What are space and time? What is spacetime?

What are space and time?  What is spacetime?  This is not a joke, nor is it an idle question.  The answer concerns the deepest mysteries and confusions at the heart of physics.

Space and time are fixed references.  We know this is so for two reasons.

• Every measurement ever made of the large scale universe shows it to be flat (Euclidean).
• Special relativity depends upon the Pythagorean theorem, which requires Euclidean geometry to be true.  Experiments show it to be true.
• Every test ever made shows the speed of causation to be finite and fixed.

However, we know spacetime is curved.

• Special relativity describes the curving of space (contraction) and time (dilation).
• General relativity depends upon hyperbolic geometry.  Experiments show it to be true.

How can these two contradictory facts both be true in a universe without contradictions?

Category error.  Imprecise terminology.  They do not, cannot describe the same things.

• Space and time are fixed references.
• What we call spacetime is two separate but interdependent fields - kinetic (space) and potential (time) energy.

Just as the electric and magnetic fields guide and are influenced by the motions of charges (a type of energy), so too do the kinetic and potential fields depend upon each other and the motion of matter (a type of energy).

These are the fundamental laws of the universe:

• Magnetic - Electric = 0
• Kinetic - Potential = 1

Yes, potential energy (time squared) is negative.  That's because time is imaginary.  That's because time is a sort of spin.  Spins are scalars with opposites.  That implies antimatter is matter with opposite time spin.  Which implies that electric charges (opposite scalars) are types of spin which have positive and negative values in comparison to the spin of time.

You only have kinetic energy when you have motion (a vector).  You only have magnetic energy when you have motion (a vector).  Yet you always have electric charge (a scalar) and potential energy (a scalar).

So here we have another pairing:  vector with scalar.  So perhaps we should rewrite our basic equations:

• ||Magnetic|| - Electric = 0
• ||Kinetic|| - Potential = 1

Reminder

 

On the nature of neutrinos

Oh, the things that seem so simple after you've figured out the trick.

Photons are energy in space but not time.

Neutrinos are energy in time but not space.

Mass is a binding of space and time.

Thus, neither neutrinos nor photons have mass, and both travel at the speed of causality.  Photons do not change, because they have no time.  Neutrinos constantly change, because they are little else but time.

Neutrinos carry the weak force.  The weak force governs decay.  Spontaneous decay is entirely caused by time.  That's why they're called half lives - half of the number of particle p will decay in time t.

---

Time is a type of spin.  Anti- particles have opposite spin time.  Electric charge can be thought of as a spin in the same direction as time (arbitrarily plus), or the opposite direction (arbitrarily minus).  Thus, an anti-electron (positron), with negative time, to have a negative charge from its own perspective, must have a positive charge from ours.  Positive time, negative charge.  Negative time, positive charge.

Proof of pilot wave theory

A photon is emitted by an electron shedding energy as it drops to a lower energy orbital around a nucleus.  This photon has a highly specific energy, shown by its wavelength/frequency (these are inverses).  The photon is emitted in a random direction as the electron orbits.  The atom as a whole is also moving, if only through Brownian motion.

Does the frequency of the photon depend on the direction it took compared to the motion of the electron that created it?  No.  Does its frequency depend on the motion of the atom that it originated from?  No.  How do we know?  Lasers work.  The whole point of a laser is to produce a coherent beam of light in one and only one frequency.  And yet, the electrons are moving at ludicrous speed around the nucleus, but there is no massive red or blue shift.  All the photons emitted are of the same wavelength.  Presumably, all photons are emitted in the direction of travel of their parent electron at the time, like how a sling will send a stone in its instantaneous direction of travel when released.

But how do red and blue shift happen?  These are real effects, easily measured.

The only way for red and blue shift to happen is for the guiding waves to build up or stretch out.  No individual photon shifts its own frequency, but motion in a certain direction will bunch up the waves in that direction while stretching out the waves behind it.  This stretching and compaction we see as red and blue shift, because the waves themselves add energy to the photons passing through them in the proper direction.

