Wrinkles in Spacetime

Hi Tom and Pentcho,

What are the highlights from the article, "A self-interfering clock as a "which path" witness"?

Tom, you never betrayed you had any health challenges. Your posts have been as poignant as ever. Tempted to use the adjective "stubborn" or "incorrigible" but probably not politically correct :) Wish you all the best and hope your health is fully restored soon. I am sure you have access to the best care and latest technologies. Stroke is almost a death sentence on this side.

Pentcho, thanks for the link to the Perimeter Institute roundtable discussion...

Sabine has her job well cut out. Let's hope she does not disappoint. Relative time: To be or not to be, that is the question.

Regards,

Akinbo

Thanks for the reference to Hossenfelder's review article. Very short distance scales mean very short time delays and have the same infinity problems as do very long distance and time scales at event horizons.

Excerpts: "We review the question of whether the fundamental laws of nature limit our ability to probe arbitrarily short distances...Finally, we touch upon the question of ways to circumvent the manifestation of a minimal length scale in short-distance physics...Exploring the consequences of a minimal length scale is one of the best motivated avenues to make contact with the phenomenology of quantum gravity, and to gain insights about the fundamental structure of space and time."

Mainstream science must break out of the straitjacket of spacetime and replace space with the pure time and matter dimensions of a primitive reality. Aether is the way out of the blind alley of space...

hello dear thinkers,

Tom ,me also I wish you all the best for your health.Take care.We have had several difficult discussions due to my stupid parano in the past.But I have always liked to read your posts and developments.I am asking me also how is going Lawrence.Hope he is well.Take care dear Jedi of the Sphere.Regards

Hi Akinbo,

I've learned that strokes are funny things. While my verbal skills have declined (I stutter), my cognition and focus have benefitted. Maybe the speech impediment is a blessing -- it relieves me of the burden of having to engage in small talk. I am sad that the same level of health care is not available worldwide (or even in the U.S.) -- I strongly believe that free health care (and free lifelong education as well) are absolute entitlements.

Yeah, stubborn and incorrigible fit.

Anyway, I get access to Science articles through my AAAS membership. I don't know if you can access it; I would shoot you a copy if I could.

The crux of the experiment is the creation of an artificial superposition of states of time so that one state lags due to gravitational influence. The first two paragraphs of the (exceptionally well-written) article give the gist:

"Two-slit interferometry of quanta, such as photons and electrons, figured prominently in the Bohr-Einstein debates on the consistency of quantum theory (1, 2). A fundamental principle emerging from those debates--intimately related to the uncertainty principle--is that 'which path' information about the quanta passing through slits blocks their interference. At the climax of the debates, Einstein claimed that a clock, emitting a photon at a precise time while being weighed on a spring scale to measure the change in its mass-energy, could evade the uncertainty principle. Yet Bohr showed that the clock's gravitational redshift induces enough uncertainty in the emission time to satisfy the uncertainty principle. Inspired by the subtle role time may play, we have now sent a clock through a spatial interferometer. Our proof-of-principle experiment introduces clock interferometry as a new tool for studying the interplay of general relativity (3) and quantum mechanics (4).

"Time in standard quantum mechanics is a global parameter, which cannot differ between paths. Hence in standard interferometry [e.g., (5)], a difference in height between two paths merely affects their relative phase, shifting their interference pattern without degrading its visibility. General relativity, by contrast, predicts that a clock must 'tick' slower along the lower path; thus if the paths of a clock through an interferometer have different heights, a time differential between the paths will yield 'which path' information and degrade the visibility of the interference pattern (6). Consequently while standard interferometry may probe general relativity (7-9), clock interferometry probes the interplay of general relativity and quantum mechanics. For example, loss of visibility due to a proper time lag would be evidence that gravitational effects contribute to decoherence and the emergence of a classical world (10)."

Hello Steve,

Thanks. I expect Lawrence is still lurking. He pops in occasionally. My best wishes for your own health, too. :-)

Tom (et al),

Concerning; "For example, loss of visibility due to a proper time lag..." IF an experimental protocol could be so devised as to tell the difference. After all its already ambiguous as to what is meant by 'a photon', and the most recent researches I've read of ( at Maryland, if I recall correctly) have confidence of counting down to a level of about four photons. It seems ambitious, but worth trying. But are we dealing with a particle form or a waveform, and would it matter? And is light subject to entropy, or is it light because it is non-entropic?

But let's speculate some success, and a loss of visibility is attributable to gravitational effect. That would firstly corroborate Minkowski from the QM side, which taking the paradigm of absolute time would cast blocktime as a picture where 'everything happens at the same time'. So too, 'many spaces' would also be 'many times'; which I don't see as very different from Bohr holding that one thing can occupy more than one space at the same time. Just stated differently. Extending that to gravitational lensing, a proper time lag would also suggest that Olber's paradox is not so paradoxical. The light is 'there' in our space, just out of time sync. Perhaps the ticket to accounting for all that dark energy? It would open a can of worms, me thinks. Is cosmological inflation the reality or an illusion cast by a vast gravitational time warp? Was Hoyle half right? I'd like to think more real estate is still being made. Heretcally, jrc

I have spent considerable time trying to understand nature. Some of intricacies of nature as they became known to me, created the fascination. One of the earliest one was - conservation of Energy, the next was special theory of relativity, the third was exploding universe. The complexity of nature grew more as I progressed though my education as carrier as engineer. But now, I consider myself to be Pico-Physicist. TO say more, In Pico-Physics, the wrinkles are result of presence of matter in space. Some corollary of Pico physics state, that if we compare a star which is hiding behind lot of matter in space and another with line of clear space between start and observer, the one with matter clusters will appear to recede faster.

