From: tao@tomato.princeton.edu (Terry Tao)
Subject: Re: TIME HAS INERTIA
Originator: news@nimaster
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 1993 17:40:14 GMT

I'll take the bait and oblige Abian.  Here's a capsule of what I have heard
of Abian's theories, from the last two months:


Abian thinks time has "inertia", though he has never defined such the
concept, as time cannot move.  What he implies from this is that the energy
of the universe decays exponentially "to keep time moving".  Still unclear
what speed time has or what direction it is going, or by what mechanism
energy is transferred, or an example of an observable experiment of energy
leaking away to fuel time.  Incidentally, no way has been given to
determine the rate of decay.  He also predicts anhilliation of particles at
unspecified rates (exponential again?).

He has not given a deduction of this claim, only that he says he can deduce
it from this principle, that all matter tends toward a steady state unless
provoked, in which case the matter tends toward another (or possibly the
same) steady state.  In this form he is repeating Newton's first law and
the Second law of thermodynamics, though actually weaker(as there is
nothing about increasing entropy, or the exact nature of the steady state).  He
has distorted this principle for purposes of proving what he wants to prove, and
the distortion is "if Abian says X is a steady state, then all matter will tend 
toward X".

How this deduces the exponential decay of energy, he has never shown. 
Incidentally, he has also given several false deductions of gravity, 
electromagnetism, and the invasion of france from this principle and some other
assumptions about the universe, which by the way are contradictory (in case 
anyone is *still* listening, I have a proof below...). 

Then there are the New Improved versions, involving an even more
"fundamental" principle, that all objects act to increase their feeling of
"security".  This apparently deduces the previous principle, but how has
also not yet been shown, seeing as a tendency to a steady state is not
necessarily the only way to be secure.  Unless, of course, the axiom is
perverted to become "if Abian says X increases security, then all matter
will perform X".

Besides, he has not defined what "security" is for inanimate objects.  A
similar old quote by him is "Physics is what I say it is"; a corollary of
his statements is "I have found the fundamental principles of what I say it
is."

Finally, he seems to have come up recently with an extra axiom that everything
bad is caused by Judgement Day.  I hesitate to probe the ramifications of this
new principle.  I'm not sure whether this shows a mighty intellectual fist,
though.

I hope this clears up any misconceptions on Abian's theories.

Terry

p.s. The above was not sarcastic :).  If somebody thinks it is, I say that
all that I have said above is a true and accurate assessment of the
situation, and this somebody may feel free to point out any inaccuracies.

p.p.s.  One (of many) contradiction in the theory.

Here is the basic argument for gravity:	

To prove the existence of gravity, we make the additional assumption that
there was an event called the Big Bang and that all matter was concentrated
at one point before then, and that this situation stayed the same for some
time.  In particular, matter EXISTS before the big
bang.

Then before the big bang, all matter was in a steady state, viz. matter not
moving, matter all in one place.

After the big bang, Abian notes that "X is a steady state", where X is the
above steady state.

Hence, by the axiom "If Abian says X is a steady state, then all matter
tends toward X", all matter tends together, i.e. gravity.

Note that gravity cannot be deduced from the original axiom of maintaining
steady states, etc. because the steady state of all matter at one point is
not necessarily the only available status quo: the expanding universe is
another, or the steady state where everything stops moving.

The existence of gravity may be deduced from this variant of the principle, that
"all matter tends toward a status quo, unless provoked, in which case it tends
back to the previous status quo."  This principle is the principle of
Aristotlean mechanics, that an object moving with velocity v1 and then
pushed into moving with velocity v2 will "tend" back to velocity v1, which
is of course a direct contradiction with Newton's first law.

This ends the "argument" for gravity.  Now for the argument for
electromagnetism.

We now make the extra assumption that there was an event called the Big
Bang and that before this event all matter was electrically neutral.  Or,
as Abian puts it, "space is electrically neutral", and that this situation
existed for some time before BB.  Charge somehow inexplicably appears
during the BB.

Then, before the big bang, space was in the steady state of electrical
neutrality.

After the big bang, Abian notes the above steady state of X.

Hence, by the second variant of the steady state principle, space tends
toward electrical neutrality by moving charged particles of opposite charge
closer together, and like charges further apart.  By the same token,
incidentally, matter should have attenuating charge, i.e. the charge of an
electron should decay exponentially over time.

the tendency of like particles to repel and opposites to attract can also
be explained by the Aristotlean variant, but not the original one, because
there are plenty of other reasonable steady states, like for example
charges ignoring each other, or like charges attracting because all
positive charges were together in the BB, etc.

Finally, the argument for a further prediction of Abian, that matter
becomes destroyed because space is trying to become a vacuum.

We first make the assumption that there was an event called the Big bang
and that space was a total vacuum before this event.  In particular there
was no matter.

Thus, space was in the steady state of vacuum.

Abian then notes the above steady state of X.

Hence, by the second variant, space will tend toward vacuum by destroying
particles, though incidentally it also predicts exponential decay of mass
of particles instead.

Again, this is also deducible from the Aristotlean variant.

From the original axiom, incidentally, we can prove that if space is
tending toward a vacuum, then before the big bang, space WAS a vacuum.

Thus, from all of Abian's theories, we have:

a choice of three different axioms, the first one true, the second one
false, and the third one extremely dubious;

all explanations of phenomena are explained by the second and third axioms,
and not deducible from the first;  attempts to verify the first axiom are
not worthwhile, because it is generally thought to be true anyway, and the
first axiom deduces practically nothing important in abian's theory.

and three extra assumptions have to be made, including: there was matter
before the Big Bang, and there was no matter before the Big Bang. 

Thus we have actually two (not one, sorry!) contradictions in the theory.


p.p.p.s. I think I shall take the excellent advice of killing the Time has
Inertia subject line forthwith.  This is my final spiel.