LOBES OF THE BRAIN

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Some opening thoughts about Quantum Mechanics

This is really just a collection of the things scribbled on the pieces of paper shoved inside of my copy of the Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene. I have no idea whether any of it is of any value or what but I wanted to put it up here as something I can come back to and take pieces of and expand on...


Questions: Gravity described as a curvature in space/time but why do objects roll “down” the curve toward the earth...? Close to the Earth or any object the curvature would become greater lessening as you move away from the object so the second object of lesser mass would follow the more dramatic curvature??

In string theory: are subatomic particles ect. vibrating strings moving through space? Or vibrations moving along/between strings which themselves are staying locationaly fixed in space? Are the strings themselves the constituent basis of space itself?

What force does the curvature of space/time exert on an object? None, the object and space are not pushing against one another there simply is no other elsewhere for the object to be... but doesn't the idea of curvature imply a dimension through which the space is curving? The earth is only edgeless in 2 dimensions we can move along the surface forever and arrive back at our beginning but if we blast off the surface in a rocket or dig down we will not be brought back to our beginning point. The same would be true of a 3D manifold universe which curves back on itself, this would require a 4th dimension through which the curve is made, just because we currently cannot move in or perceive this 4th dimension does not remove it from the Universe under discussion nor does it mean that our technological abilities will not someday progress to the point that we will be able to interact with the 4th dimension. On the contradictory side any theory which requires the existence of imperceptible extra dimensions to work properly cannot be held to be true, until the existence of such dimensions has been proven empirically and not merely by mathematical equations... in this way we can say that as our current understanding of the universe stands it would be ridiculous to say it is spatially finite but once a fourth dimension is proven to exist we would need to show how that dimension is curved back upon itself which might require a 5th etc. etc. although perhaps the 4th is curved through one or more of the known dimensions, but if this is possible why would it not be possible for the three known dimensions to curve back upon themselves through one another removing the need for the 4th in the first place...

Quantum Entanglement (I think): What if a particle's spin changes according to a pattern such that at any given point in time rotation around a randomly chosen axis is the same... I am not entirely sure what I mean by this as I don't have a clear reference back to what brought this thought up....

The expansion of space might be going on constantly at all points but at the nano-meter scale it is so small it cannot be effectively measured but summed up over distances at the light-year scale they become great, such that individual particles are being pulled apart but it can't be measured where as galaxies are being pulled away from each other at great speed. (This I think is intended to respond to the problem of explaining the source of expansion) There might also be something to be said for the fact that at the quantum scale or even the everyday scale there are forces sufficient to pull matter back in upon itself countering the internal expansion of space particles and objects are experiencing on the galactic scale such forces do not exist or are insufficient to counter the expansion of space and so we are able to measure and perceive the expansion...

Our horizon expands at the speed of light, but if space itself were to expand at a rate faster than light, not impossible as nothing would be moving within space faster than light, areas once within the horizon would be moved beyond it and we would not have any proof of their ever existing...

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