Why is there so much crackpot physics?

[Farsight]

The way you deceive yourself is quite amazing.... These are merely loose terms describing a relationship that is only really defined by the mathematics. IT DOES NOT MATTER! Are you beating this to death because you can no longer defend your unsupportable claims about time?

I've defended them with empirical evidence and references to Einstein. I support what I've said. All you've done is thrown out words like crackpot and clung to conviction and dismissed the evidence.

How about responding to the following with a substantive argument:

Doubtless you'll dismiss everything as ever but here goes. Pay attention.

The point is that your unfounded belief that a minus sign effects "footing" -- whatever you think that means -- is misguided.

No it isn't. That minus sign on the invariant Lorentz interval makes it crystal clear that we don't treat time on an equal footing with space. We treat the x dimension on an equal footing with the y dimension, and the z dimension. But not the t dimension.

The equations of relativity treat time as a dimension with a conversion factor. That is a mathematical truth.

It isn't a conversion factor between distance and time, but we've been through all that. Yes, the equations of relativity treat time as a dimension. Because it is a dimension. But it's a dimension of measure rather than a dimension that offers freedom of motion. Do you understand this distinction? We can hop backwards a metre but we can't hop backwards a second. We can go to another place. We can't go to another time.

Time is real, it is fundamental, it is a dimension in our most accurate and important model of the behavior of the universe.

I'm on record as saying time exists like heat exists, and is real enough. But heat is an emergent property of motion, not something fundamental. If nothing moves there is no heat, and there is no time. So time isn't fundamental either. But if things do move, things like clocks, then we give a cumulative display of their motion and call it the time. It's things that move, through space, and time is a measure of it. Which is why we call it a dimension. But because it's a measure of things that move, we cannot move through it, and it itself does not move. It does not literally pass or flow.

Motion is defined mathematically by Δx/Δt; there is no other definition of motion nor is there any physics with time as a derived quantity.

And t is said to be measured by a clock, but when you actually look at that clock, why, there are things moving in there, regularly, cyclicly. The thing you call the time is nothing more than some count, some accumulation of that regular cyclic motion. And the best clock you've got is an optical clock. Yes, that operates through the motion of light. So Δx/Δt is nothing more than a comparison of one motion with another. Ever seen the Twilight Zone episode A little peace and quiet? A harried housewife finds a medallion that gives her the power to freeze time. When she shouts stop, everybody around her freezes like a statue. But she doesn't actually stop time. What she stops is motion. Think it through. Perhaps then you'd like to talk about whether the speed of light is constant.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

It isn't a conversion factor between distance and time, but we've been through all that. Yes, the equations of relativity treat time as a dimension. Because it is a dimension. But it's a dimension of measure rather than a dimension that offers freedom of motion. Do you understand this distinction? We can hop backwards a metre but we can't hop backwards a second. We can go to another place. We can't go to another time.

If you mean that one cannot possibly make such a translation, then this is a claim that you make without support.

I'm on record as saying time exists like heat exists, and is real enough. But heat is an emergent property of motion, not something fundamental. If nothing moves there is no heat, and there is no time. So time isn't fundamental either. But if things do move, things like clocks, then we give a cumulative display of their motion and call it the time. It's things that move, through space, and time is a measure of it.

This history of physics disagrees with you. You have not been able to provide any way to do "motion only" physics. Without some demonstration, you are merely presenting us with a fantasy.

Ever seen the Twilight Zone episode A little peace and quiet? A harried housewife finds a medallion that gives her the power to freeze time. When she shouts stop, everybody around her freezes like a statue. But she doesn't actually stop time. What she stops is motion. Think it through. Perhaps then you'd like to talk about whether the speed of light is constant.

You are claiming, then, that there is an absolute reference frame in which there is some true motion. Please show us how to do physics with this absolute reference frame.

 

[Farsight]

...In the case of "time travel", you are correct that many physicists believe in "time travel" if one uses a pathological definition of the phrase (as you tend to), but not if one uses a more standard definition of the phrase...

There's physicists out there, respected physicists, who really do take time travel (in the time-machine sense) absolutely seriously, and who talk earnestly about the grandfather paradox. I hope we are now all agreed that they're talking through their hats and promoting crackpot physics.

