opposite of a photon

[BTMO]

And remember that the speed of dark if faster than the speed of light, because no matter how fast the light moves, the dark always gets there first.

It's swings and roundabouts...

 

[Singularitarian]

Let's focus on that, since it's at least vaguely comprehensible.

Earlier you asserted (I think) that physics today says it's the case. You're wrong: no such idea is established or anywhere near widely accepted. Since it's your assertion, you provide the evidence. A statement to that effect in a textbook would do nicely (something in a speculative paper or crank website will not).

Actually, there are many references. I can state two so far. There is Hameroff on time on YouTube, and he concludes himself that most scientists today believe that time is not a flow, but rather made up of starts and stops. Here is also a reference to a paper which covers this new discovery (actually - not so new, its been around for a good couple of years):


''The Flow of Time'' by George F. R. Ellis who explains that ''Current theoretical physics suggests the flow of time is an illusion: the entire universe just is, with no special meaning attached to the present time.''

http://www.fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Ellis_Fqxi_essay_contest__E.pdf

 

[sol invictus]

There is Hameroff on time on YouTube, and he concludes himself that most scientists today believe that time is not a flow, but rather made up of starts and stops.

This guy?
YouTube - Quantum Consciousness (Stuart Hameroff)

He's not even a physicist, and looks decidedly crank-ish.

Fail.

''The Flow of Time'' by George F. R. Ellis who explains that ''Current theoretical physics suggests the flow of time is an illusion: the entire universe just is, with no special meaning attached to the present time.''

That says nothing remotely like "Time is made of tiny fragments". He simply means that one can view spacetime globally, all at once - which is true (one can if one wants, although it's not necessary), but doesn't support your assertion.

Fail.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Some years ago I read The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene, and in that book he laid out a way of thinking about relativity that made things click for me like no other explanation had before.

Professor Greene wrote that any object, particle, or photon, is always moving at the speed of light through space-time. A particle's total speed (lightspeed) through space-time is split between the three spatial dimensions and single time dimension. The faster a particle moves through space, the slower it moves through time, and vice versa.

So a photon, with zero mass, "uses up" its total available speed moving through space, with nothing left over to move through time.

Would it make sense to think of the protean point mass which underwent the Big Bang as the other end of the spectrum? That is, an object with infinite mass, traveling at light speed through time, and not moving through space at all?

I'm not leading to any "gotcha" point here. I'm not plumping for some alternative theory. I'm not trolling. I'm just curious as to whether this conjecture makes sense, is useful, is patently absurd, etc. If the thread dies in one or two posts, then so be it.

Well there are several problems here. First you do not need infinite mass just to be at rest in an IRF to be going as fast through time as possible. And long before you get to infinite mass, you will have more energy involved than exists in the universe.

Also you have the issue of a singularity as the mass will have non trivial effects in general relitivity. For example time stops in black holes but they can move through space. Of course that formulation referenced above is an SR universe not a GR universe.

 

[Singularitarian]

This guy?
YouTube - Quantum Consciousness (Stuart Hameroff)

He's not even a physicist, and looks extremely crank-ish.

Fail.

That says nothing remotely like "Time is made of tiny fragments". He simply means that one can view spacetime globally, all at once - which is true (one can if one wants, although it's not necessary), but doesn't support your assertion.

Fail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Hameroff

As you can see, he has done work in quantum physics, and is not considered a crank, whilst he may not himself be a physicist. But he knows his stuff.

Secondly, the flow of time is an illusion, that is what you enquired. But i havealso added, which what replaces the flow, is in fact quantized, or fundamental time.

 

[Singularitarian]

Besides, there is also no flow to time from a special relativistic view, since all events are frozen out in time, static over all history.

 

[MattusMaximus]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Hameroff

As you can see, he has done work in quantum physics, and is not considered a crank, whilst he may not himself be a physicist. But he knows his stuff.

Secondly, the flow of time is an illusion, that is what you enquired. But i havealso added, which what replaces the flow, is in fact quantized, or fundamental time.

Are you referring to Planck time? Because, if you aren't, I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about...

... and I'm a physics professor.

 

[sol invictus]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Hameroff

As you can see, he has done work in quantum physics, and is not considered a crank, whilst he may not himself be a physicist. But he knows his stuff.

Are we reading the same article?

