3 ms·
Well I'm not a physicist, but I think at the very least we perceive time (locally) as proceeding in a linear fashion infinitely. My mountain example obviously
by tinco 10y ago
Well I'm not a physicist, but I think at the very least we perceive time (locally) as proceeding in a linear fashion infinitely.
My mountain example obviously couldn't happen in the physical world. I suppose in that case you might as well substitute the infinite value for an arbitrary large one. Which is not really what infinite values are about in mathematics, as they are more about describing the (imaginary?) limit of a divergent series.
I guess my point is more that for a mathematician it would probably be obvious that when you talk about the limit of a divergent series it could be any imaginary or intermediary value. But for a layman infinite values and infinite series are interpreted as larger than any value you can come up with, and more than any repetition you can write down. So any explanation for this equality should, I think, involve first deconstructing that.
- dskloet 10y agoAre you suggesting that time extends infinitely into the past? Because if it doesn't, there will never be an infinite amount of time, so there won't be any point in time when this -1/12 becomes relevant to physics in this sense. > I guess my point is more that for a mathematician it would probably be obvious that when you talk about the limit of a divergent series it could be any imaginary or intermediary value. I'm a mathematician and I might agree (not entirely sure what you mean). But -1/12 is a concrete value so it doesn't apply here.
- jjnoakes 10y agoWhy can't time begin at a point in the past, but extend infinitely into the future?
- tinco 10y agoWell it might, but in what calculation would the fact that time extends infinitely be a factor? You can say all past time resulted in the current moment, but as far as I know there's no such thing flowing from the future into now. So any physics calculation you do will deal with finite amounts of time.
- jjnoakes 10y agoI won't pretend to know every possible calculation that might be desired, but I can imagine any sort of prediction or simulation about the future may want to use such an infinite view of time going forward.