Iiiiinteresting. I can see how, at first glance, String Theory wouldn't be taken seriously. It's just so out there. But if everything in the universe is just variations of vibration, it would explain why matter and energy and directly related. I kinda like it.

Also,

Decrescent Daytripper wrote:

And if it cannot be done, it'll be subverted.

Science means hope!

Where's a "high-five" smiley when I need one? Ah, this'll do.

Stormcrow wrote:

These laws of motion are VERY accurate and apply to any two moving bodies. At least above the atomic scale, not sure about the little fry...

Nope, small enough and two bodies are the same as three and twenty in that Newtonian physics, based on gravity, takes a backseat to strong/weak forces and magnetism.

And thanks , actually, I've never heard an explanation of Heisenberg's work as it applied when he did it, all my info was in its application to quantum theory.

Stormcrow wrote:

Now, in some systems, particularly complex systems with a lot of variables, minor alterations in the initial conditions can have huge repercussions on down the line. This is known as the butterfly effect, and is central to chaos theory. The point is, the progress of the system is still perfectly orderly, but the small change in initial condition may escape notice. So the changes on down the line seem to make no sense, but they're actually consistent with the system.

Ah, that makes sense -- although it begs the question, if something was travelling in a circle, around and around, and then deviated slightly and this deviation caused a minor change to something adjoining the particle (I'm thinking on the scale of Brownian motion here) then yes, I can accept a cascade of changes to the system resulting in something catastrophic that was actually initiated on a very small scale. But the question remains, what caused the deviation in the first place? That's where my brain breaks. Either there is an inherent disorder in the system, or everything really IS just one great big circle. Everything affects something else, but sooner or later that effect links via everything it affects until it affects the original thing that exerted an effect on it. If that makes any sense. Frankly, I just used "effect" and "affect" so much I think my brain just exploded.

Clarice wrote:

But the question remains, what caused the deviation in the first place? That's where my brain breaks.

Terminology issue. Initial conditions don't mean the beginning, they just mean the point where the system is observed. So the deviation as you put it comes from the rest of the system. Or perhaps from outside of the system. Of course, system is a pretty vague word in itself...if I'm talking about weather patterns in the Caribbean, that's a system. But a butterfly flapping its wings in Beijing is outside of that system. On the other hand, they're all contained in the system called earth.

And finally...at the subatomic scale...sometimes the perturbations do in fact come from no predictable source. Heisenberg's Uncertainty strikes again.

Satyreyes wrote:

So which phenomena are chaos-theoretical, which ones are psychohistorical, and which are neither?

Kiiiinda an apples to oranges type of comparison...Saying the stock market is generally going up over time works because you smooth out all of the little anomalies. It's all a question of what kind of information you need, and how precise. A good example would be the function f(x) = x/((x+2)(x-1)). It has a horizontal asymptote at y=0, which is to say that at the edges of the graph, the curve approaches the x-axis without ever touching it, but in the interior of the graph, the curve ignores the asymptote completely, crossing right over it. In other words, asymptotes mark trends, but may be violated by local conditions. This can just as easily be true of so-called chaotic systems however.

To return to the wind pattern example. You may be able to predict that the temperature of the water in the Caribbean (a major indicator of hurricane strength) will be between 15 and 25 C in ten years, but miss entirely that 7 years from now a major storm is going to wash Havana into the sea. Local conditions vs. general trends.

Giovanna wrote:

String theory, M-branes and other stuff that sounds suspiciously like the basic mechanics of multi-dee engineering (as sci-fi writers interpret this stuff, of course)

Sorry about being late into this stuff; it's almost eleven at night right now and my brain is spewing its precious juices through every orifice in my head.

I've never really been fascinated by FTL travel, but rather multidimensional (multi-dee) travel. The M-brane stuff fits right into this, and it's been expanded upon by other writers. Basically each dimension has a band of subdimensions associated with it, usually called alpha, beta, or even theta walls. A craft equipped with an engine designed to translate energy between these subdimensions can easily penetrate the "barriers" we perceive and thus travel faster than light because of the "shortness" of these dimensions. As one goes higher through the bands and the barriers, one eventually reaches the point where spatial movement translates into temporal movement -- that is, travelling through time, usually backward instead of forward. However, such travel does come with severe repercussions: normally once through a temporal "translation," one sets up a new timeline parallel to where they originally came from.

