The Nature of the Universe, Time Travel and More...

[CorporalCaptain]

If we're talking about conventional engineering, then knowing that something is possible can limit search spaces, which increases the potential for proliferation of a piece of technology without the total sharing or transfer of its design in complete detail. This usually occurs when a piece of technology is reverse engineered. For that to be feasible, you generally need to posses some elements of the design in concrete form. Even only photographs of an aircraft could qualify, but the more data the better, such as knowledge of what types of materials are in the supply chain. There's nothing metaphysical exhibited in this process.

 

[publiusr]

There have been instances where folks show up at the patent office within hours…more sociology perhaps.

 

[Will The Serious]

There have been instances where folks show up at the patent office within hours…more sociology perhaps.

Leibniz and Newton. It's because the same problems that required Calculus were being worked on across the scientific community.

knowing that something is possible can limit search spaces,

Same idea. The field of work limits the field of play.

-Will

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

We may have seen a physics breakthrough or two:

Einstein's dream of a unified field theory accomplished?

During the latter part of the 20th century, string theory was put forward as a unifying theory of physics foundations. String theory has not, however, fulfilled expectations. That is why we are of the view that the scientific community needs to reconsider what comprises elementary forces and...

phys.org

They consider charge to just be compression of spacetime.

It turns out that the mathematics in the paper is really bad - as is the physics.

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I hadn't read the paper, but I agree with Sabine's critical analysis. There's really no excuse for not getting such things checked. Any peer review should have spotted the errors.

 

[Will The Serious]

There's really no excuse for not getting such things checked. Any peer review should have spotted the errors.

Agreed. Sabine seemed to indicate the paper was written by students. Do students not give such papers to their professors to look over?

-Will

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Peer review in Physics used to be a lot more rigorous - at times even sarcastic. I'm talking about in the coffee lounge as well as academic papers. However, that was over three decades ago before the rise of the Internet and the pressure to publish. "Never mind the quality, feel the width."

 

[Will The Serious]

This 4th dimension Sabine mentions the article requiring for elections? We traditionally think of time as the fourth dimension and Einstein's relativity requires it; yet the way Sabine talks about it in her review, it seems as though she felt that was unusual. Of course, any discussion of a force or a geometry that causes a change in the relationships of matter (gravity's free-fall geometry only works with time in the mix, as well as any discussion of acceleration) would need time as part of its calculation. Is the fourth dimension in this paper something other than time? Is time treated separately or can time be inserted as the fourth dimension for electromagnetic force?

-Will

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

This 4th dimension Sabine mentions the article requiring for elections? We traditionally think of time as the fourth dimension and Einstein's relativity requires it; yet the way Sabine talks about it in her review, it seems as though she felt that was unusual. Of course, any discussion of a force or a geometry that causes a change in the relationships of matter (gravity's free-fall geometry only works with time in the mix, as well as any discussion of acceleration) would need time as part of its calculation. Is the fourth dimension in this paper something other than time? Is time treated separately or can time be inserted as the fourth dimension for electromagnetic force?

You're misunderstanding what she said. It's the old (1921) Kaluza-Klein Theory that has the extra tiny rolled-up spatial dimension. The new paper claimed to do something different, but is so full of basic errors that no-one should take it seriously.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

We need more Sabine's within Academia, more people to debunk, be cycnical, be critical.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

There are so many of these nonsense theories around that debunking them all could be a full-time job - albeit unpaid and very unpopular. At least, Sabine probably gets some income from YouTube, but it has made her a pariah in some circles - such as the HE Physics mob who want to spend billions building ever larger experiments. I can appreciate the big money being spent on astronomy - HST, JWST, etc, - has been well spent, but the LHC hasn't delivered anything much other than the Higgs Boson.

 

[publiusr]

That and inspiring Galaxy class plaster strips.

Didn’t Reagan want Superconducting Supercollider to have a slanted section for a beam to go above ground?

Instead of lasers for Starshot-maybe a Starwisp deal?

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

There are so many of these nonsense theories around that debunking them all could be a full-time job - albeit unpaid and very unpopular. At least, Sabine probably gets some income from YouTube, but it has made her a pariah in some circles - such as the HE Physics mob who want to spend billions building ever larger experiments. I can appreciate the big money being spent on astronomy - HST, JWST, etc, - has been well spent, but the LHC hasn't delivered anything much other than the Higgs Boson.

Astronomy is always a good way to spend Scientific Money because it usually brings back clear results & knowledge in reasonable time.

The large Physics Experiments are much harder to justify.

 

[Will The Serious]

There has been a lot of time and attention and, I presume, money on a Unified Theory. I don't think the scientific community is a lot closer to that goal, nor is it further from agreeing that it is something that will come about. The above paper may be riddled with errors and ridiculous in its clumsiness, but has it put anyone off of their belief a unified theory is possible? I dare say even Sabine's belief in a unifying theory hasn't waned in the face of this or other failed attempts to come up with one. It isn't like we should put a time limit on discovery or even a budget cap. It's just hard for supporters to justify the expense when the outcome is uncertain and in a possibly distant future.

How does an investor know, before the money is spent, that answers won't be found?

What is a waste of money anyhow? Money is like energy, it doesn't just disappear. Someone receives that money and recircuates it. There is a loss to other possible beneficiaries, perhapse, but the economy is still stimulated by the expenditure. And that money is still being passed around.

Maybe that money even flows towards a kind of entropy. The more money flows out of the pockets of the wealthy: people, corporations, governments, churches, the wider it gets distributed and the closer it moves towards leveling the economic field. Eventually, as everyone begins to have the same as everyone else, less work gets done. Just as much money, but no organization to do work with it (entropy). The balance of bank accounts means no big projects to invest in. We have to, therefore, pump money back uphill, not necessarily the same hill, to regain money's potential energy. That way, the reservoir of money at the top of that hill can spend it downward, on another wild speculation.

Sorry, I was just thinking random thoughts out loud as I wrote. This is a good analogy. Money vs mater/energy has potential energy, kinetic energy, and entropy. n-dollars flow in over over time t, and n-dollars will flow out over t. Time may become compressed or stretched out at either end of the flow, depending upon the savings or credit spending habits of the particular pipeline, but over all, it will equal out. What goes in, comes out.

Don't mind me. I do think the analogy works, though.

-Will

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Money is a purely human construct, being a tokenised form of barter. The divergence of the money supply M is not zero as more can be printed/minted - whether physically or virtually. It does seem to obey a simplistic equation of exchange such as MV = PQ (or some variation thereof). If its velocity of circulation V and the quantity of goods Q are roughly constant, increasing M also raises the price of goods P. Pumping too much money into the economy can cause harm by creating inflation, so I'd prefer it not go to keeping physicists performing useless effort when their skills might be better used elsewhere rather than in some boondoggle that keeps them comfortable until they retire. There is no motivation to really find a theory of everything as doing so might put them out of a job. Even if we had such a theory, what would we do with it? Create new universes or new ways of killing people? I doubt it'd be much help solving our societal problems.