There’s another twist, and Jack meets Higgins?:)

Higgins is beyond anything Jack is use too. The fictional conspiracy grows with this new turn of events.

The crew begins to delve into “other possible” terror scenarios?

Elliot

Watch the code-sharing.. Lufthansa (as poor as the planes have become) and United airlines work well together, but United Airlines and US Airways don’t (they don’t talk to each other and make dreadful mistakes transferring luggage between the two airlines), and in general I’ve learned that it is good to check the flight designation to know for sure “which” airline is actually flying to know better about the ’sharing’. In 2003, I used Air Canada to go to Denver for a workshop in the Rocky Mountains because the price was good, and because Air Canada was part of the Star Alliance network. Somehow Alitalia code-shared the Air Canada flight and flew that part. Since Alitalia is not part of the Star Alliance network, I lost miles on my Mileage Plus for that round-trip Transatlantic flight.

(OK, not about string theory, gauge theory or particle physics, but thoughts that came to my mind when you spoke about your trip.)

Well, if space and time have no meaning, we shouldn’t be talking about “regions” or “where”, should we now? And even that “have” looks rather questionable

I agree with CVJ that it may not be very helpful to get all philosophical here. But philosophy might just remind us that “replacing space and time” is likely to be a *lot* harder than we think. I recall an amusing talk by a quantum gravity theorist who insisted that space and time would be replaced by “a well-known substance, familiar to all quantum gravity theorists, which appears in all discussions of this subject, including those by string theorists”, which he denoted by SE. At the end of the talk it was revealed that the “substance” was “Something Else”. Such honesty is all too rare; too many people think that the magic incantation “Duality!” automatically generates “Something Else”. It doesn’t.
By the way, it is true that the singularities studied by Sethi et al have only a very tenuous connection with real cosmological singularities. The hope, however, is that their so-called singularities might turn into something more interesting when back-reaction is turned on……

Maybe you too, Clifford?

You know what happens when you have to explain yourself?

Well, it could be interpreted that maybe I didn’t understand it at all? Well that’s partially true, and I do know the trouble philosphers have?

Oh your not “obtuse” at all either Clifford.

SuperCosmologists Think Out of the Box Clifford at 1:13 a.m. August 3 2005

Clifford:

Physicist are attracted by the idea of showing that the types of 3+1 dimensional models and equations which regular cosmologists study actually have their origins “outside the box,” in the larger setting….

Better?

Looks as though you have moved onto a more attractive monastery. Despite your body bathing in less atmospheric pressure and your blood circulating with less oxygen, I’m certain your stay at this outdoor monatary is riveling to your senses.;-)

Hmmm…Can time end? Equally profound, how did time begin? Doubtlessly, the component of time, as opposed to the multi-components of space, still remains the fundamental wild-card in theoretical physics. Intuitively speaking, the flow of time is intertwined with the process of entropy production. Likewise, the component of time appears to be the key mechanism behind the evolution of the Universe.

Perhaps on his quest to make sense of time, your fellow theorist – Savdeep Sethi- can solve the cosmological constant problem, in turn, can unveil the ubiquitous dark energy as well.

Best, Cynthia

In the large part, physics has not advanced by people sitting around declaring that an issue is wierd or spooky and therefore a matter for the philosophers. Not the philosophy of the sort Spyder is referrring to. We’d never have had Galileo or Newton or Einstein, to name just a few. The philosophy (and I don’t mean “natural philosophy” (roughly what we would call physics now)) that is associated with those people and their physics came *after* the physics. People will no doubt come in and try to romanticize what they were doing and blow out of proportion some philosophy-sounding things they might have said in their writings, but they will be wrong. Strip down what those scientists were doing to the core and you will see that they were doing good old fashioned physics, and using a firmly pragmatic scientific method as their guide.

I don’t want to overstate things here (since I like the idea of healthy dialogue between disciplines), but it is very important to distinguish the process of doing physical science from doing philosophy, and we’ve done a lot better at accurately describing our world in physical terms by doing the former. To simplify a bit, I know, one could say that the latter is useful for trying to make sense of the description once it has been found. Trying to make sense of it all is another matter entirely. That is not what physics is about.

So physics (=observation, experiment and constructing physical theories to underlie the results) comes first, while philosphy follows. ’twas ever thus. Sorry if you don’t like it, but the weight of history is against you on this one.

Kindly present me with a good measure of significant counter examples rather than questioning my qualifications, and I’ll be happy to reconsider.

-cvj