Time as an Emergent Phenomenon: Traveling Back to the Heroic Age of Physics by Elliot McGucken

Dr. E,

Thank you!

I see your *knowledge* of MDT, and I like where this is going...

But what is the course of *action* you suggest?

CKM

Well, no man is an island, and physics has ever been advanced by cordial conversation in the context of rigorous honesty and a humble acknowledgement of empirical facts. Einstein and Bohr disagreed often, but yet they had a deep respect for one-another, and I highly recommend the perusal of their converstations! Where would be be without the disagreements between Einstein and Minkowski, between Bohr and Einstein, and between Pauli and just about everybody? Contrast their exalted dialogues to the snarky dialogues in the modern string-LQG wars, and the perhaps even more troubling complete *lack* of dialogue for topics and approaches transcending those two "theories" which might not even be successful theories after all.

"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck

And yet today's science is dominated by "communal" theories bolstered by multi-million-dollar media teams. And again, these theories aren't really theories. They are often merely "not even wrong."

Planck also wrote, "Eine neue wissenschaftliche Wahrheit pflegt sich nicht in der Weise durchzusetzen, daß ihre Gegner überzeugt werden und sich als belehrt erklären, sondern vielmehr dadurch, daß ihre Gegner allmählich aussterben und daß die heranwachsende Generation von vornherein mit der Wahrheit vertraut geworden ist."

Translation: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

Once upon a time new theories were opposed by established scientists and established science. But today, new theories are mostly opposed by established bureaucracies and established bureaucrats, which have done little, if anything, to advance or contibute to actual science. So it's more akin to Galileo standing before the Inquisition.

It seems too many have forgotten the Hippocratic Oath--"first, do no harm."

Perhaps we ought contemplate one for scientists!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath_for_Scientists

So, in light of all this, CKM, I'm thankful for this conversation and to fqxi for providing this forum which brought us togetehr!

MDT provides opportunities for novel research programs and curriculums--for new directions and exalted pursuits in physics, philosophy, and knowledge--based upon the foundational works of physics. And on a deeper level, the "heroic spirit" the program exalts could find use across all realms in academia and throughout our economy, in which far, far too many people profit by saying one thing and doing another--activities which have lead to our current crisis.

MDT predicts all of relativity from a simple postulate and equation that also provides *physical* model for entropy, time, and all its arrows, quantum entanglement and nonlocality, and all the dualities--space/time, energy/mass, and wave/particle. Not bad for one small equation: dx4/dt = ic, which offers a *physical* unification across all realms of physics, tying together entities as diverse as quantum entanglement and the timelessness of the photon, while presenting insight into a novel physical facet of our universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.

Science is more of an art than a science, and it always seems to advance in manners never before anticipated by the establishment, as Planck stated. One cannot legislate, nor vote on, nor dictate the advancement of science by fiat. "One cannot pray a lie," as Mark Twain once said.

"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck

And again we see the primacy of the honest individual in the classic, epic hero's journey!

"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man." --Joseph Campbell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth

And the Nobel Laureate eocnomist F.A. Hayek agrees!

"The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for "conscious" control or "conscious" planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme--while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the superindividual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." -F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom

Well, thanks again for the exalted dialogue CKM.

With our newfound freewill provided by MDT, which liberates us from the block universe while llowing us to keep all of relativity, we can become those things we seek!

Best,

Dr. E :)

Dr. E,

Thank you for thanking me for the conversation, I have enjoyed it as well.

But I still cannot figure out what you think the outcome of our conversation is: you seem to agree with everything I say, and then repeat your comments about MDT...?

CKM

Yes CKM--I agree with your general perspectives and view on the higher purposes of science.

I've been taking the opportunity to approach MDT from different angles, with slight variations on the theme, as that is the ultimate purpose of this specific forum.

Best,

Dr. E

Not to belabor the point, but doesn't the opposite also apply; From the perspective of the "fourth dimension," it is the three spatial dimensions which are shrinking?

Einstein said the photon is timeless and that gravity shrinks the measure of space. If energy is the "now," then there is no future and the events we perceive as time are constantly receding into the past, as each is replaced by the next, so that our three dimensional context shrinks relative to this energy.

On the other hand, he did feel compelled to add the cosmological constant, for balance, so maybe there is some counteracting curvature to this fourth dimension. It's my feeling that redshift is evidence of a cosmological constant, which is a property of space, not the source of it, as the singularity would be. So this outward curvature, expanding fourth dimension, would be the direction of the future.

A review of Elliot "Dr. E" McGucken's "Time as an Emergent Phenomenon: Traveling Back to the Heroic Age of Physics":

In this essay, McGucken claims that all of physics, including all of quantum mechanics, relativity, thermodynamics, and a large part of cosmology, including universal expansion and the Big Bang, follow from one line that appears in a 1912 paper by Einstein: "x4 = ict" (the Lorenz transformation for the 4th dimension of space-time), which McGucken rewrites as "dx4/dt = ic". From this, he concludes pretty much everything else in the universe.

Some observations by the careful reader of this essay start planting seeds of suspicion on McGucken's grasp of elementary math. For example, on page 7 he spends about half a page trying to show that the integration of the relation dx4/dt = ic with respect to t results in x4 = ict, a "feat" that any year-12 high-school student would regard as obvious and not worth showing. Worse, McGucken performs a "crime" that any 1st-year college student of calculus is warned to avoid: he throws away the constant of integration, because it doesn't suit his purpose! Specifically, McGucken writes: "Dropping the arbitrary constant, we get..." But constants of integration, we learn in math, are not to be dropped like unwanted fruits of illicit love affairs! If they appear in physics, they must have a physical explanation, otherwise there is something wrong with the idea of integration. And, indeed, there is something *very* wrong with McGucken's idea of taking the derivative with respect to time in Einstein's x4 = ict. The problem is, x4 = ict is *not* a physical equation, such as F = m·a, which connects different physical quantities; it is a *transformation of coordinates* (part of the Lorenz system of transformations), and as such, it is meaningless to try and find its derivative on both sides. The symbol x4, which also appears as t´ in other versions of Lorenz transformations, represents *time*. Thus, t´ = ict means this: if you want to find the new 4th coordinate, t´, of a point (x´, y´, z´, t´) in an inertial frame of reference that moves with a given uniform speed relative to another point (x, y, z, t) in another inertial frame of reference, then multiply t by ic, and this will give you the fourth coordinate of the point (or 4d-event, as is usually called). Einstein would often write (x1, x2, x3, x4) instead of (x´, y´, z´, t´), to emphasize that the four coordinates of space-time are more similar to each other than our choice of letters, x, y, z, t, tricks us to believe -- that's all that there is between the symbol x4 and the concept of time: x4 *is* time, it's the new time-coordinate.

But instead of realizing that t´, or x4, is the Lorenz-transformed temporal coordinate of a 4d-event, McGucken proceeds to differentiate both sides of this transformation with respect to time t. In essence, he takes the derivative of time with respect to time on the left side, and finds that it is (surprise-surprise) constant. Thus, instead of interpreting x4, or t´, as the transformed temporal (4th) coordinate in space-time, McGucken makes the ad hoc interpretation that x4 is *another* dimension, not the temporal one, which "moves" at speed c. But if it is another dimension, how can it be related with time t through a constant such as ic? Multiplying a dimension by a constant does not result in another dimension, but in a modification of the *metric* that returns the distance between points in the space (space-time, in our case) that includes that dimension. Specifically, having the factor ic in front of t, implies that when we compute the distance d² = x² + y² + z² + (ict)², then we get d² = x² + y² + z² - c²t², because i² = -1, a fact known by every child in the kindergarten. Thus, the minus sign in front of c²t² results in the well-known Minkowskian metric, rather than the Euclidean one, d² = x² + y² + z² + t², otherwise known as Galilean, because it is suitable in Galilean (or Newtonian) physics, which treats space-time as Euclidean. McGucken, instead of realizing that the transformation t´ = ict results in the Minkowskian metric, in which "circles" (i.e., equidistant points from a given point) are hyperbolas satisfying the equation d² = s² - t² (rather than true circles in the Euclidean metric, which satisfy the equation d² = s² + t²), imagines an essentially Euclidean geometry for the universe, which he assumes to be a 4d-sphere that expands radially at the speed of light, the "3d-surface" of which is our familiar 3d space. McGucken's "time" is quintessentially Newtonian, absolute, independent of space.

Moreover, as hard as McGucken tries to rid himself of the idea that time is the fourth dimension, he fails to do so, because a 3d-sphere that expands in time does not expand "along an imaginary 4th dimension", but *in time*. That is, each point within such an expanding sphere is adequately described by four coordinates: x, y, z (the 3d-spatial ones), and t, the time of "now" of the point in that sphere. With his description, McGucken brings evidence that he doesn't understand very well the concept of dimension.

Further, the idea that 3d-space is spherical, i.e., closed along any direction, does not follow from anything in McGucken's essay. Space could be infinite (open), in one, two, or all three dimensions, and still expanding in size (and still with a wrong Euclidean geometry, as per McGucken's essay). McGucken's conception of 3d-space as spherical is an arbitrary axiom of his, but he doesn't say so explicitly.

There are more points in this essay that cause the reader to question McGucken's grasp of even the most elementary math. For example, on p. 4 he states: "Consider two interacting photons that propagate in opposite directions, [...] One second later, [...] although separated by 372,000 miles, the photons yet inhabit a common locality in the fourth dimension". This is McGucken's "explanation" of quantum non-locality, for, he says, the photons might be 372,000 miles apart, but they stand at the same temporal coordinate, ergo... "It is as if the photons are yet side-by-side during the measurement." This is like saying that, suppose we have two points on the familiar 2d-plane, with coordinates [1,2] and [3,2]. Although the points are separated by a distance of 2 units of length, they stand "side-by-side" because their y-coordinates are equal, and so one influences the other! Does McGucken understand the notion of *distance*? Or of "Cartesian coordinates"? Quite doubtful, given what he states.

Overall, the essay does not stand serious criticism. If this review was written, it was because McGucken appears to have persuaded some readers that he has something of significance to say, when in reality he is saying absolutely nothing. -- End of review.

---------------------------------------

This review was prepared by "Dr. F", which is the first derivative of "Dr. E" with respect to time, i.e., d"Dr. E"/dt = "Dr. F", where "F" stands for "Failure". Pure, total, complete, and undoubted failure.

This review was also prepared with the knowledge that "Dr. E" (the integral of "Dr. F" minus some unwanted and dropped constants) will respond with yet another one of his loooooooooong "answers", which he copy-pastes from texts he has already prepared, entirely irrelevant to the points made by his critics, and the purpose of which is to "bury" the critic's comments under an avalanche of irrelevant text: "out of sight, out of mind," according to Dr. E/McGucken. A prime example of this was when Dr. Nikolic (topic 259) asked Dr E to please answer with a single letter (a, b, c, or d) in a multiple-choice question, through which poor Dr. Nikolic was trying to figure out what Dr. E was really saying. Instead of a single letter, McGucken's "answer" was another several-page-long irrelevant document, through which McGucken effectively "buried" Dr. Nikolic's question. Taking into account this, the present post requests from the eloquent and speech-unrestrained Dr E to answer with exactly zero (0) letters to this post. If Dr. Nikolic's 1 letter was multiplied by a factor of several thousand to become Dr E's response, let us see what multiplying 0 by any factor means for Dr. E. Let us see at least Dr. E's grasp of *this* rule of arithmetic.

Dr. F

Hello Dr. F,

Thanks for the feedback. It seems you are arguing with yourself, as MDT agrees wholeheartedly with Einstein's relativity, quantum mechanics, and statistical mechanics.

Einstein stated "The Lord is subtle, but he is not malicious." Now you are being malicious, launching emotional ad-hominem attacks. Is that why you are refraining from using your real name?

You'll enjoy this post on Peter Woit's blog:

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=894

"The topic of blogs came up mainly in a section where Smolin discussed the ethical importance of scientists putting their name and reputation behind what they have to say about their science. He characterized anonymous criticism as one of the main reasons for the low signal/noise ratio and nasty environment of the comment sections of many blogs, describing this as far worse than anything he had encountered in his professional career, and something that is giving science a bad name. The theoretical physics group at Harvard in the 1970s was given as an example of about the worst it could get in academia. At the end of the discussion session, Paul Ginsparg took him to task about this, saying that he had been there too and it wasn't that bad. I was there at the same time as both of them, and remember it as a rather unfriendly environment with a quite high arrogance level. But, with faculty like Coleman, Weinberg, Glashow, and postdocs like Witten, the talent and accomplishments of the people involved seemed to justify quite a bit of arrogance.

Ginsparg went on to agree with Smolin about anonymity on blogs, comparing trying to have a serious discussion in such an environment to trying to do so in a Fellini movie, being attacked by dwarves wearing masks." from--http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=894

I highly recommend Lee Smolin's speech:

http://pirsa.org/08090035/

"Abstract: I develop the idea that science works because scientists form communities defined by a set of ethical principles which, even if imperfectly applied, tend to lead to progress in our understanding of nature. While these communities have long been international, the combination of the internet with cheap airfare and easy migration of educated people makes scientists into 'global souls', in Pico Iyer's phrase. This opens up new opportunities and also new challenges for the thriving of scientific communities."

So in the spirit of science, please do provide us with your real name and credentials. When Bohr and Einstein debated, they didn't hide beyond cowardly anonimity to accuse one-another of not understanding arithmetic. What good can come of this childlike behavior?

You are extrapolating, augmenting, twisting, convoluting, and compromising MDT, and then castingating and impugning the straw man you erected. So congrats on that.

MDT has come not to deny the laws of the Founding Fathers of physics, but to unite them. MDT has come to liberate us from the block universe and unfreeze time, while providing a common *physical* model for all of relativity, quantum mechanics, entropy, and time's arrows and assymetries.

If you really believe what you are saying, could you please provide your real name and credentials?

Why do you not want us to know who you really are?

You write "x4 *is* time, it's the new time-coordinate."

Actually, in his 1912 Manuscript, Einstein wrote x4 = ict. There is an equal sign in the above equation, and hence time's arrows and assymetries, entanglement, nonlocality, entropy, and relativity, which are all united in the *physical* framefork afforded by MDT.

All the above posts do pertain to MDT, and I am passionate about talking about it, but then again, this forum is devoted to MDT.

So now the question is, "Which forum is devoted to your novel theories regarding time and its arrows and assymetries, entropy, entanglement, nonlocality, relativity, qm, and a new interpretation of the classic double-slit experiment?"

MDT offers a simple postulate and equation, and an ensuing novel unification of diverse physical phenomena, as well as insight into a fundamental facet of our universe that has hitherto been unsung--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions--dx4/dt=ic. Expect the Inquisition, and expect them to be anonymous "dwarves wearing masks.

Best,

Dr. E

Dr. E,

Why don't you focus on the questions asked in my review regarding your incompetence in math? What difference does it make what my real identity is? I told you who I am: I am your derivative, your first derivative with respect to time: "Dr. F". (Why, do you think you have the exclusive right to differentiate anything and everything?) I have no "forum devoted to [my] novel theories," sorry for dashing your hopes. Nor do I have novel theories at all. I am just a passerby. Your derivative.

