Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: Ron Hughes on 14/01/2010 16:10:01
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The 2009 September issue of Discovery magazine has an interesting interview with Roger Penrose. His responses mimic my own view of Quantum Mechanics. The math of QM makes predictions about the probability of an event occurring. Never has it made a prediction with a time and date attached. It considers the standard model to be a success. My own opinion is that the standard model is a disaster. It requires to many hypothetical particles to make it work, any of which if proved to be non-existent makes the whole thing fall apart. Brilliant men and women have spent their entire lives trying to unify gravity with this enormously successful way of looking at the micro world. If the path that QM has taken us down does not lead to a final solution then it is time we re-examine our search for that solution.
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Shouldn't this be in New Theories?
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"Never has it made a prediction with a time and date attached"
Yep, and it makes sense. Not our macroscopic sense though.
But it's a coherent theory, and those "hypothetical particles" you write about is just one main stream theory. If it is wrong it won't destroy the rest we know. It will just mean that we need to puzzle it differently.
QM is correct, and the 'time' you speak of is in reality 'times arrow' which is something different than 'time' to me.
QM works with 'events' that forms up to a 'arrow' macroscopically. By that that I'm not inferring that time is 'events' by the way, just that the 'arrow' disappears down there :)
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It is quite obvious that QM is correct in the method used to make probability predictions. It is also obvious that most of the QM people have bought into the standard model, as the billions invested in particle research suggest. I also believe that the information necessary for the solution resides in you, me and anyone who stays abreast of Physics on a regular basis. The main keys to that solution in my mind, electron positron and proton negatron annihilation produce nothing but radiation, a charged particle accelerated in free space produces radiation perpendicular to the direction of acceleration, the rate at which events occur gets faster( slowing clock) as you move deeper into a gravity well and the fact that we can't tell the difference between gravitational and inertial frames. There is a relationship between radiation and mass,charge,gravity and inertia that so far has eluded us. If most of the brilliant minds in physics were not tied up looking( over the past eighty years) for a particle solution we might already have the answer.
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It's an imperfect world, Ron. We do what we can to make it less imperfect.
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I have given a logical explanation of gravity here, http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=24337.msg271862#msg271862 . It shows the mechanism by which gravity works but what it does not show is why the clock I refer to runs slower. Why does the clock that each particle carries with it start to run slower as it approaches another particle. The answer to that will open a brand new door in physics.
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Ron I agree with you on that one "There is a relationship between radiation and mass,charge,gravity and inertia that so far has eluded us."
As far as if the search for a universal 'original' 'force' I also question it. But that's just because I have definite troubles seeing any 'forces'. Not that we don't have and use them :) But in physics what we see macroscopically becomes indefinable.
To me it's all a matter of scales, macroscopic versus QM versus ?
And what they call 'emergences' begetting new 'properties'.
If that is correct then you can see what we notice immediately as a true reality with 'forces' existing, but somehow connected to another 'reality' at the Quantum mechanic level where everything gets another shape, and where matter and 'times arrow' becomes doubtable, and 'forces' becomes even weirder.
But it won't invalidate the search we already have, just make it a restricted case valid inside certain parameters. And knowledge is knowledge.
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I looked at your post "gravity is strictly a function of time dilation?" Maybe? I've been wondering the same in fact. If time is the 'original'. There is a very strong correlation between matter (mass) and time. When we speak about space we have another view. There we see it as 'expanding' which seems to induce a weaker correlation between it and time. You can see it two ways. Light traveling a distance over an expanding 3D sphere is directly involved in 'space' and exists there. Or light is a direct result of matter and a constant 'c' but does not 'travel' at all which then leaves the field wide open for the question what 'space' really is.
What we do can say about 'space' is that it is directly correlated to 'distance' and that 'distance' is expressed through times arrow. Without distance there will be no times arrow to describe anything in either. Doesn't mean that 'time' is gone though.
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Shouldn't this be in New Theories?
