“Truth is crooked, time is a circle”
Nietzche , Thus spoke Zarathustra

There are ways to introduce paradigmatic changes?

The usual method is to have the old one collapse of its own inherent weaknesses and built the new one from the bottom up, out of the lessons learned. That’s why the Bush administration has given me such a warm fuzzy feeling. It’s so nice to see the old world order collapse when you want to start a new one. Just think, if Gore or Kerry had won, the Republicans would still be in control of the house and senate. Change is bottom up, even if it’s just the foundation crumbling.

Here is part of an essay posted on a yahoogroups that was in my maibox this morning;

Thing is, the History of Science shows that science itself is overburdened with the social aspect, an intrigue I refer to as ’sand box.’ One thing that keeps people in the sand box is the simple function of eating. If you don’t want to play in the sand box of those writing the checks, you don’t get to eat. Got to keep one’s self and one’s family fed, you see. As a result of this, those who will ‘buy in’ when it comes to ‘articles of faith’ are the ones who are earliest to employ, since they don’t ask embarrassing questions. As a result, you get opacities based on what one might otherwise call cloudy thinking, thinking that can usually be tracked back to one leader and a covey of followers or other hangers on.

I think that in any of this we need to be a bit less arrogant than is usually the case in science. I know that may seem a bit odd. But look at the evidence we have. How many times have you heard someone say that in a particular case that the outcome is governed by some equation? I’d guess that you’ve heard it quite a few times. Equations never govern. It’s that simple, the things that we write down or the words we define to suit ourselves govern nothing. What our various equations do, however, is at most predict how things should come out.

John Merryman: Can they propose these dimensions as anything more then the copyrighted product of their own imagination and not loose control over the idea?

Tried to respond.

Growth is bottom up, not top down, so capitalism is at its most vibrant when wealth is most evenly distributed. The problem with treating the economy like a game of Monopoly is that when one person controls everything, the game is over and you start again. In real life this stage is called revolution.

Money is a public utility, not private property. Pass it on.

There are ways to introduce paradigmatic changes? The last line is a important one.

The idea that originally led me off the beaten track was the observation that Omega=1. That the rate of expansion and the force of gravity are balanced. While this point has been open to question, observations from, I believe it was COBE, proved it to be fairly close, if not equal. If this is so, then the universe is ultimately flat, with regions of intergalactic expansion balanced by the gravitational vortexes of galaxies. It first occured to me that the space, as we measured it, that was being pulled into galaxies, was re-emerging as vacuum fluctuation across the open spaces inbetween. In discussing this on forums back in the ’90’s, a physicist pointed out that the logical medium for this transmission was simply light itself. He used a far more complex description, but the point was simple. He also said that when he mentioned it to an older mentor, he was advised that if he wanted a job in the field, he’d do better to find ways to support accepted theory then question it, so he dropped it.
The fact is that politics is as important to science as anything else. I’m into this because as a child I was fifth of 6 kids and I found out early on that the ones in charge got to decide what’s right and what’s wrong, so the only way I could win anything was to understand the facts better then anyone else. It has done me few favors in life because so much of what is accepted, from politics to religion, to economics and yes, even science, is biased towards the power structure and most change occurs when it gets so out of touch with reality that it collapses. As Stephen Jay Gould described it, Punctuated Equilibrium. Catastrophism to the classicists. Revolution to the politicians. Nova to cosmologists. Chaos to everyone else. But as Complexity Theory points out, a little chaos is necessary. Now the fact is that science has quite a few brownie points under its belt, so that the larger society will continue to tolerate its junk code for a long time to come, therefore the current situation isn’t going to change anytime soon. Remember it was well over a millenium between Ptolomy proposing epi-cycles and Copernicius and Galilao refuting them. So that’s why I don’t put much personal capital, beyond the obsession factor, into this discusssion. Here is another idea on another subject that I do get a fair amount of positive feedback on, not because it’s any better than what I keep pointing out here, but because the power structure is so much closer to collapse.

http://www.exterminatingangel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=203&Itemid=118

John, “when” nothing exists there exists no requirement why also “the opposite” should occur as well. You could argue that also an “anti-universe” also should be created, but logically there is no reason to insist on this. So we can use Occams
razor on it if we wish.

