How physics has become a pathological science and a way it may be put right using Morevas work Introduction First a brief word as to why physics has become a pathological science. Here I am using a phrase, pathological science, in a fairly precise way as defined on page 9 of the excellent book Voodoo Science by Robert Park. Park points out that erroneous conclusions by respected scientists can carry other scientists along the path to ignominy. And that is what has happened to contemporary physics. How has it happened ? We look at the Michelson-Morley (3,4,5) experiment and note that it provides evidence for geocentrism. Obviously, by the time the experiment was done, most people felt that they did not want to go back to that idea. Einstein summed up some reasons where this was not needed in his special theory of relativity. But the sword of Damocles still hangs over physics, with a vengeance. We all know about the way that so many people point the finger at string theory, and always have. Krauss (2) recently pointed out the new results are either telling us that all of science is wrong and were the center of the universe....or something has gone wrong. We are perhaps between Scylla and Charybdis. Between Tegmarks Mathematical Universe hypothesis (6) (or some similar McTaggart B series ideas) and straighforward science which can rapidly degenerate to scientism and a cult. The problem is that we are placed almost in the Michelson-Morley situation with no special relativity to get us away from scientism. So we have a problem - existing mathematics, in effect almost tells us just to look for more eternalist mathematics. So perhaps Tegmark etc. has simply descended into the new scientism, a sort of post-pre-Copernican view. How to put physics right using the work of Moreva In reference (7) I did point out that time is not an illusion and we all experience it. So how do we relate that fact to the eternalism (8) implied in B series physics ? The work of Moreva et al (9) did experiments on how quantum entanglement can be used, in the B series, to measure time by using the ideas of Page and Wooters (10). The effect of such a measurement can be seen, either by someone external to the universe - a god like observer as pictured by externalists (for example as in reference (8)) - or an individual within the universe - like a person in a JME McTaggart A series perhaps. In the latter case, the internal observer would see a change and this difference in the evolution of entangled particles compared with everything else is an important a measure of time. In the Moreva experiment there is the creation of a toy universe consisting of a pair of entangled photons and an observer that can measure their state in one of two ways. In the first way, a god-like observer measures the evolution against an external clock which is entirely independent of the toy universe. In the second way, the observer measures the evolution of the system by becoming entangled with it (11). So it may be claimed, on the basis of what is after all only a toy experiment, that quantum entanglement brings the observer into the picture and gives him a past, a present, and a future. As Strumfels (11) points out, the next step will be to extend the idea further, particularly to the macroscopic scale. It’s one thing to show how time emerges for photons, it’s quite another to show how it emerges for larger things such as humans and train timetables. There is the further point that while physicists may claim that the emergence of time from an abstract theory is occurring, it can also be claimed that they are just trying to put their theory right and realise their work with JME McTaggart A series results. We can also argue as to whether it is the Platonic eternalist Gods who have the final say, or the human beings and their real perception, of a Descartian cat-kicking (12) variety or otherwise. Our current Experiments on Time I mentioned that anyone can do experiments with chronesthesia (13), referring to the work of Lynden Miles et al (14). We are doing experiments using Python and Haskell and will refer to the results in a later blog entry. We are managing well with Python rather than Haskell. Though ultimately the results may require the lazy evaluation methods of Haskell, I definitely still prefer Python for a variety of reasons, including those already mentioned (1,15, 16). References (1) swizec/blog/python-and-lazy-evaluation/swizec/5148 (2) edge.org/conversation/the-energy-of-empty-space-that-isn-39t-zero (3) www3.uji.es/~planelle/copernicus.html (4) iamtymaximus.wordpress/2012/05/11/can-geocentricity-be-true/ (5) geocentrism/gww.htm (6) arXiv: 0704.0646.pdf (7) ttjohn.blogspot.in/2013/05/time-is-not-illusion-again-and-again-we.html (8) youtube/watch?v=vrqmMoI0wks (9) arXiv:1310.4691 (10) D.N. Page and W.K. Wootters, Phys. Rev. D, 27, 2885, (1983) (11) https://medium/the-physics-arxiv-blog/d5d3dc850933 (12) freerepublic/focus/news/781932/posts (13) ttjohn.blogspot.in/2013/12/chronesthesia-and-experiment-you-can-do_5.html (14) sydneysymposium.unsw.edu.au/2011/chapters/MacraeSSSP2011.pdf (15) sridattalabs//2012/02/21/lazy-evaluation/ (16) ttjohn.blogspot.in/2014/01/duck-typing-and-time-travel.html
Posted on: Sat, 18 Jan 2014 05:05:21 +0000
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