Arronax and Nasrudin are HUMAN

To get this out of the way, yes, I used a web-based util. The one run by Websters. It used to be Websters.com, but now it's dictionary.com. My Webster's 10th New Collegiate has the exact same defintion, but I used the web one as I could copy and paste that way. The Websters II series of dictionaries is a popularized, abridged dictionary, designed for general use. It never has more than 3 or 4 defs, and is missing wuite a few words. It has no etymology. Also, theorem is NOT theory. They are different words with different meanings. If you'd taken logic, general philosophy, or calculus, you'd know this. That's not a self-referntial def. You are using both words in a scientific context, so use the scientific meanings. For instance, if I use the word autochthonous in the anthropological sense, it means born of the earth, whereas in sociology and politics, it means native. Different meanings in different contexts.

Anyway, for all of you interested in science, check out the NYT science section from this Tuesday. It talks about what the lastest work on figuring out gravity real scientists are doing. There is an article in Nature on the same subject for those prepared for a little more depth. Basically, the going idea is that gravity is slowed by passing through Calabi-Yau shaped milimeter sized 6-dimensional areas distributed relatively evenly throughout the cosmos. The math works, and they're testing it now at Fermilab. Modern physics RAWKS!

 

The change in intelligence is like a slap in the face between posts ...

Mmm...I'm interested in both physics and astronomy, but know basically nothing about either. How far in does high school physics generally go? Is there anything you guys could suggest that would help me get at least a basic grasp (keep in mind I know nothing )?

Grrr...still over a year away...eh, double history can make up for it ...

 

at the two high schools i went to the classes ent this way, physics or physic honors (or ap (advanced placement) for partial college credit), and then physics 2 advanced placement. generally you didnt go past physic 2, but when i lived in louisianna i knew a guy that went to three classes at the actual school and then spent the rest of the day at Lousiana State University studying physics, and calculus. so if you're a genius then you can go pretty far before high school ends, but generally its pretty hard to even get into the whole physics 2 program anyway (there were only 5 people in the class at my school and only 2 in the ap chemistry 2 class). luckily my interests lie in english, music and history etc. so i can look forward to a life of unfullfilled liberalism and days at my government job wishing i could get my book published...

 

True :lol: .



N.B - It's smiting time, I'm an Ageless Blade.

 

There's basically no way you'll get to real quantum physics and relativity, let alone string theory, in high school. You just won't have the math. You need topology and linear algebra, at least. As for most of the advanced newtonian stuff Calis was talking about it, you'll certainly understand it you take Physics 2 in high school, or, well, college. You might not cover everything he said, but you'll get the gist.

If you want to understand the wacky stuff like a layman, read some of the books out there for non-physicsts. Some are pleasant, but lame, like Tao of Physics, whihc I can't recommend, having studied both Tao and physics. Some good oones, however, are: The Stephen Hawking books, The ELegeant Universe, by Brian Greene - HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! Anything by Richard Feynman that looks like it was written for a layman, Goedel, Escher, Bach -- well, actually, that's more for AI and number theory, but it's cool, and oh, shit, there are dozens of others. Also, you can go to http://www.superstringtheory.com to find a tutorial that explains the basics of relativity, quantum, and string theory. There's also a forum there worth checking out.

 

Calis, I believe I've answered your initial question before but I'll take another whack at it by giving you another "simple" example. The spacetime fabric of the universe is the surface of a pond. The Big Bang is a pebble that is dropped into the pond. When the pebble breaks the surface of the pond ripples form and expand outwards from the point of contact. Seen in cross section the ripples are waves and seen from above or below the the forces of these waves are set up in lines originating from the point of contact. The waves represent the balancing act played out by celestial bodies and they take their energy directly from the force of the pebble. Yet the waves follow a radiative and linear pattern that is defined by the expansion going on at the most basic level.

Objects in this universe can take one or both of only two tacks: they can spin, and/or they can travel in a line. Sometimes the spins or trajectories of celestial objects won't be matched perfectly and this is what results in elliptical orbits and so-called "complex orbital systems". If there is an apparent change in direction then that is all it is: apparent. It is perceived as a result of the skew of perspective and not actual. Going back to the example of the pond, it would be like one of the ripples breaking rank with its fellows and tearing off in some other direction contrary to the line imparted to it by the pebble. Even further back, there was my example of the optical play on perspective that the ToEE is constantly portraying. Things don't change direction, they merely appear to do so.