You use "time travel" to refer to the standard practice in physics of requiring a time coordinate for every event and for requiring some account of time in order to provide a description for a physical system.

No I don't. I refer to time travel as in the science fiction movies. I've never said we get rid of t.

As someone pointed out in the relevant thread, your argument against time travel is merely that time travel is impossible.

No it isn't. My argument against time travel is that clocks clock up motion local to that clock within that clock, and you don't travel through a measure of motion. Not forward, and not backwards either. So the grandfather paradox is just specious irrelevant bunk.

I suspect that you focus on looking for time in clocks rather than on looking for time in the applications of physics because of your inability to perform physics. It is not an ad hominem to point out that your reasoning is incredibly bad, especially when identifying the topic of crackpot behaviour; that is directly addressing the argument at hand.

I address the argument with crisp empirical reasoning. All you do is say nay nay nay and snipe.

All:So, are we all agreed that time travel is crackpot? And yet people just lap it up because they love their woo, and don't want to let it go come hell or high water? Yes? Then let's turn to something else peddled by high-priest celebrity "physicists" and try to establish the pattern. Then maybe we can answer the question Why is there so much crackpot physics?

 

[Farsight]

This history of physics disagrees with you. You have not been able to provide any way to do "motion only" physics. Without some demonstration, you are merely presenting us with a fantasy.

Go look inside a clock. Time travel is the fantasy.

You are claiming, then, that there is an absolute reference frame in which there is some true motion. Please show us how to do physics with this absolute reference frame.

No I'm not. If there was an absolute reference frame you'd be able to tell whether you were moving without looking outside your box. You can't. Note that the CMBR gives you the rest frame of the universe, and the universe is as absolute as it gets. But the CMBR rest frame isn't an absolute reference frame in the relativity sense of the phrase. See this webpage for a write-up. And stop being such a whining naysayer.

 

[ctamblyn]

Yes, the equations of relativity treat time as a dimension. Because it is a dimension. But it's a dimension of measure rather than a dimension that offers freedom of motion. Do you understand this distinction? We can hop backwards a metre but we can't hop backwards a second. We can go to another place. We can't go to another time.

Your worldline through spacetime always has a timelike tangent. Using your initial rest frame, you cannot merely "hop backwards a metre" without simultaneously "hopping futurewards" by at least a 1/299792458 of a second. No Superluminal Hopping Permitted.

That restriction is mainly what makes "timelike" different from "spacelike" in SR, as opposed to any unit conversion factors or coordinate axes. According to SR any of the infinite number of timelike directions at a given event can potentially be the "time axis" for some observer - there is no fundamental "t-direction" any more than there is a fundamental "x-direction".

As for going to another time - just twiddle your thumbs.

And t is said to be measured by a clock, but when you actually look at that clock, why, there are things moving in there, regularly, cyclicly.

No, not for all clocks.

 

[ctamblyn]

Ever seen the Twilight Zone episode A little peace and quiet? A harried housewife finds a medallion that gives her the power to freeze time. When she shouts stop, everybody around her freezes like a statue. But she doesn't actually stop time. What she stops is motion. Think it through.

I remember that episode. She ends up trapped on the brink of annihilation by nuclear missiles, IIRC. Note only that, but I've seen a Star Trek film where they slingshot around the sun and arrive in the 20th century, as well as all the Back to the Future films and many episodes of Doctor Who. I don't think Sci-Fi is evidence, to be honest.

 

[Daylightstar]

... And t is said to be measured by a clock, but when you actually look at that clock, why, there are things moving in there, regularly, cyclicly. ...

How do you measure time again, Farsight?
With a digital watch?

 

[Farsight]

OK, how about the multiverse?

It's a contradiction in terms. The word universe comes from uni as in unicycle, meaning "one", along with verse as in vice-versa, meaning "turned into". It means turned into one which in turn means everything. There isn't more than one everything.

Here's the wiki article on multiverses, classified by Max Tegmark, the guy who wrote this paper claiming that our physical world is an abstract mathematical structure. Why don't you look at the different flavours of multiverse and put them up one at a time, and I'll shoot them down, BANG, BANG, BANG.

