We treat time as the fourth dimension and divide it into three categories; (Past, Present, and Future) and then cut it into many pieces we call durations; Attoseconds, Seconds, Days, Hours, Light Years, (and many more), and use these as units of comparison to measure movement, to order events, to control our technology and much of our lives. We treat time as a real thing, something we can save, use, and spend. In a practical sense, with our awareness focused on ourselves in everyday activities, this perspective makes sense, but our scientific investigations have created a very different view of time, one that goes well beyond the cyclical events of our planet spinning on it's axis as it circles the sun.
Our tools of discovery have become ever more sophisticated and as we look deeper into space and deeper into the structure of matter, time takes on new dimensions. Our macro discoveries have forced us to expand our durational units to cover periods many times larger than our practical units and our micro discoveries have forced us to chop our practical units of time into bits so small we need negative exponents to represent them. We have also discovered that time is not a universal constant but a variable and find this so disconcerting that we cling to old perspectives in many of the formulae we use to describe our new findings. The past now extends back beyond human history, more than 13 billion years to the beginning of the universe, and the forecast future extends forward in equally incomprehensible measure.
But what of the present? Is it also a variable? Is our "Now" different from "Now" in other places, and how wide is the present? How much time exists between the past and the future? As I type, I tap every key in the present but the last letter I typed is now in the past and the letter I am about to type is in the future. Is the present wide enough to encompass my entire typing session? Is it wider, or could it be much narrower? Our awareness is a survival adaptation of sensory organs and synaptic functions that allow us to sense conditions and activities around us and use our bodies, to react appropriately. Reflexes are built in for nearly instant reactions and instincts are genetically hard wired for reactions to more complex situations, but life has also developed the synaptic survival trick of recording events from past events and carrying these recordings into new present situations for use as needed. Living forms record bits of the past that are significant in a genetic library written in an amino acid alphabet of A, C, G,T, and an even more complex analog library written in electro chemical synaptic connections. The analog library collects data through sensory organs and when the brain is in a collection mode we perceive the activity as the present and when the brain is in a retrieval mode we perceive the activity as the past. We sense only a small part of the reality around us because of the limitations of our sensory organs just as we perceive time within the limits of our own synaptic functions. Our pace of awareness determines our perception of time including both the duration of the present and the division between the present and the past. But we have significantly augmented our sensory capabilities with technology and have used our technologically augmented synaptic capabilities to store more of the past and to explore more of the reality around us. We now know that the universe is exponentially more diverse and complex than we thought and are re-evaluating our concepts and perspectives to accommodate our growing augmented synaptic library. But some old perspectives are difficult to abandon, especially our concept of time as a real thing, a fourth dimension.
Leading us to our new perspectives has been a series of experiments and discoveries. When light is shined on a metal the metal emits electrons and we discovered that the intensity of light doesn't affect the results, but when we altered the wavelength and the frequency of light we concluded that when the wavelength of light is increased the frequency decreases and vice versa. When one increases the other decreases an equal amount leading us to a constant. When wavelength and frequency are multiplied together we discovered a constant of: (3.0 x 10 to the 8th power meters per second). (this constant also happens to be the speed of light in a vacuum). We also discovered that an atom energized by light accepts the energy and subsequently gives it back in packaged amounts, which led us to postulate discrete electron orbital energy levels and eventually relativity, the uncertainty principle, plank limits, quantum theory and a theory joining all the basic forces of nature, (except gravity).
We have gone far beyond our survival adaptive uses of our senses, reflexes, instincts, and synaptic capacity and ventured into the basic secrets of our surroundings, exploring with extreme tools a universe of controlled chaos ruled by probability and as we search for its largest patterns in outer space we also search for its smallest units in inner space. After combining the gravitational constant, (G), the relativity constant, (c), and the quantum constant, (h) Max Plank arrived at a constant unit of length, the smallest of which, (one plank length) is the smallest distance a photon of light can travel across at the speed of light in a vacuum. Anything smaller and the unit becomes dimensionless and our wavelength/frequency constant becomes an infinity that swallows the photon. Likewise a plank unit of time, (5.4 x 10 to the negative 44th power- seconds) is the smallest unit of time possible before physical laws fail and this limit is thought to have implications for quantum gravity, (yet to be reconciled with other forces) and has led to string theory, quantum loop theory and other extreme scientific reachings.
Without capital letter credentials behind my name I am free to think outside the box risking only amusement by those with a deeper understanding. I am forced to think outside the box because my lack of fluency in the language of mathematics, (spoken inside the box), does not allow me access. Free of any fear of being embarrassed or discredited by any peers, I offer the following.