I'm not sure it is a new theory to state that we may need a new theory to explain reality. If we actually come up with something, that would be a new theory. [:)]
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Yor, you bring up a quality question, " What is a photon, what does it look like and how is it formed? ". If we look for events that create photons there are really only two, an annihilation event or where a charged particle is accelerated. Both are interesting but the really intriguing one is an accelerated particle. I'm leaving out the QM explanation because of the possibility it may not be right. A collision between two particles or atoms is an event of interest. A container filled with Helium at stp has atoms that collide all the time. Looking at a single head on collision between two of the atoms. The fields of their respective electrons and protons start to repel (the electrons field more so than the protons) causing each to decelerate. I see each of the fields being squeezed outward and looking somewhat like an egg in a frying pan just before they come to a complete stop and start accelerating in the opposite direction. This distortion of fields could be what we call infrared radiation. This is of course my imagination looking for answers. Even if what I suggest is correct, how does that distortion propagate through space?
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"The fields of their respective electrons and protons start to repel (the electrons field more so than the protons) causing each to decelerate. I see each of the fields being squeezed outward and looking somewhat like an egg in a frying pan just before they come to a complete stop and start accelerating in the opposite direction."
How do you mean this resemble radiation? A lot of 'atoms' bumping into each other and the intersections of their changing field being 'radiation' or?
I'm losing you there :)
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Ron: yes gravity is a function of time dilation, but that time dilation is in turn a function of motion through space, and that in turn is affected by the disposition of stress-energy. Ask most people about general relativity and they'll talk about curved spacetime. But when you read the original Foundation of the Theory of General Relativity, you see that Einstein's actually talking about the equations of motion. We don't need a new theory, general relativity has been very well tested. All we need is for people to properly understand general relativity and read what Einstein actually said instead of accepting the overly-simplified pastiche we see in the popular media.
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Yor, if you take a water balloon squeeze it in your hand then toss it in the air. As you release the balloon it starts oscillating in and out. I see the fields of the two particles doing the same thing as they separate. Since the strength of the fields obey the inverse square law that oscillation would propagate away at C.
far, you are right, Albert never used the word space time but neither did he explain a mechanism for gravity. He gave a description of how gravity effects matter and radiation better than anyone before.
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If I get you right you are separating radiation from the atoms, and see it as atoms oscillating as they 'touch' or 'bounce' against each other. As if it was a kinetic energy released as photons/waves?
But then you have an electromagnetic energy even in one atom also propagating?
One might be correct in arguing that we can't measure it without interacting with it, but I'm not sure on that. We should be able to observe it the same way we observe 'virtual particles' if it has it. And if it does then those oscillations isn't the reason.
I will have to look into that.
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Also you have 'black body radiation' coming in discrete steps.
Why would it do that if radiation is a direct measure of atoms 'bouncing'?
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------Quote----
The new technique is a magnetic version of "inelastic electron tunneling spectroscopy" that the IBM scientists call "single-atom spin-flip spectroscopy." To use it, the scientists first place a magnetic atom on a surface and use a strong magnetic field to orient its spin. Next, they position a non-magnetic tip of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) above the atom being studied. By applying a voltage to the tip, electrons are made to flow, or "tunnel," from the tip to the magnetic atom.
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So here we can say that they are bouncing electrons against that atom, right?
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Most of the time, the electrons pass right through the atom. However, if the voltage is great enough, some electrons can transfer energy to the atom, causing a spin flip and the flow of electrons to increase. By measuring the voltage at which the electron flow begins to increase, the scientists can determine the energy required to flip the spin.
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So the 'atom' do not oscillate at all times then.
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The experiments are conducted within a vacuum and at very low temperature -- less than one degree Kelvin -- to achieve enough resolution to measure the very small energy required to flip the single spin of a lone manganese atom. resolution to measure the very small energy required to flip the single spin of a lone manganese atom. They found the energy, which varies somewhat with the strength of the orienting magnetic field, to be about 0.0005 electron-volts -- some 10,000 times less than the energy of a single molecular hydrogen bond.
IBM's technique is so sensitive that the scientist learned that it takes 6 percent more energy to flip the spin of atoms positioned near the edge of an insulating patch on the surface than for atoms in the middle of the patch. Such detail will be valuable in understanding and engineering the properties of future nanoscale spintronic devices.
---End of quote---
single atom (http://www.physorg.com/news1114.html)
No, I don't think so myself, A atom is a 'composite' of a lot of parts and they all contribute to 'matter', the spin is a electromagnetic factor intrinsic to all atoms, don't you agree?
But it was a new idea to me.
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One could argue that this is not atoms bouncing against each other here, but when they do 'bounce' against each other they meet the 'electron cloud' first too.
Also we have light that "is the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. The effects of this force are easily observable at both the microscopic and macroscopic level, because the photon has no rest mass; this allows for interactions at long distances."