But is it really important to know *who* gives you the message? Isn't it more important to look at *what* the message is, and answer to everybody, specifically and explicitly, each one of the cases of McGucken-math-salad that I pointed out in my review? I questioned your grasp of elementary math. For example, on page 7 you spent about half a page trying to show that the integration of the relation dx4/dt = ic with respect to t results in x4 = ict, a "feat" that any year-12 high-school student would regard as obvious and not worth showing. Worse, you performed a "crime" that any 1st-year college student of calculus is warned to avoid: you threw away the constant of integration, because it didn't suit your purpose! Specifically, you wrote: "Dropping the arbitrary constant, we get..." But constants of integration, we learn in math, are not to be dropped like unwanted fruits of illicit love affairs! If they appear in physics, they must have a physical explanation, otherwise there is something wrong with the idea of integration. And, indeed, there is something *very* wrong with your idea of taking the derivative with respect to time in Einstein's x4 = ict. The problem is, x4 = ict is *not* a physical equation, such as F = m·a, which connects different physical quantities; it is a *transformation of coordinates* (part of the Lorenz system of transformations), and as such, it is meaningless to try and find its derivative on both sides. The symbol x4, which also appears as t´ in other versions of Lorenz transformations, represents *time*. Thus, t´ = ict means this: if you want to find the new 4th coordinate, t´, of a point (x´, y´, z´, t´) in an inertial frame of reference that moves with a given uniform speed relative to another point (x, y, z, t) in another inertial frame of reference, then multiply t by ic, and this will give you the fourth coordinate of the point (or 4d-event, as is usually called). Einstein would often write (x1, x2, x3, x4) instead of (x´, y´, z´, t´), to emphasize that the four coordinates of space-time are more similar to each other than our choice of letters, x, y, z, t, tricks us to believe -- that's all that there is between the symbol x4 and the concept of time: x4 *is* time, it's the new time-coordinate. And t΄ = ict (or x4 = ict) is NOT AN EQUATION for Pete's sake, McGucken, it is a COORDINATE TRANSFORMATION. The Lorenz transformation. The equal sign (=) DOES NOT STAND FOR EQALITY of quantities. It could very well be an arrow, like this: t΄

(Continuing from my previous post)

...

like this: t΄ ARROW ict. AND WE DON'T DIFFERENTIATE TRANSFORMATIONS. Understooded?

But instead of realizing that t´, or x4, is the Lorenz-transformed temporal coordinate of a 4d-event, you proceed to differentiate both sides of this transformation with respect to time t. In essence, you take the derivative of time with respect to time on the left side, and find that it is (surprise-surprise) constant. Thus, instead of interpreting x4, or t´, as the transformed temporal (4th) coordinate in space-time, you make the ad hoc interpretation that x4 is *another* dimension, not the temporal one, which "moves" at speed c. But if it is another dimension, how can it be related with time t through a constant such as ic? Multiplying a dimension by a constant does not result in another dimension, but in a modification of the *metric* that returns the distance between points in the space (space-time, in our case) that includes that dimension. Specifically, having the factor ic in front of t, implies that when we compute the distance d² = x² + y² + z² + (ict)², then we get d² = x² + y² + z² - c²t², because i² = -1, a fact known by every child in the kindergarten. Thus, the minus sign in front of c²t² results in the well-known Minkowskian metric, rather than the Euclidean one, d² = x² + y² + z² + t², otherwise known as Galilean, because it is suitable in Galilean (or Newtonian) physics, which treats space-time as Euclidean. You, instead of realizing that the transformation t´ = ict results in the Minkowskian metric, in which "circles" (i.e., equidistant points from a given point) are hyperbolas satisfying the equation d² = s² - t² (rather than true circles in the Euclidean metric, which satisfy the equation d² = s² + t²), imagine an essentially Euclidean geometry for the universe, which you assume to be a 4d-sphere that expands radially at the speed of light, the "3d-surface" of which is our familiar 3d space. Your "time" is quintessentially Newtonian, absolute, independent of space.

Moreover, as hard as you try to rid yourself of the idea that time is the fourth dimension, you fail to do so, because a 3d-sphere that expands in time does not expand "along an imaginary 4th dimension", but *in time*. That is, each point within such an expanding sphere is adequately described by four coordinates: x, y, z (the 3d-spatial ones), and t, the time of "now" of the point in that sphere. With your description, you bring evidence that you doesn't understand very well the concept of dimension.

Further, the idea that 3d-space is spherical, i.e., closed along any direction, does not follow from anything in your essay. Space could be infinite (open), in one, two, or all three dimensions, and still expanding in size (and still with a wrong Euclidean geometry, as per your essay). Your conception of 3d-space as spherical is an arbitrary axiom of yours, but you don't say so explicitly.

There are more points in this essay that cause the reader to question your grasp of even the most elementary math. For example, on p. 4 you state: "Consider two interacting photons that propagate in opposite directions, [...] One second later, [...] although separated by 372,000 miles, the photons yet inhabit a common locality in the fourth dimension". This is your "explanation" of quantum non-locality, for, you say, the photons might be 372,000 miles apart, but they stand at the same temporal coordinate, ergo... "It is as if the photons are yet side-by-side during the measurement." This is like saying that, suppose we have two points on the familiar 2d-plane, with coordinates [1,2] and [3,2]. Although the points are separated by a distance of 2 units of length, they stand "side-by-side" because their y-coordinates are equal, and so one influences the other! Do you understand the notion of *distance*? Or of "Cartesian coordinates"? I am still expecting an answer.

Try to concentrate on "the beef", McGucken. Just the beef.

Your derivative,

Dr. F

Anonymous Coward,

If you had serious points to make, I imagine you would be able to do it without the snarky name-calling and childish attacks. Also, if you were proud of your name, you would use it. If you had faith in your words, you would put your name on them.

Your tone and tenor bring to mind atheme from Lee Smolin's The Trouble With Physics--physics has come to a standstill largely because of well-funded, established snarkers, who haven't exactly advanced physics themselves, but only built a mean-spirited bureaucracy that is closed to new ideas--a bureaucracy you seem to be a part of. So who are you?

You write, "What difference does it make what my real identity is?" It obviously makes a vast difference, as you are carefully concealing your identity, while launching snarky, childish, ad hominem attacks.

In the spirit of truth and science, please share your name and credentials, if you have any.

Your greatest critique of my paper is that MDT is too simple, too beautiful, too elegant.

Again, we would like to know your identity and program of research, so that we can better understand why you so detest simple theories based upon rock-solid precepts and principles.

"Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone." Albert Einstein

Did you know that the most quoted phrase from the most-perfomed play of all time is "To be or not to be, that is the question?" Are you also one of those snarky deconstructors of Shakespeare, who removed him from the academy for using such simple phrases--the most fundamental verb in our language--to be?

Beethoven's 9th is based on the first five notes of the simple C Major scale. Do you also detest this final symphony because it is so simple that it cannot possibly be good?

Must all physics be tied up in knots and non-theories, to please your anonymous demands? So man up and let us know your name and program of research, so that we might better understand your emotional attacks, snarky namecalling, and put-downs.

In your snarky mean-spiritedness, which I would not be surprised to see fqxi delete, you completely miss the greater glory of MDT. It is hard to imagine a true physicist leading with childish putdowns and unadulturated snark. You ought be grateful I am even responding, but it is easy to sing the virtues of MDT.

Relativity freezes time and consigns us to a block universe. MDT unfreezes time and liberates us from the block universe, while also providing a *physical* model for time and all its arrows and assyemtries, entropy, entanglement, nonlocality, and relativity--a relativity wherein time flows, just as it does in our universe.

What do you personally have against the flow of time? Why are you snarking the ageless, timeless photon with ad hominem attacks? Why does time stop at the speed of light? Does not time flow day in and day out? *Why* does time flow? Do we not witness time in all realms of physics? Does not time have a dominant direction and arrow? Do not two initially-interacting photons remain entangled, no matter how far they are separated? All these things can be seen to descend from a common, simple principle--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, distribuuting locality and fathering time.

One of the chilish contentions in your diatribes is that x4 = ict is not an equation.

Well, it has two sides and an equals sign. It equates two entities, and this action is from where the word "equation" derives. x4 = ict.

You also tell me that I break some law in taking the derivative of the equation with respect to t.

dx4/dt = ic

There.

I did it again. Are you going to dress up as an anonymous dwarf and attack me personally some more, so as to preserve the sanctity of your block universe and time travel fanatasies? Go ahead, make my day.

In his 1912 Manuscript, Einsetin wrote x4=ict, inspired in part by Minkowski. Ergo, as t progresses, x4 must move.

dx4/dt = ic

There--I just took the derivative again. Are you going to round up a posse of masked, anonymous snarkers and hang me for this crime?

If simplicity, beauty, elegance, novelity, and truth are crimes, then I am guilty. You and your posse of anonymous snarkers can try and force me to sign a paper stating that the fourth dimension does not move relative to the three spatial dimensions, but even if you overpower my hand and force it to move so as to form the words, I will yet speak and think, "but yet it--the fourth dimension--moves." "E pur si muove." All the anonymous masked dwarves in the world cannot stop the fourth dimension from moving, nor can they keep time and progress in the realm of theoretical physics frozen forever.

The dominant source of your vituperation, ad-hominem attacks, childish namecalling, and bitter emotion seems to be that MDT is *too* simple, *too* beautiful, *too* elegant.

Well, if we got rid of all simple, elegant physics, we'd be left with string theory and the other non-theories that I am betting you have devoted your life to, and are too embarrassed to admit to, which is why you refuse to man up and share your identity. Your cowardly behavior is a tragic part of the postmodern, unheroic age, where the Great Books and Classics have been deconstructed, and small souls seek to rule via anonymous snark and fiat.

So what role do you play in all this?

That is one reason we would all like to know your true identity and program of research. Hundreds of millions of dollars--billions of dollars--have been spent over the past thirty years in theoretical physics. And yet, there has been no progress.

Theoretical physics has come to a standstill, and I would suggest that it is the fault of close-minded, snarky individuals such as yourself, and furthermore, I would suggest that deep down you know this, and this is the ultimate reason you remain anonymous.

You go on and on to accuse MDT of failing at things it does not even attempt, while ignoring all the things it gets right--the unification of time's arrows and assymetries across all realms, the unification of the dualities (space/time, mass/energy, wave/particle), our liberation from frozen time and a block universe, an expalnation for entanglement and nonlocality, and a fundamental invariance underlying all of relativity. It are anonymous, embittered folks like you who would prefer to live in a block universe and frozen time and frozen physics, where all progress is outlawed by anonymous snarkers, and math is used not in a simple manner to emlighten and exalt, but to berate, bring down, and destroy that which one did not create.

So please do share your name, title, and program of research, if you wish to continue. Perhaps by using your real name, you won't descend into snarky namecalling, and ad hominem attacks against straw men you created, and you can concentrate on discussing physics and physical reality.

Dr. E

You keep asking for my identity, Dr. E. But you failed to reply to the essence of the several counts, on the basis of which I charge that your essay violates high-school math. You only made a feeble attempt to answer *one* of those points, saying that, no, t´=ict is an equation, because "it has two sides and an equals sign". This is another indicator of your detachment from even the most elementary math notation, because not every symbolism in math with an equals sign and two sides is an equation. But I'll come back to this and answer it soon. First, I'd like to focus on a few other, interesting observations.

You accuse me of ad hominem attacks. Is it an ad hominen attack to point out not one, not two, but *five* points in which your essay violates high-school math and logical deduction? An ad hominem attack would be one in which I would be (I copy from the dictionary) "Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason". But I appeal to logic and reason only when I point out at least *five* *points* in which your essay screws up high-school math. It's not my fault if you read between the lines of my review and took my critique as an attack on your person! On the contrary, your insistence to learn my "true identity" betrays your passion to shift the discussion away from the essence, which is your mishandling of elementary math --more on that below-- and move it toward attacking my supposed "novel theories" (which I don't have any). But this is a very common and well-known tactic of people like you: sweep the annoying questions under the rug, and shift the discussion to something else --anything would do. You have nothing you can find, because you don't know who I am (and that's why I won't tell you, to prevent you from shifting the discussion). And so you keep repeating your mantras, hoping to bury away my obnoxious questions on your essay. But you won't manage. UNTIL YOU ANSWER MY QUESTIONS ON THE SUBJECT, day in and day out, I'll be there to remind you that you ought to reply, to concentrate on "the beef". (I'll get to the beef in a minute. Patience, Dr. E, patience. ;-) There are more "pearls of reasoning" worth mentioning in your previous posts.)

You wrote: "All the above posts do pertain to MDT, and I am passionate about talking about it, but then again, this forum is devoted to MDT." But Dr. E, it doesn't matter how passionate you are about supporting a scientific idea. Science is not based on passion, but on the experimental verification of ideas. We are not the Taliban in science, passionately supporting our false beliefs! If your idea is right, it will be proven right by experiment. If it's wrong, it'll be thrown into the dustbin of crackpot theories, no matter how many tons of ink you waste in preaching passionately for it.

You complained about my supposed misuse of blogs. Look who's talking! You, sir, went to the blog of another author (Dr. Nikolic's, topic 259), and after writing two or three trivial remarks on his essay, you went on expounding your magnificent "MDT theory" even there, causing noise and distraction, and shifting the topic from a discussion on his essay, to a monologue on your theory of everything --which, in my humble opinion, is a theory of nothing. I didn't do anything like that sort of violation of ethics. It is *you* who did, and *you* must apologize. If "this forum is devoted to MDT", then the other person's forum is devoted to that person's ideas, so why did you go and defile it, turning it into a monologue on your "MDT"?

Finally, I remind you once more that you *still* DIDN'T ANSWER MY QUESTIONS on the misuse of math on your part. Since you made that feeble attempt to answer only *one* of my points in your previous post, I'll do you the favor and answer that now.

Here is why a Lorenz transformation (such as t´=ict, or x4=ict), is called a *transformation*, NOT an equation, and why, consequently, it is *meaningless* to differentiate it. (Warning to the casual reader: what you're about to read is high-school math, perhaps year 11 or year 12; I apologize for having to explain such elementary concepts in this forum, but it is Dr. E's essay that violates them, and in addition, he doesn't realize that it does.)

Dr. E,

An equation in physics is some relation that connects two *different* physical quantities. For example, s = v·t, which relates space, velocity, and time. We can differentiate both sides of this equation with respect to time, and obtain a somewhat meaningful result: ds/dt=v, in other words, v (speed) is the first derivative of s (space) with respect to t (time). We can differentiate because the equation s = v·t describes a process that happens *in time* (e.g., a car moving), therefore, it is meaningful to ask: "How fast does it happen in time? What is the speed of it (e.g., of the car)?" That is the meaning of the first derivative with respect to time. Another example: water is dripping from a tap and is filling up a container. It is meaningful to ask: "How fast does the water fill up the container?" We can then differentiate the relation that connects the volume of water and time, and find the speed. Is this clear?

Now let's go to coordinate transformations. Suppose I have a point on the xy-plane (the familiar 2D Cartesian plane). Say the point is (x, y). Now I want to rotate this point on the plane by angle theta around the origin, and obtain its new coordinates (x´, y´). So I write down the transformation relations:

x´ = x·cos(theta)

y´ = y·sin(theta)

In doing so, I provided two *transformations* of coordinates, not two equations of physics. More important, it is not a question how fast, or how slow, I do the rotation. In fact, there is no physical process at all in this transformation. It's *not* a process by which point (x, y) "glides", say, with some speed on the plane, and goes to its new location at (x´, y´). Nothing like that. Point (x, y) is converted instantaneously, and *mathematically* to its new coordinates. It's like converting dollars to yen: you don't ask how fast or slow the conversion takes place, nor do you pass smoothly from dollars to yen through a number of in-between currencies. You just go to the exchange booth and do it.

