Time and the Tower of Babel
Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist at CalTech. Great job if you can BS your way into it. His latest ruse? Thinking about time:
One way to get noticed as a scientist is to tackle a really difficult problem. Physicist Sean Carroll has become a bit of a rock star in geek circles by attempting to answer an age-old question no scientist has been able to fully explain: What is time?
I’m trying to understand how time works. And that’s a huge question that has lots of different aspects to it. A lot of them go back to Einstein and spacetime and how we measure time using clocks. But the particular aspect of time that I’m interested in is the arrow of time: the fact that the past is different from the future.
Wonder what his salary is?
Well, Sean, one theory asks you to imagine you are a deity. Now, you live in a time frame which is universal but you want to make some little mini-gods to run around on a new paradise called earth. Clearly you don’t want them to live forever or discover the ultimate secret or anything like that so you construct this new bio-mechanism with a linear time frame and you give this bio-mechanism a name – Homo Sapiens.
Now, as long as the eternal spirit of each of these little entities is inside the physiognomy, the linear time scale kicks in and he/she goes forward from birth to death. Once he/she passes that point, the standard universal time-frame kicks back in and all is well.
There are some problems with this, of course. One is that humans can’t then conceptualize of when the Messiah is actually coming. He might be coming in 70 AD, some time near the centre of the graph or in 3546 AD, which is actually a time on the second spiral arm over on the multi-planar graph.
In human terms, it’s meaningless and so the best thing to do is to tell the humans not to overly worry about it and enjoy their time in the Garden of Eden.
Now, how to get CalTech to notice me?
Forgive me, Mr. Carroll, sir, I’m not trying to be a smarta–e or to play down your undoubted achievements in the field of theoretical physics. It’s just that, if CalTech would let me use my Mac, give me a broadband connection and allow me access to Google search, I could have a dissertation out on “Time” within a week and a half, chock full of fragments of the opinions of your learned colleagues and if you could give me four weeks, I’ll give you a book on the subject.
Filed under: Technology & ideas
Deus ex machina?
God works by rules, time therefore has rules, if we can figure out the rules, we can adapt them to many quantum concepts.
We’re the model that didn’t have the receptors built in to understand – not unlike a child understanding quantum physics.
Ah! but it isn’t the here an now time we need to get figured out…
I don’t think you understand what he is talking about. One of the interesting issues in physics is that lots of our equations run both ways- so they go forwards and backwards in time in the same way. Its not an easy issue to understand and it is a legitimate one for him to raise as part of physics- I wish I had the intelligence to understand it.
Gracchi writes: “I don’t think you understand what he is talking about. One of the interesting issues in physics is that lots of our equations run both ways- so they go forwards and backwards in time in the same way. Its not an easy issue to understand and it is a legitimate one for him to raise as part of physics-”
That is very interesting and true (at least in part). Space too runs forward and backwards. We know we cannot be in 2 different places at the same time (though we can revisit where we have already been). But we can be in 2 times at the same place. So is that what he’s talking about?
Somewhat differently, we have nature (physics) that is not time reversible. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics . Roughly, the 2nd law of thermodynamics states that a closed system (ie no energy in or out) tends to become more disordered with time (eg of a more even temperature throughout), and unchanging at best. As this cannot be reversed without adding energy from outside, which is not step-wise equivalent, there is no time reversibility.
With these sorts of problems, I tend to fall back in the view that correct science is nothing but correct prediction of what will happen (and explanation of what has happened, but that is less testing). Seeking meaning and purpose in science is only likely to confuse, especially in the more difficult and unusual cases. However, I cannot deny myself finding beauty or elegance, sometimes, in the simplicity and generality of scientific theories; but that, sadly, applies to the incorrect as well as the correct.
I don’t know anything of Sean Carroll, as to whether he is a good theoretical physicist or not. Noting he has a bit of a thing about self-promotion, the washing-up looks distinctly attractive as my next task.
And gracchi writes: “- I wish I had the intelligence to understand it.”
Well, so do I: I wish it on gracchi, me, James and Sean Carroll.
I also wish an understanding on all of us, of what is science, what is metaphysics and what is religion. Helllppp!
Best regards
Thanks … reading all with interest.
We do not exist in a closed system.
Wiki states, re conservation of mass/energy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy
Energy, or mass can be moved from, and returned to, our system/universe.
The technology was known in ancient Sumer, in Egypt, and the captive semitic tribes learned of it. The knowledge found its way into the Essene community, and was demonstrated to the occupying Romans.
Moses experienced it first hand on more than one occassion, and it was used in the construction of Notre Dame, in France, by the Templar masters, or more correctly, the “Children of Solomon”, a guild of specialist Masons instructed from the newly acquired arcane knowledge of St Bernards Cistercian Order, the details being discovered during excavations beneath the Jerusalem Temple, by those who would become the founders of the Templar order. The French Hermeticist Fulcanelli explained it.
The famous archeologist, Sir Charles Leonard Woolley discovered the Egyption laboratories (now named as a temple, doohh!) where such technology was undertaken, although the remnants were beyond the analytical abilities of the day. Consequently, Sir Charles had no idea of the importance of his discovery. The remaining descriptions however, match the descriptions contained in the new patents.
It has recently been re-discovered, and patented.
It travelled to Britain long ago, but was lost, rediscovered by Newton, in theory.
I believe the US military now control it….An awesome technology!
You may argue,…What has this to do with time?
This is a bending, from thousands of years ago, of things long held as unbendable. A technology that seemingly came from nowhere….you have to wonder…….
Time is not linear.
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