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Boof-head

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I've been an IS 'man' for quite a while. I didn't realise this was the case, at least not in a definitive sense, until I actually went and studied it; though I had previously been engaged in a bit of home-science - that art of building electronic circuits, digital logic, breadboarding - I was a member of a class of geeks who join "Radio clubs" and so on.

 

So anyway, after some years of learning the art of programming; how a modern computer is structured; various kinds of language; databases and storage schemes; networking and communications, I got a fairly general kind of 'computer education', and I've picked up some more languages and extended my grasp of computing into the functional, OO, and list paradigms. It has become apparent that, given a digital computer built out of Boolean logic gates, an arbitrarily complex virtual system (machine) can be constructed 'on' it because the underlying logical structure is general enough and sufficiently universal, that any such a reasonable computing system might be 'built' using it.

 

This is congruent with the development of increasingly complex and arbitrary physical theories: start with a fundamental, irreducible universal logic (say, the logic of voltages and currents) and construct virtual 'machines', or logical devices (theories) that conform to this underlying structure - a machine algebra. Modeling a physical theory on such a computer, is using a set of fundamental algebraic functions, at the machine-level, to construct a realistic virtual set of functions, which can be used to construct other functions, and so on. The paradigm is: build a more complex logic starting with a fundamental, irreducible logic, then compose a more abstract logic from that, and on 'up'.

At any stage, the meta-logic is always reducible to a set of fundamental operations, at the machine-level, the virtual logics are in that sense, meta-languages.

 

Physical theories use a language which is also (meant to be) in the same domain; if you want to write a program, you use a known language - it's easier than inventing your own, you can expect that other programmers will understand it. It's like writing and playing music, where the 'tunes' are all formulas (functions) that correspond to an accepted notation.

 

Now, lots of people can 'bash out' a tune on a musical instrument, and they don't see a need to learn how to read (or write) the notation. Music notation is a simple kind of representative algebra, developed over centuries and simplified to the modern representation used today. Physical theories convey certain ideas, by using a similar method - notation - but the thing is, notation, musical notation say, will not convey ideas about harmony and melody, about 'why' the notation works, and moreover, why music 'works', why a given melody sounds 'right' but another sounds 'wrong', etc.

 

The nuances of physical theories are best supported by direct experience of the phenomena they describe, just as the nuances of music are, by listening to it - you listen to it when you play it, but anyone can hear music, just as anyone can see a laser beam on a screen, or waves in a wave-tank, etc.

 

So it's about sticking to accepted notation, so that 'others' will be able to read and understand (that is, play the tune). These days, some of the accepted meaning, the interpretation, is being 'abused'; we now consider certain well-understood physical processes might not be as well-understood as we think, so we have to distort meanings, we are obliged to stretch certain meanings (perhaps beyond their original intent).

 

For instance, we understand 'rhythm', and we understand it's connected to a linear 'flow' of regular, monotonic time. These days, the concept of 'real, physical' time is under serious review. For starters, time is not 'physical', we can't store it, or send it somewhere. We need to step beyond the fixed, invariable perception of flow of time, and perhaps consider a logic of time, generators, inverters, gates; these operators cannot be 'channels with memory' since there isn't anything to remember. But we still have to consider time (or times) as some kind of potential; then if the model holds together, although time cannot be a physical, material thing like an atom or a photon, we need some kind of irreducible structure (the machine) that allows the time logic and a time language - we should be able to build arbitrarily complex 'switching networks' in it, and design arbitrary meta-languages.

 

See where this is going?

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Not sure where this post is 'going' for you. But for me, your post supports my view that 'time' is nothing more than a 'type of number'.

 

For me, time is the 'enumeration of motion' of things that exists, it is the number of the motion of things that exist in respect to a 'before' and an 'after'. Since motion is always in existence, so then must be time. Time, then is a type of number, time is WHAT IS COUNTED, not that with which we count--time is that which is intermediate between two moments, between two "nows", a 'before' and an 'after'.

 

Since time is a type of number, then, as you post, it can become a part of machine computer programs and stored as a number of WHAT IS COUNTED.

 

I would agree with you that time can be viewed as a type of 'potential'. For me time is a potential between (1) two future 'nows', or (2) a current 'now' and some future 'now'. Time, is the 'potential of enumeration between two nows that each have motion'--time is what is intermediate between the two nows, and is measured only in reference to the extremes of the two nows. The terms {'now', 'before' 'after'} form a set that are within the universal time of that which exist since the beginning of time to the end of time, the same way {'even' and 'odd' and rational, etc.} form a set within number. The 'now' can be said to be 'within universal time' the same way 'odd' can be said to be 'within universal number'.

