where is the evidence proving that the universe was not already billions of miles wide before it started to expand? where is the proof explaining a singularity? peace.
Correct. If you don't have energy or even if you do have energy but are not connected to an event then that event may as well be in another universe. It doesn't exist. Location is meaningless unless you are connected via energy to another energy event. Get it?
The pencils are sparated by discrete packets of energy. Their distance is a consequence of the energy separation.
Energy is ordered. It has order. Direction is a consequence of multiple energy events adjacent to eachother and in "communication". What could be more simple? Time is a way of determining where and how you behave in an energy field. Distance is a measurement of how you are separated in that energy field. The universe is one giant energy field. Nothing needed exept energy. Energy came first, and it all ends with energy - the fabric of the universe. The dimensions are just relative measurements, nothing more, nothing less. Time doesn't exist. Only energy exists.
dav--- It is quite clear that you haven't studied the problem in any detail, and absolutely nothing I can say can convince you that you are wrong. I can't point to an inconsistency in the maths because, conveniently, there are none. Energy didn't ``cause'' time---if anything it is the other way around. Time exists as an independant direction, and the way we know this is because the Lorentz group (which describes space-time) is SO(3,1). This is the goup which describes Lorentz transformations. If time isn't a dimension, then the Lorentz group is only SO(3). If that is true, then translations aren't a symmetry of space-time. But we know that translations are a symmetry---to see this you only have to think about it. Imagine you are in free space, and you move in one direction. Everything is the same as it was before. Another way to say this is that we don't expect the laws of physics to change from one place to another---if translations are a symmetry of space-time, then we are assured this. So, if (as you and countless others I've talked to on this forum seem to think) time is just a consequence of energy and not really a dimension, then the symmetry of space-time cannot possibly be SO(3,1), and it must be SO(3), or something else. Now the irreducible representations of the Lorentz group determine what kind of particles you are allowed. So, if we lived in a universe that had Lorentz group SO(3), as you are claiming, we would see fermions of one chiralirty. Why? There is only one spinor representation of SO(3). But we see fermions of two chiralities. We have particles which are ``left-handed'' and ``right-handed''. (We can test this in experiments.) Conveniently, the Lorentz group SO(3,1) has two spinor representations, that are (even more conveniently) chiral. This should tell you that time has to be included as a dimension. If this seems a bit overwhelming, trust me---I watered it down. If you don't undestand things like ``irreducible representation'', then you are not prepared to talk about these ideas at a meaningful level.
Ben, You are so deeply buried in chiral fermions and irriducible representations that you too are unlikely to change your stance or look at the universe in a different way. Everything you use to back up your arguments are based on mathematics and probably have little to do with reality. Mathematics is a description of the universe but not an explanation. When science gets past the brick wall and discovers the reasons behind the many mysteries still unexplained then I will change my mind. We can all describe and measure the speed of light, mass, inertia, gravity, particle entanglement, quantum effects etc. but can you EXPLAIN them using our current theory? I think not. Science has gone up the wrong path. Time to turn around and listen to alternatives.
dav, I think that perhaps it is you who is going up the wrong path. First, a word about science. The role of science is first to describe reality, and then to offer explanations. The descriptions are more important - if two theories offer different explanations of similar complexity for the same descriptions, then those two theories are equally valuable, and it's not possible to say which theory (if either) is right. Second, a word about explanations. I think that all explanations must have some fundamental axioms - things which just are, with no further explanation possible. Have you ever played the "why" game? Start with a "why" question, eg "Why do magnets stick to the fridge?". Now, whatever answer is offered, respond with "But why?" Repeat. You can keep asking "But why?" forever, but the answers must run out eventually. At some point, you run up against the old standby "Just because, that's why!" or (better) "I don't know why. Maybe that's just the way it is." There is always another why - explanations can never be complete. It is my hope that it will one day be possible to reduce explanations to truly self-evident axioms, but I'm not holding my breath. Finally, a word on the topic of time. Any alternative explanation must be meaningful. No matter what your alternative is, there must be something in there that corresponds to the everyday notions of time and distance. It seems to me that you aren't really arguing that these everyday concepts aren't real, but that they are derived in some way from something (or things) more fundamental. The discussion is getting needlessly caught up in the semantics of what it means to exist. So forget that, let's cut to the chase. Let's take the idea that time and distance might not be fundamental and go from there. So, where do the ideas of time and distance come from? When I assign an order to two events, where does that order come from? When I measure the time elapsed between some pair of events, what am I measuring and where does it come from? When I measure the distance between two events, what am I measuring and where does it come from?
