Hi Ronald, Thank you for this reference and querry for comments. I recall that this idea, of a crystalizing space-time, appears in The Maker of Dune, a collection of letters, short stories and essays by Frank Herbert - the Science Fiction writer famous for his Dune series. The following are my "margin scribblings"... pg.13. I am happy to see new discussion of Cramer's Transactional Interpretation of QM. ;) I have often wondered what kind of multiverse would result from using a completely time-symmetric equation...
pg. 16.It seems that we still have not gotten past the need to introduce some kind of conditions by hand to obtain somethig that resembles our everyday experience of a universe. The discussion of scale is also interesting but upsetting. Is the quantum behaviour of macroscopic systems such as superconducting magnets somehow fundamentally different from that is electrons in atoms? If so, how? pg. 17. "Potentiality changes to actuality at each quantum measurement process, but some potentialities may remain undecided even as others have transmuted to definiteness. Thus we consider that on a given world line "now" is the moment when those aspects of reality become fixed." Cool! We have a definition of "now" but does it stand up to scrutiny? pg. 18. Would this crystalization's dependence on scale introduce "defects" that could have observational consequenses? Would these differ sufficiently from the defects that we expect from symmetry breaking? How do I line up these predictions with resent observational results that strongly indicate that there is no linear dependence between the speed of light and the frequency of a photon? pg.20. "The measurement interaction may perhaps be regarded as an interaction between scales." This sounds a lot like a transactional version of Penrose's OR idea! Maybe similar experiements would illuminate them... pg. 21. "when quantum effects are significant, the Evolving Block Universe ("EBU") of classical physics cedes way to the Crystallizing Block Universe ("CBU"). On large enough scales that quantum effects are not significant, the two models become indistinguishable." We are left with what looks like a global time-assymetry and scale-dependence as an explanation, but such an explanation is driven by a need for a global "ice cube". Is the idea that "property definiteness is a purely "local" phenomena contingent of the observational conditions therein" not ever considered? Do we *really* have to have global definiteness? Onward! Stephen ----- Original Message ----- From: "ronaldheld" <ronaldh...@gmail.com> To: "Everything List" <everything-list@googlegroups.com> Sent: Wednesday, December 09, 2009 5:25 AM Subject: Crystallizing block universe? > Anyone want to give this a try and comment? > http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0912/0912.0808v1.pdf > Ronald -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.