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[Virex]

I can't disprove the concept of a 4th dimension, though I do have a few questions and not willing to accept it completely. Does this prove that there is a 4th dimension? Not really. It certainly does not conflict with the concept of a 4th dimension, though. There are so many factors that come into play, that wobble could have been from just about anything.

But time, by definition, is linear. It is what happened, what is happening, and what will happen. And that traveling through it would always end in a paradox leads me to believe that you can't travel through it at all. It's just our way of putting things in order. If it involves going to a parallel universe that is exactly like our timeline except that you are now there, anything you do will not affect what happened in your universe. But that is not time travel. It might be 4th dimension travel, but it's not time. This is the part of the theory of relativity or any iteration thereof that is wrong (I can't see it any other way).

That isn't to say we can't have a 4th dimension without time. I see no reason why space and time can't still be separate.

Time doesn't have to be linear to always be progressing forward. It could progress at different rates under different circumstances yet not permit time travel (general relativity actually explains this, there is no physical objection to going back in time, but there is also no way to reverse time that would not cost infinite amounts of energy)

[Starver]

A little bit ninjaed, but I wrote quite a bit before finding that I had been, and it's difficult to excise the repeated stuff.

I can't disprove the concept of a 4th dimension, though I do have a few questions and not willing to accept it completely. Does this prove that there is a 4th dimension? Not really. It certainly does not conflict with the concept of a 4th dimension, though. There are so many factors that come into play, that wobble could have been from just about anything.

That's not quite right.  If the simplest explanation for something (e.g. gravitational 'leaking') is that there's a 4th (...5th, ...6th) dimension into which it dissipates, then not being able to disprove it allows it to be an acceptable theory for how the problem concerned is solved.  Being unable to disprove a 4th dimension when there's no reason to suppose one doesn't make it desirable to believe in it after all, however. (I think I've not double-negated anything in that last sentence, but it looks awkward.  YKWIM, I'm sure.)

But time, by definition, is linear.

By that, you mean unidirectional, I think.  (Measurement of time is variable according to who is measuring it.  And, by that definition, measurement of someone else's time (e.g. while observer/observed/both approach, pass and recede from the observed/observer/one another at any significant speed) could very well show time around the observed passing at different speeds at different observer-times, thus not 'linear' in any accepted manner.)

And that traveling through it would always end in a paradox leads me to believe that you can't travel through it at all.

First of all, you're right if you go back and kill your own grandfather, that's a causality-breaking paradox, but if you were to go back and be own your grandfather (making out with your hot grandmother-to-be...  yeah... I'll let that one sink into your mind a bit...  indeed...) that it's a causality-making paradox which is not strictly prohibited by any of the relevant rules of physics.

But I've already pontificated about all the various ways in which time travel might reinforce or 'branch' a time-line, in past threads on the subject.  I've got a surprisingly large tolerance for just about any of the fictionally-used versions of time-travel, except for the Fading Marty McFly one, but I do tend to personally favour the You Go Back And Do What You've Been Back And Done idea as the most elegant.  (IMO, YMMV.)

Which is not to say that there might not be a form of time-travel which takes one into the 'forbidden zone' of lightspeed-limited travel.  A wormhole takes you, by a shortcut and with a time-travel element, on not just an FTL journey (as it would have to be if taking a non-wormhole direct route through normal space), but to a 'when' that a suitably neutral-framed observer (e.g. sitting equidistant between embarkation and destination point, in the same relative frame of reference[1]) eventually sees the appearance of the arriving you at the destination prior to seeing the disappearance of the departing you from the starting point.  But unless you 'drop into' the historically-facing time-cone from the departure point, you're not dropping into your own past and giving any reason for a paradox.

