Some folks seem to be confused about what constitutes natural phenomena. Go figure. This thread was about finding a way to show the natural phenomena we call time isn't fundamental [lol] because it's not observable and because the device we observe it with could have moving parts. Somehow disqualifying the measurement [lol]. How many ways can we measure it [observe] and how many different sets of 'units of measurement' can we come up with to post the measurement results. Since when does the measurement device determine what kind of natural phenomena it's observing. [lol].
An interesting, short article by Prof. Carlip on the arrow of time: http://physics.aps.org/articles/v7/111
It measures what it measures. Open up a clock and look at what it's doing. There isn't any time passing through it. So it isn't actually measuring the passage of time, now is it? So when the clock goes slower it isn't because time's passing slower, is it? Go figure! Perhaps that deserves another thread Billy.
This is like saying "3" physically exists. You're insisting on some proprietary meaning of "exist", and you are unilaterally declaring that a number physically exists which at this point is a bald claim (unsupported). Now we need to define "literally" and "travel". Otherwise the idiom translates as "time elapses" which is reasonable enough. Not until they read it, and then it's a done deal. Good. We've made headway then. Not that I agree with that assessment myself, I was just responding to the inconsistencies and errors I detected in your posts. Time elapses for the stone at rest and for the stone in motion. The stone need not change in any measurable way for time to elapse. Actually it's less than that. It is nothing more than a reference point for establishing the origin of a (usu. Cartesian) coordinate system. But that has nothing to do with what I said. I wasn't characterizing the frame. I was characterizing the events within the frame. With or without events, time elapses. But time is always pegged to the frame in question. (Another important aspect of time lost in the din here.) Sure I can. There are an infinity of reference frames between the span of my thumb and forefinger. What difference does it make where the frame is? None, esp. with reference to my remark: there need not be any event occurring in a frame to declare that time has elapsed in it. Not sure why you are arguing this. It seems to demand that nothing exists unless proven. But as a general rule, I would refer you to Hubble's observations, and the corroborations which followed, which demonstrated a kind of homogeneity about time as it concerns all of the visible universe. And that is, that c is constant in all frames and always was. I'm not quarkhead. Yes it is, which is why I said you need to be more aware of units when you invoke physics. As I explained, 1 N = 1 kg · m/s². The "s" means "seconds" which is a unit of time. You quoted Einstein not saying "matter is made of energy" to support your statement that matter is made of energy. I don't care about that. I care about the statement by the psychologist referring to the brain's innate capability of marking time. You were arguing against this. What does that mean? Time elapses. Since no one thinks time is a fluid, the use of "flow" could not possibly be interpreted "fluid flow". Evidently you never took biology. I highly recommend it. If you can get into a course which covers brain functions you will discover the functions of the parietal region and related sections of the brain which endow animals with spatial perception as well as temporal perception and many of the other functions you are overlooking. Yes I oppose indoctrination everywhere I see it. So far you cited Einstein not saying what you said he said. As for your part in fighting indoctrination, flame on. But don't expect anyone with a reasonable amount of education to support your equivocations on education vs indoctrination. And don't expect the folks who worked through their science programs to pander to random attacks on academia. And don't expect anyone to respect something you post just because you believe it derives from Einstein. If you want to discuss science, you need more than rhetoric. You need physical evidence, you need to link the evidence to the applicable laws and principles, and you need math to do that. You need foundations in the human repository of knowledge commonly called "an education". And, most of all, you have to be correct. And when you're wrong, you have to yield to the superior facts and evidence. Here, the problem has nothing to with indoctrination (unless you ever divulge what turned you against academia, which is usually indoctrination) but rather the problem of doing science as opposed to backseat driving. When doing science, refer to the paragraph above. It outlines a whole lot more than rhetoric. Using the example of how you tried to say Einstein said "matter is made of energy", the above methodology will prove to be insurmountable to you. No. Whenever you perceive "now" you perceive time. Again, this is a topic of biology. Physics is not the only branch of science, you know. Since so much of what you said reflected on perception, you need to settle the question of how brains mark time - without physics, without machines, without clocks, just by the biological nature itself. That may be a tall order, but that's where the comments of perception lead. That's nonsense. You said "a clock clocks" which is meaningless. And as I've stated several times now, all motions are rates, therefore every kind of motion reveals the passage of time. Again, a rate is the derivative of something with respect to time. By definition then time can be measured by measuring motion. You discounted "cumulatives" without acknowledging that the integral is the inverse operator of the derivative. But don't limit this to definitions: it's an imperative of Nature, based on the physical meaning of d(·)/dt. Without understanding the nuance of this (which requires a little math background) then I can see where you would be unable to follow me. Some calculus and some biology is assumed in my post. But I do try to keep this at a high school level so general readers don't get lost. And I know you require as non-technical an approach as possible. After all, I wouldn't want to demand that you go get indoctrinated with calculus and biology just to follow my meaning. That would be ludicrous.
