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Post by greedy on Jun 4, 2007 17:13:04 GMT -5
stronger than a j.k. rowling hard back reads faster than autistic people can count orders lattes in a single breath it's a cartoon it's an anime no it's spacecowboy
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Post by spacecowboy on Jun 11, 2007 19:02:01 GMT -5
This book you recommended, "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" by Gary Zukav would probably not be in the "Home & Garden" section, would it? Just wondering ...
And being lumped into the same sentence with J.K. Rowling makes me feel like I've just been squeezed out of an elephant's sphincter. Thanks!
New research in Physics has done away with the whole "time paradox" thingie.
NEW MODEL "PERMITS TIME TRAVEL"
Researchers speculate that time travel can occur within a kind of feedback loop where backwards movement is possible, but only in a way that is "complementary" to the present.
In other words, you can pop back in time and have a look around, but you cannot do anything that will alter the present you left behind.
The new model, which uses the laws of quantum mechanics, gets rid of the famous paradox surrounding time travel.
The main headache stems from the idea that if you went back in time you could, theoretically, do something to change the present; and that possibility messes up the whole theory of time travel.
You go back to kill your father, but you'd arrive after he'd left the room, you wouldn't find him, or you'd change your mind Professor Dan Greenberger, City University, New York.
According to Einstein, space-time can curve back on itself, theoretically allowing travelers to double back and meet younger versions of themselves. And now a team of physicists from the US and Austria says this situation can only be the case if there are physical constraints acting to protect the present from changes in the past.
The researchers say these constraints exist because of the weird laws of quantum mechanics even though, traditionally, they don't account for a backwards movement in time.
Quantum behavior is governed by probabilities. Before something has actually been observed, there are a number of possibilities regarding its state. But once its state has been measured those possibilities shrink to one - uncertainty is eliminated.
So, if you know the present, you cannot change it. If, for example, you know your father is alive today, the laws of the quantum universe state that there is no possibility of him being killed in the past.
It is as if, in some strange way, the present takes account of all the possible routes back into the past and, because your father is certainly alive, none of the routes back can possibly lead to his death.
"Quantum mechanics distinguishes between something that might happen and something that did happen," Professor Dan Greenberger, of the City University of New York, US, told the BBC News website.
"If we don't know your father is alive right now - if there is only a 90% chance that he is alive right now, then there is a chance that you can go back and kill him.
"But if you know he is alive, there is no chance you can kill him."
"You go back to kill your father, but you'd arrive after he'd left the room, you wouldn't find him, or you'd change your mind," said Professor Greenberger.
"You wouldn't be able to kill him because the very fact that he is alive today is going to conspire against you so that you'll never end up taking that path leads you to killing him."
Greenberger and colleague Karl Svozil introduce their quantum mechanical model of time travel on the ArXiv e-print service.
(Story from BBC NEWS)
Amazing how Physicist spend time thinking about this and get payed while we do it for nothing.
This new information creates a whole new view on time and how it works. Of course, DD also deals tangent or parallel time lines, which are really funky.
One Physics experiment in time travel actually work. Now if only I could find the article ...
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Post by billy on Jan 15, 2008 10:02:21 GMT -5
bill Touche. Perhaps 'machine' was the wrong word... although the point being made was that IF there is mind shaping the universe it's far more likely to be one mind than many. But I'm not suggesting that that mind be God or similar - more the concept that you can't be sure that the universe extends beyond your own experience or that there are other minds than your own. If YOU even exist - you could simply be the avatar through which a vast puff of mind/consciousness/thought-stuff experiences it's eternal dream of a universe of it's own devising. Could you call that omni-dreamer God? Perhaps - but I don't think such concepts could never extend beyond speculation. Having waffled for a bit, I do agree with your second thought - processes such as evolution, geology, and other self organising systems in nature were really where I was heading with the machine analogy - no watch maker necessarily required. One of my university professors once demonstrated that, properly configured, a stick of rock could satisfy most definitions of 'alive' and 'intelligent'. This was part of a machine intelligence course, but he wasn't really clear whether this was to demonstrate that the definition of intelligence is ill-defined, or that on some level intelligence is inherent in all things. I expect it's the former, but the latter would fit with what you're saying. Which opens up all sorts of questions - did the universe retroactively design itself (and by extension us)? The idea of the giant pink unicorn has been around for years - maybe your sect is an ideological offshoot? As it is I'm staying for the Beer volcano and Stripper Factory that awaits us all...
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Post by greedy on Apr 1, 2009 21:52:02 GMT -5
this still dosn't explain the jelly doughnut paradox
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Post by twinkle on Apr 2, 2009 19:43:11 GMT -5
this still dosn't explain the jelly doughnut paradox no, but it does provide ample input regarding the fortune cookie conundrum.
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