astro
04-24-2008, 08:30 PM
Moving Dimensions Theory & A Dialogue With Roger Penrose
Based on, with Dr. E!: http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/flowtime.html
Physicist : Einstein's Theory of Relativity was really the death-knell for the old concepts of space and time. Einstein showed that Absolute Space and Absolute Time could not exist any longer.
Narrator : According to the Theory of Relativity, space and time were no longer a rigid framework but were instead a fabric which could be stretched and distorted.
Dr. E: In other words, dimensions can and do move.
Physicist : Normally we think of a black hole, a collapsed star, as being a point of zero size and infinite density surrounded by what's known as the event horizon, the point of no return. But most stars actually spin, and when they collapse they will begin to spin more rapidly. And the spinning star that becomes a spinning black hole doesn't have a point, a singularity in the centre; its singularity looks like a ring, a dough-nut. One possibility was that maybe we could travel into a black hole, avoid the singularity, and travel through the middle and come out the other side. Because space and time were linked, you would not only have to come out in another point in space, but in time as well. This sounds like it would be the ultimate freedom for us that we can time travel; Einstein gives us this wonderful freedom of moving back, changing history, going to the future, seeing what things are like and coming back again, finding what mistakes we might make and then avoid them. This would imply that the past, present and future all exist. There is no present moment to distinguish past from future. All times co-exist, time just is. And so the future is already out there. The only way to understand this was to link the 3 dimensions of space with the one dimension of time to what became known as 4-dimensional space/time.
Dr. E: Time travel into the past is impossible. Otherwise we would have met visitsors from the future. Never did Einstein, nor Minkowski, say that time is the fourth dimension. Rather, Einstein equated the fourth dimension x4 with x4 = ict. Hence MDT’s simple postulate and equation: dx4/dt = ic.
Roger Penrose : Space-time is certainly different stuff from space because its 4 dimensional instead of 3-D (RP larfs!) which is a big diff. Time really has to be brought into the picture; this one thing which is space/time.
Dr. E: MDT shows that time, as measured by the ticking seconds on our watches, and remembered in our memories, is not the fourth dimension, but rather it is a phenonomen that emerges because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. Never did Einstein, nor Minkowski, say that time is the fourth dimension. Rather, Einstein equated the fourth dimension x4 with x4 = ict. Hence MDT’s simple postulate and equation: dx4/dt = ic.
Physicist : Just imagine what this might be like: 3-D space implies a volume, and you can move any where in that volume. Once you add time as a 4th dimension, another axis, then this block of space/time would contain within it past, present and future, all at once. Time is frozen, all times exist together; so just as you can say "over here, over there" in 3-D space, you can talk about "over then", in 4-D space/time.
Dr. E: This is exactly where physicists are lead astray. Time is not a fourth dimension, but it inherits properties of the fourth dimension, which is expanding at c relative to the three spatial dimensions. Physicists extrapolate this fact to believe that the past and future exist out there. But in reality, the deepest we ever get into the expanding fourth dimension is on the order of the Planck length.
Roger Penrose : It's a way of looking at things if you like which physically we seem to be forced into. I say physically from the point of view of what the theory of rel. tells us. And Relativity is remarkably well tested, I mean, 14 places of decimal, its just incredible. So we know that this theory does describe the universe to an extraordinarily precise degree, so we have to take it seriously. And that theory tells us that we have to regard space and time as one thing, its all out there, its one thing. In the same sense that space is out there, time is out there.
Dr. E: Space and time are not the same thing. This is obvious to everyone. We can translate freely through space, but we cannot move at all through time. MDT shows that time, as measured by the ticking seconds on our watches, and remembered in our memories, is not the fourth dimension, but rather it is a phenonomen that emerges because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. Never did Einstein, nor Minkowski, say that time is the fourth dimension. Rather, Einstein equated the fourth dimension x4 with x4 = ict. Hence MDT’s simple postulate and equation: dx4/dt = ic.
Narrator : Like the Medieval God's-view of time, Einstein's physics says that the future is already out there. The moments of our lives are just waiting for us to step into them.
Dr. E: No. Read Einstein’s 1912 Manuscript on Relativity. Never did Einstein, nor Minkowski, say that time is the fourth dimension. Rather, Einstein equated the fourth dimension x4 with x4 = ict. Hence MDT’s simple postulate and equation: dx4/dt = ic.
Roger Penrose : But there's no more problem about the future being out there than saying that space is out there. You say, "Mars is out there", but why is that more comprehensible than saying "next week is out there"? It’s just as far away in a certain sense.
Dr. E: This is wrong. Read Einstein’s 1912 Manuscript on Realtivity. Never did Einstein, nor Minkowski, say that time is the fourth dimension. Rather, Einstein equated the fourth dimension x4 with x4 = ict. Hence MDT’s simple postulate and equation: dx4/dt = ic.