Bingo!!! My question stands, as well as my challenge to Farsight from post 625 re his credentials as compared to the giants he chooses through Ignorance to denigrate. I also recognise that the non existence of any achievements, and/or qualifications over and above, or anywhere near equal to those giants, will be highly embarrassing for our delusion self rightious Farsight.
I myself am honored to achieve peeling a hard boiled egg and afflicting minimal damage. I might dye my hair blue in celebration. (Maybe I should dye my cat?)
No it isn't. Planck's constant is an established part of physics. No you weren't. There weren't any. You just made a mistake and assumed I'd been saying time does not exist. No it doesn't. Huh? No there aren't. But like him you let abstraction get in the way of evidence and understanding. Yes I did. Oh really. OK that's enough. You're engaging in a long rambling ad-hominem diatribe and trying to bore everybody to death with a megapost instead of participating in a sincere discussion about an interesting subject. So we are done. You're on ignore.
Nice post I'd. For Farsight the lack of scholarship has led to low self esteem so he needs to invent his scholarship to fill the void.
Did you even stop to think before you said that? Planck's constant and the number three have more in common with one another, than they do with apples and oranges. So you don't get confused the latter, apples and oranges, exist physically... You can pick the off a tree and eat them! Try that with Planck's constant.
Yep. Go and look at some pictures of the electromagnetic spectrum. Note how the depicted wave height is always the same? And remember how I said the dimensionality of action is momentum x distance? Well, Planck's constant is all to do with the quantum nature of light, and it isn't anything to do with photons being little billiard balls, because they aren't. Instead they have an E=hc/λ nature. Imagine you're playing a guitar. You finger the frets to change the wavelength, but the amplitude of your pluck is always the same. The quantum nature of light is something similar. And it's very very real. You might think I'm talking out of my hat with this, because it isn't mainstream. But trying explain yourself what the quantum nature of light is all about. And when you find yourself talking about little billiard balls and energy coming in lumps, remember that a photon can have any wavelength and any energy you like.
Planck introduced his entirely arbitrary constant to make his explanation of the ultra-violet catastrophe work in purely mathematical terms. It was "re-discovered" by Einstein in his "quantum of action" paper of 1905 (that with deals with the photoelectric effect) which essentially says that (unlike Planck, who believed, rightly, that his equations referred only to radiation interacting with matteri) light is quantatized throughout it propagation history. Here it is an undefined mathematical constant Niels Bohr also made arbitrary use of this same constant to describe, mathematically, the allowable energy levels for bound electrons. Again, a purely mathematical conjecture In short, the Planck constant is a device which makes the mathematics of physical phenomena work to the satisfaction of established mathematics, not the other way around
But there is an underlying reality to it. No problem. Einstein got his Nobel prize for this. He was in on the ground floor of quantum mechanics. Yes, but that's not quite the quantum nature of light. Yes we can make electrons (and positrons) out of light in pair production and we can diffract electrons, but electron orbitals is something different. The quantum nature of light being what it is, is why electron mass is 511keV and not a whole range of values. Setting aside the mass deficit of course. I will reiterate: the mathematics is describing physical phenomena, there is an underlying reality to Planck's constant of action.
And time is all to do with what evolved along with space from the BB, and a fundamental property of the Universe we inhabit. Better luck next time. The quantum nature of light has as much to do with playing a guitar, as a waterfall and fish swimming against the tide, has to do with the EH of a BH. Do better. Yes. No, simply because that isn't what we observe. Try again.
