From: Tony Christney <tchristney@t...>
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 1998 11:15:45 -0800
Subject: Re: Universal Constants (this is getting a bit long and going a bit off topic...)
Just to add to the madness that is our Universe... > At 23:36 11/02/98 -0700, you wrote: General Relativity implies that gravity, mass and energy are far more bizarre than anyone had previously imagined. They are intimitely connected, yet all have to be postulated in order for physics to work at all (you can't derive mass, it just is...) > states, Oscar's Razor comes into play. (Oscar's Razor states that you Nope, Heisenberg's U P says that the energy _can't_ be constant. Even a laser has a spectrum (albeit very narrow). > Corollary: Since there are no universal measurements, there is no If the speed of light is constant, then what is the speed of light when measured by a photon?, ie, how fast does a photon "feel" like it is going? For example, it takes a finite time for a photon to go from A to B, but since the photon is travelling at the speed of light the distance between A and B is zero, time stands still, and the photon takes an infinite amount of time to go from A to B, which contradicts the fact that it does get to B (very quickly, I might add!). Quantum Mechanically, the photon is actually everywhere in the universe at the same time, until it is detected in a particular place. This has to be so, because for a photon to be emitted, it also has to be absorbed (we can't have a "leaky" universe, can we?). Hence it has to "know" that it will be absorbed before it can be emitted! Again, another contradiction! If nothing can travel faster than light, then how does that little bugger know about its absorber when it is, say, 10 million light years away? Feynman tried explaining this, but even he ran into troubles. A professor of mine had the priveledge of metting RPF and asked him about it. His answer was that "that is just crazy stuff!" (typical Feynman). As for the immortal Pi, try drawing a circle on a sphere! Then Pi changes for every circle of a unique radius! Kinda like how a triangle on a sphere can have interior angles that add up to more than 180. As an aside, many physics students learn the concept of a closed, expanding, yet infinte universe through the analogy of standing on an inflating baloon. At any point on the baloon, the space around that point is expanding away from that point. The further you look, the faster that part is moving away from you. Hence the quest for the elusive Hubble Constant. The problem is when you consider the point directly opposite you on the balloon. Whichever way you look, that point is moving away from you at the maximum speed possible. However, if you look in opposite directions simultaneously, the point(s) seem to be moving towards each other! In fact, if you look all the way around to your own back, things get even more bizarre! Could this be what we are seeing when we look at Quasars? Are they actually the same thing that we see when we look in the other direction? Would someone standing near a Quasar see US as a living in a Quasar, while things around him seem quite normal? > Whether this allows you to communicate effectively with an (Just when you thought I was done, ha ha ha!) Even atomic decay rates are not constant. Its impossible to slow them down enough! And when they are slow enough, they have already decayed down to their lowest possible energy! Interstingly, the atomic clocks used in orbit for GPS (among other things) keep different time than identical clocks on Earth! As you can see, if I were to write sci-fi, I would probably confuse myself so much that I wouldn't even be able to write an intro! My readers would likely see my name on the cover and just leave it on the shelf! BTW, I don't really expect anyone to reply to these comments. Most of the questions I am posing have no (known) answers. Indeed, some of the questions may have no meaning at all! I'm just trying to show what can happen when "logic" is applied to something completely outside of our realm of experience. Some things just are, and we have to learn to accept apparent contradiction in order to preserve our sanity... > TTFN