Physicist : If you take this block of 4-D space/time literally, it means you have to abandon free will. It means not only is the future pre-ordained, but its already there, its already happened. There's no point in making any decisions, whatever you do has already happened. If I choose to drop this stone into a pond, I think of it being my own free choice, but of course in 4-D space/time I had no choice in dropping the stone ; the splash is already there in the future and so we lose all free will. If time travel was possible, you can imagine people coming back from the future to visit us; its no good us saying, "you cant exist - you haven't happened yet".They've come from a time which they consider to be their 'now' and for them we're in their path.
Dr. E: But we do have free will. Quantum Mechanics and relativity both support this, as does reality. Read Einstein’s 1912 Manuscript on Realtivity. Never did Einstein, nor Minkowski, say that time is the fourth dimension. Rather, Einstein equated the fourth dimension x4 with x4 = ict. Hence MDT’s simple postulate and equation: dx4/dt = ic.
Roger Penrose : So this means that in a sense, the present past and future are out there, and that also gives us a very deterministic view of the world. We have no control of what happens in the future because its all laid out. I think the trouble that people have with this idea is that you think the future is under your control, to some degree, and so this means that if the future's laid out then in a sense its not under your control.
Dr. E: But we do have free will. Quantum Mechanics and relativity both support this, as does reality. Read Einstein’s 1912 Manuscript on Realtivity. Never did Einstein, nor Minkowski, say that time is the fourth dimension. Rather, Einstein equated the fourth dimension x4 with x4 = ict. Hence MDT’s simple postulate and equation: dx4/dt = ic.
Physicist : Personally I'm very uncomfortable about the block universe idea. Now this may be just a gut feeling or just irrational, but can't accept the future's already 'out there'. I don't accept that I don't have any free will.
Roger Penrose : I think there is a positive side to this picture of space and time being laid out there as 4 dimensions, because it tells you that all times are there once and it can affect the way one thinks about people who have died. I mean, I remember thinking in this kind of way when my mother died. In some sense she was still there because her existence is still out there in space/time although in our time she is not alive. A colleague of mine had a son who died in tragic circumstances and I presented this idea to him and it helped his understanding also. This was before I heard that Einstein had a colleague died and he wrote to the man's wife that Bessa was still out there, and that somehow this was reassuring. I certainly think this way often, that space/time is laid out and that things in the past and things in the future are out there still.
Dr. E: But we do have free will. Quantum Mechanics and relativity both support this, as does reality. Read Einstein’s 1912 Manuscript on Realtivity. Never did Einstein, nor Minkowski, say that time is the fourth dimension. Rather, Einstein equated the fourth dimension x4 with x4 = ict. Hence MDT’s simple postulate and equation: dx4/dt = ic.
Narrator : But almost at the same time that Relativity was gaining universal acceptance a radically different picture of the universe was emerging.
Physicist : The way out if you don't want to accept the block universe idea is quantum mechanics.Now, Quantum Mechanics is the second great discovery of the 20th century physics and that states that the future isn't predetermined and preordained.
Narrator : Quantum Mechanics was born out of a series of experiments whose results even today have no satisfactory explanation. Relativity works at the large scale where it provides exact predictions as to what will happen next. But when physicists started looking down at the atomic and sub-atomic level, the familiar laws failed. At this level, there were no certainties, only probabilities. How can the future of the universe be already out there if the future of a single molecule is so utterly unpredictable?
Dr. E: MDT gives a satisfactory account of all of Quantum Mechanical phenonema. In addition to underlying relativity, dx4/dt = ic also underlies QM’s inherent nonlocality, which results in probability. The expanding fourth dimension distributes and disperses locality in a nonlocal manner. A single point becomes a sphere, as the fourth dimension expands as a spherically-symmetric wavefront of radius ct, describing exactly the propagation of a photon’s probabilistic wavefront. The act of measurement localizes the particle which was hitherto caught in an expanding dimension, where all points were at the same point in that dimension.
Physicist : Before we look to see what the atom is doing, not only is there a gap in our knowledge, the atom itself has not decided what to do. It had an infinite number of choices to make, it will be doing all those choices all at once, and its only when we look to see what is happening do we force it to make a choice. In Quantum Mechanics the future is not determined, and so Quantum Mechanics in a sense rescues us and rescues free will.
Roger Penrose : In a sense you don't have the future laid out in Quantum Mechanics So Quantum Mechanics is basically different in the way we look at it. You do have this indeterminacy about the future and a necessary feature of this is its incompatibility with Special Relativity. So we have these 2 great theories, both of which are extremely accurate, tell us something about how the world operates, something very insightful and profound and accurate, but they're incompatible with each other. So there's no doubt there's something missing here. How important it is to how we 'feel' the passage of time is I think very important.
