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its badly explained, but what the first paragraph is saying is basically: "the act of measuring time in greater detail requires increasing amounts of energy" (
by wayn3 10y ago
its badly explained, but what the first paragraph is saying is basically:
"the act of measuring time in greater detail requires increasing amounts of energy" (increasing amounts of energy dilates time because general relativity) "therefore, time-keeping devices become less precise".
time dilation implies "less precise measurements". If we assume a balance where time measurements always require more energy, then there has to be a level of precision at which increasing precision through deploying more energy increases precision by less than the increased energy decreases precision, therefore, improving precision becomes impossible.
- M_Grey 10y agoI see, and that at least does make a certain amount of sense. By putting timekeeping into the same category as any other measurement regime you would expect to see this kind of measurement difficulty emerging. What I'm not clear on though, is whether they're saying this is a fundamental uncertainty, or a measurement problem. The latter seems likely, the former a lot less likely.
- fastball 10y agoIt seems to me it is fairly analogous to how our perception of mass in relation to GR has been for a while now. It is impossible for a particle with mass to reach the speed of light because a.s it gets closer to the speed of light, it requires more and more energy to get it going faster
- bmh100 10y agoWhy does increased time dilation imply decreased precision? If we can precisely measure the energy deployed, can't we also precisely estimate time dilation and account for it?
- zaroth 10y agoNow you've got two problems.
- M_Grey 10y agoYes, but it's a well-defined problem with known solution. As complexity goes, it's not exactly the n-body problem in an exact numerical simulation.
- wayn3 10y agodo you mean that literally? overcoming laws of physics is a bit more difficult than calculating the n-body problem, to be honest. edit: to make this clear, the solution to the n-body problem is known. its just not analytical.
- M_Grey 10y agoThis isn't a matter of "overcoming the laws of physics"... what's being conjectured in the article may or may not be a physical reality.