The Limitations of Atheism.

[Tiassa]

An atheist depends on tactile perception. The theist, then, must looks at life with mind?

The only disagreement I'll have here is that theists tend to look at life through filtered perspectives. Reality is described by the nature of the individual form of theism. For instance, if I am a Christian, God tells me what is evil. How one perceives people engaged in certain acts cannot be divorced from that assumption. Thus, as a faithful, my perception of reality has been formed by my choice to perceive reality as described in the Bible.

Is someone breaking God's law a "good" person?

In my opinion, sure. I don't always give until I have no money left to give. Whether the Old Testament or the New Testament, sure, I'm breaking some of God's laws. So are others I know, including those who worship graven images like the 12-foot wooden crucifix in my high-school chapel, or the Bible, as some have asserted it is God's word, and therefore God. But I know I'm not as morally decrepit as the alleged faithful who beats the crap out of his kids in the woodshed because to "spare the rod is to spoil the child."

What about Catholics? Are the Maccabees a real part of the Bible? Are they breaking God's law, or is a Protestant who worships via a Bible without it.

If you're looking to the Bible or any other holy book for your answers, you're using your mind, sure, but just to look things up.

What's the difference between "discovering" God's Law, as such, and "looking it up" in a dusty book in the nightstand?

thanx,
Tiassa

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Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.--Denis Diderot

 

[Bowser]

I promised to perform some work today. Catch you later.

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It's all very large.

 

[Boris]

Bowser,

Please, Boris, tell me more. I am interested in this concept of relativity.

Very well, since you asked so politely

Relativity the science actually has roots in relativity the philosophy. The idea is that there is no absolute frame of reference. For example, there is no state of motion such that you could describe it as "standing <u>absolutely</u> still." For a more complete example, you can stand still without moving on Earth's surface. But the earth is zipping around the sun, which is zipping about the galactic center of gravity, which is in turn hurtling around the local galactic group, etc. and ultimately we are all clocking some serious RPMs due to the expansion of spacetime. In a universe without a universal yard stick, without some fixed coordinates drawn up on its surface, there is simply no way to tell what's really moving and what's really standing still. All we see is things moving toward us, or away from us, or sideways -- but is it those things that are moving, or is it us, or both? There is simply no way to tell in an <u>absolute</u> sense (so the story goes.)

Indeed, the only way to measure motion is by anchoring the measurement <u>relative</u> to something else. For example, a car's speedometer measures motion relative to the surface of the road. But now remember that motion is a fundamental player in the laws of physics. Momentum, for example, is velocity times mass. When two objects collide, it is the difference in their velocities that determines the impulse of the collision. It doesn't stop with Newtonian physics, either. In general, we observe that the laws of physics work identically in any two systems that are moving inertially (i.e. with uniform velocity in a straight line) -- no matter whether their trajectories are opposite, parallel or perpendicular, no matter which one is moving faster, no matter in what direction. This identity only holds for inertial systems. For example, dropping an object while standing still and dropping an object while being accelerated will result in visibly different trajectories for that object. Acceleration destroys the symmetry; those who are accelerating feel a force acting on them, while those who are not accelerating feel no force.

Einstein's Principle of Equivalence (I believe that's the one) postulates that in any two inertial (non-accelerating) frames of reference, the laws of physics are identical. To put it another way, without having an external cue to measure against, there is absolutely no way to tell whether you are moving or standing still. Imagine a perfectly empty universe with just you in it. You are suspended in dark empty space. Are you moving or standing still? How can you tell? According to the theory of relativity, you cannot.

Anyway, once you couple the Principle of Equivalence to the postulate that the speed of light in vacuum is constant regardless of observer (a "postulate" that conforms to even the most exacting empirical prying, not to mention flows directly out of Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism), and you can mathematically derive the equations of special relativity. Which is what Einstein did in 1905. From these equations, you see that if the two postulates are to hold, a first inertial observer measuring a second inertial observer moving relative to his/her reference frame will discover that the "moving" observer is contracted along the line of motion, and experiences a slowdown in time. The mind-bending thing about this, is that the second observer will make the exact same conclusions about the first observer -- i.e. that the first observer is contracted along the line of motion, and experiences a slowdown in time. For either observer individually, the time flows just as it has always done; to them individually it appears that it is <u>they</u> who are standing still, while everything else is moving. And they are both right, even if only in a relative sense. So the next time you observe Boris travelling near the spead of light, keep in mind that as far as Boris is concerned it is <u>you</u> who are travelling near lightspeed. Everything's relative.

