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Posted on 10/28/2012 8:50:13 PM PDT by JerseyanExile
Physicists have proposed an experiment that could force us to make a choice between extremes to describe the behaviour of the Universe.
The proposal comes from an international team of researchers from Switzerland, Belgium, Spain and Singapore, and is published today in Nature Physics. It is based on what the researchers call a 'hidden influence inequality'. This exposes how quantum predictions challenge our best understanding about the nature of space and time, Einstein's theory of relativity. "We are interested in whether we can explain the funky phenomena we observe without sacrificing our sense of things happening smoothly in space and time," says Jean-Daniel Bancal, one of the researchers behind the new result, who carried out the research at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. He is now at the Centre for Quantum Technologies at the National University of Singapore.
Excitingly, there is a real prospect of performing this test. The implications of quantum theory have been troubling physicists since the theory was invented in the early 20th Century. The problem is that quantum theory predicts bizarre behaviour for particles – such as two 'entangled' particles behaving as one even when far apart. This seems to violate our sense of cause and effect in space and time. Physicists call such behaviour 'nonlocal'. It was Einstein who first drew attention to the worrying implications of what he termed the "spooky action at a distance" predicted by quantum mechanics. Measure one in a pair of entangled atoms to have its magnetic 'spin' pointing up, for example, and quantum physics says the other can immediately be found pointing in the opposite direction, wherever it is and even when one could not predict beforehand which particle would do what. Common sense tells us that any such coordinated behaviour must result from one of two arrangements. First, it could be arranged in advance. The second option is that it could be synchronised by some signal sent between the particles.
In the 1960s, John Bell came up with the first test to see whether entangled particles followed common sense. Specifically, a test of a 'Bell inequality' checks whether two particles' behaviour could have been based on prior arrangements. If measurements violate the inequality, pairs of particles are doing what quantum theory says: acting without any 'local hidden variables' directing their fate. Starting in the 1980s, experiments have found violations of Bell inequalities time and time again. Quantum theory was the winner, it seemed. However, conventional tests of Bell inequalities can never completely kill hope of a common sense story involving signals that don't flout the principles of relativity. That's why the researchers set out to devise a new inequality that would probe the role of signals directly. Experiments have already shown that if you want to invoke signals to explain things, the signals would have to be travelling faster than light – more than 10,000 times the speed of light, in fact. To those who know that Einstein's relativity sets the speed of light as a universal speed limit, the idea of signals travelling 10,000 times as fast as light already sets alarm bells ringing.
However, physicists have a getout: such signals might stay as 'hidden influences' – useable for nothing, and thus not violating relativity. Only if the signals can be harnessed for faster-than-light communication do they openly contradict relativity. The new hidden influence inequality shows that the getout won't work when it comes to quantum predictions. To derive their inequality, which sets up a measurement of entanglement between four particles, the researchers considered what behaviours are possible for four particles that are connected by influences that stay hidden and that travel at some arbitrary finite speed.
Mathematically (and mind-bogglingly), these constraints define an 80-dimensional object. The testable hidden influence inequality is the boundary of the shadow this 80-dimensional shape casts in 44 dimensions. The researchers showed that quantum predictions can lie outside this boundary, which means they are going against one of the assumptions. Outside the boundary, either the influences can't stay hidden, or they must have infinite speed. Experimental groups can already entangle four particles, so a test is feasible in the near future (though the precision of experiments will need to improve to make the difference measurable). Such a test will boil down to measuring a single number. In a Universe following the standard relativistic laws we are used to, 7 is the limit. If nature behaves as quantum physics predicts, the result can go up to 7.3. So if the result is greater than 7 – in other words, if the quantum nature of the world is confirmed – what will it mean? Here, there are two choices. On the one hand, there is the option to defy relativity and 'unhide' the influences, which means accepting faster-than-light communication. Relativity is a successful theory that researchers would not call into question lightly, so for many physicists this is seen as the most extreme possibility.
The remaining option is to accept that influences must be infinitely fast – or that there exists some process that has an equivalent effect when viewed in our spacetime. The current test couldn't distinguish. Either way, it would mean that the Universe is fundamentally nonlocal, in the sense that every bit of the Universe can be connected to any other bit anywhere, instantly. That such connections are possible defies our everyday intuition and represents another extreme solution, but arguably preferable to faster-than-light communication. "Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them," says Nicolas Gisin, Professor at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and member of the team.
