pmb

A large number of them think they are going to be the exception. Raptured strait to heaven, I see bumper stickers all day long that say "car will be unmanned in case of Rapture" They think they get saved, everyone else dies in a spasm of evil run a muck while they get to watch from the best seats in the house.... it's really an odd point of view....

I'm geetting the feeling that my comment side tracked this thread so let's get back online, shall we?

Well what if we could somehow harness the properties of wormholes to achieve light speed travel? Wormholes don't necessarily destroy what goes through them, do they?

I briefly read something by Kip Thorne who said that it would requiretoo much exotic matter to create one.

Action principles have always fascinated me. Least action, Fermat's principle, maximal proper time, etc.

I think you might enjoy reading this

http://www.eftaylor.com/leastaction.html#actionleast

Can it be possible to impart rotations to earth thereby gaining momentum and hence making a frenzy time spiral in the fourth dimension?

It could even make some planets of our solar system to dissappear!

 

So is the sun rise set is infact a melodrama 2-dimensional eye wonder, that everytime the sun passes us and returns again in its second dimension. And earth was said to be flat!

First off - You are willfully ignoring queries directed at you which are posted to deetermined why you're highjacking and ruining your own thread.

You are violatingf forum rules by not staying on topic. I.e. from the forum rules thread

<LI>Stay on topic. Posts should be relevant to the discussion at hand. This means that you shouldn't use scientific threads to advertise your own personal theory, or post only to incite a hostile argument.

You have willfully and anoyingly going off topic.

Your new topic is also violating forum etiquette

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/7813-science-forums-etiquette/

You have willfully ignoing others who are telling you that you're not making sense to them. Not being coherent is violating forum etiquette.

Be Coherent

When you reply, try to make as much sense as possible. Organize your post into paragraphs or sections as to make it easier to understand. If nobody knows what you're saying, they aren't going to learn anything from it, or try to reply to it.

If you are going to say "it" or "one" or "they" then make sure we know what you are talking about. "It" is not a very descriptive word and people may get confused as to what you are trying to say.

According to the forum rules those posts should be deleted and perhaps the thread could be locked. Please get back on topic or please don't post at all.

There was another thread in this subforum which had a thread called "Defining God." I read part of it and the first post seemed to be interesting - of course I'm finding it difficult to concentrate today.

A while back I created a web page entitled The Word"God" and placed it here

http://home.comcast.net/~peter.m.brown/religion/the_word_god.htm

I'd love to hear some feedback on the content. Thanks.

Best wishes,

Pete

I'm very sorry to hear about your condition. ......

I appologize for being a downer. Sometimes just getting it out can help me. It didn't work today. Sorry.

This was my fav subject in school...

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton's_law_of_universal_gravitation

How is this related to the topic of this thread? It's not useful to simply post something like this without stating how it's useful here. You can't simply assume that everybody has read and studied everyword of this thread. Just plopping it in as you did is quite irritating.

they warning us or do they, secretly, welcome the devastating scenarios they describe?

Note: I am telling you this with the assumption that nobody will use it againts me and nothing that I say will go outside this forum. If my trust is violated then I ask the forum moderator to take appropriate action they see fit given the specifics. I amtrusting the moderators with my well being. Please don't let me down.

I pay no attention to what those wack jobs say. I know the date that the Maya calendar ends and am looking forward to seeing the wackos will respond to the lack of anything happening that day.

However, I'm going to admit something today that I never ever ever admit to anybody outside my doctors office - I am one of thoe people that would appreciate the end of the world happening. Whethera person is rligious or not I believe that people won't experience and end to their existance. This is not a scientific viewpoint though. Scientifically I can't even imagine how such a thing could happen. But I do see something beyond death. The research of Henry Stapp is interesting on this point, if I read him right that is.

I keep reaching points in my life where I just can't bear living to see he next day. You see, I'm disabled. I have a damaged spine in that I have 4 herniated disks. When I became disabled I lost most of my friends. My family doesn't want me to call them because they see me as a burden. The pain can be unbearable a good fraction o the time I'm awake. When I'm asleep I have very bad nightmares. The purpose in my life is all gone. I have no fear of death. It would be a release from never ending pain. That's how I see it.