Let's be clear---whether this is right or not is never to be determined by the human race. Physics is an experimental science, and if we can't measure something, if we can't preform an experiment, then it isn't physics. Now to predict something precisely requires the use of math. So I don't know how one can ever hope to separate math from physics---if you do, then it's no longer physics. If you can't calculate something using your satements, then they are physically worthless. All you (and others here like Farsight) have done is butcher 100 years of work by very intelligent people, claiming that you can explain nature without math. Proposterous! Explain means that you can predict what will happen in an experiment, which means that you can calculate something. If you don't introduce any new calculus by which to arrive at new results, your theory is worthless. I've given you an explanation of chiral fermions, which, among other things, fits beautifully together with the treatment of time as a dimension, and Lorentz Invariance. What you have done is to sweep these statements aside, presumably because you don't understand them, in favor of pimping your own pet theories. To be sure, this anti-scientific attitude is also why we have Intelligent Design.
Does this mean random events are unexplainable? I think this is the stumbling block of modern physics, the assumption that by successfully predicting something you've explained it. For example, we can predict the path of an object through a gravitational field by mathematically modeling the space around it as curved, but we haven't proven whether it is physically curved. We assume so, and then we proceed to build more and more theory onto this assumption, until we're left with a problem like the unification of gravity and quantum mechanics. It's possible for an assumption to be wrong and still give the right answers in many cases. But at the same time there's really no other way to approach it. Without prediction and mathematics there's no way to distinguish between good and bad answers. Like you said, without experimentation there's no science. Science assumes that "how" and "why" are the same questions, that by modeling how something happens you've explained why it happens, and I think that's where a lot of the confusion comes from.
That's a common misconception of what scientists think, probably because it's a common conceit of bright young highschool science students. I think good theoretical physicists have a strong grasp of difference between models and reality. We can use models to explain how things happen in that model. If those same things also happen in reality, then it's a good model. But in some cases, more than one model can predict precisely the same thing - we say that both models explain what happens, so they are both good models. Which one corresponds to reality? We can't tell, unless they have different predictions. What we hope is that some other more fundamental model might be developed that explains both the other models. Your example of curved space is a good one, and one that I've mentioned before in this forum:
Is sound real? Does sound exist? Can you use sound to measure things with? What are you actually utilising when you measure using sound? If there is no medium, does the sound still exist? Did it really exist in the first place?
dav--- Sound is a compression wave, propogated by air molecules (or water molecules, or anything else). I can predict things like the shift in frequency due to a moving source, the location of nodes and anti-nodes in the compression waves, the harmonics of a pure signal, constructive and destructive interference, (I could go on)... If there is not media in which to propogate the wave, then the sound doesn't exist. When I talk, for example, my vocal chords vibrate the air in a very specific way (by looking at the frequency spectrum of various people's voices, you can SEE why people sound differently). If there is no air to vibrate, then the sound doesn't propogate, and my vocal chords are just there in my throat, vibrating about. I guess I typed all of this to say that your example is either poorly constructed or confusing...
I have been too busy restoring a crashed computer to comment much here and have already given my POV that time (and space) do not have solid claim to ontological status, but will try to answer your four terminal questions. (1) Ideas of time and space come from the same place that following ideas came from: Earth is center of the universe. God created all the animals and plants just as we see them. The land is solid and has always had Africa far from South America etc. Namely these ideas come from our every day experiences and seem to be so obviously true that only a crazy person* would question if they really are true statements about what is really existing. (2) Where does the idea that "a" preceded and caused "b" come from? Answer, in a word: "probability" In a sentence (Quoting myself in post 19 of thread cited below.): "Thus probability, not physics, gives time its “arrow” and makes the determination of which is “cause” and which is “effect” possible." See: http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=1422822&postcount=19 where full argument is presented. (3) You are not necessarily "measuring" anything. You are only observing a correlation between two different pairs of events. Events A & B compared to a & b. (In fact, but I do not wish to go into it again, the answer I gave to (2) is the only reason why you can say that A preceeds B. Note this alone is extremely probably once you are dealing with any more than a few atoms, but when you add the correlation observed with a & b the possibility that B preceeds A** (and b is before a) becomes even less probable. -See my discussion in post 22 about puddle reforming ice cube etc. and also post 19 for more of the foundation of my "crazy" POV. (Fortunately, those of us who hold these "crazy" views no longer need to be quiet about them for fear of being "roasted at the stake." Once the