Dr. E: no—the two theories are exactly compatible. The Curious Nature of the Photon, Einstein's Annus Mirabilis,
and Moving Dimensions Theory
As the contemplation of the photon lead to both quantum mechanics and relativity, let us also begin by contemplating the photon. Einstein's revolutionary 1905 papers included one devoted to the photoelectric effect-the quantized nature of the photon, and another devoted to the electrodynamics of moving bodies-electromagnetic radiation, relativity, and the wave properties of the photon. Another paper discussed statistical mechanics in the form of Brownian Motion, and the final paper commented on the equivalence of mass and energy, as denoted with his famous equation, E=mc2. Moving Dimensions Theory underlies and unifies all of Einstein's 1905 papers with its simple postulate-the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
Picture the emission of a photon in free space. Once second later, the photon has equal probability of being found anywhere upon a sphere with a radius of 186,000 miles, as c, the velocity of light, equals 186,000 miles per second. If we covered the surface of the sphere with detectors, one, and only one, would click. And the photon, although traveling 186,000 miles through space, will not have aged one iota, for time stops at the speed of light. The photon will have traveled 186,000 miles through the three spatial dimensions, and yet it will not have moved one iota in the fourth dimension. And there lies our first clue to moving dimensions theory. For how can a photon propagate 186,000 in the three spatial dimensions, and yet not budge an inch in the fourth dimension, unless that fourth dimension is expanding? Ergo, the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
Consider two interacting photons that propagate in opposite directions. One second later, each photon's polarization is measured at detectors separated by 372,000 miles. According to the laws of quantum mechanics and numerous supporting experiments, the measurement at one detector instantaneously affects the measurement at the second detector. It is as if the photons are yet side-by-side for all intents and purposes. This "spooky action at a distance," as Einstein called it, is not so spooky in the context of moving dimensions theory, for MDT states that although separated by 372,000 miles, the photons are yet in the exact same place in the fourth dimension, as the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. So it is that quantum phenomena on the photonic level, as well as relativistic phenomena on the photonic level, are both accounted for with simple elegance via MDT: the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
Another paper Einstein penned in 1905 was devoted to Brownian Motion and statistical mechanics. Drop a thimbleful of food coloring in a pool. The laws of statistical mechanics dictate that it will spread out throughout the entire pool, and never again reassemble in a localized region. That everything tends towards random disorder is a fundamental law of physics, and too, it can be accounted for by moving dimensions theory. As the fundamental motion of the universe is the expansion of the fourth dimension relative to the three spatial dimensions, two photons originating from a common origin will harbor a vast probability of being found at great distances from one another one second later-distances far greater than the distance that separates them at their emission. This is because each one has an equal probability of being found anywhere upon the surface of a spherically-symmetric wave front of probability, corresponding to the wave front of the fourth expanding dimension. Recall our system of detectors placed everywhere through the surface of a sphere with a radius of 186,000 miles-each photon has an equal chance of being found at any detector after one second, and chances are that the detectors will be farther apart than the distance of 0 that defines the photon's common origin. Hence entropy. Entropy arises because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. All particles undergoing thermal vibrations interact with photons, and all photons reside in the fourth expanding dimension, dragging all of entirety into random disorder.
Yet another paper published by Einstein in his "Miraculous Year" (anna mirabilis), was devoted to the equivalence of mass and energy. Think about the fascinating physical reality implied by E=mc2. A kilogram of gold or lead or feathers sitting on a desktop is the same thing as 9x1016 joules of energy-an exorbitant amount of energy-enough to power, or to destroy, a major city. How is it that a stationary mass possesses such a great energy? It is because the m**** which is stationary in the three spatial dimensions, is yet propagating through the fourth dimension at the rate of c. This is because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, and matter trapped in the fourth expanding dimension appears at photons. Furthermore, as noted earlier, the photons will propagate at the rate of c through the three spatial dimensions, and yet they will never age-they will stay in a fixed place in the fourth expanding dimension. The primary invariant is c-all matter and/or photons-be it propagating through space or time, or some combination thereof, always, always moves at the rate of c. To be stationary in space means to propagate at the rate of c through time. To be stationary in time means to propagate at the rate of c through space. This is because the fourth dimension is expanding at the rate of c relative to the three spatial dimensions. Most objects share motion between space and time, but the overall velocity of propagation through space-time is fixed at c-this primary invariance can never change.
And so it is that Moving Dimensions Theory underlies and unifies the papers Einstein Published during his Annus Mirabilis-his "miraculous year." I highly recommend Harvard University Press's Einstein 1905: The Standard of Greatness (Hardcover) by John S. Rigden, about wchich Publisher's Weekly writes,
"The year 2005 will be the centenary of Einstein's annus mirabilis, when he published the five papers that marked him as one of the greatest scientists of all time. Washington University professor Rigden (Hydrogen: The Essential Element) sits readers down in front of his white board and explains what Einstein said in each of these papers, what was significant in them and how the scientific community reacted (not very well, in most cases-for a while). Einstein started off with a bang: in March he proposed that light was not a continuous wave, but was made up of particles. In April he finished what became his dissertation, on how to determine the size of molecules in a liquid (that may not sound very exciting, but this is one of Einstein's most cited papers). In May he wrote his paper on Brownian motion, and then in June came the summit of his achievements that year: the paper proposing his principles of relativity and the consistency of the speed of light (commonly known as the Special Theory of Relativity). Finally, almost as an afterthought, in September came the three-page paper that unleashed his now-famous equation, e=mc2, upon an unsuspecting world. Rigden writes with a rare felicity, free of jargon and with everyday metaphors that Einstein himself would no doubt have appreciated."
