[HN Gopher] Strange new phase of matter acts like it has two tim...
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Strange new phase of matter acts like it has two time dimensions
Author : wjSgoWPm5bWAhXB
Score : 210 points
Date : 2022-07-21 08:59 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| Optimal_Persona wrote:
| Says Dumitrescu, "I've been working on these theory ideas for
| over five years, and seeing them come actually to be realized in
| experiments is exciting." Wait, he only specified one of the time
| dimensions he's been working in...j/k, any experiment showing
| unexpected temporal properties is fascinating!
| andsoitis wrote:
| "The best way to understand their approach is by considering
| something else ordered yet non-repeating: "quasicrystals." A
| typical crystal has a regular, repeating structure, like the
| hexagons in a honeycomb. A quasicrystal still has order, but its
| patterns never repeat. (Penrose tiling is one example of this.)
| Even more mind-boggling is that quasicrystals are crystals from
| higher dimensions projected, or squished down, into lower
| dimensions. Those higher dimensions can even be beyond physical
| space's three dimensions: A 2D Penrose tiling, for instance, is a
| projected slice of a 5-D lattice.
|
| For the qubits, Dumitrescu, Vasseur and Potter proposed in 2018
| the creation of a quasicrystal in time rather than space. Whereas
| a periodic laser pulse would alternate (A, B, A, B, A, B, etc.),
| the researchers created a quasi-periodic laser-pulse regimen
| based on the Fibonacci sequence. In such a sequence, each part of
| the sequence is the sum of the two previous parts (A, AB, ABA,
| ABAAB, ABAABABA, etc.). This arrangement, just like a
| quasicrystal, is ordered without repeating. And, akin to a
| quasicrystal, it's a 2D pattern squashed into a single dimension.
| That dimensional flattening theoretically results in two time
| symmetries instead of just one: The system essentially gets a
| bonus symmetry from a nonexistent extra time dimension."
| ttpphd wrote:
| Feeling resigned to just not understanding this one as a lay
| person. Oh well, hope it leads to more cool things!
| im3w1l wrote:
| It's wrong to say that a quasi-crystal _is_ crystal from a
| higher dimension. You apparently get a quasi-crystal if you
| project a higher dimensional crystal, which I guess is neat.
| But really they are just trying to hype up their own results.
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| If you look at the graphic at the top of the article (Penrose
| tiling) you'll notice there are a bunch of points that are
| centers of rotational symmetry (you can rotate it 2pi/N and
| get the same thing) and lines of reflection symmetry (you can
| mirror it over that line and get the same thing) but there is
| no translational symmetry (you can't slide it over in any
| direction and overlap with the original), this is a
| "quasicrystal" (in 2d)
|
| Compare to e.g. a grid of squares that has reflection and
| rotation symmetry but also has translational symmetry, this
| is a true "crystal" (in 2d)
|
| This article is treating a train of laser pulses as a "1d
| crystal" and if long/short pulses resemble a Fibonacci
| sequence treating it as a "1d quasicrystal". This seems to be
| noteworthy in that using such a structured pulse train
| provides some improvements in quantum computing when it's
| used to read / write (i.e. shine on) information (i.e.
| electron configuration) from atoms / small molecules (i.e.
| qubits)
|
| Edit: And the "2 time dimensions" thing is basically that a
| N-d "quasicrystal" is usually a pretty close approximation of
| an [N+M]-d "true crystal" projected down into N dimensions so
| the considering the higher dimension structure might make
| things easier by getting rid of transcendental numbers etc.
| jerf wrote:
| "Feeling resigned to just not understanding this one as a lay
| person."