Volume and mass have their places in Newtonian mechanics and they occupy similar niches in the ToEE. Objects which are closer to each other by dint of their volumes and possessing likewise densities will appear to affect each other differently than two small objects of higher densities but masses equivalent to the first two. Dense objects become less dense as they expand but they retain their density relative to all other objects. Therefore, dense objects exert greater apparent force because they are able to bring more matter to bear on whatever object they are in contact with.

I'm not certain what names I dropped and would appreciate it if you would point them out to me. As regards the name YOU dropped, I'm thankful that you pointed me in that direction. Loop quantum gravity has a few parallels with my own ToEE, one of them being that it's breaking away from the classical definition of general relativity. Another parallel is the spin networks of quantum foam; the ToEE is sort of like quantum foam that keeps getting foamier. LQG has recently scored a victory over M-theory by showing that more energetic photons behave differently in discrete and continuous spacetime -- it allows for the variation of c and offers a system of viewing the universe that is more dynamic.

lab, please give us a link or, better yet, enlighten us yourself on these new Calabi-Yau nodes. They sound relevant to the topic at hand, perhaps offering a refinement to LQG's discrete spacetime.

 

Thanks, lab, I'll have a look.

 

As far as I know, some of the leading heads have been angling to envelop loop quantum gravity into M-theory. In fact, M-theory does not dictate a static c across all universes, or even within a specific universe. The beauty of brane theory, or Mtheory, or whatever you want to call it, is that it only dictates in what way physical laws vary, not that they do not vary. In two of the string branch theories, c is constant, but in current M-theory it is not. That happened sometime in the early 90s when they figured out that the graviton had to somehow go faster than light. Last year's (or was it 2001?) experiments that proved that c can vary in very rare circumstances was not seen as blow to M-theory. And now, with this new Calabi-Yau thing, they think the other dimensions might have something to do with it.

And so on to that: Calabi-Yau's are multidimensional spheres that exist, for all intents, equally spaced everywhere. The reason they seem to have to exist is that, for string math to work, there seem to have to be (about) 10 dimensions. During the big bang, it is posited that all dimensions larger than 3space and 1time were trapped inside closed strings and were unable to expand. Until recently, they have been thought to be mighty tiny - about Angstrom-sized. But recently, some folks have done some math which makes it look that they could me larger in some instances, up to about a millimeter. This current experiment would be the first thing to test the Calabi-Yau hypothesis. Basically, I don't really get it, but it has to do with watching the shape of the aftereffects of proton smashing. The idea is that gravity (maybe gravitons, but they aren't integral to the math) is weakened over time as it is fored to pass through these larger spaces. If there are gravitons, imagine them lost when they hit these spaces, so that over enormous distances, all or most of the gravitons would be lost piecemeal, one here, one there. Them's the basics. I don't have link, as I read it in print, but I'm sure you can find something is Science or Nature in the past two months.

As far as your example of the big bang and the pond, there is one fundamental flaw: spacetime itself was born of the big bang. There was no pond. The dimensions, space, time, the physical laws, all arose from the big bang. If there is something outside our universe, it plays no perceivable part in the development of our universe, and likely ours has played no part in it. Even in the black hole universe conjecture of Hawking, there may be an energy/mass trade, but even that would do nothing to define our physical laws.

 

lab, your counter to my "simple" example can be likened to the paradoxical question: if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?? The concept of time didn't exist until humans came up with it but does that mean that the time before then was timeless?? Perhaps there was no measure of time before the Big Bang and then again, perhaps there was. No one can prove it either way. For the Big Bang to occur, wouldn't there have to be a space in which for it to occur?? No one can prove it either way. This is why I dubbed my analogy "simple"; it attempted to leave out such things that were irrelevant although it failed to anticipate that quality in your specific comment by dint of its "simpleness".

