Posted on 10/10/2012 10:41:01 AM PDT by ShadowAce
Light is a form of electro-magnetic energy, and light is bent by gravity; and can even be trapped by gravity. So, between the two forces, gravity and electromagnetism, which stomps the other depends on the location.
FWIW, my layman’s take on “string theory” is that it provides (among other things) a mathematical system where there is no such thing as a “point.” The smallest unit is not a dimensionless point, but a “string.” Having the smallest entity have a size eliminates the absurd mathematical result when size is driven to zero.
Penrose also cites the Mandelbrot set as an example of something mathematicians did not create. Or to put it another way, the Mandelbrot set exists - like Reimannian geometry or pi - and the mathematician came along and discovered it.
Boogieman mentioned higher dimensions and the discussion has moved into string theory. But one of the more elegant solutions only requires five dimensions (P.S. Wesson)
That said, all of you might find Wesson's work on time rather interesting: Time as an Illusion
The speed of light is a linear temporal effect. It is by no means a limit to the Universe since it is nominal in planar temporal expression ... quantum non-locality anyone? Can you ‘gage’ the limit?
"A fly is on the back glass of a station wagon that is traveling at 70 m.p.h. The fly takes flight and moves forward from the back glass to the dashboard of the station wagon. At what rate of speed is the fly travelling? Is it exceeding 70 m.p.h.? Or, is it traveling at 2 m.p.h. in its enclosed environment?"
My answer was always "2 m.p.h. in its enclosed environment." Keep in mind, though, that if someone standing on the roadside was able to actually see the fly moving from the back glass to the dashboard the observer would be seeing a fly moving at 72 m.p.h. It depends upon whether you are inside or outside of the station wagon as to what speed you would be observing the fly travelling. To me the enclosed environment for the fly is comparable to the enclosed environment for the light from your flashlight in that the light particle/wave function is not moving against the forces found in the area surrounding the exterior of the spacecraft in which you are moving. The light from your flashlight would still be traveling away the you at 299,792,458 meters / second. If someone were in a stationary position (in a pressurized environment since we are in space) and was able to observe you passing by in your spacecraft when you turned on your flashlight, technically they would be seeing the light from your flashlight at 2 x 299,792,458 meters / second. Unfortunately, the doubling of the speed would be imperceptable for us...
Just my 2 cents...
Yes, Wesson's 3-space, 2-times model — 3S+2T — very elegant!
Wesson's article, Time as an Illusion, is a fascinating read! Thank you ever so much for the link, dearest sister in Christ! It's a "keeper!"
Yes, 11 dimensions, sometimes 12.
Sting theory does appear to be one of the more exotic mathematical exercises to come down the pike. It recognizes the need for "extra" dimensions beyond the 4D of ordinary experience. What is striking to me, however, is string theory's propagation of additional spatial dimensions. (IIRC, it calls for only one extra temporal dimension.) These new-found spatial dimensions are said to be curled up unto themselves and are incredibly teensy — less than Planck length in size. Right there, one knows that they would be physically indetectable on the basis of direct observation in principle. Which kind of puts string theory in the same boat as multi-world cosmological theories: There is no known way to validate or disprove the existence of e..g., "other" worlds, or "other dimensions" in this case.
But the string theorists are all pros, and I am but an amateur. So what do I know? Still, I'm happy the string theorists are happy with their work, and look forward to hearing about any progress they are making.
zeugma, I highly recommend Wesson's article, Time as an Illusion. Here's the abstract from the article:
We review the idea, due to Einstein, Eddington, Hoyle and Ballard, that time is a subjective label, whose primary purpose is to order events, perhaps in a higher-dimensional universe. In this approach, all moments in time exist simultaneously, but they are ordered to create the illusion of an unfolding experience by some physical mechanism. This, in the language of relativity, may be connected to a hypersurface in a world that extends beyond spacetime. Death in such a scenario may be merely a phase change.If nothing else, the article will likely give you something new to think about!
Anyhoot, Wesson developed a 5-dimensional model of the universe that posits a fifth "time-like" dimension, which operates as an extra-cosmic hypersurface. In this particular article, Wesson points out the many ways in which our perception of time may well be a mainly subjective construct.
Fun stuff to think about!
Thanks so much for writing, zeugma!
This planar temporal reality is not outside of the cosmic reality, it is merely so complex (or more simple?) that the way we are currently constructed, we do not sense it directly. I do however believe that our body exist in the sensed linear temporal realm, and our soul exists in this planar temporal realm, and the spirit component of our soul perhaps exists in yet a more complex (or perhaps more simple?) 'hypervolume'.
