Scientists don't always understand what they can describe mathematically

Perpetual Student said:
Which word is misused? Future? Determined? What paradox? Negative v would indicate B is in A's future? The equation is quite clear. If the future is not already set, how could that happen?
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Hercules Rockefeller said:
I don't think so. You're only making observations of events at different times in the past, not in the future.
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Amazing what equations will reveal, especially if you're not familiar with the language and terminology
Just how would v become negative?
 
rwguinn said:
Amazing what equations will reveal, especially if you're not familiar with the language and terminology
Just how would v become negative?
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Indeed! Of course v can be negative with respect to a frame of reference; it is a vector.
 
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Perpetual Student said:
Of course v can be negative with respect to a frame of reference; it is a vector.
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Observer and frame of reference are confusing me, here..
If x is positive and v is negative, the observer will never know of the event anyway.
At least, that appears to be the case. V is a vector, but it always points at the observer, no?
(This is why I stick with Newtonian approximations at v<<C)
 
Perpetual Student said:
Which word is misused? Future? Determined? What paradox? Negative v would indicate B is in A's future? The equation is quite clear. If the future is not already set, how could that happen?
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The human concept of "future" is not useful here, since time is not universal. Any two events are separated by a space-time interval that is reference-frame invariant. The sign/zeroness determines whether or not those events could be causally related. Since reference frame changes do not change space-time intervals, there is no "problem" introduced by uncaused events or randomness, which seems to be what you were first implying.

From wikipedia: "When a space-like interval separates two events, not enough time passes between their occurrences for there to exist a causal relationship crossing the spatial distance between the two events at the speed of light or slower. Generally, the events are considered not to occur in each other's future or past."
 
rwguinn said:
Observer and frame of reference are confusing me, here..
If x is positive and v is negative, the observer will never know of the event anyway.
At least, that appears to be the case. V is a vector, but it always points at the observer, no?
(This is why I stick with Newtonian approximations at v<<C)
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Consider only one dimension to simplify the question. We have two points on a line -- call them A and B on the x axis. When A moves toward B we can (arbitrarily) label v as positive so that when A moves away from B, v must be negative. In three dimensional space, the straight line separating A and B can always be regarded as a coordinate axis so that v is simply positive or negative.
Actually, this is true in Newtonian physics.
 
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Perpetual Student said:
Consider only one dimension to simplify the question. We have two points on a line -- call them A and B on the x axis. When A moves toward B we can (arbitrarily) label v as positive so that when A moves away from B, v must be negative. In three dimensional space, the straight line separating A and B can always be regarded as a coordinate axis so that v is simply positive or negative.
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Please don't lecture me about vectors. I know what a vector is, and use the ***************** every damn day as an aerospace engineer. Condescension will piss me off.
read what I wrote.
 
Modified said:
The human concept of "future" is not useful here, since time is not universal. Any two events are separated by a space-time interval that is reference-frame invariant. The sign/zeroness determines whether or not those events could be causally related. Since reference frame changes do not change space-time intervals, there is no "problem" introduced by uncaused events or randomness, which seems to be what you were first implying.

From wikipedia: "When a space-like interval separates two events, not enough time passes between their occurrences for there to exist a causal relationship crossing the spatial distance between the two events at the speed of light or slower. Generally, the events are considered not to occur in each other's future or past."
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I do not agree with that Wikipedia claim. When we view a galaxy, say, 1 billion light years away, we see the form and shape of that galaxy as it was 1 billion years ago. It's "current" form and shape cannot be known to us. Whether it has been distorted by nearby galaxies or has merged with a nearby galaxy, it still exists in some form -- currently. In that sense, the "present" of that galaxy has meaning, regardless of whether or not there is a causal relationship to us. If the present has meaning as described above, so does past and future.
 