 

Chalupa, I know what you meant by your example. But, really, you'll have to trust me, it is not the tree/forest koan we're dealing with here. The problem is that the big bang did NOT occur in space, or even in time. This very fact is one of the weirdest, most counterintuitive parts of science, rivaling just about everything quantum or stringy in fuctupitude. But it's true. When the big bang happened, TIME ITSELF was one (or two) of the dimensions that came out of that little naked singularity of prebigbangspace. The big bang was not matter and energy exploding into vacuum, or even space exploding into time, but x-number of dimensions (probably 10) just, er, expanding. One or two of those dimensions were time dimensions. Before the big bang, there was no time, not for any reasons relating to the anthropic principle, but just because that moment, that bang, was the birth of time itself, not as an idea, but as a dimension. I can understand if this just sounds stupid, or if you can't wrap your head around it without some powerful hallucinogen, but, well, that's kinda the way it is. It would seem that modern physics, like mysticism before it, is showing us that the more counterintuitive something is, the more likely it is to be false. I'd say this is because intuition itself is nothing but the subconcious acting upon an amalgam of learned experienced and mores and preconceptions of a given social group, but that's for another thread.

 

This is most likely going to be the stupidest thing on this thread, and I have no real qualifications for talking about astronomical physics. I am not in college, or anything like that.

Does anyone really know what happens in a black hole? I saw something on the discovery channel where they were looking at black holes. Regular black holes create ripples in the time-space continium. They bend the laws of physics slightly. They found super-massive black holes at the center of each galaxy. While regular black hole are the size of our sun, these are the size of a solar system. A radius equal to the length from the Sun to Pluto. These, of course, create a much larger effect of the physical laws. But we have yet to find the center of the universe, and some enormous gravitational pull is holding our galaxy in orbit. What would the gravitational pull of a galaxy sized black hole be? And what effect would THAT have on the laws of physics? If all the matter in the universe was sucked into a black hole of that size, it could feasibly bend the physical laws to their breaking, and therefore change the laws of physics. So perhaps THESE laws of physics that we currently use have not existed before the Big Bang, but another set of laws may have. And in the Big Bang theory all the matter in the universe was contained in one location. But the universe is supposedly infinite, with an infinite amount of matter. So even something with infinite room will eventually be filled with infinite matter. All the matter will be condensed into a single point, and when the black hole is filled, a tremendous reaction causes the explosion known as the Big Bang. And this will eventually repeat itself.

Now go ahead, fill my little argument with holes.

 

Blinky, you're not as far off base as you seem to think you are. One of the scenarios physicists are postulating, though it falls in and out of fashion, is the Big Crunch. Yes, that would be the opposite of the big bang. Essentially, if there is enough dark matter in the universe, some black hole related and some not, the universe should collapse on itself. Now, if it weren't for the weord fuctupery of my last post, this would mean "wash,rinse,repeat," but since time would not exist if the whole universe was one singularity, it is hard to say whether the phrase "another big bang" actually has any meaning. We are used to time as our frame of reference, but what do you do when there can be, by defintion, no frame of reference.

Problem with this whole thing, though, is that is seems that the universe is expanding, and that expansion is ACCELERATING. The guys who know seem to be beginning to figure out why, but as of now, nobody does. If there were going to be a big crunch, it would seem that the universal expansion would have to be at least slowing down, if not reversing. But, it's not. And so we get to dark gravity, which is basically the mysterious force that seems to be pulling the universe apart. There have been a few papers, but nobody knws why for sure yet. Or what this shit really is.

Another thing is that nobody knows what black holes really are. We know how they get there, and we know what they do to our world, but we have no idea what else they might do. Some folks think they are rips in the fabric of spacetime. That follows general relativity. Quantum physics shows they emit light, and therefore lose energy. The explanation of why is a massive headtrip that involves something being borne of nothing. WEIIIIIRRRRRRRRD!!! Other folks think that they are self-contained universes, and that our universe may well be nothing more than a black hole inside another universe, and that one is inside...and there is no biggest one, just an infinite string. Under this, the birth of a black hole as seen from "outside" is equivalent to a big bang as seen from "inside." And this explains why our universe is expanding -- it's being fed by the other universe, which is being fed by another, and another. This one also explains how some particles seem to leave the universe while another particle of the same mass is born "from nothing" light years away. Works with brane theory. This last opne, strangely, is one of the most popular ones out there now. Whew.

So, anyway, your idea is not bad. I fact, it's exactly the same one I had when I was 17. I still think I was pretty smart to think of it, and I think you are, too. So there. Just like I think Chalupa is pretty smart for thinking up HoEE (sorry, C, couldn't resist the H). And as long as you're willing to realize that smart ideas aren't always right, you'll keep gettin smarter.