"This more developed version of their ideas was also widely attacked, and notably by the physicist, Max Tegmark, who calculated that quantum states in microtubules would survive for only 10-13 seconds, too brief to be of any significance for neural processes (Tegmark, 2000)[6]. Hameroff and the physicists, Scott Hagan and Jack Tuszynski (Hagan, Hameroff & Tuszynski, 2002)[7] replied to Tegmark arguing that microtubules could be shielded against the environment of the brain. To date, there is no experimental confirmation of these proposed methods of shielding, but Hameroff has proposed tests that could falsify the theory[8]."

Crank strike one - propose some nonsense, get caught, invoke magic.

Hameroff appeared as himself in the documentary film What tнe ♯$*! Do ωΣ (k)πow!? (2004).

Crank strike two - appeared in What the bleep do we know.

He also participated in the first Beyond Belief conference, where his theories were sharply criticized by Lawrence Krauss, among others.[1]

OK, being criticized by Krauss doesn't count as a crank strike (more like a ball). But it's obvious that this guy's views on physics are not accepted by physicists.

Fail.

Secondly, the flow of time is an illusion, that is what you enquired. But i havealso added, which what replaces the flow, is in fact quantized, or fundamental time.

More assertions with zero evidence. This is a skeptic's forum, sing - you can't just claim things and then run away. Where's the textbook that backs you up? If this is widely accepted by physicists, why are you using medical doctors working on consciousness as a reference?

 

[Singularitarian]

Are you referring to Planck time? Because, if you aren't, I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about...

... and I'm a physics professor.

Yes, the fundamental time is or near this quantity.

Now, according to physicist Fotini Markopoulou, the problems of time in a geometric sense is synonymous with the emergence of space itself - which is geometry. It absolutely requires no time whatsoever. He continues to say, ''By making the geometry not fundamental, we are able to make a distinctionbetween the geometric and the fundamental time, which opens up the possibility that, while the geometric time is a symmetry, the fundamental time is real.''

So what experiences time in general? Is it us mere humans, niavely assessing the world in frames of existence flowing inexorably in one direction and increasing in a gradient we call time, or can much smaller objects, dimensionless objects actually experience some internal time as well? The periodic internalclock hypothesis was first made by De Broglie in his wave hypothesis of all matter. The perdiodic nature of this internal time is in fact [latex]10^{21}[/latex] seconds; this is close to the chronon compatibility for the electron suggested by Piero Caldirola in 1980. Caldirola's model has one chronon corresponds to about [latex]6.97 x 10^{-24}[/latex] seconds for an electron.. The clock hypothesis has not been very popular for some reason over the years since De Broglie proposed it in his PhD thesis on the wave structure of the electron. But, for the importance of this work, it is now reestablished here so that time in its many aspects can be properly analyzed under the scrutiny of logic. In a series of experiments, it was finally shown that the electron did in factpossess an internal clock frequency

Annales de la Fondation Louis de Broglie (2005) and later M. Gouanère et. al. (2008), A Search for the de Broglie Particle Internal Clock by Means of Electron Channeling, Foundations of Physics 38: 659-664.

The electron would not have a smooth experience of time like we do, but rather instead experiences time as starts and stops, purely as oscillations themselves.

 

[Singularitarian]

Are we reading the same article?

"This more developed version of their ideas was also widely attacked, and notably by the physicist, Max Tegmark, who calculated that quantum states in microtubules would survive for only 10-13 seconds, too brief to be of any significance for neural processes (Tegmark, 2000)[6]. Hameroff and the physicists, Scott Hagan and Jack Tuszynski (Hagan, Hameroff & Tuszynski, 2002)[7] replied to Tegmark arguing that microtubules could be shielded against the environment of the brain. To date, there is no experimental confirmation of these proposed methods of shielding, but Hameroff has proposed tests that could falsify the theory[8]."

Crank strike one - propose some nonsense, get caught, invoke magic.

Hameroff appeared as himself in the documentary film What tнe ♯$*! Do ωΣ (k)πow!? (2004).

Crank strike two - appeared in What the bleep do we know.

He also participated in the first Beyond Belief conference, where his theories were sharply criticized by Lawrence Krauss, among others.[1]

OK, being criticized by Krauss doesn't count as a crank strike (more like a ball). But it's obvious that this guy's views on physics are not accepted by physicists.

Fail.

More assertions with zero evidence. This is a skeptic's forum, sing - you can't just claim things and then run away. Where's the textbook that backs you up? If this is widely accepted by physicists, why are you using medical doctors working on consciousness as a reference?

Sol, i've linked you to a mathematical paper which explains that the flow of time is an illusion. This has **** all to do with stuart. You've been shown to be wrong, whether or not time itself is cut up into fragments, time does not have a flow.