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rwguinn said:
Please don't lecture me about vectors. I know what a vector is, and use the ***************** every damn day as an aerospace engineer. Condescension will piss me off.
read what I wrote.
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I apologize if I misunderstood your comment, which I mistakenly took as you not understanding vectors. No condescension was intended.
 
Perpetual Student said:
I do not agree with that Wikipedia claim. When we view a galaxy, say, 1 billion light years away, we see the form and shape of that galaxy as it was 1 billion years ago. It's "current" form and shape cannot be known to us. Whether it has been distorted by nearby galaxies or has merged with a nearby galaxy, it still exists in some form -- currently. In that sense, the "present" of that galaxy has meaning, regardless of whether there is a causal relationship to us. If the present has meaning as described above, so does past and future.
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The quote was about events. If they are space-like separated, then neither is in the others' future, because their order/simultaneity depends on reference frame.

But I think you are not using "deterministic" in the same way that I am. You can be in a certain place at a certain local time, and some event in another place has already happened, but if you had been moving differently at the same place and time, the same event would not have happened yet. This feels like it requires the history of the universe to be "prerecorded" in some way. That is only because of the way you are used to thinking about time, as universal. You are mixing relative and universal time in the same thought. Happened in the "past" and happened in the "future" have basically the same relationship to you, here and now, for an event that can't be causally related to anything happening to you, here and now.

And the opposite of that feeling would be the sense that the existence of true randomness requires there be an objective "now", at least locally. That one is a lot harder to shake, I think.
 
Perpetual Student said:
I do not agree with that Wikipedia claim. When we view a galaxy, say, 1 billion light years away, we see the form and shape of that galaxy as it was 1 billion years ago. It's "current" form and shape cannot be known to us. Whether it has been distorted by nearby galaxies or has merged with a nearby galaxy, it still exists in some form -- currently. In that sense, the "present" of that galaxy has meaning, regardless of whether or not there is a causal relationship to us. If the present has meaning as described above, so does past and future.
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Actually, we only see the light that is local to us - "simultaneous" to us. Granted, we interpret this to mean something about the star in question, but we aren't "seeing the past." We only ever see the present, and the present that is local.

Our justification for calling it the past state of the star is based on our understanding of a causal chain, a sequence of events that runs through: light produced --> light travels a certain distance --> light reaches us. We combine this with the speed of light and calculate the time.

If you remove that causal chain there is no basis for getting any information at all. And this is what happens with great distances where causality can't occur. Events that far away are as separated from us as the Electroids from the Eighth Dimension (even more so, since the Electroids managed to get here to fight Buckaroo Banzai). There's no yardstick to claim simultaneity, nor set the past or future in a meaningful way.

Here I shall argue from authority and invoke Marplot's Principle of Local Causality: "What happens in Vega stays in Vega."


ETA: I have endeavored to avoid the trap set in the thread title and keep all my misunderstandings math-free.
 
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marplots said:
Actually, we only see the light that is local to us - "simultaneous" to us. Granted, we interpret this to mean something about the star in question, but we aren't "seeing the past." We only ever see the present, and the present that is local.

Our justification for calling it the past state of the star is based on our understanding of a causal chain, a sequence of events that runs through: light produced --> light travels a certain distance --> light reaches us. We combine this with the speed of light and calculate the time.

If you remove that causal chain there is no basis for getting any information at all. And this is what happens with great distances where causality can't occur. Events that far away are as separated from us as the Electroids from the Eighth Dimension (even more so, since the Electroids managed to get here to fight Buckaroo Banzai). There's no yardstick to claim simultaneity, nor set the past or future in a meaningful way.

Here I shall argue from authority and invoke Marplot's Principle of Local Causality: "What happens in Vega stays in Vega."


ETA: I have endeavored to avoid the trap set in the thread title and keep all my misunderstandings math-free.
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Yes, when we see the sun, feel it's heat and examine its solar activity, it is the sun of eight minutes ago we are experiencing. We have very a very strong scientific basis to believe the "current" sun exists and we will experience its effects in eight minutes. Similar reasoning would apply to a nearby star, the andromeda galaxy and a galaxy a billion light years distant. I see no basis for denying that these objects exist in the present -- the hyperspace of the present.
 