(It's as much a paradox as the fact that a lighthouse beam, sweeping the sky, can (eventually) shine on one distant planet and then shortly afterwards shine on another distant planet, with the 'end' of the spotlight apparently travelling faster than light...  But it doesn't take information at Planet A and convey it to Planet B at FTL speeds, it just (at lightspeed) tells Planet A that it is being shone upon (or was shone upon, a length of time proportional to the distance between Here and Planet A, ago) and also tells Planet B that it is (/was being) shone upon from Here.  There's no A->B communication involved, merely two independent H->A and H->B communications that obey the cosmic speed limit.)

Arriving right next to a supernova, that hadn't, at the time of departure, announced itself to the origin point, wouldn't allow you to broadcast a signal to pre-departure self and tell you not to go back in time.  Because that signal could not out-pace the initial output of the supernova that you hadn't yet known about.


Which is not to say that perhaps one couldn't travel back into one's own (known!) past.  If nothing else, travelling sideways-in-one-direction and back-a-bit-in-time could be followed by a second jump sideways-in-the-other-direction and back-a-bit-in-time to allow one to arrive at your origin point but two 'bits' of time past-wise.  (Minus jump preparation time, of course.)  But there's no reason to suppose that you even have to go sideways at all, when you go back.  This is where the [ABBREV=You Go Back And Do What You've Been Back And Done]YGBADWYBBAD[/ABBREV] idea (or the many others, like the 'branching timelines' one, or the 'into a different version, and change that instead' one which I think that's what you consider to be "4th Dimensional Travel").

That's if I understand your objection, leading up to the bit you talk about in the "This is the part of the theory of relativity or any iteration thereof that is wrong (I can't see it any other way)." part of your post.


However, none of the aforementioned world-views are authoritative.  It's all just vaguely viable speculation. They explain the known facts for the facts which are known to me, and moreover they fail at the Occam's Razor fence as not being the simplest explanation, given that it's quite possible that there is absolutely no possibility of wormhole travel (effectively or actually through time... or even just less bothersome but still sub-FTL in all respects), up until the point at which something (c.f. Quantum Tunnelling, although that is actually probably happening without any fancy wormhole stuff anyway) shows to want to do something apparently not 'normal'.





[1] Other observers in other parts of the universe and/or in other frames of reference might have their own ideas about order, and not necessarily agree that the effect preceded the cause.  Or even see it in a more extreme way.  Either way, it's essentially a Picard Manoeuvre, I suppose.

[Virex]

That is only possible assuming that wormholes actually exist, which is not a given, since as far as we know, current theories indicate that wormholes would disappear to quickly to allow them to be traversable, or they would require a large negative energy density at the mounds to stabilize them, something which at this point is purely hypothetical.

[Starver]

That is only possible assuming that wormholes actually exist, which is not a given, since as far as we know, current theories indicate that wormholes would disappear to quickly to allow them to be traversable, or they would require a large negative energy density at the mounds to stabilize them, something which at this point is purely hypothetical.

Indeed.  My last (non-footnote) paragraph meant to encompass their absence, as well as unsuitability, but probably doesn't read that way.

[Lagslayer]

A little bit ninjaed, but I wrote quite a bit before finding that I had been, and it's difficult to excise the repeated stuff.

I can't disprove the concept of a 4th dimension, though I do have a few questions and not willing to accept it completely. Does this prove that there is a 4th dimension? Not really. It certainly does not conflict with the concept of a 4th dimension, though. There are so many factors that come into play, that wobble could have been from just about anything.

That's not quite right.  If the simplest explanation for something (e.g. gravitational 'leaking') is that there's a 4th (...5th, ...6th) dimension into which it dissipates, then not being able to disprove it allows it to be an acceptable theory for how the problem concerned is solved.  Being unable to disprove a 4th dimension when there's no reason to suppose one doesn't make it desirable to believe in it after all, however. (I think I've not double-negated anything in that last sentence, but it looks awkward.  YKWIM, I'm sure.)

But time, by definition, is linear.

By that, you mean unidirectional, I think.  (Measurement of time is variable according to who is measuring it.  And, by that definition, measurement of someone else's time (e.g. while observer/observed/both approach, pass and recede from the observed/observer/one another at any significant speed) could very well show time around the observed passing at different speeds at different observer-times, thus not 'linear' in any accepted manner.)

