LOOSE TALK ABOUT TIME AND PHYSICS

in physics •  3 years ago 

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Once upon a time I had lively commentary-conversations, like under this one:

https://hive.blog/science/@erh.germany/let-s-play-a-mental-game-of-time-perception

Reading it after more than three years I thought to myself:

If I suddenly realise that my sense of time is something deeply human, how can I possibly be able to understand the cosmos through my (in)understanding of time?

Like the minute-man, I would be not only slightly but significantly mistaken in what I predict about the future by what I think I know at present.
Assuming that I would be just as limited in my interpretation of data in relation to the universe as the minute-man, this error would not only befall me with regard to the future, but in the same way with regard to the past. Historiography, like futurology, is therefore a profoundly human matter, fraught with great errors. After playing with the concept of time in this way, I could no longer think otherwise.

"minute-man" = a man who lives only one minute.

To answer it: I cannot "understand" the Universe through linear time perception. I cannot understand it through any thought concept.

"The world" as it seems, peoples more stupid peoples.

But I think that is not neccesarrily correct. It's only that more stupidities are seen in the form of medial distribution. It becomes more audible and visible for we have so much more audible and visible forms of communications.

Since Einstein, we have known about the relativity of time, but generally seem to treat it like students receiving frontal teaching. We try to learn the thing by memorize it, which is not ideal for learning.

If anyone of you is a school teacher or at a faculty in university, why not give your students this little text on time perception, so they can toy with it themselves?

If space-time does not "behave" according to the observable laws, the mind comes to all kinds of thoughts.

In the context of my research of this article I have seen a thought of mine for the first time (!) reiterated. That everything that comes to the mind of Science Fiction authors basically unfolds out of space itself, because nothing that does not exist in the universe is "new" from the ground up, but merely that space, which is infinitely folded, allowed a corner of its folding to pass through at one point.

This is an excerpt of a response from me to a comment.

Those of you who have practised origami, i.e. who have folded a three-dimensional body from a single sheet of paper or have watched it being done, will understand this sentence better.

That space could therefore be something folded, not only outer space, but of course also our earthly existence, is an idea that seems to remind me of something I "know" but cannot really put into words.

But what this idea of manifoldness does is that it cleans up linear thinking. A really nasty thinking that dominates everything else that is much more interesting.

Do you really understand warp drive?

The representation of our ever-popular Trekis is not always quite suitable to really translate the warp as figuratively as it is actually meant. It is not the Enterprise that moves through space at faster than light speed. No. It is space that is being moved or bent, pulled over your ship.

If you are the spaceship, then space is like a jumper that you put on. You fly off in our solar system (you put your arms through your sleeves) and you come out at Alfa Centauri (you pull the rest of the jumper over your head). The moment your nose and eyes come fore, you have travelled with warp speed. HaHa!

The trouble is

... that the amount of energy that has to be expended for such an act is so immense that your ship would not only sizzle itself on arrival, but also all the matter in whose vicinity it would arrive. Since the first problem, the creation of matter, cannot be overcome, the second problem, the creation of anti-matter, cannot be overcome.

A circular saw, for example, when it is running at full speed, looks as if it is motionless. The eye cannot follow and so, if you were to go deaf, you might be tempted to touch the rotating blade because it appears to be stationary. The reason a wall cannot be passed through with our head is because the speed at which its particles move is many times faster than the speed of the particles of our biological body. If the particles moved at the same speed, we could walk through walls.


Picture source:
By Ryanicus Girraficus - Own work, CC0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65858333

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  ·  3 years ago  ·  
  ·  3 years ago  ·  

:D HaHa!! A good one.

  ·  3 years ago  ·  
  ·  3 years ago  ·  

Thanx. Appreciated.