I encourage everyone to read Einstein's and Bohr's and Heisenberg's and Dirac's original papers, and contrast their majestic elegance, eloquence, reason, and logic to the snarky death threats and crackpot indexes manufactured by today's "best and brightest," and the accompanying silence from their established elders-the founders of string theory's oppressive regime. This book looks back to the giants of yesteryear with deep honor and reverence, so that tomorrow's physics might advance in the spirit of simple Truth and Beauty. Every effort will be maintained to demonstrate that true physics is marked by grace and simplicity, as opposed to obfuscation and bullying. Moving Dimensions Theory is an idea whose time has come, and ideas are bulletproof.
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Narrator : The tragedy of modern physics is that it explains so much of the objective universe but at the cost of what we subjectively feel; about our conscious free will and our feeling that time does flow.
Faun Flynn : I very much think there's a flow to time. If you consider what music would be like if there was no flow to time. You couldn't have music if you didn't have memory, or if you didn't have an expectation generated by that memory. You'd have an isolated note in the 'now'. Music unfolds in time in such a way that we have a memory of what we've heard, and this memory conditions to what we expect. This of course is something that everybody is familiar with, because if you hear ( 7 note scale played on piano) you have a very strong expectation that the next note will be (plays final octave note of scale) . Music is a distillation or a side-effect of that mental faculty we employ to perceive time, and things changing in time.
Roger Penrose : The question of the passage of time is something the scientists have rather set aside, and taking the view that its not really physics, it's a subjective issue; and subjective questions are not part of science. Now when you start talking about phenomena like one's own perception of the passage of time, then that is a subjective thing. And that's almost a taboo subject for science because it's subjective. The physical world at least according to Relativity, is out there, and there is no flow of time, it's just there; whereas our feeling (we have this feeling of the passage of time) are intimately connected to our perceptions.
Dr. E: No longer shall time be a taboo subject for physics. MDT shows that time, as measured by the ticking seconds on our watches, and remembered in our memories, is not the fourth dimension, but rather it is a phenonomen that emerges because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. Never did Einstein, nor Minkowski, say that time is the fourth dimension. Rather, Einstein equated the fourth dimension x4 with x4 = ict. Hence MDT’s simple postulate and equation: dx4/dt = ic.
Physicist : We have this subjective feeling, that time goes by, but physicists would argue this is just an illusion.
Roger Penrose : Yes I think physicists would agree that the feeling of time passing is simply an illusion, something that is not real. It has something to do with our perceptions.
Dr. E: Time is very real; both in physics and in ever day life. MDT shows that time, as measured by the ticking seconds on our watches, and remembered in our memories, is not the fourth dimension, but rather it is a phenonomen that emerges because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. Never did Einstein, nor Minkowski, say that time is the fourth dimension. Rather, Einstein equated the fourth dimension x4 with x4 = ict. Hence MDT’s simple postulate and equation: dx4/dt = ic.
Narrator : Illusion or not, our perceptions emerge somewhere between the cosmic scale of Relativity where the flow of time is frozen and the quantum scale, where flow descends to uncertainty.Our world is on a scale governed by a mixture of chance and necessity.
Roger Penrose : My view is that there is some large scale quantum activity going on in the brain.Physics does not say that Quantum Mechanics takes place in small areas, but also take place over larger areas. I think this has to do with the consciousness. I think we need a new way to look at time, not either Quantum Mechanics or Relativity.
Narrator : If Quantum Mechanics is taking place in the brain then the same randomness of outcome and unpredictability might explain our ability to make sometime random choices. Opening up the future to the possibility of change would provide the first step of restoring to physics the flow of time it currently denies.
Physicist : I don't think time flows, I feel that time flows, but I feel we can only understand this if we have a better understanding of how consciousness works. I think human consciousness probably has the secrets as to how and why we think of time as going by.
Roger Penrose : I don't think we have the tools, I don't think we have the physical picture to accommodate these things yet. We're not very close to it.
Dr. E: MDT presents those new tools. MDT shows that time, as measured by the ticking seconds on our watches, and remembered in our memories, is not the fourth dimension, but rather it is a phenonomen that emerges because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. Never did Einstein, nor Minkowski, say that time is the fourth dimension. Rather, Einstein equated the fourth dimension x4 with x4 = ict. Hence MDT’s simple postulate and equation: dx4/dt = ic.