Ditto with the transformation t´=ic·t, which is the basis of your theory of everything. It tells us how to find the new temporal coordinate, t´, of a point in 4D space-time with new coordinates (x´, y´, z´, t´), given that that point has old coordinates (x, y, z, t). The transformation does not happen *in time*, but instantly, *mathematically*, because it is a mathematical computation of a new coordinate, like x´ = x·cos(theta), not a physical process that happens in time, and for which we could be legitimately asking "What is the *speed* by which it's happening?" That question would be answered by finding the first derivative w.r.t. time. But a coordinate transformation is *not* a physical process. In my analogy with the rotation by angle theta, what corresponds to theta in the Lorenz transformation is the relative speed of the two concerned frames of reference.

Also, just like x is one of the coordinates, and the tick that we place on the left side of the transformation x´ = x·cos(theta) means "this is the new x coordinate", similarly, t is one of the coordinates in the Lorenz system of transformations, and the tick we place on the left side in t´=ic·t means "this is the new time coordinate". That you see t´ written as x4 does not make it a new dimension, it's merely a renaming, a change of the name of a variable. Understooded, Dr?

Do you have anything to reply on the above, and only the above (the beef) "Dr. E"?

You would tell me again that I continue my "ad hominem attacks". :-) But no rational reader will be fooled by your renewed attempt to shift the topic to something other than answering how you dare to differentiate a coordinate transformation, a non-physical process. (Let alone all the other points of math abuse that I mentioned in my review.) You'll keep asking for my identity, having nothing more essential to say. By the way, Dr. E, my identity has been adequately given to you: I am your derivative, Dr. F. A derivative is sometimes marked with a tick, like this: (Dr. E)´. You could say, I am a tick of sorts. A tick on you, Dr. E. ;-) That answers your question, "So what role do you play in all this?" But stop being obsessed with who I am, and do focus on the *beef*: answer my criticisms!

So, you'd wish that my posts are removed from the forum? :-) ("In your snarky mean-spiritedness, which I would not be surprised to see fqxi delete[...]") Ha-ha! :-) I don't think so, Dr. E. "Out of sight, out of mind," right Dr. E?

Answer my questions. How do you dare to differentiate w.r.t. time t´=ic·t, a coordinate transformation, a non-physical process! Answer!

Your derivative,

Dr. F

Drs. E and F,

Wouldn't "Entangled particles" make more sense as different points on a wave front?

First it would explain why the information they carry is identical and also why it isn't disrupted, as particles would likely be. Such as why the light of stars that has traveled for billions of years is still extremely focused. It seems that while this light is measured as quanta, it travels as a wave.

Dear John Merryman,

Sorry, I have no idea. He (Dr. E) might have. I suspect that, even if he doesn't, he'll make up something. Actually, posts like yours, though based on legitimate and interesting questions, serve as "lifejackets" for people like Dr. E. You see, my prediction is that he'll use the opportunity to get away from the need to reply to my main point, which is that his "equation" is not an equation but a transformation of coordinates. He'll say, "Oh, how very interesting your question, Mr. Merryman, allow me to... [blah-blah-blah]", and then offer you a bogus "explanation" based on a bogus differentiation, dx4/dt=ic. You do very well by asking, but... I believe you should direct your question to others, who I'm sure are more qualified to answer than me, and definitely more than Dr. E, who's capable of differentiating even the plus sign in isolation.

So, Dr. E, if I may use the opportunity... :-) Would you please care to focus on my questions, summed up in my previous post? Thank you for your attention, and your ability to home in on the essential, leaving out the irrelevant.

Always your derivative,

Dr. F

Hello All,

Anonymous Coward,

The one thing I want to make clear throughout this is that the main question here is why must you remain anonymous? Is it because you do not believe your words and do not want to have your name associated with them? Is it because you do not want your department chair or funders to see your childlike namecalling and ad-hominem attacks that you use instead of logic and reason? Is it because you think that simple logic and reason is not enough, and that snarky namecalling and childish put-downs accomplish what your logic and reason cannot? Please focus on my questions here, and please answer, as I am answering your questions, even though you do not want to meet at high noon, but you prefer to catcall from behind a mask and shoot your opponent in the back, like a coward.

Niels Bohr had a lot to say about the Cowboy Code, and therein we can find insights as to why your behavior ultimately loses both on the cultural and scientific levels:

From: http://holasunshinegirl.blogspot.com/2006/07/westerns-and-niels-bohr.html

"The great Danish Physicist Niels Bohr, an avid Western film fan, wondered why in all the final shoot-outs, the hero shoots faster even if his adversary is the first to reach for his gun. Bohr asked himself if some physical truth might not explain this convention. He came to the conclusion that such a truth did indeed exist: the first to draw is the slowest because he decides to shoot, and dies. The second to draw lives because he is faster, and he is faster because he doesn't have to decide, he is decided. This brilliant discovery was the result of a whimsical empirical research: Bohr and his assistants went off to a toy shop, bought water pistols , and back in their laboratory duelled for hours and hours."

--http://holasunshinegirl.blogspot.com/2006/07/westerns-and-niels-bohr.html

So it is that you decided to shoot first in the dark of night, from behind a mask like a lowly outlaw, and thus made my decision for me. EBohr--a Dane--had a great appreciation for the Cowboy--for honor and integrity--for Truth and Justice. Too, too many postmodern "physicists," such as yourself, have lost that honorable, noble spirit. The classic, epic showdown goes back 2800 years to The Odyssey, when Odysseus rides back on into his home, disguised as a beggar. Eventually he alone strings the bow and slays all the false suitors to his wife who kicked him around and spat on him--that eternal faceless, nameless mob which you, and all too many postmodern physicists, run with. But alas, they banned *The Odyssey* from the academy, and thus your behavior dominates.

What we have here is an evolution and paradigm shift, and deep down you sense it. That is the source for your emotional vitriol. If you were certain that I was wrong, you would calmly state so and let your Word--let your Name--let your Reason speak for themsleves. But as you are driven by emotions you do not understand, and as you do not have faith in your Word nor reason, and are embarrassed by it and/or your Name, you hide behind anonimity. Perhaps you do not wish to badmouth MDT, as you sense that in a year or so you may be seeking funding to support your MDT research.

A few major forces have ever driven the evolution of physics: The realization that math is actually telling us something about the *physical* nature of reality, the realization that one thing that was formerly believed to be stationary moves, the realization that two disparate entities are actually the same--as in space/time, wave/particle, mass/enegery, and the relaization that we must not ignore physical realtity just to have some fancy-shmancy math/science fiction.

Well, MDT is driven by all these forces.

Consider the equation x4 = ict .

x4 represents the fourth dimension. Now Einstein taught us that dimensions are very, very real *physical* entities. They can bend. They can warp. They can *move*. The fourth dimension is a *physical* entity.

i is the imaginary number--the square root of -1.

c is the *physical* velocity of light. c is a *physical* entity. we generally know it by the *physical* enity of the photon.

t is time--that *physical* parameter--that ever-moving force none can deny, except for some advanced postmodern physicists, who wish to keep quantum gravity, which does not exist, and get rid of time, which does, in fact, exist.

So it is that we have a *physical* equation telling us the relationship between *physical* entities.

x4 = ict.

The glaring mistake you make, pilgrim, is asserting that

x4 = ict is not a physical equation, relating physical quantities. How embarrassing! No wonder you must remain anonymous. Imagine if your department chair or funders found out!

I take great pride in MDT's simplicity, elegance, and boldness. You, the anonymous masked dwarf, like all too many physicists over the past thirty years whence Homer's Odyssey was deconstructed, adhere to a debased religion in which postmodern physics must be complicated, snarky, convoluted, indecipherable, filled with advanced, meaningless math that is used to select and promote groupthinkers, and to intimidate and cajole indie thinkers and lone cowboys, while building postmodern bureuacracies (like the machines did in The Matrix)rather than to exalt and explain--rather than to actually perform physics. Your fallen, mean spirit is the dominant brand and trademark of postmodern physics and academia, and your behavior can be seen throughout the internet and academy, where young physicists are taught to engage in groupthink math and snark independent thinkers who come forth with simple logic and reason. The Nobel Laureate economist F.A. Hayek's THE ROAD TO SERFDOM has two chapters entitled The End of Truth and Why The Worst Get on Top. Because of the nature of the system, you feel you are forced into anonymity.

But more and more of us, who agree with Einstein, are banding together, and time, as a *physical* entity, is on our side:

"Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone." --Albert Einstein

As physicists, it is not our job to wallow in snarky, meaningless mathematics and use it to convolute and confound the simple, so as to build postmodern bureaucratic empires, but it is our job to figure out what the math *physically* means.

That is *exactly* what MDT does--it goes back to Einstein's 1912 paper and tells us what the equation x4 = ict *physically* means, granting us new insight into a hitherto unsung feature of the universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.

"But even if the radiation formula should prove to be absolutely accurate it would after all be only an interpolation formula found by happy guesswork, and would thus leave one rather unsatisfied. I was, therefore, from the day of its origination, occupied with the task of giving it a real physical meaning." --(Max Planck, 1919 Nobel Prize address, 'The Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory')

Something that was once considered to be mere math, is seen to have physical content, implicatioons, and meaning. Something that was once more or less considered to be stationary--the fourth dimension--is seen to be moving. 'Tis a revolutionary affront to the church of wormholes and time travel worthy of burning me at the stake, you can bet all the well-funded, anonymous cowards agree.

And too, where so many dismissed x4 = ict as "meaningless math," I actually noted that it has physcial meaning. Now I know that the highest form of postmodern physicists today are those who can look at an equals sign and deny it exists, just as the postmodern lit professor denies Shakespeare's and Dante's greatness, but I look at an equals sign and see it for what it is, just as I see x4, i, c, and t for what they are--entities in Einstein's 1912 Mansucript which are related in a *physical* manner.

And from MDT's simple postulate and equation we naturally get all of relativity in a 4D universe where the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic. This also shows that time, as measured on our watches, is an emergent phenomena that arises because the propagation of photons, which are but matter carried upon the fourth expanding dimensions. The expansion of the fourth dimension distributes locality and thus is the cause of quantum entanglement, as well as qm's general features such as wave-particle duality and its probabilistic nature, wherein a photon has an equal chance of being found anywhere upon the nonlocal, spherically-symmetric probability distribution defined by the expansion of the fourth dimension, manifested in our three spatial dimensions. Entropy, and time and all its arrows and assymetries, can also be seen to arise naturally from MDT, and too, all the dualties--space/time, energy/mass, and wave/particle--are shown to have a common source.

Yes, anonymous coward, I am going to have to stick with Moving Dimensions Theory's simple beauty and elegance, which unifies so much of our entirety with a comon *physical* model. All the NSF mondey in the world, and the approval of your department chair and grad students, could not force me to change my mind--the fourth dimension moves and expands independent of the three spatial dimensions.

And I encourage you to choose MDT over your anomymous, cowardly, snarkfest behavior, which is intellectual violence unbecoming of a physicist.

For your unmanly, dishonorabe snark and bitter mean-spiritedness, we cannot forgive you, anonymous coward, and we hope you change your ways are man up and walk into town with your head held high, proud of your word and honor--proud of the Name your parents gave you. But for your refusal to recognize that the simple math can sometimes be telling us something profound and new about physics, perhaps we *can* forgive you, as even Planck did not believe the deeper implications of the quantum theory he developed. Einstein did.

Planck lectured at Columbia, "Consequently, there remains only the one conclusion, that previous electron theories suffer from an essential incompleteness which demands a modification, but how deeply this modification should go into the structure of the theory is a question upon which views are still widely divergent. J. J. Thompson inclines to the most radical view, as do J. Larmor, A. Einstein, and with him I. Stark who even believe that the propagation of electromagnetic waves in a pure vacuum does not occur precisely in accordance with the Maxwellian field equations, but in definite energy quanta hv.

I am of the opinion, on the other hand, that at present it is not necessary to proceed in so revolutionary a manner, and that one may come successfully through by seeking the significance of the energy quanta hv solely in the mutual actions with which the resonators influence one another. A definite decision with regard to these important questions can only be brought about as a result of more experience."--(From Max Planck's famous Columbia Lectures)

From: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/Einstein_and_photoelectric_effect.html

"Experimentalists railed at the prospect of what Einstein's equation of the photoelectric effect implied. Robert Millikan, the very man who showed that the equation really did work, would have nothing to do with its physical interpretation. In 1915, Millikan wrote: "The semicorpuscular theory by which Einstein arrived at his equation seems at present wholly untenable." Three years later, Ernest Rutherford, the great New Zealand physicist who probed the structure of the atom, said there appeared to be "no physical connection" between the energy and frequency in Einstein's hypothesis about light quanta. It didn't seem to make sense that a particle could have a frequency, or that a wave could act as if it were made of energetic particles. The two concepts seemed to rule each other out." --http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/Einstein_and_photoelectric_effect.html

Well, at least they all used their names when they railed against a new theory. Sure, they were all great physicists, but first and foremost, like Bohr, they were rugged *cowboys*.

Gamow loved cowboys & Westerns too. Check out, "Mr. Tompkins Gets Serious: The Essential George Gamow, The Masterpiece Science Edition (Hardcover)

by George Gamow."

"The Cowboy Experiment

Father's nickname was Joe. Niels Bohr and my father were addicted to western movies while they were in Copenhagen together. All the cowboys in these movies--Gary Cooper types--were called Joe. That's how Father's nickname came about--he was named after a typical cowboy movie hero.

Bohr had some difficulty with cowboy movies. Being a great physicist he took things very literally. After seeing one of the many films in which there was a shootout between a good guy in a white hat and a bad guy in a black hat, Bohr asked Father, "How is it possible that the man in the black hat always reaches... "

--http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Tompkins-Gets-Serious-Masterpiece/dp/0131872915

Even more important than MDT is that we bring that classic, epic, western, heroic, cowboy spirit on back; for it is the true source of all enduring art and sicence, of truth and freedom, of rugged romance, beauty, and elegance--that rugged, lone truth seeker is how physics has ever advanced.

"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck

"The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for "conscious" control or "conscious" planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme--while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the superindividual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." -F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom

You can stand him up at the gates of hell, but he won't back down. Bruno, Socrates, Galileo, Dante, Einstein, Gamow, and Bohr--they all walked and spoke freely in plain sight, and stuck by their guns when the chips were down. They, like Odysseus, were classic, epic cowboys, always standing up against the anonymous, faceless mob for truth, reason, and justice.

Well, we've all got a showdwon commin'. And if you call down the thunder, you've got to man up and face it at high noon--you can't just run and hide and use snarky, postmodern math in the dark of night, sneaking up anonymously behind the mysterious stranger. For ultimately, as Feynman knew, science is not advanced by those seeking fame and fortune--tenure and titles--but by those seeking truth and classic, epic honor.

Perhaps we ought make a list of Bohr's and Gamow's favorite Westerns.