And that traveling through it would always end in a paradox leads me to believe that you can't travel through it at all.

First of all, you're right if you go back and kill your own grandfather, that's a causality-breaking paradox, but if you were to go back and be own your grandfather (making out with your hot grandmother-to-be...  yeah... I'll let that one sink into your mind a bit...  indeed...) that it's a causality-making paradox which is not strictly prohibited by any of the relevant rules of physics.

But I've already pontificated about all the various ways in which time travel might reinforce or 'branch' a time-line, in past threads on the subject.  I've got a surprisingly large tolerance for just about any of the fictionally-used versions of time-travel, except for the Fading Marty McFly one, but I do tend to personally favour the You Go Back And Do What You've Been Back And Done idea as the most elegant.  (IMO, YMMV.)

Which is not to say that there might not be a form of time-travel which takes one into the 'forbidden zone' of lightspeed-limited travel.  A wormhole takes you, by a shortcut and with a time-travel element, on not just an FTL journey (as it would have to be if taking a non-wormhole direct route through normal space), but to a 'when' that a suitably neutral-framed observer (e.g. sitting equidistant between embarkation and destination point, in the same relative frame of reference[1]) eventually sees the appearance of the arriving you at the destination prior to seeing the disappearance of the departing you from the starting point.  But unless you 'drop into' the historically-facing time-cone from the departure point, you're not dropping into your own past and giving any reason for a paradox.

(It's as much a paradox as the fact that a lighthouse beam, sweeping the sky, can (eventually) shine on one distant planet and then shortly afterwards shine on another distant planet, with the 'end' of the spotlight apparently travelling faster than light...  But it doesn't take information at Planet A and convey it to Planet B at FTL speeds, it just (at lightspeed) tells Planet A that it is being shone upon (or was shone upon, a length of time proportional to the distance between Here and Planet A, ago) and also tells Planet B that it is (/was being) shone upon from Here.  There's no A->B communication involved, merely two independent H->A and H->B communications that obey the cosmic speed limit.)

Arriving right next to a supernova, that hadn't, at the time of departure, announced itself to the origin point, wouldn't allow you to broadcast a signal to pre-departure self and tell you not to go back in time.  Because that signal could not out-pace the initial output of the supernova that you hadn't yet known about.


Which is not to say that perhaps one couldn't travel back into one's own (known!) past.  If nothing else, travelling sideways-in-one-direction and back-a-bit-in-time could be followed by a second jump sideways-in-the-other-direction and back-a-bit-in-time to allow one to arrive at your origin point but two 'bits' of time past-wise.  (Minus jump preparation time, of course.)  But there's no reason to suppose that you even have to go sideways at all, when you go back.  This is where the [ABBREV=You Go Back And Do What You've Been Back And Done]YGBADWYBBAD[/ABBREV] idea (or the many others, like the 'branching timelines' one, or the 'into a different version, and change that instead' one which I think that's what you consider to be "4th Dimensional Travel").

That's if I understand your objection, leading up to the bit you talk about in the "This is the part of the theory of relativity or any iteration thereof that is wrong (I can't see it any other way)." part of your post.


However, none of the aforementioned world-views are authoritative.  It's all just vaguely viable speculation. They explain the known facts for the facts which are known to me, and moreover they fail at the Occam's Razor fence as not being the simplest explanation, given that it's quite possible that there is absolutely no possibility of wormhole travel (effectively or actually through time... or even just less bothersome but still sub-FTL in all respects), up until the point at which something (c.f. Quantum Tunnelling, although that is actually probably happening without any fancy wormhole stuff anyway) shows to want to do something apparently not 'normal'.





[1] Other observers in other parts of the universe and/or in other frames of reference might have their own ideas about order, and not necessarily agree that the effect preceded the cause.  Or even see it in a more extreme way.  Either way, it's essentially a Picard Manoeuvre, I suppose.