|
| The biggest and most important step is to make sure you drop
| any mysticism about what a "dimension" is. It's just a
| necessary component of identifying the location of something
| in some way. More than three "dimensions" is not just common
| but _super_ common, to the point of mundanity. The location
| and orientation of a rigid object, a completely boring
| quantity, is six dimensional: three for space, three for the
| rotation. Add velocity in and it becomes 12 dimensional; the
| six previous and three each now for linear and rotational
| velocity. To understand "dimensions" you must purge _ALL_
| science fiction understanding and understand them not as
| exotic, but _painfully_ mundane and boring. (They may measure
| something interesting, but that "interestingness" should be
| accounted to the thing being measured, not the "dimension".
| "Dimensions" are as boring as "inches" or "gallons".)
|
| Next up, there is a very easy metaphor for us in the
| computing realm for the latest in QM and especially materials
| science. In our world, there is a certain way in which a
| "virtual machine" and a "machine" are hard to tell apart. A
| lot of things in the latest QM and materials science is
| building little virtual things that combine the existing
| simple QM primitives to build new systems. The simplest
| example of this sort of thing is a "hole". Holes do not
| "exist". They are where an electron is missing. But you can
| treat them as a virtual thing, and it can be difficult to
| tell whether or not that virtual thing is "real" or not,
| because it acts exactly like the "virtual" thing would if it
| were "real".
|
| In this case, this system may mathematically behave like
| there is a second time dimension, and that's _interesting_ ,
| but it "just" "simulating" it. It creates a larger system out
| of smaller parts that happens to match that behavior, but it
| doesn't mean there's "really" a second time dimension.
|
| The weird and whacky things you hear coming out of QM and
| materials science are composite things being assembled out of
| normal mundane components in ways that allow them to
| "simulate" being some other interesting system, except when
| you're "simulating" at this low, basic level it essentially
| _is_ just the thing being "simulated". But there's not
| necessarily anything new going on; it's still electrons and
| protons and neutrons and such, just arranged in interesting
| ways, just as, in the end, Quake or Tetris is "just" an
| interesting arrangement of NAND gates. There's no upper limit
| to how "interestingly" things can be arranged, but there's
| less "new" than meets the eye.
|
| Unfortunately, trying to understand this through science
| articles, which are still as addicted as ever to "woo woo"
| with the word dimensions and leaning in to the weirdness of
| QM and basically deliberately _trying_ to instill mysticism
| at the incorrect level of the problem. (Personally, I still
| feel a _lot_ of wonder about the world and enjoy learning
| more... but woo woo about what a "dimension" is is not the
| place for that.)
| deanCommie wrote:
| This may be the most eye-opening and clarifying thing I've
| read about this domain in literally years. Thank you.
|
| The connection back to the complexity chasm that exists
| between NAND gates and Quake is also fantastic because as a
| "traditional" software engineer, it makes perfect sense.
|
| It's also good remembering that most of the "academic
| science" that underlies computers was established almost
| 100 years ago. But it took this long for us to get GTA
| Online.
|
| Whatever advances arrive from these developments in Quantum
| computing may not see practical groundbreaking applications
| until we're all very old and decrepit.
|
| It's still incredible to hear about. The fact that our
| modern "wireless" world exists on fundamentally the same
| physical primitives as a radio wave pulsing morse code
| bouncing it off the ionosphere 100 years ago is
| mindboggling.
| lucasgw wrote:
| This is a really wonderful explanation that removes the woo
| from QM. As a non-scientist, I've spent a lot of time
| reading about QM and trying to understand stuff, and
| eventually get lost in hand-waviness about dimensions and
| vague references to Schrodinger and his boxes of semi-cats.
| Thanks!!
| phkahler wrote:
| They could have just said "aperiodic laser pulses" are
| used. No need to introduce fantastical sounding terminology
| about multiple time dimensions, which seems to have been
| done quite deliberately.
| philipswood wrote:
| Yeah, extra spatial dimensions might be common as grass in
| visualisations, but extra TIME dimensions... those are
| pretty unusual.
| [deleted]
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Ok, so let's cut through the woo:
|
| A crystal is a repeating pattern of elements in space. For
| example, a diamond is carbon atoms - the same thing in
| ordinary coal - arranged in a particular shape of grid.
