Absolutes

[Michael Sternbach]

Okay, I can grasp that except for it having zero rest-mass.  I have the feeling that this will eventually be my understanding but as of yet the concept of some "thing" having no mass is contradictory in my brain.

 

What do you think mass is?

[Michael Sternbach]

According to relativity, time is directly connected to space, thus it's considered another dimension. The faster an object is moving through space, the slower it's moving through time.

[Karl]

According to relativity, time is directly connected to space, thus it's considered another dimension. The faster an object is moving through space, the slower it's moving through time.

 

Relatively of course. For the traveller time remains a constant. I'm surprised to find I'm somewhat in agreement with Kant on this subject- which automatically makes me doubt my judgement on the matter.

[Brian]

Agreed, but we still only need distance and angle in a 3 dimensional universe. Time isn't even linear in respect of speed over distance. We get into all kinds of trouble when we reach speeds approaching that of light. Time passes differently for the observer than for the traveller. Trying to compute the actual time of landing on a journey of several light years, at even fractional light speed becomes a serious obstacle for calculation. You could over shoot you meeting time by several decades by travelling too fast, the faster you go, the later you get there. It's outside my theoretical field of knowledge. Brian probably knows all this stuff, he likes hard sums.

The math isn't complicated -- no more than a square or square-root -- but the concepts usually seem alien to people who haven't started from first principles and arrived there through the context of the historical progression. Similarly, the score for a concerto seems confusing to someone who hasn't learned to read music but is comprehensible to someone who has put in the effort to build the foundational knowledge.

[Zhongyongdaoist]

You get the exact same results with other types of particles, BTW. Like electrons, for instance. The so-called duality of light applies to matter as well...

 

It works for "particles" as large as beryllium too:

 

New York Times "Physicists put single beryllium atom in two different places"

 

This was twenty years ago, but many people have not heard of this.

 

Most of this discussion is marred by real misunderstandings which Brian is doing his best to clear up.  His patience is admirable, and his exposition is very good, but I don't think these types of misunderstandings can be cleared up in a format like this.  Not only is this a matter of science as understood today, but there are important historical aspects to it also and these need to be addressed in order to show that most of what people believe to have been pre-quantum science wasn't science at all, if by science you mean something that has been rigorously tested and demonstrated by "scientific method".  Almost all beliefs about matter and atoms before 1900 was simply some minor changes in speculations that went back to ancient Greece and there was precious little to support these speculations and no means of testing them.  When the necessary mathematical and experimental tools became available in the late Nineteenth Century, these speculations had largely and in the midst of considerable controversy within physics, be abandoned.  This interesting, semi-technical article summarizes conclusions that I reached after a lot of reading in the History of Science over many years:

 

Atomism from the 17th to the 20th Century Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

 

To quote from its conclusion:

 

If we take atomism to involve the claim that the properties of macroscopic matter arise as a result of the combinations and motions of tiny particles, then it is a position confirmed by the time of the Solvay Conference in 1911 in a way that left little room for sensible doubt. But if we take atomism in a stronger sense, to mean a theory that explains all of the properties of macroscopic matter in terms of underlying particles with specified properties and governed by specified laws, then it must be denied that atomism had reached its objective in 1911. There were identifiable inadequacies and gaps in the specification of the properties of atoms and the electrons and protons that compose them and there were to an increasing extent problematic experimental results that were eventually to lead to a radical change in the laws that were presumed to govern the behaviour of atomic and sub-atomic particles.

 