So no, but then again :)
It made me wonder.
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But I'm still not sure if I really understood your idea?
Deem me brain-dead today :)
I think I will stick to the lighter sections now ::))
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far, you are right, Albert never used the word space time but neither did he explain a mechanism for gravity. He gave a description of how gravity effects matter and radiation better than anyone before.
He didn't explain it totally, but he did say that a concentration of stress-energy tied up in the matter of a planet "conditions" the surrounding space, making it non-uniform. See this from his 1920 Leyden address:
"According to this theory the metrical qualities of the continuum of space-time differ in the environment of different points of space-time, and are partly conditioned by the matter existing outside of the territory under consideration. This space-time variability of the reciprocal relations of the standards of space and time, or, perhaps, the recognition of the fact that “empty space” in its physical relation is neither homogeneous nor isotropic, compelling us to describe its state by ten functions (the gravitation potentials gμν), has, I think, finally disposed of the view that space is physically empty."
Hence something like a light beam doesn't travel straight. He even talks about Huygen's principle on page 198 of The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity. See http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath242/kmath242.htm for an interesting article, especially the bit about Einstein and Feynman. Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huygens%E2%80%93Fresnel_principle and note the refraction. There's even modern papers on this sort of thing, see http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0256-307X/25/5/014 and let me know if you want me to send you a copy. Like I was saying the problem isn't so much that we need a new theory, but instead that people don't know what the old theory said. Newspaper and magazine articles tend to start with "Einstein told us that gravity is curved spacetime", totally missing out the gμν that describes the inhomogenous space that causes the curvilinear motion that affects everything so totally we call it curved spacetime. I imagine some textbooks do this too.
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Far, very interesting sites, thank you. I am not trying to overturn present concepts about QM or any other part of physics just to examine some from a different angel. I want to expand on the idea of a collision between two water balloons with the idea that each balloon represents an electric field that extends to infinity via the inverse square law. The balloons have no actual surface and to simplify the discussion we well ignore the positive charge of the protons. As the balloons come into contact they start becoming compressed. When the pressure becomes great enough they stop and reverse their direction of motion. We can see that the fields would be oscillating in and out as they separate. Since the fields extend to infinity via the inverse square law why wouldn't this oscillation propagate through each field at C?
Yor, I disagree about a single atom having radiation. It will produce radiation only if it is accelerated by some force and virtual particles have never been observed.
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Ron - You wrote: "Never has it made a prediction with a time and date attached". I believe this is not the case. Specifically, I believe entangle particles have actually been observed changing state at precisely the time predicted. Which is, conveniently, instantaneously!
PS: I do not believe any field extends to infinity for the simple reason they seem, in general, to travel at c. This seems to be the case even with gravity. Accordingly, any field that had a beginning will always have an age and a size. Accordingly, infinity is by definition excluded.
However, big bang inflation supposes as 'scaler' field that expanded faster then c but only up to a point. Sort of like a compressed spring that jumps out suddenly, but then stops once the full coil compression is released.
This may or may not have relevance to the increasing acceleration of expansion in the universe. Who is to say this is not the result of a similar scalar field that will, at some point, become fully decompressed. At that point the Universe could simply continue expansion/contraction according to normal gravitational forces. This seems reasonable, since increasing acceleration of universal space time automatically supposes a point at which it will expand faster then c. But scalar fields have limits, both in time and distance.
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You are making the assumption that there is no possibility of another explanation for entangled particles. As far as a field reaching infinity, look at Newton's law of gravitation. No matter how big r^2 gets the force between two objects will never reach zero. Also, did you ever notice that when scientists can't explain something they manage to come up with one. I think inflation is one of those cases.
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Okay Ron, I haven't thought of that question before but it's a nice one. Let me look into what I can find on it. As for now it seems that most doing QM would agree with you, but it's strange to me. If you have a quantized electron cloud why shouldn't it radiate? The main reason why seems to be the argument that the atoms then over time would 'evaporate' and cease to exist.
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Electrons are bound to the atomic nucleus by a Coulombic potential. Some people think that due to this Coulombic interaction, the electrons are accelerated and therefore they must radiate continuously. This is wrong (the radiation part that is) because the orbitals (the regions where you can find a certain electron at a certain energy-state) are stable. To see this, just imagine this: when an electron is close to the nucleus, the Coulombic interaction is stronger, yielding a potential energy that is smaller (more negative). However, the kinetic energy of such electrons is bigger. So electrons that are close to the nucleus have a lower potential energy but they move faster in the orbitals, yielding a higher kinetic energy. When looking at electrons that are further away from the nucleus, the potential energy rises and the kinetic energy lowers. In the end, these two effects of energy will yield a stable situation. Therefore, there will be no radiation.
regards
marlon
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This is the best explanation I've seen yet.
