Before I begin discussing thoery like "strings theory" which, as i think, is another baseless theory as time travel to some of the intellects with an excellent command over physics, I would like get their comments first. When I will have enough discussion done over it I will argue my case. I just saw in one of the threads how brainers have doctored time according to their convenience.
I would still consider myself naive as compared to the people who are blogging here. Iwish to be right! that's it!
You are probably referring to the lack of experimental evidence backing up string theory. Good point. However, the beauty of the mathematics supporting string theory justifies research so that experimental proofs can be devised.
I don't understand. It seemed like, in the OP, that you attacked string theory for some reason. Now you agree with John's claim that the maths are beautiful and worthy of study in an of themselves?
Hey, Ben - me too. What I do detect here is a difficulty on the part of the original poster to communicate clearly.
You consider yourself naive, and wish to be right but you claimed: So how do the "brainers" doctor time to their convenience, when you state you have no background in physics? What do you consider "doctoring"?
I don't think you ever read the previous post. The point that I made there had nothing to do with strings theory. My reason to start this string is know how many people believe in originality of theories like the strings theory. Also, the reason I mentioned the word "doctored" is because I can see people manipulating the idea of time according to their convenience rather than understanding the concept of time and its relevance to what is the original idea of posting a thread. If you don't believe me, go ahead and check the newest posts on time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.
So how is it being doctored by the brainers? (I'm assuming by that you mean the people WITH brains, as opposed to "no-brainers"). Ben gave a perfectly valid explanation and you claim it's doctoring? Or if you meant the no-brainers why read their posts? Physicists and philosophers (and woowoos) have differing ideas, but only one of those groups can show how things work. Since the original post asked and Ben's posts show that time exists whether we "measure" or not... Did length exist before we (humans) decided to measure it? Was the universe a point source before someone delineated feet and inches (or whatever they used)? BELIEF in sting theory is not prerequisite: it works. Do you believe in gravity? Colour? And how do you justify calling it "baseless"?
Let's go ahead and make it work I am sorry. Earlier, I was just playing around with all that goofy stuff in the beginning of the post. But now, it seems things have escalated and I need to get serious. One can conclude that, however smart string theorists may be, that they are not thinking deeply enough about the unification of general relativity and quantum theory, and while they do not think deeply about such ideas, there is not a lot of point in discussing the subject with them. I find it obvious that string theorists are currently the only community that is able to seriously and collectively consider even the general puzzles related to quantum gravity. For example, a paper by Maldacena and Horowitz that was published less than two weeks ago initiated a new intense wave of discussions - among string theorists and some particle phenomenologists - about the black hole information puzzle. It is sort of amazing that no one in this newsgroup seems to be interested in this important issue. Is the information lost after the black hole evaporates? String theory (perturbative string theory, Matrix theory and AdS/CFT in particular) seem to suggest that the information can't be lost. On the other hand, semiclassical reasoning leads us to the opposite conclusion; it is based on Hawking's approximative calculations, and it even led Hawking to bet that the information is lost even in the exact theory (a statement that he partly softened, after the breakthroughs in string theory's description of black hole thermodynamics). In popular terms, a person who falls into the black hole knows his or her future - he will die. In fact, he can know it even at the microscopic level - the final state is a unique quantum state, they say. Once he or she hits the singularity, one can imagine that he is reflected - by a complicated but concrete unitary transformation - and becomes Hawking radiation that travels backwards in time inside the black hole. (The arrow of time might seem reflected, but Juan and Gary argue that such effects won't be measurable because of the space and information limitations inside the black hole.) Once this Hawking radiation reaches the horizon, it is transformed - via the Unruh state - to the Hawking radiation that escapes to infinity. All steps in this description were unitary, and one can show that the information will be preserved. The possible modifications of causality, locality, information loss, black hole entropy and its microscopic origin, (in)dependence of the degrees of freedom inside and outside the black hole, quantum treatment of singularities, topology change, the arrow of time and similar issues is what I - as well as most "real" quantum gravity practitioners - call "interesting questions about quantum gravity". A reader of this thread would conclude something completely different: he would conclude that the most important thing is to complete some details in a naive picture that constructs spacetime out of some almost randomly chosen elementary building blocks. But the main goal of this text is to say something slightly different.
Define "thinking deeply enough". You think most of them just see it as a hobby? Most physicists (of) I know think about it night and day, 24/ 7. Suggest a line of research... The same ones that aren't thinking deeply enough? The same string theorists that aren't thinking deeply enough? SciForums isn't so much a newsgroup as collection of like and un-like minded people. There's a lot of everything to get through. Someone would have posted on it sooner or later. Congratulations, you were first. That being? PS. I just downloaded the pdf and will read through it. For others interested I found it at: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-th/pdf/0310/0310281v2.pdf Once mortal: it's considered good form to provide links. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!