 

Consider at the moment A you hit piano key D, then next at some moment B you hit key F then at some moment C you hit key E. At each hit of key is a wave formed with motion that can have a math identity given to it--a wavefunction. Only the moment B is within the 'time' of this event, the {set of events of hitting of three keys}, for the "time" of this event A ----> C is that which is intermediate between moments A and C.

 

In relation to memory, time then can become a memory. In above example, between moment A and B is some time, a measure of WHAT IS COUNTED as a number, likewise, between moment B and C, and between moment A and C. In this way time can become a memory, it can be the memory (as a number) of WHAT IS COUNTED say between moment A (hit piano key D) and moment B (hit piano key F). And connected to the memory of this time as a number can be any change in the waveform taken by the piano note D created at the moment A, the evolution of the wavefunction of note D during event A ----> B and the memory of how that wavefunction of note D changes at moment B when it begins to interact with note F until it reaches moment C.

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Time is the spin; in other words, time is moment (as you stated earlier in other post). But, moment is more than a number. It is angular movement, it is force, it is torque, it is counter force; and when you introduce mass, the moment is energy, and that creates potential, and potentials create flow, and linear and curvelinear movement.

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Ok, I'll be a little more discrete about the model.

If we can find something in the universe that isn't 'physical' in the same sense atoms are, can we build something with it? That sounds impossible - how can you 'build' anything out of something 'non-physical', like time?

 

Well, it turns out there is something we've found that looks a lot like something 'unphysical' but which is a connection between physical things - entanglement.

 

If we can build a model that "holds together" (preserves entanglement), can we use it to build arbitrarily complex switching networks - realise a logic of states, an algebraic surface?

 

"channels with memory" exist - since particles 'remember' entangled states; the memories can be erased by thermodynamic interference effects, so that's a big design problem. These channels don't 'store' anything physical however; and they're all one-way, simplex channels.

That is, the 'storage' is the connection itself; just as a photon connects (masslessly) two charged particles. The latter takes 'time' , whereas massless entanglement is time-independent, and so distance-independent. It depends (the signal does) on the thermodynamic noise level in the 'channel'.

 

Where do we go from here, bearing in mind we can 'use' entangled states already - up to a thermodynamic limit and a 'complexity limit' of 3-bit entangled GHZ states?

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What I've seen of the entanglement 'connection' is that we are definitely on it. Einstein had problems accepting that such spooky stuff was possible, but it seems to be a requirement. Photons, the simplest particle since it represents a single 'bit' of energy, are unconcerned about time or distance - we can still detect the ones emitted by the first universal expression, of radiation after the baryogenesis lead to nucleons, and these combined to form atoms with electrons, which released the radiation as they all recombined - it was the first free-field stuff.

 

But a photon with the right frequency can 'flip' the spin of an electron, in a low-energy cavity; a photon is 'spatial extent, with energy', the energy means it has motion. If the motion is 'stopped' in a cavity that has a way to absorb the spatial extent - by imprinting it in three dimensions - then it can be restored by copying the pattern, of a photon (actually a group of them, or a pulse), or modulating a carrier with the signal. This has been done with BECs and lasers.

 

So what's entangled, or superposed on what here? The CMB is 'entangled' with the first moments of the BB, it's a one-way signal, that is everywhere (zipping through anything transparent to microwaves, including you); another signal is the radiation from the furthest objects. When you combine these signals, is anything revealed by superposing them?

 

Electron spin is 'entangled' with photon frequency; a single electron has an entangled momentum, when it goes through a double-slit both ways; it 'decides' to land at a position on a screen, which is entangled with a wavefunction, which all the other electrons that make the same 'decision' are also in.

 

It's a connection that looks like it can divide and merge; a photon can transform into two, each transformation is exactly - up to a limit of exactness - one half of the original; although photon's spin isn't oriented in spacetime, it is oriented in 'entangled-time' since the division halves the spin of the original - photon spin is 1, so it doesn't matter to spacetime, but the twin photons are spin-polarised.

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Copenhagen interpretation denies immediate transfer of information. However, it allows that the measurer can be certain instantaneously that an event will occur at large distance. This is very interesting as far as possibility of life building in distant galaxies, from this location.

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Time is the spin; in other words, time is moment (as you stated earlier in other post). But, moment is more than a number. It is angular movement, it is force, it is torque, it is counter force; and when you introduce mass, the moment is energy, and that creates potential, and potentials create flow, and linear and curvelinear movement.

