Yeah, atheists are the intelligentsia, long live atheism in this mad, mad world.

bartender says "what'll it be?" a tachyon walks into a bar.

All thanks go to atheism, the biggest idea in the universe!

Yes, atheism is like that, it's wanting more cowbell. I've got a fever and the only prescription is more atheism.

It's an equally fair argument for the fairies at the bottom of your garden, or the spiders in your brain.

At such condition, time simply converges to being another spatial dimension of locations. The equation t^2-x^2 and pythagorean theorem become equivalent.

Not a physicist, but I'm of the understanding that you are correct: photons cannot change/decay because they are mass-less and move at the speed of light. The fact that neutrinos were found to decay informed physicists that neutrinos have mass, albeit very small, and move close to but not quite at the speed of light.

Multi-photon interactions do occur. At sufficiently high energy, 2 or 3 photons can turn into an electron/positron pair. That's just the time-reversed reading of annihilation.

@@JohnDlugosz Yeah but now you are talking about things interacting, even if it is photon on photon action (can particle physics sound dirty?) When a photon hits a particle, an electron for example, things happen. The question is really about a photon meandering all on its lonesome.

@@justdata3650 Nothing ever happens to a particle by itself. When you look at a decay, for example, you are really simplifying a diagram that involves a virtual particle pulled from the vacuum. E.g. a W boson will interact with a virtual neutrino, producing an electron (or positron) and giving energy to the virtual neutrino's partner to become real. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-photon_physics The interesting thing about a Feynman diagram is that it can be turned in any direction and describe legal interactions. So hold it diagonally, and you'll see it describes 1 photon spontaneously turning into 3.

An electromagnetic field has wave properties. Time is simply what you measure with a clock. Wave-like properties are not required to define time.

Just ask the USA why they are keep using feet , miles , pound , fahrenheit ! Just ask why does some people keep driving on the left side of the road , and some on the right ! Just ask why does the flow of current is assumed to be from positive to negative direction. The flow of electrons is from negative to positive. Etc

@@cazymike87 I get what you are suggesting but I don't think these are equivalent. Physicists routinely change light to equal 1 instead of 299e3 km/s, i.e. change it to what they call natural units so these people are used to changing units however they want for the sake of ease of calculations. This is a very different mindset to your average Joe who's just used to using gallons for fuel purely out of habit and convention and doesn't give it 2nd thought. There's probably some convention in their thinking but I suspect the primary reasons are more complicated than that and are probably centered around convenience of common calculations.

Yep. My wife is my new barber. Its waaay cheaper.

E=mc2. Mass has an equivalent amount of energy and vice versa. When they measure the energy of empty space or vacuum, there is some energy there which therefore has mass. This is called vacuum energy or the cosmological constant, also known as dark energy.

Not just matter, but any form of energy -- and curved spacetime itself has energy. So spacetime can do interesting things all by itself.

The speed of light is just a scaling value, and properly has a value of 1. The fundamental constant is called "alpha" and is dimensionless.

Max Tegmark wrote in "Our Mathematical Universe" about the idea that maybe all values for fundamental constants in the wavefunction of the universe have "real" representations, and its just anthropic principle that these particular values allowed for enough fun stuff to happen to lead to us. Those values could be part of our address within a larger multiverse.

In 1999 for not much more than a second I left my body and met God in His Shekinah Glory, that one second was eternity. I experienced in that single moment (now - the present _then)_ everything I ever experienced in my life all at once. I was about 38 years old. So, all of a sudden I'm whooshed out of my body and experiencing everything i ever did, all of my past was accelerated into a consolidated eternal moment. That's what it is to be glorified, to die and go to heaven, that's the reward. I could see how God knew the future the same way as LaPlace's Demon. I knew as I was known.

@@michaelsommers2356 Hey, sorry my explanation was not clear. You are absolutely correct, the light cone in 4d is the "4d cone". My explanation was an attempt to illustrate what this 4-d cone is. Let me try to explain it again. In math we have a notion of an "n-sphere" and I will use wikipedia's definition of an n-sphere (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-sphere) in my explanation, Here goes: In 1-d space and 1-d time, a light cone is a collection of concentric 0-spheres (2 pts a distance r from the "center") which are drawn in the time axis; so you get a 2-d cone which has a point at an "event" and rays coming out at 45 degrees in either direction from the point. If we think of this as though we are at a position and experience this over time, then we would say that there is a large 0-sphere of light which is shrinking to a point (when it is a point is when the light actually hits where we are in space and is when we actually see it) then the sphere expands away from us. What I am trying to illustrate can be explained another way. Given the 2-d drawing of a light cone, as in the videos, imagine sweeping a horizontal line upwards(in time); the intersection of this horizontal line with the light cone is 2 points, ie a 0-sphere. This can kind of be thought of as concentric 0-spheres. In 2-d space and 1-d time, a light cone is a collection of concentric 1-spheres (ordinary circles with radius r) which are drawn in the time axis; so you get a 3-d cone which has a point at an "event" and rays coming out at 45 degrees in any direction off the x-y plane from the point. If we think of this as though we are at a position and experience this over time, then we would say that there is a large 1-sphere of light which is shrinking to a point (when it is a point is when the light actually hits where we are in space and is when we actually see it) then the sphere expands away from us. What I am trying to illustrate can be explained another way. Given a 3-d drawing of a light cone imagine sweeping a plane upwards(in time); the intersection of this plane line with the light cone is a circle, ie a 1-sphere. This can kind of be thought of as concentric 1-spheres. In 3-d space and 1-d time, a light cone is a collection of concentric 2-spheres (ordinary spheres with radius r) which are drawn in the time axis; so you get a 4-d cone which has a point at an "event" and rays coming out at 45 degrees in any direction off the x-y-z cube from the point. If we think of this as though we are at a position and experience this over time, then we would say that there is a large 2-sphere of light (ordinary sphere) which is shrinking to a point (when it is a point is when the light actually hits where we are in space and is when we actually see it) then the sphere expands away from us. What I am trying to illustrate can be explained another way. Given a 4-d drawing of a light cone imagine sweeping a cube upwards(in time); the intersection of this cube line with the light cone is an ordinary sphere, ie a 2-sphere. This can kind of be thought of as concentric 2-spheres. Also when I say Cube, I mean a 3-d space, like an infinitely large filled in cube, couldn't think of a better word... hope this clarifies what I was trying to say! Let me know if you disagree or now understand what I was originally saying.

