, as fluid spikes out at the tops?)

Exactly! This is the key to understanding your device! How can any system perpetually cycle through the same states without requiring any new energy, and while losing (a tiny amount of) energy due to friction? Conservation of energy is what you need to research. If you can extract a certain amount of energy going from state A to B, it will take at least that much energy to go from state B (through any states C etc) back to state A.

Some additional points:

- A system can cycle for a very long time if it is very efficient. A pendulum won't swing to the bottom and then immediately stop, even though it has the lowest potential energy there, because potential energy is constantly being converted to kinetic energy and vice versa (with some lost to inefficiency), in accordance with conservation laws.

- Having a device drip for a long time is meaningless if you're extracting very little energy from it. See: http://www.emoti.com...ag/00/0417.html Tar can continue dripping extremely slowly for a century but no one would consider it a perpetual motion machine. The longer your machine runs, the easier you're making it to fool yourself (and possibly others).

- You have not shown how or even speculated that your machine circumvents conservation of energy laws. There is no reason to believe it does, other than that it's a puzzle to figure it out.

On the plus side: You may consider this device among the best "perpetual motion machines" ever designed and built, some of which might be considered "famous".

On the bad side: None have ever worked, and there is scientific proof of that, and a lot of time has been and continues to be wasted.

On a related note... I finally discovered the "Stop watching this topic" button which has improved my life! I keep fooling myself into thinking that I can help resolve something with a reply.

In contemporary physics, is time suppose to exist as an actual thing, or is it just a system of periodically measuring things? Because all those equations with time only assume time is true, which hasn't been proven to be a thing that actually exists as something.

I am not an expert, but...

It is simply a measurement, exactly like distance is. It's not a "thing" with substance.

"Distance" is real but it's not a physical thing. You can say distances exist, but you intuitively think of them as properties of a system, or as aspects of other things in a system, ie as measurements. They are not "stuff". Similarly, space-time is not "stuff", like an aether.

Space-time doesn't exist independently of other things. In the sense that it's a measurement, it's a measurement between other things. It can also be a measurement between imaginary locations in space and time, where those locations are also not things.

Time is a physical property defined between any locations in spacetime.

"Don't give up though …"

 

Thank you. I won't.

I disagree with that advice. I'd recommend researching a bit more so that you understand why these machines don't work, instead of trying multiple times to build them.

I think that it is very unlikely that you can break a law of science without first understanding it enough to know where (and only IF) it can be broken.

You requested and listed possible explanations for why your machine doesn't work, but you've skipped the suggestions given to you.

Here is your flaw: You are starting your machine in one state (capillaries empty; relatively high amount of potential energy) and then letting it run to another state (capillaries saturated) at which point, for some reason you expect it to keep running.

Once you get to a stable state, there are not really any "new states" for the machine to get to. You are claiming that the machine is in one state, the liquid drips, the capillaries suck up more liquid, and you are back at a state very similar to the previous state.

So answer this: What form of energy is used to return the machine to a previous state?

If you can answer that realistically, then you've identified an energy input to your machine.

It's nothing special that the machine would go from its start state to a stable state, even if that involves the liquid dripping and moving across the magnet, even cycling for days or whatever else it might do. However I don't think you've shown that your machine goes from a stable state, through a cycle, and returns to a stable state. Without energy input this is impossible. Yet you're ignoring this, and looking for other excuses for why the machine stops working.