Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Strings
Apr 13, 2013 0:33:45 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Apr 13, 2013 0:33:45 GMT -5
Good morning to you all! We are used to thinking of matter as being composed of particles, but this model does not ultimately explain gravity. An apple may once have fallen on Sir Isaac Newton's head, and all was light, but for kleines c, I see matter more like a series of vibrating strings.
Apart from the fact that instead of one there are five different, healthy paths for modelling strings (three superstrings and two heterotic strings), there is another difficulty in studying string theory: we do not have tools to explore the theory over all possible values of the parameters in the theory. Each theory is like a large planet of which we only knew a small island somewhere on the planet.
In the twenty-first century, techniques have been developed to explore the theories more thoroughly, in other words, to travel around the sea in each of those planets and find new islands. Only since then has it been realised that those five string theories are actually islands on the same planet, not different ones! Thus there is an underlying theory of which all string theories are only different aspects. This is called M-theory.
Just as one of the world's great orchestras has violins, violas, cellos etc. playing in tune, this is how I understand matter. Matter is where many strings are vibrating to produce the same note, or chords which resonate to produce some kind of harmony. This is the musical equivalent of matter.
What matter is are strings vibrating in harmony, because matter is ultimately composed of vibrating strings. In this sense, we are therefore dealing with multiplicities. I am not here and there at the same time. It is the harmonies that are here and there at the same time, in any one of eleven dimensions.
The real point, however, is that these strings are not composed of anything. They are energy as much as they are matter. Albert Einstein was arguably the first to define how they were linked. Has kleines c finally been squared?
|
|
|
Strings
Apr 13, 2013 10:09:20 GMT -5
Post by Gerard on Apr 13, 2013 10:09:20 GMT -5
. . . this model does not ultimately explain gravity. . . . Three questions for you kleines c: Firstly, what is the difference between gravity and gravitation? And next, what would an "explanation" of gravity . . . or let's call it "heaviness" for now . . . what would an "explanation" of heaviness look like kleines c? Or in other words, how will you know when it has been explained? And - the last one for to-day - a " why" question: as a scientist, can you explain why heaviness needs to be explained?
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Strings
Apr 14, 2013 2:54:38 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Apr 14, 2013 2:54:38 GMT -5
Good morning, Gerard! I trust that all is well with you this weekend! If I may nevertheless address all four of your questions below directly: a. Firstly, what is the difference between gravity and gravitation? There is no difference between gravity and gravitation. I should perhaps confess that kleines c likes to have a hot bath. It is a good way for me to relax in the evening before I go to bed. As I lie in the water relaxing, I have effectively eliminated the effects of gravity, gravitation and my own heaviness. So a lack of heaviness looks like kleines c lying in the bath. When kleines c gets out of the bath, however, that is what heaviness looks like! It is more muscle than fat, however, Gerard, but let us not dwell on my physique, or the physical. I have transformed myself, temporarily, into an intellectual lightweight in the bath, too! Eureka!When I get out of the bath, Gerard, I will know that my own heaviness will have been explained. Immanuel Kant argued that experience can come to us only through our faculties, our sensory and mental apparatus. Therefore, what we can experience depends not only upon what there is out there to experience but also on the nature of our faculties, and what they can handle and what they do to what they handle. All very reasonable! This means that the actual forms which experience takes are subject-dependent. Now Schopenhauer took this whole analysis over from Kant, and racked his brains about the connection between the world as it is and the world as it appears to be to us. He accepted Kant's contention that the former could never directly be known to us, but he wondered whether a detailed analysis of the latter might not give us important indications of what it must be. Personally, I think that Arthur Schopenhauer was barking up the wrong tree, but Richard Wagner bought his philosophy, and