time-discreteness - what might the "sampling frequency" of Nature be?
robert bristow-johnson
wow, this NG got online before i expected it to be!
In article c2hhmd$1smfa6$1...@ID-225840.news.uni-berlin.de, karl robold at
k.ro...@t-online.de wrote on 03/08/2004 18:26:
> suppose you are a piece of continuous 1-dim time and you decide to get slim
> by a low-fat diet. After some time you loose standard topology/metric and
> get really discrete.
> Should that starving be order-preserving, i. e. are there remnants of the
> the standard binary order-relation for life in discreteness absolutly needed
> ?
> Do we need binary order relation at Planck-time scale. Has time-like order
> disappeared and manifests herself only at larger scale >> 10^-44sec?
is the Planck Time the best candidate for the unit of discrete-time? how
about a "rationalized" Planck Time where "G" is replaced by 4*pi*G?
just curious.
r b-j
Ed Fredkin
> wow, this NG got online before i expected it to be!
>
> In article c2hhmd$1smfa6$1...@ID-225840.news.uni-berlin.de, karl robold at
> k.ro...@t-online.de wrote on 03/08/2004 18:26:
>
> > suppose you are a piece of continuous 1-dim time and you decide to get slim
> > by a low-fat diet. After some time you loose standard topology/metric and
> > get really discrete.
> is the Planck Time the best candidate for the unit of discrete-time? how
> about a "rationalized" Planck Time where "G" is replaced by 4*pi*G?
>
> just curious.
>
> r b-j
IMHO, there is no reason to suppose that Planck Length has any special
claim on being the unit of length in a discrete space-time-state
model. It's so small as to leave an enormous gulf of unknown and
unexplored physics. Its derivation is a trick of dimensional analysis
that doesn't make a lot of sense. Finally, the most important thing
missing is necessity. We look to experiments to decide on the likely
scale of discrete length, but 99.9% of the theoretical physics
community doesn't have a clue as to how to do this properly. In
general, experiments allow us to determine the scale of locality.
Locality has to do with the positional information associated with a
particle. It is unreasonably simple-minded to equate locality with
the unit of discrete space or discrete time.
In a discrete space-time-state model of physics such as a simple
cellular automata, a particle need not be a bit, a number or a set of
numbers in one cell. Instead, a particle is more likely to be
something like a little machine embedded in an extended wave
structure. A particle is also associated with a lot of information
(such as momentum). Experimentally, we know that this information is
distributed over a large volume (when a particle passes through a
pinhole, it loses some of that momentum information, but it can retain
its energy information!) The most likely form of momentum information
is a second order representation of positional information in a wave
structure that involves a large volume of cells.
To make a long story short, (and a length constant long) it is likely
that the unit of length in good CA model of physics would be greater
than a fermi, 10^-15 meters. The fact that experiments yield
information that supports locality less than 10^-20 or 10^-22 meters
may have very little direct bearing on the question.
Another clue is the fact that, in some sense, h-bar is huge! It is
almost palpable. h-bar and c are the 2 most fundamental units we have
in quantum mechanics. Since QM and GR are inconsistent, using G along
with c and h to calculate a unit of length can only be done while
holding your nose.
Ed F
Ed Fredkin
"Ed Fredkin" <edfr...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:c91c8a19.0404...@posting.google.com...
> robert bristow-johnson <r...@surfglobal.net> wrote in message
news:<BC90AF6E.A0A0%r...@surfglobal.net>...
> > wow, this NG got online before i expected it to be!
> >
> > In article c2hhmd$1smfa6$1...@ID-225840.news.uni-berlin.de, karl robold at
> > k.ro...@t-online.de wrote on 03/08/2004 18:26:
> >
> > > suppose you are a piece of continuous 1-dim time and you decide to
get slim
> > > by a low-fat diet. After some time you loose standard topology/metric
and
> > > get really discrete.
> Snip
>
> > is the Planck Time the best candidate for the unit of discrete-time?
how
> > about a "rationalized" Planck Time where "G" is replaced by 4*pi*G?
> >
> > just curious.
> >
> > r b-j
Of course, Planck Time=(Plank Length)/c so the following discussion of
Planck Length is also a discussion of Planck Time
Sorry for any possible confusion,
Ed F