 

[Fredrik]

"The ''linearity'' of time is an illusion": no idea what you're talking about.

Probably this:


(I'm sure you've seen it already, but I couldn't resist).

 

[Molinaro]

Sol, i've linked you to a mathematical paper which explains that the flow of time is an illusion. This has **** all to do with stuart. You've been shown to be wrong, whether or not time itself is cut up into fragments, time does not have a flow.

You said time was made of fragments.

He asked you to provide support for that specific statement you made.

Who gives a flying duck about your links to things that do not support that statement? Are you at all familiar with the term moving the goal posts?

 

[Singularitarian]

I know that time is made of starts and stops, but i can't find the paper yet which explains this. For now, it will not need to matter, because time does not have a flow, which is more specific to the arguement, i think you will agree.

 

[MattusMaximus]

I know that time is made of starts and stops, but i can't find the paper yet which explains this. For now, it will not need to matter, because time does not have a flow, which is more specific to the arguement, i think you will agree.

No, not until I can parse all of this gobble-de-gook that you're throwing out. And perhaps not even then...

ETA: And what's with all this business about photons having "infinite mass"? That claim seems quite clearly to contradict E=mc²

 

[Singularitarian]

This shows a hint to what i was talking about.

Essay Abstract
In our everyday lives we have the sense that time flows inexorably from the past into the future; that time has a definite direction; and that the arrow of time points towards a future of greater entropy and disorder. But in the microscopic world of atoms and molecules the direction of time is indeterminate and ambiguous.

Author Bio
Gavin Crooks is divisional fellow in Physical Biosciences at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. His current research interests include the thermodynamics of molecular machines and solar energy capture. http://threeplusone.com

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[Audible Click]

I know that time is made of starts and stops, but i can't find the paper yet which explains this. For now, it will not need to matter, because time does not have a flow, which is more specific to the arguement, i think you will agree.

Yes it does matter even if you don't think it does.

 

[Singularitarian]

No, not until I can parse all of this gobble-de-gook that you're throwing out. And perhaps not even then...

ETA: And what's with all this business about photons having "infinite mass"? That claim seems quite clearly to contradict E=mc²

I never ever justified a photon with a infinite mass. You have me mixed up with someone else.

 

[Singularitarian]

Yes it does matter even if you don't think it does.

Look above, i have given a paper which hints at something similar to which i was describing.

 

[Molinaro]

This shows a hint to what i was talking about.

Essay Abstract
In our everyday lives we have the sense that time flows inexorably from the past into the future; that time has a definite direction; and that the arrow of time points towards a future of greater entropy and disorder. But in the microscopic world of atoms and molecules the direction of time is indeterminate and ambiguous.

Author Bio
Gavin Crooks is divisional fellow in Physical Biosciences at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. His current research interests include the thermodynamics of molecular machines and solar energy capture. http://threeplusone.com

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That's not equivalent to saying that time does not flow. Further, the direction of the flow of time is only indeterminate if you exclusively look at the equations. When you apply those equations to reality, and observe reality, the flow is evident.

 

[Singularitarian]

That's not equivalent to saying that time does not flow. Further, the direction of the flow of time is only indeterminate if you exclusively look at the equations. When you apply those equations to reality, and observe reality, the flow is evident.

No, the paper which describes that is this:

The Flow of Time*
By George F. R. Ellis


Essay Abstract
Current theoretical physics suggests the flow of time is an illusion: the entire universe just is, with no special meaning attached to the present time. This paper points out that this view, in essence represented by usual space-time diagrams, is based on time-reversible microphysical laws, which fail to capture essential features of the time-irreversible nature of decoherence and the quantum measurement process, as well as macro-physical behaviour and the development of emergent complex systems, including life, which exist in the real universe. When these are taken into account, the unchanging block universe view of spacetime is best replaced by an evolving block universe which extends as time evolves, with the potential of the future continually becoming the certainty of the past; spacetime itself evolves, as do the entities within it. However this time evolution is not related to any preferred surfaces in spacetime; rather it is associated with the evolution of proper time along families of world lines. The default state of fundamental physics should not be taken to be a time irreversible evolution of physical states: it is an ongoing irreversible development of time itself.

Author Bio
George Ellis is Professor Emeritus of applied mathematics at the University of Cape Town. He has written or co-authored many books and papers on relativity theory and cosmology, including On the Large Scale Structure of Space Time with Stephen Hawking.

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