Ishango Bones

I thought I understood this but the last several times I have thought it through I reach the same sticking point. I will paste in a typical layman explanation from a PhD in Physics below and respond with my questions.   https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-a-clock-ticks-more-slowly-when-it-moves-at-a-higher-speed-Why Is it true that a clock ticks more slowly when it moves at [more …]

Another example of physics as geometry.

We always talk of matter as if it only had passing relation to electrical effects. Yet if we look in detail into the nature of matter, we find physical substances, made of molecules, made of atoms, made of positive and negative electric charge. Matter is not electrical? No, quite the opposite: electric charge is the major component of all atoms. Therefore matter is *made out of cancelled electric charge.* If we cancel out some opposite charge by placing positive charge together with negative charge, do we get NOTHING? No, instead we get material substance. Positive protons plus negative electrons equals neutral atoms. Physical objects normally have no charge? Wrong. The physical objects *are* the charge.

This is the interpretation of Quantum Mechanics that you DONT hear about (the one that actually makes sense). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Broglie-Bohm_theory The “standard” interpretation is the “Copenhagen Interpretation” put forward by the Zen-minded Neils Bohr (Einstein and he had many heated arguments over this) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_interpretation The problem here is that the mathematical models are not mechanical explanations. [more …]

http://circlon-theory.com/HTML/EmcFallacies.html What is energy? What is mass? How are they related? Does energy have mass? Is mass really ever converted to energy? Actually, mass is a form of energy, called inertia. What do we mean by “form” of energy? How many “forms” of energy are there? — There is this idea that inertial-mass-energy (matter) is [more …]

The holographic principle, deriving Newton’s laws, and gravity as entropy

God is the Machine http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.12/holytech_pr.html — Seth Lloyd This paper proposes a method of unifying quantum mechanics and gravity based on quantum computation. In this theory, fundamental processes are described in terms of pairwise interactions between quantum degrees of freedom. The geometry of space-time is a construct, derived from the underlying quantum information processing. The [more …]

Drop a ball on the floor and watch what happens. The ball bounces a few times and eventually comes to rest. But we know that there is a law called the conservation of energy, which means that the motion of the ball falling cannot be lost, it can only be transferred. So after the ball [more …]

Hawking: The Beginning of Time Quantum theory introduces a new idea, that of imaginary time. Imaginary time may sound like science fiction, and it has been brought into Doctor Who. But nevertheless, it is a genuine scientific concept. One can picture it in the following way. One can think of ordinary, real, time as a [more …]