I think it's supposed to be smooth but nothing important happens at distances shorter than planck length or durations shorter than planck time.

@@michaelsommers2356 Not in the reference frame of the photon.

Dfpolis (KZfaq) has two videos on demythologizing quantum theory. He says there are no particles only discrete wave packets.

I see this is not taking Proff. Carroll’s advice!

@@michaelsommers2356 I got the Impression that he based this statement (that elctrons don't experience anything at all) on the argument that you would need *at least* some kind of internal change in order to be able to experience anything (I know that to him this would be necessary but not sufficient for "experience" to emerge) Thus he ruled out the possibility for internal experience of electrons. I disagreed that you can rule it out on that basis, because as I said, there is an internal oscillation of the wavefuncion going on, generated by the energy of the system.

@@michaelsommers2356 Well sorry then maybe I misunderstood your first reply, but it seemed to me that you didn't really react to the point that I made. Thus I assumed that you misunderstood my point. but maybe you weren't interested in it in the first place. Anyways, do electrons experience anything? Well, the word "experience" has no clear meaning here, so it doesn't really make sense to answer it. But what I have in mind when I use the word "experience" is something intrinsic, something that can't be "observed" by interacting with something on the "outside" thus it is an unscientific question to ask about the experience of electrons, and thus it borders on ideology to plainly answer the question with a "no". And I think it is important to distinguish ideology from science, science should not be abused

@@michaelsommers2356 I would say it's wrong to think that experience would imply a person. To me admitting the possibility that "dead" parts of the universe could have some kind of experience is not a personification, and it's not unscientific. (it's a-scientific if you will) For example, nowadays people are more prone to believe that animals have inner experiences, but one could argue that this is mainly because people can percieve similarities between themselves and animals. They can see similarities in their behaviour and it makes it plausible that animals can have experiences just as we do But there is no direct evidence of an "internal experience" happening in animals. Still it seems reasonable to believe so. The fact that we don't believe this with inanimate matter might just be our failure to "see ourselves" in dead matter. They don't act and react like ourselves, thus they must be dead inside. This is basically the same line of reasoning that made descartes declare that animals are empty machines (they don't act like we do, they are not "reasonable") I think this is just as much a logical fallacy as the "unscientific personification" that you put forth in your argument, just the other way around. Actually, I think it's like this: You are saying I'm personifying dead matter when I say that it could have an experience, thus alluding to some kind of spiritual world (which probably goes against your world view) But I'm saying: you are personifying people/animals by saying only those could have experiences, making people (or "higher animals" ) special in a way, saying there is a qualitative difference between living things and dead things. I think it boils down to the question of whether one thinks that such a qualitative difference is actually just an emergent difference, just a difference in form. I don't think that a new quality like this can arise by mere reordering of matter. and there is no scientific evidence for or against that statement. Thus it's still unscientific to believe one way or the other

@@michaelsommers2356 schade

Special Relativity postulates that the speed of light is the same in all inertial reference frames. The speed of light being a limiting speed for all massive objects is just a consequence of that .. It has nothing to do with quantum mechanics.

You're spot on David, there are no particles only discrete wave packets.

@@incoathwetrust4612 I understand that the SR says the speed of light is the same and I understand the Lorentz transformation, etc. To me, that feels more like a mathematical description, rather than an explanation.

Its hard to grok a billion

The lemniscate is the symbol for infinity, right? It's not my field, but maybe fully self explained like God (?). Your question reminds me of Dawkins proof for atheism, *God is Too Complex to Exist.* I think he's begging the question of God being material. It's easier to say, IF everything is material then God does not exist.

That's trickier than you're imagining. The universe isn't expanding in the way that you think; it's just that things are getting further apart. Point A is not moving away from point B, but there is more distance being injected between them. This absolutely does not happen anywhere in human experience. When things get further apart in "real life", one or both of the things has to be moving. You can't get B increasing in distance from A at a rate of one metre per second just by putting spare metres between them carefully at an appropriate rate. But that's what's happening (as near as anyone can tell) with universal expansion.

@@stanrogers5613 Not my subject and yet I've found a supporting experience in the supernatural, life after death experiences. A not so bright man, a Dull, after he died was taken out of this universe and shown the multiverse by God. He testified to the multiverse as an infinite to him number of cigar shaped universes. It's like that 50 year old man with a 3rd grade level education speaking fluent latin or the little boy as the subject of the movie The Exorcist who fluently spoke ancient Aramaic, how did the Dull know our universe is cigar shaped?

@@stanrogers5613 I believe the way you described it , is perfectly normal. Because every galaxy is in free fall towards the center of galaxy cluster and clusters are in free fall towards the center of superclusters and so on!(it is my guess) therefore, we see them falling apart from us and we observe the increase in the distance between them. But my question was not based on this idea of free fall in structures of the universe. I used to think that by expansion of the universe, they mean that the fabric of universe is expanding . Is this assumption false?

@@stanrogers5613 also, if only distance between the galaxies increases without moving any of two galaxies, that would mean that the light between those two galaxies must be decelerating in order to cancel out the acceleration of increase in that distance!