(1) Matter motion and change don't require time any more than light requires a medium in which to travel. Changing relative positions conditions, temperatures or states, (be they the spin of a galaxy, the orbit of an electron, the death of a star or the joining of atoms to become molecules), require space and energy but not time. Time is an illusion created by an observer witnessing a record of motion and change that is recorded and carried into successive movements in quantum pulses which occur much to quickly to be observed.
(3) The Universe exists only as a succession of plank units. A strobe lighted reality with a flicker rate far above our ability to observe.
(4) Quantum uncertainty and action at a distance are the result of distortions as a jump to the next plank unit is made.
(5) Information is passed from successive plank units to the next in unique arrangements of discrete packets describing energy, matter, congregations of matter, relative positions and relative motion Slight transposition errors occasionally cause information to fragment and recombine in a hierarchy of evolving complexity that describes the motions and combinations of energy and matter that has evolved into the reality we now perceive.
Our persistent use of the term (t), (time), in descriptive formulae we use to guide our experiments and discovery efforts may be misleading, even when it is not explicit, (as in the speed of light) (d/t). Replacing (t) with comparatives complicate our formulae but may lead us closer to not only reconciling gravity with t,he weak and strong forces, but also in reconciling Newtonian physics with Relativity and Quantum effects.
I will let someone else do the math.
.
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Friday, July 25, 2014
Describing Gravity
from the time when pre- humans were still being bruised from falling out of trees we have been acutely aware of the force that tugs on us from below. Probably regarded as a spirit that pulled everything down to a lowest level it, along with other natural spirits living on mountains and in the clouds, was described by its effects. The gravitational spirit pulled rain from the clouds and pulled rocks and mud from the sides of mountains in an attempt to bring them down from a presumptive position of elevated self importance. Mayan myths include an anti gravity below the Earth's surface where other people walked upside down and where the sun went when it set and, during the upright people's darkness, lighted the world below. Many other ancient myths describe gravity and it's effects in ways we may find naïve but linger on in our own experiences as a strange but familiar force.
Modern science allows us to measure and describe gravitational effects in more detail but does not explain it. Newton, on a sabbatical from his studies at Oxford to escape the plague, developed a formalized description of gravity, a new mathematical concept, (the calculus), to calculate it's effects. He also solidified the concept of mass as a measure of the amount and density of material needed to produce a gravitational field of a certain strength. This mass/gravity equivalency is still at the core of the physical sciences, orbital calculations and cosmology even after being called into question by Einstein and the recent discovery of gravity without any apparent causal mass, (dark matter).
The Mayans had the upside down people on the other side of a thin flat plane but were getting close to the truth. The persistent and unavoidable observations of a curved horizon hinted at a sphere and the Greeks, using shadow lengths taken at different latitudes, were able to calculate the size of the ball implied by the curved horizon. But persistent popular common sense opinions clung to a flat earth image with an edge which you could fall off if you sailed too far. Until astronomy advanced, and adventurers sailed beyond the horizon and returned did the full realization that we were stuck to a giant ball by a mysterious force called gravity become widespread and accepted.
Newton's new math established the mass of the earth and it's gravitational field as a measure of acceleration as objects are pulled to earth from a height, and used this 32 feet per second/per second standard as a yardstick for measuring other massive objects in space by observing their orbits, but we still don't have an explanation, we only have a description and sometimes the description results in some very strange concepts.
Newton's math describes why we can accelerate a satellite to 18,000 miles per hour and have it continually fall around the Earth instead of directly to the ground. It also allows us to calculate a speed, 25,000 miles per hour needed for the accumulated potential energy of a space probe's acceleration to exceed gravities potential to pull it back and escape into space beyond the Earths influence.
Strangely, Newton's math also describes a point of zero gravity at the center of the Earth and, if the world could be hollowed out, leaving only a thick crust, the surface people would still feel the effects of, (a reduced gravity), but people inside the hollow Earth would always be weightless, even when near the inside of the crust.
With the advent of quantum theory gravity's description gets even more strange and as we smash the basic particles of matter together looking for clues inside cloud chambers we still don't have an explanation, only a more complicated and confusing description. Is the proton the source of gravity? It has mass but so do other sub atomic particles. Is gravity a by product of the strong force? Is it created by the gluons buzzing around and holding the quarks together inside the proton, and what about the Higgs particle. We are surrounded by and made up of mostly empty space. Empty space inside atoms and their constituents and between stars and galaxies, but gravity from dark matter and luminous matter continues to tug on itself at a distance and continues to shape the Universe and control how things move within it.
We can describe gravity but still have no idea what it is. Maybe it is a spirit like our ancestors thought.
