Quote:
Originally Posted by jlhredshift
Ladies and Gentlemen may I point out that already 100 views have occurred of this comparatively short forum. There are only two links given here, but I still spent over an hour reading them and related links from them. The subject of the Planck domain is the frontier of human conceptualizations, the unknown. Feynman points out in the sixties that it is a "quantum world", so that is how things work. The deeper we investigate the better. Even if our math is on the order of a 100 powers of ten off today, it will get better, I have confidence in the sagacity of you and the ones who will follow you. Philosophical or not it is of great interest and a viable pursuit of thought.
Please, keep it coming.
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Along these lines, may I recommend Lee Smolin's book, The Trouble with Physics? (
this site lists two ISBN's; I thought there was only one, per book? ISBN-13/EAN: 9780618551057; ISBN-10: 0618551050).
I've just finished reading it, and found it very refreshing.
Back to the topic ... I'm still looking for a non-math way to describe the incompatibility -
Tensor's post is good, but I suspect most folks' eyes will glaze over when you try to explain why infinities in the expansion series terms is a (fatal) problem* ...
One approach I've considered is to try to show that 'time', 'energy', and 'space' (etc) are just as much 'models' (or 'theory-dependent') as, say, 'isospin' or 'colour charge'. IOW, there is no fundamental thing about the universe, independent of theory (or models), which you can assume exists, despite one's intuition and what one has picked up from being an intelligent, avid reader. You know what I'm talking about - whatever theory of gravity we have, or quantum theory, 'energy is conserved', or 'the first law of thermodynamics is valid', or 'space and time exist, period'.
*
Apropos of which, I didn't realise that string theory hasn't got beyond showing that the second (or was it the third?) term is finite, much less showing that the infinite series isn't infinite ... well, that's what Smolin says ...