There Is No Single Instant In Time 672
tekkieRich writes "Some interesting news from the world of physics. Supposedly, in this paper, the author answers some of the major paradoxes (achilles vs. the turtle and Zeno) concerning our understanding of time. 'Impressed with the work is Princeton physics great, and collaborator of both Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman, John Wheeler, who said he admired Lynds' "boldness," while noting that it had often been individuals Lynds' age that "had pushed the frontiers of physics forward in the past."'"
Article Text (Score:3, Informative)
Contact: Brooke Jones
Brooke.Jones@australia.edu
Independent Communications Consultant
Ground-breaking work in understanding of time
Mechanics, Zeno and Hawking undergo revision
Full size image available through contact
A bold paper which has highly impressed some of the world's top physicists and been published in the August issue of Foundations of Physics Letters, seems set to change the way we think about the nature of time and its relationship to motion and classical and quantum mechanics. Much to the science world's astonishment, the work also appears to provide solutions to Zeno of Elea's famous motion paradoxes, almost 2500 years after they were originally conceived by the ancient Greek philosopher. In doing so, its unlikely author, who originally attended university for just 6 months, is drawing comparisons to Albert Einstein and beginning to field enquiries from some of the world's leading science media. This is contrast to being sniggered at by local physicists when he originally approached them with the work, and once aware it had been accepted for publication, one informing the journal of the author's lack of formal qualification in an attempt to have them reject it.
In the paper, "Time and Classical and Quantum Mechanics: Indeterminacy vs. Discontinuity", Peter Lynds, a 27 year old broadcasting school tutor from Wellington, New Zealand, establishes that there is a necessary trade off of all precisely determined physical values at a time, for their continuity through time, and in doing so, appears to throw age old assumptions about determined instantaneous physical magnitude and time on their heads. A number of other outstanding issues to do with time in physics are also addressed, including cosmology and an argument against the theory of Imaginary time by British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking.
"Author's work resembles Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity", said a referee of the paper, while Andrei Khrennikov, Prof. of Applied Mathematics at Vaxjo University in Sweden and Director of ICMM, said, "I find this paper very interesting and important to clarify some fundamental aspects of classical and quantum physical formalisms. I think that the author of the paper did a very important investigation of the role of continuity of time in the standard physical models of dynamical processes." He then invited Lynds to take part in an international conference on the foundations of quantum theory in Sweden.
Another impressed with the work is Princeton physics great, and collaborator of both Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman, John Wheeler, who said he admired Lynds' "boldness", while noting that it had often been individuals Lynds' age that "had pushed the frontiers of physics forward in the past."
In contrast, an earlier referee had a different opinion of the controversial paper. "I have only read the first two sections as it is clear that the author's arguments are based on profound ignorance or misunderstanding of basic analysis and calculus. I'm afraid I am unwilling to waste any time reading further, and recommend terminal rejection."
Lynds' solution to the Achilles and the tortoise paradox, submitted to Philosophy of Science, helped explain the work. A tortoise challenges Achilles, the swift Greek warrior, to a race, gets a 10m head start, and says Achilles can never pass him. When Achilles has run 10m, the tortoise has moved a further metre. When Achilles has covered that metre, the tortoise has moved 10cm...and so on. It is impossible for Achilles to pass him. The paradox is that in reality, Achilles would easily do so. A similar paradox, called the Dichotomy, stipulates that you can never reach your goal, as in order to get there, you must firstly travel half of the distance. But once you've done that, you must still traverse half the remaining distance, and half again, and so on. What's more, you can't even get started, as to travel a certain distance, you must firstly travel half
Mirror (Score:2, Informative)
Nothing new under the sun (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Groundbreaking? (Score:5, Informative)
Having been exposed to that "scene", I can tell you that the referees for papers submitted to academic journals are capable of being quite clueless when they want to be. I've known a number of authors who got comments back from referees which made it quite clear the referees hadn't even bothered trying to understand the paper.
Believe it or not, the whole paper-refereeing scene isn't that much different from the Slashdot moderation system. Referees are chosen more or less at random (from within the community of people who are knowledgeable about the paper's subject matter, and who are willing to read and comment on a paper.) And just like Slashdot, some of them won't take the time to read the paper completely, some won't understand what the paper is really saying, and some will let their own personal biases determine how they vote.
TheFrood
Re:Groundbreaking? (Score:5, Informative)
It isn't a theory, rather a paradox. If you keep dividing the time & distance intervals, the two objects never pass each other. They just get infinitely closer. Hence the paradox. The paradox (and most of science for that matter) makes the assumption that time can be measured in finite bits.
What this guy is saying that there are no moments in time (or rather, there is no basic/smallest unit of time), which is why the two objects pass each other.