Hope that made some sense.

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I am; therefore I think.

 

[Bowser]

Boris,

Thank you for your efforts. It is very fine and good, but I'm still chewing on your previous statement:

"Time flows differently for objects that move differently, but that merely underscores the fallibility of the original (and primitive) concept of "time" as we used to know it."

Tenderize that statement by explaining our new concept of time. I understand it as being a progression of events. ...? Although it was very good, your last post didn't define that concept for me.

Just to test the notion that we are in agreement:

<hr>
I'm traveling half the speed of light through a vacuum.

Traveling at the speed of light from the opposite direction is another mad fellow.

With clock in one hand and a ruler in the other, I prepare to measure the speed of my passing partner.

Since I'm racing at 93,ooo mps and my buddy is burning the waves at 186,ooo mps, the sum of his passing speed should be 279,ooo mps.

"Damn! The speed of light is absolute!" His passing speed is only 186,ooo mps.

Go figure.

To accommodate this curiosity, I must assume that my experience of "time" has been altered? The passage of events have slowed? Or maybe my ruler is longer? Or maybe both?

<hr>


"...that the first observer is contracted along the line of motion, and experiences a slowdown in time."

The contraction doesn't make sense to me. It would suggest that two of the measurements of concern (time and distance) are shortened, presenting a time passage which is faster rather than slower... Whoops! That's from the outside observers perspective. But wait, if time is slowing down for the observer traveling at or near the speed of light, wouldn't his ruler be expanded (stretched) along the line of motion. We must accommodate the slowing of time relative to his observations and his rulers...right?

What I question here is the possibility that we can observe reality exhibiting two opposing (contradicting) states at the (forgive the following) same time. Whether that is truly possible is another argument, but it does suggest the existence of such a thing--it's much like having in your hand a square-circle. <img src = "http://www.exosci.com/ubb/icons/icon10.gif">

Anyway, Boris, I thank you for your last post.

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It's all very large.

[This message has been edited by Bowser (edited January 04, 2001).]

 

[Bowser]

"What's the difference between "discovering" God's Law, as such, and "looking it up" in a dusty book in the nightstand?"

I can only assume that the dusty book provides directions or answers where some people can't find their own.

People use books for authoritative reference for many reasons. Some people read their news paper as if it were the truth. <img src = "http://www.exosci.com/ubb/icons/icon10.gif">



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It's all very large.

 

[Tiassa]

Bowser--

Wow ... if I agree with you ... does this mean we're gay? (I'll stop the joke there )

(Really, it's rare that I agree with you so wholeheartedly.)

thanx,
Tiassa

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Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.--Denis Diderot

 

[Bowser]

"Wow ... if I agree with you ... does this mean we're gay? (I'll stop the joke there)."

Hmm. I attain more pleasure when we disagree. Agreement is more of an anti-climax. Either way, it doesn't feel erotic to me. <img src = "http://www.exosci.com/ubb/icons/icon10.gif">

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It's all very large.

 

[Boris]

Bowser,

Paradigm shifts are always strenuous business.

Tenderize that statement by explaining our new concept of time. I understand it as being a progression of events. ...?

One way to describe time has indeed been as a "progression". However, what's missing in such a description is two concepts: rate and relativity. The rate at which events progress has been shown not to be absolute, but relative. That's the new concept of time.

Since I'm racing at 93,ooo mps and my buddy is burning the waves at 186,ooo mps, the sum of his passing speed should be 279,ooo mps.

Yes and no. The 279,000 figure is computed by a third guy, who is "standing still". Which could never happen anyway, since your buddy would have to be a photon of light to travel that fast (matter can never reach lightspeed without being converted into light.) It does not represent an actual velocity of any single object. To this stationary guy, neither of you can exceed the speed of light.

To you, it looks like the "stationary" guy is racing toward you at 93,000 mps. While your "buddy" the photon is still travelling toward you at 186,000 mps. For your buddy the photon, none of it looks like anything at all, since for a photon time is not defined.

To accommodate this curiosity, I must assume that my experience of "time" has been altered? The passage of events have slowed? Or maybe my ruler is longer? Or maybe both?

See what religion gets you? You are still thinking in absolutes. (That was a cheap shot, of course. Nobody has an easy time digesting relativity.)

Your experience of time has not been altered, because to be "altered" it must be altered from an absolute point of view. To other observers who are not moving as you are, your time differs from their time (and to you, their time differs from your time in perfect mirror symmetry).