1. That's why I figure these things became so popular in the first place. They are more interesting. But as to why I'm not convinced, I ask myself "Can an object exist with less than 3 dimensions?". Such a thing would have no volume, and therefor no mass. Can something exist without mass? I'm not buying that light has no mass, either. They have shown it to have momentum and is affected by the gravity of a black hole.

2. You speak of measuring someone else's time, but we don't know how to do that yet. That would make this a self fulfilling theory, but the theory itself is in question.

3. If you can go back and become your own grandfather, then why couldn't you go back and kill him instead? What would there be to stop you from doing something besides a self-creating paradox? Is the universe conscious and actively working against your arbitrary actions? And the different "versions" of the timeline would be more akin to a parallel universe, which would just be traveling through a 4th dimension.

4. At the end, you briefly speak of time as a perception. This is my theory exactly. It's not something you move through, but a way to explain the world around you to yourself. People perceive time differently, and this is why we need an arbitrary standard to measure time, so people can conform to it.

But it's just my theory, derived from the data I've collected myself.

[JoshuaFH]

After reading this thread, the only thing I could think of is:

"Ha! My balls are so big they warp spacetime!"

[Pnx]

Whenever I hear discussions or explanations about complex physics I always wind up getting rather confused and frustrated, but I think maybe that's just because I don't understand how they are defining words like "space", "time", "dimensions", "gravity"... It seems to me there's more than one way to define those words.
Of course this is probably only because I never studied physics, so I don't know the common scientific definitions (although somehow I imagine if I HAD studied physics I'd just wind up more confused).

In any case, this seems interesting and cool, and for some reason the idea of a near perfect sphere spinning around in orbit seems awesome to me. But I have no idea what exactly this is proving, and the article clarifies nothing for me except "NASA did something cool with near-perfect spheres, and extremely precise measure technology, and the technology required to create the environment that allows the accurate use of these instruments without excessive interference." *gasp*

Which while interesting, leaves me with a lot of questions... But of course if I understand correctly, people seem to be having trouble coming up with decent answers to those questions anyway.... and I get a little tired of scratching my head asking dumbass questions.

[Starver]

1. That's why I figure these things became so popular in the first place. They are more interesting. But as to why I'm not convinced, I ask myself "Can an object exist with less than 3 dimensions?". Such a thing would have no volume, and therefor no mass. Can something exist without mass? I'm not buying that light has no mass, either. They have shown it to have momentum and is affected by the gravity of a black hole.

The 'reason' (the theory, but the major accepted one, unless I'm missing something) is that light, being intrinsically massless (for, if it were not, it could not go "the speed of light", and would probably change speed according to frequency, IIRC) cannot react to large masses by changing (directionless) speed and thus show their interaction by changing their velocity in the only way they could, i.e. by their direction.  (That's a horrible explanation, but it's very early in the morning, apologies.)

As to the "no volume==no mass", that's not strictly concurrent, although I do remember something (from early '90s, so my memory is rather hazy on this) where someone at the theoretical forefront of "higher applied maths" had worked out that gravity could not exist in less than three space dimensions.  Not sure if that was because of the wave-function of a particle was constrained to a flat sheet, or that 'graviton' information could not propagate past such objects.  (I also recall something along the line of "a dimension with one space and three time dimensions was the ideal universe in which tachyons could exist", but the reasoning behind that escapes me.)

2. You speak of measuring someone else's time, but we don't know how to do that yet. That would make this a self fulfilling theory, but the theory itself is in question.

To measure someone else's time one can observe the... erm... observed person... and determine that (for example) a beacon known to be flashing at a certain rate is flashing at (to you) another rate.  Very much as per the classic "light-clock-onna-train", as an external observer of a moving (w.r.t. yourself) subject you observe[1] the light is travelling further than just up-and-down, and thus you see the bouncing light go further, and take longer, than the 'owner' of the device.  Am I wrong in thinking that the difference between that and measuring time for the observer is no more than semantic in nature?