 

Lawcat--no--you do not state what I said correctly. Time is not spin. Spin is within the moment, time is that which is intermediate between two moments, there is zero spin within time. The spin is the motion of that which exists as entity within each moment that makes discussion of time possible. Of course, opposite is also true, time is that which measures the evolution of the spin. The two, motion and time are a dialectic--the one makes no sense without the other--just the way the universe happens to be. So, at moment A we measure spin X, and at moment B we measure spin Y--time is that which is intermediate between the two measures of spin. Moments (the now, the before, the after) can be within time line, but time line can never be within a moment. Think of the concept 'even' as relates to number line. 'Even' can be within the number line, but the number line is not within 'even'--so it is with moments and time. I do agree with all else you say about moment.

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Ok, I'll be a little more discrete about the model.

If we can find something in the universe that isn't 'physical' in the same sense atoms are, can we build something with it? That sounds impossible - how can you 'build' anything out of something 'non-physical', like time? Well, it turns out there is something we've found that looks a lot like something 'unphysical' but which is a connection between physical things - entanglement.

I would agree that, because time is a type of number, it is not a physical entity. And it would then appear to be true that time can serve to 'entangle' say moment A and moment B by units of Planck time. The smallest quantized unit of time is Planck time. So, between moment A and moment B would be a finite number of Planck time measurements, let us say five has been measured,(tP1,tP2,tP3,tP4,tP5) no more and no less. In the same way, between the numbers 2 and 8 are a finite number of whole numbers (3,4,5,6,7--no more, no less) that serve to 'entangle' the 2 and the 8. In this way I can see how time can be said to entangle. So, your question then seems to be, can we build something out of the five units of Planck time in the above example between moments A and B--(tP1,tP2,tP3,tP4,tP5)--would this be correct understanding of what you are asking ?
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...although photon's spin isn't oriented in spacetime, it is oriented in 'entangled-time' since the division halves the spin of the original...
Here is how I view this comment. First I agree that the photon spin is not within spacetime--there is no spin at all possible within spacetime, since it is a type of number that is intermediate between 'two moments of an existent'--which each existent taking up a space. Thus, all types of spin are outside spacetime, and exist only within the 'moment' the 'now', the only place where things that exist with spin can be found.

 

Now, the photon, because it is a type of a physical entity with spin,is present within the 'moment' and 'now'. So, I do not like your use of the word 'entangled-time' to identify where the photon can be, for me it is better to say the photon is oriented within each 'entangled-moment', which differs fundamentally from 'spacetime'. The term 'entangled-time' implies two times

 

How I view the photon to serve to entangle, is that, within each moment, within each now, is a doing away of the 'before' (the past) and a coming to be of the 'after' (the future)--that is, it is within the 'now' that the past changes into the future, it is a process that is within what we can call the 'entangled-moment' outside spacetime. Thus the function of the photon is to entangle the past of an electron with its future within the moment, and this is why it appears that the photon can take two forms, because it both divides and merges the before and the after of the electron within the moment. And then of course, because there is no time within the moment, and that is where the photon is found, it has no care of time and is not under the influence of time. It does appear that this thread has evolved into very abstract thinking for me--perhaps I view things incorrect.

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Look at 'entangled-time' like this: a photon is timeless, it has a unitary lifetime - it gets 'created' and propagates in some direction, it gets 'annihilated' by being absorbed. The interaction occurs independently of space or time, from the perspective of a photon's energy; it occurs in space and time for observers in relative motion.

The last is only true when (iff) one observer creates the "event" and the other observes, or absorbs the event.

 

Entanglement occurs here because the emitting and absorbing particles become 'entangled' by the transition; this entanglement is determined at the moment of photon creation, and 'vanishes' at the moment of annihilation - these moments are the same for the photon's momentum energy; the worldline 'appears' when the entanglement disappears.

 

With 'randomly created' radiation, like from celestial objects, the entanglement paradigm implies that an electron 'knows' where to send a photon signal; but this is our misunderstanding - light propagates in all directions as a spherically expanding wavefront, so "a photon" is part of the transverse area of such a propagating wavefront; however photons do propagate and they do find another electron or other charged particle eventually (even if it takes forever, remember photons don't care about forever), which suggests a photon 'knows what to do and where to go' all by itself. The universe is intrinsically entangled.

 

Note, this is all a bit of an abuse of meaning - entanglement and superposition are treated differently, and here I am using them in similar ways (horrors!). But they are fundamentally very similar and very quantum-weird.

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