Based on, http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/flowtime.html with Dr. E!:
Based on, with Dr. E!: http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/flowtime.html
Physicist : Einstein's Theory of Relativity was really the death-knell for the old concepts of space and time. Einstein showed that Absolute Space and Absolute Time could not exist any longer.
Narrator : According to the Theory of Relativity, space and time were no longer a rigid framework but were instead a fabric which could be stretched and distorted.
Dr. E: In other words, dimensions can and do move.
Physicist : Normally we think of a black hole, a collapsed star, as being a point of zero size and infinite density surrounded by what's known as the event horizon, the point of no return. But most stars actually spin, and when they collapse they will begin to spin more rapidly. And the spinning star that becomes a spinning black hole doesn't have a point, a singularity in the centre; its singularity looks like a ring, a dough-nut. One possibility was that maybe we could travel into a black hole, avoid the singularity, and travel through the middle and come out the other side. Because space and time were linked, you would not only have to come out in another point in space, but in time as well. This sounds like it would be the ultimate freedom for us that we can time travel; Einstein gives us this wonderful freedom of moving back, changing history, going to the future, seeing what things are like and coming back again, finding what mistakes we might make and then avoid them. This would imply that the past, present and future all exist. There is no present moment to distinguish past from future. All times co-exist, time just is. And so the future is already out there. The only way to understand this was to link the 3 dimensions of space with the one dimension of time to what became known as 4-dimensional space/time.
Dr. E: Time travel into the past is impossible. Otherwise we would have met visitsors from the future. Never did Einstein, nor Minkowski, say that time is the fourth dimension. Rather, Einstein equated the fourth dimension x4 with x4 = ict. Hence MDT’s simple postulate and equation: dx4/dt = ic.
Roger Penrose : Space-time is certainly different stuff from space because its 4 dimensional instead of 3-D (RP larfs!) which is a big diff. Time really has to be brought into the picture; this one thing which is space/time.
Dr. E: MDT shows that time, as measured by the ticking seconds on our watches, and remembered in our memories, is not the fourth dimension, but rather it is a phenonomen that emerges because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. Never did Einstein, nor Minkowski, say that time is the fourth dimension. Rather, Einstein equated the fourth dimension x4 with x4 = ict. Hence MDT’s simple postulate and equation: dx4/dt = ic.
Physicist : Just imagine what this might be like: 3-D space implies a volume, and you can move any where in that volume. Once you add time as a 4th dimension, another axis, then this block of space/time would contain within it past, present and future, all at once. Time is frozen, all times exist together; so just as you can say "over here, over there" in 3-D space, you can talk about "over then", in 4-D space/time.
Dr. E: This is exactly where physicists are lead astray. Time is not a fourth dimension, but it inherits properties of the fourth dimension, which is expanding at c relative to the three spatial dimensions. Physicists extrapolate this fact to believe that the past and future exist out there. But in reality, the deepest we ever get into the expanding fourth dimension is on the order of the Planck length.
Roger Penrose : It's a way of looking at things if you like which physically we seem to be forced into. I say physically from the point of view of what the theory of rel. tells us. And Relativity is remarkably well tested, I mean, 14 places of decimal, its just incredible. So we know that this theory does describe the universe to an extraordinarily precise degree, so we have to take it seriously. And that theory tells us that we have to regard space and time as one thing, its all out there, its one thing. In the same sense that space is out there, time is out there.
Dr. E: Space and time are not the same thing. This is obvious to everyone. We can translate freely through space, but we cannot move at all through time. MDT shows that time, as measured by the ticking seconds on our watches, and remembered in our memories, is not the fourth dimension, but rather it is a phenonomen that emerges because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. Never did Einstein, nor Minkowski, say that time is the fourth dimension. Rather, Einstein equated the fourth dimension x4 with x4 = ict. Hence MDT’s simple postulate and equation: dx4/dt = ic.
Narrator : Like the Medieval God's-view of time, Einstein's physics says that the future is already out there. The moments of our lives are just waiting for us to step into them.
Dr. E: No. Read Einstein’s 1912 Manuscript on Relativity. Never did Einstein, nor Minkowski, say that time is the fourth dimension. Rather, Einstein equated the fourth dimension x4 with x4 = ict. Hence MDT’s simple postulate and equation: dx4/dt = ic.
Roger Penrose : But there's no more problem about the future being out there than saying that space is out there. You say, "Mars is out there", but why is that more comprehensible than saying "next week is out there"? It’s just as far away in a certain sense.
Dr. E: This is wrong. Read Einstein’s 1912 Manuscript on Realtivity. Never did Einstein, nor Minkowski, say that time is the fourth dimension. Rather, Einstein equated the fourth dimension x4 with x4 = ict. Hence MDT’s simple postulate and equation: dx4/dt = ic.