crazy view that Earth goes around the sun did get people roasted, and all four "crazy views" might have, if they were more readily understood by the masses. Three "obvious facts" knocked down and one to go. - my POV.) For example A might be the sun rise and B the sun set. "a" might be the dial of a digital clock displaying 6:15A and b that same digital clock displaying 7:10P. Time need not even exist to make this correlation and certainly does not cause the Earth to spin (or me to now have silver hair). Again time causes nothing and has nothing causal to do with anything. It is just a dam convenient parameter for descriptions of event evolutions. In principle, all the universe can be fully described with out it by making these correlations explicit. The equations of physics that "fall out of" principles like "Action is an extremium." (usually a local minimum) NORMALLY MAKE NO REFERENCE TO TIME. ("Action" is used here in a technical sense. I forget the general definition of "action," if there is one, but in optics, all paths of photons to the focus are the shortest optically*** and I think have the same action. The trajectory of Earth around the sun I know is fully describable directly in terms of the correlations between the true observables, without any reference to that convenient, but unobservable parameter we call time.) Time is not directly measurable and does not cause anything. It is just a very convenient correlate that permits the evolution of many systems to be described with quite simple equations, such as what the clock will be displaying as Bus 7 arrives at the intersection of Olive and Green streets or the calender in my computer screen will display as the Earth passes thru apogee, etc. (4) Basically same answer as for (3) {and it must be as if I switch reference frames some of the time of frame 1 is "mixed" into space in frame 2 etc.}. Namely you are not measuring "distance." You are correlating the object A with the end "a" of a ruler and the object B with the mark "b" on the ruler and perhaps falsely reporting this correlation as: "B is b distant in space from A." PS - I hope you have a little bushman native blood in you. The American Indian natives were kind to crazy people (even those who think neither time nor space necessarily have any claim to ontological status.) Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! --------------------------- *Alternative to being "crazy" is to be very young, still respecting "authority" so that when you are told the "facts" you accept them, without replying: "Are you blind or just dumb? Can't you see the sun go round the solid Earth and that all dogs differ from cats, etc." Many people (BenTheMan included) see A at a and when their clock has different display see A at b and believe that the passage of time has been established, so it must be something real. - If I could have been his sole instructor when he was young, perhaps I could have drummed into him all four (instead of only three) of these "obviously false, crazy ideas" :shrug: **Now I exhibit the full extent of my insanity: There is nothing in basic physic (excluding "probability" of course) which out laws the scrambled egg from forming the unbroken egg again. See above link again which starts by noting that a movie which shows the train smoke going back down into the smoke stack is not necessarily being shown "backwards." *** Optical length is the physical length times the index of refraction. Thus, the optical length of the path which passes thru the edge of the lens (longer thru air, shorter physically thru glass) is the same length as the path straight to the focal point thru the center of the lens. - same "action," I think. There are several "invariance principles" that can derive directly the connections between observables without any reference to the unobservable time.
Yeah, exactly. So sound is a consequence of physical motion of air and THAT physical motion is caused by a force or energy of some sort. Sound is just an effect of what came before it i.e. energy + a bit of air and something physical which can react to it and possibly record it. When you hear something, you don't hear sound, you REACT to the energy which then vibrates the air. No sound exists, just moving air. So sound is just a way of describing the motion of air after energy is invoked in some way. Sound doesn't exist when you think of it like this, but it's ok to use sound as a measurement. And that analogy goes for time and distance aswell. The universe is just a whole bunch of organised energy which we happen to be a part of. We're capable of using the effects which energy creates to measure comparative distances and comparative times from one event to another. Time is merely a comparison of one energy event with another. Time doesn't exist. You need to rethink.
The two phenomena are completely different. Time is a direction on a Lorentzian manifold, and thus is required to exist by Lorentz Invariance---this means that time is as fundamental as space is. By your logic, if time doesn't exist, then neither does space.
Lorentzian manifold is nothing more than a model - a mathematical model. It helps describe and predict our universe, it doesn't depend on time existing as peolple imagine it to exist. Time is a mathematical concept which helps us understand the movement and behaviour of energy / mass. That's all your Loretzian manifold is doing! It doesn't explain anything. In any case, the Lorentz invariance is known to be violated under certain theoretic field conditions. I've read about this before and what implications this has for your theory, I don't know. I think there are some tests planned for the future where they will test this in space. But one thing's for sure, it's just a best fit model - a bit of algebraic manipulation, that's all.
It explains chiral fermions. The sorts of Lorentz violations you are talking about occur when general relativity breaks down. If GR breaks down (then surely it does), whatever theory is more fundamental must give GR in certain limits.