Regards,

Carl

Yes, if the universe continues to expand indefinitely, my theory is wrong. However, I feel that there are some compelling reasons to believe that the universe will eventually collapse. Some of these are discussed in my paper, but I feel that the most compelling (and, as yet, generally least recognised) one is that an ever expanding cosmos offers no answer at all to its origin…a question which is not possibe to answer if the universe is thought to have had a beginning at some finite time in the past.

Again, the question of existence over non-existence is a different question. I think you are confusing it with the question of the universe’s origin, to which the model says that there was (and can be) no beginning (but yet that the universe is finite).
Moreover, that the universe (and conditions in it) can have no “causal” explanation.

Best wishes

Peter

If you have something from nothing, then you need its opposite to occur as well. So it’s actually something from its opposite. Otherwise something from nothing would need explanation for what it took to occur.

Anything that is not explaining “Why something rather than nothing” is not explaining anything at all, in my view. Any other explanation involves existence (at some level) to explain existence. This is of course circular logic and must be rejected.

Logic forces us to reject anything but “nothing” for explaining existence. It is only “nothing” that does not need to be explained.

So this all fits together. Why something rather than nothing? Because “it” comes from nothing. And “it” also gets a “finite” beginning as well, as it must.

Regards,

Carl

I get the feeling that you possibly didn’t understand what I said. Perhaps it got lost in the translation.

If it is close to the following description you gave Carl, I think I have a reasonable grasp of your understanding of time.

If you think about time in the regular way, making a distinction between past and future, yes, the universe is eternal. However, if one considers what is actually happening in respect to time in the model, it is finite (though without boundaries). A good way to think about it is to think of a clock, with the whole evolution of the universe from big bang to big crunch taking just 12 hours. Although the hands of the clock will continue to rotate indefinitely, it is the very same 12 hour interval that plays over, not a later one. There are no past or future cycles of the universe. It is one and the same.

The point I’ve been making is that time as process isn’t between a cyclical vs. linear description of time. Consider; If two atoms hit each other, it creates an event. While the atoms proceed from one event to the next, the events go from being in the future to the past. So there are effectively two directions of time. The existing reality goes from past to future events, but the information created goes from being in the future to being in the past. That is why reality, as we perceive it, goes from being present to past. To quote Newton, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” So while we, from our subjective perspective, perceive time as directional, these two effects cancel each other out, so while time has direction, two actually, it doesn’t have dimension. It is not that the cycles of the clock repeat, but that from the perspective of the hands, the face is going counterclockwise. Since the hands represent the physical reality of the present, the units of time, the hours, days, years, what we percieve as the dimensionality of time, is going from being in the future to being in the past. Since current theory is that time is a fundamental dimension, then it is assumed physical reality proceeds along it, from past events to future ones. It is this intuitive understanding that is mistaken, just as we perceive the sun going east to west, when the reality is that the earth rotates west to east.

“I really do see a big problem with the concept of time where ” events and times are all mapped out together, neither happening in the past, present or future, and sharing equal temporal status.” It models time as a static dimension, when time is dynamic process.”

I get the feeling that you possibly didn’t understand what I said. Perhaps it got lost in the translation.

Dear Carln,

“I think that a reality where time reverses on regular basis actually is an eternal existence. It has always “been there”.”

If you think about time in the regular way, making a distinction between past and future, yes, the universe is eternal. However, if one considers what is actually happening in respect to time in the model, it is finite (though without boundaries). A good way to think about it is to think of a clock, with the whole evolution of the universe from big bang to big crunch taking just 12 hours. Although the hands of the clock will continue to rotate indefinitely, it is the very same 12 hour interval that plays over, not a later one. There are no past or future cycles of the universe. It is one and the same.

“I believe there is no contradiction here. What is needed is an explanation for how something exists rather than nothing.”

You didn’t say why. In relation to why something exists rather than nothing, that is an entirely different question and the only one to do with the physical universe that I feel science is unable to offer an answer for.

