Re: Page 90
Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2011 7:38 am
Objection, 'classical' objects are a collection of almost innumerable quantum effects, the dissociation between physics and quantum physics is a failing of modern science.
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Let us perform a simple experiment to determine the probability of a classical-scale object quantum tunneling through another such object:Cy83r wrote:Objection, 'classical' objects are a collection of almost innumerable quantum effects, the dissociation between physics and quantum physics is a failing of modern science.
Here's a simple method to understand why causality is critical.dfacto wrote: And my question is, "so what?"
Just because it makes no sense doesn't necessarily mean anything at all (Hi quantum mechanics, you sick twisted hellscape you), other than that we're in for some seriously bonkers stuff. Is there some physical roadblock to causality violations (other than FTL seeming to be impossible)? Maybe we haven't observed paradoxes simply due to lack of contact with FTL capable civilizations? Maybe one day we'll colonize other solar systems before constructing the colony ships, but will that just be us scratching our heads or will the universe bear any effect from the paradox?
If I had to guess though it's a moot point and FTL is just not going to happen.
Physicists would love nothing more than to be able to go FTL without breaking causality or relativity. They'd be on the research gravy train for life if they could manage that... not to mention all the science groupies they could getdiscord wrote:
and something that always bothered me with the 'no rest frame' is the speed of light....what exactly is it relative to? and that always makes me think of the speed of sound, there seems to be several similarities here, as you approach the 'barrier' you need more and more energy to overcome.....something in the way...the faster you go, the more wave front you are building up in front of you, creating drag hindering further acceleration...
so, my theory here is that the speed of light is merely the speed of sound in a near vacuum. now chew on that you damn physicists.
Not really. The universe is obviously causal (barring further physics asshattery), and I can't see why a single point causality violation would automatically negate all existence. It COULD, and causality violations could be a giant "off" switch on the whole operation, but on the other hand it might just be a localized quirk which only impedes physical processes in whatever space-time area it applies to. This is what my question basically is, and I'm pretty sure there's no answer: What does a single causality violation actually mean to the universe?Razor One wrote:Here's a simple method to understand why causality is critical.
2H2 + O2 = 2H2O + Energy
That there is a chemical equation. It shows that when you add two hydrogen molecules (not atoms, molecules) and a molecule of oxygen, the result is two water molecules and energy.
The left side of the equation is the cause.
The right side of the equation is the effect.
Let's remove effect.
2H2 + O2 = ...
Oops. Water can't form. There goes life. The laws of chemistry are absolutely dependent on there being cause and effect. Cause and effect lead to a sequence of events that allow a chemical reaction to occur. Your body, right now, is absolutely dependent on millions of chemical reactions which allow you to live, breathe, percieve and think. If these chemical reactions occurred with no resultant effect, you would die, instantly. If the reactions occurred spontaneously within you without cause, you would also die. Instantly.
Put another way...
Science aims to model the universe. It does this through observation, hypotheses, modelling and experimentation.
Without causality, experimentation is pointless. Experimentation is pointless because one could not construct a model or formulate a hypothesis. One could do neither of these things because observations would never be consistent.
Our entire universe depends on the integrity of causality. It is present in everything from fundamental natural laws through to philosophy. We would not be able to exist if not for causality.
Chucking the book on causality is chucking the book on all existence.
That's not what that equation means. For starters, there's no velocity in it. E = m*c^2 just expresses the equivalence relationship of energy and mass, with the conversion factor the square of the fastest possible relative velocity...c^2. That equation is specifically for the rest mass. The full equation is E^2 = (m*c^2)^2 + p^2*c^2, where p is momentum. Massive particles thus relate rest mass to energy as E = m*c^2, and massless particles like photons relate momentum to energy as E = p*c. For relativistic energy of moving massive particles, you use the whole thing, together with p = γ*m*v if you're working with velocity instead of momentum.discord wrote:razor: E=mc2(yeah i know, can't be arsed figuring out how to do a squared 2) tells us that objects in motion have more energy, therefor a increase in energy without a increase in speed should be a increase in mass...these are still pretty small value changes though.
It's not relative to anything. The speed of light in vacuum is always c with respect to the observer. Even if you have multiple observers flying around and flashing lights at each other. c is invariant, lengths and time are not.discord wrote:and something that always bothered me with the 'no rest frame' is the speed of light....what exactly is it relative to?
There's only a very superficial resemblance to drag. There's nothing slowing things down toward some special rest state, and nothing taking energy away from relativistic particles undergoing acceleration...they retain all the kinetic energy added to them. It's not drag, it's geometry, in a non-Euclidian spacetime:discord wrote: and that always makes me think of the speed of sound, there seems to be several similarities here, as you approach the 'barrier' you need more and more energy to overcome.....something in the way...the faster you go, the more wave front you are building up in front of you, creating drag hindering further acceleration...