Good book for black holes: "Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays," by Stephen Hawking, or really anything by him, but go for the most recent ones, as they are, obviously, the most up to date. The last one is called, aptly, "The Theory of Everything." He's a mad hardcore scientist who writes books for anyone willing to think.

 

WOW! So if I eat my vegetables and realize when I'm wrong, I can grow up to be a really big brain like you! That's really all I picture you as. Like some scientist has a vat and he made a really big brain and gave it a computer.

That black hole theory is very interesting, and it makes alot of sense to me. You see, I was wondering how our niverse could have been made except by a God, matter cannot be created nor destroyed by natural means. And I'm very skeptical of God. It's mostly just his fan club that annoys me, but I question everything, as I think people should, and alot of the Bible gets tangled over itself, and contradicts other parts. God is merciful and saves his people, then blows up 2 cities? I don't understand it.

 

Man, sorry Blinky if I came across condescending and patronizing. I didn't mean to, but looking back at my post, I guess I did. It's just that this world is so filled with people unwilling to question and think that when I see someone who does, I feel like I should mention how cool I think that is. I'm sure you have no desire to end up like me, and I wasn't saying you should. I'm just a neurotic whose obsession happens to be omniscience.

As far as what I look like, that's pretty funny, but if you saw me, you'd proabably just think you were looking at another poser with sideburns, a soul patch, and motorcycle boots. Chances are that I'd be drinking bourbon, chainsmoking, and generally looking gloomy. So there's your picture.

The philosophy of religion is what I really study, well, part of it. As such, any discussion I have will get way, way too acadmeic for an online gaming forum. Yes, more than the science ones. Guess I'll just say that God, the idea of a god or gods, is just about the most beautiful and symbolic literary character ever created in the mind of the novelist that is mankind. God is like Hamlet but moreso: he helps us understand who and what we are, but that doen't make him "real."

Disclaimer: if anyone is religious and thus offended by what I just said, flame away, but I'm not going to argue with you. If you have faith, fine and beautiful, but faith cannot be aruged, as it is by nature, for better and for worse, not a rational animal.

 

Can't you see how silly it is to make declarative statements about the beginning of the universe?? No one -- and I say again, "NO ONE," -- has been able to create even a theoretical model of how the universe began. We can approach that point up to about 10^-17 seconds just after the universe's start with our current knowledge but anything before that is a total enigma. Same with black holes; the topic is wide open to speculation because there are certain barriers that we cannot yet penetrate. I would agree that it's good to think "outside the box," but declaratively stating that there was no time and there was no space before the Big Bang is ludicrous! There is no support for the position either way, hence my likening the situation to the tree and the forest.

Equally ludicrous, in my opinion, is this notion of extra dimensions. The reason these extra dimensions were formulated in the first place was to cover up the holes in our theoretical knowledge of the universe, just as you'd patch a tire that's starting to go flat. Certain phenomena were unexplainable with our old knowledge of physics and so these excessive dimensions were tacked on to cover up the equational gaps. I believe that if there really were as many as ten dimensions then we would have a pretty good intuitive grasp of those lower ones that are closer to our own, but we don't. Hyperspace (fourth dimension, FYI) is something that very few people have an intuition for and that's only because they've worked with the equations for a good portion of their lives -- the very notion goes against intuition when one is first introduced to it. Humans have had a good billion or so years to evolve senses which could "feel out" all the dimensions and I'm fairly confident that we have done just that. The proverbial sixth sense is a figment of the mind.

My ToEE ties into my hypothesis that the universe's form has taken the shape of a fractal. That is, forms at the smallest possible level are reflections of the overarching pattern of the whole. Expansion at the microscopic level is mirrored at the macroscopic. I'm open to the speculation that our universe may be nested inside another and that our universe may contain universe's of its own; I would add that these reflections are all isomorphic to one another, though. Perhaps there are infinite copies of each of us living out our lives in universes that are all essentially the same. Perhaps there are slight variations throughout but I would say that there must be a constance in the way these variations take place. I think that the universe is a place of order and although there may be areas of localized chaos, still, this chaos has its orderly underpinnings.