Best wishes

Peter

rgb, the difference between the frames is (as you seem to know) just a change of field variables. Morally, it’s not much different from a change of coordinates. In particular, any true “observable” won’t depend on the frame. But “size of the universe” (or really “scale factor”) is not an observable; something like “frequency of a photon in the observer’s frame” is. That can be calculated equally well in either frame, of course. In the Jordan frame it’s just a matter of solving the geodesic equation for the photon, so it’s tempting to think of that frame as “what observers really measure.” But you could also do it in the Einstein frame, where your description would involve a direct interaction between the photon and the scalar field.

While a is obviously not an observable, I was thinking (mistakenly) that the Hubble parameters is, or at least directly related to observables. I am guessing that I am going wrong because I am trying to extrapolate intuition based on FRW cosmology, where light rays follow geodesics. But, as you point out, the description in the Jordan frame would be more complicated, probably leading to all directly measurable quantities being the same. Thanks for helping me out.

Don’t knock the supernatural without looking through that door you are opening. No telling what’s on the other side.

it actually has some basis to it that one can retreat too, to see the ultimate form being expressed not only in our universe, but within the scope of our connection with reality.

I can see what you are getting at, that the whole is contained in the parts, but my problem is that trying to give form to function, which is what describing time as a static dimension does, is flawed. Think of it this way; Space is noun, time is verb. One is, the other does. It’s not like physics doesn’t understand this, consider the uncertainty principle, that you can’t measure both position and momentum. In more colloquial terms, you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Trying to describe what is inherently dynamic as static misses the reality entirely. Is it any wonder that physics is trying to explain reality in terms of other dimensions and universes? It is science fiction. Psychedelic physics. Back in ‘98, when Perlmutter and company found out that expansion didn’t match Big Bang Theory, there was no hint of reviewing the theory! Even though it did match a cosmological constant, the only possible explanation the cosmology establishment was willing to consider was that 70% of the universe is dark energy. Sometimes, there really are no weapons of mass destruction. Sometimes it’s the theory that’s wrong, not the evidence.

To which I’ve pointed out that math, like any language, is a model, not an ideal. It is not an argument against what I said, but a retreat into formula.

While this is has been my difficulty, I introduced a basis to the previous argument that is geometrically based. While it may have seemed “philosophical” it actually has some basis to it that one can retreat too, to see the ultimate form being expressed not only in our universe, but within the scope of our connection with reality.

So on that point you are wrong in my view and Jason Dick is right.

Peter Lynds: Recognising what it is just requires one to closely examine one’s regular assumption about cause i.e., that events are always caused by ones (that we normally would term to be) in the past.

Unfortunately I can never agree with Carl’s logic. Mine, “may be” a contradiction.

But here’’s the thing that sets the thought pattern for me about how we reduce our thinking and invite the greater potential of probability becoming into any discussion.

Namagiri, the consort of the lion god Narasimha. Ramanujan believed that he existed to serve as Namagiri´s champion - Hindu Goddess of creativity. In real life Ramanujan told people that Namagiri visited him in his dreams and wrote equations on his tongue.

At first appearance of the ridicules would be the problem of the subconscious mind to introduce such outlandish circumstance to the objective mind to consider?

Based under this process is a mathematical pattern?

Now how could such “reductionistic features” produce such a probability in this situation.

By ‘dilating’ and ‘expanding’ the scope of our attention we not only discover that ‘form is emptiness’ (the donut has a hole), but also that ‘emptiness is form’ (objects precipitate out of the larger ’space’) - to use Buddhist terminology. The emptiness that we arrive at by narrowing our focus on the innermost is identical to the emptiness that we arrive at by expanding our focus to the outermost. The ‘infinitely large’ is identical to the ‘infinitesimally small’.The Structure of Consciousness John Fudjack - September, 1999

This loop is inherent not only in the universe, but with our connection with reality? A Inductive/deductive approach. While this is a philosophical position, it is one that is necessary in providing that third option and enclosing the apparent contradiction with connectivity.

Our attempt to justify our beliefs logically by giving reasons results in the “regress of reasons.” Since any reason can be further challenged, the regress of reasons threatens to be an infinite regress. However, since this is impossible, there must be reasons for which there do not need to be further reasons: reasons which do not need to be proven. By definition, these are “first principles.” The “Problem of First Principles” arises when we ask Why such reasons would not need to be proven. Aristotle’s answer was that first principles do not need to be proven because they are self-evident, i.e. they are known to be true simply by understanding them.