Eric - a word of advice. Start taking the medication again. You are havering. If you actually think that concatenation of buzz words condenses into something with meaning, then you have more than one loose screw.

Note: I'm not a moderator. But the moderator might chime in on this post since it's against forum rules. E.g.

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/7813-science-forums-etiquette/

Don't Flame

Just because someone doesn't agree with you, doesn't mean you need to insult them. They may be ignorant, but try not to flame them out of the forum. If they're intentionally insulting people, don't reply--just use the Report Post function to let the moderators know about it. They can deal with insult wars and rule-breakers more efficiently than regular users.

.

.

.

Don't be Mean

If you don't agree with someone, don't attack them. Tell them politely why you think they're wrong, and give them evidence. Insulting people won't get you anywhere but suspended.

Just a friendly note of caution to help you avoid being slammed.

Good luck and best wishes,

Pete

a quote by D H:- "mass tells space-time how to curve,and space-time tells mass how to move".

The person coined that phrase is John Archibald Wheeler. The same person who coined the term black hole.

Sometimes mass say to spacetime - "Don't curve". two examples are the vacuum domain wall and the cosmic straight Cosmic String. There is no spacetime curvature outside the location of the matter. E.g. assume the domain wall is in the xy-plain. Then outside the plane objects accelerate towards the plain. But outside the plain there is no spacetime curvature. However if you placed objects on each side of the wall the particles will accelerate towards the wall and, if placed just right, towards each other!! In that there are gravitational tidal accelerations.

Example; wall is in xy-plain. One particle is placed on the plain at x=y=0 and along z > 0. The other is placed at x - y =0 and along z < 0. These particles will accelerate towards each each other.

I recalled my childhood days favorite movie called ' armageddon'.

Yikes. It seems like yesterday that I saw that movie.

Another thing to note that passing through time frame in zero gravity does it occur to neglify time? Or the time itself acts to slow down as gravity tends to zero?

There is no such word as neglify. Please tell me what you mean when you use it.

Or the time itself acts to slow down as gravity tends to zero?

What do you mean by gravity tends to zero? There can be two meanings to it.

Potential function Phi(z) tends to zero

Gravitational field g(z) tends to zero

It's also possible to have Phi(z) --> 0 and g(z) remain constant. This is the case for a uniform gravitational field.

Note: In what follows I will assume the gravitational field is uniform. This will make the problem easier to explain.

Time doesn't slow with less gravity, it speeds up.

Suppose the observer is at z = h and the clock at z.

As z --> 0 Phi(0) also goes to zero since Phi = gz where g = gravitational acceleration = constant.

If the observer is at z = 0 and then h > z then the clock appears to slow down.

If you have a clock in space, it will count faster than a clock on Earth simply because there is higher gravity on the surface of Earth. A larger distortion in the fabric of space slows down local time more to an outside observer.

If the observer is at z > h the clock appears to slow down.

Time movement going to and fro? Zero time state? No, it doesn't work that way.

 

Clocks moving relative to you will run slow, and clocks deeper in gravitational potentials will run slow. There is no absolute frame of reference.

Darn it. I didn't see this post. You just explained what I did. Sorry swansont.

eric - What is neglify time supposed to mean? I.e. neglify as no meaning. So what do you mean when you choose to use it?

Excuse me?

Time for some psycho-babble: - I'm sure that some people see you as closed-mined just as some people consider me to be closed minded. I also don't believe that either of us are closed-minded. I think it's a matter of perception. The person who said that has experiences which form his perceptions just as it does to all of us. To a large extent I believe that everyone has perceptions about everyone else which are formed from past experiences and I'm convinced that those experiences are embedded in our subconscience. Whew! That was a pretty labored response.

I had a friend who I thought I knew well. One day I stopped ny his house while he was online and posting to some sort of forum. He turned out to be what we call a "flamewarrior". I saw him in a totally different light after that.

The rubber sheet analogy is just that -- an analogy aimed at the law audience. Don't try to read anything more into any one of those analogies than the limited thing the analogy is trying to depict...