"Bohr was very fond of seeing Western (cowboy) movies in which gun duels are quite common. In all such duels, the villain draws his gun but the hero always shoots down the scoundrel first. Bohr had an explanation for this phenomenon, ascribing this as the difference between wilful and conditioned thinking. "The scoundrel has to think and decide when to go for his gun, which slows his action, while the hero acts faster because he acts, without thinking, the moment he sees the scoundrel reaching for his gun." When nobody agreed with his theory, he bought a pair of toy guns and playing the hero, tried duels with his pupils. Surprisingly, he 'killed' everybody who tried to take a shot at him first." --from http://www.dawn.com/weekly/dmag/archive/030420/dmag21.htm

Best,

Dr. E

p.s. http://confoundingvariable.com/article.cfm/id/211368

"New Book about 'Galloping Gamows' Shows Relationship between Physics and Cowboys"

Dear reader,

At this point I think it's high time that I stop castigating poor Dr. E, feeling that he doesn't really deserve any more whipping. He's evidently unable to perceive his condition, to rationalize, and conclude that he's grappling with issues that are light-years ahead of his theoretically reachable horizon. After all, what horizon can one expect from someone who concludes that two points that share a common coordinate stand "side-by-side", and who thinks that anything with two sides and an equal sign, such as a coordinate transformation, is an equation that can be differentiated. And what rationality can one expect from someone who accuses me of "name calling", when in fact I haven't used a single name-calling adjective against him, whereas he has used the following against me: "anonymous coward", "mean-spirited", "anonymous dwarf", "snarky individual", and many more. In addition, he thinks I am a man (!) so he asks me to stand up like a man with pride, as if women have no dignity and only men can do such things as keep their heads up with pride (sorry for the dumb language, I'm just using his expressions).

I suppose the main purpose for which I decided to write in this forum has been achieved: I wanted to warn the unwary reader that what they read in Dr. E's essay is pure and unadulterated nonsense. If anyone, after this, falls for Dr. E's "theory", fooled by his tactic to bury his interlocutor's criticisms under tons of irrelevant material(*), I don't think there is anything further I can do.

(*) His last post was 1/8th in length of the total on this page, and he went on telling us about the Odyssey, cowboys, and what films Bohr enjoyed. He could've posted the yellow pages as well --that would be more effective as a dumping material.

I admit my strategy to conceal my name worked only partially. But, had I disclosed it, he would waste ten times more energy and web space in trying to attack me personally. This way he was confined to repeating his calls to let him know who I am, ad nauseam.

What I want to express to you (and only to you, dear reader) is my puzzlement about our educational system. What kind of college graduates do we produce? (I'm assuming you're an American. If not, you must be wondering what kind of graduates American colleges produce, and you're right in sharing my puzzlement.) Do you like what you're seeing? Think about it, this person claims he has a PhD in physics from UNC Chapel Hill! Is this ever possible? Can anyone obtain a PhD in physics from a well-known university, and yet be unable to understand what a coordinate transformation is, or even the very idea of distance on the xy-plane? If he says the truth, I'd find it's tragic! How can I send my children to UNC Chapel Hill knowing they deliver PhD's in physics over there to individuals of Dr. E's caliber? (And how do I know that other universities are any better?) I prefer to believe that his resume, just as his essay, is a fraud --that makes me feel more tranquil regarding our universities. But even so, it's still pathetic that someone can graduate from high school, work toward a degree in science, and still not have grasped what a coordinate is! Our secondary education is third-world like --all statistics and international competitions (e.g., math Olympiads) point toward this conclusion-- and it doesn't look like it's getting any better. I think we're doomed.

Sorry about this rant, dear reader. Just think about it--a million thanks.

Dr. F

I'll be surprised if fqxi allows ad-hominem, libellious defamiation (which is illegal), and personal attacks to remain here, which the anonymous coward engages in instead of responding to the physics in the above post, so I will repeat the above post below, as I stand by my words. An anonymous coward who cannot put their own name on their childish slanders, vitriol, and false libel and defamation (which is illegal) is not worthy of the spirit embodied by every other participant here, nor is it worthy of further responses.

Anonymous Coward,

The one thing I want to make clear throughout this is that the main question here is why must you remain anonymous? Is it because you do not believe your words and do not want to have your name associated with them? Is it because you do not want your department chair or funders to see your childlike namecalling and ad-hominem attacks that you use instead of logic and reason? Is it because you think that simple logic and reason is not enough, and that snarky namecalling and childish put-downs accomplish what your logic and reason cannot? Please focus on my questions here, and please answer, as I am answering your questions, even though you do not want to meet at high noon, but you prefer to catcall from behind a mask and shoot your opponent in the back, like a coward.

Niels Bohr had a lot to say about the Cowboy Code, and therein we can find insights as to why your behavior ultimately loses both on the cultural and scientific levels:

From: http://holasunshinegirl.blogspot.com/2006/07/westerns-and-niels-bohr.html

"The great Danish Physicist Niels Bohr, an avid Western film fan, wondered why in all the final shoot-outs, the hero shoots faster even if his adversary is the first to reach for his gun. Bohr asked himself if some physical truth might not explain this convention. He came to the conclusion that such a truth did indeed exist: the first to draw is the slowest because he decides to shoot, and dies. The second to draw lives because he is faster, and he is faster because he doesn't have to decide, he is decided. This brilliant discovery was the result of a whimsical empirical research: Bohr and his assistants went off to a toy shop, bought water pistols , and back in their laboratory duelled for hours and hours."

--http://holasunshinegirl.blogspot.com/2006/07/westerns-and-niels-bohr.html

So it is that you decided to shoot first in the dark of night, from behind a mask like a lowly outlaw, and thus made my decision for me. EBohr--a Dane--had a great appreciation for the Cowboy--for honor and integrity--for Truth and Justice. Too, too many postmodern "physicists," such as yourself, have lost that honorable, noble spirit. The classic, epic showdown goes back 2800 years to The Odyssey, when Odysseus rides back on into his home, disguised as a beggar. Eventually he alone strings the bow and slays all the false suitors to his wife who kicked him around and spat on him--that eternal faceless, nameless mob which you, and all too many postmodern physicists, run with. But alas, they banned *The Odyssey* from the academy, and thus your behavior dominates.

What we have here is an evolution and paradigm shift, and deep down you sense it. That is the source for your emotional vitriol. If you were certain that I was wrong, you would calmly state so and let your Word--let your Name--let your Reason speak for themsleves. But as you are driven by emotions you do not understand, and as you do not have faith in your Word nor reason, and are embarrassed by it and/or your Name, you hide behind anonimity. Perhaps you do not wish to badmouth MDT, as you sense that in a year or so you may be seeking funding to support your MDT research.

A few major forces have ever driven the evolution of physics: The realization that math is actually telling us something about the *physical* nature of reality, the realization that one thing that was formerly believed to be stationary moves, the realization that two disparate entities are actually the same--as in space/time, wave/particle, mass/enegery, and the relaization that we must not ignore physical realtity just to have some fancy-shmancy math/science fiction.

Well, MDT is driven by all these forces.

Consider the equation x4 = ict .

x4 represents the fourth dimension. Now Einstein taught us that dimensions are very, very real *physical* entities. They can bend. They can warp. They can *move*. The fourth dimension is a *physical* entity.

i is the imaginary number--the square root of -1.

c is the *physical* velocity of light. c is a *physical* entity. we generally know it by the *physical* enity of the photon.

t is time--that *physical* parameter--that ever-moving force none can deny, except for some advanced postmodern physicists, who wish to keep quantum gravity, which does not exist, and get rid of time, which does, in fact, exist.

So it is that we have a *physical* equation telling us the relationship between *physical* entities.

x4 = ict.

The glaring mistake you make, pilgrim, is asserting that

x4 = ict is not a physical equation, relating physical quantities. How embarrassing! No wonder you must remain anonymous. Imagine if your department chair or funders found out!

I take great pride in MDT's simplicity, elegance, and boldness. You, the anonymous masked dwarf, like all too many physicists over the past thirty years whence Homer's Odyssey was deconstructed, adhere to a debased religion in which postmodern physics must be complicated, snarky, convoluted, indecipherable, filled with advanced, meaningless math that is used to select and promote groupthinkers, and to intimidate and cajole indie thinkers and lone cowboys, while building postmodern bureuacracies (like the machines did in The Matrix)rather than to exalt and explain--rather than to actually perform physics. Your fallen, mean spirit is the dominant brand and trademark of postmodern physics and academia, and your behavior can be seen throughout the internet and academy, where young physicists are taught to engage in groupthink math and snark independent thinkers who come forth with simple logic and reason. The Nobel Laureate economist F.A. Hayek's THE ROAD TO SERFDOM has two chapters entitled The End of Truth and Why The Worst Get on Top. Because of the nature of the system, you feel you are forced into anonymity.

But more and more of us, who agree with Einstein, are banding together, and time, as a *physical* entity, is on our side:

"Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone." --Albert Einstein

As physicists, it is not our job to wallow in snarky, meaningless mathematics and use it to convolute and confound the simple, so as to build postmodern bureaucratic empires, but it is our job to figure out what the math *physically* means.

That is *exactly* what MDT does--it goes back to Einstein's 1912 paper and tells us what the equation x4 = ict *physically* means, granting us new insight into a hitherto unsung feature of the universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.

"But even if the radiation formula should prove to be absolutely accurate it would after all be only an interpolation formula found by happy guesswork, and would thus leave one rather unsatisfied. I was, therefore, from the day of its origination, occupied with the task of giving it a real physical meaning." --(Max Planck, 1919 Nobel Prize address, 'The Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory')

Something that was once considered to be mere math, is seen to have physical content, implicatioons, and meaning. Something that was once more or less considered to be stationary--the fourth dimension--is seen to be moving. 'Tis a revolutionary affront to the church of wormholes and time travel worthy of burning me at the stake, you can bet all the well-funded, anonymous cowards agree.

And too, where so many dismissed x4 = ict as "meaningless math," I actually noted that it has physcial meaning. Now I know that the highest form of postmodern physicists today are those who can look at an equals sign and deny it exists, just as the postmodern lit professor denies Shakespeare's and Dante's greatness, but I look at an equals sign and see it for what it is, just as I see x4, i, c, and t for what they are--entities in Einstein's 1912 Mansucript which are related in a *physical* manner.

And from MDT's simple postulate and equation we naturally get all of relativity in a 4D universe where the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic. This also shows that time, as measured on our watches, is an emergent phenomena that arises because the propagation of photons, which are but matter carried upon the fourth expanding dimensions. The expansion of the fourth dimension distributes locality and thus is the cause of quantum entanglement, as well as qm's general features such as wave-particle duality and its probabilistic nature, wherein a photon has an equal chance of being found anywhere upon the nonlocal, spherically-symmetric probability distribution defined by the expansion of the fourth dimension, manifested in our three spatial dimensions. Entropy, and time and all its arrows and assymetries, can also be seen to arise naturally from MDT, and too, all the dualties--space/time, energy/mass, and wave/particle--are shown to have a common source.

Yes, anonymous coward, I am going to have to stick with Moving Dimensions Theory's simple beauty and elegance, which unifies so much of our entirety with a comon *physical* model. All the NSF mondey in the world, and the approval of your department chair and grad students, could not force me to change my mind--the fourth dimension moves and expands independent of the three spatial dimensions.

And I encourage you to choose MDT over your anomymous, cowardly, snarkfest behavior, which is intellectual violence unbecoming of a physicist.

For your unmanly, dishonorabe snark and bitter mean-spiritedness, we cannot forgive you, anonymous coward, and we hope you change your ways are man up and walk into town with your head held high, proud of your word and honor--proud of the Name your parents gave you. But for your refusal to recognize that the simple math can sometimes be telling us something profound and new about physics, perhaps we *can* forgive you, as even Planck did not believe the deeper implications of the quantum theory he developed. Einstein did.

Planck lectured at Columbia, "Consequently, there remains only the one conclusion, that previous electron theories suffer from an essential incompleteness which demands a modification, but how deeply this modification should go into the structure of the theory is a question upon which views are still widely divergent. J. J. Thompson inclines to the most radical view, as do J. Larmor, A. Einstein, and with him I. Stark who even believe that the propagation of electromagnetic waves in a pure vacuum does not occur precisely in accordance with the Maxwellian field equations, but in definite energy quanta hv.

I am of the opinion, on the other hand, that at present it is not necessary to proceed in so revolutionary a manner, and that one may come successfully through by seeking the significance of the energy quanta hv solely in the mutual actions with which the resonators influence one another. A definite decision with regard to these important questions can only be brought about as a result of more experience."--(From Max Planck's famous Columbia Lectures)

From: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/Einstein_and_photoelectric_effect.html

"Experimentalists railed at the prospect of what Einstein's equation of the photoelectric effect implied. Robert Millikan, the very man who showed that the equation really did work, would have nothing to do with its physical interpretation. In 1915, Millikan wrote: "The semicorpuscular theory by which Einstein arrived at his equation seems at present wholly untenable." Three years later, Ernest Rutherford, the great New Zealand physicist who probed the structure of the atom, said there appeared to be "no physical connection" between the energy and frequency in Einstein's hypothesis about light quanta. It didn't seem to make sense that a particle could have a frequency, or that a wave could act as if it were made of energetic particles. The two concepts seemed to rule each other out." --http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/Einstein_and_photoelectric_effect.html

Well, at least they all used their names when they railed against a new theory. Sure, they were all great physicists, but first and foremost, like Bohr, they were rugged *cowboys*.

Gamow loved cowboys & Westerns too. Check out, "Mr. Tompkins Gets Serious: The Essential George Gamow, The Masterpiece Science Edition (Hardcover)

by George Gamow."

"The Cowboy Experiment

Father's nickname was Joe. Niels Bohr and my father were addicted to western movies while they were in Copenhagen together. All the cowboys in these movies--Gary Cooper types--were called Joe. That's how Father's nickname came about--he was named after a typical cowboy movie hero.

Bohr had some difficulty with cowboy movies. Being a great physicist he took things very literally. After seeing one of the many films in which there was a shootout between a good guy in a white hat and a bad guy in a black hat, Bohr asked Father, "How is it possible that the man in the black hat always reaches... "

--http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Tompkins-Gets-Serious-Masterpiece/dp/0131872915

Even more important than MDT is that we bring that classic, epic, western, heroic, cowboy spirit on back; for it is the true source of all enduring art and sicence, of truth and freedom, of rugged romance, beauty, and elegance--that rugged, lone truth seeker is how physics has ever advanced.

"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck

"The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for "conscious" control or "conscious" planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme--while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the superindividual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." -F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom

You can stand him up at the gates of hell, but he won't back down. Bruno, Socrates, Galileo, Dante, Einstein, Gamow, and Bohr--they all walked and spoke freely in plain sight, and stuck by their guns when the chips were down. They, like Odysseus, were classic, epic cowboys, always standing up against the anonymous, faceless mob for truth, reason, and justice.

Well, we've all got a showdwon commin'. And if you call down the thunder, you've got to man up and face it at high noon--you can't just run and hide and use snarky, postmodern math in the dark of night, sneaking up anonymously behind the mysterious stranger. For ultimately, as Feynman knew, science is not advanced by those seeking fame and fortune--tenure and titles--but by those seeking truth and classic, epic honor.

Perhaps we ought make a list of Bohr's and Gamow's favorite Westerns.

"Bohr was very fond of seeing Western (cowboy) movies in which gun duels are quite common. In all such duels, the villain draws his gun but the hero always shoots down the scoundrel first. Bohr had an explanation for this phenomenon, ascribing this as the difference between wilful and conditioned thinking. "The scoundrel has to think and decide when to go for his gun, which slows his action, while the hero acts faster because he acts, without thinking, the moment he sees the scoundrel reaching for his gun." When nobody agreed with his theory, he bought a pair of toy guns and playing the hero, tried duels with his pupils. Surprisingly, he 'killed' everybody who tried to take a shot at him first." --from http://www.dawn.com/weekly/dmag/archive/030420/dmag21.htm

Best,

Dr. E

p.s. http://confoundingvariable.com/article.cfm/id/211368

"New Book about 'Galloping Gamows' Shows Relationship between Physics and Cowboys"

Hello John,

Thanks for your above comment,

"Wouldn't "Entangled particles" make more sense as different points on a wave front?