Modern science allows us to measure and describe gravitational effects in more detail but does not explain it. Newton, on a sabbatical from his studies at Oxford to escape the plague, developed a formalized description of gravity, a new mathematical concept, (the calculus), to calculate it's effects. He also solidified the concept of mass as a measure of the amount and density of material needed to produce a gravitational field of a certain strength. This mass/gravity equivalency is still at the core of the physical sciences, orbital calculations and cosmology even after being called into question by Einstein and the recent discovery of gravity without any apparent causal mass, (dark matter).
The Mayans had the upside down people on the other side of a thin flat plane but were getting close to the truth. The persistent and unavoidable observations of a curved horizon hinted at a sphere and the Greeks, using shadow lengths taken at different latitudes, were able to calculate the size of the ball implied by the curved horizon. But persistent popular common sense opinions clung to a flat earth image with an edge which you could fall off if you sailed too far. Until astronomy advanced, and adventurers sailed beyond the horizon and returned did the full realization that we were stuck to a giant ball by a mysterious force called gravity become widespread and accepted.
Newton's new math established the mass of the earth and it's gravitational field as a measure of acceleration as objects are pulled to earth from a height, and used this 32 feet per second/per second standard as a yardstick for measuring other massive objects in space by observing their orbits, but we still don't have an explanation, we only have a description and sometimes the description results in some very strange concepts.
Newton's math describes why we can accelerate a satellite to 18,000 miles per hour and have it continually fall around the Earth instead of directly to the ground. It also allows us to calculate a speed, 25,000 miles per hour needed for the accumulated potential energy of a space probe's acceleration to exceed gravities potential to pull it back and escape into space beyond the Earths influence.
Strangely, Newton's math also describes a point of zero gravity at the center of the Earth and, if the world could be hollowed out, leaving only a thick crust, the surface people would still feel the effects of, (a reduced gravity), but people inside the hollow Earth would always be weightless, even when near the inside of the crust.
With the advent of quantum theory gravity's description gets even more strange and as we smash the basic particles of matter together looking for clues inside cloud chambers we still don't have an explanation, only a more complicated and confusing description. Is the proton the source of gravity? It has mass but so do other sub atomic particles. Is gravity a by product of the strong force? Is it created by the gluons buzzing around and holding the quarks together inside the proton, and what about the Higgs particle. We are surrounded by and made up of mostly empty space. Empty space inside atoms and their constituents and between stars and galaxies, but gravity from dark matter and luminous matter continues to tug on itself at a distance and continues to shape the Universe and control how things move within it.
We can describe gravity but still have no idea what it is. Maybe it is a spirit like our ancestors thought.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Light Speed Illusions
Not much progress has been made in the past ten years with the dark energy concept and as a practical matter the general population could care less. We have made some advances in describing dark matter but don't understand what it is and like dark energy it's not a topic of conversation appropriate in grocery store check out lines but, I find our cute titles and confusion interesting. Explaining rotational anomalies observed in spiral galaxies as being the result of an additional gravitational force we have applied "in the box" thinking.
Mass generates gravity. Additional gravity explains the phenomena we are observing therefore there must be more mass in and around the galaxies than we can see and light must be passing through it or we would see it's shadow. Instead of leaving the question open to other explanations for an observed angular momentum disparity between the mass of all the visible matter in distant galaxies we immediately assumed a great deal of hidden matter, (which makes our equations work), and call it dark. In fact it isn't dark, it is invisible, (not responsive to light). What we are really looking for is an invisible force causing galaxies to rotate, and clump, in ways we didn't expect and can't explain. It isn't dark and it may not be matter.
Not long after our discovered assumption that a mysterious form of matter dominated the gravitational scene we got a look at light coming in from distant galaxies much further out than we had ever seen before, thanks to the Hubble telescope, and discovered that early galaxies were not separating from each other as fast as nearby galaxies. Ironically Hubble, the astronomer, was the first to use the red shift of light to reach the conclusion that the Universe was expanding and now a space telescope named after him presents us with evidence that it is not only expanding, it is accelerating and suddenly we are faced with another gravitational challenge.
