| Topic: |
Science > Physics |
| User: |
"Pentcho Valev" |
| Date: |
16 May 2007 02:48:16 AM |
| Object: |
HOW PAUL DAVIES BUILDS TIME MACHINES |
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0004226A-F77D-1D4A-90FB809EC5880000&catID=2
"How to Build a Time Machine It wouldn't be easy, but it might be
possible By Paul Davies.....The effect, known as time dilation, occurs
whenever two observers move relative to each other. In daily life we
don't notice weird time warps, because the effect becomes dramatic
only when the motion occurs at close to the speed of light. Even at
aircraft speeds, the time dilation in a typical journey amounts to
just a few nanoseconds--hardly an adventure of Wellsian proportions.
Nevertheless, atomic clocks are accurate enough to record the shift
and confirm that time really is stretched by motion. So travel into
the future is a proved fact, even if it has so far been in rather
unexciting amounts......Speed is one way to jump ahead in time.
Gravity is another. In his general theory of relativity, Einstein
predicted that gravity slows time. Clocks run a bit faster in the
attic than in the basement, which is closer to the center of Earth and
therefore deeper down in a gravitational field. Similarly, clocks run
faster in space than on the ground. Once again the effect is
minuscule, but it has been directly measured using accurate clocks.
Indeed, these time-warping effects have to be taken into account in
the Global Positioning System. If they weren't, sailors, taxi drivers
and cruise missiles could find themselves many kilometers off course."
So any time Paul Davies builds his time machines he relies on either
(ordinary) time dilation or gravitational time dilation. He also knows
ordinary time dilation is a corollary of Einstein's light postulate
whereas gravitational time dilation....well....who cares. But even if
only ordinary time dilation is a corollary of Einstein's light
postulate, Paul Davies still feels discomfort because from time to
time it seems to him that this postulate is somewhat unreliable:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/08/08/1028157977713.html
"In a changing world at least something seemed constant the speed of
light. That's what Einstein taught us. Right? Wrong, says a team of
Sydney researchers led by the renowned cosmologist Professor Paul
Davies, of Macquarie University..... Last week, Professor Davies won
the 2002 Michael Faraday Award, given by the Royal Society in London
to scientists who have done the most to further public communication
of science, engineering or technology. In 1995, he was awarded the
prestigious Templeton Prize for progress in religion."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2181455.stm
"Einstein's theory 'may be wrong'.....there are startling implications
if the law that nothing can go faster than light is overturned. "Maybe
it's possible to get around that restriction, in which case it would
enthral Star Trek fans because at the moment even at the speed of
light it would take 100,000 years to cross the galaxy," says Davies."
Sometimes Paul Davies is more optimistic: it seems to him that, no
matter what happens to Einstein's light postulate, he will always be
able to build his time machines and win prestigious Awards for
progress in science and religion.
Pentcho Valev
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| User: "Rock Brentwood" |
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| Title: Re: HOW PAUL DAVIES BUILDS TIME MACHINES |
16 May 2007 09:12:41 PM |
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On May 16, 2:48 am, Pentcho Valev <pva...@yahoo.com> wrote:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2181455.stm
"Einstein's theory 'may be wrong'.....there are startling implications
if the law that nothing can go faster than light is overturned.
The paper that article was in refernece to had nothing to do with
light speed!
The reference was nothing more than a mass media article written by a
basically clueless science writer.
What the paper was claiming was that the *fine structure constant*
varies. That is -- the coupling between electromagnetism and electric
charges.
In fact, not only does that NOT "refute Einstein", it actually serves
to support Kaluza-Klein, which makes this very prediction.
The fine structure constant is alpha = e^2/(2 epsilon_0 h c). A
variation shows that epsilon_0 is varying -- i..e, that the vacuum has
the properties of a dielectric medium, precisely as Maxwell had
hypothesized. Neither h nor c are either constant OR variable, since
"constant" and "variable" is only meaningful with respect to a set of
units, and these are used to define units -- as Maxwell had originally
done (with c).
You get all your science information from the Mass Media?! No wonder
why you're so pissed. I'd be pissed too. Half the characterizations
you give of modern science don't even resemble what you're describing,
though they in almost all cases coincide with the over-cliched' mass
media populations of the respective fields.