Physicist : If you take this block of 4-D space/time literally, it means you have to abandon free will. It means not only is the future pre-ordained, but its already there, its already happened. There's no point in making any decisions, whatever you do has already happened. If I choose to drop this stone into a pond, I think of it being my own free choice, but of course in 4-D space/time I had no choice in dropping the stone ; the splash is already there in the future and so we lose all free will. If time travel was possible, you can imagine people coming back from the future to visit us; its no good us saying, "you cant exist - you haven't happened yet".They've come from a time which they consider to be their 'now' and for them we're in their path.
Dr. E: But we do have free will. Quantum Mechanics and relativity both support this, as does reality. Read Einstein’s 1912 Manuscript on Realtivity. Never did Einstein, nor Minkowski, say that time is the fourth dimension. Rather, Einstein equated the fourth dimension x4 with x4 = ict. Hence MDT’s simple postulate and equation: dx4/dt = ic.
Roger Penrose : So this means that in a sense, the present past and future are out there, and that also gives us a very deterministic view of the world. We have no control of what happens in the future because its all laid out. I think the trouble that people have with this idea is that you think the future is under your control, to some degree, and so this means that if the future's laid out then in a sense its not under your control.
Dr. E: But we do have free will. Quantum Mechanics and relativity both support this, as does reality. Read Einstein’s 1912 Manuscript on Realtivity. Never did Einstein, nor Minkowski, say that time is the fourth dimension. Rather, Einstein equated the fourth dimension x4 with x4 = ict. Hence MDT’s simple postulate and equation: dx4/dt = ic.
Physicist : Personally I'm very uncomfortable about the block universe idea. Now this may be just a gut feeling or just irrational, but can't accept the future's already 'out there'. I don't accept that I don't have any free will.
Roger Penrose : I think there is a positive side to this picture of space and time being laid out there as 4 dimensions, because it tells you that all times are there once and it can affect the way one thinks about people who have died. I mean, I remember thinking in this kind of way when my mother died. In some sense she was still there because her existence is still out there in space/time although in our time she is not alive. A colleague of mine had a son who died in tragic circumstances and I presented this idea to him and it helped his understanding also. This was before I heard that Einstein had a colleague died and he wrote to the man's wife that Bessa was still out there, and that somehow this was reassuring. I certainly think this way often, that space/time is laid out and that things in the past and things in the future are out there still.
Dr. E: But we do have free will. Quantum Mechanics and relativity both support this, as does reality. Read Einstein’s 1912 Manuscript on Realtivity. Never did Einstein, nor Minkowski, say that time is the fourth dimension. Rather, Einstein equated the fourth dimension x4 with x4 = ict. Hence MDT’s simple postulate and equation: dx4/dt = ic.
Narrator : But almost at the same time that Relativity was gaining universal acceptance a radically different picture of the universe was emerging.
Physicist : The way out if you don't want to accept the block universe idea is quantum mechanics.Now, Quantum Mechanics is the second great discovery of the 20th century physics and that states that the future isn't predetermined and preordained.
Narrator : Quantum Mechanics was born out of a series of experiments whose results even today have no satisfactory explanation. Relativity works at the large scale where it provides exact predictions as to what will happen next. But when physicists started looking down at the atomic and sub-atomic level, the familiar laws failed. At this level, there were no certainties, only probabilities. How can the future of the universe be already out there if the future of a single molecule is so utterly unpredictable?
Dr. E: MDT gives a satisfactory account of all of Quantum Mechanical phenonema. In addition to underlying relativity, dx4/dt = ic also underlies QM’s inherent nonlocality, which results in probability. The expanding fourth dimension distributes and disperses locality in a nonlocal manner. A single point becomes a sphere, as the fourth dimension expands as a spherically-symmetric wavefront of radius ct, describing exactly the propagation of a photon’s probabilistic wavefront. The act of measurement localizes the particle which was hitherto caught in an expanding dimension, where all points were at the same point in that dimension.
Physicist : Before we look to see what the atom is doing, not only is there a gap in our knowledge, the atom itself has not decided what to do. It had an infinite number of choices to make, it will be doing all those choices all at once, and its only when we look to see what is happening do we force it to make a choice. In Quantum Mechanics the future is not determined, and so Quantum Mechanics in a sense rescues us and rescues free will.
Roger Penrose : In a sense you don't have the future laid out in Quantum Mechanics So Quantum Mechanics is basically different in the way we look at it. You do have this indeterminacy about the future and a necessary feature of this is its incompatibility with Special Relativity. So we have these 2 great theories, both of which are extremely accurate, tell us something about how the world operates, something very insightful and profound and accurate, but they're incompatible with each other. So there's no doubt there's something missing here. How important it is to how we 'feel' the passage of time is I think very important.