For a long time we thought that the observed expansion, widening separation of galaxies, was the result of an initial push, the big bang, (another cute but misleading title), and that the total mass of all matter in the universe, (I sometimes wonder if the guy who calculated this was related to the guy who added all the begats in the old testament to put creation at about six thousand BC), to come to the conclusion that the initial push, (big bang energy was nearly balanced by gravity's tendency to slow things down and the Universe might slow to a stop and then start to collapse. All of this scientific speculation was based on observations but also on a lot of assumptions that have used the expansion rate, amount of assumed gravity and some heavy mathematics to formulate a history for our Universe leading back 13.8 billion years to a singularity, but now we seem to have found a major imbalance and have explained it with a new cute title, "Dark Energy"
Dark energy, like dark matter, is evidenced only in its effect and has no visible attributes and is the result of us being able to discern faint light never seen before that was emitted by stars 10 or 12 billion years ago, {talk about snail mail). So now we are comparing light that was emitted a few thousand years ago to light emitted billions of years earlier and concluding that the big bang was really just a mini fart compared to whatever is really blowing up the balloon. Hidden in all the formulae that leads us to these almost preposterous conclusions is our misguided use of time as a term with significance beyond comparative movements or change. Relativity is everywhere and everywhen. Time is not a thing.
Our standard for comparing rates and distances is the speed of light we assume it travels at a constant speed through space, (even though we know it slows down traveling through transparent materials and in intense gravity fields). The speed of light is our yardstick for measuring time and distances but what if our yardstick is elastic and stretches as the universe expands. We assume and have calculated a mass total for all matter in the Universe and assume and have evidence that the universe is expanding. Gravity also appears to be a constant directly associated with proximity and mass and the mass of all matter in the Universe appears to be being disbursed, spreading apart, creating a declining proximity. If the early Universe, the Universe sending us photon messages packaged billions of years ago, was less expanded, gravity would be more concentrated, matter in a much close proximity and light, affected by gravity, would have started it's journey at a slower pace and accelerated as the universal gravity sum weakened.
Our elastic yard stick would then have a compressed end in the early universe and a stretched end as it gets closer to our telescopes Remember what spit out the light long ago is long gone We aren't seeing something that exists anymore, only a faint flicker of photons that have been traveling across space for a very long time and if they have not always been traveling at the speed we now observe them to be traveling when they reach us, they could easily lead us a false conclusions; like the universe is filled with dark energy and expanding at an accelerating rate.
Mass generates gravity. Additional gravity explains the phenomena we are observing therefore there must be more mass in and around the galaxies than we can see and light must be passing through it or we would see it's shadow. Instead of leaving the question open to other explanations for an observed angular momentum disparity between the mass of all the visible matter in distant galaxies we immediately assumed a great deal of hidden matter, (which makes our equations work), and call it dark. In fact it isn't dark, it is invisible, (not responsive to light). What we are really looking for is an invisible force causing galaxies to rotate, and clump, in ways we didn't expect and can't explain. It isn't dark and it may not be matter.
Not long after our discovered assumption that a mysterious form of matter dominated the gravitational scene we got a look at light coming in from distant galaxies much further out than we had ever seen before, thanks to the Hubble telescope, and discovered that early galaxies were not separating from each other as fast as nearby galaxies. Ironically Hubble, the astronomer, was the first to use the red shift of light to reach the conclusion that the Universe was expanding and now a space telescope named after him presents us with evidence that it is not only expanding, it is accelerating and suddenly we are faced with another gravitational challenge.
For a long time we thought that the observed expansion, widening separation of galaxies, was the result of an initial push, the big bang, (another cute but misleading title), and that the total mass of all matter in the universe, (I sometimes wonder if the guy who calculated this was related to the guy who added all the begats in the old testament to put creation at about six thousand BC), to come to the conclusion that the initial push, (big bang energy was nearly balanced by gravity's tendency to slow things down and the Universe might slow to a stop and then start to collapse. All of this scientific speculation was based on observations but also on a lot of assumptions that have used the expansion rate, amount of assumed gravity and some heavy mathematics to formulate a history for our Universe leading back 13.8 billion years to a singularity, but now we seem to have found a major imbalance and have explained it with a new cute title, "Dark Energy"
Dark energy, like dark matter, is evidenced only in its effect and has no visible attributes and is the result of us being able to discern faint light never seen before that was emitted by stars 10 or 12 billion years ago, {talk about snail mail). So now we are comparing light that was emitted a few thousand years ago to light emitted billions of years earlier and concluding that the big bang was really just a mini fart compared to whatever is really blowing up the balloon. Hidden in all the formulae that leads us to these almost preposterous conclusions is our misguided use of time as a term with significance beyond comparative movements or change. Relativity is everywhere and everywhen. Time is not a thing.
Our standard for comparing rates and distances is the speed of light we assume it travels at a constant speed through space, (even though we know it slows down traveling through transparent materials and in intense gravity fields). The speed of light is our yardstick for measuring time and distances but what if our yardstick is elastic and stretches as the universe expands. We assume and have calculated a mass total for all matter in the Universe and assume and have evidence that the universe is expanding. Gravity also appears to be a constant directly associated with proximity and mass and the mass of all matter in the Universe appears to be being disbursed, spreading apart, creating a declining proximity. If the early Universe, the Universe sending us photon messages packaged billions of years ago, was less expanded, gravity would be more concentrated, matter in a much close proximity and light, affected by gravity, would have started it's journey at a slower pace and accelerated as the universal gravity sum weakened.
