Is time continuous?

[Schneibster]

Somehow or other this thread dropped through the cracks. Prolly hadn't been updated in several hours and was on page 2 every time I looked. Sort of an "uncertainty principle of forum surfing."

Now, I never graduated from college,

You're doin' all right. No need to apologize.

but while I was there I recall my Physics professor spending a class period deriving the uncertainty principle from a few axioms and Maxwell's Equations.

This is interesting. I spent about five minutes thinking about this. Any recollection which axioms they were? I'm curious.

The impression that I got was that the uncertainty principle is hard-wired into the universe as we have come to know it, and that these quantum quantities (from the Office of Redundant Tautologies) are either a true physical concept of our model of the universe (from the Office of Really Using Imprecise Language, but Doing so Authoritatively), or our basic model is wrong on the macroscopic level.

Well, you've probably misused "model," because it's not the model that would be wrong on the macroscopic level, it's our observations. In other words, there are a whole bunch of things we've seen actually happening that this is the only explanation we've been able to come up with that's consistent with all of them, and believe me, lots of people have tried to come up with something different, and they were real smart folks, because Einstein was one of them. No one has succeeded. This is what we have.

Uncertainty absolutely has to be part of the picture. The consistency that we observe in the universe as we directly observe it to be breaks down at a certain size scale, and stops being true below that. No one has been able to devise a description of it that doesn't include uncertainty.

Again, I am no expert, but as I understand it, these limits are real, in the sense that beyond (or in the interior of) them, the physics that has defined our universe is possibly playing dirty pool, and it is doing so at a level of subtlety that we are not able to detect, although we can surmise that dirty pool is being played, and adjust for the effects that the cheating may have in our observable realm.

Dirty pool. I like that. It's actually kind of expressive of the way I think about it; the only thing that I think you missed with the metaphor is not in the metaphor itself, but in your explanation of it. It's not that we can't detect it, it's that it's inherently indetectible. And I'd extend it a little further: we don't just adjust for the effects the cheating has, the cheating itself is necessary for things to be the way they are. It's an amusing idea, the entire universe as some scam by a pool shark.

Please be gentle to my metaphor, as it is not responsible for any misconceptions or inaccuracies in this post. Please direct any anger at me. I'll be waiting in the quantum foam.

Actually, I found it amusing and rather perspicacious. Post on.