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Modified said:
The quote was about events. If they are space-like separated, then neither is in the others' future, because their order/simultaneity depends on reference frame.

But I think you are not using "deterministic" in the same way that I am. You can be in a certain place at a certain local time, and some event in another place has already happened, but if you had been moving differently at the same place and time, the same event would not have happened yet. This feels like it requires the history of the universe to be "prerecorded" in some way. That is only because of the way you are used to thinking about time, as universal. You are mixing relative and universal time in the same thought. Happened in the "past" and happened in the "future" have basically the same relationship to you, here and now, for an event that can't be causally related to anything happening to you, here and now.

And the opposite of that feeling would be the sense that the existence of true randomness requires there be an objective "now", at least locally. That one is a lot harder to shake, I think.
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Have you read Brian Greene's description of the "frozen river"?
 
Perpetual Student said:
Yes, when we see the sun, feel it's heat and examine its solar activity, it is the sun of eight minutes ago we are experiencing. We have very a very strong scientific basis to believe the "current" sun exists and we will experience its effects in eight minutes. Similar reasoning would apply to a nearby star, the andromeda galaxy and a galaxy a billion light years distant. I see no basis for denying that these objects exist in the present -- the hyperspace of the present.
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I guess the tricky part of that for me is "the present." Plainly, we do not share the same present with that distant star, because our interaction with it is only by way of "old" light. Hence my insistence that time is local.
 
Perpetual Student said:
Yes, when we see the sun, feel it's heat and examine its solar activity, it is the sun of eight minutes ago we are experiencing. We have very a very strong scientific basis to believe the "current" sun exists and we will experience its effects in eight minutes. Similar reasoning would apply to a nearby star, the andromeda galaxy and a galaxy a billion light years distant. I see no basis for denying that these objects exist in the present -- the hyperspace of the present.
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Hypersurface
 
Maartenn100 said:
Darwin123, I have a (dutch) book by Karl Popper. It's interesting literature. He invented the idea of falsification in order to test a theory instead of confirming a theory.
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Not quite right, Maartenn100. The idea of falsification has been around for many centuries. Many scientific theories were falsified before Popper wrote his book. Popper defined a scientific theory as one that has the property (among others) of being able to be falsified.
This does not excuse you using Popper's interpretation of Einstein's opinion as argument from authority:
Reality Check said:
An irrelevant, second hand argument from authority: Has the idiocy of argument from authority raised its ugly head?
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marplots said:
I guess the tricky part of that for me is "the present." Plainly, we do not share the same present with that distant star, because our interaction with it is only by way of "old" light. Hence my insistence that time is local.
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The problem I have with this reasoning is the question of how distant does an object have to be to no longer share "the same present"?
All light is "old light" to some degree. The light from my iPad as I write this takes a minuscule amount of time to reach my retina. The house across the street takes a little longer. The moon takes about a second, the sun eight minutes, etc., etc.
The plane that is at the apex and is perpendicular to a light cone is called the hypersurface of the present. It is an infinite plane, with no defined distance that is no longer in "the same present."
 
This thread appears to have turned, as so many of Maartenn's, into the topic of "why Einstein was wrong, and why I (Maartenn) am correct and I don't need no stinking mathematics to prove it." As such I think much of the current thread should be lumped into the general; "Maartenn's views on physics super thread. This thread is now no longer a discussion of if mathematic descriptions represent a true understanding.