Wagner's great operatic tetralogy therefore covers the same ground. Begun in the Revolutionary Years of 1848 and 1849, and occupying Wagner for a quarter-century, the "Ring" is one of the most extended of all artistic creations. Wagner binds this structure of over fifteen hours' duration with a complex web of Leitmotive (in English, leading motives). Each Leitmotif is a brief musical idea (usually a bit of melody but sometimes a harmonic or rhythmic idea) which stands for something in the drama often a character, but just as often an event, memory, or abstract idea. Through thematic transformation, the important players and events of the drama take on new guises and implications. For instance, in just the first scene of the first opera of the four, the all-important motif of the Rhine Gold, a joyful and sparkling song when first heard, transforms itself into a baleful denunciation of love and a symbol of evil power when dominion is gained over it by a character who denounces love. The idea of world-controlling power is extended to the well-intentioned world of the Gods at the end of this scene, when it is transformed again into the noble theme of Valhalla, their castle above the Rhine. The basic conflict in the Ring cycle occurs between Alberich, a dwarf who has gained dominion over the power of Gold. With it he can gain control of an army of slaves who can manufacture the weapons and wealth that will make him invincible; he can rule strictly through power and money. Thus he seeks to overthrow the existing world order, headed by the god Wotan, who rules through the power of honour, that is, the keeping of contracts. All the contracts of the world are symbolically impaled on the shaft of his spear, which he cut from a magic tree called the World-Ash Tree after sacrificing one of his eyes for it in order to gain the hand of the goddess Fricka. Alberich and Wotan are, thus, mirror images of each other, the one having sacrificed love itself to gain unbounded power; the other having sacrificed to gain love and to rule in a power that both controls and is bound by the idea of honour. Fricka, for her part, is the goddess of marriage, enforcing that contract in her own right. Wotan could never really be trusted to pay for his mighty fortress, Valhalla. The dwarf Alberich, no relation of kleines c, renounces love and steals the Rhinegold, from which he forges a magic ring. Meanwhile Wotan, chief of the gods, has built his mighty fortress Valhalla with the help of the giants. But in order to pay them back, Wotan in turn needs to steal the Rhinegold back from Alberich. And so with this double theft Wagner sets up the theme of love versus power that reverberates throughout all four dramas of Wagner's epic Ring cycle. What will survive of us, Gerard, is love. Without it, we would float in air, Gerard, like kleines c in his bath! This is why my own heaviness needs to be explained. Of course, your heaviness may need no explanation at all! Out of interest, do you feel the need to explain your own heaviness, Gerard?
|
|
|
Strings
Apr 15, 2013 2:28:38 GMT -5
Post by Gerard on Apr 15, 2013 2:28:38 GMT -5
Must not every true scientist by definition disagree with all the other scientists, in that he discovers that something which had long been thought to be something else was in fact not really that something else but something else again? Thus the supposed "scientists" are necessarily divided into two parts: the true scientists and the parrot scientists. On this question of "strings" I thought it advisable to get a second opinion. Here is Herr Mohaupt on the question: The trouble with that is that his spelling is wrong. The putative scientist Herr Mohaupt cannot be bothered finding out the correct spelling of the words he uses! Is that the true scientific attitude? And then there is this: and this: and this: Three errant "onlies" on three pages! Herr Mohaupt's logic, like his spelling, leaves a lot to be desired, and so we can have no confidence in his particular strings. We must instead repose our trust in the scientist kleines c, whose spelling and grammar have generally been impeccable (except when in a moment of madness he cut and pasted from some silly American who cannot spell "honour"). Perhaps the scientist kleines c might be able to explain to the membership what a "world sheet" (or "world-sheet") is. (It reminds me of an exciting book I wrote in my youth entitled " World Grid.") But let's rename it as the "world-blanket" as I do not wish to appear to be attempting a pun here. And while he is at it perhaps he might oblige us by explaining what a "world" is. Could the definition of a "world" be "something that has a blanket"? Would that get us any further forward?