Such acceptance of all things “already existing” allowed for the the provisions of Veneziano and others to introduce the a prior connection to our universe. It set the stage for further perceptions to be introduced? Also, verification.

Does anyone see anything wrong with this position?

You wrote earlier:
“However, the universe can also not have had a beginning at some finite time in the past (if so, what caused it, and what caused that, and so on…). Both ideas result in very real contradiction. ”

I believe there is no contradiction here. What is needed is an explanation for how something exists rather than nothing. And the explanation cannot involve anything but nothing!

Nothingness takes precedence over existence. Nothingness does not need an explanation or a cause. Existence on the other hand, needs any explanation, but cannot be explained by something that exists. Trying to do so is circular logic. The explanation for existence cannot involve anything that exist. So existence has to come from nothing.

But that is easy to understand:

1. “When” nothing exists there are no hinders for something to start to exist. Any such hinders don’t exist “when” nothing exists.

2. There are no conditions the need to be fulfilled for something to start to exist
“when” nothing exist. Any such conditions don’t exist “when” nothing exists.

3. No causation is needed for something to start to exist “when” nothing exits. Such need for causation does not exist “when” nothing exists.

So creation from nothing is actually logical. And when something starts to exist, it also has a beginning (a big bang). And naturally there is no time that “runs” before the big bang. Time (in this universe)

started only to run at the big bang. So we have naturally a finite beginning.

This goes on further. One can for example argue that only self-consistent “things” can start to exist “from” nothing, so that its existence does not in any way contradict itself. So no wonder the laws of physics looks like mathematics. The math keeps the universe self-consistent.

Sorry for the bad English!

Regards,

Carl

Observables are frequently different when observing in different frames of reference. For a rudimentary example, if we take the reference frame of the driver of the car, the car has zero kinetic energy (since the driver is at rest with respect to the car). From the frame of a person on the side of the road, however, the car has significant kinetic energy.

Sure, but then there is a clear way of the observer physically going from one frame to another. These have to do with a physically different state of the observer. In your rudimentary example, you would tell me to get into a car of speed v wrt to the standing man to see the zero velocity (and hence KE).

Going from the Einstein to Jordan frame involves a conformal transformation and redefinitions of a scalar field. This seems like a more mathematical transformation somewhat like a use of a different coordinate system. In that case all observables must be independent of these frames.

Perhaps, you are saying that there is a physical way in which an observer can go from one of these frames to another. If so, I would like to know how. That would perfectly answer my question.

Thanks.

Of course, gr tells us that events and times are all mapped out together, neither happening in the past, present or future, and sharing equal temporal status. My cosmology model actually says the same, while also saying that what we would normally call the future can equally be called the past, and vice versa. As long as one recognises that, like instants and spatial points, space-time points do not exist either, motion can still take place (and the hands of clock rotate etc). This is a given and doesn’t require time (past, present, future, time physically existing etc). If you like, and as I said before, it is motion that enables time (the hands of a clock to rotate), rather than the other way around, and, in physics anyway, one has to forget about the past, present, future, time physically existing, flowing etc. All there is the capability for physical continuity, motion, change etc, in Nature - something which is a given if there is some matter present - and this in turn enables one to represent time (interval) with a clock.

I really do see a big problem with the concept of time where ” events and times are all mapped out together, neither happening in the past, present or future, and sharing equal temporal status.” It models time as a static dimension, when time is dynamic process. It’s like dissecting an organism to find out what makes it alive and then laying all the parts out in a line. Time is a vector because it has direction, but the point I’m trying to make, in pointing out that energy and information go in opposite directions, is that these two directions cancel out. “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Thus; To the hands of the clock, the face goes counterclockwise. Therefore while it may have direction, it just doesn’t have dimension.

If time is a property and consequence of motion, then it is similar to temperature, as they would both be methods of defining and measuring motion. Scale and vector. Even thermodynamics is a vector of a scalar activity.

The same can be said for space and a ruler.