How can a vacuum with particles averaging a centimeter or so of spacing so effectively propagate waves with wavelengths of a few hundred nanometers? Why isn't vision hopelessly blurred in a near-vacuum due to lack of particles to carry a clear image?discord wrote:so, my theory here is that the speed of light is merely the speed of sound in a near vacuum. now chew on that you damn physicists.
"The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline"Razor One wrote:Asimov wrote a good story once dealing with cause and effect. I can't recall the name of the story but it relied on a chemical reaction. It was argued that if timed just right, a certain substance would dissolve in water before it actually touched it. When they tried to break causality by preventing the substance from actually dissolving in water, they faced all kinds of natural disasters and deleterious effects until they finally dunked the substance in water.
Statement, quantum tunneling of any scale only requires the proper amount of energy, you are neglecting that the hypothetical classical tunneling event I posited occurs to an object moving above the lightspeed barrier, there may be sufficient energy to cause quantum tunneling of a sufficient majority if not the entirety of such an object just as there may be enough energy to escape the event horizon of a black hole.elizibar wrote:Let us perform a simple experiment to determine the probability of a classical-scale object quantum tunneling through another such object:Cy83r wrote:Objection, 'classical' objects are a collection of almost innumerable quantum effects, the dissociation between physics and quantum physics is a failing of modern science.
1) Smash head into keyboard.
2) Record whether the head tunneled through the keyboard.
3) Repeat the trial until a statistically significant number of events have occurred.
I'll be over here on the other side of the internet waiting for you to find your first positive tunneling event. Be sure to let me know, I could use a co-authorship on the publication of such a result!
No working unified theory. If the universe works the way we think it ought to, there is a unified physical theory.What do you mean by "The dissociation between physics and quantum physics" and how is that a failing of modern science?
Energy + 2h2o = 2h2 + o22H2 + O2 = 2H2O + Energy
Work ran late, I have Kendo in the morning tom- today, so I'll only answer this portion for now.Cy83r wrote:
What I find most amusing is, however, that you claim 'exceeding the c barrier causes time travel'
Perhaps it's just me being tired but... where exactly did I say this?...and then say 'because time travel is patently ridiculous, exceeding the c barrier is impossible'.
Unless I'm mistaken they've tested time dilatation recently and it does actually happenCy83r wrote:IMPLICATIONS
Also, you take Kendo classes? You win.
But no, seriously, how the hell do you watch someone travel back in time? My brain is running up against a wall here trying to imagine what negative time looks like. Everybody says, oh well neg time is time travel, but why? Is it just because we have so many stories that that's the first thing we think of. Somebody please tell me where the math says negative time is traveling into the past because I can't read the math.
But wait, hang on a second, what if negative time is impossible, like negative mass, it would then be imaginary time, right? And what does that look like?
And relativity itself is hard for me to conceptualize, being an amoral objectivist (that is objectivism without Ayn's moral bull) and a nihilist, idealist, utilitarian, determinist, and masochistic hedonist among other collections of contradictions. I accept that perception can be relative, but I rail against the idea that this phenomenon carries over to the physical execution of events. The math may allow it, but the math has allowed falsities before, and this seems to my perception and understanding to be wrong. Not only is my intuition screaming in protest, a bad gauge of the weather itself, but examples given do not seem to follow relativity in their explanations.
For instance, in the argument about the two duelists striking each other before they even shoot, both duelists moved under propulsion before observing their time and then firing. To my understanding this is a completely invalid example of relativity in action and would not result in the proposed outcome for the obvious reason that both induce upon themselves a new velocity at the start of the duel and thus are both said to be in movement and that neither can be said to be able to claim the state of being at rest relative to the other.
It isn't an issue at all if FTL phenomena don't exist.Cy83r wrote:But no, seriously, how the hell do you watch someone travel back in time? My brain is running up against a wall here trying to imagine what negative time looks like. Everybody says, oh well neg time is time travel, but why? Is it just because we have so many stories that that's the first thing we think of. Somebody please tell me where the math says negative time is traveling into the past because I can't read the math.
Again, time dilation is measured fact, an effect that commonly has to be taken into account for modern time and navigation systems. It's not a perceptual effect, it's not an illusion. Clocks taking different paths do in fact experience different amounts of time before meeting again. The difference is predictable by the math of relativity and repeatably measurable by experiment.Cy83r wrote:And relativity itself is hard for me to conceptualize, being an amoral objectivist (that is objectivism without Ayn's moral bull) and a nihilist, idealist, utilitarian, determinist, and masochistic hedonist among other collections of contradictions. I accept that perception can be relative, but I rail against the idea that this phenomenon carries over to the physical execution of events. The math may allow it, but the math has allowed falsities before, and this seems to my perception and understanding to be wrong. Not only is my intuition screaming in protest, a bad gauge of the weather itself, but examples given do not seem to follow relativity in their explanations.