We have lot of data now, may be some day, I my inquisitiveness will be satisfied.

Pico-Physics agree with your analysis. But it arrives at Conclusion "space to be 3-D" from a different logic. This logic is based on Unary law of Pico Physics "Space Contains Energy". Multi-dimensional space can be seen as a mathematical formulation to understand problems, but not a reality of nature.

I would like to draw your attention to a chapter in Pico-Physics - Observation & Observer, picophysics.org/concepts/observation-observer.

I believe with your approach to understanding reality, we may have much in common.

I had problem understanding the concept of Zero & infinity. It took me a long time, to understand the numbers by theself are just symbols, when associated with a unit they represent reality. They come to exist when associated with a unit. From this understanding evolved Infinte Maths, which I use to establish - Three dimensions of space and integrate whole lot of isolated divergent branches of physical sciences into UNary Law - "Space Conatins Energy".

You may like to visit /picophysics.org/concepts/pico-mathematics/ or just download vmguptaphy.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/infinite-maths7.pdfAttachment #1: infinite-maths7.pdf

Quantum Gravity - If we mean some thing like quantized radiations, Pico-Physics Negates this. To a Pico-Physicists gravitation is result of interaction of Space & Energy as per Unary Law "Space Contains Energy". The essential loop contemporary science is in on gravitation is due to basic understanding about potential energy (postulated to preserve law of conservation of energy) being misplaced. Refraction and Gravitation are two aspects of this interaction Space with Energy.

Dear Tom,

i too wish you all the best for your health condition and that you continue to contribute to the fqxi community. We are all driven by curiosity about the fundamentals of existence and it was always a pleasure for me to exchange point of views with you.

Best wishes

Stefan

That experiment is quite ingenious.

"Hence in standard interferometry [e.g., (5)], a difference in height between two paths merely affects their relative phase, shifting their interference pattern without degrading its visibility. General relativity, by contrast, predicts that a clock must 'tick' slower along the lower path; thus if the paths of a clock through an interferometer have different heights, a time differential between the paths will yield 'which path' information and degrade the visibility of the interference pattern"

The result could demolish or strengthen the 'probability demons" in QM

Regards,

Akinbo

Hello all,

Tom,thanks also :)hope that Lawrence will post.

Regards

You do not have to try to understand visible nature. Just look at yourself. You have a real complete visible skin surface. Every real person place and thing has a real complete visible surface. Obviously, only visible surface is real. In order to be visible, surface must be illuminated by light. Obviously, light cannot have a surface. Reality is simplicity itself.

Joe Fisher, Realist

Reality is visible infinite surface illuminated by infinite non-surface light. Reality has nothing to do with invisible finite black holes, invisible finite atoms, invisible finite quantum particles, or invisible finite strings of energy. Please stop wasting your time with codswallop theories about the invisible.

Joe Fisher, Realist

Stefan,

Thanks. Ditto to you. :-)

Einsteinians (other than Sabine Hossenfelder) reject special relativity

[link:www.newscientist.com/article/mg22730370-600-why-do-we-move-forwards-in-time/]"[George] Ellis is up against one of the most successful theories in physics: special relativity.[/link] It revealed that there's no such thing as objective simultaneity. Although you might have seen three things happen in a particular order - 
A, then B, then C - someone moving 
at a different velocity could have seen 
it a different way - C, then B, then A. 
In other words, without simultaneity there is no way of specifying what things happened "now". And if not "now", what is moving through time? Rescuing an objective "now" is a daunting task."

"And by making the clock's tick relative - what happens simultaneously for one observer might seem sequential to another - Einstein's theory of special relativity not only destroyed any notion of absolute time but made time equivalent to a dimension in space: the future is already out there waiting for us; we just can't see it until we get there. This view is a logical and metaphysical dead end, says [Lee] Smolin."

"A conscientious cosmologist rejects Einstein's notion that time is an illusion and the future is set. (...) In 1905, Einstein overturned Newton's harmonious picture of a standard universal time. He replaced it with a discordant, relative view in which different people could disagree about the duration of events, and even the order in which they happened. The young Einstein came to the remarkable realization that time was, in fact, a fourth dimension, alongside the three dimensions of space that we see around us, creating what has become known as the "block universe" picture of reality. (...) [George] Ellis respected Einstein's mathematical ingenuity, but he later balked at the philosophical implications of the block universe, in which the future stands on the same footing as the past."

What scientific idea is ready for retirement? Steve Giddings: "Spacetime. Physics has always been regarded as playing out on an underlying stage of space and time. Special relativity joined these into spacetime... (...) The apparent need to retire classical spacetime as a fundamental concept is profound..."

Joao Magueijo, Faster Than the Speed of Light, p. 250: "Lee [Smolin] and I discussed these paradoxes at great length for many months, starting in January 2001. We would meet in cafés in South Kensington or Holland Park to mull over the problem. THE ROOT OF ALL THE EVIL WAS CLEARLY SPECIAL RELATIVITY. All these paradoxes resulted from well known effects such as length contraction, time dilation, or E=mc^2, all basic predictions of special relativity. And all denied the possibility of establishing a well-defined border, common to all observers, capable of containing new quantum gravitational effects."

Pentcho Valev

Dear Pentcho Velev,

Although Einstein foolishly insisted that a finite amount of invisible energy was exactly equal to a finite amount of invisible mass multiplied by a finite beam of invisible light multiplied by its finite invisible self, this has absolutely nothing to do with observable reality. Only infinite surface is observable because it is always illuminated by infinite non-surface light.

Joe Fisher, Realist