|
| You can have patterns that are made in time rather than
| space, such as by hitting a drum with a stick in time with
| music. Of course, this isn't really very crystal-like,
| because the drum doesn't try to resist you hitting it off-
| time. However, there _are_ certain atomic-scale materials
| that _do_ resist your horrible off-beat drumming, and you
| "hit" them with a laser rather than a drumstick. _These_
| systems are time crystals[0].
|
| You can also have crystal patterns that _don 't_ repeat,
| which are called quasicrystals. For every quasicrystal,
| there's a higher-dimension crystal that it is a shadow of.
| You could imagine, say, a 3D grid or lattice that you can
| shine a light through onto a piece of paper to get an
| irregular 2D pattern, which would be your quasicrystal. The
| two structures are related to one another, but that doesn't
| necessarily mean that the flatlanders living in it have proof
| of the existence of a third dimension.
|
| The new development is time _quasi_ crystals: i.e. a drum
| that you can bang with some non-repeating pattern and it will
| also keep in time with the pattern even if you are off. The
| stuff about "acting like it has two time dimensions" is more
| woo; there _is_ a 2D time relation to the 1D time
| quasicrystal, but there is no actual 2D time shenanigans
| going on. The non-repeating pattern apparently also makes the
| time crystal better at "keeping time" which _may_ help build
| more stable qubits for quantum computers.
|
| [0] Note that you can't have _spacetime_ crystals in the same
| material. You can either have atoms that link to one another
| with chemical bonds to form a pattern, or atoms that trade
| their bonds in rhythmic patterns, but not both.
| function_seven wrote:
| > _You could imagine, say, a 3D grid or lattice that you
| can shine a light through onto a piece of paper to get an
| irregular 2D pattern, which would be your quasicrystal._
|
| This is where I lose it. I actually can't imagine such a
| thing. Every regular 3D crystal I imagine has a repeating
| pattern in its shadow. For every ray of light passing
| through one part of the 3D lattice, I can locate parallel
| rays that produce the same result in other parts of the
| lattice.
|
| What am I missing here? Just not imagining the right
| lattice types? Or are we assuming a point-source of light
| so that no 2 rays are parallel?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| If you angle the 3D lattice at an irrational angle
| relative to the 2D plane the points will not be perfectly
| periodic in the plane.
| boppo1 wrote:
| What is an irrational angle? Is this something I can
| actually do physically, or is it more of a theoretical
| math thing? For example, if I'm holding a toy that is a
| lattice showing the 3d structure of carbon between my
| dining room table and ceiling lamp, how do I rotate it
| such that it is irrational relative to my table?
| tiler2915072 wrote:
| this might help a little:
| https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/791848/penrose-
| tili... which is just a watered down explanation of the
| excellent https://tilings.math.uni-
| bielefeld.de/substitution/fibonacci...
| McBeige wrote:
| I'm guessing it's irrational as in rational vs irrational
| numbers. Rational means a fraction of whole numbers, so
| irrational numbers are those which cannot be represented
| as such a fraction. A 1/4 turn is rational, a 1/pi turn
| is irrational.
|
| I feel like the light has to be parallel for it to work,
| so sunlight is a better example than a table lamp.
| Although I can't imagine any rotation of a simple 3D
| lattice having a nonrepeating shadow. Perhaps a more
| complex 3D crystal is necessary?
| mcswell wrote:
| Rational/ irrational here depends on the unit of
| measurement. A full circle (360 degrees) is rational if
| you measure it in degrees, but irrational if you measure
| it in radians (it's 2 pi radians).
| cercatrova wrote:
| Look at this image: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/54/1b/1a/54
| 1b1afd4a72564f808825b3e...
|
| The window is the lattice, which is regularly ordered.
| The _shadow_ , however, is distorted, ie each light beam
| is not the same size as the one next to it.
