Question about movement

fredreload

What you said is correct, I'm just wondering where the information of the destination is held. The idea about moving object with force is credited to BenG549 and the direction is through someone I met online. I think I'll stop here. There might be more questions in the future.

uperkurk

I think the OP means if you were to roll a single atom along a desk for example. You lay a (planck length measuring stick) on the desk next to it. Then when you roll the atom, it has to move in the form;

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 ect planck length at a time.

What is the law that governs this movement? Why can the atom not jump a few spaces. This is what the OP is asking I think.

Well if the atom did jump a few spaces, that would be teleportation. What law tells the atom it must move in this fashion? I do not know if such a law exists... I think it most certainly exists though otherwise atoms would teleport micro-distances all the time I would think.

fredreload

Right but as soon as the atom moves from stationary it should make a jump since the atom's shape doesn't change. And it jumps from the center of a sphere by its radius according to the direction of the force. Then again there might be other explanation if the atom does not "jump".

BruceW

I am pretty sure that this is not correct.

Khashishi

When an object moves from point A to point B, unless you actually make a measurement of the object in an intervening point, you can't say for certain that it has passed through this intervening point. According to Dr. Feynman, you have to take into account ALL possible routes connecting point A to point B to calculate the probability for the object to end up at B. The exact path is unknowable and unphysical, so you might as well say that the object jumps from A to B.

MikeGomez

You are on the right track, but remember that the force is external to the particle. As you are considering the particle itself and not the external force, you should think of it in terms of the energy/momentum of the particle.

The force applied to the particle imparts energy/momentum to the particle. This includes both the amount of energy as well as the direction. So now the particle has the new energy/momentum as contributed by the force, in addition to what it had before.

Now how the particle uses it’s energy/momentum (with it’s direction information) to evaluate where to exist in the next instant in time is an unsolved problem in physics.

There are many opinions, and I hope this discussion continues to get some more ideas.
[Edit] After sending this post it occurred to me that it seems against the forum policies to speculate or theorize on unsolved issues in physics. Please kindly disregard the above comment.
[End edit]

MikeGomez

Here are a few references to what I consider legitimate research related to the subject. Admittedly some are quite old, but I guess you have to start somewhere, especially if you are just learning the material as I am.


On the Origin of Inertia: D.W. Sciama 1952
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/c...;filetype=.pdf

Phase waves of Louis deBroglie:
http://users.df.uba.ar/giribet/f4/debroglie2.pdf

Louis deBroglie’s PHD thesis in its entirety:
http://www.fisicateorica.me/reposito...f%20quanta.pdf

Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon its Energy-Content: Einstein 1905
http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/E_mc2/www/

Energy Flow as the Cause of Inertia: Maciej Rybicki 2007
http://redshift.vif.com/JournalFiles...F/V14N3RYB.pdf

BruceW

Yeah, that is true. But this is true for a path of any length, for example A and B could be meters away from each other. This is why I was saying that particles don't just do little jumps on the order of the planck length.

Edit: also, I don't really like the term 'jump' because it implies something about the motion of the particle, but really in this context it just means 'it was there at one time, then at a later time, it was somewhere else"

MikeGomez

Lets not forget the distinction between the nature of motion of the photon with no rest mass, and the nature of the motion of a particle with mass.

A photon travels at the speed of light, so it covers a fixed distance per time unit. If it moves in discrete increments (alternate paths notwithstanding) it moves either exactly one Plank length at a time or by some exact proportion to it.

A massive particle on the other hand, although composed of bound energy, does not move at the speed of light. What I have researched so far leads me to believe that the Plank unit governing the motion of a massive particle seems much more likely to be the Plank energy.

deBroglie said that all motion requires frequency. It struck me as profound.

fredreload

I think spacetime decides how particle should travel. The thing is we do not know about the structure of spacetime other than it is three dimensional and continuous. By looking at how particle travels should reveal more about spacetime. I think base on special relativity spacetime would contract at high speed and distance changes. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Length_contraction)

MikeGomez

Absolutely. But spacetime also needs information from the particle.

In case #1 the particle is moving at some velocity and we say that spacetime moves the particle.

In case #2 accelerate the particle to twice it’s initial velocity. Now spacetime moves the particle at twice the original velocity.

So how does spacetime ultimately decide at what velocity to move the particle? How does it decide which velocity of the two cases to use, or of an infinity of other possible cases? Spacetime uses information (kinetic energy etc) of the particle itself.

ZealScience

Are you asking about the destination or the trajectory? The trajectory is determined because that particular EOM minimize the action using Hamilton's principle. I think the final position however is confined by the trajectory on the phase space

fredreload

We'll need to see the form energy takes apart from the particle itself. This is a famous equation by Einstein (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2...gy_equivalence). Let's say the particle is at rest, and then some energy is transfer to it, how does it decide where its next position should be.

fredreload

Actually energy should have a direction heh, else the model would not work.

sophiecentaur

A sign (you can add and subtract it from a total) but not a direction - Energy is a Scalar, like money.

fredreload

Sphere is something I found regarding shape of universe on wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_of_the_Universe). Right it's a sign, I think it's out of my reach for now.