When you think about it for a little bit, it makes sense. It's kind of like PI
Re:Groundbreaking? (Score:3, Informative)
As for Achilles' "paradox", it took some time for me to understand it, but now it is obvious that the mathematical model used simply cannot account for the time beyond the point where Achilles passes the tortoise. Therefore, in that model, of course he cannot pass it, and time "stops". This not being what we observe in reality, a better model is required; just like Newtonian mechanics not being compatible with electromagnetics, time dilation, etc. but simpler.
I'd have to read the actual paper, but the linked article definitely stinks and points to the guy being a crackpot. One of many...
PDF of the actual paper can be found here (Score:4, Informative)
It may not be the same paper that will be published in Foundation of Physics Letter in August. But it is a complete paper on Peter Lynds' discussion on Zeno's Paradox.
Get it before it's
Strange. (Score:3, Informative)
Link to PDF of actual paper (Score:3, Informative)
Just in case anyone actually wants to read it before commenting.
Re:Crackpot? Explain how. (Score:4, Informative)
In science the burden of proof is on you. If you can't make your case so that you peers can readily understand the evidence your work will most likely be disqualified with comments like those he got from the referee.
You may be 100% right but if your paper is confusing, uses unorthodox terminology and contains crap figures you can bet that the referee is going to disqualify it. This guy should have co-authored the paper with a professional scientist who knows the proper language and the way to present new ideas. And this attitude is not elitism. Science must be ultraconservative to keep the crackpots out. And unlike the crackpots would like to believe, given enough time and attempts to push a new revolutionary theory through (not by one person but by many) it will eventually be accepted as the proof for it accumulates.
Re:Is this a hoax? (Score:5, Informative)
Try Googling "Peter Lynds" or check out a similar thread at the Chinese University of Hong Kong: http://www.phy.cuhk.edu.hk/course/phy2002/forum/m
Re:Time is mostly subjective anyway... (Score:4, Informative)
The brain can't monitor the world continuously so it "samples" it's enviroment every, say, 1/50th of a second. However if something threatening is happening it will sample more often, say every 1/100th of a second. This would be why time seems to slow down in an accident. Conversely it samples less often when it's not threatened, ie when you're enjoying yourself, so time seems to go faster.
I don't remember it saying anything about why boring things seem to take so long, maybe it's just the contrast between the "fun" sampling rate and the "normal" sampling rate.
here is the actual paper (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Groundbreaking? (Score:5, Informative)
people learned how to sum an infinity series.
Say the archilles is running at 1meter per second
and is 1 meter behind the tortoise who is moving at 1/2 a meter per second, then
v = D/T for that total, and for any given length
of time,
D_total = D_1 + D_2 + D_3 + D_4...
T_total = T_1 + T_2 + T_3 + T_4...
D = 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8... = 2
T = 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8... = 2
So archilles passes the tortois after 2 seconds
just as he should. Of course poor zeno who never
learned to sum series or break out of loops is stuck counting ever smaller freese frames in
an infinite regression, like the famous oozalum bird. But that doesn't bother our athlete or his
slow foe, or nature one iota.
Re:Slashdot (Score:3, Informative)
[cuhk.edu.hk]
The source that everyone keeps getting this article from is a self published online journal, meaning noone has read it or reviewed it, the author just submitted it himself.
[pitt.edu]
There is a certain anti intellectualism that runs through slashdot sometimes that i find disturbing.
I will concede that it might, just might be legit, but the markers are all there for a hoax.
Re:Overclocking the human brain (Score:3, Informative)
Other physics news (Score:5, Informative)
other recent physics news...
1. The've just found a pentaquark state.
The rule in quark theory and QCD (the theory of
the 'color' force that binds quarks), is that
quarks always come in triplets or quark anti-quark pairs. Haven't never seen a free quark, theres always been a little nagging doubt that
quark are real. So that fact that they have found
a suprisingly (for QCD resonances) long lived state that can only be make of 5 quarks, the Z+ at 1540Mev, which made of two up quarks, two down quarks and an anti-strange
quark. It was previously predicted by QCD, and is a classic example of the exception proving the rule.
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/hep-ex/0307088
http://
Dark Matter, after 10 years of searching theres
finally for faint experiment signals that dark
matter exists. This was been found because two experiments looking for collisions between WIMPs
and cold crystals have found significantly more
signal when at time of the year then the earth
is moving against the motion of the galaxies
spiral arm, than when its moving towards it.
http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0307403
That is not the paper the article refers to... (Score:2, Informative)
You linked to a follow-up paper that focuses on Lynds's so-called solution to Zeno's paradoxes. By the way, what is the point of linking to the Google cache when the original PDF [pitt.edu] is still available?
zeno paradox solution (Score:5, Informative)
It seems pretty clear to me that the zeno paradox is not a paradox at all but just our inability to intuitively solve maths with infinite terms. It reminds me of those visual illusion drawings that cause our brains to make sense of things in a missleading way. Check it out. [uml.edu]
At the same time, this does not disprove his paper since the article, is not well writen enough to be useful in determining the validity of this work.