"...that the first observer is contracted along the line of motion, and experiences a slowdown in time."

The contraction doesn't make sense to me. ...

Wellcome to physics.

Actually, I think you misunderstood me. For example, I say that according to Alice (who is "stationary" and is performing the measurement), Bob (who is "moving" relative to Alice) is contracted. That simply means that when Alice measures Bob's length, she finds it shorter than when Bob is not "moving". If Bob was to perform the same measurement on Alice, he would find that it is Alice who "shrank" as compared to when she is not "moving". Similarly Alice will observe that Bob's clock is running slow, while Bob observes that Alice's clock is running slow.

What I question here is the possibility that we can observe reality exhibiting two opposing (contradicting) states at the (forgive the following) same time.

It's a good start -- to question, that is. Too bad your questioning seems only confined to physics...but I digress.

There is no contradiction or opposition. The theory is derived mathematically from its premises, and the argument is flawless. If there were to be a contradiction in the theory's conclusions, then it can only stem from a contradiction in the premises. And the premises are pretty hard to dispute: the principle of equivalence, the constancy of light's velocity in vacuum.

By the way, time dilation and length contraction are real. That is, they have been verified experimentally many times. For example, a precise atomic clock has been flown around the world in a jet, and when compared to an identical clock on the ground it was slow by the amount (within error margins) predicted by general relativity. As another example, in orbital particle accelerators the curvature of the track has to be matched to the curvature "perceived" by a particle travelling at near lightspeed; if it weren't for corrections provided by general relativity, a majority of modern particle accelerators would have never worked.

Now, don't take it as if I was myself convinced that the picture of space and time painted by general relativity is the true representation of what's going on. All I'm accepting is that the <u>model</u> is by far superior to the models we have had before Einstein. And that's the way it is. Life isn't the only thing that evolves, you know (unless we define communicable knowledge as a form of life...)

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I am; therefore I think.

 

[Cris]

Many years ago I completed a physics course with the British Open University. They had produced a superb animated film demonstrating relativity. For a brief transitory moment I remember being able to grasp the whole of the relativity argument.

Boris, I'm following your lecture closely but I'm not sure I'm gaining ground. I will try harder. Don't give up.

Cris

 

[Tiassa]

Can I simplify my two cents on time?

Regarding relativity: If it was possible to "stand" on the "surface" of a black hole, the following would, by theory, apply-- Joe and Sara calibrate two stopwatches so that they are exactly synchronized. Sara remains in orbit beyond the event horizon of the black hole, and Joe "descends" to the "surface" of the black hole. Even if they start their stopwatches at the same time, Joe will experience a longer period, yet sense the same number of seconds. Sara will sense the same number of seconds over a shorter period. To exaggerate, when Joe lands on the black hole, Sara is his high school sweetheart. When he emerges, perhaps a few minutes later, he is still Joe, age 17 or whatever. Sara is probably dead of old age.

Accepting something about Heisenberg, though it's not a direct application: you cannot observe this process from within the affected system. If we could take the God's-eye view of it, and all such things be available to us, we could watch and count, and if we fixed on Joe, it would appear to the outside perspective that Sara's aging process sped up; if we choose Sara as our reference, Joe ages much slower. But the grand stopwatch agrees that Joe only expereinced a couple of minutes away.

This is apparently demonstrable with high-quality chronometers at severe altitude differences. Gravity is a force, and can be considered, from some accellerating perspectives, to be resistance. Certain processes must occur for time to pass; gravity, resisting these processes, essentially slows them down. When we take all of the gravity of a sun, or of Jupiter, or whatever, and pack it into a cubic mile, that's a lot of resistance to the other natural processes.

Given the relationship of all of this to lightspeed, I should dredge up two recent innovations: the Bose-Einstein Condensate, which can have the effect of slowing lightspeed (to below 40 km/h), and a cesium chamber, which I may have read about here at Exosci, which is reported to cause lightspeed to violate itself senseless (the photon is reported to have exited the chamber before it entered, which makes some sense to me but I'm hoping someone else is better with the idea than I am).

Anyway, two cents, some blithering, and so forth

thanx,
Tiassa

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Whether God exists or does not exist, He has come to rank among the most sublime and useless truths.--Denis Diderot

 

[Boris]

A few comments on Tiassa's last post:

Gravity is a force, and can be considered, from some accellerating perspectives, to be resistance. Certain processes must occur for time to pass; gravity, resisting these processes, essentially slows them down. When we take all of the gravity of a sun, or of Jupiter, or whatever, and pack it into a cubic mile, that's a lot of resistance to the other natural processes.