Acceptance of the kinetic theory implied acceptance of the existence of atoms and molecules with a well-defined mass. However, it was perfectly clear that they must have further properties. For example, they needed properties that would explain chemical combination, and, specifically, the notion of valency. They also needed properties that would account for spectra. Answers to these challenges were forthcoming in the form of the electron structure of the atom and the quantum mechanics that governs it. There is a sense in which contemporary physics, with its account of the properties of atoms and molecules in terms of their electron structure and the explanation of many macroscopic phenomena in terms of the atomic and molecular structures underlying them, comes close to the ideal of Democritus. A general account of the properties of the material world is offered in terms of underlying particles with a few well-defined properties governed by well-defined laws. The difference between the contemporary situation and the ideals of Democritus or the mechanical philosophers lies in the epistemological access to the general atomistic theory. The contemporary theory became possible only as a result of centuries of scientific development. The quantum mechanical laws governing the atomic world were responses to quite specific problems revealed by experiment in areas such as black-body radiation, emission and absorption spectra, the specific heats of gases and radioactivity. The properties ascribed to electrons, for instance, such as their charge and half-integral spin, were themselves responses to quite specific experimental findings involving discharge tube phenomena and spectra. Atomism, which began its life as speculative metaphysics, has become a securely established part of experimental science. (Emphasis mine, ZYD)

 

In short Quantum Physics, like it or not, was the first genuine result of scientific method applied to and rigorously testing traditional "metaphysical" speculations about atoms.

 

The article should be read in full, and as it makes clear there was little that could scientifically be said about atoms until the later half of the Nineteenth Century with the development of Kinetic Theory and Statistical Mechanics, but that didn't stop people from making all sorts of grandiose, but basically unscientific, claims about them and the "Mechanistic Philosophy" from 1700 onward, but which remain staples of thought today, such as that people are machines, that machines can think, etc. all taken for granted in far too many circles, especially Biology, but where exactly are the observations and experiments that demonstrated these "doctrines" rigorously?.

 

The article covers the "scientific" and philosophical issues well, but completely leaves out the Religious context in which they occurred, which dealing the the Reformation, Counter-Reformation and the very bloody and bitter intra-European wars of Religion contributed a great deal to how some of these issues developed from 1500 to 1800 which was much more influential than the popular histories of science like to admit.

[Brian]

That is an excellent summation, Donald, and the link you provided is remarkably easy to follow. Were you involved in its composition or just stumble across it?

[Zhongyongdaoist]

That is an excellent summation, Donald, and the link you provided is remarkably easy to follow. Were you involved in its composition or just stumble across it?

 

No, I had nothing to do with it and came across it recently while looking for internet material to refer people to in posts like this, but thank you for the compliment of thinking that I had anything to do with it.

 

[Marblehead]

What do you think mass is?

From Wiki:

 

In physics, mass is a property of a physical body. It is generally a measure of an object's resistance to changing its state of motion when a force is applied.^[1] It is determined by the strength of its mutual gravitational attraction to other bodies, its resistance to being accelerated by a force, and in the theory of relativity gives the mass–energy content of a system. The SI unit of mass is the kilogram (kg).

 

Mass is not the same as weight, even though we often calculate an object's mass by measuring its weight with a spring scale instead of comparing it to known masses. An object on the Moon would weigh less than it would on Earth because of the lower gravity, but it would still have the same mass.

 

In Newtonian physics, mass can be generalized as the amount of matter in an object.

[Michael Sternbach]

Relatively of course. For the traveller time remains a constant.

 

For the traveller, space shortens. Thus, at a velocity sufficiently close to the speed of light, they traverse the roughly two and a half million lightyears to Andromeda galaxy in, let's say, a couple of decades.

 

I'm surprised to find I'm somewhat in agreement with Kant on this subject- which automatically makes me doubt my judgement on the matter.

 

I doubt yours too.

[Marblehead]

As I've said before:  Question everything.  Especially anything I say.

[Michael Sternbach]

From Wiki:

 

In physics, mass is a property of a physical body. It is generally a measure of an object's resistance to changing its state of motion when a force is applied.^[1] It is determined by the strength of its mutual gravitational attraction to other bodies, its resistance to being accelerated by a force, and in the theory of relativity gives the mass–energy content of a system. The SI unit of mass is the kilogram (kg).

 

Mass is not the same as weight, even though we often calculate an object's mass by measuring its weight with a spring scale instead of comparing it to known masses. An object on the Moon would weigh less than it would on Earth because of the lower gravity, but it would still have the same mass.

 

In Newtonian physics, mass can be generalized as the amount of matter in an object.

 

LOL. You cheated. I asked about your understanding of the mass concept, not Wikipedia's. But never mind, we can work from there.