Chronopunk (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Is calculus a valid tool? (Score:2, Informative)
> quantities calculus deals with. So his approach might be valuable in giving
> a different approach to the mathematics behind physics, and therefore
> yielding a new perspective on physics. The article doesn't say that
> he's getting different results, only the means of getting there is different.
but there is only a problem if time is discretized while space is not. That seems highly unlikely (especially in view of relativity which tells us that what is time from one perspective is space from perspective).
If space is also discretized then Achilles cant take the required infinite amount of small steps.
But yes, if they both are discretized then Newtons infinitesimal approach to the equation of motion etc. is wrong. But guess what - that is actually the case and has to be taken into account when doing path integrals in Quantum Field(*). This is a relatively old thing (20-50 years) - nothing new there (but a field with a lot of unanswered problems).
(*): very hardcore stuff - but also very fundamental! For discussions about these fundamental things ordinary quantum mechanics does definitely not suffice. Its like discussing curvature of space using only Newtonian mechanics.
Re:Groundbreaking? (Score:5, Informative)
Einstein on Time (Score:2, Informative)
Einstein on Time
"People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."
"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us "universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
More Giveaways (Score:4, Informative)
Just quickly scanning it, two things seemed suspicious (apart, obviously, from the content):
Re:God help the Mods (Score:5, Informative)
He also had a PhD, did theory and therefore didn't really need a lab, and was most certainly not someone you can reference in this context. His papers were important because they HAD mathematical foundations worked out, and were't just philosophical ramblings.
I hate to break it to you, but until you understand the math and physics behind our current theories, it doesn't make sense to make up new ones. He may be getting some press, but that doesn't mean much.
pmj
Re:Paper was mostly philosophy (Score:3, Informative)
Google is your friend [google.com]
Re:Singularity next? (Score:5, Informative)
In my college astronomy class, the professor told us that Russian astrophysicists call black holes "collapsars." The reason being that (according to prevailing theory, I guess) once inside the black hole event horizon, you would look down and see the surface of the former star collapsing - but it never quite makes it to the "singularity" stage.
It's just perpetually collapsing.
(Also, I just realized that you could see something because light is able to travel away from the star surface - just not past the event horizon. In fact, if I remember my Hawking correctly - aside from the "tidal" forces that would tear you apart - you wouldn't notice any difference in the universe upon crossing the event horizon).
Re:Groundbreaking? (Score:2, Informative)
Have you read the story surrounding "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" [nyu.edu]? This physicist submitted a paper full of complete nonsense to a social science journal, and they actually accepted it! He later reveals his hoax in a later paper. [nyu.edu] Needless to say, the original journal did not publish it.
Summary of Paper (Score:4, Informative)
Time is not Quantised.
There, that's a nice, neat summary.
Which if true has all sorts of interesting implications. The argument appears to be that if time was quantised - as all other things, like space, energy etc appear to be - then the Universe could be described by a single n-dimensional vector containing all information. (ie a longgggg list of numbers describing where everything is, but not where it's going as rate-of-change derivatives aren't possible if time is quantised.). It would be "stuck" in this position, if you like. Alternately, if derivatives were allowable, everything would be predictable, with no uncertainty. Heisenberg Uncertainty means continuous unquantised time.
He may be right, he may be wrong, but this is interesting enough either way to be worth study.
Achilles/Zeno != Paradox (Score:5, Informative)
It's actually quite easy to realize why Achilles 'never' catches up to the tortoise: the paradox draws our attention away from the passing of time.
In any given instant, Achilles makes up a certain amount of distance, and the tortoise moves further off by a little bit.
But the trick in the paradox is that at each 'iteration' of the paradox, a shorter amount of time is passing.
Why a shorter amount of time? Because both Achilles and the tortoise are traveling at a constant (but different) speed, and each 'iteration' has Achilles less ground than the iteration before.
If you do the math, the increments of time between each iteration sums up to equal exactly the time when you would expect Achilles to pass the tortoise.
In other words, the paradox is just a trick - break up the time leading up to the fast Achilles passing a slow tortoise into infinite slivers of time, each sliver slightly shorter than the previous one.
The paradox occurs when we assume each sliver of time is the same amount, and that an infinite amount of them results in an infinite amount of time.
Just a trick, nothing more.