First it would explain why the information they carry is identical and also why it isn't disrupted, as particles would likely be. Such as why the light of stars that has traveled for billions of years is still extremely focused. It seems that while this light is measured as quanta, it travels as a wave."

I'm not quite sure what you mean... but yes--waves and nonlocality do walk hand-in-hand.

Consider two entangled photons emitted from a common source. A photon is ageless, and thus both photons share a common locality in time. If one of them is measured, or halted, the two photons will no longer be entangled. So it is that the only way for the photons to remain entangled--to remain in the same place in the fourth dimension--is for both to travel at the velocity of light.

How curious is that!

To stay in the same place in the fourth dimension--to stay entangled--both photons must travel at c, which in its simplest case defines a spherically-symmetric expanding wavefront in 3D.

Ergo the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.

On page 4 of my paper, I write, "Consider two interacting photons that propagate in opposite directions, as in experiments inspired by Bell's Inequality and conducted by Aspect et al. One second later, each photon's polarization is measured at detectors separated by 372,000 miles. According to the laws of quantum mechanics and numerous supporting experiments, the measurement at one detector

instantaneously affects the measurement at the second detector. It is as if the photons are yet side-by-side during the measurement. This "spooky action-at-a-distance," as Einstein called it, is not so spooky in the context of a fourth expanding dimension, for although separated by 372,000 miles, the photons yet inhabit a common locality in the fourth dimension, as the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, distributing locality at the rate of c. So it is that both quantum and relativistic phenomena are accounted for with the simple elegance of the postulate: the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions."

Now, if we consider the x-y plane, every point in it shares a common z cooridnate of 0 (zero). If we consider points moving about the x-y plane, they can move anywhere they wish, and they will yet share a common z coordinate of 0. Or, they can be stationary in the x-y plane, and their z corrodinate will remain 0 (zero).

Now, the interesting thing about our 4D universe is that the only way to stay stationary in the fourth dimension is to move at c through the three spatial dimensions. If one stands still in the x,y,z coordinate system, one cannot stand still in fourth dimension, and vice versa. Ergo the fourth dimension is moving relative to the three spatial dimensions.

And we see this fact manifested in the entangled photons. The only way for them to remain (1) entangled (share a locality) and (2) ageless (locality in time), is to move at the velocity of light. Ergo the fourth dimension is expanding or moving at the velocity of c, relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt = ic.

All of relativity may be derived from dx4/dt = ic in a 4D universe, and we also get a *physical* model for nonlocality (the fourth expanding dimension distributes nonlocality), entanglement, entropy, and time and all its arrows and assymetries. dx4/dt = ic is a fundamental invariance upon which the very invariance of the velocity of light rests--both its independence of the source, and its independence of the velocity of the observer.

Thanks for the words--I hope this helps make clear how MDT provides a *physical* model for entanglement.

Anonymous Coward,

If you had serious points to make, I imagine you would be able to do it without the snarky name-calling and childish attacks. Also, if you were proud of your name, you would use it. If you had faith in your words, you would put your name on them.

Your tone and tenor bring to mind atheme from Lee Smolin's The Trouble With Physics--physics has come to a standstill largely because of well-funded, established snarkers, who haven't exactly advanced physics themselves, but only built a mean-spirited bureaucracy that is closed to new ideas--a bureaucracy you seem to be a part of. So who are you?

You write, "What difference does it make what my real identity is?" It obviously makes a vast difference, as you are carefully concealing your identity, while launching snarky, childish, ad hominem attacks.

In the spirit of truth and science, please share your name and credentials, if you have any.

Your greatest critique of my paper is that MDT is too simple, too beautiful, too elegant.

Again, we would like to know your identity and program of research, so that we can better understand why you so detest simple theories based upon rock-solid precepts and principles.

"Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone." Albert Einstein

Did you know that the most quoted phrase from the most-perfomed play of all time is "To be or not to be, that is the question?" Are you also one of those snarky deconstructors of Shakespeare, who removed him from the academy for using such simple phrases--the most fundamental verb in our language--to be?

Beethoven's 9th is based on the first five notes of the simple C Major scale. Do you also detest this final symphony because it is so simple that it cannot possibly be good?

Must all physics be tied up in knots and non-theories, to please your anonymous demands? So man up and let us know your name and program of research, so that we might better understand your emotional attacks, snarky namecalling, and put-downs.

In your snarky mean-spiritedness, which I would not be surprised to see fqxi delete, you completely miss the greater glory of MDT. It is hard to imagine a true physicist leading with childish putdowns and unadulturated snark. You ought be grateful I am even responding, but it is easy to sing the virtues of MDT.

Relativity freezes time and consigns us to a block universe. MDT unfreezes time and liberates us from the block universe, while also providing a *physical* model for time and all its arrows and assyemtries, entropy, entanglement, nonlocality, and relativity--a relativity wherein time flows, just as it does in our universe.

What do you personally have against the flow of time? Why are you snarking the ageless, timeless photon with ad hominem attacks? Why does time stop at the speed of light? Does not time flow day in and day out? *Why* does time flow? Do we not witness time in all realms of physics? Does not time have a dominant direction and arrow? Do not two initially-interacting photons remain entangled, no matter how far they are separated? All these things can be seen to descend from a common, simple principle--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, distribuuting locality and fathering time.

One of the chilish contentions in your diatribes is that x4 = ict is not an equation.

Well, it has two sides and an equals sign. It equates two entities, and this action is from where the word "equation" derives. x4 = ict.

You also tell me that I break some law in taking the derivative of the equation with respect to t.

dx4/dt = ic

There.

I did it again. Are you going to dress up as an anonymous dwarf and attack me personally some more, so as to preserve the sanctity of your block universe and time travel fanatasies? Go ahead, make my day.

In his 1912 Manuscript, Einsetin wrote x4=ict, inspired in part by Minkowski. Ergo, as t progresses, x4 must move.

dx4/dt = ic

There--I just took the derivative again. Are you going to round up a posse of masked, anonymous snarkers and hang me for this crime?

If simplicity, beauty, elegance, novelity, and truth are crimes, then I am guilty. You and your posse of anonymous snarkers can try and force me to sign a paper stating that the fourth dimension does not move relative to the three spatial dimensions, but even if you overpower my hand and force it to move so as to form the words, I will yet speak and think, "but yet it--the fourth dimension--moves." "E pur si muove." All the anonymous masked dwarves in the world cannot stop the fourth dimension from moving, nor can they keep time and progress in the realm of theoretical physics frozen forever.

The dominant source of your vituperation, ad-hominem attacks, childish namecalling, and bitter emotion seems to be that MDT is *too* simple, *too* beautiful, *too* elegant.

Well, if we got rid of all simple, elegant physics, we'd be left with string theory and the other non-theories that I am betting you have devoted your life to, and are too embarrassed to admit to, which is why you refuse to man up and share your identity. Your cowardly behavior is a tragic part of the postmodern, unheroic age, where the Great Books and Classics have been deconstructed, and small souls seek to rule via anonymous snark and fiat.

So what role do you play in all this?

That is one reason we would all like to know your true identity and program of research. Hundreds of millions of dollars--billions of dollars--have been spent over the past thirty years in theoretical physics. And yet, there has been no progress.

Theoretical physics has come to a standstill, and I would suggest that it is the fault of close-minded, snarky individuals such as yourself, and furthermore, I would suggest that deep down you know this, and this is the ultimate reason you remain anonymous.

You go on and on to accuse MDT of failing at things it does not even attempt, while ignoring all the things it gets right--the unification of time's arrows and assymetries across all realms, the unification of the dualities (space/time, mass/energy, wave/particle), our liberation from frozen time and a block universe, an expalnation for entanglement and nonlocality, and a fundamental invariance underlying all of relativity. It are anonymous, embittered folks like you who would prefer to live in a block universe and frozen time and frozen physics, where all progress is outlawed by anonymous snarkers, and math is used not in a simple manner to emlighten and exalt, but to berate, bring down, and destroy that which one did not create.

So please do share your name, title, and program of research, if you wish to continue. Perhaps by using your real name, you won't descend into snarky namecalling, and ad hominem attacks against straw men you created, and you can concentrate on discussing physics and physical reality.

If you had serious points to make, I imagine you would be able to do it without the snarky name-calling and childish attacks. Also, if you were proud of your name, you would use it. If you had faith in your words, you would put your name on them.

Your tone and tenor bring to mind atheme from Lee Smolin's The Trouble With Physics--physics has come to a standstill largely because of well-funded, established snarkers, who haven't exactly advanced physics themselves, but only built a mean-spirited bureaucracy that is closed to new ideas--a bureaucracy you seem to be a part of. So who are you?

You write, "What difference does it make what my real identity is?" It obviously makes a vast difference, as you are carefully concealing your identity, while launching snarky, childish, ad hominem attacks.

In the spirit of truth and science, please share your name and credentials, if you have any.

Your greatest critique of my paper is that MDT is too simple, too beautiful, too elegant.

Again, we would like to know your identity and program of research, so that we can better understand why you so detest simple theories based upon rock-solid precepts and principles.

"Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone." Albert Einstein

Did you know that the most quoted phrase from the most-perfomed play of all time is "To be or not to be, that is the question?" Are you also one of those snarky deconstructors of Shakespeare, who removed him from the academy for using such simple phrases--the most fundamental verb in our language--to be?

Beethoven's 9th is based on the first five notes of the simple C Major scale. Do you also detest this final symphony because it is so simple that it cannot possibly be good?

Must all physics be tied up in knots and non-theories, to please your anonymous demands? So man up and let us know your name and program of research, so that we might better understand your emotional attacks, snarky namecalling, and put-downs.

In your snarky mean-spiritedness, which I would not be surprised to see fqxi delete, you completely miss the greater glory of MDT. It is hard to imagine a true physicist leading with childish putdowns and unadulturated snark. You ought be grateful I am even responding, but it is easy to sing the virtues of MDT.

Relativity freezes time and consigns us to a block universe. MDT unfreezes time and liberates us from the block universe, while also providing a *physical* model for time and all its arrows and assyemtries, entropy, entanglement, nonlocality, and relativity--a relativity wherein time flows, just as it does in our universe.

What do you personally have against the flow of time? Why are you snarking the ageless, timeless photon with ad hominem attacks? Why does time stop at the speed of light? Does not time flow day in and day out? *Why* does time flow? Do we not witness time in all realms of physics? Does not time have a dominant direction and arrow? Do not two initially-interacting photons remain entangled, no matter how far they are separated? All these things can be seen to descend from a common, simple principle--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, distribuuting locality and fathering time.

One of the chilish contentions in your diatribes is that x4 = ict is not an equation.

Well, it has two sides and an equals sign. It equates two entities, and this action is from where the word "equation" derives. x4 = ict.

You also tell me that I break some law in taking the derivative of the equation with respect to t.

dx4/dt = ic

There.

I did it again. Are you going to dress up as an anonymous dwarf and attack me personally some more, so as to preserve the sanctity of your block universe and time travel fanatasies? Go ahead, make my day.

In his 1912 Manuscript, Einsetin wrote x4=ict, inspired in part by Minkowski. Ergo, as t progresses, x4 must move.

dx4/dt = ic

There--I just took the derivative again. Are you going to round up a posse of masked, anonymous snarkers and hang me for this crime?

If simplicity, beauty, elegance, novelity, and truth are crimes, then I am guilty. You and your posse of anonymous snarkers can try and force me to sign a paper stating that the fourth dimension does not move relative to the three spatial dimensions, but even if you overpower my hand and force it to move so as to form the words, I will yet speak and think, "but yet it--the fourth dimension--moves." "E pur si muove." All the anonymous masked dwarves in the world cannot stop the fourth dimension from moving, nor can they keep time and progress in the realm of theoretical physics frozen forever.

The dominant source of your vituperation, ad-hominem attacks, childish namecalling, and bitter emotion seems to be that MDT is *too* simple, *too* beautiful, *too* elegant.

Well, if we got rid of all simple, elegant physics, we'd be left with string theory and the other non-theories that I am betting you have devoted your life to, and are too embarrassed to admit to, which is why you refuse to man up and share your identity. Your cowardly behavior is a tragic part of the postmodern, unheroic age, where the Great Books and Classics have been deconstructed, and small souls seek to rule via anonymous snark and fiat.

So what role do you play in all this?

That is one reason we would all like to know your true identity and program of research. Hundreds of millions of dollars--billions of dollars--have been spent over the past thirty years in theoretical physics. And yet, there has been no progress.

Theoretical physics has come to a standstill, and I would suggest that it is the fault of close-minded, snarky individuals such as yourself, and furthermore, I would suggest that deep down you know this, and this is the ultimate reason you remain anonymous.

You go on and on to accuse MDT of failing at things it does not even attempt, while ignoring all the things it gets right--the unification of time's arrows and assymetries across all realms, the unification of the dualities (space/time, mass/energy, wave/particle), our liberation from frozen time and a block universe, an expalnation for entanglement and nonlocality, and a fundamental invariance underlying all of relativity. It are anonymous, embittered folks like you who would prefer to live in a block universe and frozen time and frozen physics, where all progress is outlawed by anonymous snarkers, and math is used not in a simple manner to emlighten and exalt, but to berate, bring down, and destroy that which one did not create.

So please do share your name, title, and program of research, if you wish to continue. Perhaps by using your real name, you won't descend into snarky namecalling, and ad hominem attacks against straw men you created, and you can concentrate on discussing physics and physical reality.

Dr. E

Anonymous Coward,

The one thing I want to make clear throughout this is that the main question here is why must you remain anonymous? Is it because you do not believe your words and do not want to have your name associated with them? Is it because you do not want your department chair or funders to see your childlike namecalling and ad-hominem attacks that you use instead of logic and reason? Is it because you think that simple logic and reason is not enough, and that snarky namecalling and childish put-downs accomplish what your logic and reason cannot? Please focus on my questions here, and please answer, as I am answering your questions, even though you do not want to meet at high noon, but you prefer to catcall from behind a mask and shoot your opponent in the back, like a coward.

Niels Bohr had a lot to say about the Cowboy Code, and therein we can find insights as to why your behavior ultimately loses both on the cultural and scientific levels:

From: http://holasunshinegirl.blogspot.com/2006/07/westerns-and-niels-bohr.html

"The great Danish Physicist Niels Bohr, an avid Western film fan, wondered why in all the final shoot-outs, the hero shoots faster even if his adversary is the first to reach for his gun. Bohr asked himself if some physical truth might not explain this convention. He came to the conclusion that such a truth did indeed exist: the first to draw is the slowest because he decides to shoot, and dies. The second to draw lives because he is faster, and he is faster because he doesn't have to decide, he is decided. This brilliant discovery was the result of a whimsical empirical research: Bohr and his assistants went off to a toy shop, bought water pistols , and back in their laboratory duelled for hours and hours."

