The non-beginning (and the end)

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
I did read the article. I did not say the article was substanceless. I said that the one quote you chose to base your question on was substanceless, and that I'd rather go back to where the author got his information from than rely on the author. You seem to find this offensive - like an attack on you. I didn't mean it that way.

Here's a good link for the mathematically and scientifically inclined:

http://relativity.livingreviews.org/open?pubNo=lrr-2005-1&page=articlesu17.html

My suspicion at this time - assuming time exists 😉 - is that time doesn't exist at the microscopic level in something like the same way that temperature does not exist at the microscopic level when "temperature" is defined as an average kinetic energy of a macroscopic collection of particles. Or, perhaps, time doesn't exist at these scales in the same way Newton's Laws "don't exist" at high velocities because they are low velocity approximations of Special Relativity.

I'm also finding a lot of connections between the idea of "nonexistence of time" in this context and the idea of "nonexistence of space" as I look into this topic e.g.

When one attempts to interpret the quantum theories coming from the Chern-Simons formalism or covariant canonical quantization, one finds an immediate and rather profound difficulty. The gauge-invariant observables - the traces of the holonomies - are automatically nonlocal and time-independent, and one obtains a “frozen time formalism,” or what Kuchař has called “quantum gravity without time”

... it is not at all easy to see how to extract local geometry and dynamics from such a picture: If our only observables are nonlocal and time-independent, how can we recover a classical limit with local excitations that evolve in time?

http://relativity.livingreviews.org/open?pubNo=lrr-2005-1&page=articlesu17.html

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
"Space and imaginary time together". That's not a dimension; that's three dimensions and "a genuine scientific concept" all together describe some sort of finite combination when all graphed together or something.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
You are committing the Fallacy of Equivocation. That is not the same definition of "dimension" used in the sense of "third dimensional". That is a casual definition, not a technical one.

Tim Folger refers to me, an emeritus professor aged 78, as "a young American physicist." Maybe he really accepts Julian Barbour's thesis that time is an illusion. Even when the Wheeler-DeWitt equation was first written down (1965), I was 42, an age by which theoretical physicists are regarded as already over the hill.

Is time more of an illusion than space or anything else? I still believe what I told Barbour in Spain: "Time is what a clock measures, nothing more"— but also nothing less. Solutions of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation can be interpreted if one understands that they describe correlations between the objects that make up the universe, e.g., ticking clocks and moving planets. One does not need to grind an ax about time.

It is fine to have a novel viewpoint, but the acid test is whether it suggests a new experiment or explains a new observation. Folger leads the reader to believe that the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, which Barbour holds in unjustifiably high esteem, describes the entire universe. This is not true. The equation merely provides a framework, like relativity and quantum theory themselves do.

Bryce DeWitt
Department of Physics
University of Texas at Austin

http://discovermagazine.com/2001/feb/letters/?searchterm=barbour


Like I said; I think the journalist sensationalized this to the point where all meaning was lost.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Well then, can you give your technical definition?

Originally posted by twhitehead
You aren't at all clear. Is Stephen Hawking suggesting that space and time are finite or not? I have no doubt that he is (only a suggestion though). My point is that he certainly does not see any logical reason for it being impossible.

[b]EDIT - I've seen the "finite but unbounded" comment explained as the observable universe being finite but there are ...[text shortened]... .
No. Stephen Hawking is definitely not merely saying that we cant see infinitely far.[/b]

Originally posted by twhitehead
You aren't at all clear. Is Stephen Hawking suggesting that space and time are finite or not? I have no doubt that he is (only a suggestion though). My point is that he certainly does not see any logical reason for it being impossible.

[b]EDIT - I've seen the "finite but unbounded" comment explained as the observable universe being finite but there are ...[text shortened]... .
No. Stephen Hawking is definitely not merely saying that we cant see infinitely far.[/b]

Originally posted by AThousandYoung

Like I said; I think the journalist sensationalized this to the point where all meaning was lost.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Forget about the journalist; tell me about Rovelli.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
[4.a] The least number of independent coordinates required to specify uniquely the points in a space.

http://www.answers.com/topic/dimension

I was apparently incorrect (see Definition 5) that you were using the term in a non technical sense. However you were not using it in the specific technical sense implied in this context, which is Definition 4.a.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
The creator of the equation in question specifically commenting on this journalist's interpretation of his equation isn't enough for you?

I'll look into Rovelli.

Originally posted by twhitehead

The surface of the earth is 'a space' and is two dimensional. Latitude and longitude are a valid set of dimensions for the surface of the earth and they are both finite.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Noob question: given that the Earth is spherical (sort of) with lots of bumps and so forth, can its surface still be said to be two-dimensional?

Originally posted by twhitehead
Your usage so far is actually closer to 5. as in "regarded as a fundamental measure", whereas I was using the more general 4.a.

Your mistake in 4.a. is to not realize what is meant by 'a space'.
The surface of the earth is 'a space' and is two dimensional. Latitude and longitude are a valid set of dimensions for the surface of the earth and they are both finite.