Lee Smolin - How Can Space and Time be the Same Thing?

[Uncle Joe]

[multigraincracker]

1. The Tao Of Physics.

Interesting book I read many years ago.
Perhaps the only thing that separates anything in the universe are words.

[Chainfire]

2. I find it amazing that there are people who can grasp the concepts that they were discussing.

I not only lack the mathematical skills, but I don't have the imagination to go to those places. I am glad that there are people who can.

I was having an argument with a conservative over the value of a higher education. The other party was sure that colleges had no value other than creating liberals, and that any education that did not teach a job skill was wasted. He is the type that would put the questions discussed in the video to the preachers instead of the scientists. It is a damn shame that our country has produced so many of the type.

[Ocelot II]

3. Time exists so everything doesn't happen at once.

Space exists so everything doesn’t happen to you.

[ChazInAz]

4. Now there's an explanation that I can understand!

[William Seger]

5. I've always thought that the "strangeness" of both relativity and quantum physics...

... are only strange because our intuitive understanding of space and time is completely wrong.

[Warpy]

6. Prickles vs Goo is how Alan Watts put it

and it pervades a lot of debates over not only physics, but politics, psychology, social sciences, philosophy, etc.

Some current thinking says time and gravity are inextricably linked and that space is largely an illusion. We know time slows the deeoer you get into a gravity "well." Time is measurably faster where I am at 6000 feet than it is at sea level, so I'm aging faster up here, although my perception of it is exactly the same. To someone way out far between galaxies, I would appear to be standing still, while they would appear to me to be moving faster and faster.

None of this would decrease the time it takes for me to limp to the mailbox, thought experiments being wonderful when my hamster wheel brain wakes me up at 3 AM and I know stewing about practical things at that hour is futile, at best. I'd rather play with ideas like these.