But it seems to treat something 'statistical' as something real.
Suddenly this 'cloud' have singular electrons?
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If that is correct your idea starts to make sense to me as we then need a explanation to why radiation can come to be if there is no such thing intrinsic to the atom alone. What is the main stream explanation for how atoms can radiate if so?
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I'm getting a new and horribly strong headache here :)
According to Bohr.
"Bohr said later: "As soon as I saw Balmer's formula, the whole thing was immediately clear to me." What he saw was that the set of allowed frequencies (proportional to inverse wavelengths) emitted by the hydrogen atom could all be expressed as differences. This immediately suggested to him a generalization of his idea of a "stationary state" lowest energy level, in which the electron did not radiate. There must be a whole sequence of these stationary states, with radiation only taking place as the atom jumps from one to another of lower energy, emitting a single quantum of frequency f such that
hf = En - Em,
the difference between the energies of the two states. Evidently, from the Balmer formula and its extension to general integers m, n, these allowed non-radiating orbits, the stationary states, could be labeled 1, 2, 3, ... , n, ... and had energies -1, -1/4, -1/9, ..., -1/n2, ... in units of hcRH (using l f = c and the Balmer equation above). The energies are of course negative, because these are bound states, and we count energy zero from where the two particles are infinitely far apart."
Bohr Atom (http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/252/Bohr_Atom/Bohr_Atom.html)
So an atom will radiate but only when it changes its energy state :)
And to do that there has to be an interaction taking place first.
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But the idea still disturbs me. It seems to imply that a atom is 'indestructible' if left alone?
Like it won't lose any energy, yet we have the idea of this 'probability cloud' of electrons varying with different measurements. Meaning that it must use 'energy', and if it does some of that must 'radiate' away?
If it doesn't you will have an perpetuum mobile (perpetual motion machine) as it has 'moving parts' but won't lose energy.
Is there any other way you can lose energy, that isn't due to radiation?
I mean immeasurable for us?
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Do you see what I'm asking here :)
Either an atom have 'moving parts', and remember we have experiments showing us electron clouds and the probability of where those electrons should be, at shifting localities, for the same atom, well, at least I presume that kind of experiment to have been done? If it hasn't it should. Because if they're 'moving/shifting' locality for the same atom experimentally, you have a object that expends energy without losing any, as far as i can see?
I would like if someone could explain that one to me :)
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Deem me weird :)
It could have to do with our concept of time, possibly?
That we study it under our 'arrow of time' that imposes sequences to it?
Awh...
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I am not an expert on the energy level changes of the electrons around an atom but my understanding is that if an atom could be placed in a magical container that would shield it from any outside radiation then it would never emit any radiation and theory says that it should last for something on the order of 10^30th years.
Back to my collision radiation. We know that collisions like I describe must occur at enormous velocities in stars which suggests that all frequencies can be produced by collisions. Thousands if not hundreds of thousands of those collisions would be off center rather than head on impacts. Would the angle of impact simply determine the direction of propagation or would it change the emitted frequency? As Yor points out, electrons absorb and emit radiation in discrete energy packets, would that somehow play role?
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But the idea still disturbs me. It seems to imply that a atom is 'indestructible' if left alone?
Like it won't lose any energy, yet we have the idea of this 'probability cloud' of electrons varying with different measurements. Meaning that it must use 'energy', and if it does some of that must 'radiate' away?
If it doesn't you will have an perpetuum mobile (perpetual motion machine) as it has 'moving parts' but won't lose energy.
Just a though. Does it really have moving parts, or is the movement "powered" by radiation received? What happens to an atom at 0K? Is there any movement at all?
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Your statement that science is to enamored with explaining the Universe using particles mimics my own sentiments. I still think the proton is some sort of wave.
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If it as you say Ron?
"10^30th years"
How does it 'dissipate' without spending 'energy'?
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I'm just quoting what I've read about the lifetime of the proton. I have to guess it would be a catastrophic dissipation since I believe the proton to be a wave.