| abeppu wrote:
| ... but that window is a 2D lattice, with a 2D shadow.
|
| > For every quasicrystal, there's a higher-dimension
| crystal that it is a shadow of.
|
| So what's the 3d crystal whose shadow is the Penrose
| tiling? The article says it's a "projected slice of a 5D
| lattice", which I really struggle to visualize.
|
| Or perhaps easier, what's the regular 2D pattern of which
| the Fibonacci sequence is a projection?
| mcswell wrote:
| You're struggling to visualize this? "You're just not
| thinking fourth dimensionally." --Doc Emmet Brown
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUcNM7OsdsY)
| [deleted]
| rocqua wrote:
| My guess is that it has to do with projections at an
| 'irrational' slope. That would prevent repetition, though
| I believe it would cause a dense set of points if you
| project the infinite lattice to a lower dimension.
| vez- wrote:
| This video gives a very concrete example of a non-
| repeating pattern (Penrose tiling)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48sCx-wBs34
| function_seven wrote:
| I understand the non-repeating patterns. I just don't see
| how a regular 3D lattice can produce such a pattern.
| Unless the light source creating this shadow is a point-
| source rather than a parallel one?
|
| I guess I'm just looking for confirmation on this
| thought: _A parallel light shone through a repeating 3D
| lattice will always produce a repeating 2D lattice._
| yazanobeidi wrote:
| Try projecting it on a surface with curvature. The
| projected grid spacing will be irregular and follow the
| curvature.
| wnolens wrote:
| > there are certain atomic-scale materials that do resist
| your horrible off-beat drumming
|
| whoa.
| clord wrote:
| Does this then count as a sort of "holographic time"? Encoding
| two dimensions on a single stream of time.
| Izkata wrote:
| ..and can two of them create a Time Cube?
|
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-time-cube
| Tao3300 wrote:
| 4-day confirmed. We're all educated stupid now.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| But that's saying that if you have something repeating in the
| same way along the X axis, you have two spacial dimensions.
| That's not the way most of us use "dimensions". (The math may
| work out for their usage to not be nonsense, but it's
| considerably less than a "real" extra time dimension.)
| elil17 wrote:
| So essentially this is somehow akin to a network with hypercube
| topology - it's got a mathematical relationship to an extra
| dimension but there's no physical extra dimension.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| I don't think anything is claimed about the existence or non
| existence of a corresponding physical dimension
| joenathanone wrote:
| "The system essentially gets a bonus symmetry from a
| nonexistent extra time dimension."
| bordercases wrote:
| It's in the last sentence of the GP
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| Two time dimensions? So the metric signature is (+,+,-,-)?
| Sharlin wrote:
| Apparently not in this case. But Greg Egan (of course it's Greg
| Egan) has written an entire novel about a civilization of
| sentient creatures inhabiting a universe with a (+,+,-,-)
| metric - time is still one-dimensional in their universe, but
| one of the spatial dimensions is hyperbolic:
| https://www.gregegan.net/DICHRONAUTS/DICHRONAUTS.html
| jacquesm wrote:
| That makes Flatland look tame.
| thatcherc wrote:
| And in case anyone is new to Greg Egan, there's also the
| Orthogonal series (starting with The Clockwork Rocket) where
| the metric is (+,+,+,+) - the "time" dimension is just like
| the spatial dimensions. Pretty cool read with a bit of
| physics background!
| fareesh wrote:
| Can someone ELI5
| [deleted]
| awsrocks wrote:
| [deleted]
| inDigiNeous wrote:
| Interesting article. The part that caught my attention was:
|
| "Even more mind-boggling is that quasicrystals are crystals from
| higher dimensions projected, or squished down, into lower
| dimensions. Those higher dimensions can even be beyond physical
| space's three dimensions: A 2D Penrose tiling, for instance, is a
| projected slice of a 5-D lattice."
