The Non-Expanding Universe

FQXi ^ | 25 Aug 2009 | Kate Becker

[Huck]

I've never been able to grap these deep physics arguments. Just because we don't have an absolute God-approved clock to check against doesn't mean there is no such thing as time. Things happens in a sequence. If I put a pot of water on to boil, it doesn't instantly boil. I have to wait until it reaches boiling temperature. That waiting period is clearly time. You can argue about whose clock measures that time the best, but you can't argue that there was a period of time bewteen setting the pot on the stove, and the point when it started to boil.

Likewise with the "grid" concept. The grid is a construct to measure space. The grid might be inaccurate, but it doesn't mean space doesn't exist. And even if the Universe is expanding, or if it's a triangle, it pretty much solves nothing, because of infinity. That triangle, or that expanding Universe, exists within space. But isn't there more space outside that space? I can't fathom nothingness. Even empty space is something, isn't it?

[Huck]

PS— I do find it quite entertaining and amazing to consider how little we know about where we are, when we are, why we are. We do well getting by on earth, but the big picture remains a mystery.

[SunkenCiv]

Julian Barbour site:freerepublic.com

Google

Thanks BGHater.

---

· List topics · post a topic · FR page layout · Google ·

---

[SunkenCiv]

Julian Barbour’s web site
http://www.platonia.com/

[BGHater]

Well, there are certain things constant in the Universe, of course, death and taxes.

[EGPWS]

If Barbour had told Einstein to give him a call back in seven minutes, Einstein might have asked: Your minutes or mine? If Barbour had been calling, say, from a spaceship moving at close to the speed of light, or one perched at the lip of a black hole, Einstein would find that each of Barbour’s minutes would last far longer than his. There is no universal reference clock that both Barbour and Einstein could agree on.

Exactly!

It frustrates me to no end that some people miss this important part of physics.

I get flack for not getting the lawn cut yet, when in effect, on MY time it is already cut!

I constantly have to make people realize that their time is simply different than mine.

[Quix]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm

Things that make one go Hmmmmmmm in the night . . .

Thanks.

[mikrofon]

He’ll investigate this possibility with the help of a $99,563 grant from the Foundational Questions Institute

The Institute claimed they gave him $100K -- relativity, y'know...

[brytlea]

From a Christian standpoint not having time as a real thing makes perfect sense. It would explain how God knows what is going to happen—it already has. But I’m not physics smart enough to understand this stuff. We are concrete beings and to us, time DOES exist just as beginnings and endings exist. Except, I also can’t grasp the concept that everything didn’t ALWAYS exist (that is, it has a starting point) because seems that if there was nothing there would never have been anything. OK, now my head hurts!

[trussell]

I get flack for not getting the lawn cut yet, when in effect, on MY time it is already cut!

Who's giving you flack? I'll kick their butt! ;~)

[Michael Barnes]

You still alive and kicking? This is up your alley, right?

[Michael Barnes]

Quix! How ya been?

[aruanan]

"My life’s work has been about finding an alternative theory of change," says Barbour, one that is purely "Machian"—that is, a theory that does away with the grid and clock. Such a theory, he believes, might open the door to quantum gravity.

Grid is Dead?

[Quix]

Up to my usual and getting the new semester off in good form.

Will be interesting to see what happens in such a setting when the

poo HTFan

GOD HAVE MERCY ON US ALL.

Missed seeing you much . . . What’s new in your neck of the woods?

Anything interesting to report from your connections?

What’s your sense, feel, impressions from your perspective?

Do you expect as so many seem to . . . that things will fall utterly apart in great trauma within 30-60 days?

or is it ho hum status quo as far as the eye and senses can see and sense in your sphere?

[aruanan]

Of course, against Barbour's huge pile of words, we have Mills's actually existing hydrinos. He seems to have a much better grasp of physics than Barbour does and it doesn't have to invoke quantum silliness.

[count-your-change]

One can measure the depth of the world's economic depression by the number of books written on esoteric theories that no one reads but are praised to the heavens.

[PIF]

A Time Experiment

Step outside:

Now prove which way a sequence went...

cool water in kettle;
burner lit;
kettle boils;

or

kettle boils;
burner lit,;
cool water in kettle...

Or to put it another way:
If you have a ping pong ball bouncing off two walls - can you prove which wall the ball began bouncing from? There's an article in a very very old Scientific American on this example.

What happens in the middle is called time, but that time may be something subjective and particular only to humans. James Maxwell Clerke posited things happen in fields not vectors (current theoretical physics models). In those theorems, time is simultaneous everywhere. Everything happens at once - we are just incapable of understanding or perceiving it that way.

The perception than time runs forward is an illusion in physics, but one that makes sense to us as humans. However, in a different universe, it might be possible to say that those humans would find the reverse makes more sense for them.

And it is simply a theory that the universe is expanding. While the steady state universe was disproved, it does not mean with all the problems and uncertainties in theoretical physics that it will remain so.

My favorite one is the oft repeated “nothing escapes from a black hole, not even light”. Yet it very clear that something does escape somehow.

Since modern astronomy posits a black hole at the center of every galaxy, nothing should be emitted, but look at any UV/IR image and there indeed is something coming out of the very center of galaxies where nothing should be. No one talks about this wee problem.

Outer space is not empty, but filled with radiations of all kinds. There is nothing we currently know of that actually contains absolutely nothing. We may not be able to graps any of this in our real lives, but it is fun - to me at least - to play with them. :)

[samtheman]

Lee Smolin, a theoretical physicist at PI

This might be off-topic to this thread but the mention of Lee Smolin inspires me to mention that I just read one of his books (The Trouble With Physics) in which he goes to great lengths explaining how the entire grant, job, funding and tenure system conspires to basically lock all non-string-theorists out of the Physics Establishment (at least for a few decades) and I couldn't help thinking as I read that that I bet the EXACT SAME THING is happening in Climate Change (aka Global Warming).

[eldoradude]

Interesting article, thought provoking. Thanks for posting.