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But the idea still disturbs me. It seems to imply that a atom is 'indestructible' if left alone?
Like it won't lose any energy, yet we have the idea of this 'probability cloud' of electrons varying with different measurements. Meaning that it must use 'energy', and if it does some of that must 'radiate' away?
If it doesn't you will have an perpetuum mobile (perpetual motion machine) as it has 'moving parts' but won't lose energy.
Just a though. Does it really have moving parts, or is the movement "powered" by radiation received? What happens to an atom at 0K? Is there any movement at all?
Now you're turning it around :)
i was thinking of it radiating and you want to discuss if it receives radiation.
that one you will have to explain a little more Geezer?
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Okay Geezer. Nice question, 'what happens to an atom at 0K'.
The easy answer is that we can't reach that temperature. but the relevance is still there. What happens to it? And I like mine too :) How does it decompose if it never 'radiates' by itself?
Bohr's model of an atom is not the one used by QM it seems? It have instead been replaced by a 'probability model' based on Louis de Broglie question about if light could behave like both waves and particles, why shouldn't particles also behave like waves?
"Thus, electrons in an atom were not moving in orbits but filled an orbit as standing waves. Familiar electromagnetic radiation, like light, exists as traveling waves, moving through space at the velocity of light. A standing wave does not move, but vibrates between fixed points, like the string on a violin."
While Bohr's model of the atom could account for spectral lines, it still could not account for why electrons had quantacized angular momentum in atoms and why electrons could be in orbit in atoms, which would involve acceleration around the nucleus, without radiating away all their energy, which accelerated electrical charges do. The atom could simply not be a little solar system, based on charge rather than gravity, since electrons, on classical principles, would lose energy and fall into the nucleus.
Familiar electromagnetic radiation, like light, exists as traveling waves, moving through space at the velocity of light. A standing wave does not move, but vibrates between fixed points, like the string on a violin. The sine wave at right represents a whole wavelength. It has a portion with a positive magnitude, a portion with a negative magnitude, and a node, which has zero magnitude.
The ends of the wave, which also have zero magnitude, are usually not considered to be nodes. Half a wavelength would have no nodes; one and a half wavelengths, two nodes; and two whole wavelengths, three nodes. A one dimensional wave has nodes that are points, and it vibrates into two dimensions. Similarly, a two dimensional wave, like a wave of water on the ocean, has nodes that are lines, and it vibrates into three dimensions.
A three dimensional wave, which is what electrons in an atom would be, has nodes that are surfaces. Such surfaces can be planes, cones, or spheres. By analogy, we might want to say that a three dimensional wave would vibrate into four dimensions, but this aspect of the matter does not seem have been much discussed or explored. In electron waves, each non-spherical node represents a quantum of angular momentum.
Thus, a half wavelength, with no non-spherical nodes, is 0 angular momentum; a full wavelength, with one non-spherical node, is angular momentum; a wavelength and a half, with two non-spherical nodes, is 2 angular momentum; etc. "
But it still doesn't answer the question about an atoms dissipation of energy if left alone?
From the Quantacized Atom
(http://www.friesian.com/quanta.htm)
Now take a look here conservation_of_energy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy#Law_of_conservation_of_energy)
What we read here is firstly 'energy can neither be created (produced) nor destroyed by itself. It can only be transformed.' All of this I presume to build on the idea of a closed system naturally but under that assumption it makes good sense to me. then we come to 'In quantum mechanics energy is expressed using the Hamiltonian operator. On any time scales, the uncertainty in the energy ... is similar in form to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (but not really mathematically equivalent thereto, since H and t are not dynamically conjugate variables, neither in classical nor in quantum mechanics).
So, how am I supposed to understand this. Is this a suggestion that an atom is on that indeterminate 'scale' that it gets its 'energy' from HUP (Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle)? And as HUP is outside Planck scale it is free to violate times arrow, which means that all bets on an atoms energy is open to interpretation? And if so, what regulates that 'energy' to a 'consistent system' differing for different atoms under our arrow of time.
Don't know if I made this clear enough, but I hope you can follow it?
You have to remember that when I'm looking at it, I differ between the 'arrow of time' and 'time' in itself. 'Time' is what exist, like a pool of undifferentiated water, where the stream we see will be our 'arrow of time' defining us macroscopically.
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This thread had approached the limit of what is considered a new theory. There is more I would like to discuss so I will start a new thread in New Theories.