If the relationship between mass’s velocity and its kinetic energy were linear rather than as it is, would life have evolved and be able to exist?
Would any universe be able to exist?
transition said:
If the relationship between mass’s velocity and its kinetic energy were linear rather than as it is, would life have evolved and be able to exist?Would any universe be able to exist?
I doubt there would be any reality without the nature of FoR resolving a static constant………
transition said:
If the relationship between mass’s velocity and its kinetic energy were linear rather than as it is, would life have evolved and be able to exist?Would any universe be able to exist?
Maybe some matter may exist but not as we know it, hence the statement, “It’s life Jim but not as we know it would also apply”.
Can I have some of what you are smokeing please?
See Mollwoll’s post regarding different types of possible.
KE is defined to be equal mv^2/2.
transition said:
If the relationship between mass’s velocity and its kinetic energy were linear rather than as it is, would life have evolved and be able to exist?Would any universe be able to exist?
I don’t think so. But these sort of questions where you change a single law of physics can be very tricky.
In your scenario, KE would be proportional to momentum (except that momentum is a vector and energy is a scalar). I’m pretty sure that this would muck up fairly important things like Newtonian inverse square gravity being a conservative force, and likewise it’d be pretty hard to reconcile with relativity, but it’s even worse than that.
One of the fundamental features of our universe is that we have laws of motion which can be expressed in the form of equations. So if you set up a bunch of particles with given mass and velocity you can calculate what happens to that system over time as the particles bounce off each other. The equations that describe this motion must have unique solutions, otherwise each time you repeat the experiment with identical starting conditions you’d get different outcomes. And that would imply that the universe wouldn’t know how to behave, or at least, it’d make mathematical physics useless.
These equations involve the momentum & kinetic energy of the particles. Typically, you solve the equations of motion of a system by calculating the final velocities of the particles such that the final total momentum and energy is equal to the initial momentum and energy. But if KE were proportional to momentum then you wouldn’t have enough restrictions on the particles’ motion to get a unique solution.
¿defined eh?
Not wanting so much to rejig the entire physics of the universe, a conceptual starting point to something else were intended, being the pervasiveness of this non-linear relationship, how it might contribute to the evolution of complex systems (life for example), and the consequences of viewing the world from linear time as we may tend.
Is the view humans have sort of constrained by conceptualizing through linear time, and are there alternatives.
SCIENCE said:
¿defined eh?
yes
PM2Ring’s reply is excellent.
> If the relationship between mass’s velocity and its kinetic energy were linear rather than as it is, would life have evolved and be able to exist? Would any universe be able to exist?
But it does no harm to consider “what it” questions on occasions. Questions such as “what it the universe had only one space dimension” lead to “Causal Dynamical Triangulation” for instance, a leading contender for a Theory of Everything.
Let me start by thinking around the topic.
Velocity has direction, kinetic energy doesn’t. The relationship between momentum and velocity is already linear, and both General Relativity and Newtonian Dynamics say that the key equations governing the universe are conservation of mass and conservation of momentum. So why bother setting kinetic energy proportional to velocity when momentum already plays that role? Kinetic energy is relatively unimportant, being a quantity derived by manipulating the equations of momentum and mass conservation, in the same way that angular momentum is derived by manipulating the same equations in similar ways.
So let’s say I start by disposing of “kinetic energy” entirely. Is this possible? The equality of potential and kinetic energy comes out of Noether’s theorem, but that can be overcome by simply assuming that “potential energy” is not well defined. The equality of thermal and kinetic energy comes out of kinetic theory. Kinetic energy in kinetic theory comes out of the relationship: Force = momentum divided by time. With time as distance divided by velocity we end up with force proportional to mass times velocity squared – kinetic energy, but there is a subtlety here because force is a vector and kinetic energy is a scalar. It’s not easy to break the equality of temperature and kinetic energy, so let it stand but then if kinetic energy is linear with velocity then so is temperature.
Kinetic energy is also a facet of quantum mechanics. Note that quantum mechanics can be written to allow kinetic energy to become negative, which is inconsistent with the simple setting of kinetic energy proportional to velocity squared, but is consistent with velocities faster than the speed of light and temperatures below absolute zero. In quantum mechanics the kinetic energy appears in the Hamiltonian. Here potential and kinetic energy are intimately linked. If potential energy were assumed not to be well defined then most applications of quantum mechanics, such as their effect on the stability of atoms and atomic nuclei, would be under threat. It would be extremely difficult, but perhaps not impossible, to devise a variant of quantum mechanics that relied solely on momentum and not on a kinetic energy proportional to velocity squared.