Borrowing notions from spatial description, dimensions have variablity expressions, as in dimension space is linear, planar, and volumetric, where planes are composed of linear expressions thus bringing about a greater exprerssion of planar, and planes make up the volumetric, etc., and similarly for dimension Time. Our bodies have been created to sense the linear temporal reality, yet the mind of our soul assimilates the linear temporal data, to fashion a composite planar temporal meaning.
When the light from a distant star reaches us, we can abstract from the wave patterns the present state of the star when the photon was emitted, yet that present is well gone since it occurred at a time (linearly/planarly/volumetrically speaking) long since past, before we even existed to be a receiver of the data. BUT, if there is planar and volumetric temporal expression, then the background realm of 'the cosmos' has all events occurring within the volume of reality thus nothing that is or happanes actually happens outside of spacetime reality of some continuua expressions. [The last is offered with thanks to Alamo-Girl for sharing the 'without time, events do not occur, and without space things do not exist' expression. That notion arrived in my psyche at a time when I was truly struggling to accept these notions of where/when continuua, and the clarity that insight offered nailed my conceptualizations down for acceptance in my mind. Since I trust the Bible to be true and truly information from God for us, I am finding numerous passages in the Bible which become so much clearer with this new cosmological perspective: Daniel Chapter Five is an excellent example.]
I'll check Wesson's article out this evening. Thanks!
hahahahahahahaha!!!
“... that means that gravity is faster than light.” Um, kind of the same as saying apples are sweeter than nails are hard.
Well perhaps my trial description of an "extra-cosmic hypersurface" missed the mark. By "extra-cosmic," I intended the idea of a uniform, universal cause that does not arise from nor reside in the same field wherein its effects are manifestly experienced and felt.
This is not to maintain that God does not act "in" the world. It is only to say that God is not subject to the laws appertaining to creatures in this world, for the simple reason that He is their Author, their Father. [Not to mention their Truth and Salvation.]
Dear brother in Christ, you wrote: "What Wesson calls a hypersurface I would define as planar temporal in nature.... our body exist[s] in the sensed linear temporal realm, and our soul exists in this planar temporal realm, and the spirit component of our soul perhaps exists in yet a more complex (or perhaps more simple?) 'hypervolume'."
I have heard that Nature tends towards simplicity, towards parsimony. I gather this has something to do with Divine Economics. It also has something to do with the revelation of divine Beauty, Love, and Justice in this world.
Which is why I thought Wesson's speculation as to the nature of death in the article linked several times above was so fascinating:
Is death an end-point, or a phase shift?Anyhoot, at a time when science has widely accepted curved-space models (e.g., Reimannian geometry) as relevant to their pressing investigative needs, it seems that "planar" (i.e., flat-space, or Euclidean) models might have to be relegated to the measure of Newtonian physics, and thereby considered accurate to about 99.997% certainty — within the 4D block of ordinary human observation and experience.
Where the Newtonian "flat-space model" falls down is at the margin where the velocity of objects converges on velocity of light, C, conventionally considered the "universal speed limit" — at the macroscopic level. It also seems to fall down at the microscopic level, at the level of quantum phenomena whose behavior seems to be "determined" by the interjection of an Observer....
Yet truly, I'm following you here: "... our body exist in the sensed linear temporal realm, and our soul exists in this planar temporal realm, and the spirit component of our soul perhaps exists in yet a more complex (or perhaps more simple?) 'hypervolume'."
Perhaps what you intend by "hypervolume" here might have something to do with the "shape" of the Creation that God made, via Logos Alpha–Omega. From "our" point of view, this might look very much like a "hypersurface."
Thank you so very much, dear brother in Christ, for sharing your thoughts re: this irresistibly fascinating topic!!!
String theory, as betty boop observed, says that the additional dimensions are compactified. And there are many of them. This follows on the Kaluza-Klein attempts to unify gravity and electro-magnetism.
But, in my view, string theory smacks of being "kluged" much like Einstein's original cosmological constant. Or to put it another way, a theory should not be formed merely to explain away the anomalies of prior theories (taking them as axioms or presuppositions) - but rather a theory should stand on its merit, elegant.
I am much more attracted to Wesson's theory calling for one expanded higher, time-like, dimension. It is an elegant theory that doesn't merely attempt to unify prior theories, unification would be a consequence not a cause.
Because Wesson's theory is elegant, issues in both physics (e.g. quantum entanglement FTL anomaly, superposition) and metaphysics (e.g. precognition or prophecy in Judeo/Christian lingo) melt away.
