Philosophers get stuck on Zeno's paradox for the same reason they flunked calculus.
G/I thruster:Please explain the difference between the diameter of a loop in Loop Quantum Gravity theory and QM's minimum Planck Length. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length "In physics, the Planck length, denoted, is a unit of length, equal to 1.616252(81)×10−35 meters. It is a base unit in the system of Planck units. The Planck length can be defined from three fundamental physical constants: the speed of light in a vacuum, Planck's constant, and the gravitational constant. Current theory suggests that one Planck length is the smallest distance or size about which anything can be known."
Quote from: mlorrey on 08/11/2009 04:56 amExplain how light refracts without action at a distance. Nobody could until Feynman said, "the photon follows all possible paths until it determines which path is shortest in time", i.e. the path of refracted light is bent by matter with an index of refraction because the speed of light inside the matter is slower than in air or a vacuum, so light wants to spend as little time travelling slower as possible. He showed that all subatomic reactions work both forward and backward in time as well, and that for some quantum interactions, such as entangled photon pairs, action at a distance DOES in fact, happen.Thank you. I was waiting for someone to point that out. There are some other examples which point this out, but for the time being there's no way to use them to transmit information. QM weirdly seems to preserve causality. Heck, some people are still arguing for really fast speeds of gravity, millions of times c. And what is aspin-2 particle doing travelling faster than light?
Explain how light refracts without action at a distance. Nobody could until Feynman said, "the photon follows all possible paths until it determines which path is shortest in time", i.e. the path of refracted light is bent by matter with an index of refraction because the speed of light inside the matter is slower than in air or a vacuum, so light wants to spend as little time travelling slower as possible. He showed that all subatomic reactions work both forward and backward in time as well, and that for some quantum interactions, such as entangled photon pairs, action at a distance DOES in fact, happen.
Star-Drive also pointed out retrograde signals, part of Maxwell's original equations, and again there's no good reason to dismiss them. Again, action-at-a-distance doesn't work if you're just looking at your 4-D space. But we have no idea how many dimensions we actually live in.
QuoteThis is all now well established physics and only fools and idiots refuse to recognise the fact that as far as simultaneity, these effects appear to be action at a distance, just as the Mach Effect appears to be so.Well, that's a bit harsh, but I guess things like tachyons (or rather, tachyonic fields) are gaining popularity again as solutions for a few theories. It'll be a while yet before it even becomes a really big controversial thing, because right now the effects just don't appear in a direct causative manner. But I gues in QM thinking, the effects ARE there, they just aren't there.
This is all now well established physics and only fools and idiots refuse to recognise the fact that as far as simultaneity, these effects appear to be action at a distance, just as the Mach Effect appears to be so.
Quote from: Lampyridae on 09/08/2009 11:56 pmQuote from: mlorrey on 08/11/2009 04:56 amExplain how light refracts without action at a distance. Nobody could until Feynman said, "the photon follows all possible paths until it determines which path is shortest in time", i.e. the path of refracted light is bent by matter with an index of refraction because the speed of light inside the matter is slower than in air or a vacuum, so light wants to spend as little time travelling slower as possible. He showed that all subatomic reactions work both forward and backward in time as well, and that for some quantum interactions, such as entangled photon pairs, action at a distance DOES in fact, happen.Thank you. I was waiting for someone to point that out. There are some other examples which point this out, but for the time being there's no way to use them to transmit information. QM weirdly seems to preserve causality. Heck, some people are still arguing for really fast speeds of gravity, millions of times c. And what is aspin-2 particle doing travelling faster than light?Refraction is explained with standard electromagnetic theory.
Quote from: mikegi on 09/10/2009 10:20 pmRefraction is explained with standard electromagnetic theory.Not to my knowledge. For refraction to work, without a quantum backward in time, multiversal explanation, you have to assume that photons are intelligent pool players and always know ahead of time what angle through every piece of matter between points A and B is the fastest path.
Refraction is explained with standard electromagnetic theory.
Standard electromagnetic theory doesn't believe in collapsing probability spheres either.
Quote from: mlorrey on 09/11/2009 01:53 amQuote from: mikegi on 09/10/2009 10:20 pmRefraction is explained with standard electromagnetic theory.Not to my knowledge. For refraction to work, without a quantum backward in time, multiversal explanation, you have to assume that photons are intelligent pool players and always know ahead of time what angle through every piece of matter between points A and B is the fastest path.You don't see that as evidence against QM and the photon model??? Look at the contortions that QM has to go through to explain simple things like refraction.