Chances are very high that any such theory, because of the radically different atomic electron energy levels and atomic nucleus energy levels, would no be able to support life in any conceivable form.
The Rev Dodgson said:
SCIENCE said:
¿defined eh?
yes
Rev, if you start with conservation of energy as your starting point then you can derive the KE formula through considering the work done on a body by a dynamical force.
MartinB said:
The Rev Dodgson said:
SCIENCE said:
¿defined eh?
yes
Rev, if you start with conservation of energy as your starting point then you can derive the KE formula through considering the work done on a body by a dynamical force.
That’s why it doesn’t make sense to define KE any other way than the way it is.
Could there be a universe where x = x*x, for all values of x?
The Rev Dodgson said:
I reckon it’d get very large, very quickly.
Could there be a universe where x = x*x, for all values of x?
The Rev Dodgson said:
MartinB said:
The Rev Dodgson said:yes
Rev, if you start with conservation of energy as your starting point then you can derive the KE formula through considering the work done on a body by a dynamical force.
That’s why it doesn’t make sense to define KE any other way than the way it is.
Some peoplewould say that a derived quantity is not defined. But that’s semantics for you!
// I reckon it’d get very large, very quickly.
For very large values of small, in fact that universe is the one with basis {0, 1}.
/* Rev, if you start with conservation of energy as your starting point then you can derive the KE formula through considering the work done on a body by a dynamical force.
That’s why it doesn’t make sense to define KE any other way than the way it is.Some peoplewould say that a derived quantity is not defined. But that’s semantics for you! */
It’sn’t just about semantics.
thereisnoether
MartinB said:
The Rev Dodgson said:
MartinB said:Rev, if you start with conservation of energy as your starting point then you can derive the KE formula through considering the work done on a body by a dynamical force.
That’s why it doesn’t make sense to define KE any other way than the way it is.
Some peoplewould say that a derived quantity is not defined. But that’s semantics for you!
As to the question whether it is semantics or SCIENCE, I shall leave that for another day.
For now I’m pondering what a universe where F = m(a^0.5) would be like.
What I’m thinking is that everything from abiogenesis (more broadly emergent complexity) to the working of consciousness are rendered difficult to understand because of the linearity imposed on perception and conception (from what we generalize to be ‘time’ as we tend to measure it), which involves propositions that require qualifications no doubt.
Something of it seems arseabout.
I think the relationship between mass’s velocity and kinetic energy somehow generates a sort of ‘computation’. An algorithm of sorts perhaps.
Somehow it originates from everything always having (had) kinetic energy, the transformation of energy. Quantities that yield qualities, that yield space that yields the time we perceive and conceive via. The perception and conception (then) in the act of doing what it does obliterates or extinguishes the possibility of rendering the algorithm to be understood, because to understand is simplification, and the thing isn’t comprehensible or apprehendable through any representational simplification. It may even be that efforts to do so (via linear time) are what make it so.
Not sure that I know what you mean by “linear time.
The Rev Dodgson said:
Not sure that I know what you mean by “linear time.
>Not sure that I know what you mean by “linear time.
The way we linearize or conceive from this way, when in fact most of the work out there that generates the world derives from something non-linear MV^2
>A word jumble trying to sound intelligent.
Nice attribution in that, fuckwit.
transition said:
>A word jumble trying to sound intelligent.Nice attribution in that, fuckwit.
You really should know the meaning of those big words before you use them.
As you cite from the dictionary below, not to be confused with inviting you to continue in this thread.
>1.The act of attributing something.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalar_(physics)
“Some examples of scalars include the mass, charge, volume, time, speed, temperature, or electric potential at a point inside a medium. The distance between two points in three-dimensional space is a scalar, but the direction from one of those points to the other is not, since describing a direction requires two physical quantities such as the angle on the horizontal plane and the angle away from that plane. Force cannot be described using a scalar, since force is composed of direction and magnitude, however, the magnitude of a force alone can be described with a scalar, for instance the gravitational force acting on a particle is not a scalar, but its magnitude is. The speed of an object is a scalar (e.g. 180 km/h), while its velocity is not (i.e. 180 km/h north). Other examples of scalar quantities in Newtonian mechanics include electric charge and charge density.
An example of a pseudoscalar is the scalar triple product (see vector), and thus the signed volume. Another example is magnetic charge (as it is mathematically defined, regardless of whether it actually exists physically).”
drop last night’s departing thoughts in here
alright
done here tonight
end this wakeful fight
slumber the go
bed these memories so
perpendicular you know
the gravity algorithm you get
vertical all day one set
reconfigure horizontal other let
real application
detached computation
there be a relation
sensory reprieve
geometry of belief
that we conceive