In my view, Max Tegmark's Level IV Parallel Universe model should be considered along with Wesson's 5D/2T theory. In Tegmark's model, everything "in" 4 dimensional (3 space, 1 time) space/time is a manifestation of mathematical structures which actually do exist beyond space and time.
From the Judeo/Christian point of view, as betty boop observed, it makes perfect sense because the Creator is not constrained by or subject to His own Creation, which is to say space/time is part of the Creation not a restriction of the Creator of it.
Or to put it another way, Wesson's 5D/2T theory would apply to the Creation not the Creator. A creature would be a higher dimensional brane (or hypersurface if you prefer since momentum of particles in a higher dimension would be imaged in 4D) could intersect the perceivable 4 dimensions (3S/1T).
Each of us - indeed, each thing (or manifestation in Tegmark's theory) - is a wave in the 5D/2T. Thus mortal "death" as we perceive it in 4D is merely a phase shift. And no doubt, the aspect of what we can perceive afterwards also changes:
This would be true because in the absence of space things cannot exist and in the absence of time events cannot occur. Both space and time are required for physical causation.
From the perspective of an observer in 4D it would seem that such entities existed in a spatially separated "world" when in the higher dimensional dynamics theory they would be phase-shifted and intersecting our 4D perceptible "world" at will. One might see this as the phase shift being bi-directional. I'm hoping MHGinTN will share some examples of this from Scripture!
But only God Himself - the Creator of all that there is - is (or is also) outside the Creation. Therefore, He alone sees "all that there is" all at once. He alone knows objective truth. He alone speaks objective truth. Indeed, He is Truth because when He says a thing, it is. It is because He says it, e.g. "Let there be light."
The peaks indicate harmonics in the sound waves that filled the early, dense universe. Until some 300,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe was so hot that matter and radiation were entangled in a kind of soup in which sound waves (pressure waves) could vibrate. The CMB is a relic of the moment when the universe had cooled enough so that photons could “decouple” from electrons, protons, and neutrons; then atoms formed and light went on its way.
Or read more about it by clicking here.
In effect, we humans are waves "in" the Creation. But those waves do not merely manifest geometric form. We are a message being communicated. Physically that message is our DNA which uniquely defines us transmitted along a worldline in space/time (the Creation.) As long as that message is being physically communicated, we are physically alive.
I strongly recommend Rosen's book titled Life Itself for the mathematics unique to living things and a model of that communication.
And when we die physically according the Wesson's theory, we experience a phase shift. In sum, a person's wave function does not simply collapse upon physical death.
But more importantly to us Christians, we also become a new creature, spiritually alive, by another message being communicated "in" us:
But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. - Romans 8:9
Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and [of] the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.
The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. - John 3:5-8
What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost [which is] in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? - I Cor 6:19
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye [are] the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. - John 15:4-5
I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. - Galatians 2:20
There is a scene where the prophet and his ‘student’ are seemingly trapped in a valley, with the army of their pursuers camped around in such a way that the student is certain with dawn they will be found and captured; the prophet is not concerned and tells his student that his army is larger/more powerful than that of the pursuers, and reveals a vast army and their campfires on the crest of the hills surrounding the pursuers; this army may well have been the recent Israeli army during one of the new Israel wars, given the locale and the nature of the vision; the pursuers apparently also saw the 'other' army, because they fled the valey during the night!
Another OT example is when an iron axehead is lost into the river and the prophet causes it to ‘float’ to the surface where the ‘student tree harvester’ can retrieve it.
In the New Testament, the scene where Philip is suddenly whisked away from the presence of the man who was riding in a chariot reading from Isaiah.
These scenes are but three of many. The essence of these scens is that time and space are not restraints to God's Spirit and the ability of His people/Spirit born people to at the very least perceive if not manipulate a greater reality. The fish and loaves Jesus fed more than five thousand with were by some means stretched as if tesseracts to be harvested at His Will. The fish and bread were real, thus they existed in space and time, but somehow space and time as reality was more than the 'witnesses' could perceive.
Jesus gave a huge hint regarding the astonishing reality of The SPirit of God present within, in the fourteenth chapter of John's Gospel, where He explained it to Philip as best Philip could conceive it ...
"Kludged" indeed. It's as if anytime the string theorist comes up against a road block in the prosecution of his mathematical trail, that he simply says, "Well, let's just propose yet another (spacial, compactified) dimension and see how that all works out."
And yet as you suggest, dearest sister in Christ, the mathematical Platonists are always looking for simplicity, elegance, beauty, and I daresay maximal efficency/economy as the touchstones of the truth of any mathematical proposition, not to mention "the laws of Nature and of Nature's God."