It's perfectly valid, up to the point where a FTL signal is involved, such signals being considered nonsensical in relativity. It's an illustration of how FTL signaling or travel doesn't make sense. The nonsensical results aren't a flaw in the argument, they are the whole point of the argument.Cy83r wrote:For instance, in the argument about the two duelists striking each other before they even shoot, both duelists moved under propulsion before observing their time and then firing. To my understanding this is a completely invalid example of relativity in action
Each sees themselves as being at rest, with the other moving. Every observer in an inertial frame can consider themselves to be at rest. It does not matter how they might have accelerated from some arbitrary reference point.Cy83r wrote: and would not result in the proposed outcome for the obvious reason that both induce upon themselves a new velocity at the start of the duel and thus are both said to be in movement and that neither can be said to be able to claim the state of being at rest relative to the other.
Never said it didn't.Nemo wrote:They've tested time dilation multiple times. It works.
Ah, I see what I missed now.Lets change the 'tachyon' pistol duel, because, honestly, pistol duels?'tachyon' pistol duel'tachyon''tachyon''tachyon''tachyon'
You're thinking about the setup like they're actually moving at some definite velocity with respect to a fixed rest frame. There's no fixed rest frame.Cy83r wrote:However, if both parties are experiencing roughly the same rate of dilation then... aren't they still reacting at the same speed and thus hit each other at roughly the same rate of delay?
That is only to simplify things a bit. Non-instantaneous FTL signaling is equivalent to signaling limited by the speed of light for a distance followed by instantaneous signaling.Cy83r wrote: After all, the article said, IIRC, they were hitting each other instantly after firing, but FTL does not necessarily imply instant transmission from point to point, just that the transmission is faster than the propagation of light, like some sort of very odd hypersonic boom mixed with a doppler effect.
Again, you're assuming a fixed rest frame, with a universal clock that time dilation is measured in reference to. Relativity doesn't work that way.Cy83r wrote:Actually, this is very much like hypersonic objects, targets are being hit by hyperlight particles, which means that they are hit before they would ever have a chance to register to oncoming object let alone the actions leading up to whatever launched said HL object at them. Even if time is wonkified according to the HL object, this effect would only occur according to the HL object, observers still react normally between the firing and being hit, time will pass forwards and the HLO will arrive sometime after, even a tiny fraction of sometime, being launched. If anything, the target suffering from heavy time dilation is only hit faster than one in a state of lower dilation and a firer in a high dilation state only sees the impact result faster. None of this implies that the effect would occur in an instant nor does it imply that some combination of of high dilation actor and HLO induces the HLO to break causality. It all just happens really really fast from the HDA's perspective and since it is an HLO it all happens really really fast from anyone's perspective (because, let's face it, in the grand scheme of things, light is really freaking slow).
Wait, no, that can't be right, from the perspective of someone at a high time dilation, everything else moves faster... doesn't it?icekatze wrote:Simply put, from the perspective of both duelists, time for their opponent is moving slower than it is for themselves.
No. Leaving out the complexities of GR and gravitational time dilation, time dilation isn't absolutely high or low, it is a function of relative motion between observers. Events in another frame can appear to move faster than normal, but this is a result of doppler effects, not time dilation...time dilation always means clocks in the other frame run slower.Cy83r wrote:Wait, no, that can't be right, from the perspective of someone at a high time dilation, everything else moves faster... doesn't it?icekatze wrote:Simply put, from the perspective of both duelists, time for their opponent is moving slower than it is for themselves.
That part was for junk. Left out mah quotes.Cy83r wrote:Never said it didn't.Nemo wrote:They've tested time dilation multiple times. It works.
...wait, time dilation is a function of acceleration, correct? What happens when a ship stops accelerating? No, that can't be right, the potential energy is still there so you'd still be under the effect, or at least you should. Fuck it, I don't understand these physics anymore.Mjolnir wrote:No. Leaving out the complexities of GR and gravitational time dilation, time dilation isn't absolutely high or low, it is a function of relative motion between observers. Events in another frame can appear to move faster than normal, but this is a result of doppler effects, not time dilation...time dilation always means clocks in the other frame run slower.Cy83r wrote:Wait, no, that can't be right, from the perspective of someone at a high time dilation, everything else moves faster... doesn't it?icekatze wrote:Simply put, from the perspective of both duelists, time for their opponent is moving slower than it is for themselves.