Dr. E: no—the two theories are exactly compatible. The Curious Nature of the Photon, Einstein's Annus Mirabilis,
and Moving Dimensions Theory
As the contemplation of the photon lead to both quantum mechanics and relativity, let us also begin by contemplating the photon. Einstein's revolutionary 1905 papers included one devoted to the photoelectric effect-the quantized nature of the photon, and another devoted to the electrodynamics of moving bodies-electromagnetic radiation, relativity, and the wave properties of the photon. Another paper discussed statistical mechanics in the form of Brownian Motion, and the final paper commented on the equivalence of mass and energy, as denoted with his famous equation, E=mc2. Moving Dimensions Theory underlies and unifies all of Einstein's 1905 papers with its simple postulate-the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
Picture the emission of a photon in free space. Once second later, the photon has equal probability of being found anywhere upon a sphere with a radius of 186,000 miles, as c, the velocity of light, equals 186,000 miles per second. If we covered the surface of the sphere with detectors, one, and only one, would click. And the photon, although traveling 186,000 miles through space, will not have aged one iota, for time stops at the speed of light. The photon will have traveled 186,000 miles through the three spatial dimensions, and yet it will not have moved one iota in the fourth dimension. And there lies our first clue to moving dimensions theory. For how can a photon propagate 186,000 in the three spatial dimensions, and yet not budge an inch in the fourth dimension, unless that fourth dimension is expanding? Ergo, the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
Consider two interacting photons that propagate in opposite directions. One second later, each photon's polarization is measured at detectors separated by 372,000 miles. According to the laws of quantum mechanics and numerous supporting experiments, the measurement at one detector instantaneously affects the measurement at the second detector. It is as if the photons are yet side-by-side for all intents and purposes. This "spooky action at a distance," as Einstein called it, is not so spooky in the context of moving dimensions theory, for MDT states that although separated by 372,000 miles, the photons are yet in the exact same place in the fourth dimension, as the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. So it is that quantum phenomena on the photonic level, as well as relativistic phenomena on the photonic level, are both accounted for with simple elegance via MDT: the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.
Another paper Einstein penned in 1905 was devoted to Brownian Motion and statistical mechanics. Drop a thimbleful of food coloring in a pool. The laws of statistical mechanics dictate that it will spread out throughout the entire pool, and never again reassemble in a localized region. That everything tends towards random disorder is a fundamental law of physics, and too, it can be accounted for by moving dimensions theory. As the fundamental motion of the universe is the expansion of the fourth dimension relative to the three spatial dimensions, two photons originating from a common origin will harbor a vast probability of being found at great distances from one another one second later-distances far greater than the distance that separates them at their emission. This is because each one has an equal probability of being found anywhere upon the surface of a spherically-symmetric wave front of probability, corresponding to the wave front of the fourth expanding dimension. Recall our system of detectors placed everywhere through the surface of a sphere with a radius of 186,000 miles-each photon has an equal chance of being found at any detector after one second, and chances are that the detectors will be farther apart than the distance of 0 that defines the photon's common origin. Hence entropy. Entropy arises because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. All particles undergoing thermal vibrations interact with photons, and all photons reside in the fourth expanding dimension, dragging all of entirety into random disorder.
Yet another paper published by Einstein in his "Miraculous Year" (anna mirabilis), was devoted to the equivalence of mass and energy. Think about the fascinating physical reality implied by E=mc2. A kilogram of gold or lead or feathers sitting on a desktop is the same thing as 9x1016 joules of energy-an exorbitant amount of energy-enough to power, or to destroy, a major city. How is it that a stationary mass possesses such a great energy? It is because the m**** which is stationary in the three spatial dimensions, is yet propagating through the fourth dimension at the rate of c. This is because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, and matter trapped in the fourth expanding dimension appears at photons. Furthermore, as noted earlier, the photons will propagate at the rate of c through the three spatial dimensions, and yet they will never age-they will stay in a fixed place in the fourth expanding dimension. The primary invariant is c-all matter and/or photons-be it propagating through space or time, or some combination thereof, always, always moves at the rate of c. To be stationary in space means to propagate at the rate of c through time. To be stationary in time means to propagate at the rate of c through space. This is because the fourth dimension is expanding at the rate of c relative to the three spatial dimensions. Most objects share motion between space and time, but the overall velocity of propagation through space-time is fixed at c-this primary invariance can never change.
And so it is that Moving Dimensions Theory underlies and unifies the papers Einstein Published during his Annus Mirabilis-his "miraculous year." I highly recommend Harvard University Press's Einstein 1905: The Standard of Greatness (Hardcover) by John S. Rigden, about wchich Publisher's Weekly writes,
"The year 2005 will be the centenary of Einstein's annus mirabilis, when he published the five papers that marked him as one of the greatest scientists of all time. Washington University professor Rigden (Hydrogen: The Essential Element) sits readers down in front of his white board and explains what Einstein said in each of these papers, what was significant in them and how the scientific community reacted (not very well, in most cases-for a while). Einstein started off with a bang: in March he proposed that light was not a continuous wave, but was made up of particles. In April he finished what became his dissertation, on how to determine the size of molecules in a liquid (that may not sound very exciting, but this is one of Einstein's most cited papers). In May he wrote his paper on Brownian motion, and then in June came the summit of his achievements that year: the paper proposing his principles of relativity and the consistency of the speed of light (commonly known as the Special Theory of Relativity). Finally, almost as an afterthought, in September came the three-page paper that unleashed his now-famous equation, e=mc2, upon an unsuspecting world. Rigden writes with a rare felicity, free of jargon and with everyday metaphors that Einstein himself would no doubt have appreciated."