Gravity indeed slows time, according to general relativity. But not because it's a force. In fact, under general relativity gravity is not a force, a field, or any kind of influence. It is merely a distortion in spacetime. A distortion such that where it it positive, time is slowed down while space is crunched up, and where it's negative time is sped up and space is dilated (although nobody has yet observed antigravity, nor does it necessarily have to exist.)

If you think of spacetime as a four-dimensional membrane (imagine that), then gravity is three-dimensional streaks of "density" twisting along the membrane. Everything in the universe is traveling along the membrane (here, even if you sit "absolutely" still, you are still traveling -- because you are moving along the dimension of time.) If you imagine the membrane like a prism, and us like photons of light passing through that prism, then it becomes easier to digest (at least for me) the fact that we always choose the path of least resistance, so to say. That is, we get from point A on the membrane to point B while traversing the shortest possible "interval" along the membrane. In the lingo of spacetime intervals, it costs more to move against a gravitational gradient, so that's why the "geodesics" (lines of shortest distance) in spacetime tend to point inward toward the loci of gravitational distortion. Since everything in the universe moves along geodesics, we are constantly trying to reach the center of our gravitational well. Of course, the electromagnetic repulsion of matter is preventing us from doing so, and it is that repulsion that we feel as the "force" of gravity, or in other words "weight".

As a more intuitive way to see that you are wrong about the "force" of gravity meddling with time, imagine a hollow spherical cavern at the center of the Earth. If you put an object dab smack in the center of that covern, the object will not feel any "force" -- it will rest at the focus of the gravitational well. Small deviations from the center will result in only a very weak restoring "force" (much weaker than the gravity at the Earth's surface). Yet, at that central spot the slowdown in time is the most extreme. So you see, the "force" is not what affects time; rather the force is a manifestation of something yet more fundamental -- which under Einstein's general relativity is represented by a differential geometric entity called a manifold, and in layman's terms is called spacetime.

Given the relationship of all of this to lightspeed, I should dredge up two recent innovations: the Bose-Einstein Condensate, which can have the effect of slowing lightspeed (to below 40 km/h), and a cesium chamber, which I may have read about here at Exosci, which is reported to cause lightspeed to violate itself senseless (the photon is reported to have exited the chamber before it entered, which makes some sense to me but I'm hoping someone else is better with the idea than I am).

These phenomena are indeed curious, but they have nothing to do with the relativistic speed of light in vacuum. Notice that it is the speed of light <u>in vacuum</u> that is the cosmic speed limit. In the presense of matter, light slows down due to electromagnetic quantum interactions. For example, it is because of this slowdown that prisms and lenses bend light. The BEC is an extreme demonstration of such slowdown, where the quantum interactions are honed and focused to an unusually high intensity. The cesium trick bypasses the limitations on light speed normally imposed by the cesium gas -- but even though the light "exits the chamber before it enters", it still does not cross the length of the chamber faster than it would cross the same length of empty space.

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I am; therefore I think.

 

[Emerald]

Jehovah,

Scatological speculation aside, did you have a point to make regarding the Limitations of Atheism? That's the topic of this thread, in case you were wondering. Just curious...

Emerald

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An ye harm none, do what ye will.

 

[Bowser]

"...did you have a point to make regarding the Limitations of Atheism."

Screw Atheism! Let's talk more physics! This has been fun. Boris, I appreciate your understanding of such things.

Another question:

"according to Alice (who is "stationary" and is performing the measurement), Bob (who is "moving" relative to Alice) is contracted. That simply means that when Alice measures Bob's length, she finds it shorter than when Bob is not "moving". If Bob was to perform the same measurement on Alice, he would find that it is Alice who "shrank" as compared to when she is not "moving". Similarly Alice will observe that Bob's clock is running slow, while Bob observes that Alice's clock is running slow.
"

Wouldn't this negate both observations when Bob and Alice returned to the same frame of reference? Would Bob's clock be behind Alice's clock, or would Alice's clock be behind Bob's clock. Since there is no absolute reference point, and since each observes the other as the object in motion, would both clocks show the same time when our pair came together?



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It's all very large.

 

[Emerald]

Screw Atheism! Let's talk more physics! This has been fun. Boris, I appreciate your understanding of such things.

