ATDTDA (5.1) - The Etienne-Louis Malus

[Lawrence Bryan]

Interesting to think about the point of view of a photon. It has some  
energy based on it's wavelength. One wonders where, exactly, along  
that length, the point of view is located. Or maybe one can only ask  
about the probability of the POV being at some particular place.

I'm getting a headache.

Lawrence

On Apr 4, 2007, at 4:59 PM, Monte Davis wrote:

> So based on this, Monte, could you give your working
> definition of time?
> (this is a deadpan serious question).

I was deadpan serious in saying that I only know what it isn't: namely,
nearly all the ways we nearly always think of it.

And I don't know of any way out of that fly-bottle except through  
stances of
mysticism and gestures -- very very serious gestures -- of art, AtD very
much a case in point.

Take away memory, the sense of continuity through time, and where's your
identity, your consciousness? As soon as you really think about about  
any of
the language of "extension" applied to time, it falls apart -- yet we  
can't
do, maybe can't be, without it.

Maybe the only scientific point essential to grappling with AtD is  
that for
a ray (beam, wave, photon) of light,*there is no time.* In your  
reference
frame you say it "takes a year" to get from point A to point B a  
light-year
away; in its own reference frame, that year -- and the every other  
year from
the Big Bang to whatever the end may be -- is one instant. Not one  
instant
of many -- the only one.