Those diagrams are called embedding diagrams and they are used to visualize the spatial part of the metric. The one for a Schwarzschild geometry can be found in http://www.eftaylor.com/pub/chapter2.pdf see page 2-24

This is not aimed at the "law audience" (whatever that is. what is it anyway??) This diagram shows up in many very mathematical texts and journals. In fact it appears in the Gravitation by Misner, Thorne and Wheeler.

i like the idea that infact only time is being "created" (and had been forever), but space is discrete.

There is no basis on saying that time is being created is if time had that property. When you say that you must change the definition of time since the current one won't get you to your notion of it. Time is a measure of how things in our world change. The property of creation doesn't belong to that definition. And the idea of space being discrete is also meaningless.

What you've said here just cannot be given a meaning

!

Moderator Note

You can ask questions or hypothesize and answer, but you can't do both. Mainstream science is what's discussed in the science sections. Speculative material belongs in Speculations.

swansont - You're being too gracious. Nothing of what he said can be given a meaning so it doesn't belong in speculations.

And I'm saying that from a point of view of a physicist who enjoys and appreciates that forum. It is hopeful that someday someone will come up with something useful. I'd hate to see that forum littered with nonsense pseudo-science and crackpottery. Is that a word?

Does that mean that when space expands, time expands too? so that the ratio space/time remains equal?

Not in my opinion.

It's easier to sit on these things a while and tell yourself that you're in the position to answer that yourself before you need to bounce it offsomeone. E.g. What possible meaning can "time expands" be given? What does "expand" mean? Does it, or can it, apply to time? If so then try t think of an example of how to measure expand and ask yourself does spatial expansion need to be there in order for time to expand. Etc. etc. etc. I think that eventually you'l be in a much better position to ask your question at that point.

People want to apply similar meanings to time as they do to time and vice versa. This is Minkowski's fault with his famous article where he says space and time will dsappear and only a kind of union will remain. He never hinted on how to do it or what'd mean. What remained after his paper was a clear notion that time and space play a role where they are analogous, not the same. Even the metric tells us that. Measurment and obsvation area all quite different for space as they are for time.

Let me relay the following. From Nature No. 2677, Vol. 106, page 783

From this it follows that, in respect of its role in the equations of physice, though not with regard to its physical significance, time is equivalent to the space co-ordinates (apart from the relations of reality).

People have a talent for not getting this part. I think its because certain people get turned on by understanding things that others don't understand. And the properties of spacetime is one thing that people just don't understand so accepting without query what Minkowski stated causes all sorts of misleading things. (sigh)

I can also send this article to those who wish to read it in e-mail if I've already scanned it into a PDF file alreadt. If not then I can't do that anytime soon.I just can't take sitting in front of my computer anymore this weekend ery much. So off I go to the couch for the rest of today. More tommorow.

I'd like to recommend that two new forums be created under physics; Themodynamics, Electrodynamics and Philosophy of Physics

From Relativity, Thermodynamics and Cosmology by Richard C. Tolman, Dover Pub. (1987 version of 1934 text), page 29

In this language it is important to guard against the fallacy of assuming all directions in the hyper-space are equivalent, and of assuming that extension in time is of the same nature of extension in space merely because it may be convenient to think of them as plotted along perpendicular axes. …. That there must be a difference between the spatial and temporal axes in our hyper-space is made evident, by contrasting the physical possibility or rotating a meter stick from an orientation where it measures distance in eh y-direction, where the impossibility of rotating it into a direction where it would measure time-intervals-in other words the impossibility of rotating a stick into a clock.

This is an excellant explanation about what the cautions are regarding the nature of spacetime.

I recall countless times people speaking about the speed at which a photon travels through spacetime.

You can just as well talk about the speed at which light moves through spacetime as you can talk about rotating a clock into a rod.

seconded.

 

 

pmb

But surely in your opening post you showed that Goldstein played the good guy by acknowledging that there are different interpretations of the phrase 'classical mechanics' and defining precisely what definition he was going to employ?