I'll give an example from the book (The Apocalypse Troll, by David Weber) which described this theory: In the year 2450 AD, a human ship with a multi-dee engine is chasing an enemy ship, also equipped with a multi-dee engine. Both are travelling as high as their multi-dees will allow, meaning that eventually they'll hit the uppermost bands and start making temporal translations instead of FTL translations. The human ship sends a smaller scout, also equipped with a multi-dee, to tail the enemy ship. The larger human ship's multi-dee burns out, causing time and space to collapse and making the ship's very molecules -- along with every crew member and object aboard it -- go acoherent. Lost forever to the upper bands. Such is the price to pay for risky behavior.

But the small scout ship and the enemy ship both survive the translation, and end up approximately 450 years in the past. Coincidentally, their target is not the world where the original human ship came from, but Earth itself in the year 2000 AD. Their translations both managed to punch through the most dangerous M-brane wall and experienced temporal displacement.

Now here's the tricky part: This Earth cannot be the timeline from which originated the three ships. Thus, the two surviving ships find themselves in what is effectively an alterverse, where events happen as they did in the ships' timeline, but only to an extent. We'll call the timeline from which the ships originated Timeline One (T-1) and the dimension they find themselves in Timeline Two (T-2). Nothing the ships do at this point can affect T-1, as they have been effectively shunted to a new timeline. Anything they do only affects T-2, and nothing further.

An argument can be made that if we can design a machine to perceive the other M-branes -- and thus the "upper" dimensional bands, we can create a transmitter that can send messages through these superdimensions to receivers that monitor a given superdimension for such missives. We'll call this "Hyper-wave" transmission, after the game which describes its mechanics rather vaguely (UFO: Enemy Unknown, the first game in the X-COM series by Mythos Games/Microprose).

Thus, we have two theories that could be explored with enough time, research and money for the purposes of interstellar telecommunications. We have Hyper-wave, which relates to multidimensional and string theories. We also have the possibility of the ansible (as seen in Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card), which uses more traditional views of FTL travel (namely, photons as a very long range version of fiber optics).

Having said all that, you may now feel free to wash down that salt lick with a very large glass of water and say I'm a crazy young fool who doesn't really know what he's talking about.

rhyaniwyn wrote:

This isn't a scientific comment b/c I don't get math or science, but Heinlein is one of very few SciFi authors to avoid the whole "time paradox" cliche.  His time-travel stories are based on that very same premise.  He's like, 'Weird things can happen, but there are no such things as paradoxes on your personal time line.  Any seeming paradox will become clear later on.'  Something about that has always seemed far more sensible to me.  Interesting to know.

Ah, yes. The "Time Traveller's Immunity" rule, which states that no matter what you do in any past timeline, you are safe from the repercussions when you return to your present. It skirts the Grandfather Paradox by its very definition. Anybody going back in time experiences Time Traveller's Immunity, and can easily kill their grandfather without voiding their own timeline.

There's another rule which governs the existence of objects and people temporally, called "Time Bastard." It's harder to describe, so I'll link you. The Chrono Compendium did a fantastic article regarding the principles and special cases of time and dimensional travel, using the games Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross as the focus. You don't necessarily need to have played either, as the article only uses the games to support the theory, but it may help to understand in context what each rule governs.

Science Friday on NPR was in my town today...heard part of a segment on trying to explain "the weakness of gravity".  Didn't understand it, of course, but hey.  :-)

If I may digress from time travel for a moment, I think if there is one plausible technology that's going to truly Revolutionize the World (tm), it will be cold fusion. I sincerely hope it happens within my lifetime.

Quantum particle creation-- the fact that particles can blip in and out of existence from nowhere at all and that there's always a mathematical chance that something like a bust of Shakespeare made of blue jello will do so.