|
| I've been working on creating digital mandala software for the
| past 10 years, and have created countless digital fractal mandala
| patterns during that time, and I've noticed that something really
| interesting can happen when you do that with a tool that enables
| quick and recursive creation of this kind of images.
|
| After creating a pattern for 4-5 hours for example, after that
| the patterns would continue be visualized inside my eyelids once
| I would close my eyes, evolving into new patterns that I did not
| draw on the screen, in a seemingly intelligent way, finding new
| shapes and patterns that I could not have created by myself, but
| some part of me continues visualizing these shapes into new,
| alive feeling forms inside my eyelids.
|
| Many times these patterns would continue living inside my eyelids
| when I go to sleep, and even sometimes continue right away when I
| awoke after that night. And this completely sober even.
|
| This effect can be magnified exponentially when combined with
| some mind altering entheogenics, but it works completely sober
| also.
|
| It is hard to describe, but the feeling has been many times that
| I am looking at an "2D shadow" of something that lives beyond
| this current moment, like I am seeing a slice of time represented
| in 2D about a higher dimensional form that is not possible to
| visualize with current tools.
|
| This article would push towards confirming my theories about
| forms existing that we only see parts of in slices of time, but
| somehow we can connect to those higher dimensional versions
| through the act of mandala creation.
|
| Just wanted to share some thoughts on the subject, it is not
| something I claim to understand at all. If you want to test this
| out yourself, we have a trial version of our software available
| at http://www.OmniGeometry.com :-)
|
| Would be interesting to hear if you have some thoughts on this
| subject. The act of creating mandalas is something many spiritual
| traditions also have utilized to connect us to the coherence of
| the greater patterns, like the tibetan monks creating sand
| mandalas and then wiping them away.
| akomtu wrote:
| Your software seems similar to iterated function systems (IFS,
| e.g. Apophysis) in principle, but it's deterministic.
|
| On the philosopical side, these shapes are particular kind of
| thought-forms, something that mind naturally creates when it's
| not distracted by sensory input. The forms hardly have any
| profound meaning - they are just art created by bored mind -
| but sometimes they represent sonething profound.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| For anybody whom might be interested in "what a 4D cube might
| look like..."
|
| https://youtu.be/1wAaI_6b9JE?t=2360
|
| The entire video in mesmerizing -- one of the coolest party
| tricks I've learned is the double-twisted morbius strip
| dissection.
| robocat wrote:
| Our brains are general purpose pattern-matching machines, self-
| programmed by their environment.
|
| Intense interest in anything, will eventually train models
| within the mind that not only recognise higher order patterns,
| but predict them too.
|
| Those "predictions" come from the intuitive parts of our mind -
| they bubble up - seemingly from nowhere. There is a lot of
| wonder about this, and it is fun to explore (say making music,
| or playing with patterns). The predictions are not part of our
| rational (imperative?) step-by-step mind.
|
| We also create irrational narratives to explain where our
| intuitions came from - the successful startup founder
| explaining their route - the mystic explaining their source.
| It grew out of tasks in which he asked a split-brain person to
| explain in words, which uses the left hemisphere, an action
| that had been directed to and carried out only by the right
| one. "The left hemisphere made up a post hoc answer that fit
| the situation." In one of Gazzaniga's favourite examples, he
| flashed the word 'smile' to a patient's right hemisphere and
| the word 'face' to the left hemisphere, and asked the patient
| to draw what he'd seen. "His right hand drew a smiling face,"
| Gazzaniga recalled. "'Why did you do that?' I asked. He said,
| 'What do you want, a sad face? Who wants a sad face around?'."
| The left-brain interpreter, Gazzaniga says, is what everyone
| uses to seek explanations for events, triage the barrage of
| incoming information and construct narratives that help to make
| sense of the world.
|
| A split-brain guy creating an narrative, rationalising:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Of01gO_fC1M
| jacksnipe wrote:
| This isn't any sort of crank theory, I think this is basically
| what string theory amounts to: we experience a 4-dimensional
| projection of an N-dimensional space.
|
| Also, in math, lots of things are projections of higher order
| objects into lower order spaces!
