http://www.nature.com/news/superfluid-spacetime-points-to-unification-of-physics-1.15437?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20140624
Very cool to think about, but I'm not too sure how likely it is. It makes more sense to me than string theory, but most physicists think string theory is more likely.
Interesting, but it seems to get off track pretty early in the article. "In this analogy particles would travel through spacetime like waves in an ocean, and the laws of fluid mechanics — condensed-matter physics — would apply. Previously physicists considered how particles of different energies would disperse in spacetime, just as waves of different wavelengths disperse, or travel at different speeds, in water. In the latest study Liberati and Maccione took into account another fluid effect: dissipation. As waves travel through a medium, they lose energy over time. This dampening effect would also happen to photons traveling through spacetime, the researchers found. Although the effect is small, high-energy photons traveling very long distances should lose a noticeable amount of energy, the researchers say." In fluid mechanics you define speed in dimensionless quantity ( Reynolds number) to compensate for the medium, air, water, space. So it is possible that a boat will travel through water at the same velocity as an aircraft travels through air, with speed given as a Reynolds number. A fast sail boat will travel as fast as the SR71 aircraft and much faster than a spacecraft. Since the properties of the medium, viscous, and inertial forces are both relative to gravity, neither are going to be significant in near zero gravity. Waves travelling through a fluid lose energy depending on their speed to one or the other or both of these properties of the fluid. If you assume Time is a fluid or behaves as a fluid, then it would have no inertial force (zero mass) or viscosity. A particle should not lose any energy traveling long distances through such a fluid. I got stuck at this point.
Interesting to think about though, the idea that time would flow, then it would flow smoothly around gravitational bodies, and maintain laminar flow. Light does this too. Perhaps there is a way to find the equivalent of the great circle route across an apparent long expanse of space bent around the unknown.
One more thought that interest me, perhaps others. I expect the MarAzul can ride the waves like a particle taking only enough energy from the wind to maintain postilion on the wave it rides, possible at 28 knots in the Great Southern Ocean. Possibly even turning in the fastest circumnavigation of the globe for a monohull, somewhat like a particle in time
It is fucking hilarious. That is what it means. I was confused/distracted reading your post. HCP might actually have a stroke while reading it.
British scientists are gadflies. (Nature Magazine is British.) Their media calls them boffins because they lack discipline when they talk gibberish. The article is nonsense.