Where do these waves come from?  The object moving.  It's made of particles, each of which of moving in space, most (the vast majority, really) of which have electromagnetic properties.  Thus, a build up of energy in the direction of motion, with a corresponding decrease in the opposite direction.  Both the EM field and spacetime exhibit this behavior.

Two objects moving in the same direction would have compression and elongation exactly cancelling each other out.  An object approaching another would have an excess of compression, thus blue shift.  Two objects receding from each other would have an excess of stretching, thus red shift.

Aside - I sincerely admire the profound relationship between the EM field and spacetime.

    Electric energy - Magnetic energy = 0

    Kinetic energy (space^2) - Potential energy (time^2) = 1

How to update file types in Linux Mint

I have spent the last few hours trying various things to update the .odin file type associations in Linux Mint.  Here is what I found that actually worked.

Open /usr/share/mime/packages as root.

Create a new file called your-file-type.xml.  The one I created is: x-odin.xml
(The "x-" follows an established pattern for programming source code.)

Inside this file, have text similar to the following, but with your information replacing the bits in color:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<mime-info xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info">

  <mime-type type="text/x-odin">

    <comment>Odin source file</comment>

    <generic-icon name="OdinO"/>

    <glob pattern="*.odin"/>

  </mime-type>

</mime-info>

The "glob pattern" line is where you associate the file extension.  "*.odin" means any file ending with ".odin".

Place various sized versions of the icon you want to use in the various size folders in: /usr/share/icons/theme-name/mimetypes.  In my case, that's /usr/share/icons/Mint-Y/mimetypes.  Make sure the icons are all named the same as the whatever you use in the generic-icon-name line above.  .png files seem to work well, but make sure you create a large one, and then scale it down to the various sizes (16, 24, 32, 48, 64, 128 pixels).

Once you've done all that, open a terminal in the /usr/share/mime/packages folder and type (replace x-odin with your file name):

    sudo xdg-mime install --mode system x-odin.xml

    sudo update-mime-database /usr/share/mime

Once the system has finished updating, behold your newly associated file type with its lovely, hand-crafted icon.  Now, all you have to do is associate the file type with a program to open it.  That's done by right clicking on an appropriate file, selecting "open with", "other application", choosing the proper application, and then clicking on "set as default".

That's all you have to do.  Why is it this convoluted?  I'm guessing historical reasons, as in they made it up as they went along.  Simple is much, much more difficult to achieve than complex.

Space-X did it!

Just a few minutes ago, millions of people watched Space-X launch Starship, recover the booster with 'Mechazilla', take Starship up to orbit, then drop it back down for a soft landing in the water precisely on target.

They did it.  The crazy geniuses actually did it.

Remember this day.

The four types of programming languages

There are four types of programming languages.  I'm not talking about the religious differences between object oriented, procedural, and functional languages.  I'm talking about something more fundamental - syntactic structure.  The vast majority of computer languages (excepting esoteric or very primitive ones) fall into the four camps of ALGOL, LISP, APL, and Forth/Joy.  These differ based on how you read and understand the code.

Note:  Examples are not necessarily valid code in these languages.

ALGOL:  Left to right (left or right associative based on what makes sense, usually), prefix (except infix operators like '+' and '*'), inside out.  These are the procedural languages most programmers are familiar with.

    command(arg1)
    command(arg1, arg2)
    command(arg1, arg2, arg3)
    command-a(arg1a, command-b(arg1b, arg2b), arg3a)
    add(1, 2 * 3)
    if (3 > 2) then {print("true")} else {print("false")}

LISP:  Left to right (no associativity), prefix (always), inside out.