I was thinking this morning of just how many radical, novel ideas Einstein proposed, and how virtually all of them subsequently were proven to be true by experiments. Light bent by a large mass, local time slowed by a large mass, the relativistic effects of velocity on mass, length, and time, gravitational waves, etc. All largely unanticipated in the early 20th century, yet each checked off as correct as experiments to test these theories were finally devised. When people called Einstein a genius I used to think "Genius? Well I've met some very people who are multiple standard deviations above average, so Einstein must have been just one of these- rare, but not once in a century." But the more I think about it, the more extraordinary Einstein's insights and thoughtfulness truly stand out. What an amazing man!
 
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Perpetual Student said:
Have you read Brian Greene's description of the "frozen river"?
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Have you Albert Einstein's Relativity: The Special and the General Theory, Chapter IX, The Relativity of Simultaneity?

Perpetual Student said:
The problem I have with this reasoning is the question of how distant does an object have to be to no longer share "the same present"?
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If the relativistically invariant interval between events E1 and E2 is timelike and nonzero, then either E1 happened before E2 or E2 happened before E1, and all observers will agree on the order.

If the relativistically invariant interval between two distinct events E1 and E2 is null, and you are a massless photon travelling at light speed, and your path takes you through both E1 and E2, then they happen at the same time for you. That's because your clock is not running.

If the relativistically invariant interval between E1 and E2 is spacelike so neither event lies within the other event's past or future light cone, then it is entirely up to you whether you want to believe events E1 and E2 were simultaneous, E1 happened before E2, or E2 happened before E1.

You may believe E1 happened in your past but E2 happens in your future. Years later, you may run into journalist Ford Prefect who insists it was the other way around. You're both right.

How does that become an argument for determinism?
 
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rwguinn said:
Observer and frame of reference are confusing me, here..
If x is positive and v is negative, the observer will never know of the event anyway.
At least, that appears to be the case. V is a vector, but it always points at the observer, no?
(This is why I stick with Newtonian approximations at v<<C)
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The magnitude of a vector has to be nonnegative real number. However, th vector itself is characterized by as an ordered set of real numbers that can be positive, negative or zero. Each real number is called a component of the vector.

The English language fortunately distinguishes between velocity and speed. Velocity is the vector and speed is its magnitude. So speed is nonnegative, properly speaking in English. However, a one dimensional vector has only one component. T

A one dimensional vector can be characterized by one real number that can be positive, negative or zero. So if v is a magnitude (e.g., speed), then it has to be either zero or a positive real number. However, the one dimensional number is a component. It can be positive, negative, or zero.

In the case of a zero dimensional vector, the absolute value of the real number is the magnitude of the vector. So the magnitude is always nonnegative because the absolute value is nonnegative. However, the actual velocity is the same as the component in the one dimensional case.

In problems with only one degree of freedom, a vector is characterized by a real number. The magnitude

The Lorentz transform uses the velocity, which is a vector. The Lorentz transform is really not determined by the speed of a reference frame. The Lorentz transform is determined by the velocity of the reference frames. very often, the coordinate system is chosen so the only one degree of freedom is important. Therefore, the velocity is merely a real number that can be positive, negative or zero. There is no speed in the Lorentz transform, even in the one-dimensional cases usually shown.


Presenting a one dimensional velocity to lay people (Maartenns word, not mine) can be confusing especially when the path of the observer is changing. The direction of a vector could be changing while the magnitude remains the same. In rotational motion, the speed of the observer often does not change while the direction changes.

The important thing to note is that the velocity vector of a body can not change unless a mechanical force is applied. This third law of motion is valid both in the 'absolute space' of Newton and the inertial frame of Einstein. Hence, the velocity of an observer can not change unless a mechanical force is applied to the observer.

So in a lot of problems, the velocity in the Lorentz transform changes due to a mechanical force. In the so called twin paradox, the sign of the velocity changes due to a mechanical force that is the thrust of the rocket. The speed of the observer does not change due to the fact that the thrust is an infinitesimal impulse. However, the velocity changes a great deal. So understanding the twin paradox relies on accepting the fact that the mechanical force is not negligible.