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Strings
Apr 15, 2013 6:37:30 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Apr 15, 2013 6:37:30 GMT -5
Good afternoon, Gerard! I should perhaps confess that I am often in the States, so I am not particularly bothered by American spelling. Let us not be pedants, anyway. Few people can spell perfectly all the time, and cutting and pasting potentially saves a lot of time. Nevertheless, let me address all three of your points below directly: Think of it like a map in which you can place a string, Gerard. For example, if kleines c is flying from London to Chicago later today, the worldsheet could be thought of as a map of the world. You could place a string between London and Chicago, along which kleines c is about to travel. Wikipedia - WorldsheetPlanet Earth is a world. You could think of it like a blanket, but I prefer to think of it like a bubble in space. You are more than welcome to choose your own metaphor. The surface of the Earth is covered by a world blanket of air, which we call the atmosphere! Scientists do disagree with one another all the time. String theory is speculative, so it is likely to change over time. The half-life of scientific knowledge is around eighteen months, so I am likely to disagree with about half of the scientific knowledge I possessed only eighteen months ago. Yet science demonstrably does get us further forward, because the technologies it generates are so obviously useful to us. This very discussion is a product of the digital revolution.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Strings
Apr 16, 2013 0:13:39 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Apr 16, 2013 0:13:39 GMT -5
It is due to the perfect order, harmony and beauty of our conceptions that the world is made cosmos not chaos; from its in-dwelling reason. Now "reason" - the arrangement of concepts - is just a fancy word for grammar. So rather than this "world-blanket" of poor deluded Doktor Mohaupt, let us speak of the "world-grammar"! In the beginning is the wor[l]d!
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Strings
Apr 16, 2013 2:09:34 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Apr 16, 2013 2:09:34 GMT -5
According to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in the beginning was not the Word, but the Deed. The Word, an abstraction, came later, Sydney Grew?
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Strings
Apr 17, 2013 9:48:01 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Apr 17, 2013 9:48:01 GMT -5
Do they not signify the same? The defining of a word must be the performance of a deed must it not. The apparent contraries come together in true Hegelian fashion.
If some one were seriously to think of the Word as an "abstraction," he would be obliged to tell us a) what is abstracted, and b) from what it is abstracted . . .
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Strings
Apr 17, 2013 10:36:43 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Apr 17, 2013 10:36:43 GMT -5
Arguably the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century, Ludwig Wittgenstein, felt that previous philosophers had tied themselves in knots by asking the wrong sorts of questions, Sydney Grew. They thought that philosophical problems were to do with understanding the nature of the world, but Wittgenstein thought that they were all problems of language. Sort language out, however, and you could knock philosophy itself on the head. Let us therefore knock language, philosophy and everything else on the head here in 'The Third' this afternoon, Sydney Grew.
Wittgenstein thus pondered how language related to the world, what the limits of language were and what this all meant for the philosopher. He came to two different conclusions; firstly, as outlined in 'The Tractatus', that language had a logical structure that accurately reflected the structure of reality; secondly, as outlined in the later 'Philosophical Investigations', that language was a game, full of tricks, jokes and subtleties, the meaning of which was derived from social context as much as logical analysis.
I suspect that you have taken Wittgenstein's first conclusion, Sydney Grew, and ignored the second. My view, of course, is that language can be both, either and neither, all simultaneously. The word and the deed can be the same and/or different, depending upon the circumstances. Writing these very words, for example, Sydney Grew, represents a deed of kleines c.
QED
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Strings
Apr 19, 2013 4:30:52 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Apr 19, 2013 4:30:52 GMT -5
. . . I suspect that you have taken Wittgenstein's first conclusion, Sydney Grew, and ignored the second. . . . Actually I have - I hope - ignored the lot! In my youth I suffered the misfortune - indignity even - of being force fed Wittgenstein by over-enthusiastic Englishmen. I like to think that I successfully resisted this abuse and survived; perhaps I should sue "Professor" Armstrong and the rest of that crowd. Money was always of prime importance to Wittgenstein and his British admirers, and upon inspection of my copy of Philosophical Investigations I see that it was purchased for 60/9, a notation that the youth of to-day may well find opaque. It is an unsystematic work - that he admits - and as such there is not a great deal that can be done with or had from it - I correctly decided to ignore it, because is not system all?Its first paragraph is a quotation from jolly old Augustine, very relevant to something that Professor Cave has written in about about smiles and flocks of birds which I wish to discuss to-morrow; the "theory of kinesic response" he calls it. Here is Augustine: "Cum majores homines appellabant rem aliquam, et cum secundum eam vocem corpus ad aliquid movebant, videbam, et tenebam hoc ab eis vocari rem illam, quod sonabant, cum eam vellent ostendere. Hoc autem eos velle ex motu corporis aperiebatur: tamquam verbis naturalibus omnium gentium, quae fiunt vultu et nutu oculorum, ceterorumque membrorum actu, et sonitu vocis indicante affectionem animi in petendis, habendis, rejiciendis, fugiendisve rebus. Ita verba in variis sententiis locis suis posita, et crebro audita, quarum rerum signa essent, paulatim colligebam, measque jam voluntates, edomito in eis signis ore, per haec enuntiabam." Which being translated runs rather as follows: "When my elders named some object, and accordingly moved towards something, I saw this and I grasped that the thing was called by the sound they uttered when they meant to point it out. Their intention was shewn by their bodily movements, as it were the natural language of all peoples: the expression of the face, the play of the eyes, the movement of other parts of the body, and the tone of voice which expresses our state of mind in seeking, having, rejecting, or avoiding something. Thus, as I heard words repeatedly used in their proper places in various sentences, I gradually learnt to understand what objects they signified; and after I had trained my mouth to form these signs, I used them to express my own desires."