--http://holasunshinegirl.blogspot.com/2006/07/westerns-and-niels-bohr.html

So it is that you decided to shoot first in the dark of night, from behind a mask like a lowly outlaw, and thus made my decision for me. EBohr--a Dane--had a great appreciation for the Cowboy--for honor and integrity--for Truth and Justice. Too, too many postmodern "physicists," such as yourself, have lost that honorable, noble spirit. The classic, epic showdown goes back 2800 years to The Odyssey, when Odysseus rides back on into his home, disguised as a beggar. Eventually he alone strings the bow and slays all the false suitors to his wife who kicked him around and spat on him--that eternal faceless, nameless mob which you, and all too many postmodern physicists, run with. But alas, they banned *The Odyssey* from the academy, and thus your behavior dominates.

What we have here is an evolution and paradigm shift, and deep down you sense it. That is the source for your emotional vitriol. If you were certain that I was wrong, you would calmly state so and let your Word--let your Name--let your Reason speak for themsleves. But as you are driven by emotions you do not understand, and as you do not have faith in your Word nor reason, and are embarrassed by it and/or your Name, you hide behind anonimity. Perhaps you do not wish to badmouth MDT, as you sense that in a year or so you may be seeking funding to support your MDT research.

A few major forces have ever driven the evolution of physics: The realization that math is actually telling us something about the *physical* nature of reality, the realization that one thing that was formerly believed to be stationary moves, the realization that two disparate entities are actually the same--as in space/time, wave/particle, mass/enegery, and the relaization that we must not ignore physical realtity just to have some fancy-shmancy math/science fiction.

Well, MDT is driven by all these forces.

Consider the equation x4 = ict .

x4 represents the fourth dimension. Now Einstein taught us that dimensions are very, very real *physical* entities. They can bend. They can warp. They can *move*. The fourth dimension is a *physical* entity.

i is the imaginary number--the square root of -1.

c is the *physical* velocity of light. c is a *physical* entity. we generally know it by the *physical* enity of the photon.

t is time--that *physical* parameter--that ever-moving force none can deny, except for some advanced postmodern physicists, who wish to keep quantum gravity, which does not exist, and get rid of time, which does, in fact, exist.

So it is that we have a *physical* equation telling us the relationship between *physical* entities.

x4 = ict.

The glaring mistake you make, pilgrim, is asserting that

x4 = ict is not a physical equation, relating physical quantities. How embarrassing! No wonder you must remain anonymous. Imagine if your department chair or funders found out!

I take great pride in MDT's simplicity, elegance, and boldness. You, the anonymous masked dwarf, like all too many physicists over the past thirty years whence Homer's Odyssey was deconstructed, adhere to a debased religion in which postmodern physics must be complicated, snarky, convoluted, indecipherable, filled with advanced, meaningless math that is used to select and promote groupthinkers, and to intimidate and cajole indie thinkers and lone cowboys, while building postmodern bureuacracies (like the machines did in The Matrix)rather than to exalt and explain--rather than to actually perform physics. Your fallen, mean spirit is the dominant brand and trademark of postmodern physics and academia, and your behavior can be seen throughout the internet and academy, where young physicists are taught to engage in groupthink math and snark independent thinkers who come forth with simple logic and reason. The Nobel Laureate economist F.A. Hayek's THE ROAD TO SERFDOM has two chapters entitled The End of Truth and Why The Worst Get on Top. Because of the nature of the system, you feel you are forced into anonymity.

But more and more of us, who agree with Einstein, are banding together, and time, as a *physical* entity, is on our side:

"Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone." --Albert Einstein

As physicists, it is not our job to wallow in snarky, meaningless mathematics and use it to convolute and confound the simple, so as to build postmodern bureaucratic empires, but it is our job to figure out what the math *physically* means.

That is *exactly* what MDT does--it goes back to Einstein's 1912 paper and tells us what the equation x4 = ict *physically* means, granting us new insight into a hitherto unsung feature of the universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.

"But even if the radiation formula should prove to be absolutely accurate it would after all be only an interpolation formula found by happy guesswork, and would thus leave one rather unsatisfied. I was, therefore, from the day of its origination, occupied with the task of giving it a real physical meaning." --(Max Planck, 1919 Nobel Prize address, 'The Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory')

Something that was once considered to be mere math, is seen to have physical content, implicatioons, and meaning. Something that was once more or less considered to be stationary--the fourth dimension--is seen to be moving. 'Tis a revolutionary affront to the church of wormholes and time travel worthy of burning me at the stake, you can bet all the well-funded, anonymous cowards agree.

And too, where so many dismissed x4 = ict as "meaningless math," I actually noted that it has physcial meaning. Now I know that the highest form of postmodern physicists today are those who can look at an equals sign and deny it exists, just as the postmodern lit professor denies Shakespeare's and Dante's greatness, but I look at an equals sign and see it for what it is, just as I see x4, i, c, and t for what they are--entities in Einstein's 1912 Mansucript which are related in a *physical* manner.

And from MDT's simple postulate and equation we naturally get all of relativity in a 4D universe where the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic. This also shows that time, as measured on our watches, is an emergent phenomena that arises because the propagation of photons, which are but matter carried upon the fourth expanding dimensions. The expansion of the fourth dimension distributes locality and thus is the cause of quantum entanglement, as well as qm's general features such as wave-particle duality and its probabilistic nature, wherein a photon has an equal chance of being found anywhere upon the nonlocal, spherically-symmetric probability distribution defined by the expansion of the fourth dimension, manifested in our three spatial dimensions. Entropy, and time and all its arrows and assymetries, can also be seen to arise naturally from MDT, and too, all the dualties--space/time, energy/mass, and wave/particle--are shown to have a common source.

Yes, anonymous coward, I am going to have to stick with Moving Dimensions Theory's simple beauty and elegance, which unifies so much of our entirety with a comon *physical* model. All the NSF mondey in the world, and the approval of your department chair and grad students, could not force me to change my mind--the fourth dimension moves and expands independent of the three spatial dimensions.

And I encourage you to choose MDT over your anomymous, cowardly, snarkfest behavior, which is intellectual violence unbecoming of a physicist.

For your unmanly, dishonorabe snark and bitter mean-spiritedness, we cannot forgive you, anonymous coward, and we hope you change your ways are man up and walk into town with your head held high, proud of your word and honor--proud of the Name your parents gave you. But for your refusal to recognize that the simple math can sometimes be telling us something profound and new about physics, perhaps we *can* forgive you, as even Planck did not believe the deeper implications of the quantum theory he developed. Einstein did.

Planck lectured at Columbia, "Consequently, there remains only the one conclusion, that previous electron theories suffer from an essential incompleteness which demands a modification, but how deeply this modification should go into the structure of the theory is a question upon which views are still widely divergent. J. J. Thompson inclines to the most radical view, as do J. Larmor, A. Einstein, and with him I. Stark who even believe that the propagation of electromagnetic waves in a pure vacuum does not occur precisely in accordance with the Maxwellian field equations, but in definite energy quanta hv.

I am of the opinion, on the other hand, that at present it is not necessary to proceed in so revolutionary a manner, and that one may come successfully through by seeking the significance of the energy quanta hv solely in the mutual actions with which the resonators influence one another. A definite decision with regard to these important questions can only be brought about as a result of more experience."--(From Max Planck's famous Columbia Lectures)

From: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/Einstein_and_photoelectric_effect.html

"Experimentalists railed at the prospect of what Einstein's equation of the photoelectric effect implied. Robert Millikan, the very man who showed that the equation really did work, would have nothing to do with its physical interpretation. In 1915, Millikan wrote: "The semicorpuscular theory by which Einstein arrived at his equation seems at present wholly untenable." Three years later, Ernest Rutherford, the great New Zealand physicist who probed the structure of the atom, said there appeared to be "no physical connection" between the energy and frequency in Einstein's hypothesis about light quanta. It didn't seem to make sense that a particle could have a frequency, or that a wave could act as if it were made of energetic particles. The two concepts seemed to rule each other out." --http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/Einstein_and_photoelectric_effect.html

Well, at least they all used their names when they railed against a new theory. Sure, they were all great physicists, but first and foremost, like Bohr, they were rugged *cowboys*.

Gamow loved cowboys & Westerns too. Check out, "Mr. Tompkins Gets Serious: The Essential George Gamow, The Masterpiece Science Edition (Hardcover)

by George Gamow."

"The Cowboy Experiment

Father's nickname was Joe. Niels Bohr and my father were addicted to western movies while they were in Copenhagen together. All the cowboys in these movies--Gary Cooper types--were called Joe. That's how Father's nickname came about--he was named after a typical cowboy movie hero.

Bohr had some difficulty with cowboy movies. Being a great physicist he took things very literally. After seeing one of the many films in which there was a shootout between a good guy in a white hat and a bad guy in a black hat, Bohr asked Father, "How is it possible that the man in the black hat always reaches... "

--http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Tompkins-Gets-Serious-Masterpiece/dp/0131872915

Even more important than MDT is that we bring that classic, epic, western, heroic, cowboy spirit on back; for it is the true source of all enduring art and sicence, of truth and freedom, of rugged romance, beauty, and elegance--that rugged, lone truth seeker is how physics has ever advanced.

"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck

"The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for "conscious" control or "conscious" planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme--while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the superindividual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." -F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom

You can stand him up at the gates of hell, but he won't back down. Bruno, Socrates, Galileo, Dante, Einstein, Gamow, and Bohr--they all walked and spoke freely in plain sight, and stuck by their guns when the chips were down. They, like Odysseus, were classic, epic cowboys, always standing up against the anonymous, faceless mob for truth, reason, and justice.

Well, we've all got a showdwon commin'. And if you call down the thunder, you've got to man up and face it at high noon--you can't just run and hide and use snarky, postmodern math in the dark of night, sneaking up anonymously behind the mysterious stranger. For ultimately, as Feynman knew, science is not advanced by those seeking fame and fortune--tenure and titles--but by those seeking truth and classic, epic honor.

Perhaps we ought make a list of Bohr's and Gamow's favorite Westerns.

"Bohr was very fond of seeing Western (cowboy) movies in which gun duels are quite common. In all such duels, the villain draws his gun but the hero always shoots down the scoundrel first. Bohr had an explanation for this phenomenon, ascribing this as the difference between wilful and conditioned thinking. "The scoundrel has to think and decide when to go for his gun, which slows his action, while the hero acts faster because he acts, without thinking, the moment he sees the scoundrel reaching for his gun." When nobody agreed with his theory, he bought a pair of toy guns and playing the hero, tried duels with his pupils. Surprisingly, he 'killed' everybody who tried to take a shot at him first." --from http://www.dawn.com/weekly/dmag/archive/030420/dmag21.htm

The one thing I want to make clear throughout this is that the main question here is why must you remain anonymous? Is it because you do not believe your words and do not want to have your name associated with them? Is it because you do not want your department chair or funders to see your childlike namecalling and ad-hominem attacks that you use instead of logic and reason? Is it because you think that simple logic and reason is not enough, and that snarky namecalling and childish put-downs accomplish what your logic and reason cannot? Please focus on my questions here, and please answer, as I am answering your questions, even though you do not want to meet at high noon, but you prefer to catcall from behind a mask and shoot your opponent in the back, like a coward.

Niels Bohr had a lot to say about the Cowboy Code, and therein we can find insights as to why your behavior ultimately loses both on the cultural and scientific levels:

From: http://holasunshinegirl.blogspot.com/2006/07/westerns-and-niels-bohr.html

"The great Danish Physicist Niels Bohr, an avid Western film fan, wondered why in all the final shoot-outs, the hero shoots faster even if his adversary is the first to reach for his gun. Bohr asked himself if some physical truth might not explain this convention. He came to the conclusion that such a truth did indeed exist: the first to draw is the slowest because he decides to shoot, and dies. The second to draw lives because he is faster, and he is faster because he doesn't have to decide, he is decided. This brilliant discovery was the result of a whimsical empirical research: Bohr and his assistants went off to a toy shop, bought water pistols , and back in their laboratory duelled for hours and hours."

--http://holasunshinegirl.blogspot.com/2006/07/westerns-and-niels-bohr.html

So it is that you decided to shoot first in the dark of night, from behind a mask like a lowly outlaw, and thus made my decision for me. EBohr--a Dane--had a great appreciation for the Cowboy--for honor and integrity--for Truth and Justice. Too, too many postmodern "physicists," such as yourself, have lost that honorable, noble spirit. The classic, epic showdown goes back 2800 years to The Odyssey, when Odysseus rides back on into his home, disguised as a beggar. Eventually he alone strings the bow and slays all the false suitors to his wife who kicked him around and spat on him--that eternal faceless, nameless mob which you, and all too many postmodern physicists, run with. But alas, they banned *The Odyssey* from the academy, and thus your behavior dominates.

What we have here is an evolution and paradigm shift, and deep down you sense it. That is the source for your emotional vitriol. If you were certain that I was wrong, you would calmly state so and let your Word--let your Name--let your Reason speak for themsleves. But as you are driven by emotions you do not understand, and as you do not have faith in your Word nor reason, and are embarrassed by it and/or your Name, you hide behind anonimity. Perhaps you do not wish to badmouth MDT, as you sense that in a year or so you may be seeking funding to support your MDT research.

A few major forces have ever driven the evolution of physics: The realization that math is actually telling us something about the *physical* nature of reality, the realization that one thing that was formerly believed to be stationary moves, the realization that two disparate entities are actually the same--as in space/time, wave/particle, mass/enegery, and the relaization that we must not ignore physical realtity just to have some fancy-shmancy math/science fiction.

Well, MDT is driven by all these forces.

Consider the equation x4 = ict .

x4 represents the fourth dimension. Now Einstein taught us that dimensions are very, very real *physical* entities. They can bend. They can warp. They can *move*. The fourth dimension is a *physical* entity.

i is the imaginary number--the square root of -1.

c is the *physical* velocity of light. c is a *physical* entity. we generally know it by the *physical* enity of the photon.

t is time--that *physical* parameter--that ever-moving force none can deny, except for some advanced postmodern physicists, who wish to keep quantum gravity, which does not exist, and get rid of time, which does, in fact, exist.

So it is that we have a *physical* equation telling us the relationship between *physical* entities.

x4 = ict.

The glaring mistake you make, pilgrim, is asserting that

x4 = ict is not a physical equation, relating physical quantities. How embarrassing! No wonder you must remain anonymous. Imagine if your department chair or funders found out!

I take great pride in MDT's simplicity, elegance, and boldness. You, the anonymous masked dwarf, like all too many physicists over the past thirty years whence Homer's Odyssey was deconstructed, adhere to a debased religion in which postmodern physics must be complicated, snarky, convoluted, indecipherable, filled with advanced, meaningless math that is used to select and promote groupthinkers, and to intimidate and cajole indie thinkers and lone cowboys, while building postmodern bureuacracies (like the machines did in The Matrix)rather than to exalt and explain--rather than to actually perform physics. Your fallen, mean spirit is the dominant brand and trademark of postmodern physics and academia, and your behavior can be seen throughout the internet and academy, where young physicists are taught to engage in groupthink math and snark independent thinkers who come forth with simple logic and reason. The Nobel Laureate economist F.A. Hayek's THE ROAD TO SERFDOM has two chapters entitled The End of Truth and Why The Worst Get on Top. Because of the nature of the system, you feel you are forced into anonymity.

But more and more of us, who agree with Einstein, are banding together, and time, as a *physical* entity, is on our side:

"Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone." --Albert Einstein

As physicists, it is not our job to wallow in snarky, meaningless mathematics and use it to convolute and confound the simple, so as to build postmodern bureaucratic empires, but it is our job to figure out what the math *physically* means.

