The fabric of space-time

Discussion in 'Physics & Math' started by Saint, Feb 12, 2020.

  1. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

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    These days, having had a degree in IS for a while, I tend to apply an information-theoretic approach.

    What is real, if that is asking equivalently what is physical, is "just" information, information is physical or it has a physical basis; information occupies a volume but seems to be something that can project onto an area, maybe onto a line. As long as you can define a storage operation and the notion of transmitting information from place to place, you necessarily define a physical space.

    So does the vacuum store information? How is it written and on or in what?
     
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  3. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Is Universal storage of information necessary? Everything in the Universe has inherent information (value). It is the relational values that determine the logical function, no?

    Universal logic ? (This article is about the abstract study of logics.)
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_logic

    Truth function
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_function
     
    Last edited: Oct 4, 2020
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  5. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

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    Necessary for what? So it gets stored the same way in this part of the universe, as in other parts?

    How, moreover, is a physical measurement related to information? Is information like a metric of some kind, does it have different forms? In what sense can a store of information be a copy of another, physically distinct one? Who decides?
     
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  7. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    You are merely repeating my question. I am not proposing anything needs to be stored at all. That was your question.
    The mathematical relational values decide the logical functional processes, from the very subtle micro scale to gross expression at the macro scale.
     
    Last edited: Oct 5, 2020
  8. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

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    Well, in a digital electronic computer, the on-off states of transistors are mapped to 'logic gates' which operate according to the rules (laws) of Boolean logic. No numbers.

    Numbers have well-defined operations, an arithmetic, defined on them only when the Boolean gates are arranged so that "addition with carry" becomes an an operation. But at all times, the gates operate under Boolean laws of logic. In any case, there are only transistors being switched on and off; the particular arrangement of devices corresponds to this logic (and is why they're called electronic logic gates).
     
  9. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Fundamentally as I have said many times, space and time are inseparable and two sides of the same coin.
    Some expert opinion follows....




     
  10. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sean-carroll-eternity-to-here/

    What Keeps Time Moving Forward? Blame It on the Big Bang
    A timely Q&A with physicist Sean Carroll about how our one-way trip from past to future is entangled with entropy and the origin of the universe

    Physicists often describe the fabric of the universe we inhabit as four-dimensional spacetime, comprising three dimensions of space and one of time. But whereas we spend our days passing freely through space in any direction we wish (gravity and solid obstacles permitting), time pushes us along, willingly or not, in a single predetermined direction: toward the future.

    This is the arrow of time—life carries us from the past, through the present, and into the future. Back to the Future plotlines notwithstanding, no one knows how to reverse the arrow—how to move backward in time—and the logical paradoxes that would result from such a trip into the past render it a thorny proposition at best. (Thanks to a prediction of special relativity called time dilation, travel into the distant future is relatively easy: just move really, really fast.)

    In his new book, From Eternity to Here (Dutton, 2010), theoretical physicist Sean Carroll of the California Institute of Technology sets out to explain why time marches along unfailingly in one direction. Expanding on the concepts in his June 2008 feature for Scientific American,"The Cosmic Origins of Time's Arrow," Carroll argues for the necessity of marrying three seemingly disparate concepts: time, entropy and cosmology.

    Entropy, which in rough terms is the measure of a system's disorder, creeps up over time, as dictated by the second law of thermodynamics. To illustrate entropy's inexorable growth, Carroll takes us to the breakfast table—you can't unscramble an egg, he points out, and you can't unstir the milk out of your coffee. These systems invariably proceed to disordered, or high-entropy, arrangements. Each of these examples shows how the continual growth of entropy fills the world with irreversible processes that divide the past from the future: The making of an omelet and the mixing of milk into a cup of coffee are events that work in only one temporal direction.

    But why should entropy always increase? This is where Carroll turns to cosmology, which must explain why the universe began in a uniquely low-entropy state. We spoke to the physicist about his new book and the challenges of presenting cutting-edge physics to a wide audience.

    more.......................
     
  11. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

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    7,832
    One thing about trying to characterise everything in terms of information: you need to quantify information, it needs to have an entropy measure. It seems that time and changes in information are closely connected (you don't say?).

    Ultimately you need to be able to quantify the information content of say, a Feynman diagram, or a Minkowski diagram. You don't have to have equivalence, but like I say, being able to show A is a copy of B might be useful.

    But it seems that changes in information and a way to transmit it, are like maybe fundamental principles thereof. Without transmission and errors, or reading and writing, it might be quite hard to define it.
     
  12. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    20,069
    Numbers are only human symbolic representations of inherent values.
    A computer (and the universe in general) is still processing relational values via mathematical (algebraic) functions, no?
    https://www.lotame.com/what-is-boolean-logic/#

    IMO, it's elegant simplicity makes it a candidate as a basic functional property of spacetime.
     
  13. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

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    7,832
    It seems the whole algebra vs logic thing is down to whether you have numbers.
    Like I say, a digital computer doesn't have numbers, it has binary logic and strings of bits.

    To have numerical operations you need a particular choice of gates, and the gates operate in parallel on a pair of inputs. Logically, you define a particular 'gate product' that gives you the result of adding a pair of bits and also has a carry bit. Addition and carry are just gate products (usually a pair of gates). The algebra that gets you from on/off states to numbers is Boolean 'gate algebra'.