3. If you can go back and become your own grandfather, then why couldn't you go back and kill him instead? What would there be to stop you from doing something besides a self-creating paradox? Is the universe conscious and actively working against your arbitrary actions? And the different "versions" of the timeline would be more akin to a parallel universe, which would just be traveling through a 4th dimension.

If (if!) you can go back at all, my personal worldview (from a very much aesthetic sense, admittedly) is that it self-reinforces history.  Whether that's because non-reinforcing and contradictory histories produce futures and future-trips-to-the-past with different effects until it eventually[2] it becomes self-reinforcing (or at least non-contradictory, in a "Twelve Monkeys" manner), or because the Universe cannot exist at all without the original and basic consistency of cause and effect throughout all the time-loops it allows itself to have, is another question.

That said, I am open to the various other ideas, that I said in the previous message that I wouldn't go into, but briefly include:

• Going back in time sparks off a new branch of time.  The branch you eventually time-departed from still does not have you time-arriving at the branch point.  The branch that has you time-arriving, however, has a shared history with the first branch but now has you and your causality sending it into a different future.  (From which, you could again time-depart to arrive and re-branch the time-line from any point in the tree that you're allowed to time-arrive at[3].)  And if the Universe is "zero sum", there's no reason to suppose that you need to destroy the ongoing branch you left from in order to provide the mass/energy required to create the new branch from.
• Something much like your idea about the 4th dimension, I think, in that you side-slip into a different universe in the 'stack'.  Of course, there's questions about whether you'd 'time-travel' actually into a recognisable alternate history, because the stacked-together alternate universes probably differ slightly (maybe in the fundamental constants of the universe).  So travelling back-and-sideways lets you affect the future-path of a universe already different.  (Also, what's to stop you travelling "back-and-unsideways" to get back to one's own history?  Well, perhaps the fact that 'aiming' at a rather particular universe is essentially impossible, or you've even excluded the original universe from receiving visitors from other planes of existence by the act of breaking the 'seventh wall'.)
• On the other hand, maybe it's as per the previous, but just a 'skewed stack' of identical histories, i.e. exactly the same history, but displaced, so that by travelling just sideways you can apparently travel in time.  Except that you affect their future, and do not feature in your own past.  If another you from a future-skewed universe had arrived in your own past, and stopped the 'you' you from making a similar jump (or existing!) then you wouldn't be able to do the same to the 'next universe over' and thus that you might be able to go and stop 'next next' you, etc...

Darnit, that was supposed to be a summary.  And I've not mentioned everything yet.  But it'll do for now, I suppose.

4. At the end, you briefly speak of time as a perception. [...]

Do I?  If you mean in the "other observes may have their own idea", that's just standard relativity.  If you mean "time is an illusion" (with or without the Douglas Adams addendum), then I've got sympathy with that idea as well, but I never mentioned my thoughts on that aspect so I'm wondering if we're actually not talking cross-purposes in that part.  (Easy to do, with this subject.)


Anyway, I'm also interested in your "derived data".  Care to elaborate?




[1] Noting that you couldn't observe the actual bouncing light, necessarily, but you could get your cue off of the same bit of the mirror (e.g. the bit that keeps the signal reinforced) that signals to the subject with the clock that a bounce has occured.  Look, it's a thought experiment, you work out the practical bits yourself.

[2] 'Eventually' in the sense of a more 'meta-time' sense.

[3] There are arguments that a future-you-now-in-the-'wrong'-branch could go back once (or twice, or several times) more and eventually be the progenitor of the branch from which the original-you occurred.  "Put right what once went wrong", as it were, insofar as the original "wrong" is actually the branch that never had you even starting to bounce around the timeline, 'you' (spontaneously) arrived and branched off a disrupted branch in which a time-travel virgin 'you' could set off, create further 'wrong' branches with further disrupted futures until eventually becoming the 'you' who spontaneously arrived and allowed the whole chain of events to occur.  To be honest, that's how many time-travel themed movies reduce down to, anyway.