Funky physics blows my mind. I love it.

It's not entirely related to quantum physics, but some of them are:

http://www.exitmundi.nl/exitmundi.htm Read and be addicted.

Here's something from the new trivia thread:

Nanami's Rose Groom wrote:

- According to new quantum theories, "magic" rituals are actually able to change reality on a quantum level, and therefore affect our lives, like in butterfly effect. Yay for occultism?

Er, no.

Stormy quite properly asked NRG for a legitimate citation on this one, and here's the link he came up with: http://www.ecauldron.net/quantummagick.php

If you click on that link you are going to find a lot of equations that purportedly represent quantum physics.  The one at the top, Schrodinger's Wave Equation, is well established science, but has no bearing on magic.  The interesting part of the article comes lower down:

Larry Cornett wrote:

Quantum Mechanics And Psychokinesis

By merely observing a phenomenon (resonating ones brain with it) one can affect the outcome, since the physical mechanisms in your brain are part of the wave matrix described by quantum mechanics. The information handling rate in resonance determines the amount of effect, along with the elapsed time of resonance and the probability distribution of the phenomenon you are observing [5]. . .

Okay, hang on a second.  This paragraph basically means: "Because quantum theory says that the subatomic state of one thing affects the subatomic state of other things, the mind can have certain predictable effects on matter."  This is a little like saying "because physics says that all objects with mass have gravity, people born when Neptune is in Aquarius will have certain predictable personality traits."  You can sort of see what the relationship between the premise and conclusion is supposed to be, but in between there's an enormous leap where you're making all kinds of crazy assumptions.  It might be true, but if so it would be quite extraordinary.  Let's see what kind of extraordinary proof Mr. Cornett is going to cite to prove his case.

The effect of consciousness is incredibly small on macroscopic systems; but it can be measurable when it occurs on quantum mechanically defined and divergent systems, where a slight change can amplify itself as it propagates through the system. The effect is about 1E-17 degrees on the angle of the bounce of cubes going down an inclined plane. Changes in the angle of bounce result in changes in displacement of the cubes that increase about 50% on every bounce, and the effect is measurable after many bounces [6]. The theory successfully and quantitatively modeled the differing amounts of displacement observed in experiments on cubes of different weights and weight distributions [5].

Walker also modeled information retrieval in "guess the card" experiments. Simple, classical, random chance would predict a smooth, binomial curve for the probabilities of getting the right answer versus the number of subjects making successful predictions at these probabilities. Walker's model predicts that the curve would have peaks at certain levels of probability of getting the right answer above those predicted by chance alone. Experimental data showed peaks at the locations modeled. However, more people were successful at the higher probability levels than Walker's model estimated. This is considered to be evidence of learning enhancement [5].

Mr. Walker's ideas and equations would only be hypotheses if it weren't for the fact that they have been tested experimentally and found to predict the results of experiments with reasonable accuracy [4,5]. The evidence meets the usual rules of proof for scientific theory, and this makes Walker's equations legitimate scientific theory.

This author is very good at throwing around technical words designed to sound convincing to people who haven't studied science.  But the idea that the experiments he's describing prove that the mind's "resonance" can psychokinetically influence objects in predictable ways is absolutely wrong, for the following reasons, among others.