In Natural Law Theory, the former is regarded as the universal language of the latter.
I do believe that, not only Max Tegmark (whose Level IV Parallel Universe theory I greatly admire), but also such other eminences as Einstein, Eddington, Wesson, et al. are mathematical Platonists.
Anyhoot, as you noted, Einstein later regretted his "kluge."
Dearest Alamo-Girl, you wrote:
From the perspective of an observer in 4D it would seem that such [higher than 4D] entities existed in a spatially separated "world" when in the higher dimensional dynamics theory [e.g., Wesson's 5D/2T] they would be phase-shifted and intersecting our 4D perceptible "world" at will.An observer in 4D sees what he sees from the inside of the "all that there is," as part and participant of it. He cannot ever gain a perspective from the outside of the 4D world, so as to see it all "entire" in perfect "objectivity."
Sense perception developed to accommodate interactions with a 4D world have no utility whatever with respect to direct observation of a fifth, timelike dimension.
Here it seems useful to cite Romans 1:20:
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuseWhich regarding the instant case I take to mean: The fifth timelike dimension is not directly perceptible by means of sense, but can be "seen" or intuited by the human mind — which seems to have a "natural ability" to "sense" such things — in a purely subjective process. Thus the Natural Law connection, or correspondence, between the world of Nature (Creation) and the human psyche: The two orders naturally "correspond" in Natural Law Theory; which is why mathematics can stand as the universal language that so aptly describes their relations.
Dearest sister, you wrote:
And when we die physically according the Wesson's theory, we experience a phase shift. In sum, a person's wave function does not simply collapse upon physical death.Lately, just this point has practical significance in the life of my family. I have an elderly father who — although as healthy as a horse physically — has lost his will to live. He actively wants to die. But it seems to me he is a man (very Newtonian! probably a Deist to boot!) who sees death as an endpoint, not as a phase shift.... But if death truly is a phase shift (as thinkers as far back as Plato seem to suggest), then Dad is not at all "prepared" for it....
I just hope and pray that he will acknowledge our Lord Jesus Christ — Son of God and Logos Alpha to Omega — before he passes away.
My father is a man of sterling character and intelligence. I do not understand why he continues to refuse to give proper acknowledgement to the Source of his own fine human qualities, which have led to a rich and diverse life of wonderful achievements.
So I pray. Would you please say a little prayer for my Dad, dearest sister in Christ?
I'll close for now — though there were so many other splendid insights in your absolutely outstanding article. Thank you ever so much, dearest sister in Christ, for writing it!
Perhaps the presence of the 'point/moment' from God in our human spirit is the 'why' or 'how' our souls seems to some extent 'sense' the greater universe our bodily senses are not fashioned to perceive? I wonder, is that why God instructed 'be still, and know that I AM God' to the Prophet?
Would you and A-G, perchance, be willing to consider the idea that six days experienced in "the 'non-4D realm' of Wesson's 5D/2T" might be experienced in the '4D realm' as, say, 14 billion years? '-)
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bb, You have my sympathies and prayers re your father: We are going through the same thing here with my 95-year-old aunt -- with the exception that she is having physical difficulties and some pain. She is confident of her future with our Lord, and she has, when in pain, said, "Just let me die"... We just moved her from a long stay in the hospital battling congestive heart failure to a nursing home (which is, in reality, hospice care.)
Both she and her 90 year old sister who lives with her in the old family homestead require 24-hour company, so we few nephews and nieces have been manning 12-hour shifts with them for what seems like many months now. And, having them separated doubles our load...
Blessedly, we "youngsters" are their siblings in Christ, and we all recognize that this intergenerational caring is just part of a "family life cycle" that has been repeated countless times since the days of Adam. And we can all see where we will be in the next cycle -- and we face that fact with calm assurance.
I suppose you can take that as an explanation as to why I have "dropped off the radar" on FR in recent months... Yet, I'm still working on my "experiential essay"! ;-)
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Please continue this discussion; I will be following along as I can. For me, it has already provided the useful concepts of "phase change" and of "making a turn" into an extra-4D realm. And I have caught strong glimpses of the "Universal Now" principle we are discussing -- albeit with interruptions...
In concert and in Him,
TXnMA
Truly, I believe it was no accident that God created our physical senses such that we can only physically perceive four dimensions. For one thing, those physical perceptions persist despite what we know in our mind, soul or spirit.
The situation teaches us to live by faith not by sight.
God's Name is I AM.
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