[Farmerbob]

  There's a reason why it takes a PHD level degree to have any real understanding of physics.

1)  The physics we learn in high school is mostly what had been figured out by people before the industrial revolution.

2)  The stuff you learn in a four year degree is mostly what had been figured out before computers existed.

3)  Post grad work is when you get into the stuff that it took computers to figure out.

[Lagslayer]

@ Starver (quoting would be a huge block of text)

I can elaborate, but as a warning ahead of time, I do not have a degree in physics. This is just stuff I worked out from various theories I've read about (and from what I could understand of them) and whatever I happened to watch on the science channel about them.

I believe that greater than light travel is possible, and that light has mass. Well, not the light itself, but the particle it is attached to. I also assume that energy is just the motion part of matter, so they would be inseparable. Given that light can be sucked into a black hole, and that light has momentum leads me to believe that it has mass. The particle may be so small that we cannot measure it, but just because we can't detect it does not mean it is not there. If light is not just "pure energy", and therefor not pure movement, then that means there is no upper limit to how much energy a particle can hold, if it is directed properly (not randomly, because it would then explode). As for black holes, I see no reason to believe anything other than that they are super compacted matter, and thus, have a lot of gravity. Light moves fast, but if it is attached to a particle, it will be affected by gravity. This is normally not noticeable because light moves so fast and most celestial bodies have relatively little gravity, leaving very little to measure.

As for branching timelines, everything about them is strictly theoretical right now. We can't prove any of it yet, so I can't use any of it to back something else up. And if there are no branching timelines, then time is strictly linear (for the purposes of this argument, I'm considering alternate universe timelines to not be time travel at all). A self creating paradox (you are your own grandfather) could not occur because you never existed to give birth to your father in the first place, so you were never born to go back in time (but if you were to somehow overcome that obstacle, it could continue on as normal). If it were a negative feedback loop paradox (you killed your grandfather), then you would have no reason to go back in time in the first place, or you never existed to go back in time in the first place. Then your grandfather never would have been killed, so you would be born as normal, then you would go back to kill him, etc. Time would never be able to progress again (assuming no branching timelines) because it is locked around this event which keeps preventing itself from happening.

Well, if time isn't a dimension, then what is it? Then I thought about color blindness, and it seemed to fit with the concept of time as well. Sight is a perception. What you call blue, a color blind person might not be able to distinguish from another color. I would also use infra-red as an example. Snakes have special heat sensors that let them "see" the heat better than we do, but who is to say they see it in color? Our heat vision goggles measure the incoming heat source, then show us patterns of light in our visible spectrum, so that we can examine it with our eyes. We don't see the heat, we see a translation that the goggles provide for us. How are we to know how a snake interprets the data? We don't know how to read intricate data like that yet. Maybe it's like we feel it through our skin, but more sensitive. Time is similar. People perceive time differently, and it's why some people can count off exactly ten seconds in their head every time, and others couldn't do it to save their life. It would also explain a bullet time effect. The adrenaline heightens our senses and lets us process data faster. Time would appear to slow down because our minds sort it out so quickly, and then it just sits there, waiting for more to come in. Similarly, if our perception were to slow, everything would appear to be moving super fast because we can't process the data as quickly as we normally would. In this sense, time is still relative, but in the same way any other perception is.

As for the fourth dimension, I've already explained why I'm not ready to accept objects with less than 3. If they cannot exist with less than 3, then how can they exist with more? It must be able to work both ways. We don't know how gravity works, and a 4th dimension could explain it, but I just don't know if it really is the answer.

[Il Palazzo]

I was going to rant because of the overwhelming arrogance that I see. But I shan't.

Lagslayer, "derived data" means that there should be some data and some derivations, not just fancy philosophising. This is not science. Science is not about beliefs, just data, mathematics and more data. Your approach has none, yet you readily dismiss those which do, for no good reason.

[Starver]

@ Starver (quoting would be a huge block of text)

You're right, and I know how guilty I am for making huge blocks of text.