 

I repeat my comment one more time that there are yet more sorts of mechanics than quantum v classical.

 

I even offered the example of a type which is sensitive to scale (colouring of cellular automata) which is neither quantised nor does it follow normal rules.

 

go well

I guess that in my heart I was trying to get an idea of who means what when they use the phrase.

I really don't know why I do that. In the past I've always regret getting into debates about definitions.

Given that local spacetime is flat, there should be no possible way to measure any curvature at a single point.

With no curvature, there is no gravitation.

If a mass can be a point mass, it would need observations or measurements of spacetime from multiple locations in order to determine any curvature and be affected by it (eg. gravitational attraction). The minimal spatial extent of a mass must include multiple spatial points of observation (as in a particle with size, or multiple point particles somehow combined and sharing information, or a single point particle making observations from different locations).

 

Is this a sound argument?

First off -

Given that local spacetime is flat, there should be no possible way to measure any curvature at a single point.

Your subject matter is differential geometry and it'sapplication to generl relativity. When I see someone say local spacetime is flat, I wince. The curvatue of a manifold is a local property. A local property such as this is primarily geometry in the small or local geometry.

The smaller the spacetime you confine yourself to the more precisely you can measure the curvature. There are articles about this in the American Journal of Physics as well as in a few GR texts. E.g

What is the principle of equivalence?, Hans C. Ohanian, Am. J. Phys. 45(10)), October 1977

Abstract - The strong principle of equivalence is usually formulated as an assertion that in a sufficiently small, freely falling laboratory the gravitational fields surrounding the laboratory cannot be detected. We show that this is false by presenting several simple examples of phenomena which may be used to detect the gravitational field through its tidal effects: we show that these effects are, in fact, local (observable in an arbitrarily small region). Alternative formulations of the strong principle are discussed and a new formulation of strong equivalence (the "Einstein principle") as an assertion about the field equations of physics, rather than an assertion about all laws or all experiments, is proposed. We also discuss the weak principle of equivalence and its two complimentary aspects: the uniqueness of free fall of a test particles in arbitrary gravitational fields ("Galileo principle") and the the uniqueness of free fall of arbitrary systems in weak gravitational fields ("Newton's principle").

I have the article in a PDF file if you want to read it.

Second --

With no curvature, there is no gravitation.

Not only do I disagree with this I know as fact that Einstein disagreed with it to. See my article http://xxx.lanl.gov/...physics/0204044 for details and Einstein's written references.

The important part of the paper regarding this point is where I quote Einstein who said

... what characterizes the existence of a gravitational field from the empirical standpoint is the non-vanishing of the components of the affine connection], not the vanishing of the [components of the Riemann tensor]. If one does not think in such intuitive (anschaulich) ways, one cannot grasp why something like curvature should have anything at all to do with gravitation. In any case, no rational person would have hit upon anything otherwise. The key to the understanding of the equality of gravitational mass and inertial mass would have been missing.

Basically what all this says is that the observations you make in a free-fall enviroment when objects are accelerating towards/away from each other are observations of tidal forces. The equivalent GR name for such tidal gradients is spacetime curvature.

Third ---

If a mass can be a point mass, it would need observations or measurements of spacetime from multiple locations in order to determine any curvature and be affected by it (eg. gravitational attraction). The minimal spatial extent of a mass must include multiple spatial points of observation (as in a particle with size, or multiple point particles somehow combined and sharing information, or a single point particle making observations from different locations).

Sorry but I can't make sense out of this.

I assume by If a mass can be a point mass you are referring to a test particle. If so then I can't make out what the following means regarding it

(test particle) ... would need observations ... of spacetime from multiple locations ....

Are you observing the test particle or are you obseving spacetime?

The rest I can't understand at all

Is this a sound argument?

Sorry, but no, it isn't.

Please read my article from front page to back page and if you read it close enough and ask me questions when you think I'm unclear, then I'm sure we can come to s place in the topic in which we both agree. In the meantime I'm going to write a quote from a differential geometry text which defines some terminology so we have the same basis of terminology there too. That will have to wait a bit. My legs are giving out (due to spinal cord damage and sitting too long).