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I believe this is a common Phenomenon with a lot of different
| manifestations. I think it's scientifically boils down to
| hyperactive pattern matching by the brain. Is common with
| psychedelics and often manifests as a fractal growth but also
| manifest in normal life. A common sober example is seeing
| floaters in your vision. Most people have floaters but not all
| see them and not all the time. The brain gets a lot of
| information and passes it through a filter, and then tries to
| pattern fit it. Prolonged exposure to a certain stimulus or a
| fixation on it attenuates the filters down and the pattern
| fitting up.
|
| With sufficient attenuation, the brain will simply fit any
| noise it sees into the pattern.
|
| The idea is related to the Nobel prize winning vision cognition
| studies of David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel, where animals can be
| conditioned to not perceive vertical or horizontal lines.
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/intl/bl...
| jlokier wrote:
| You might enjoy "The Hyperbolic Geometry of DMT Experiences
| (@Harvard Science of Psychedelics Club)",
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loCBvaj4eSg
| colechristensen wrote:
| I would classify what you experience as an instance of the
| Tetris effect.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect
| purplerabbit wrote:
| I've experienced with this with racquetball strangely enough,
| and my brother tells me that he regularly experiences this
| with playing the piano.
|
| (This makes me terrified of the degree to which programming
| has affected my way of thinking, considering I've spent 100x
| as much time doing that as playing racquetball.)
| duskwuff wrote:
| One part Tetris effect, one part Kluver form constants.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_constant
| Sniffnoy wrote:
| Note, the sequence used here is what's normally known as the
| Fibonacci word: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_word
| [deleted]
| roywiggins wrote:
| The "encoded" time dimension has a certain "Permutation City"
| flavor.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| So is the Earth flat or not? That is, are there any
| mathematically possible ways the earth could be considered flat
| or two dimensional after all.
| xwdv wrote:
| Can someone attempt to explain what the implications of this
| would be on a more macro level?
| sedatk wrote:
| "Information stored in the phase is far more protected against
| errors than with alternative setups currently used in quantum
| computers. As a result, the information can exist without
| getting garbled for much longer, an important milestone for
| making quantum computing viable"
| awinter-py wrote:
| nature article is paywalled, but looks like this arxiv from last
| year is the same?
|
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.09676 Dumitrescu et al
|
| not my area, but I think they're working with 'floquet systems'
| (the same platform used to build a time crystal) and 'mbl
| systems' (a kind of quantum system that can be temporarily
| protected from thermodynamic entropy). I'm reaching, but I think
| both kinds of systems show extended lifetimes when you drive them
| externally with a periodic laser.
|
| I think the Dumitrescu paper is building on work done in Else
| 2020 https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.03584
|
| The Else paper is using two lasers with non-ratio frequencies to
| extend the lifetime of these systems. The new dumitrescu paper is
| discretizing that approach by using a fibonacci sequence instead?
| and somehow this buys them a few more seconds of system
| coherence?
| cohomologo wrote:
| As far as I understand it, either two incommensurate
| frequencies or the Fibonacci sequence ABAAB... approach produce
| similar physics. The Fibonacci sequence is easier to simulate
| numerically on a (classical) computer because there is a
| recursive property to it that allows you to jump forward in
| time in large steps, making it nice for theorists even if the
| experiments are fairly similar.
| ffhhj wrote:
| 2 dimensions of time would allow supertasks in our reality. A
| problem is solved in the perpendicular axis and the result is
| returned to our observer axis. No time travel paradoxes. Next
| thing after quantum computing.
| t_mann wrote:
| Dear quantum physicists, when will you stop messing with our
| minds? Just when we'd warmed up to superpositions over 2^n qubit
| states, you had to introduce extra time dimensions?