(Here, now excised, was a point-for-point addressing of what you say.  Not a rant, and it had a lot of "yerbut" about the 'normal' physics and was all about "yes all that timeline stuff is theoretical, that's what I was saying", rather than completely "nonononono!" about it all, but I'd told myself I wouldn't go on too long in my reply, and had failed.  But Il Palazzo got in there before I'd finished refining it, cutting it down, etc.  In fact, I'd just added the following pair of paragraphs, which is the only bit I shall let stand.)


Pre-posting addendum: That's a coincidence, I've just heard a report about the ALICE detector, on the radio (a programme which I'd recorded yesterday morning, and only just got around to listening to because I happen to like listening to news programmes like this while tapping away on the keyboard).  This detector is supposed to test String Theory (and others), and that requires more than three dimensions, for reasons you can easily look up and make your own mind up about.  I'd completely forgotten about ALICE.  And the only reason I'm adding this addendum is because of a recurring problem that means my internet link is flaky, at the moment.

Now, the following is admittedly more 'conspiracy theory', but just imagine that a stable timeline could not occur in which I had not in some way mentioned the above addendum (for whatever reason, you can use your imagination as to how!).  Having a timecop appear in the room next to me and reminding me about it would be one solution, but the universe having engineered the situation such that my internet link has already been flaky, well in advance, so that I'm well prepared for it to happen 'normally'.  Or it might just happen to be a deterministic happening that was always going to happen.  (But, you see, that's how insidious the universe works to maintain its own consistency!!! )

[Lagslayer]

I was going to rant because of the overwhelming arrogance that I see. But I shan't.

Lagslayer, "derived data" means that there should be some data and some derivations, not just fancy philosophising. This is not science. Science is not about beliefs, just data, mathematics and more data. Your approach has none, yet you readily dismiss those which do, for no good reason.

I was under the impression that he wanted to know how I came to my conclusion.

As for what backs up my theory, it is in accordance with all the laws of physics except those which assume time travel is possible.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/04/spacetime-has-no-time-dimension-new-theory-claims-that-time-is-not-the-4th-dimension.html
http://scienceray.com/physics/considering-time-as-the-fourth-dimension/
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-scientists-spacetime-dimension.html

@ Starver (quoting would be a huge block of text)

You're right, and I know how guilty I am for making huge blocks of text.

(Here, now excised, was a point-for-point addressing of what you say.  Not a rant, and it had a lot of "yerbut" about the 'normal' physics and was all about "yes all that timeline stuff is theoretical, that's what I was saying", rather than completely "nonononono!" about it all, but I'd told myself I wouldn't go on too long in my reply, and had failed.  But Il Palazzo got in there before I'd finished refining it, cutting it down, etc.  In fact, I'd just added the following pair of paragraphs, which is the only bit I shall let stand.)


Pre-posting addendum: That's a coincidence, I've just heard a report about the ALICE detector, on the radio (a programme which I'd recorded yesterday morning, and only just got around to listening to because I happen to like listening to news programmes like this while tapping away on the keyboard).  This detector is supposed to test String Theory (and others), and that requires more than three dimensions, for reasons you can easily look up and make your own mind up about.  I'd completely forgotten about ALICE.  And the only reason I'm adding this addendum is because of a recurring problem that means my internet link is flaky, at the moment.

Now, the following is admittedly more 'conspiracy theory', but just imagine that a stable timeline could not occur in which I had not in some way mentioned the above addendum (for whatever reason, you can use your imagination as to how!).  Having a timecop appear in the room next to me and reminding me about it would be one solution, but the universe having engineered the situation such that my internet link has already been flaky, well in advance, so that I'm well prepared for it to happen 'normally'.  Or it might just happen to be a deterministic happening that was always going to happen.  (But, you see, that's how insidious the universe works to maintain its own consistency!!! )

I am willing to admit that some of my theory is speculation, but at the same time, I'm also quite reluctant to accept fresh data if I can't personally verify it. I also realize my theories are kind of boring compared to the alternatives. I'm not a physics expert, so I do what I can to analyze it a different way. I have a hard time trusting someone who claims to have all the answers, but I have no way to verify them. ALICE is that super collider, right? The one they are afraid to use because it could blow up the earth? I've heard a lot about that. I suspect they will find some new sub-atomic particles and super dense elements, but little else. I am interested in seeing how it goes, though.