I encourage everyone to read Einstein's and Bohr's and Heisenberg's and Dirac's original papers, and contrast their majestic elegance, eloquence, reason, and logic to the snarky death threats and crackpot indexes manufactured by today's "best and brightest," and the accompanying silence from their established elders-the founders of string theory's oppressive regime. This book looks back to the giants of yesteryear with deep honor and reverence, so that tomorrow's physics might advance in the spirit of simple Truth and Beauty. Every effort will be maintained to demonstrate that true physics is marked by grace and simplicity, as opposed to obfuscation and bullying. Moving Dimensions Theory is an idea whose time has come, and ideas are bulletproof.
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Narrator : The tragedy of modern physics is that it explains so much of the objective universe but at the cost of what we subjectively feel; about our conscious free will and our feeling that time does flow.
Faun Flynn : I very much think there's a flow to time. If you consider what music would be like if there was no flow to time. You couldn't have music if you didn't have memory, or if you didn't have an expectation generated by that memory. You'd have an isolated note in the 'now'. Music unfolds in time in such a way that we have a memory of what we've heard, and this memory conditions to what we expect. This of course is something that everybody is familiar with, because if you hear ( 7 note scale played on piano) you have a very strong expectation that the next note will be (plays final octave note of scale) . Music is a distillation or a side-effect of that mental faculty we employ to perceive time, and things changing in time.
Roger Penrose : The question of the passage of time is something the scientists have rather set aside, and taking the view that its not really physics, it's a subjective issue; and subjective questions are not part of science. Now when you start talking about phenomena like one's own perception of the passage of time, then that is a subjective thing. And that's almost a taboo subject for science because it's subjective. The physical world at least according to Relativity, is out there, and there is no flow of time, it's just there; whereas our feeling (we have this feeling of the passage of time) are intimately connected to our perceptions.
Dr. E: No longer shall time be a taboo subject for physics. MDT shows that time, as measured by the ticking seconds on our watches, and remembered in our memories, is not the fourth dimension, but rather it is a phenonomen that emerges because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. Never did Einstein, nor Minkowski, say that time is the fourth dimension. Rather, Einstein equated the fourth dimension x4 with x4 = ict. Hence MDT’s simple postulate and equation: dx4/dt = ic.
Physicist : We have this subjective feeling, that time goes by, but physicists would argue this is just an illusion.
Roger Penrose : Yes I think physicists would agree that the feeling of time passing is simply an illusion, something that is not real. It has something to do with our perceptions.
Dr. E: Time is very real; both in physics and in ever day life. MDT shows that time, as measured by the ticking seconds on our watches, and remembered in our memories, is not the fourth dimension, but rather it is a phenonomen that emerges because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. Never did Einstein, nor Minkowski, say that time is the fourth dimension. Rather, Einstein equated the fourth dimension x4 with x4 = ict. Hence MDT’s simple postulate and equation: dx4/dt = ic.
Narrator : Illusion or not, our perceptions emerge somewhere between the cosmic scale of Relativity where the flow of time is frozen and the quantum scale, where flow descends to uncertainty.Our world is on a scale governed by a mixture of chance and necessity.
Roger Penrose : My view is that there is some large scale quantum activity going on in the brain.Physics does not say that Quantum Mechanics takes place in small areas, but also take place over larger areas. I think this has to do with the consciousness. I think we need a new way to look at time, not either Quantum Mechanics or Relativity.
Narrator : If Quantum Mechanics is taking place in the brain then the same randomness of outcome and unpredictability might explain our ability to make sometime random choices. Opening up the future to the possibility of change would provide the first step of restoring to physics the flow of time it currently denies.
Physicist : I don't think time flows, I feel that time flows, but I feel we can only understand this if we have a better understanding of how consciousness works. I think human consciousness probably has the secrets as to how and why we think of time as going by.
Roger Penrose : I don't think we have the tools, I don't think we have the physical picture to accommodate these things yet. We're not very close to it.
Dr. E: MDT presents those new tools. MDT shows that time, as measured by the ticking seconds on our watches, and remembered in our memories, is not the fourth dimension, but rather it is a phenonomen that emerges because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. Never did Einstein, nor Minkowski, say that time is the fourth dimension. Rather, Einstein equated the fourth dimension x4 with x4 = ict. Hence MDT’s simple postulate and equation: dx4/dt = ic.
Based on, http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/flowtime.html with Dr. E!: