On Saturday, September 14, 2019 at 3:03:38 PM UTC-6, John Clark wrote: > > On Sat, Sep 14, 2019 at 9:33 AM Alan Grayson <[email protected] > <javascript:>> wrote: > > >> There is no reason to think physics needs all the real numbers and >>> considerable evidence to think it does not. To my mind the strongest >>> evidence is that a physical Turing Machine is incapable of even >>> approximating most real numbers, I happened to have posted a proof of this >>> yesterday on the "Observation versus assumption" thread. >>> >>>> >> *> Physics doesn't need all the real numbers, just some of them, say any >> continuous range of any variable; like the mass of the electron.* >> > > The electron doesn't have a continuous range of mass. >
Sure, in OUR universe, but it might be a continuous variable when other universes are created. That was my conjecture, and it need not be mass, but other properties of other variables. AG > And mass is the force on a object divided by its acceleration, but > acceleration > is the change in speed per unit of time and speed is the change in > positional distance per unit of time, so if neither time or space is > continuous then mass can't be either. > Space and time could be continuous. Just because there's a lower limit on what we can measure, doesn't guarantee any inherent graininess. AG > > > *Einstein's field equations use PI, and so do Maxwell's equations. * > > > Physics theories may need PI but physics itself probably doesn't. PI has > been calculated to 31 trillion digits and even that is only an > approximation, but only 8 or 9 digits are needed to explain every physical > observation ever made, and the same thing is true for e. > > John K Clark > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/8d02ee81-73ed-4526-acda-2d051f9232c3%40googlegroups.com.