But aw, that would be like fish in a barrel. It would be more fun to talk about something closer to home, something that leads right on from time does not flow. Something that advances your understanding and delivers benefit. Like the speed of light. I say it isn't constant, and you'll doubtless call me a crackpot for saying it. But I'm not, and I can prove it, with hard scientific evidence. So where's that going to leave you? Knowing a little bit more about why there's so much crackpot physics I hope.

 

[Daylightstar]

...
Time is real, it is fundamental, it is a dimension in our most accurate and important model of the behavior of the universe.

I'm on record as saying time exists like heat exists, and is real enough. But heat is an emergent property of motion, not something fundamental. ...

Is time, or is time not fundamental, according to you?

E.T.A. Never mind the brainfart

 

[godless dave]

It's a contradiction in terms. The word universe comes from uni as in unicycle, meaning "one", along with verse as in vice-versa, meaning "turned into". It means turned into one which in turn means everything. There isn't more than one everything.

Argument from prefixes?

 

[Deetee]

Farsight, I see you are a "graduate poster".
Tell me where I can get a degree in posting just like you do - I wanna have one.

 

[Farsight]

Your worldline through spacetime always has a timelike tangent.

Spacetime is useful, but it's a mathematical space, and a worldline is an abstract thing. You can't step outside and point up to the sky and say "Hey look at that lightcone!" Don't confuse abstraction with reality. The map is not the territory.

Using your initial rest frame, you cannot merely "hop backwards a metre" without simultaneously "hopping futurewards" by at least a 1/299792458 of a second. No Superluminal Hopping Permitted.

Oh, figures of speech! Using my rest frame I'm just sitting here at my desk not hopping anywhere. My chest is moving, so's my heart, so are my fingers and so are the electrochemical signals in my brain. Light is moving to my eye, on the wall the clock is moving, the Earth is moving through space, and so on. That's the real world. Spacetime is just a mathematical representation of it. Remember the stasis box. Yes it's science fiction too, but no motion occurs inside this gedanken idealised refrigerator. None whatsoever. So when I put you inside, electromagnetic and other phenomena don’t propagate, and absolutely nothing happens. So you can’t see, you can’t hear, and you can’t even think. Hence when I open the door 5 years later, to you it’s like I opened the door just as soon as I closed it. You “hopped futurewards” to the future by not moving at all. Instead everything else did.

That restriction is mainly what makes "timelike" different from "spacelike" in SR, as opposed to any unit conversion factors or coordinate axes.

That restriction exists for a very simple real-world reason, not because the maths doesn't allow it. Newton sussed it, which is why he was so interested in Opticks: "Are not gross bodies and light convertible into one another?"

According to SR any of the infinite number of timelike directions at a given event can potentially be the "time axis" for some observer - there is no fundamental "t-direction" any more than there is a fundamental "x-direction".

But I can point in some spatial direction and call it the x direction. Then you could point in some x' direction, and everybody's happy. Until I ask you to point in a some t direction.

As for going to another time - just twiddle your thumbs.

You don't go to another time. You just sit there, in the same place, and all around you everything moves, and after it's moved a bit, you're in the same old place, and you call it another time.

No, not for all clocks.

Yes, for all clocks. Every last one. And please don't give me muon decay time dilation. That's just a variant of a parallel-mirror light clock that falls apart after some average number of reflections.

 

[schrodingasdawg]

[The multiverse is] a contradiction in terms. The word universe comes from uni as in unicycle, meaning "one", along with verse as in vice-versa, meaning "turned into". It means turned into one which in turn means everything. There isn't more than one everything.

I've never liked the term 'multiverse' for this reason, but that isn't a serious argument. You can quibble with the etymology all you'd like, but what a theory is named has nothing to do with the veracity of its content.

 

[edd]

Yes, for all clocks. Every last one. And please don't give me muon decay time dilation. That's just a variant of a parallel-mirror light clock that falls apart after some average number of reflections.

No it isn't, there aren't any reflections happening.

 

[Perpetual Student]

Farsight: (Some comments and questions.)