    (command arg1)
    (command arg1 arg2)
    (command arg1 arg2 arg3)
    (command-a arg1a (command-b arg1b arg2b) arg3a)
    (add 1 (* 2 3))
    (if (> 3 2) (print "true") (print "false"))

    

APL:  Left to right (right associative), prefix or infix, inside out.  It's easier to read right to left.

    command1 arg1
    arg1 command1 arg2
    there are no 3 or more argument commands in APL
    arg1a command-a arg1b command-b arg2b
    1 add 2 x 3            this is the same as 1 add (2 x 3)
    3 > 2 ⍳ ⎕  ← "true" ⋄ "false"            I got this from an AI prompt.  APL is weird.

Forth / Joy:  Left to right (usually no associativity), postfix (usually, unless it's immediate, which looks like prefix or infix).

    arg1 command
    arg1 arg2 command
    arg1 arg2 arg3 command
    arg1a arg1b arg2b command-b arg3a command-a
    2 3 * 1 add
    Forth:  3 2 > if "true" print else "false" print then
    Joy:  3 2 > ["true" print] ["false" print] ifte

The ALGOL (procedural) family of languages make regular use of syntactic sugar to make reading the code easier.  The annoying-to-learn syntax is what makes it more readable, and programmers spend much more time reading code than writing it.  That's part of why they have mostly conquered the programming world, despite the niche technical superiority of the other language styles.  

What is woo-hoo?

Scientific woo-hoo is the propagation of nonsense.  It is the belief in magic, draped in the robes of science.  The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics has done more harm to science than even the global warming cash and power grab.

Woo-hoo is the belief that particles don't have properties until a scientist measures them.  They really believe this, because they have been carefully trained, for generations, to not think.  (Don't believe me?  Look up the history of rogue waves in the ocean.  Despite sailors knowing about them for millennia, they "didn't exist" until scientists finally documented one hitting an oil platform in 1995.)

Woo-hoo is the belief that math is more real than reality, that models are more important than observation, that the map really is the territory, that doctrine is more important than thought.

Woo-hoo is the belief that a particle in a superposition is actually in multiple states and multiple places at the same time.

Woo-hoo is the belief that in a double split experiment, a single photon splits itself into multiple existences, some traveling slower than the speed of light while others travel faster, so it can interfere with itself along the way to the detector.

Woo-hoo is the belief that entangled particles don't have properties until a scientist measures one of them, then the other instantaneously becomes something as well.  This is the belief that if you flip a coin and see heads on top, the bottom suddenly and magically becomes tails.  The belief that if you take a pair of shoes, randomly place them in separate boxes, and mail one box to China, that box will suddenly and magically contain a left shoe the instant you open the other box and find it contains the right shoe.

Woo-hoo is the ongoing experiments to see if a particle quantum tunneling through a barrier teleports or moves faster than light.  The reality is so much more simple.  The particle tunneling its way out of a barrier does so because at that random instant, the barrier isn't there.  A tunnel momentarily opens up through sheer Brownian chance.  The particles and fields comprising the barrier have randomly moved and changed in such a way that the barrier is no longer a barrier at that particular time and place.  If you shake a box of ping pong balls long enough, while looking through a pair of holes on opposite sides of the box, there will eventually come a moment when you can see clearly through the box because all the balls are randomly not in the way.

Woo-hoo is believing that black holes really are singularities of infinite density, with alternate universes inside them.

Woo-hoo is actually believing the 'many worlds' hypothesis is in any way scientific.

Woo-hoo is the uncritical belief that Bell's theorem disproves local realism, despite Bell's inequality being obviously based on a strawman argument.  (Bell "proves" that triangle waves are not identical to sine waves, that straight lines are not curves.  The fact that nobody ever suggested they were somehow seldom gets mentioned, and those who do quickly lose their jobs and voices in the industry.  Pour encourager les autres.)

Woo-hoo is the unquestioning belief that the expansion rate of the universe randomly changes over time, never asking how or why.  So many questions left unasked - how would the rate change everywhere, evenly, at the same time?  If this is a real effect, and I am by no means assured it is (there are a lot of adjustments made to observational data), then it is the most definite proof of the existence of God I have ever seen.

Woo-hoo is strangling science through magical thinking.