This occurs when the mechanical force (also a vector) on a body is perpendicular to the velocity (a vector). If the force on a body is constant and perpendicular to the velocity, the body will keep the same speed at all times. The body will move on a circular path where the velocity is parallel to the path. So to simplify the problem, the velocity is approximated as a one-dimensional vector lying on the circular path.


Suppose that you look at a quantity with units of speed that I designate to be v. How do you decide whether it is a magnitude (speed) or a vector (one dimensional velocity).

When 'v' is capable of changing sign, it is likely to be a one dimensional vector. In that case, 'v' can be positive or negative. It may be part of a three dimensional component that is changing direction. However, the direction of a one dimensional vector has only two choices: positive or negative.

I think this confusion about v being a speed or v being a one dimensional vector is really important in understanding the Hefele-Keating experiment. There, the velocity of the earths surface is a one dimensional vector.


Understanding the relativistic paradoxes without mathematics requires one to visualize the mechanical forces. The conundrums of relativity often involve determining what mechanical forces are acting on the observer. The observer can be 'conscious' of the mechanical force acting on him.

The hidden assumption is that the mechanical force on an observer is locally objective. Space and time are subjective, in that they vary with the mechanical force acting on an observer. However, the reference frame of an observer is determined by the mechanical force on the observer.

Here, I think the phenological philosophy parts way with relativity. Popper and Husseri appear to think that mechanical force is locally subjective.
 
W.D.Clinger said:
Have you Albert Einstein's Relativity: The Special and the General Theory, Chapter IX, The Relativity of Simultaneity?
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Yes, I just re-read it and agree that there is no indication or need for determinism here.

If the relativistically invariant interval between events E1 and E2 is timelike and nonzero, then either E1 happened before E2 or E2 happened before E1, and all observers will agree on the order.
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OK

If the relativistically invariant interval between two distinct events E1 and E2 is null, and you are a massless photon travelling at light speed, and your path takes you through both E1 and E2, then they happen at the same time for you. That's because your clock is not running.
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OK

If the relativistically invariant interval between E1 and E2 is spacelike so neither event lies within the other event's past or future light cone, then it is entirely up to you whether you want to believe events E1 and E2 were simultaneous, E1 happened before E2, or E2 happened before E1.

You may believe E1 happened in your past but E2 happens in your future. Years later, you may run into journalist Ford Prefect who insists it was the other way around. You're both right.

How does that become an argument for determinism?
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It seems to me that having the choice you describe implies determinism -- E1 and E2 have occurred sometime regardless of time frame. How can that happen if they are not determined?
 
I cannot find any source of Brian Greene's "frozen river" analogy to directly quote here; however, here is a very brief Wikipedia description:
Part II: Time and Experience Edit
Part II begins by addressing the issue that time is a very familiar concept, yet it is one of humanity's least understood concepts.

Chapter 5, "The Frozen River", deals with the question, "Does time flow?" One key point in this chapter deals with special relativity. Observers moving relative to each other have different conceptions of what exists at a given moment, and hence they have different conceptions of reality. The conclusion is that time does not flow, as all things simultaneously exist at the same time.
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LINK
 
Perpetual Student said:
I cannot find any source of Brian Greene's "frozen river" analogy to directly quote here; however, here is a very brief Wikipedia description:

LINK
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Say WHAT? :jaw-dropp

'The conclusion is that time does not flow, as all things simultaneously exist at the same time.'


I don't think that conclusion means anything with or without SR! First, SR doesn't say that all things occur at the same time. Second, existing at the same time has nothing to do with whether there is 'flow'.

I reentered the thread when Maartenn brought up phenomenology. At least phenomenology is philosophical dispute with a history. However, the history part has vanished.

I think that this thread has gone beyond all hope. So I am leaving the thread until someone comes up with some new historical insight.
 