1. Let's see where your time travel fixation takes you. How would you interpret the following equation for modest values of v and large values of x, say a few billion light years?
t' = γ(t-vx/c²)

2. Schrodingasdawg anticipated my very reaction to your comment about multiverses, which was based on the etymology of the word instead of its substance. Do you have something of substance to say about Tegmark's speculations, or is it all hot air? By the way, I do not participate in this forum because I regard it as a combat. I'm interested in ideas, so your comment, "and I'll shoot them down, BANG, BANG, BANG" does not attest to an open mind and a basis for a discussion.

3. You said, "I'm on record as saying time exists like heat exists, and is real enough. But heat is an emergent property of motion, not something fundamental. If nothing moves there is no heat, and there is no time. So time isn't fundamental either."
Do you realize that since your notion that time is an emergent property of motion produces no new science, yields no new insights and has no experimental confirmation it is, at best, philosophic flutter and, at worst, crackpot blather?

 

[Farsight]

I remember that episode. She ends up trapped on the brink of annihilation by nuclear missiles, IIRC.

Yes, there's one poised in mid-air, high up. It's not a perfect story, in that she's of course immune, and she can see and move things and people, and breathe air and drive her car etc.

Note only that, but I've seen a Star Trek film where they slingshot around the sun and arrive in the 20th century, as well as all the Back to the Future films and many episodes of Doctor Who. I don't think Sci-Fi is evidence, to be honest.

It isn't. But hopefully it makes you think. Hopefully you notice that in this real world you don't see time flowing, you see things moving. Then you notice that when somebody "stops time" in a science fiction movie, what they actually stop is motion. It's just a question of paying attention to what you can see and not letting abstraction get in the way.

Uh, look at the time. I'm off to bed.

 

[ctamblyn]

Spacetime is useful, but it's a mathematical space, and a worldline is an abstract thing. You can't step outside and point up to the sky and say "Hey look at that lightcone!" Don't confuse abstraction with reality. The map is not the territory.

Oh, figures of speech! Using my rest frame I'm just sitting here at my desk not hopping anywhere. My chest is moving, so's my heart, so are my fingers and so are the electrochemical signals in my brain. Light is moving to my eye, on the wall the clock is moving, the Earth is moving through space, and so on. That's the real world. Spacetime is just a mathematical representation of it.

You are confusing a map you confidently call "real world" with actual reality. Bear in mind that if our standard physics models are somehow the "true picture" of reality - and I'm not saying they are, by the way - then you could not tell the difference between that and your personal "real world" notion above. You have no argument against the standard model, other than an aesthetic one.

The notion of spacetime is extremely useful and intuitive, of course, so that is the map we use (in the context of SR). Judging from our many conversations, the notion of a 3-space with a seperate "time" which is somehow derived from motion, lacks any such positive qualities.

Remember the stasis box...

Your box which magically freezes e/m interactions is totally unphysical, so I don't think it will help the discussion at all. After all, from a contradiction anything follows.

...Newton sussed it,...

Newton had no idea of Minkowski spacetime, or the meanings of "spacelike" and "timelike" as used in my post. He pictured a universe of 3-space and absolute time.

But I can point in some spatial direction and call it the x direction. Then you could point in some x' direction, and everybody's happy. Until I ask you to point in a some t direction.

I hold my extended finger still (relative to the rest of me), and then it's tip is a timelike curve in spacetime. That is sufficient to define my "t-direction". Alternatively I'd use light-cone coordinates based on muon decay clocks (so I'd just be counting decays for two of the dimensions and measuring angles for the other two), and then define a rectangular system for you in terms of that.

Bear in mind, I already pointed out how timelike and spacelike directions are different, above, and this is a fundamental part of the framework of relavitity. The fact that you have to use different processes to define different axes is not news, nor is it troublesome for SR (or GR).

You don't go to another time. You just sit there, in the same place, and all around you everything moves, and after it's moved a bit, you're in the same old place, and you call it another time.

In the standard, useful and intuitive view of things, if I sit here and twiddle my thumbs for a while, the start of my thumb-twiddling occurs at an earlier time than the end of it. On the other hand, you have not been able to show that motion can coherently be taken as more fundamental than time in any consistent, predictive model, let alone one that more useful than the standard model.