Isn't there a way to delete a post I make? E.g. if I post in a thread and a hour later I decide that it was unwise that I posted it at all then I'd like a way to be able to delete the post. Other forums have that function and seem to use the same software so it seems like it should be possible for the software to be adjusted to make it so.

I would say that just about every theoretical and mathematical physicists would.

I'm confused. Are you saying that most would go with Goldstein et al? I need to ask because earlier this morning when I first logged on I read it the other way.

Fiber-optic Michelson interferometers exist. A null result from re-doing the M-M experiment might not get published because it's not a very interesting result.

Ah ha!!! Now I recall the experiment. It's quite famous. It's the Kennedy-Thorndyke Experiment It's much more precise thanthe Michelson-Morely experiment of which it is a modified version of.

See http://en.wikipedia....dike_experiment

I find any kind of fake ID to be obnoxious. What is worse with this one is that he spent several follow up posts arguing with you as if that'd change yor mind rather than irritate you more. So we have someoene who is obnoxious and caused an irritating hijack of this thread. Thank for saying it. This is an interested thread.

And Einstein didn't believe in quantum mechanics or plate tectonics. Yeah, he was smart. Smart people can also be wrong.

It's not quite acurate to claim that Einstein didn't believe in quantum mechanics. He was one of the founders of it. What Einstein didn't believe was the Copenhagen interpretation, i.e. the probabilistic interpretation.

why was this moved? u know i proved astrology in my videos. it has scientific foundations, as i mentioned in my first video.

You claim that your so-called "proof" of astrology is in the first video. I was being open-minded when I saw it. For a scientist, that means that they paid attention from the beginning to the end. I did so. And it was hard to do because of your ignorance of science. When anybody states/writes that they have incontrovertible proof of something then I know that they're ignorant of/in the scientific method.

E.g. there is not a theory in existence today which can be said to have been proved correct. All scientists knows that for a theory to be scientific that i must be falsifiable, which you haven't hinted on it being. In fact you claimed the opposite. And all physicists know that astrology has for a very long time been proven to be wrong. Notice that I said "proved"? Did I just contradict myself because of what I had just said about proof and scientific theories? No. I haven't. A theory cannot be proven right. It can, however, be proven wrong! The video with Tyson in it explains it all.

have you read the book cosmos and psyche by richard tarnas? he hasnt been refuted

You pointed to this book as (1) being your "bible" and (2) being written by a Harvard scholar (3) if they back up your assertions. On what basis do you believe that he's a Harvard scholar? You claim astrology was proven by him. How? I have no plains on reading a book which was written by somene who in all likelyhood never claimed his work proved astrology. Do you actually believe that you coming here and posting a reference to a book whom you claim proves astrology and expect the scientists here to be in awe and so proven wrong by your extremely poor arguement in your video (no true arguement was there to be honest, only gibberish and assertions like It's weird" and "If my theory is correct..") I can promise you that it won't work, as you have already seen.

The author who wrote that book does not work at Harvard. He only went to school there and graduated way back in 1972. He didn't get his PhD there. So on what basis do you claim that he's a Harvard scholar? To be precise, on what basis is he a Scholar? An MIT physicist/relativity author for famous MIT text on relativity, refered to my work on relativity as being scholarly. So on what basis should we take his word over mine? At least I'm a physicist. That guy isn't even a scientist, he's an historian. So what he aims to prove most likely has nothing with what you thought he proved.

When you point to someone who believes a theory and choose that persons credentials as part of your arguement as part of your proof then what your using is an attempt at using appeal to authority as your source of knowledge. Appeal to authority requires a few things in order for your use not to have a fallacy. If that was actually what you were doing when you spoke of him and his connection to Harvard then you're using authority wrong since he is not an authority on astrology.

And you are vague about him not being refuted. By that do you mean that no scientist on the entire earth as offered a valid proof that his arguments wrong? That is something you can't possibly know. And in any case, theories cannot be proven as you believe that they can.