That is *exactly* what MDT does--it goes back to Einstein's 1912 paper and tells us what the equation x4 = ict *physically* means, granting us new insight into a hitherto unsung feature of the universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.

"But even if the radiation formula should prove to be absolutely accurate it would after all be only an interpolation formula found by happy guesswork, and would thus leave one rather unsatisfied. I was, therefore, from the day of its origination, occupied with the task of giving it a real physical meaning." --(Max Planck, 1919 Nobel Prize address, 'The Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory')

Something that was once considered to be mere math, is seen to have physical content, implicatioons, and meaning. Something that was once more or less considered to be stationary--the fourth dimension--is seen to be moving. 'Tis a revolutionary affront to the church of wormholes and time travel worthy of burning me at the stake, you can bet all the well-funded, anonymous cowards agree.

And too, where so many dismissed x4 = ict as "meaningless math," I actually noted that it has physcial meaning. Now I know that the highest form of postmodern physicists today are those who can look at an equals sign and deny it exists, just as the postmodern lit professor denies Shakespeare's and Dante's greatness, but I look at an equals sign and see it for what it is, just as I see x4, i, c, and t for what they are--entities in Einstein's 1912 Mansucript which are related in a *physical* manner.

And from MDT's simple postulate and equation we naturally get all of relativity in a 4D universe where the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic. This also shows that time, as measured on our watches, is an emergent phenomena that arises because the propagation of photons, which are but matter carried upon the fourth expanding dimensions. The expansion of the fourth dimension distributes locality and thus is the cause of quantum entanglement, as well as qm's general features such as wave-particle duality and its probabilistic nature, wherein a photon has an equal chance of being found anywhere upon the nonlocal, spherically-symmetric probability distribution defined by the expansion of the fourth dimension, manifested in our three spatial dimensions. Entropy, and time and all its arrows and assymetries, can also be seen to arise naturally from MDT, and too, all the dualties--space/time, energy/mass, and wave/particle--are shown to have a common source.

Yes, anonymous coward, I am going to have to stick with Moving Dimensions Theory's simple beauty and elegance, which unifies so much of our entirety with a comon *physical* model. All the NSF mondey in the world, and the approval of your department chair and grad students, could not force me to change my mind--the fourth dimension moves and expands independent of the three spatial dimensions.

And I encourage you to choose MDT over your anomymous, cowardly, snarkfest behavior, which is intellectual violence unbecoming of a physicist.

For your unmanly, dishonorabe snark and bitter mean-spiritedness, we cannot forgive you, anonymous coward, and we hope you change your ways are man up and walk into town with your head held high, proud of your word and honor--proud of the Name your parents gave you. But for your refusal to recognize that the simple math can sometimes be telling us something profound and new about physics, perhaps we *can* forgive you, as even Planck did not believe the deeper implications of the quantum theory he developed. Einstein did.

Planck lectured at Columbia, "Consequently, there remains only the one conclusion, that previous electron theories suffer from an essential incompleteness which demands a modification, but how deeply this modification should go into the structure of the theory is a question upon which views are still widely divergent. J. J. Thompson inclines to the most radical view, as do J. Larmor, A. Einstein, and with him I. Stark who even believe that the propagation of electromagnetic waves in a pure vacuum does not occur precisely in accordance with the Maxwellian field equations, but in definite energy quanta hv.

I am of the opinion, on the other hand, that at present it is not necessary to proceed in so revolutionary a manner, and that one may come successfully through by seeking the significance of the energy quanta hv solely in the mutual actions with which the resonators influence one another. A definite decision with regard to these important questions can only be brought about as a result of more experience."--(From Max Planck's famous Columbia Lectures)

From: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/Einstein_and_photoelectric_effect.html

"Experimentalists railed at the prospect of what Einstein's equation of the photoelectric effect implied. Robert Millikan, the very man who showed that the equation really did work, would have nothing to do with its physical interpretation. In 1915, Millikan wrote: "The semicorpuscular theory by which Einstein arrived at his equation seems at present wholly untenable." Three years later, Ernest Rutherford, the great New Zealand physicist who probed the structure of the atom, said there appeared to be "no physical connection" between the energy and frequency in Einstein's hypothesis about light quanta. It didn't seem to make sense that a particle could have a frequency, or that a wave could act as if it were made of energetic particles. The two concepts seemed to rule each other out." --http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/Einstein_and_photoelectric_effect.html

Well, at least they all used their names when they railed against a new theory. Sure, they were all great physicists, but first and foremost, like Bohr, they were rugged *cowboys*.

Gamow loved cowboys & Westerns too. Check out, "Mr. Tompkins Gets Serious: The Essential George Gamow, The Masterpiece Science Edition (Hardcover)

by George Gamow."

"The Cowboy Experiment

Father's nickname was Joe. Niels Bohr and my father were addicted to western movies while they were in Copenhagen together. All the cowboys in these movies--Gary Cooper types--were called Joe. That's how Father's nickname came about--he was named after a typical cowboy movie hero.

Bohr had some difficulty with cowboy movies. Being a great physicist he took things very literally. After seeing one of the many films in which there was a shootout between a good guy in a white hat and a bad guy in a black hat, Bohr asked Father, "How is it possible that the man in the black hat always reaches... "

--http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Tompkins-Gets-Serious-Masterpiece/dp/0131872915

Even more important than MDT is that we bring that classic, epic, western, heroic, cowboy spirit on back; for it is the true source of all enduring art and sicence, of truth and freedom, of rugged romance, beauty, and elegance--that rugged, lone truth seeker is how physics has ever advanced.

"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck

"The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for "conscious" control or "conscious" planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme--while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the superindividual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." -F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom

You can stand him up at the gates of hell, but he won't back down. Bruno, Socrates, Galileo, Dante, Einstein, Gamow, and Bohr--they all walked and spoke freely in plain sight, and stuck by their guns when the chips were down. They, like Odysseus, were classic, epic cowboys, always standing up against the anonymous, faceless mob for truth, reason, and justice.

Well, we've all got a showdwon commin'. And if you call down the thunder, you've got to man up and face it at high noon--you can't just run and hide and use snarky, postmodern math in the dark of night, sneaking up anonymously behind the mysterious stranger. For ultimately, as Feynman knew, science is not advanced by those seeking fame and fortune--tenure and titles--but by those seeking truth and classic, epic honor.

Perhaps we ought make a list of Bohr's and Gamow's favorite Westerns.

"Bohr was very fond of seeing Western (cowboy) movies in which gun duels are quite common. In all such duels, the villain draws his gun but the hero always shoots down the scoundrel first. Bohr had an explanation for this phenomenon, ascribing this as the difference between wilful and conditioned thinking. "The scoundrel has to think and decide when to go for his gun, which slows his action, while the hero acts faster because he acts, without thinking, the moment he sees the scoundrel reaching for his gun." When nobody agreed with his theory, he bought a pair of toy guns and playing the hero, tried duels with his pupils. Surprisingly, he 'killed' everybody who tried to take a shot at him first." --from http://www.dawn.com/weekly/dmag/archive/030420/dmag21.htm

The one thing I want to make clear throughout this is that the main question here is why must you remain anonymous? Is it because you do not believe your words and do not want to have your name associated with them? Is it because you do not want your department chair or funders to see your childlike namecalling and ad-hominem attacks that you use instead of logic and reason? Is it because you think that simple logic and reason is not enough, and that snarky namecalling and childish put-downs accomplish what your logic and reason cannot? Please focus on my questions here, and please answer, as I am answering your questions, even though you do not want to meet at high noon, but you prefer to catcall from behind a mask and shoot your opponent in the back, like a coward.

Niels Bohr had a lot to say about the Cowboy Code, and therein we can find insights as to why your behavior ultimately loses both on the cultural and scientific levels:

From: http://holasunshinegirl.blogspot.com/2006/07/westerns-and-niels-bohr.html

"The great Danish Physicist Niels Bohr, an avid Western film fan, wondered why in all the final shoot-outs, the hero shoots faster even if his adversary is the first to reach for his gun. Bohr asked himself if some physical truth might not explain this convention. He came to the conclusion that such a truth did indeed exist: the first to draw is the slowest because he decides to shoot, and dies. The second to draw lives because he is faster, and he is faster because he doesn't have to decide, he is decided. This brilliant discovery was the result of a whimsical empirical research: Bohr and his assistants went off to a toy shop, bought water pistols , and back in their laboratory duelled for hours and hours."

--http://holasunshinegirl.blogspot.com/2006/07/westerns-and-niels-bohr.html

So it is that you decided to shoot first in the dark of night, from behind a mask like a lowly outlaw, and thus made my decision for me. EBohr--a Dane--had a great appreciation for the Cowboy--for honor and integrity--for Truth and Justice. Too, too many postmodern "physicists," such as yourself, have lost that honorable, noble spirit. The classic, epic showdown goes back 2800 years to The Odyssey, when Odysseus rides back on into his home, disguised as a beggar. Eventually he alone strings the bow and slays all the false suitors to his wife who kicked him around and spat on him--that eternal faceless, nameless mob which you, and all too many postmodern physicists, run with. But alas, they banned *The Odyssey* from the academy, and thus your behavior dominates.

What we have here is an evolution and paradigm shift, and deep down you sense it. That is the source for your emotional vitriol. If you were certain that I was wrong, you would calmly state so and let your Word--let your Name--let your Reason speak for themsleves. But as you are driven by emotions you do not understand, and as you do not have faith in your Word nor reason, and are embarrassed by it and/or your Name, you hide behind anonimity. Perhaps you do not wish to badmouth MDT, as you sense that in a year or so you may be seeking funding to support your MDT research.

A few major forces have ever driven the evolution of physics: The realization that math is actually telling us something about the *physical* nature of reality, the realization that one thing that was formerly believed to be stationary moves, the realization that two disparate entities are actually the same--as in space/time, wave/particle, mass/enegery, and the relaization that we must not ignore physical realtity just to have some fancy-shmancy math/science fiction.

Well, MDT is driven by all these forces.

Consider the equation x4 = ict .

x4 represents the fourth dimension. Now Einstein taught us that dimensions are very, very real *physical* entities. They can bend. They can warp. They can *move*. The fourth dimension is a *physical* entity.

i is the imaginary number--the square root of -1.

c is the *physical* velocity of light. c is a *physical* entity. we generally know it by the *physical* enity of the photon.

t is time--that *physical* parameter--that ever-moving force none can deny, except for some advanced postmodern physicists, who wish to keep quantum gravity, which does not exist, and get rid of time, which does, in fact, exist.

So it is that we have a *physical* equation telling us the relationship between *physical* entities.

x4 = ict.

The glaring mistake you make, pilgrim, is asserting that

x4 = ict is not a physical equation, relating physical quantities. How embarrassing! No wonder you must remain anonymous. Imagine if your department chair or funders found out!

I take great pride in MDT's simplicity, elegance, and boldness. You, the anonymous masked dwarf, like all too many physicists over the past thirty years whence Homer's Odyssey was deconstructed, adhere to a debased religion in which postmodern physics must be complicated, snarky, convoluted, indecipherable, filled with advanced, meaningless math that is used to select and promote groupthinkers, and to intimidate and cajole indie thinkers and lone cowboys, while building postmodern bureuacracies (like the machines did in The Matrix)rather than to exalt and explain--rather than to actually perform physics. Your fallen, mean spirit is the dominant brand and trademark of postmodern physics and academia, and your behavior can be seen throughout the internet and academy, where young physicists are taught to engage in groupthink math and snark independent thinkers who come forth with simple logic and reason. The Nobel Laureate economist F.A. Hayek's THE ROAD TO SERFDOM has two chapters entitled The End of Truth and Why The Worst Get on Top. Because of the nature of the system, you feel you are forced into anonymity.

But more and more of us, who agree with Einstein, are banding together, and time, as a *physical* entity, is on our side:

"Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone." --Albert Einstein

As physicists, it is not our job to wallow in snarky, meaningless mathematics and use it to convolute and confound the simple, so as to build postmodern bureaucratic empires, but it is our job to figure out what the math *physically* means.

That is *exactly* what MDT does--it goes back to Einstein's 1912 paper and tells us what the equation x4 = ict *physically* means, granting us new insight into a hitherto unsung feature of the universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.

"But even if the radiation formula should prove to be absolutely accurate it would after all be only an interpolation formula found by happy guesswork, and would thus leave one rather unsatisfied. I was, therefore, from the day of its origination, occupied with the task of giving it a real physical meaning." --(Max Planck, 1919 Nobel Prize address, 'The Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory')

Something that was once considered to be mere math, is seen to have physical content, implicatioons, and meaning. Something that was once more or less considered to be stationary--the fourth dimension--is seen to be moving. 'Tis a revolutionary affront to the church of wormholes and time travel worthy of burning me at the stake, you can bet all the well-funded, anonymous cowards agree.

And too, where so many dismissed x4 = ict as "meaningless math," I actually noted that it has physcial meaning. Now I know that the highest form of postmodern physicists today are those who can look at an equals sign and deny it exists, just as the postmodern lit professor denies Shakespeare's and Dante's greatness, but I look at an equals sign and see it for what it is, just as I see x4, i, c, and t for what they are--entities in Einstein's 1912 Mansucript which are related in a *physical* manner.

And from MDT's simple postulate and equation we naturally get all of relativity in a 4D universe where the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic. This also shows that time, as measured on our watches, is an emergent phenomena that arises because the propagation of photons, which are but matter carried upon the fourth expanding dimensions. The expansion of the fourth dimension distributes locality and thus is the cause of quantum entanglement, as well as qm's general features such as wave-particle duality and its probabilistic nature, wherein a photon has an equal chance of being found anywhere upon the nonlocal, spherically-symmetric probability distribution defined by the expansion of the fourth dimension, manifested in our three spatial dimensions. Entropy, and time and all its arrows and assymetries, can also be seen to arise naturally from MDT, and too, all the dualties--space/time, energy/mass, and wave/particle--are shown to have a common source.

Yes, anonymous coward, I am going to have to stick with Moving Dimensions Theory's simple beauty and elegance, which unifies so much of our entirety with a comon *physical* model. All the NSF mondey in the world, and the approval of your department chair and grad students, could not force me to change my mind--the fourth dimension moves and expands independent of the three spatial dimensions.

And I encourage you to choose MDT over your anomymous, cowardly, snarkfest behavior, which is intellectual violence unbecoming of a physicist.

For your unmanly, dishonorabe snark and bitter mean-spiritedness, we cannot forgive you, anonymous coward, and we hope you change your ways are man up and walk into town with your head held high, proud of your word and honor--proud of the Name your parents gave you. But for your refusal to recognize that the simple math can sometimes be telling us something profound and new about physics, perhaps we *can* forgive you, as even Planck did not believe the deeper implications of the quantum theory he developed. Einstein did.

Planck lectured at Columbia, "Consequently, there remains only the one conclusion, that previous electron theories suffer from an essential incompleteness which demands a modification, but how deeply this modification should go into the structure of the theory is a question upon which views are still widely divergent. J. J. Thompson inclines to the most radical view, as do J. Larmor, A. Einstein, and with him I. Stark who even believe that the propagation of electromagnetic waves in a pure vacuum does not occur precisely in accordance with the Maxwellian field equations, but in definite energy quanta hv.