 

The article mentions inertial/gravitational mass. Well, light has that kind of mass too! (As per Einstein's famous energy/mass equivalence.) Thus light can't escape from a black hole because the gravitation of the latter holds it back.

 

The statement that a photon has zero rest mass is basically just another way of saying that it can never stand still, it's always on the move.

[Karl]

For the traveller, space shortens. Thus, at a velocity sufficiently close to the speed of light, they traverse the roughly two and a half million lightyears to Andromeda galaxy in, let's say, a couple of decades.

 

 

 

I doubt yours too.

 

Time doesn't shorten for the traveller Michael. Space stays the same length. It's the time in relation to the observer that changes. For the observer more time passes than for the traveller. Hence the traveller is younger than the observer after a journey.

 

I think time is relational as a measure but only directional (forward) else wise.

[Karl]

 

The statement that a photon has zero rest mass is basically just another way of saying that it can never stand still, it's always on the move.

 

Excited particle.

[Karl]

The math isn't complicated -- no more than a square or square-root -- but the concepts usually seem alien to people who haven't started from first principles and arrived there through the context of the historical progression. Similarly, the score for a concerto seems confusing to someone who hasn't learned to read music but is comprehensible to someone who has put in the effort to build the foundational knowledge.

 

If only you took that approach to philosophy. ;-)

 

Are you telling me that you can compute near light speed navigation for a planet in a distant universe to arrive at a certain point in time ? If you can I'm mightily impressed.

[Michael Sternbach]

 

Time doesn't shorten for the traveller Michael. Space stays the same length. It's the time in relation to the observer that changes. For the observer more time passes than for the traveller. Hence the traveller is younger than the observer after a journey.

In my example, the traveller is traversing millions of light-years within a few decades. That means that, from his own perspective, he is either travelling at many times the speed of light, or the distance to the destination has considerably shortened.

 

The former is impossible, the latter is the case - as I already showed once before:

 

http://www.thedaobums.com/topic/39834-time-is-the-speed-of-light/page-8#entry658103:

[Michael Sternbach]

Excited particle.

 

No, a photon is not an excited particle. An example for the latter would be an electron moved from its ground state to a higher orbital shell.

[liminal_luke]

At my present stage in the cultivation game I don´t experience time especially fluidly.  I´m not hopping around changing past and future at will.  Even staying in the"now" is a formidable challenge.  And yet I don´t doubt that it´s possible to change the past and travel far into the future.  Such miraculous things seem possible to me because I believe there´s more to the universe than what I´ve experienced so far.  So much more.  In fact I´m absolutely sure of it.  

Edited March 12, 2016 by liminal_luke

[Zhongyongdaoist]

Just to clarify some matters related to space/time and spacetime:
 

In mathematical physics, Minkowski space or Minkowski spacetime is a combination of Euclidean space and time into a four-dimensional manifold where the spacetime interval between any two events is independent of the inertial frame of reference in which they are recorded. Although initially developed by mathematician Hermann Minkowski for Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism, the mathematical structure of Minkowski spacetime was shown to be an immediate consequence of the postulates of special relativity. (Wikipedia on Minkowski Space, Emphasis mine, ZYD)

 
Space/time is our ordinary awareness in which there is one dimension of time and three of space, however no coherent model of matter and motion can be created within space/time, but it requires the introduction of the notion of at least four dimensional space, to even begin to make sense of the world.  Also, as the quote says, this was originally developed for Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism and then applied to special relativity, indicated that the matter energy equivalence usually attributed to Einstein and Special Relativity was already implicit in Maxwell's equations (Einstein's two 1905 papers that deal with this were basically papers dealing with electrodynamics, so this is no surprise.).
 
In my interpretation of this I view space/time as broken symmetry of four dimensional spacetime which results in space/time, matter/energy, and more importantly for us here, body/mind, in which a fundamental four dimensional unity is experienced as a body with consciousness in it, and that meditation states are those in which awareness is regained of this four dimensional "being", which is what we truly are, in Daoist terms, experiencing "sitting and forgetting" our Body/mind to experience our real nature in wuji.
 