Perpetual Student said:
If the relativistically invariant interval between E1 and E2 is spacelike so neither event lies within the other event's past or future light cone, then it is entirely up to you whether you want to believe events E1 and E2 were simultaneous, E1 happened before E2, or E2 happened before E1.

You may believe E1 happened in your past but E2 happens in your future. Years later, you may run into journalist Ford Prefect who insists it was the other way around. You're both right.

How does that become an argument for determinism?
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It seems to me that having the choice you describe implies determinism -- E1 and E2 have occurred sometime regardless of time frame. How can that happen if they are not determined?
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You and Ford can't have that conversation about E1 and E2 until both events have happened and have happened far enough in the past to lie within your past light cone and Ford's. Neither of you can even become aware of an event until it lies within your past light cone.

It is only in retrospect, after you have become aware of events E1 and E2, that you can say you now believe there was a time and place in your past (let's call it E3) when E1 was in what you now reckon to have been the past of E3 while E2 was in what you now reckon to have been the future of E3.

Ford, however, says E1 was in what he now reckons to have been the future of E3, while E2 was in what he now reckons to have been the past of E3.

Both of you are right, but both of you are talking about events that happened in the past. Both of you are taking the reference frame you were using at some time in the past and extending that reference frame to include events you could not have been aware of at that time in the past.

What we have here is the relativity of description. Both you and Ford are describing exactly the same events, and both of your descriptions are (presumably) internally consistent and compatible with the universe as it has unfolded.

Neither of you had the choice of talking about these events until they lay within your past light cone. By then it's old news.

What this comes down to is that light travels only 10cm per nanosecond. If you've got a motherboard 20cm wide, with inputs arriving on both sides of the motherboard, and two inputs on opposite sides of the motherboard arrive within less than a nanosecond as observed (in retrospect) by someone using the usual SR coordinates associated with an inertial frame at rest with respect to the center of the motherboard, then there will be perfectly legitimate coordinate systems in which one input arrives first and the other second, and other perfectly legitimate coordinate systems in which those inputs arrive in the opposite order.

You can (in retrospect) tell a consistent history of the motherboard using any of those coordinate systems. No matter which coordinate system you select for your description, no one will ever be able to construct a chain of causality that contradicts you. They may disagree with you, but they can't prove you wrong...because you aren't wrong.
 
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Darwin123 said:
Say WHAT? :jaw-dropp

'The conclusion is that time does not flow, as all things simultaneously exist at the same time.'


I don't think that conclusion means anything with or without SR! First, SR doesn't say that all things occur at the same time. Second, existing at the same time has nothing to do with whether there is 'flow'.

I reentered the thread when Maartenn brought up phenomenology. At least phenomenology is philosophical dispute with a history. However, the history part has vanished.

I think that this thread has gone beyond all hope. So I am leaving the thread until someone comes up with some new historical insight.
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This a skeptics forum, where novel ideas are presented for discussion. Brian Greene is a respected (and perhaps controversial) theoretical physicist.
Brian Randolph Greene[1] (born February 9, 1963) is an American theoretical physicist and string theorist. He has been a professor at Columbia University since 1996 and chairman of the World Science Festival since co-founding it in 2008. Greene has worked on mirror symmetry, relating two different Calabi–Yau manifolds (concretely, relating the conifold to one of its orbifolds). He also described the flop transition, a mild form of topology change, showing that topology in string theory can change at the conifold point.

Greene has become known to a wider audience through his books for the general public, The Elegant Universe, Icarus at the Edge of Time, The Fabric of the Cosmos, The Hidden Reality, and related PBS television specials. He also appeared on The Big Bang Theory episode "The Herb Garden Germination", as well as the films Frequency and The Last Mimzy. He is currently a member of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
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LINK

Your inability to participate in a discussion about Greene's ideas concerning time is your problem. So, please do seek some "historical insight" elsewhere. Frankly, I have found your contributions here to be long winded, ponderous and of little value.
 