Pray on if it makes you feel better by fattening your ego, but you hadn’t even begun to address the problem of timeless change.
Ignoring it and running away makes your beliefs mere superstition, and that in turn explains your lack of effort in delving into the actual problem.
I’m not surprised, for that is the very nature of untested, blind faith.
Imagine a line segment, let's call it a timeline... now does the non-existence of the line past its endpoints invalidate the timeline itself?
Eyes... see... ears... hear...
or something like that.
Not sure where you come up with the notion that a God who transcends time is the same thing as a God stuck in one point in time- or a God without time - and yet you do. You come at this as if you understand time totally, and a God who has a different relationship than you necessarily has a subordinate position with regard to time than you.
That is absurd, and not at all the point. You are stuck on a template. Moreover, to call this superstition or blind faith - when it is based in the highest of quantam physics - and to call it ego - when it is the total opposite of that - proves only that you are coming to this with a chip on your shoulder.
Atheism is blind faith. You have faith that man was created by a process that would be the math equivalent of a tornado ripping through a junk yard and leaving a fully assembled 747 in its wake, complete with first class wine and meals.
Go ahead, all aboard that train......
For the analogy to apply, imagine you have an infinitely large sheet of paper, with its edges at infinity.
If I asked you to draw the line segment with its first of two end points (one being the “origin” of Time, “Big Bang”, etc., and the other representing the present moment) at the centre of the page (the other end point being radially away from the centre) how would you find this centre?
It is impossible to have distinct events not fall into simultaneity without Time.
Transcendent or not, any resolution of the problem not involving Time becomes an absurdity. If you say your god can do it, it is the equivalent of claiming that your god can do evil, or make square-shaped circles. The point is that not even your god can be outside Time and order sequential events because sequence demands Time to define it. Simply put, there are some things even your god cannot do (do you disagree?).
The ego and arrogance I referred to was not what you later highlighted, but rather, your behaviour. You use choice words to label me, and then buy yourself guilt insurance by saying you’ll “pray” for me. If you have not yet completely lost / sacrificed your capacity to introspect your own behaviour to the idols of lazy dogma, you will realise it.
You are so close minded that don’t realize you live in a world of oblivion, one constrained by your own microscopic understanding and yet breathtaking arrogance.
You say you’ve been around FR for six years. Perhaps you might have noticed that it is a website that stands for certain principles, and arrogant malignant atheism is NOT among them.
Perhaps after this election I’ll have time and energy for apologetic discussions, until then, go away.
In an infinite by infinite plane it simply doesn't matter because the [non-existent] edge is an infinite distance away from any given point. IOW, the origin is arbitrary and may legitimately be said to be anywhere -- thus arbitrarily deciding/defining that the "start of time" point is the origin is valid.
You seem to have lost the plot.
You repeatedly say you are going away, and yet keep responding with labels and insults, obviously to feed the endless appetite of your ego, then buy yourself piety by “praying” for me. Your hypocrisy has trapped you in a mental prison you are not capable of realising the reality of.
You provided no answer of substance to the philosophical and logical questions asked, and instead chose (and continue to choose) to run away after parting with insults and labels.
Your mind is so closed, it’s ossified. That’s why you are unable to course through basic logic, falling over to dogma that you are incapable of defending, instead.
Think about it some more. If the infinite plane has a centre that could be anywhere, then everywhere would be a centre. But can this be true? Our Universe is infinite - it has no “edge” to define its limits. If anywhere was its centre, then right now you are in the centre of the Sun.
But you obviously aren’t. So, even in infinities, centres matter. Likewise, Time cannot be “begun” without a pre-existing Time to define the change that brings about the new Time’s existence. Change, put in simpler words, is simply impossible without the lapse of Time.
No, you have it wrong. It's not that everywhere is (rather can be) the center means that every point is the the same point.
Think of longitude on our planet, any particular point excepting the poles [which define the latitude] could be our 0 degrees [the prime meridian] as it is arbitrarily chosen; this does not mean that every point on the planet is the same.