Attachment to a "pretty idea", despite feedback showing where that idea is lacking, is one of the hallmarks of crackpot physics as discussed in this thread.

Yes, for all clocks...

Nope. I was going to go for a strong decay rather a weak one, but it makes very little difference. There is no evidence whatsoever for the non-standard models of decay processes you have at times proposed. If you'd like to continue this particular discussion, perhaps your old thread would be a better venue, to avoid derailing this thread further.

 

[ctamblyn]

It isn't. But hopefully it makes you think. Hopefully you notice that in this real world you don't see time flowing, you see things moving. Then you notice that when somebody "stops time" in a science fiction movie, what they actually stop is motion. It's just a question of paying attention to what you can see and not letting abstraction get in the way.

I get what your idea is, but I don't agree with it at all.

 

[kalen]

Yes, for all clocks. Every last one. And please don't give me muon decay time dilation. That's just a variant of a parallel-mirror light clock that falls apart after some average number of reflections.

Because you think electron, muons, and every other particle is made of photons? And these photons are bouncing around in their own little "parallel-mirror light clocks?"

 

[W.D.Clinger]

a running example of crackpot misdirection, part 1

We are grateful to one of this forum's most prolific promoters of crackpot physics for illustrating almost every major point that's been made in this thread.

For example:

... Farsight appears to have forgotten which thread he's in, but we should consider the possibility that his introduction of time travel into this thread is just another of his deliberate derails.

Garbage. In post 972 after Darat and Perpetual Student bumped the thread I said It isn't counter-culture Zeuzzz. What it is is that people just love mystery and woo. They do, they love it, and they cling to it with utter conviction. And if you take issue with their time machines or their sky falling in, or their wormholes or white holes or branes or multiverse, they get all sniffy and say stuff like you don't understand the math, crackpot. Then Godless Dave said mainstream physicists don't believe in time travel, then I referred to Thorne and Wheeler and Hawking, then we were all having a nice chat and I was proving my case when you did the derail in post 998 with ad-hominems directed at me re the Andrew Worsley's expressions. You're doing the same thing again after I put Perpetual Student straight about the conversion factor. You should have said Actually, Farsight is right about that. Not doing so and trying another dishonest ad-hominem instead merely discredits you. Now, can we get on please?

Actually, Farsight is right about that: He really did attempt to derail this thread by introducing the topic of time travel in post #972.

Farsight is wrong about post #998, of course. My post #998 contained no ad hominem argument, but it did attempt to counter Farsight's time-travel derail by returning to a sensational example of crackpot physics, which is what this thread is about.

Farsight's promotion of the Worsley/Farsight crackpot numerology units fail is very much on topic. My posts on that subject have not been ad hominem; I and others have taken great care to explain why the value of a dimensionless mass ratio cannot be given by a formula whose dimensions are the square root of length divided by the square root of time. We have also taken care to trace the history of Farsight's refusal to address that fundamental technical problem, and we have documented Farsight's deliberate attempts to derail discussion of Farsight's crackpot physics.

Had we been making ad hominem arguments, we'd have noted that Dr Worsley is a medical doctor, whereas few of us have any diplomas that go beyond a mere PhD.

If I were to succumb to Farsight's time travel misdirection, I'd note that Farsight's argument rests upon a thoroughly deceitful equivocation: Farsight has been accusing Kip Thorne and others of promoting a woo version of time travel, but the article Farsight's been citing contains no woo at all.

Thorne's article explains why backward time travel is probably impossible, whereas relativistic time dilation implies the theoretical possibility of forward time travel: If near-light-speed transportation were perfected, then a resident of earth could travel away from earth at high speed and then return to earth arbitrarily far into earth's future, while the traveller has aged only a few years. That's the so-called Twin Paradox. For more than a century, that form of forward time travel has been known to be a consequence of special relativity, and the relativistic time dilation that implies that form of forward time travel has been confirmed by many experiments.

Thorne's notion of forward time travel, based on the twin paradox, is neither woo nor crackpot physics. It's mainstream physics, confirmed by abundant experimental evidence. Farsight's denial of that particular form of time travel is a denial of relativistic time dilation and the experimental evidence. It's just another example of Farsight's promotion of crackpot physics.