As the others suggest, it'd be wise for you to learn about the philosophy of science. Otherwise there is zero chance you'd be able to convince a scientist of what you wish to convince them of.

guitaoist - One last question for you in this post - Did you ever track down and read for yourself all the sources that author quoted? If not then how do you know if they were what you accepted them to be? I know from experience that what I thought was a source to my arguement was often not a source at all because when I actually went and verified it I found there to be a lot of misquoating. Frosting in an arguement is what I now call it.

Most of the first one and bits of the second. Would you like to summarise your evidence? And then try some causal explanation?

I really have to congratulate you Klaynos. I could only take the first video bit by bit and only then by running it several times. I find that I was getting nauseas because it was so irrational. E.g. guitaoist refered to NYC as the city that never sleeps. However since there are eight cities which carry that title he should say NYC is one of the cities that never sleeps and then see if he is able to apply his same reasoning about psychic energy. NYC is called the city that never sleeps is because there are always people awake around the clock. Guitaoist claims the reason for this has to do with insomina and some bizzare assertion about psychic energy being transmitted around the city causing insomina. In my opinion its because there is a lot do do around the clock and people in NYC, just like any other city, work different shifts. Those who work second shift might be sleeping in the day time when the day shift is working. There are two choices for these people as far as when to sleep. There is sleeping during the day shift or sleeping during the afternoon shift aka second shift. If I worked in NYC I might just choose to spend some months during the year sleeping during the afternoon and living it up at night. That'd be for the young and I would have only done it when I was young.

So there are much more plausible reasons to be away at night than psychic energy keeping me awake.

I have a question about the analysis of the MM experiment presented earlier in this forum at the link: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/26262175/InterpretationMichelsonExperiment.pdf

Has anyone ever done this experiment again, but with the use of glass arms of the interferometer instead of the air? If so, what were the results of this experiment?

 

 

I recall reading references to that kind of experiment but I can't recall the reference itself.

Well yes, "stationary" is technically the accurate word. "Least action" and "maximal proper time" are the usual names used, and are almost always accurate names.

To m Least etc. are not the words that should be used since one never knows when which of them applies unless one already knows and doesn't need to determine it.

That's pretty cool that you got to work with Taylor and Wheeler.

Yes. It was very very cool. My name is in it and it's online so you can verify it. See

http://www.eftaylor....ront_matter.pdf

Go to the page where the word Acknowledgements is printed. Then look in right column and read where it says

Peter M. Brown made many suggestions, found quotations, drafted the Glosssary of Terms, and helped to assemble the reading list, and had the initial idea for the front cover.

This book is now used to teach a course in GR and black holes at MIT. And all those people who take that course read my name!

It was published at the right time. In June of 2000 I was diagnosed with Acute Myloid Leukemia. Edwin came to see me in the first week and handed me a copy of the book in which it was autographed by both Taylor and Wheeler. Nothing could have made me better. That's the kind of person Edwin is. I was fortunate to have him in my life at that time.

Pete

Action principles have always fascinated me. Least action, Fermat's principle, maximal proper time, etc.

The term/principle Least Action is inaccurate. The correct term should be the principle of stationary action. See - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_action

In physics, the principle of least action – or, more accurately, the principle of stationary action – is a variational principle that, ...

The integral in the variation doesn't need to be least, it merely requires the first variation of the action integral to be zero. There are no requirments on the second variation.

This can also be found in Classical Mechanics - Third Edition, byGoldstein, Poole and Safko, Addison Wesley (2002), page 35 Eq. (2.1). The itegral is I = integrl L dt and the following words after that integral are

...where L = T - V, has a stationary value for the actual path of motion.

I believe this is proven in The Variational Principles of Mechanics by Cornelius Lanczos, Dover Pub. An Excellant text I should add.

The more general statement about proper time is that it's extremal, i.e. either maximal or minimal. I learned that about 13 years ago when I was helping the author of Exploring Black Holes by Edwin F. Taylor and John Archibald Wheeler. We (Edwin and I) discussed the principle of stationary action many times since I had to know it since I was writing the Glossary to the text.

I always wondered why there was no restriction on the second variation. Now I know.

I recommend learning about this. It's actually fun to do so!