A thousand constants are "established" throughout all the sciences. But no one ever said they are entities within the physical universe. They do not exist in any conventional sense of the word. Planck's constant has several forms, but nowhere does it appear as a "thing". It's a constant of proportionality. This is like saying the dielectric constant "exists" which is nonsensical. No I read you saying several times that it exists like heat exists then arguing that it can't be measured, which would at least pretend to insist that it doesn't exist. You kept saying it doesn't "flow". And so on. I was also responding to various errors, like the cite of Einstein not saying "matter is made of energy" supporting your statement "matter is made of energy". Proof? For my side I offer the Lorentz rotation on one frame with respect to the other, which operates on time and space only and levies no requirements about the events therein. Time is relative. Well how many are there then? I haven't abstracted anything, and I haven't distanced myself from evidence or understanding. I gave you concrete examples and cited one expert so far. I cited a couple of relevant courses in a typical high school or freshman college level program in science, and recommended that you enroll in them. That promotes understanding and fosters the production of evidence. I've also attacked indoctrination and appealed to the holistic standards of "an education" as opposed to arguing science as a backseat driver purely by rhetoric. I've outlined the need to conform all inferences on evidence to all established laws and principles of nature. I can't think of a more distorted characterization of what I actually said than what you said above. But let me add that "abstraction" is a cue, much like "indoctrination", which implies that something is fundamentally broken without coming out with it. So I'll leave that to your confession, when you choose to make it, about how you came to the decision that one of your roles in life is to attack education. The evidence says otherwise. Your posts deny that the animal brain is endowed with an innate perception of time; that when I say "now" every person with a normal brain perceives time. Well folks? Was that an ad hom or a fair characterization of what he posted? It certainly was brief by comparison to my typical verbosity. Not sure how "rambling" and "megapost" apply. But heck, he opened the door during this exchange into the question of whether science is fundamentally broken. Gee-a poster defends education here (yawn) -- yeah I guess that's pretty boring. Can a member get carded for falsely alleging "ad hom"? That's an ad hom in itself, as opposed to making a reasonably accurate characterization of his attacks on academia. Now stand by, folks, while I go find the Einstein paper that supports what I just said . . . Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Intriguing if true. Do you have a related link? (I'm not good a searching - found none) One thing that bothers me is the negative muon. It is identical to the electron in charge so should have same relationship to light as the electron but being about 200 times more massives makes a much smaller hydrogen atom with very different energy levels and radiative wave lengths. (it is also unstable but last long enough for some to suggest it may be a path to fusion as nuclei get much closer before the electric repulsion begins) I have always believed that the 0.511Mev was just a "fact of nature" with no known reason why that value.
Hey bruce. The funny thing is that he seems to really believe a lot of what he posts. Either that or he's a great actor. How long has he been attacking science now? 14 years? We need to have a contest to see who can find the oldest anti science post of one John Duffield. My feeling is that he is building a case for the Young Earthers, that, like his attacks on the constancy of c, he was building here to an attack on the measurement of time. Both are said to be ammo for Creationists to fire at radioisotope dating. Other than that, it's impossible to understand what motivates these attacks. He has put out in the public domain that he has a degree in computer programming, that his motivation for attacking academia came from his kids' abandonment of science (whatever that means). Here in the US it looks like the only way to walk away from science (for minors) is if their parents home school them, or they go to charter schools, and the only reason for deviating from the curriculum (that I can think of) is religious choice to do so. Also, I think his first salvo with me here was "indoctrination" which sounds like the reaction of a person accused of of indoctrinating his own children. I'm just guessing, from the fragmentary information he published. The actual language reads "Developed a special interest [in physics] a few years back when our children gave up all their science subjects and I learned that UK physics A-levels were down 57% in 20 years." How do children "give up" their science subjects, unless they are electives? And if the system is turning out less fluency in science, that's a reason to build education up, not tear it down. So who knows what this really means. But I did almost spew my coffee when he said Planck's constant "exists". I can see he's hanging his hat on this now, but who knows how he thinks it might benefit his game plan. In a way I think his primary goal is to get replies to his posts, since I think he is mostly ignored at large.
You have done this in the past Farsight... When you say, "we can make" it suggests that it has been done! Where is your reference to anyone having made any particle with mass from two photons, that does not involve another massive particle..? For that matter where is your reference that anyone has ever succeeded in getting two photon's to collide?... Again without there having been some other massive particle involved. (Both cases requiring a great deal of interpretation to arrive at the conclusion(s) you state as fact.) Pair production as you describe it may be possible, but being possible and having been done, is the difference between theoretical and reality. Point two lasers such that the beams intersect, one green and one red or both the same color, then tell me how that changes anything where each of the beams hits a detector after the intersection. Theoretically two high energy gamma rays could interact directly with eachother, resulting in a positron/electron.., but that.., so far remains theory. Check it out yourself. There have been some suggestions that it could or might be done, but that is not the same as having been done... And that is just making the gamma ray laser, not getting two gamma ray beams to interact.... You do a lot of pulling bits and pieces of information out of context and shoving them together, to make claims that are far beyond the scope of our current technology and understanding. Constantly confusing what is with what might be, reality and theory....