(From Wikipedia)
By convention, one of these, the Prime Meridian, which passes through the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, England, establishes the position of zero degrees longitude.
[...]
Note that the longitude is singular at the Poles and calculations that are sufficiently accurate for other positions, may be inaccurate at or near the Poles. Also the discontinuity at the ±180° meridian must be handled with care in calculations. An example is a calculation of east displacement by subtracting two longitudes, which gives the wrong answer if the two positions are on either side of this meridian.
But it may actually be true that every particular point is the center of the universe. Consider the big bang, if at the beginning of time [t=infinitesimal] the universe was a single point then any point in today's universe is derived from that point thereby making all points the center.
Change, put in simpler words, is simply impossible without the lapse of Time.
You have it exactly backwards: time is the measurement of change; that is time is dependent on change... not change dependent on time.
With the longitude example, you commit the error of mixing up axes and spatial position. The longitude fixes the rotational position about the axis of the Earth, from an arbitrarily chosen reference. The value of that rotational position is constant between the poles along the parallel (coplanar) to the axis of the Earth because you have not changed your rotational position which the longitude defines. This is nowhere applicable as an analogy to the actual point we are discussing - which is picking a moment to begin something, when you don’t have Time as a fundamental dimension to define that beginning moment.
If the Universe was a pinpoint of say 1/1000th cubic inches spherical volume, what was present to define the boundary of this pinpoint radially away from the centre? More space? A mirror?
Are you saying that if nothing changes, Time stops? If so, when exactly does Time start to flow?
Yes, it must be so. Time is the measurement of change.
If the universe is a void, or a truly atomic particle [classic meaning of indivisible], then there cannot be any time. There can be time with a single non-atomic particle because the subcomponents can change in relation to each other.
If so, when exactly does Time start to flow?
Easy, when there are multiple items in existence.
Your question is kind of analogous to software in computer programming; in specific a variable coming into existence.
Yes, the analogy is flawed in that it's time-based, but the issue of scoping is still relevant: the creation of something that wasn't there before.
This is what happened when God started creating and said "Let there be light", bam! multiple particles, and therefore time.
That they suddenly came into being is not doubted, we're here after all. I'm not sure what it's like to be outside of time, I am after all wholly bounded by it and therefore have only time a a point of reference... but such a concept is not unheard of in the Bible, in Hebrews the prophets and heroes of faith are said to be Justified by faith looking forward to Jesus, but if God is outside of time then Jesus on the cross and Abraham trusting God are as you put it "the same moment" from God's perspective then of course Jesus can save those who died before he came to Earth... and likewise that everyone born after his death can be forgiven means that his death did not just cover sins up to that point. God is the God of Time, and not even Time can stand in God's way preventing Him from accomplishing His purposes.
A better way of saying this is that God is outside of our time, our time merely being a shadow of the time that God inhabits.
That was fun.
Thanks for the discussion.
You’re welcome, but credit where credit’s due, I only posted the ping message. :’)
“That is the consequence of not being under Time”
That shows a bit of hubris that you can try to define to our creator what His limitations are. Sheesh!
“In such a realm, God did something and yet didn’t do it, simultaneously. This is the absurdity which arises from an entity ordering sequential events in a Timeless realm. How do you resolve it?”
I can imagine the scene at your judgement. In the smallest unit of TIME, it will be evident, and you have just enough TIME to utter one word...
“Oh...”
Best of luck. I was as arrogant as you at one time, relying on my printed IQ score to blaze my trails before me, only to realize that the more I knew, the less I knew. Hubris to humility is a journey, friend. Don’t be so reliant on your own understanding, because it is not all that.
Back in the day I’d compare brain pans with you, but these days I just pray.
To human eyes, too much of light
Is blinding as the blackest night.
And this is so, too, of the mind,
In total ignorance it’s blind.
But more truth than it can absorb
Will overwhelm the mental orb.
So, lest our vision burn to ashes
God shows us truth in bits and flashes,
White revelations that the brain
Can comprehend and yet stay sane.
And we, poor fools, demand truth’s noon
Who scarce can bear its crescent moon.
— “White Revelations,” by Georgia Starbuck Galbraith.
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