I’m not really setting out to be too heretical, but I don’t see space as being entirely relative. Maybe our mapping of it is, but the territory is another matter. Consider first that gravity is described as bending space because light passing though gravity fields is distorted. Distorted compared to what? To what would otherwise be a straight line through that area. Light passing through a medium such as a glass prism is distorted, but we don’t say that space is bent because we know what the medium distorting it is. We say gravity distorts space because we really haven’t figured gravity out yet, other then it affects the relationships of matter and energy, so we model it as bent space.

Now consider that Inflation Theory says that space itself is expanding, rather then the volume of the universe is simply increasing. What is it expanding relative to? Our most basic concept of distance in space is C, the speed of light in a vacuum. So if space is expanding, it would seem necessary that this basic ruler of distance be stretching as well, such that it would take the same amount of time/duration to cross the same proportion of space. Otherwise the speed of light is based on some other dimension of space then what is being expanded. Example; Say another galaxy is a billion lightyears away. If the universe doubles in size, is that galaxy now two billion lightyears away, or is it still only one billion years away, since our unit of measure, the lightyear, is being stretched as well? Obviously the problem here is that if our unit of measure was being stretched as well, we wouldn’t even be able to detect the expansion, since we would have nothing to compare it to. On the other hand, if C isn’t increasing, then we don’t have expanding space, we having increasing distance in stable space. To put this in context; Doppler Effect isn’t about expanding space either. It is also increasing distance in stable space. The train might be moving away down the tracks, but the tracks are not being stretched. The effect is due to this relationship of motion over distance relative to a stable measure of space.

This throws a large monkey wrench into the Inflation Theory/Big Bang model, because all the galaxies outside our local system are redshifted so that they appear to be flying directly away from us, as if ours was the center of the universe. Thus it was proposed that it is space itself that is expanding, not just the universe in space.

If, on the other hand, we have a negative curvature caused by radiation, being opposed to the positive curvature of gravity, this would explain redshift as a distortion of objective sight lines, as gravity distorts objective sight lines, as previously mentioned. Since it isn’t gravitational vortexes pulling matter and energy around, this wouldn’t actually curve the path of light, but cause it to redshift, as if it had to cross a greater distance then might objectively exist, like walking up the down escalator. Sort of like light climbing over a hill, as opposed to falling into a gravity well. Flat space would be if these two effects balance out. This idea first occured to me on learning that Omega must be very close to 1 for the universe to be as stable as it is. If expansion is balanced by gravity, then there is no additional expansion for the entire universe to expand, so it must be some form of cycle. Thus it can appear that all these other galaxies are flying directly away from us, because we only measure the light crossing the space, not all that falling into other gravity wells. Additionally the pressure of expansion would cause the outer bands of galaxies to spin faster, explaining the reason ascribed to dark matter.

One of your early observations about dimensions not being completely dimensionless, i.e. a point/line/plane cannot have a zero dimension, was very influential to my ideas about space, though I might describe it as a virtual dimension. The point is that they are still a point of reference and not zero. Zero in geometry isn’t the dimensionless point, but the absence of any point, with the potential for all points. In other words, empty space as the absolute. Both everything and nothing, complete neutrality. Flat line down the middle, as well as balance between the two sides. The vacuum that fluctuates.

To tie this back to the discussion of time, if time isn’t actually a dimension, then arguing whether it has a beginning or end is about as meaningless as arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. The only point of relevance would be whether motion has cause. The most basic statement made on this is that the vacuum fluctuates. Space and energy are inseparable.

Fortunately this is advocation, not vocation, or I would be out of work. The only one with the fortitude to actually address these issues I’ve raised on various threads in this forum over the last few weeks has been Jason dick and while he has admitted I may have a point, at least that there are potentially two directions of time, his rebuttal has been that unless I can express it in the mathematical formulae by which time is currently described, any point I might have is meaningless. To which I’ve pointed out that math, like any language, is a model, not an ideal. It is not an argument against what I said, but a retreat into formula. It’s about like saying belief isn’t really religion unless the Mass is in Latin. I can understand the lack of reaction though. The discipline of Physics requires an overwhelming amount of study of a system that is implicitly or explicitly based on the modeling of time as a dimension, so saying it isn’t is like loading a mac program in a PC. Does not compute.

Regards,

John