I would very much like to know what you guys think of this. I've never formally taken physics, so there's a lot there I don't get, but what I do understand of it fascinates me.
you cant change what something is by how you measure it, all you can do is change how you PERCIEVE it.
There's a substantial body (a bit over two centuries' worth) of well-reviewed experimental work (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave-particle_duality) that appears to disagree with your statement. It's entirely possible I've misunderstood you, however.
(edited, by which I mean deleted and reposted, to fix bad HTML markup)
In this case you are not changing what something is by measuring it, you are changing how it behaves. You certainly change how things behave by measuring them. In fact, one of the fundamental principles of physics is that you can't measure something by changing how it behaves. It's called the Uncertainty Principle. You see, the only way to measure something is to interact with it in some way, and when you interact with it you change the way it behaves.
Note that light is not a wave or a particle. It is something that sometimes behaves like a wave and sometimes behaves like a particle. And you can change the way it behaves by the way you observe it.
That's a really good article. You also might be interested in this New York Times article The short form is 'we observe that time seems to flow in olny one direction in our daily lives, but when we go look closely at it in a lab, it is not at all clear that time works the way that we think it does, or that it can only flow in one direction.
It's nice to see what Dr Cramer is up to; I've met him at few times at SF events in the Northwest. He's also written a couple of physics-oriented hard SF books.
I've long held that, if we can only have one of {Faster than light travel | Causality}, I'll give up causality. It tickles me that it might actually be an option.
For causality violation as a weapon of mass destruction, see the works of Charles Stross, specifically Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise.
You've already made the key observation, which is that this stuff is fascinating. It's certainly not BS; physicists are a careful bunch. There are a lot of excellent physics books for a lay audience (including me); let me know if you'd like recommendations.
At this point I'd classify myself as "exceptionally well-read layperson", but there are many books that are interesting all the way through but start from a very simple foundation. I'll check my shelves and get back to you. Poke me if I forget.
Okay. There are two main branches of modern theoretical physics: Relativity, which explains how things get all weird when stuff is really big or moving really fast, and quantum mechanics, which explains how things get all weird when stuff is really tiny.
I don't seem to have any books purely about relativity in my collection. I first cut my teeth on it when I was a lad through Martin Gardner's old but excellent Relativity for the Million, which I gather has been since reprinted (and I hope revised) as Relativity Simply Explained.
In the realm of quantum mechanics (which is where that article falls), I think the best thorough, beginning-to-end overview I have is In Search of Schrödinger's Cat by John Gribbin, which does a superb job of making just how fucked-up (and entertaining) the quantum world is. Along quite different lines are Richard Feynman's Six Easy Pieces (excerpted from his famous Feynman's Lectures on Physics) and QED.
Hovering somewhere between the two fields is Kip Thorne's Black Holes and Time Warps, which is directly concerned with the sort of paradox-riddled, mind-bendy time travel stuff the article gets into.
All of the above are well-written and not difficult. There is, of course, tons of other stuff out there; these just happen to be books I own or owned and that particularly clicked for me.
That article doesn't mention information enough; information is the key. Given my background is in informatics I would say that, wouldn't I? But a lot of physicists seem to agree.
This is well-understood in relation to the speed of light: it's overly simplistic to say nothing can travel faster than the speed of light; it's information that suffers the restriction. If something's a light year away from you, you can't get news from it in less than a year.
Similarly, what's really important here (at least as I understand it) is the extension of that: if something's a light second away, what you know about it is a second old; as the object gets closer, you can get information from it more rapidly until you can get information nearly instantaneously from something right by where you're standing. But however close you get to it, you'll never be able to get information from its future.
Admittedly, I hear murmerings that this orthodoxy may be about to take a serious beating, but so far as I can tell it's still orthodoxy for the moment. That article read as though it was trying to present bleeding-edge research in as bewildering a way as possible.
This is a very good book, by the way. It's not a very easy read, but it's probably as simple as it gets. lizzip currently seems to be enjoying it when she has time for recreational reading.
I actually saw Brian Greene speak once. It was, though interesting, a bit over my head. (I should probably take an introductory physics class if I want to be able to parse any of this, shouldn't I?)
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timeasmymeasure
no way
Date: 2007-03-23 05:36 pm (UTC)Re: no way
Date: 2007-03-23 05:41 pm (UTC)you cant change what something is by how you measure it, all you can do is change how you PERCIEVE it. good game TERRIBLE
Re: no way
Date: 2007-03-23 08:09 pm (UTC)There's a substantial body (a bit over two centuries' worth) of well-reviewed experimental work (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave-particle_duality) that appears to disagree with your statement. It's entirely possible I've misunderstood you, however.
(edited, by which I mean deleted and reposted, to fix bad HTML markup)
Re: no way
Date: 2007-03-23 08:31 pm (UTC)...what?
Re: no way
Date: 2007-03-23 09:50 pm (UTC)Note that light is not a wave or a particle. It is something that sometimes behaves like a wave and sometimes behaves like a particle. And you can change the way it behaves by the way you observe it.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-23 05:38 pm (UTC)You also might be interested in this New York Times article
The short form is 'we observe that time seems to flow in olny one direction in our daily lives, but when we go look closely at it in a lab, it is not at all clear that time works the way that we think it does, or that it can only flow in one direction.
It's nice to see what Dr Cramer is up to; I've met him at few times at SF events in the Northwest. He's also written a couple of physics-oriented hard SF books.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-23 08:02 pm (UTC)For causality violation as a weapon of mass destruction, see the works of Charles Stross, specifically Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-23 11:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-23 11:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-24 12:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-24 11:19 pm (UTC)I don't seem to have any books purely about relativity in my collection. I first cut my teeth on it when I was a lad through Martin Gardner's old but excellent Relativity for the Million, which I gather has been since reprinted (and I hope revised) as Relativity Simply Explained.
In the realm of quantum mechanics (which is where that article falls), I think the best thorough, beginning-to-end overview I have is In Search of Schrödinger's Cat by John Gribbin, which does a superb job of making just how fucked-up (and entertaining) the quantum world is. Along quite different lines are Richard Feynman's Six Easy Pieces (excerpted from his famous Feynman's Lectures on Physics) and QED.
Hovering somewhere between the two fields is Kip Thorne's Black Holes and Time Warps, which is directly concerned with the sort of paradox-riddled, mind-bendy time travel stuff the article gets into.
All of the above are well-written and not difficult. There is, of course, tons of other stuff out there; these just happen to be books I own or owned and that particularly clicked for me.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-24 12:31 pm (UTC)This is well-understood in relation to the speed of light: it's overly simplistic to say nothing can travel faster than the speed of light; it's information that suffers the restriction. If something's a light year away from you, you can't get news from it in less than a year.
Similarly, what's really important here (at least as I understand it) is the extension of that: if something's a light second away, what you know about it is a second old; as the object gets closer, you can get information from it more rapidly until you can get information nearly instantaneously from something right by where you're standing. But however close you get to it, you'll never be able to get information from its future.
Admittedly, I hear murmerings that this orthodoxy may be about to take a serious beating, but so far as I can tell it's still orthodoxy for the moment. That article read as though it was trying to present bleeding-edge research in as bewildering a way as possible.
This is a very good book, by the way. It's not a very easy read, but it's probably as simple as it gets.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-07 10:53 pm (UTC)