Groundbreaking? NO (Score:3, Informative)
But Zeno's "theories" are obviously wrong. The man walking across a road will get there. Even Zeno really knew this. Here we have a theory that tries to explain why he will not get there! There's actually growing evidence that your statement but the interval can get infinitely smaller is wrong and the the interval can not shrink beyond a certain quantum size. The quantum interval is quite small, and makes time seem continuos in our normal macroscopic viewpoint, but it avoids the problems of singuarities and other paradoxes of the quantum world. It makes sense too: consider the smallest units of any theory, strings, super strings, or whatever; could there be any concept of time shorter than it takes one of these to do something?
Re:Questionable (Score:2, Informative)
Einstein was working as a patent clerk because he couldn't find a job teaching Physics or Mathematics, the two areas he had received formal university training in.
Re:Black Holes in Russia (Score:3, Informative)
The original paper is HERE, not the Zeno one. (Score:5, Informative)
Please don't spread misinformation. (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, there's no reason why light couldn't pass the "event horizon." It's just that light emitted from within the event horizon doesn't have enough energy to completely escape the black hole.
This is not true. Any photons emitted at the event horizon in a directly outward direction will stay on the event horizon, and those emitted in other directions will travel toward the center. Any photons emitted in any direction inside the event horizon will travel toward the center. Any light that does happen to be outside the event horizon has no obstructions to "completely escaping", although it may be severely redshifted depending on its proximity to the event horizon.
A black hole is more than just a place with a high escape velocity. The associated curvature of spacetime ensures that events inside the event horizon cannot affect events outside. You may want to read something like MTW [amazon.com] (especially chapter 33) to get a non-pop-science view of relativity.
The Theory of Distance - Time (Score:2, Informative)
There are much more thoroughly thought out and soundly grounded works that preceed this paper (such as the distance-time premise of Keith Maxwell Hardy).
Lynds' work is a nice critical piece, but it does not propose a working testable hypothesis.
http://www.comcity.com/distance-time/ [comcity.com]
"The distance-time premise is that distance and time are joined together in nature, possessing dual characteristics of distance and time. This premise contrasts with traditional views which separate time and space. The premise of distance-time may be proven wrong if distance or time can be measured independently. However, if any measurement is accomplished by particle motion, then an independent distance or time measurement has not been achieved since particles travel across distance and time jointly.
The rod (ruler) measurement has been traditionally seen as a measurement of distance separate from time. However, the location of every part of the rod is communicated by photons that traverse distance and time. Therefore, rod measurements are dependent on particle motion. They are not a measurement of distance separate from time. Furthermore, the difference between locations of physical bodies is always communicated by particle motion across distance and time. For instance, if I try to determine the difference of position between the earth's and the moon's surfaces, I may use a light beam or rocket. Yet, both are groups of particles which cross distance and time and move between the earth and the moon. Therefore, I would not achieve measurements of distance independent of time. Consequently, all measurements of distance by an observer in nature are made across a period of time.
Traditionally, the clock measurement also has been seen as a measurement of time separate from distance. However, clocks use particle motion in order to measure. The traditional clock has spindles which sweep across the face of the clock, crossing time and distance together. Also, a digital electronic clock requires electrons to move across time and distance jointly. These clocks do not achieve measurements of time independent of distance.
In the previous examples, measurements of distance or time, which are independent of each other, were not achieved. Therefore, the distance-time premise remains valid. However, traditional theories, such as relativity, do not use particles to define distance and time, and they do not satisfy the distance-time premise; instead, they always separate time from distance."
Re:Black Holes in Russia (Score:3, Informative)
That's a negative:
* "Black hole" in Russian is a literal translation of the English term. (Chyornaya dira, for the curious).
* It is absolutely not an obscene expression. Matter of fact, until the parent post, i didn't begin to realize it had obscene connotations. (which it does to some extent, to a perverted mind like mine - but so does almost any expression you can come up with for that matter
* I have never heard the term "collapsor", at least in popular science/college level physics. Perhaps it may have been an older term, or used in professional physics literature on level well above textbooks I read. Donno.
-DVK
Re:Singularity next? (Score:1, Informative)
If you use the coordinates of the person's local inertial frame, there is nothing wrong with some things nearer the black hole (in those coordinates) affecting some things farther from the black hole. So it is possible for a person's heart to pump blood to her brain in a normal fashion, and if you are in a spaceship and you look down, you will see the floor of the spaceship. (So it's not literally true that "you won't see much.") These things would be hard to reconcile with the features of a BH if you were a little naive (like me), and did not realize at first that the statements which are made about black holes are generally framed in terms of a global set of coordinates which you are continually falling through.
Anyway, that is how I reconcile things, so that the requirement that all objects have dr/dt < 0 for their whole trajectory beyond the event horizon is fulfilled, while at the same time, life may proceed as normal for an astronaut passing into a supermassive BH. (But I've only taken one term of GR, during which I was asleep half the time, so I could be totally wrong.)