Bowser,

*Sigh* Yes, but later on when I try to reference Boris's explanation on relativity, or Jehovah's inane ramblings on spacetime (of course, I'm not certain why I would ever want to do such a thing), I would never think to look on the 5th page of the "Limitations of Atheism" thread for it (and I might add that the search engine has proven itself next to worthless time and time again).

Perhaps a new topic would be in order? Just a thought...

Emerald

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An ye harm none, do what ye will.

 

[Cris]

I have to agree with Emerald. We should have moved or should move the relativity discusion to one of the science forums. But it is probably too late now. So I also agree with Bowser, while we have Boris we should suck out of him all that we can, it's just too good to lose. And Boris, I suspect you enjoy an appreciative audience, right?

And yup, why doesn't the search engine function correctly anymore? I spent 30 minutes yeastetday searching for a reference and it simply gave me incorrect threads. Emerald, it is a pity but I suspect we will have to copy and paste these posts directly to our own hard drives.

Jehovah is best ignored for now unless he ever makes a rational post - doesn't seem likly based on the evidence so far.

 

[Boris]

I've realized a long time ago how horribly out of place this physics discussion is, but since the discussion concerning Atheism has pretty much ceased, we might as well just go with the flow. Anyway, it is indeed fun trying to explain thorny-crazy mathematical things without going into the actual mathematics; it's a challenge of sorts.

Wouldn't this negate both observations when Bob and Alice returned to the same frame of reference? Would Bob's clock be behind Alice's clock, or would Alice's clock be behind Bob's clock.

Bowser, you should have been a scientist. You ask all the right questions, in just the right order!

Among other things, you've just hit on the other thorny issue in relativity -- namely, the infamous "relativity of simultaneity". To put it plainly, a relativistic perspective reveals that there is no such thing as two events happening <u>simultaneously</u>. Intuitively, you can grasp this if you realize that there is no such thing as an absolute frame of reference. Therefore, there is no such thing as absolutly simultaneous events, because even if according to reference frame A event 1 happens simultaneously with event 2, a reference frame B can be constructed according to which event 1 happens before event 2, and similarly with a reference frame C according to which event 2 happened before event 1. Of course, this is only true if the two events are "spacelike separated" -- meaning they are not causally connected (so causality is preserved even in a relativistic framework). The phrase "spacelike separation" means that the time interval between the two events as observed by an inertial observer is shorter than that required for light to traverse the distance between the two events.

With this in mind, immediate problems with your proposal surface. First of all, it becomes impossible for Alice and Bob to have exactly synchronized clocks as long as they are in different reference frames. Secondly, it becomes impossible for both Alice and Bob to synchronously alter their velocities so as to enter the same reference frame.

But such difficulties can be arguably bypassed if we construct the following scenario: Alice and Bob are initially at rest with respect to each other, and "touch" their clocks together so as to synchronize the time with a minimum of discrepancy. Then they accelerate along mutually distinct trajectories to enter distinct reference frames. After spending some time in those reference frames, they reproduce an inverse of the acceleration sequence to bring themselves back together into the same reference frame, and compare their clocks. In this situation, if the maneuvers were exactly synchronized, and the trajectories mirrored each other in everything except direction, then the clocks will appear to be exactly synchronized at the end of the experience (although they will appear to be out of sync during the experiment.)

With a slight variation on this experiment, we can construct the "Twin Paradox". The requisite variation is that the acceleration profiles of Alice and Bob be sufficiently distinct -- meaning that you cannot take Alice's acceleration history, cut it in pieces, rearrange the pieces, join them together and get Bob's acceleration history. As a simple example, consider a spaceship departing a planet. Alice is on the planet, while Bob is in the spaceship. Bob accelerates away from Alice to near lightspeed, spends some time in-flight, reverses his engines, returns to his planet of origin and decelerates to match its reference frame. Bob discovers that Alice is long dead, and that time on his planet of origin has leaped and bounded ahead of his time. Here, the assymetry in the clocks at the end of the experiment reflects the assymetry in the trajectories. The reason it is Bob's clock that must be considered slower than "normal" (as opposed to considering the planet's clock faster than normal), is because it is Bob who did all the accelerating and decelerating. The planet did not feel the forces of acceleration; Bob's spaceship did. So for those brief moments that Bob was accelerating, he in effect pulled himself out of the inertial universe and permanently put himself out of sync with everything else that wasn't acceleraing.