I am of the opinion, on the other hand, that at present it is not necessary to proceed in so revolutionary a manner, and that one may come successfully through by seeking the significance of the energy quanta hv solely in the mutual actions with which the resonators influence one another. A definite decision with regard to these important questions can only be brought about as a result of more experience."--(From Max Planck's famous Columbia Lectures)

From: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/Einstein_and_photoelectric_effect.html

"Experimentalists railed at the prospect of what Einstein's equation of the photoelectric effect implied. Robert Millikan, the very man who showed that the equation really did work, would have nothing to do with its physical interpretation. In 1915, Millikan wrote: "The semicorpuscular theory by which Einstein arrived at his equation seems at present wholly untenable." Three years later, Ernest Rutherford, the great New Zealand physicist who probed the structure of the atom, said there appeared to be "no physical connection" between the energy and frequency in Einstein's hypothesis about light quanta. It didn't seem to make sense that a particle could have a frequency, or that a wave could act as if it were made of energetic particles. The two concepts seemed to rule each other out." --http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/Einstein_and_photoelectric_effect.html

Well, at least they all used their names when they railed against a new theory. Sure, they were all great physicists, but first and foremost, like Bohr, they were rugged *cowboys*.

Gamow loved cowboys & Westerns too. Check out, "Mr. Tompkins Gets Serious: The Essential George Gamow, The Masterpiece Science Edition (Hardcover)

by George Gamow."

"The Cowboy Experiment

Father's nickname was Joe. Niels Bohr and my father were addicted to western movies while they were in Copenhagen together. All the cowboys in these movies--Gary Cooper types--were called Joe. That's how Father's nickname came about--he was named after a typical cowboy movie hero.

Bohr had some difficulty with cowboy movies. Being a great physicist he took things very literally. After seeing one of the many films in which there was a shootout between a good guy in a white hat and a bad guy in a black hat, Bohr asked Father, "How is it possible that the man in the black hat always reaches... "

--http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Tompkins-Gets-Serious-Masterpiece/dp/0131872915

Even more important than MDT is that we bring that classic, epic, western, heroic, cowboy spirit on back; for it is the true source of all enduring art and sicence, of truth and freedom, of rugged romance, beauty, and elegance--that rugged, lone truth seeker is how physics has ever advanced.

"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck

"The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for "conscious" control or "conscious" planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme--while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the superindividual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." -F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom

You can stand him up at the gates of hell, but he won't back down. Bruno, Socrates, Galileo, Dante, Einstein, Gamow, and Bohr--they all walked and spoke freely in plain sight, and stuck by their guns when the chips were down. They, like Odysseus, were classic, epic cowboys, always standing up against the anonymous, faceless mob for truth, reason, and justice.

Well, we've all got a showdwon commin'. And if you call down the thunder, you've got to man up and face it at high noon--you can't just run and hide and use snarky, postmodern math in the dark of night, sneaking up anonymously behind the mysterious stranger. For ultimately, as Feynman knew, science is not advanced by those seeking fame and fortune--tenure and titles--but by those seeking truth and classic, epic honor.

Perhaps we ought make a list of Bohr's and Gamow's favorite Westerns.

"Bohr was very fond of seeing Western (cowboy) movies in which gun duels are quite common. In all such duels, the villain draws his gun but the hero always shoots down the scoundrel first. Bohr had an explanation for this phenomenon, ascribing this as the difference between wilful and conditioned thinking. "The scoundrel has to think and decide when to go for his gun, which slows his action, while the hero acts faster because he acts, without thinking, the moment he sees the scoundrel reaching for his gun." When nobody agreed with his theory, he bought a pair of toy guns and playing the hero, tried duels with his pupils. Surprisingly, he 'killed' everybody who tried to take a shot at him first." --from http://www.dawn.com/weekly/dmag/archive/030420/dmag21.htm

The one thing I want to make clear throughout this is that the main question here is why must you remain anonymous? Is it because you do not believe your words and do not want to have your name associated with them? Is it because you do not want your department chair or funders to see your childlike namecalling and ad-hominem attacks that you use instead of logic and reason? Is it because you think that simple logic and reason is not enough, and that snarky namecalling and childish put-downs accomplish what your logic and reason cannot? Please focus on my questions here, and please answer, as I am answering your questions, even though you do not want to meet at high noon, but you prefer to catcall from behind a mask and shoot your opponent in the back, like a coward.

Niels Bohr had a lot to say about the Cowboy Code, and therein we can find insights as to why your behavior ultimately loses both on the cultural and scientific levels:

From: http://holasunshinegirl.blogspot.com/2006/07/westerns-and-niels-bohr.html

"The great Danish Physicist Niels Bohr, an avid Western film fan, wondered why in all the final shoot-outs, the hero shoots faster even if his adversary is the first to reach for his gun. Bohr asked himself if some physical truth might not explain this convention. He came to the conclusion that such a truth did indeed exist: the first to draw is the slowest because he decides to shoot, and dies. The second to draw lives because he is faster, and he is faster because he doesn't have to decide, he is decided. This brilliant discovery was the result of a whimsical empirical research: Bohr and his assistants went off to a toy shop, bought water pistols , and back in their laboratory duelled for hours and hours."

--http://holasunshinegirl.blogspot.com/2006/07/westerns-and-niels-bohr.html

So it is that you decided to shoot first in the dark of night, from behind a mask like a lowly outlaw, and thus made my decision for me. EBohr--a Dane--had a great appreciation for the Cowboy--for honor and integrity--for Truth and Justice. Too, too many postmodern "physicists," such as yourself, have lost that honorable, noble spirit. The classic, epic showdown goes back 2800 years to The Odyssey, when Odysseus rides back on into his home, disguised as a beggar. Eventually he alone strings the bow and slays all the false suitors to his wife who kicked him around and spat on him--that eternal faceless, nameless mob which you, and all too many postmodern physicists, run with. But alas, they banned *The Odyssey* from the academy, and thus your behavior dominates.

What we have here is an evolution and paradigm shift, and deep down you sense it. That is the source for your emotional vitriol. If you were certain that I was wrong, you would calmly state so and let your Word--let your Name--let your Reason speak for themsleves. But as you are driven by emotions you do not understand, and as you do not have faith in your Word nor reason, and are embarrassed by it and/or your Name, you hide behind anonimity. Perhaps you do not wish to badmouth MDT, as you sense that in a year or so you may be seeking funding to support your MDT research.

A few major forces have ever driven the evolution of physics: The realization that math is actually telling us something about the *physical* nature of reality, the realization that one thing that was formerly believed to be stationary moves, the realization that two disparate entities are actually the same--as in space/time, wave/particle, mass/enegery, and the relaization that we must not ignore physical realtity just to have some fancy-shmancy math/science fiction.

Well, MDT is driven by all these forces.

Consider the equation x4 = ict .

x4 represents the fourth dimension. Now Einstein taught us that dimensions are very, very real *physical* entities. They can bend. They can warp. They can *move*. The fourth dimension is a *physical* entity.

i is the imaginary number--the square root of -1.

c is the *physical* velocity of light. c is a *physical* entity. we generally know it by the *physical* enity of the photon.

t is time--that *physical* parameter--that ever-moving force none can deny, except for some advanced postmodern physicists, who wish to keep quantum gravity, which does not exist, and get rid of time, which does, in fact, exist.

So it is that we have a *physical* equation telling us the relationship between *physical* entities.

x4 = ict.

The glaring mistake you make, pilgrim, is asserting that

x4 = ict is not a physical equation, relating physical quantities. How embarrassing! No wonder you must remain anonymous. Imagine if your department chair or funders found out!

I take great pride in MDT's simplicity, elegance, and boldness. You, the anonymous masked dwarf, like all too many physicists over the past thirty years whence Homer's Odyssey was deconstructed, adhere to a debased religion in which postmodern physics must be complicated, snarky, convoluted, indecipherable, filled with advanced, meaningless math that is used to select and promote groupthinkers, and to intimidate and cajole indie thinkers and lone cowboys, while building postmodern bureuacracies (like the machines did in The Matrix)rather than to exalt and explain--rather than to actually perform physics. Your fallen, mean spirit is the dominant brand and trademark of postmodern physics and academia, and your behavior can be seen throughout the internet and academy, where young physicists are taught to engage in groupthink math and snark independent thinkers who come forth with simple logic and reason. The Nobel Laureate economist F.A. Hayek's THE ROAD TO SERFDOM has two chapters entitled The End of Truth and Why The Worst Get on Top. Because of the nature of the system, you feel you are forced into anonymity.

But more and more of us, who agree with Einstein, are banding together, and time, as a *physical* entity, is on our side:

"Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone." --Albert Einstein

As physicists, it is not our job to wallow in snarky, meaningless mathematics and use it to convolute and confound the simple, so as to build postmodern bureaucratic empires, but it is our job to figure out what the math *physically* means.

That is *exactly* what MDT does--it goes back to Einstein's 1912 paper and tells us what the equation x4 = ict *physically* means, granting us new insight into a hitherto unsung feature of the universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.

"But even if the radiation formula should prove to be absolutely accurate it would after all be only an interpolation formula found by happy guesswork, and would thus leave one rather unsatisfied. I was, therefore, from the day of its origination, occupied with the task of giving it a real physical meaning." --(Max Planck, 1919 Nobel Prize address, 'The Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory')

Something that was once considered to be mere math, is seen to have physical content, implicatioons, and meaning. Something that was once more or less considered to be stationary--the fourth dimension--is seen to be moving. 'Tis a revolutionary affront to the church of wormholes and time travel worthy of burning me at the stake, you can bet all the well-funded, anonymous cowards agree.

And too, where so many dismissed x4 = ict as "meaningless math," I actually noted that it has physcial meaning. Now I know that the highest form of postmodern physicists today are those who can look at an equals sign and deny it exists, just as the postmodern lit professor denies Shakespeare's and Dante's greatness, but I look at an equals sign and see it for what it is, just as I see x4, i, c, and t for what they are--entities in Einstein's 1912 Mansucript which are related in a *physical* manner.

And from MDT's simple postulate and equation we naturally get all of relativity in a 4D universe where the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic. This also shows that time, as measured on our watches, is an emergent phenomena that arises because the propagation of photons, which are but matter carried upon the fourth expanding dimensions. The expansion of the fourth dimension distributes locality and thus is the cause of quantum entanglement, as well as qm's general features such as wave-particle duality and its probabilistic nature, wherein a photon has an equal chance of being found anywhere upon the nonlocal, spherically-symmetric probability distribution defined by the expansion of the fourth dimension, manifested in our three spatial dimensions. Entropy, and time and all its arrows and assymetries, can also be seen to arise naturally from MDT, and too, all the dualties--space/time, energy/mass, and wave/particle--are shown to have a common source.

Yes, anonymous coward, I am going to have to stick with Moving Dimensions Theory's simple beauty and elegance, which unifies so much of our entirety with a comon *physical* model. All the NSF mondey in the world, and the approval of your department chair and grad students, could not force me to change my mind--the fourth dimension moves and expands independent of the three spatial dimensions.

And I encourage you to choose MDT over your anomymous, cowardly, snarkfest behavior, which is intellectual violence unbecoming of a physicist.

For your unmanly, dishonorabe snark and bitter mean-spiritedness, we cannot forgive you, anonymous coward, and we hope you change your ways are man up and walk into town with your head held high, proud of your word and honor--proud of the Name your parents gave you. But for your refusal to recognize that the simple math can sometimes be telling us something profound and new about physics, perhaps we *can* forgive you, as even Planck did not believe the deeper implications of the quantum theory he developed. Einstein did.

Planck lectured at Columbia, "Consequently, there remains only the one conclusion, that previous electron theories suffer from an essential incompleteness which demands a modification, but how deeply this modification should go into the structure of the theory is a question upon which views are still widely divergent. J. J. Thompson inclines to the most radical view, as do J. Larmor, A. Einstein, and with him I. Stark who even believe that the propagation of electromagnetic waves in a pure vacuum does not occur precisely in accordance with the Maxwellian field equations, but in definite energy quanta hv.

I am of the opinion, on the other hand, that at present it is not necessary to proceed in so revolutionary a manner, and that one may come successfully through by seeking the significance of the energy quanta hv solely in the mutual actions with which the resonators influence one another. A definite decision with regard to these important questions can only be brought about as a result of more experience."--(From Max Planck's famous Columbia Lectures)

From: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/Einstein_and_photoelectric_effect.html

"Experimentalists railed at the prospect of what Einstein's equation of the photoelectric effect implied. Robert Millikan, the very man who showed that the equation really did work, would have nothing to do with its physical interpretation. In 1915, Millikan wrote: "The semicorpuscular theory by which Einstein arrived at his equation seems at present wholly untenable." Three years later, Ernest Rutherford, the great New Zealand physicist who probed the structure of the atom, said there appeared to be "no physical connection" between the energy and frequency in Einstein's hypothesis about light quanta. It didn't seem to make sense that a particle could have a frequency, or that a wave could act as if it were made of energetic particles. The two concepts seemed to rule each other out." --http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/E/Einstein_and_photoelectric_effect.html

Well, at least they all used their names when they railed against a new theory. Sure, they were all great physicists, but first and foremost, like Bohr, they were rugged *cowboys*.

Gamow loved cowboys & Westerns too. Check out, "Mr. Tompkins Gets Serious: The Essential George Gamow, The Masterpiece Science Edition (Hardcover)

by George Gamow."

"The Cowboy Experiment

Father's nickname was Joe. Niels Bohr and my father were addicted to western movies while they were in Copenhagen together. All the cowboys in these movies--Gary Cooper types--were called Joe. That's how Father's nickname came about--he was named after a typical cowboy movie hero.

Bohr had some difficulty with cowboy movies. Being a great physicist he took things very literally. After seeing one of the many films in which there was a shootout between a good guy in a white hat and a bad guy in a black hat, Bohr asked Father, "How is it possible that the man in the black hat always reaches... "

--http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Tompkins-Gets-Serious-Masterpiece/dp/0131872915

Even more important than MDT is that we bring that classic, epic, western, heroic, cowboy spirit on back; for it is the true source of all enduring art and sicence, of truth and freedom, of rugged romance, beauty, and elegance--that rugged, lone truth seeker is how physics has ever advanced.

"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck

"The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for "conscious" control or "conscious" planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme--while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the superindividual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." -F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom

You can stand him up at the gates of hell, but he won't back down. Bruno, Socrates, Galileo, Dante, Einstein, Gamow, and Bohr--they all walked and spoke freely in plain sight, and stuck by their guns when the chips were down. They, like Odysseus, were classic, epic cowboys, always standing up against the anonymous, faceless mob for truth, reason, and justice.

Well, we've all got a showdwon commin'. And if you call down the thunder, you've got to man up and face it at high noon--you can't just run and hide and use snarky, postmodern math in the dark of night, sneaking up anonymously behind the mysterious stranger. For ultimately, as Feynman knew, science is not advanced by those seeking fame and fortune--tenure and titles--but by those seeking truth and classic, epic honor.

Perhaps we ought make a list of Bohr's and Gamow's favorite Westerns.

"Bohr was very fond of seeing Western (cowboy) movies in which gun duels are quite common. In all such duels, the villain draws his gun but the hero always shoots down the scoundrel first. Bohr had an explanation for this phenomenon, ascribing this as the difference between wilful and conditioned thinking. "The scoundrel has to think and decide when to go for his gun, which slows his action, while the hero acts faster because he acts, without thinking, the moment he sees the scoundrel reaching for his gun." When nobody agreed with his theory, he bought a pair of toy guns and playing the hero, tried duels with his pupils. Surprisingly, he 'killed' everybody who tried to take a shot at him first." --from http://www.dawn.com/weekly/dmag/archive/030420/dmag21.htm