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Strings
Apr 19, 2013 5:42:40 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Apr 19, 2013 5:42:40 GMT -5
You can ignore Ludwig Wittgenstein if you so wish, Sydney Grew. When I first started posting on the BBC message boards, about eight years ago, I realised that because of my scientific background, I was not really qualified to discuss the arts, and music in particular. To make amends, I started reading the great philosophers, and the process culminated in an online vote on BBC Radio 4 to determine the greatest philosopher (2005). Here are the top ten, with the individual percentages of the votes cast for the top ten greatest philosophers adding up to 83.52 out of 100: BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time's Greatest Philosopher ResultFor the record, I was surprised that Karl Marx won by a landslide, taking more than double the votes of his nearest rival, David Hume. I voted for Immanuel Kant, as did Melvyn Bragg, but he only received 5.61% of the popular vote. Ludwig Wittgenstein came third, with 6.8% of the popular vote. My conclusion would be that this vote says more about BBC Radio 4 listeners than it does about the greatest philosophers. Perhaps they are a bunch of Marxists? Anyway, I was pleased to see my personal top five in Radio 4's top ten, although not necessarily in the right order: I do not think that you can really argue that Kant was a greater philosopher than Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein or whoever. What I can say is that they have become part of my intellectual furniture, so to speak, Sydney Grew, the way I think. Ultimately, Wittgenstein was not sure that anything could be said about how language related to the world because that was necessarily beyond the scope and meaning of language itself. Thus he concluded that some things remain unsayable and declared that whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. It seems to me that we have not really properly understood Ludwig Wittgenstein. He did not really complete his work, Sydney Grew; he only just got started. The c take would be that the word is also, on occasion, the deed, although the two are not necessarily one and the same.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Strings
Apr 20, 2013 3:22:15 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Apr 20, 2013 3:22:15 GMT -5
We wonder whether the membership might be persuaded to direct for a moment their assuredly capable cognitive powers to the question above, posted yesterday in relation to a somewhat scrappy publication of Wittgenstein: "Is not system all?" I would say that it is, not only in philosophy but also in Art and in all kinds of natural science. Nothing can be anything until it partakes of a complete whole would they not say?
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Strings
May 17, 2013 7:24:23 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on May 17, 2013 7:24:23 GMT -5
Super-symmetry "probably dead" No experiment that might have produced super-symmetric "particles," not even the Collider at CERN, has seen a hint of them so far. The simplest super-symmetric theories have already been ruled out, and more complex versions await their fate when the Collider restarts at a higher energy, probably in 2015. "After that, if they don't find super-symmetric particles within about a year, I think it will be dead," laments Mr. Allanach of the University of Cambridge. "I'll start to work on something else, and I think a lot of other people feel the same way." Evidently feelings count in the lives of particle theorists! Actually the only real proof - the only real logic - is a simple exclamation "How could it be otherwise!"
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Strings
May 21, 2013 12:00:24 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on May 21, 2013 12:00:24 GMT -5
It may well be the case that strings are the wrong model for matter, and energy, Sydney Grew. Let us therefore think up a hotter model!
|
|