So that's about it. Two things to mention here is that: 1) all of this counterintuitive relativistic weirdness is only counterintuitive and weird because it manifests itself only at extremely high speeds and energies, which we never experience in ordinary life; lack of experience makes the knowledge and comprehension of such effects difficult; 2) relativity stipulates that light is the only valid measuring stick in the universe. That is, if you want to measure a distance to some object, you must bounce a photon off that object, and calculate the distance based on the roundtrip time for the light pulse. All of the mathematical derivations of relativity are structured around this concept of using light beams to measure everything. Not that this is particularly relevant to any of the wishy-washy plain-english descriptions I have provided, but it's a nice piece of trivia to associate with relativity.

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I am; therefore I think.

[This message has been edited by Boris (edited January 08, 2001).]

 

[Cris]

So what is it about light that gives it this unique property? This is basic I guess, but why can't light travel faster or slower than it does?

 

[Boris]

Cris,

Excellent question. I keep asking it myself. The obvious (though not satisfying) "answer" is that the constancy of light's velocity is what we observe. It just is, in other words. From this perspective, asking why the velocity of light is exactly what it is and not 1 mps faster or slower is sort of like asking why the amount of energy in the universe is exactly what it is, and not one erg more or less. It's almost as silly as asking such questions as, "why me?" -- knowing full well that if it happened to someone else the very same question would still arise. In the same vein, no matter what the velocity of light could be, the question of why it's that particular figure will stand.

That light's speed is constant regardless of reference frame is an empirical fact. As to where the exact speed comes from -- that's a mystery. Perhaps one day we'll know. Or not.

But if you think about it, lightspeed is intimately connected to many other things. After all, light is just a travelling disturbance in the electromagnetic field -- and as such it defines the rate of information propagation within that field. This means that whenever matter interacts electromagnetically (or indeed traverses a trajectory through spacetime), light speed comes into play. The puzzling thing about light speed is that apparently other fields besides the electromagnetic obey the same limit. Even gravitational distortions travel at light speed, according to general relativity. Which is one of the many tantalizing clues leading one to surmise that perhaps all of the "fields" are really different faces of one and the same thing. In other words, lightspeed (among many other things) contains in it a gleam of Grand Unified Theory.

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I am; therefore I think.

 

[Bowser]

"The puzzling thing about light speed is that apparently other fields besides the electromagnetic obey the same limit. Even gravitational distortions travel at light speed, according to general relativity. Which is one of the many tantalizing clues leading one to surmise that perhaps all of the "fields" are really different faces of one and the same thing. In other words, lightspeed (among many other things) contains in it a gleam of Grand Unified Theory."

That was a tasty new nugget of thought (new for me). Thank you. See, Emerald, there is value in these diversions from the main topic. Let's keep rolling the dice until we go bust...

So, Boris, I get this feeling that there is a standing medium of some sort, a medium much like an ether. Are there any revised theories that breath new life into that old idea?

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It's all very large.



[This message has been edited by Bowser (edited January 08, 2001).]

 

[Boris]

Well, there obviously is some kind of medium. Without a medium, there is no sense in talking about things like fields and manifolds. But the medium is not "ether" in the classical sense.

The old idea of ether was that it was a sort of all-permeating liquid or gas that fills up the universe. This presupposes a static absolute coordinate system tied to the ether. It was a great idea in the days before experiments began to show hints of cracks in it. Einstein's analysis finished it off.

My feeling is that, whatever the "medium" is, it cannot be described in terms of a substance that fills some n-dimensional volume. Apparently, the "medium" is both the substance <u>and</u> the volume. It describes and defines its own number of dimensions and coordinate axes, which do not exist independently from it. And it's vastly more complex than ether, because it ultimately gives rise not only to the various kinds of fields, but also to matter itself (including any potential forms of matter we have not discovered yet...) -- and it has to be the medium that defines the rules according to which matter converts to energy and vice versa. That's little more than my personal gut feel about this thing, so don't think any of my ideas just described are authoritative.

So welcome to the great unknown. Or at least to one of its many faces...

P.S. Theories abound, as always. M-theory is a well-known example (but in my view still a far cry -- because it separates its membranes from their dimensions, failing to explain where the dimensions come from or what the membranes are made of.) Trouble is, you never know which one of the many theories (if any) is going to hit the jackpot. Or even a fraction of the jackpot.

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I am; therefore I think.

[This message has been edited by Boris (edited January 08, 2001).]