Re: PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE -- Number 829 June 19, 2007 by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein

What if, what if, what if.

What if elephants flew out of my ***.


Silly man, I already explained everything to you in complete detail. How
much more do you need ? Dont you recall reading the solution to
wave-particle duality which was posted here a couple weeks ago ?

Do I have to write a solutions manual for the whole damn universe ?

Multiple dimensions of time, HUMBUG. Can clocks be orthogonal just like
yardsticks ?


There are 3 existential forms.
1] That which exists,
2] That which does not exist,
3] That for which existence is indeterminate.

Extra dimensions INDEED, and I've got a 4 foot WEENIE !! You just cant see
it because it's curled up like your extra dimensions. Hrrr-mmph.





"Sam Wormley" <swormley1@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:akTdi.110792$n_.24665@xxxxxxxxxxxx
PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News
Number 829 June 19, 2007 by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein
www.aip.org/pnu

TIME AND TIME AGAIN. The physics world accepts the idea of spacetime, a
combined metrical entity which puts time on the same footing as the
visible three spatial dimensions. Further spatial dimensions are added
in some theories to help assimilate all physical forces into a unified
model of reality. But what about adding an extra dimension of time too?
Itzak Bars and Yueh-Cheng Kuo of the University of Southern California
do exactly that, and add an extra spatial dimension too. Bars explains
this proposal with a comparison. Just as a projection of a 3D object
onto a 2D wall can have many different shapes, and each such shape is
incapable of fully conveying all the properties of the 3D object, so
the single-time description of dynamics in the standard formulation of
physics is insufficient to capture many properties of dynamical systems
which have remained mysterious or unnoticed. The addition of an extra
time and an extra space dimension, together with a requirement that all
motion in the enlarged space be symmetric under an interchange of
position and momentum at any instant, reproduces all possible dynamics
in ordinary spacetime, and brings to light many relationships and
hidden symmetries that are actually present in our own universe.

The hidden relationships among dynamical systems are akin to
relationships that exist between the multiple shadows of a 3D object
projected on a 2D wall. In this case the object is in a spacetime of 4
space and 2 time dimensions while the shadows are in 3 space and 1 time
dimensions. The motion in 4+2 dimensions is actually much more
symmetric and simpler than the complex motions of the shadows in 3+1
dimensions. Besides the general unification of dynamics described
above, what does this addition to one extra time and one extra space
dimension (in addition to all those extra space dimensions called for
in string theory) accomplish that could not be achieved without it?
Bars (bars@xxxxxxx) says that his theory explains CP conservation in
the strong interactions described by QCD without the need for a new
particle, the axion, which has not been found in experiments. It also
explains the fact that the elliptical orbit of planets remains fixed
(not counting well-known tiny precessions). This *Runge-Lenz* symmetry
effect has remained somewhat mysterious in the study of celestial
mechanics, but now could be understood as being due to the symmetry of
rotations into the fourth space dimension. A similar symmetry observed
in the spectrum of hydrogen would also be accounted for in 2-time
physics, and again explained as a symmetry of rotations into the extra
space and time dimensions. There are many such examples of hidden
symmetries in the macroscopic classical world as well as in the
microscopic quantum world, Bars argues, which can be addressed for the
first time with the new 2T formulation of physics. There have been
previous attempts to formulate theories with a second time axis, but
Bars says that most of these efforts have been compromised by problems
with unitarity (the need for the sum of all probabilities of
occurrences to be no greater than 1) and causality (maintaining the
thermodynamic arrow of time). The USC theorists have reformulated their
model to fit into the ongoing supersymmetry version of the standard
model and expect their ideas to be tested in computer simulations and
in experiments yet to come. (Physical Review Letters, upcoming article;
http://physics1.usc.edu/~bars/ )

FIRST DIRECT MEASUREMENT OF DNA STACKING FORCES. DNA is one of the most
important and studied molecules around, and yet only now has a team of
scientists, working at Duke University, succeeded in measuring the
force between the nucleotides in a single-stranded DNA (ssDNA)
molecule, using an atomic force microscope (AFM). A double-stranded DNA
is characterized by two principal forces---the stacking force between
base units along the length of the double helix and the pairing force
(Watson-Crick pairing) between the opposing base units forming the
rungs of the helix. Measurements of DNA elasticity dating back to the
1990s (http://www.aip.org/pnu/1997/split/pnu312-1.htm) were done with
double-stranded DNA, and it is difficult to separate the effects of the
pairing and stacking forces. That's why Piotr E. Marszalek
(pemar@xxxxxxxx) and his colleagues (Changhong Ke, Michael Humeniuk,
and Hanna S-Gracz) turned to ssDNA. They rigged an artificial ssDNA
consisting only of adenine base units attached to a gold substrate, and
then pulled it with an AFM tip. With a force resolution of about 1
pico-Newton, the Duke apparatus detected one plateau in elasticity (of
the stacking force) at around 23 pN, which was expected, and then a
second plateau around 113 pN. (Ke et al. Physical Review Letters,
upcoming article; a paper measuring forces for a single RNA molecule,
finding a single force plateau at 20 pN, appeared in Keol et al., Phys
Rev Lett, 13 April 2007)

CORRECTION: In Update 828, the item on polonium crystal structure was
distorted by some typos and transpositions of words. To read the
corrected version of this text, please see the Update website at
http://www.aip.org/pnu/2007/.

***********
PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE is a digest of physics news items arising
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as a way of broadly disseminating information about physics and
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Physics News Update appears approximately once a week.




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