While it is generally believed that Einstein proved aether did not exist, it was only the existence of the Luminiferous Aether of electromagnetism that he eventually realized had been rejected and later reexamined Aether theories:
 

"because it was no longer possible to speak, in any absolute sense, of simultaneous states at different locations in the aether, the aether became, as it were, four dimensional, since there was no objective way of ordering its states by time alone.". Now the "aether of special relativity" is still "absolute", because matter is affected by the properties of the aether, but the aether is not affected by the presence of matter. This asymmetry was solved within general relativity. Einstein explained that the "aether of general relativity" is not absolute, because matter is influenced by the aether, just as matter influences the structure of the aether. (Wikipedia on the Luminiferous Aither, "Einstein's views on the aether, Emphasis mine, ZYD)

 
This four dimensional aether also can be compared to Indian notions of Akasha as well as Daoist wuji, and has some more complex relations to Aristotle's aether, which are too complex to enter into now.
 
One of the interesting aspects of this is the relation of derivatives as ratios, space/time, like miles per hour, i.e. miles/hour and integrals as "spaces", areas, volumes, hyper-volumes, etc. such as spacetime, i.e. space x time as a four dimensional volume.  It is just a curious of the mathematics which people who know calculus will recognize and maybe find interesting.
 
As a note to what, in a previous post, I described as "considerable controversy", though one of his great 1905 papers was taken as one of the foundation documents of Quantum Physics, Einstein objected to Quantum Physics from the time he understood its implications about locality and determinism, spending the rest of his life working in directions more like this:

Kaluza–Klein theory, or how to save time in a Kaluza-Klein bottle

 

and opposing Quantum Physics to anyone who would listen to him.

[Brian]

 

If only you took that approach to philosophy. ;-)Are you telling me that you can compute near light speed navigation for a planet in a distant universe to arrive at a certain point in time ? If you can I'm mightily impressed.

Why would you think arithmetic is impressive?

[3bob]

math also sings when given with a certain voice

[Karl]

Why would you think arithmetic is impressive?

 

Ive never found it easy, quite possibly due to teaching methods that have caused me to have a kind of number blindness. I winged it through school and managed to pass the maths exam despite being unable to do trigonometry-then passed my college exams without being able to do it (pretty difficult as it was electrical engineering). Finally, at degree level, I was taught where all those trigonometric expressions came from and at last I grasped it-trouble was I was then running to stand still at higher maths, but I made lots of errors in the workings (I think it was the tendency for schools to accept the workings, over the accuracy which meant I never fully integrated numbers ).

[Marblehead]

LOL. You cheated. I asked about your understanding of the mass concept, not Wikipedia's. But never mind, we can work from there.

 

The article mentions inertial/gravitational mass. Well, light has that kind of mass too! (As per Einstein's famous energy/mass equivalence.) Thus light can't escape from a black hole because the gravitation of the latter holds it back.

 

The statement that a photon has zero rest mass is basically just another way of saying that it can never stand still, it's always on the move.

Everyone else was cheating.  Why can't I?

 

I presented personal experience to support my understanding but it was mostly just ignored.

 

So I quoted something of "authority".  That makes everything better.

 

 

So, are you saying that those photons that get caught in a black hole must forever try to get out even though they know they can't?  Reminded me of the Greek story of Sisyphus.  Eternal damnation.

[Marblehead]

Just to clarify some matters related to space/time and spacetime:

 

You went a lot deeper than I am able to go with you regarding this concept.

 

Interesting you mentioning aether though.

 

If given that aether does not exist it still doesn't mean the space is empty.  There is "stuff" out there.  Yeah, mostly little stuff and stuff that man has yet not found a way to detect effectively (dark matter or whatever it is). 

[vonkrankenhaus]

Light is not absolute.

 

It is relative - it is a wave.

 

Change is absolute.

 

Everything changes.

 

Nothing is ever static.

 

Taoism is studying of Change.

 

 

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

[3bob]

it sounds like you mean well VK but the TTC (for one) contradicts your statement.