A) The article contains no information about sample size or study conditions.  The cube study in particular involves physics that is very difficult to model, so it's hard to know what results would constitute evidence that something paranormal is going on -- especially when the size of the purported change is 1E-17 degrees.  Imagine the angle a clock's hour hand makes with its minute hand at 12:01.  That's a pretty small angle, but you can imagine an angle half that size, right?  Now imagine an angle half that size.  Still doable.  Can you imagine an angle half again as small?  Now we're starting to challenge the imagination.  Can you do it again?  If so, you're pretty good; I can't.  Now do it 55 more times and you've got an angle as small as the ones Mr. Walker is claiming he's observed in his experiments.  I doubt he can measure such a tiny, almost nonexistent angle, but even if he could, when the effect is that small how can you possibly know it's psychokinesis causing the result and not, say, a tiny bump in the ramp?
B) The conclusion is based on a single study conducted over thirty years ago, and there is no indication that it has been repeated with similar results.  (Indeed, the "guess the card" experiment, featured in the movie Ghostbusters, is a classic telepathy/precognition test that's been performed thousands of times in laboratory settings, never producing results notable enough to publish.)
C) The experiments are apparently being conducted by a single researcher deeply invested in a bizarre equation of his own invention.
D) You might have noticed the bracketed [5] being tossed around a lot here.  I did too, so I decided to check out the citation.  These findings were presented by Mr. Walker at the "73rd Annual American Anthropological Association Meeting, Mexico City" -- not exactly in front of a crowd of physicists who can review his findings objectively, and in fact not even in a print format that we can consult to find the missing details.  (The [6] is a little better, since it's at least from a book and so it's at least possible you could get more information there, but it's a 1977 book called "Future Science" that was apparently never taken seriously enough to be reprinted.)
E) The idea that one or two experiments, no matter how well conducted and peer reviewed, are enough to elevate a hypothesis to the status of a scientific theory (as Mr. Cornett claims) is ludicrous.  "Theory" is a word that real-life scientists don't throw around lightly.  Evolution is a theory because it explains an enormous spectrum of biological and geological data in a testable way that has withstood or even been strengthened by the thousands of observations that might have challenged it.  Similarly with atomic theory, the germ theory of disease, etc.

None of which is to say that Mr. Walker (or Mr. Cornett) is wrong that psychokinesis exists; only that these experiments, as presented here, are not sufficient to draw a conclusion of any kind.  As Carl Sagan used to say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and these findings don't even meet the benchmarks for ordinary proof.

Sorry for the rant; I'm touchy about misrepresentation of science because I think it denigrates the only reliable tool we have to search for truths about the physical world.

Last edited by satyreyes (08-08-2009 01:42:20 PM)

Thanks for the rant, on that satyr. My English is still imperfect, so i may misunderstand some contexts, or other stuff, so sometimes I jum out with theories like that. Nevertheless, quantum physics is fun.

Stormcrow wrote:

Thanks Satyr! I checked the sites myself and I came to pretty much the same conclusion, but my background in physics isn't quite as strong as yours and I only understood about half of what the guy was talking about. I think part of his problem is a fundamental misunderstanding of the word "wave" in the quantum context.

That is actually part of my problem.  The site is clearly aimed at people who don't understand physics -- because anyone who did would demand much more substantial proof than what the site offers -- and yet it's dressed up in the language of physics that is incomprehensible to the target audience.  That means that either:

1) The author of the site does not realize that his physics equations cannot be understood by his layman audience, or

2) The author of the site is intentionally trying to make his page "look sciencey" so that his conclusions farther down about magic rituals will appear to have the support of scientific reasoning.  (This does not necessarily mean that he's arguing in bad faith -- he may actually believe that his pseudoscience justifies his conclusions -- but he is at best being disingenuous.)

Call me a cynic, but I'm guessing it's option 2.

Paradox wrote:

Yes, it is, in theory, possible that I point at a wall, command it to open and a hole large enough to walk through opens for me, then closes behind me.  Unfortunately, the odds of this are beyond infinitesimal.  The usual comparisons to the odds of being hit by lightning don't even start to cover it.  I suppose getting hit by lightning once a day for several *centuries* in a row (without trying to get hit, that is) might come somewhere close, though even that seems far too likely to really serve as a comparator.  This is something that one could very easily go the entire history of time from the currently estimated start of the universe and NEVER see happen.  It's just not going to happen.

And it's not as though our author stops there: he says that you can use the "quantum matrix" of your consciousness to establish a "resonance" with the "target" that you then "energize" using "non-local essences" to perform "magic."  It's "science!"

ETA: I'm honestly not trying to lampoon anyone's supernatural beliefs here.  What I'm objecting to is using poorly understood science to lend credence to thinking that is unscientific.

Last edited by satyreyes (08-09-2009 03:38:34 PM)