X-Message-Number: 19154 Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 09:53:29 -0400 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #19150 - #19152 Hi everyone! Particularly since Lee Corbin DID understand what I was saying, I think I should have said it a little differently. The phrase about just what the meaning of "speed" was here should have been put first in my message. And yes, seen from that perspective we can think of a gravitational lens as working the same as a glass lens: light slows down in both, hence its path bends. Sure, the reasons for this effect differ, but both raise issues about just what is meant by "speed"... of light or anything else. As for the lack of advance in physics, I think that is false, even when we consider fundamental physics. There is a lot of theoretical work going on right now with the notion that the universe may be full, not of pointlike gravitational anomalies, but ones that spread out in 2 dimensions. Why is this progress? Because virtually all physicists would agree that they do not yet have a theory which includes both quantum mechanics and relativity, and the development of such a theory has turned out to be very hard. It is a requirement of such a theory, as a physical theory, that there be ways of testing it. One recent set of ideas that got theorists interested did make more of a connection, but also suggested that rather than having a singularity, "black holes" would have a center region with a very high curvature. The singularities of general relativity simply never occurred. You have to add more dimensions to the Universe for these ideas to work, however. These dimensions exist, but with such high curvature that basically they wind around to themselves without becoming so obviously significant as the 3 we generally experience. Once I wrote an article for ANALOG about the current state of such theories. It's now several years later and things have moved on a lot. I might do another one: Stan wondered if readers could take the last one, but they all seemed quite happy with it. I was going to write a sequel but by now that planned sequel would be way out of date. Just remember: they're still working, and no one claims we have a solution for the problem (combining relativity and quantum mechanics). And a REAL solution would have experiments to support it. I am optimistic that it will someday be solved, and we'll see both Heisenberg and Einstein as early precursors, just like we now see Newton. Do I believe we suffer from an inability to go further? Not at all. The way to get such inability is to decide that we simply can't do it, not to worry about how good our brains are. And we're all seeing one case of just that: think what WE think about death rather than what most people think. Best wishes and long long life for all, Thomas Donaldson PS: A few years ago an actual experiment on these theories was suggested in NATURE. The experiment may well have failed, but that criticises the theories. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=19154