The problem is that electromagnetic theory doesnt explain refraction at all, the best it can do is describe it mathematically without explaining why, for instance, in the Huygens-Fresnel principle, waves coming through parallel slits (or more properly, wave peaks for a given frequency) know to line up with each other at a new angle to create a new wave front moving in a new direction, rather than lining up with other waves ahead or behind. The Huygens-Fresnel principle fails in this description as well because it still requires that the photons in the wave front to know and communicate with each other (i.e. QE entanglement) what the speed of light is going to be in the new material it is hitting and spontaneously reorganize a new wave front at the proper angle for the change in wavelength caused by the slowing of the speed of light. There's a whole lot of helpless hand waving going on in the HF principle that remained unexplained until quantum theory came along to explain it.
Quote from: mlorrey on 09/11/2009 02:54 amThe problem is that electromagnetic theory doesnt explain refraction at all, the best it can do is describe it mathematically without explaining why, for instance, in the Huygens-Fresnel principle, waves coming through parallel slits (or more properly, wave peaks for a given frequency) know to line up with each other at a new angle to create a new wave front moving in a new direction, rather than lining up with other waves ahead or behind. The Huygens-Fresnel principle fails in this description as well because it still requires that the photons in the wave front to know and communicate with each other (i.e. QE entanglement) what the speed of light is going to be in the new material it is hitting and spontaneously reorganize a new wave front at the proper angle for the change in wavelength caused by the slowing of the speed of light. There's a whole lot of helpless hand waving going on in the HF principle that remained unexplained until quantum theory came along to explain it.Polarization in dielectric materials. There's no need for any instantaneous "communication" between distant parts of a wavefront. How do you think that a pulse going down a parallel plate transmission line reflects off a change in the geometry of the transmission line? Let's keep it simple and say the plates are superconducting and in a vacuum. Is there some sort of communication between the elements of the pulse wavefront so that it "knows" that part should be transmitted and part reflected?
Quote from: mikegi on 09/11/2009 05:21 amPolarization in dielectric materials. There's no need for any instantaneous "communication" between distant parts of a wavefront. How do you think that a pulse going down a parallel plate transmission line reflects off a change in the geometry of the transmission line? Let's keep it simple and say the plates are superconducting and in a vacuum. Is there some sort of communication between the elements of the pulse wavefront so that it "knows" that part should be transmitted and part reflected?Sorry, not going to take a strawman structured to give the answer you want.
Polarization in dielectric materials. There's no need for any instantaneous "communication" between distant parts of a wavefront. How do you think that a pulse going down a parallel plate transmission line reflects off a change in the geometry of the transmission line? Let's keep it simple and say the plates are superconducting and in a vacuum. Is there some sort of communication between the elements of the pulse wavefront so that it "knows" that part should be transmitted and part reflected?
Quote from: mlorrey on 09/12/2009 05:27 amQuote from: mikegi on 09/11/2009 05:21 amPolarization in dielectric materials. There's no need for any instantaneous "communication" between distant parts of a wavefront. How do you think that a pulse going down a parallel plate transmission line reflects off a change in the geometry of the transmission line? Let's keep it simple and say the plates are superconducting and in a vacuum. Is there some sort of communication between the elements of the pulse wavefront so that it "knows" that part should be transmitted and part reflected?Sorry, not going to take a strawman structured to give the answer you want.It's not a strawman. It's a real example of changing an em wavefront's direction that you can both simulate via computer and verify with an oscilloscope. No magic communication between wavefront elements required. It's a straightforward result of mindless, completely local wave propagation. We assign concepts like "reflection" to the result but nature couldn't care less.
Quote from: mikegi on 09/12/2009 03:24 pmQuote from: mlorrey on 09/12/2009 05:27 amQuote from: mikegi on 09/11/2009 05:21 amPolarization in dielectric materials. There's no need for any instantaneous "communication" between distant parts of a wavefront. How do you think that a pulse going down a parallel plate transmission line reflects off a change in the geometry of the transmission line? Let's keep it simple and say the plates are superconducting and in a vacuum. Is there some sort of communication between the elements of the pulse wavefront so that it "knows" that part should be transmitted and part reflected?Sorry, not going to take a strawman structured to give the answer you want.It's not a strawman. It's a real example of changing an em wavefront's direction that you can both simulate via computer and verify with an oscilloscope. No magic communication between wavefront elements required. It's a straightforward result of mindless, completely local wave propagation. We assign concepts like "reflection" to the result but nature couldn't care less.The problem with non QEM explanations of refraction is that the ray of light must penetrate some distance into the second medium in order to know what it is index is, so it knows what direction to travel inside the second medium, yet photons change their vector, as far as can be determined, upon entry into the second medium, even though this should take at least a half a wavelength. However if you take a material with a thickness of less than half a wavelength and send photons through of long enough wavelengths, they still exhibit the full vector change expected of the mediums refraction index.Also you are talking "conduction", plz be sure we are both discussing photons and not electrons. Dielectric materials deal in electrons. Refraction deals in photons.
Note, the claim is not that Gravity Probe B has failed to find frame dragging but rather, that it is incapable of doing so.