    So an algebra obviously doesn't need numbers or numeric operations to be an algebra.
    Just to underline that; only some instructions in the instruction set of most modern computers, correspond to numeric operations. In fact, you don't strictly need hardware addition/multiplication because a computer can run programs to do this, but less efficiently.
     
    Last edited: Oct 5, 2020
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  14. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Copied from a post by Magical Realist,
    http://sciforums.com/threads/quotes-to-remember.162190/page-36#post-3650723
     
  15. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    20,069
    I agree for human use (numbers are human invented symbols).
    But in context of Universal functional processes, I like the generic term "values", which applies to all values in all expressed forms.

    Value
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_(mathematics)
    Why can we not use the generic term "values" ?
    But they ALL are "forms of values", no? The universe does not deal with numbers per se, humans do.
    Hence my preference of the term "values" which can come in many forms and avoids the anthropomorphism issue.

    AFAIK, universal Algebra deals with the processing of variable relational values. That is as close as I can get to an all encompassing comprehensive description......

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  16. phyti Registered Senior Member

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    Sean Carroll;

    1. Subjective time requires memory, which allows a comparison of a current state to a previous state for any changes, which lends itself to an interpretation of time flowing. Events are caused by existing processes which work even in the absence of human perception.

    2. Time dilation is the slowing of processes involving em transactions (including clocks). For the fast moving observer, perception of time slows relative to the outside world, which appears to contract, giving the appearance of more events per unit of time. The future is the unknown state of your world at a later time. The only way to fast forward is via a coma. Sleep does not move you from today to tomorrow.

    3. Not always. Gravitation forms stars within large dust/gas clouds, and collects cold bodies/planets into stable systems. Genetic code builds organisms from basic elements.

    Scientists are expected to write books and give lectures, to promote themselves and the their universities.
     
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  17. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

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    7,832
    On the observation that digital computers don't need numeric addition and multiplication "built in" operations.
    Although a computer can be defined as a set of binary operations on strings, there are still numbers, fundamentally a computer has registers each with a number of bits, a Boolean logic gate has some number of transistors connected together, the numbers arrive here before the computer is built, or even designed.

    So maybe that's the answer to which comes first, computers or numbers. Computers depend on finite numbers (sets) of devices; numbers don't really depend on anything except if you want to compute some.
     
  18. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    20,069
    Can we not avoid this dichotomy between Human numbers and Universal numbers by using the generic term "relational values"?

    This would encompass all forms of values and does not in any way restrict the human use of symbolic representations of any of these "values".
     
  19. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

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    7,832
    I can't really say. But again, in a modern electronic computer, where are these "relational values"? There's the voltage levels in transistors, usually these get mapped to 0 and 1, but also to true and false. How does a relational value help with the difference between a number and a logical truth-value?

    My guess is, it depends on how you interpret transistor "values". Numbers are context-dependent it seems (at least in digital computers they are). In short, a digital computer operates on strings of bits, whether these are instructions, numbers, or an address, depends on how they are interpreted which depends on context.
     
  20. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    20,069
    You just said it. They are both different types of relational values. One is man made, the other is a property of the universe.
    Exactly. They are all forms of relational values, is that not why we use algebra? The universe also does not use algebraic symbols, but they are the symbolic representation of universal mathematical functions.

    Perhaps it may be compared to the concept of relativity. It's a minor distinction, but it avoids the problem of the anthropmorphic argument. A number is a useful human symbolic representation of a defined universal algebraic value.

    I only mention this because of the persistent argument that mathematics (numbers) are only a human invention, which is true, but does not explain that all human numbers are only symbolic representations of natural relational logical truth values.

    That's why mathematics work so well. Not because we invented them, but because they are symbolic identifiers of existing natural universal functional properties.

    Am I overthinking this? I can cite prominent astronomers who hold this POV of "discovery", rather than "invention"......

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    Last edited: Oct 9, 2020
  21. QuarkHead Remedial Math Student Valued Senior Member

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    Yes. Without perhaps realizing it, you have hit on an extremely abstract branch of mathematics called "Category Theory". Here the maps between sets, say, and groups, say, are considered equivalent, and called "morphisms". (Morphisms between other so-categories exist, of course - in fact between all of them). The maps between such morphisms are called "functors" and the the maps between functors are called "Natural Transformations".

    Whether the founder of Category Theory (Saunders Mac Lane) intended the term "natural" to refer to the natural world, I have no idea, but there are clever people out there (John Beaz is one) who think this is a useful form of mathematics in physics.

    I am not qualified to judge whether this is so.
     
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  22. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Thanks for that excellent link......

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    I am just beginning to explore "set theory" and perhaps the term "relational value" may be a little misleading because it popularly pertains to the human use of financial investment.

    I discovered a new term; "relative identity", which may be what I intuitively tried to present in context of universal values as they pertain to observation, but I'll need to study this a little deeper to understand the full scope of the definition and the common denominators it represents.
     
    Last edited: Oct 9, 2020
  23. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    20,069
    This may be of interest.

    A Message from the Producers of Infinite Potential –
    The Life and Ideas of David Bohm

    Thank-you so much for your interest in Infinite Potential – The Life and Ideas of David Bohm.

    First up, a BIG congrats to Roger Penrose, who features prominently in Infinite Potential, who just won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics.

    Since its release in June almost 600,000 people have seen the film, causing an avalanche of interest in David Bohm’s ideas. Ideas about our essential interconnectedness, our shared mutuality and a wholeness that exists throughout the entire physical Universe.


    https://www.infinitepotential.com/
     

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