I don't think that the universe just "started" under its own power. Causality is something which one finds at so many observable levels that it must be a part of the overarching pattern. The Big Bang MUST have happened within a framework of one sort or another or else it didn't happen at all. Maybe space and time weren't a part of that framework at the time but I believe that they MUST have had their analogous counterparts present in some form for the Big Bang to get going. Getting something from nothing is not a realizable option because nothing is not a realizable concept.

 

Warning: the following is insulting and pedantic in the extreme:


Chalupa, perhaps you should add this to your quote list:

"A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again." Alexander Pope (1688-1744) - An Essay on Criticism

I'm done. I tried to reason, to argue, to teach. Calis gave up. Ferret gave up. I'm giving up. You didn't really even understand any of our arguments, though in your ignorance, you believed you did. You're stubborn. You don't want to learn, only expound, and for some reason you think you know enough to expound. You do not. Yeah, yeah, you can't really make declarative statements about the inside of black holes or the pre-Planck period of the universe. Yeah, OK, but what I was doing was talking about what is believed by the overwhelming majority of people who KNOW A HELL OF A LOT MORE THAN YOU (OR ME). If you didn't already think you knew all you needed to know and were actually out there studying that upon which you pontificate, you would certainly know that. I guess you're too busy playing the grammar/spelling nazi on a forum about a video game. Utmost importance, I know.

About extra dimensions: No, you are wrong. What you have there is an uninformed (or worse, slightly informed) opinion. It is not a theory, or even a hypothesis. Go read up on it. Then you will have knowledge. Then you will be taken seriously.

I will grant you that your TOEE is pretty. It's quaint. It also lacks all scientific viability, as three people who know more than you have repeatedly pointed out to no avail. If you had more than bits of scattered knowledge from the peripheries of science, you'd kow that. Yeah, I know, the idea that the universe is fractal-like, microcosmic/macrocosmic like so many forms of mysticism -- Some forms of Buddhism, Upanisadic Hinduism, cabalism, Eckhartian Christianity, alchemy, is just plain beautiful. In some way, it may even be true. But not your way. Do yourself a favor: open your mind, open more books, find out why.

Now, Chalupa, I do not pretend to omniscience. I know what I know, and I am fully aware of the gaps in my knowledge that prevent me from successfully theorizing in many and most areas of expertise. Sure I think about just about every subject I have awareness of, but I do not expound upon that which I do not know.

Do the same.

I tried to be patient. I tried not to resort to ad hominem attacks. It didn't work. You wanted to believe you knew what you were talking about so badly, you just ignored the fact that you didn't. Don't ask for a quote from your posts. The answer is "every post, every misconstruction, every ignorant reply."

Please, oh mighty autodidact, didact some more.

 

lab, I think that's really terrible. Your last post took on the flavor of a polemic and it was trying to anticipate arguments that I would not have pressed even had you decided to repeat yourself instead of creating the post that you did. Your comparison between yourself, Ferret, and Calis seems apt. Now, I'll admit that I'm a stubborn person but that is NO cause to start preaching to me what MY beliefs are. I hold learning in high esteem and I have gone and researched some of the topics that have been brought up during this thread. Certainly, I have taken the role of expositor on one occasion or another yet only in my turn. I've not stooped to name-calling or quashing others' positions without backing up my own and I have striven to keep this thread accessible to anyone who had something to say on the subject; contrary to what you might think, the world isn't all "ME! ME! ME!". I don't know where you get the impression that I'm a "grammar/spelling nazi" because I only take that role when I am in the presence of hypocrisy -- I consider myself to be very tolerant of that sort of thing and were I REALLY to take on that role I think I might redefine it for you.

I know that I have learned a few things since turning this thread away from its title and I hope that others have to. I think it should be a place that we can all further our knowledge. When people like yourself take it to a personal level and start pointing insults at people, it becomes entirely counter-productive. I almost want to make the comparison between yourself and some of the lowlier sorts that plague this forum but I know that you have said some worthwhile things and that you might be saving up a few more.

I think a good start would be qualifying your statement, "No, you are wrong." How am I wrong?? Where is the gap in my understanding?? Please point it out to me along with a relevant source of information. Better yet, discuss it with me as you would an equal. Blanket statements such as those are the blinds which idiots wear to conceal their minds from the light of understanding.