Darwin123 said:
Say WHAT? :jaw-dropp

'The conclusion is that time does not flow, as all things simultaneously exist at the same time.'


I don't think that conclusion means anything with or without SR!
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Agreed. This is probably another example of a Wikipedia article saying something foolish. If it's a direct quotation of Brian Greene, then it can only be defended as a lie told to children, and it's hard to imagine a context in which that particular whopper could be defended even as a lie told to children.

In particular, the relativity of whether E1 and E2 are simultaneous, E1 happens before E2, or E2 happens before E1 extends to some events in the past and future light cones of E1 and E2. If E4 is in the future light cone of E1 but sufficiently near in time, then it will also be left to an observer's choice of coordinate system whether E4 and E2 are simultaneous, E4 happens before E2, or E2 happens before E4.

E1 will happen before E4 in all observers' coordinate systems. That means anything that ceases to exist at E1, when paired with something created at E4, gives us a clear counterexample to Wikipedia's nonsense. Those things can't possibly exist at the same time, because E1 and E4 can't possibly occur at the same time.

Perpetual Student said:
Your inability to participate in a discussion about Greene's ideas concerning time is your problem. So, please do seek some "historical insight" elsewhere. Frankly, I have found your contributions here to be long winded, ponderous and of little value.
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Okay. Trying to help you understand what you weren't able to describe mathematically was my mistake as well.
 
Perpetual Student said:
Brian Greene is a respected (and perhaps controversial) theoretical physicist
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I totally agree with you. When Brian Greene says: 'time is an illusion', 'the seperation of past, present and future is an illusion' and 'the future is already there', I take this very seriously. When he is popularising science in a book or a documentary, he is an ambassador of science.
He is representing the scientific community about a certain subject in his books and videos.
So, he has a responsibility to be accurate.

'The future is already there' he says.

The questions are:
Where is the future already? How do scientists know that? Why do scientists not admit that they are determinists?
 
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Maartenn100 said:
I totally agree with you. When Brian Greene says: 'time is an illusion', 'the seperation of past, present and future is an illusion' and 'the future is already there', I take this very seriously. When he is popularising science in a book or a documentary, he is an ambassador of science.
He is representing the scientific community about a certain subject in his books and videos.
So, he has a responsibility to be accurate.
'The future is already there' he says.

The questions are:
Where is the future already? How do scientists know that? Why do scientists not admit that they are determinists?
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Hilite by Daylightstar
The most important thing is that he has a right to have an opinion.
It however is your responsibility to understand correctly what he says or means.
If your thoughts go off on a tangent based on his words, that's not his responsibility.
 
If you've read his books or even seen his course from The Teaching Company, you know that Brian Greene bases much of his viewpoint on the 2nd law of thermodynamics. It's a fascinating thought, but only one way of looking at things. It also merely implies that the future could possibly already be determined, since the 2nd law has been working in a linear fashion.
 
Maartenn100 said:
I totally agree with you. When Brian Greene says: 'time is an illusion', 'the seperation of past, present and future is an illusion' and 'the future is already there', I take this very seriously. When he is popularising science in a book or a documentary, he is an ambassador of science.
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The Fabric of the Cosmos
Brian Greene supports mainstream science, e.g. the cosmology of an expanding containing dark matter, dark energy and with an inflationary phase.
So you agree with this, Maartenn100?

That is the danger of argument from authority - you have to accept everything your cherry picked authority states :eye-poppi.
 
Maartenn100 said:
Learn about the block universe concept. Brian Greene is presenting this 'frozen river'-concept of time in his books and documentaries.
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One more time: You need to learn what the block universe concept is, Maartenn100. The block universe concept is philosophy not science :jaw-dropp!
Do not assume we cannot read, Maartenn100, we know what Brian Greene is presenting. We also know that this is his personal opinion as presented in his books and documentaries. Actual science is presented in textbooks and scientific papers.
 
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