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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (70273)	1/3/2000 12:09:00 AM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Well, it's a philosophical problem. From the end of the article I posted to Joan, marijuana.newscientist.com Ultimately, the biggest barrier to the construction of a theory of quantum gravity may not be the mathematics, but the interpretation of the mathematics. For example, general relativists are still struggling to understand the meaning of the Wheeler-de Witt equation and its solutions, while field theorists have yet to understand just what it is that their superstrings wriggle about in. Veteran gravity theorist Chris Isham of Imperial College, London, sees even deeper issues starting to loom - issues long thought to be the preserve of philosophy. Perhaps most central of all is the question of whether space and time are merely constructs of our personal experience, as Immanuel Kant argued some 200 years ago. The mere suggestion that such fundamental concepts cannot be relied on in the construction of a theory would fill most physicists with horror. Yet those who dare to tackle the mystery of gravity are learning to live with such possibilities. As Isham puts it: 'The shadow of Kant is hanging over all of us.

To: Ilaine who wrote (70273)	1/3/2000 1:14:00 AM
From: Krowbar	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

CB, Few people can do the math, and those that can aren't sure what it means. You have a good grasp of the overall picture. Another question is... what is the Universe expanding into? Here is another dilemna. It is impossible to get a strict vacuum in a given volume, say a cubic foot. By strict vacuum I mean entirely devoid of any atoms or subatomic particles whatsoever, and no energy fields. If you try, particles will appear out of nothingness for extremely short periods of time, and then dissappear. I hate when that happens. Del