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There's a much simpler escape: That space is ultimately discrete (i.e. that there's an elementary length) rather than infinitely continuous.
by A_D_E_P_T 2y ago
There's a much simpler escape: That space is ultimately discrete (i.e. that there's an elementary length) rather than infinitely continuous.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> a much simpler escape: That space is ultimately discrete (i.e. that there's an elementary length) rather than infinitely continuous Sure. The point is the gedankenexperiment proves nothing. We don't need to "[record] an infinite amount of information" to encapsulate the infinity between any pair of real numbers.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tomrod 2y agoIs there? Planck length isn't a pixel.[0] [0] https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/hand-wavy-discussion-planck-length/ https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/hand-wavy-discussion-...
- astrange 2y agoIf space is discretized, we should see "upscaling artifacts" in the CMB, but we don't.
- defrost 2y agoMaybe we would .. but Musk has to turn off his leaky Starlink over the Murchison (not so) Quiet (anymore) Zone first.
- astrange 2y agoWe got space telescopes and stuff.
- defrost 2y agoMore expensive, harder to maintain and keep current, and a tangent to the core matter; Starlink satellites leak radiation and could be shielded, Starlink satellites could be {switched off | turned low} off over Quiet Zones but are not. Statements were made that shielding would improve after Ver 1.0 .. it got worse. Statements were made that sats would go low power over quiet zones, they do not. Returning to your erudite point "and stuff" The NASA Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite orbited Earth in 1989–1996 ... Inspired by the COBE results, a series of ground and balloon-based experiments measured cosmic microwave background anisotropies on smaller angular scales ... The sensitivity of the new experiments improved dramatically, with a reduction in internal noise by three orders of magnitude. ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background Hmmm, it appears the ground based results were a dramatic improvement over the sat based data.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoA moon base with regular travel might make maintenance on the dark side of the moon possible.
- defrost 2y agoSure, when we get there again, can make regular trips, and have consequence free energy to burn that'd be great. In the interim, and as a general rule for all private entities, it'd be nice to not pollute the commons with unnecessary discharges and sparkles and to carry through on pinky promises to maybe do something about that.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoIt might be a necessary intermediate for advanced civilizations.
- LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago> More expensive, harder to maintain and keep current... Not necessarily so? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xuntian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xuntian As of 2024, Xuntian is scheduled for launch no earlier than late 2026 on a Long March 5B rocket to co-orbit with the Tiangong space station in slightly different orbital phases, which will allow for periodic docking with the station.
- naasking 2y agoThis is a common belief and true of many discrete models because they violate symmetries, but that is not true of all discrete models: A Noether Theorem for discrete Covariant Mechanics, https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.08997 https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.08997
- analog31 2y agoThe universe runs on IEEE floats. The missing matter and energy are due to roundoff error. We pray to the great NaN in the sky.
- defrost 2y agoI'd subscribe to your religion but for the division.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y agoI both hate you and am very scared that you're actually telling the truth.
- LargoLasskhyfv 2y agoThis chain of thought should be broken down into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continued_fraction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continued_fraction 's
- javajosh 2y agoIf it were not so you could encode an arbitrary amount of information into the specific length of a one dimensional object. It would be like a physical Taylor series, but since you can go arbitrarily small you can encode arbitrary coefficients. In fact, if you had a physical disc you could encode everything at every point along its circumference. Which is, like, everything squared or something.
- adrian_b 2y agoNo, this is a wrong argument. There are a large number of continuous physical quantities, not only length (though all continuous quantities are dependent in one way or another on space or time, which are the primitive continuous quantities), and the reason why you cannot encode an arbitrary amount of information into a specific value of such a quantity is because it is impossible to make an object for which such a quantity would have a perfectly constant value. All the values of such quantities are affected by noise-like variations so you could store information only in the average value of such a quantity, computed over some time and any such average would still be affected by uncertainties that limit the amount of information that can be stored. One of the most constant lengths that have ever characterized an artificial object has been the length of the international prototype meter kept in France and used to define the meter until 1960. To minimize the length variations, that meter bar was made of platinum-iridium alloy and it was measured at a temperature as constant as possible. Despite the precautions, which included gentle removing of the dust and handling with soft grippers, the length of that meter bar fluctuated continuously. Even if it was attempted to keep a constant temperature, very small fluctuations in temperature still caused thermal expansions and contractions. Every time the bar was touched, a few metal atoms were removed from it, but other atoms from the environment remained stuck to its surface, changing the length. All these continuous variations have nothing to do with the possibility of the space being discrete, but they limit the amount of information that can be stored in any such value. For now there exists absolutely no evidence about the space or time being discrete and not continuous. There have been attempts to make theories based on the discreteness of the space and/or time, but until now they have not provided any useful result.
- javajosh 2y ago
- Henhound 2y agoAnother simple escape: space is a mental category. It's not a feature of reality, it's a requirement for representing the world to a conscious subject.