As for the length, I appreciate thoroughness. I just thought it would clutter up the page if we kept pyramiding eachothers' quotes.

[Starver]

I was under the impression that he wanted to know how I came to my conclusion.

I did, but it was the "data I've collected myself" bit that intrigued me.  Not in any way wanting to insult you (or anyone else) but it's similar to someone quoting bits of the bible to prove that dinosaurs walked alongside man.

[...]it is in accordance with all the laws of physics except those which assume time travel is possible.

What about those laws of physics which do not rule out time travel?  And you're dangerously close to saying "I don't believe it happens because, when I rule out all the theories that say that it can happen, there's nothing that says it's happening".

[...]I'm also quite reluctant to accept fresh data if I can't personally verify it.

Very laudable, but at some point I might have had to take as accepted and proven fact that the spectra of distant stars is shifted and that this means they are receding from us (or us from them, or each just receding from everything in general, obviously) if I didn't have time to make such an observation myself (trusting that the equipment that I did not scratch-build myself was working how it was supposed to, of course...).  Australia I take as a fact, despite the fact that I've never been more westerly than Pennsylvania, USA, nor more easterly than East Germany (as was), and certainly not south of the equator.

Admittedly, neither of those are quite as speculative as theories relating to the nature of the universe.  Here, we're talking about things which are into the same sort of realm (if not further, given that none of us discussing this are likely to be quite as inspired) of unknowableness as stood before Einstein while turning Maxwell's equations into the whole Relativity issue.  (To somewhat misrepresent what happened, for the sake of brevity.)  Indeed, issues regarding Relativity stood 'unproven' for a long time, at least until a certain solar eclipse, and there's still mysteries as to what it all means, but it just happens to answer certain questions in a way that agree very much with reality as we see it.  There is room for someone to posit "I think that the universe exists in a 10 dimensional membrane, because it explains something more thoroughly than all the ideas based around a mere 3 dimensions do not".  There's still room for someone else to put forward their own alternative.  (Within limits, because "God arranges it all, get over it" has very mileage in it.  It may even be true, but it explains nothing and is a dead-end explanation that brooks no further inquisitiveness on the part of man.)


BTW, I think you're thinking of CERN's Large Hadron Collider, with "the one they are afraid to use because it could blow up the Earth"... which they aren't being afraid to use, because they're using it, and even its worst enemies never suggest it will blow the Earth up.  Mostly they think it'll suck us all into a black hole of our own making.

ALICE is a group of experiments (indeed, the last two letters stand for "Combined Experiments", L=Laser?  Probably should have refreshed my memory with an on-line search, not having dealt with it for quite a while now...) based around an (IIRC) 30-odd MeV system, as opposed to the 7TeV-or-so system of the LHC, but is being used as a 'light source', rather than a particle collider, and aimed at a different set of experiments.  Most of which don't have anything to do with the large-scale nature of the universe, just like the creation of anti-matter is a small part (indeed, really a side-effect experiment) of the LHC, but still interesting to talk about (should the situation arise, although I don't think right now it does).


((Something tells me I don't do justice to the discussion with the way I've cut down my response.  Sorry.))

[Farmerbob]

<snip a lot>
Australia I take as a fact, despite the fact that I've never been more westerly than Pennsylvania, USA, nor more easterly than East Germany (as was), and certainly not south of the equator.
<snip a lot more>

Bah Australia is a myth.  It's just a bunch of Brits playing a huge practical joke on the rest of the world.  Steve Erwin (sp?) was going to spill the beans and let the world know, so MI6 had to take drastic measures with an agent in a stingray costume.

*whistles innocently*