|
| Tbf, the quasi-periodic pulsing explanation is a lot more
| understandable than the headline had me think. Sounds like the
| second dimension is just a mathematical interpretation, just like
| you can reason about which higher-dimensional objects _would_
| give rise to a particular 2D pattern if projected onto a plane -
| it doesn 't necessarily mean that the extra dimensions are really
| there, it just provides us with a new way of thinking about it
| mathematically (although I wouldn't be surprised if some quantum
| physicists came round the corner arguing that the second time
| dimension is _actually_ there, sigh).
| falcor84 wrote:
| Yeah, it reminds me that as a student I always felt that it's
| "cute" that a hyperbola can be considered as a 2d section of a
| double cone, but that this property doesn't really help me in
| any way when working with them.
| xigency wrote:
| I wonder if one of the reasons more advanced physics can be
| intractable to understand is because of all of the clever
| interpretations. By abstracting raw empirical results into an
| analogous interpretation that defies ordinary logic, we are
| introducing gates to understanding by some cleverness test.
|
| I see this for instance in the difference between elementary
| quantum explanations and something more like the Standard
| Model. One is concerned with indoctrinating some kind of belief
| or interpretation of phenomenon, even introducing philosophical
| and unfallsifiable elements, and the other is a useful index of
| known bits and pieces and their interactions found through
| empirical digging.
| contravariant wrote:
| I blame the string theorists. A single time dimension ought to
| be enough for everyone.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, no, I'm happy in Newton's world thank you very much.
| altruios wrote:
| I fully expect us to find multiple time dimensions to actually
| exist.
|
| But that is just a selfish hope for free will to exist.
|
| think about it:
|
| _taps head_
|
| If it's a time 'line' then you don't get to pick your direction
| - no choice is no free will, only if a line exists in a plane
| does choice come into the picture. /s
| t_mann wrote:
| Haha, yeah this is missing a _taps head_ meme. But we don 't
| even need multiple time dimensions for free will to exist!
| I've heard more than one physicist argue that quantum
| uncertainty alone is enough to get us free will.
| mehphp wrote:
| I'd be curious how?
| jaynetics wrote:
| I'd argue that a certain randomness of choice could indeed
| increase freedom of action, though it doesn't grant "free
| will" in the common sense. There's no need for quantum
| physics in this, though. A deterministic rand() will do
| just fine.
| [deleted]
| brandmeyer wrote:
| They just need one more to catch up with the time cube guy.
| 19f191ty wrote:
| It's still a single flow of time right? So more like two time-
| scales than two time dimensions? e.g. day and night cycle plus
| monthly cycles happening together on the same time variable. Have
| I understood this all wrong?
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| What you're describing is generally not considered two
| dimensions, but just different scales of one dimension.
| 19f191ty wrote:
| That's what I said too. The article seems to describe scales
| rather than dimensions. They specifically say there's just
| one flow of time. But as one the comments below says, there
| are two time-translation symmetries. Which in certain
| contexts can be thought of as multiple scales. It is also
| very common in the real world
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| That's how I read it too. More that they're encoding another
| aspect into their pulsing. But "multidimensional time atoms" is
| probably a much more appealing headline.
| comnetxr wrote:
| Yep, this is it. The key is not that there are two time
| dimensions but two independent time translation symmetries,
| each which translates the system by a different period of
| time corresponding to the two frequencies in their pulse. The
| two time dimensions is an analogy that's useful for the
| theoretical treatment of such a system.
| [deleted]
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I am way outside of my field, but what you describe sounds like
| Fouerier series.
| 19f191ty wrote:
| Fourier series is one way of separating out multiple time-
| scales, especially when they are regular and periodic. The
| example I gave will be amenable to that because the cycles
| are very periodic. But the different timescales don't have to
| be periodic. They can be quasi periodic, or completely
| irregular. They just have to run at different speeds.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I see, thank you! Very interesting!
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