Lorentz question

[Slasher]

Sitting around scratching my nuts recently I was idly toying with those equations (in concert with Jimmy Maxwell's) and wondered: is it possible to have a viable 'other' Universe where Time is the Constant, and Space and Causality are the variables? That is to say, where Time doesn't give a crap about Space nor the Speed of Causality (e.g. Light).

The more I did some (very unwarranted) transpositions the more it looks like it's mathematically possible, though I have this nagging thought I might be missing something (possibly with Quantum).

Just for some background info:





All highly geeky I know, but can anyone way smarter than me in this make a comment?

Thanks.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Try to answer the question yourself by thinking on the following lines:
What are the key factor(s) necessary for change (of anything).
Consider what happens at the extremes of space, time and causality (beginnings, ends, centre, edge, etc) for our own universe
Then consider how that would or wouldn't work in your newly-posited universe.

Available (intermittently) for comments on your intermediate thoughts and questions.

[Slasher]

Thanks for your reply Fox. As it is I went on a geek site and got some replies. Most say the Quantum involved doesn't preclude Time over Causality, but Space would be fixed 4 dimensionally. This means Time would be the same anywhere and Causality would be so variable that Events would be chaotic at all fixed reference frames. But the essential point is that yes such a Universe could exist according to some smart boffins there.

Trying to somehow envisage it is a problem. I think only using a tesseract model could get close.

[Slasher]

How Time could be a Constant tesseractically in our Universe:





I'm not an advocate of Absolute time as it's meaningless in our Universe, but this would explain how Events can occur simultaneously (i.e. all spotlights on) if Causality was variable.

[k3k3]

Just search for the old tapes of the 60s TV series "The Time Tunnel" and all will be revealed ;-)

[TheGreenGoblin]

is it possible to have a viable 'other' Universe where Time is the Constant, and Space and Causality are the variables? That is to say, where Time doesn't give a crap about Space nor the Speed of Causality (e.g. Light).

Would you throw away the whole of, or simply alter, special relativity and try and do what this young physicist did in his provocative and speculative layman's book.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Faster-Than-Sp ... 0099428083

Magueijo posited a variable speed of light in a vacuum in his book, which I bought, read and then waited while listening to cicadas as his associated scientific paper disappeared, but not entirely without trace?

New varying speed of light theories - Joao Magueijo

Captain, as Paul Dirac said, as also used by Magueijo in posting his thesis ...

One field of work in which there has been too much speculation is cosmology. There are very few hard facts to go on, but theoretical workers have been busy constructing various
models for the universe, based on any assumptions that they fancy. These models are probably all wrong. It is usually assumed that the laws of nature have always been the same
as they are now. There is no justification for this. The laws may be changing, and in particular quantities which are considered to be constants of nature may be varying with cosmological time. Such variations would completely upset the model makers.

And in this spirit I think your provocative questions are well worth considering but don't particularly care for the possible outcomes if such a universe is possible.

I take it you aren't proposing a reversion to a Newtonian universe where, for intents and purposes, time is a constant with all the problems that entails at quantum dimensions or at very great distances or speeds, or in different frames of reference, gravitational fields etc. or would you simply exclude the speed of light when considering causality as some others have tried to do. All in all it would make for a chaotic universe and bend that seemingly straight arrow of time and would upset me as I love the beauty of the Minkowski space time diagram.

What about mass and gravity? The questions are endless...

An interesting thread which has prompted me to try and think, for what that is worth, and I now revert to a reminder how we came to be where we are with the current model...

Relativistic - Speed of Light and Einstein

[TheGreenGoblin]

or would you simply exclude the speed of light when considering causality as some others have tried to do.

Space Time has no time dimension

PS - Those PBS science videos are very good and that Aussie (I guess? Although New Zealanders tend to be more cerebral ) presenter particularly good... an "electric monkey" I love it!

Matt O'Dowd - One lucid dude...

like this lucid chap...

Nick Lucid - The Science Asylum

[TheGreenGoblin]

See what Nick Lucid has to say about the event horizon (and by implication the speed of light) and causality in this little lesson... (man, every school in the world needs a Nick Lucid).

[TheGreenGoblin]

[TheGreenGoblin]

Remember that time is what stops everything happening at once and that an infinite speed of light would require infinite energy and effectively make matter and mass improbable. Cochrane pointed that out to me today. Who can argue with the inventor of the warp drive?

"Infinity and zero, namely infinite nothing, are bad places to be when doing the maths. And both concepts are common denominators in trouble when looking at the physics."

Cochrane was rather inebriated when he said that but it made sense to me.

[Slasher]

I'll have to get back to you Gob. I've just been hit with a ton of sim work for the next 10 days. See TRABB.

[TheGreenGoblin]

I'll have to get back to you Gob. I've just been hit with a ton of sim work for the next 10 days. See TRABB.

Good for the wallet and good for you. Nobody ever got rich as an amateur dabbler in physics on an aviation related forum!

[TheGreenGoblin]

While Captain Slasher sets up ever more fiendish failure scenarios to test his trainee pilots' mettle in the simulator, I noticed this interesting news for this who might find cosmic extremes like black holes and neutron stars interesting.

A team of astronomers from West Virginia University claim they’ve discovered the most massive neutron star to date, packing in more than double the mass of the Sun into a sphere that’s only 15 miles across.

Neutron stars are directly observable from Earth mostly in pulsar form — radiating neutron stars that emit powerful radio waves — and are the densest observable objects in the universe. And this is the heaviest yet....

To figure out its mass, the researchers measured how much gravity is warped around it from a nearby companion star. The result: a tiny sugar-cube’s worth would weigh 100 million tons on Earth, or the weight of every single human on Earth combined.

<<In fact that is an underestimate of the combined weight of the world's population, some sources claim it is over 300 million tons assuming a total of 7.7 billion souls averagely weighing 105 pounds, male and female of all ages>>

Biggest to date?

For those who are into astronomy here is the detailed technical report.

Relativistic Shapiro delay measurements of an extremely massive millisecond pulsar