Altabeh said:
No it couldn't! All people here shared their feelings over the "philosophical" musing of yours and I think all were quite right about what they suggested as someone who can actually think the way a physicist does not a pragmatic philosopher. I believe you are a perfectionist even in the type of philosophy you are into but physics does not accept people of your type just because it's against perfectionism but realism. We don't care what the theory is in case it is not in agreement with experiment. A friend of mine has the same approach to physics as yours but is always unfortunate to proceed in the understanding of most simple things in physics because of the narrow ideas and solutions he got in facing the poblems, all being related to his own version of philosophy and don't get me wrong, no offense, he can easily be referred to as being ignorant by this crackpot way of looking at physics.
Would you be able to name some of those people who probably made history in this zone through their own version of "Newton's second law", I don't know, in terms of crackpot theoretical musings\languages? As an alive example, you can find the "non-mainstream" unified field theories including http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heim_theory" " which have been almost put aside by the physics community due to being so much less strong than the usual approaches and mainly "out the zone" because of offering a more limiting framework to work within it! Furthermore, these theories are sometimes so inaccurate in their predictions and this part contributes more to them being rejected by physicists than the other reasons menstioned above! I don't know if you really belong to this way that you think it's right in physics' perspective but the history has showed us this won't take you anywhere good and the fate is this that you see how people react to your ideas!
AB
This is getting into philosophy of science now. I'm not entirely sure of what you are saying here. Science does indeed manage fine with mavericks, but I am not aware of ANY useful discovery in physics made by someone who hadn't taken the time to learn about the theories they sought to replace -- unless it was by accident and recognized by someone else who had the knowledge to see the significance.
Lisi is a physicist in the full sense of the word. He got his PhD in physics in 1999, and he publishes in science journals and goes to all the normal conferences. He's different because he doesn't have an academic position and spends a lot of time in adventure sports rather than being physics only. But that's no matter. He himself recognizes that his "exceptionally simple theory of everything" is a bit of a long shot, and that's okay. He has done the hard yards, for many years, of learning about the field which makes his proposals more credible than someone who hasn't learned about the science they want to change. His theory hasn't worked out, but that's normal for new ideas.
I don't know so much about Heim, but I believe it is a similar case.
Now where physicsforums comes into the picture is that we are an education site. The main aim here is to learn about physics as it is currently used by working physicists. No doubt that will change in the future, and perhaps even someone who started out learning physics here might bring about those changes.
That person will need to be able to think outside the box. But before you can think outside the box, you have to know where the box actually is! And that's what we are about here.
There's quite definitely no prospect whatsoever of the questions in this thread leading to some new insight to contribute to physics. But that's fine, because if you check the guidelines, the idea is to get insights to help contribute to the knowledge of members about physics. And that is definitely possible.
If someone objects to being told emphatically that a certain thought experiment is physically impossible, then they are probably in the wrong place. They should go to some other site where people try to invent new theories without troubling to learn the old ones first... and the rest of us can ignore them.
But if they want to know WHY a certain though experiment is physically impossible, then they are on the road to learning about physics, which is ultimately the only way they are ever going to redefine notions of what is and is not physically possible. And they won't do it from this thought experiment. The value in this thought experiment is in what it can tell you about physics, and nothing else.
I think you may be saying much the same thing... but I'm not entirely sure. So here's my take on it.
Cheers -- sylas
All kidding aside, really there are respected notions of imaginary time as a CONSTRUCT, but outside of that I'm really tired of this. No time = the realm of pseudoscience or a science advanced beyond our current ability to test it meanignfully... i.e. NOT SCIENCE. 