Our elastic yard stick would then have a compressed end in the early universe and a stretched end as it gets closer to our telescopes Remember what spit out the light long ago is long gone We aren't seeing something that exists anymore, only a faint flicker of photons that have been traveling across space for a very long time and if they have not always been traveling at the speed we now observe them to be traveling when they reach us, they could easily lead us a false conclusions; like the universe is filled with dark energy and expanding at an accelerating rate.
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Philosophy Ain't Dead Yet
Philosophy gets a bad rap nowadays because it's misunderstood, not because its useless and boring,
Most of us spend at least a little time during a week philosophizing without realizing it. Don't believe me? Hang around a local bar just before closing time, or listen to a mother trying to explain to a teenager why school work is important. Philosophy gets a bad rap because we haven't updated its definition. We still picture a philosopher as an old guy in white baggy pajamas setting on a porch with nothing to do but think up dumb arguments about dumb things. From our modern perspective the history of philosophy is bit like this, but philosophical thinking is still with us and very much alive. It just needs a new definition for us to recognize it
First let's make clear what philosophy is not;
Philosophy is not Science.
Science is a disciplined approach to examining, interpreting and describing the world and universe around us, including the "us" part.
Philosophy is not Religion;
Religion is an individual commitment to a factually unsupported group belief in a supreme being, or beings living on a mountain or in another dimension to whom we are subservient and are obligated to worship.
Philosophy is not magic or sophistry or mysterious. It's as simple as looking out a different window in your house and describing what you see. Looking out an upstairs window presents a different view than looking out a basement window and we are all looking out separate and different windows. Even when we look out the same window we will notice different things and describe what we see differently. It is interesting and historically informative to read ancient Greek accounts of what they saw from ancient windows and some of their viewpoints have carried forward and persist in our moral codes and forms of government.
Philosophy is an Art.
PHILOSOPHY IS THE ART OF CREATING USEFUL INSIGHTS AND PERSPECTIVES
Circumstance, discussion and use decide if an insight or perspective is useful. Formalizing the insight or perspective uses language as a paint brush, and like a painting, it will be seen and interpreted differently by those who read, hear, and attempt to interpret it. A small point made just before the bar closes can hit home with an individual made receptive by a second or third martini and repeated in more sober terms spread and be inculcated in a group of friends, a community or a Country. Philosophy echoes through even simple exchanges of opinion or perspectives and effects us all, like it or not, it ain't dead yet.
Most of us spend at least a little time during a week philosophizing without realizing it. Don't believe me? Hang around a local bar just before closing time, or listen to a mother trying to explain to a teenager why school work is important. Philosophy gets a bad rap because we haven't updated its definition. We still picture a philosopher as an old guy in white baggy pajamas setting on a porch with nothing to do but think up dumb arguments about dumb things. From our modern perspective the history of philosophy is bit like this, but philosophical thinking is still with us and very much alive. It just needs a new definition for us to recognize it
First let's make clear what philosophy is not;
Philosophy is not Science.
Science is a disciplined approach to examining, interpreting and describing the world and universe around us, including the "us" part.
Philosophy is not Religion;
Religion is an individual commitment to a factually unsupported group belief in a supreme being, or beings living on a mountain or in another dimension to whom we are subservient and are obligated to worship.
Philosophy is not magic or sophistry or mysterious. It's as simple as looking out a different window in your house and describing what you see. Looking out an upstairs window presents a different view than looking out a basement window and we are all looking out separate and different windows. Even when we look out the same window we will notice different things and describe what we see differently. It is interesting and historically informative to read ancient Greek accounts of what they saw from ancient windows and some of their viewpoints have carried forward and persist in our moral codes and forms of government.
Philosophy is an Art.
PHILOSOPHY IS THE ART OF CREATING USEFUL INSIGHTS AND PERSPECTIVES
Circumstance, discussion and use decide if an insight or perspective is useful. Formalizing the insight or perspective uses language as a paint brush, and like a painting, it will be seen and interpreted differently by those who read, hear, and attempt to interpret it. A small point made just before the bar closes can hit home with an individual made receptive by a second or third martini and repeated in more sober terms spread and be inculcated in a group of friends, a community or a Country. Philosophy echoes through even simple exchanges of opinion or perspectives and effects us all, like it or not, it ain't dead yet.