You can't trust the mass media to get anything right. They don't check
facts. They don't know how to use the English language (or whatever
other language they're writing in), they don't know how to properly
articulate ideas. They always ask the wrong questions. They always
frame everything the wrong way. Their bloated baby boomer staffs
always try to frame everything in terms of that misbegotten decade
known as the 1960's that nobody living in this century (except fossils
from the previous one) gives a damn about (e.g. their persistent
efforts at trying to railroad Iraq into "another Vietnam" when
everybody who knows anything about history knows that the correct
analogy to Iraq is Iraq (1920's) or Syria (1930's)).
They are discredited. Their viewship is dropping like a rock
(especially CBS, but if you think it's Katie, note also that NBC's
Evening News is at a near all-time low too). Newspaper circulations in
the US are paltry and vastly swamped by any decent-sized blog. They
intrude on everybody's life with their disingenuous "right to know"
bull. Public figures can't even run for office, without the Media's
noses getting into everybody's business. They've gone overtilt with
the political correctness nonsense (not only Imus -- why did the media
spend an entire week obsessing over someone nobody even knows or gives
a damn about -- or Thompson, or whoever the latest "oo! he said a
dirty word!" dupe of the day is; but groups like the Dixie Chicks, who
virtually got vilified for speaking their minds).
They are the fulfullment of Orwell -- PC, as in Correct-Think and
Correct-Speak. Even the governments of this world are the victims
here. Not the large-scale corporate-owned conglomerate mass TV and
talk radio and (especially) cable media.
It's no wonder why they go out of their way to vilify the Internet,
those of us on Cyberspace, and everything related to the Internet.
They're trying to demonize their competition in a last desperate
attempt to get people off the net, and to stave off their inevitable
obsolescence and demise.
Everybody who's been on the Net for even more than a couple months
knows that if you want to find information on a subject (e.g. on what
that "article" above actually said and what came of the paper and
followups, now 5 years old); that if they want to get a background in
the respective fields, they do an exhaustive search on this world
library whose contents now vastly supersede any land-based archive on
this planet.
And you get your science news from this institution -- the bane of
everything good in this world. Dangerously obsolete institutions that
have long overstayed their welcome aboard the face of this planet, for
audiences comprised of equally obsolete carmudgeons.
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| User: "Androcles" |
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| Title: Re: HOW PAUL DAVIES BUILDS TIME MACHINES |
17 May 2007 07:18:03 AM |
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"Rock Brentwood" <markwh04@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1179367961.065577.77810@q23g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
: On May 16, 2:48 am, Pentcho Valev <pva...@yahoo.com> wrote:
: > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2181455.stm
: > "Einstein's theory 'may be wrong'.....there are startling implications
: > if the law that nothing can go faster than light is overturned.
:
: The paper that article was in refernece to had nothing to do with
: light speed!
:
: The reference
Snipping idiot.
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| User: "Pentcho Valev" |
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| Title: Re: HOW PAUL DAVIES BUILDS TIME MACHINES |
17 May 2007 08:07:40 AM |
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Rock Brentwood wrote:
On May 16, 2:48 am, Pentcho Valev <pva...@yahoo.com> wrote:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2181455.stm
"Einstein's theory 'may be wrong'.....there are startling implications
if the law that nothing can go faster than light is overturned.
The paper that article was in refernece to had nothing to do with
light speed!
The reference was nothing more than a mass media article written by a
basically clueless science writer.
Essentially the article contains quotations by Paul Davies and if you
think he is "basically clueless" I will have to agree with you. This
"basically clueless" individual sometimes abandons Einstein in order
to help a friend:
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=5538
Paul Davies: "Was Einstein wrong? The idea of a variable speed of
light, championed by an angry young scientist, could one day topple
Einstein's theory of relativity."
In other cases Paul Davies is more faithful to Einstein:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,17159654-27703,00.html
"When you find out the speed of light differs, the whole Einstein
theory starts collapsing.....Professor Cahill said that debunking the
Einstein theories would lead to new discoveries in physics and greater
understanding of phenomena that could not yet be fully
explained.....But physicist Paul Davies of Macquarie University and
the Australian Centre for Astrobiology said Einstein's theories of
relativity had been tested, and there was no evidence to suggest they
were wrong."
Note that I am not discussing Cahill's theory here so a red herring
called "Is Cahill's theory right?" would not be necessary.
Pentcho Valev
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