X-Message-Number: 21060 Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 06:25:13 -0500 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #21051 - #21057 for Michael Price: When I said that electrons may differ on some occasions by a trait I called "hyperspin", I meant ELECTRONS. Our instruments can only perform measurements to a certain accuracy. Say that at present we have no instruments accurate enough to measure the different energies of electrons caused by their hyperspin. So we decide that necessarily such traits aren't present? Nor would hyperspin create different particles, if every electron could on one occasion or another have different hyperspins. Just as the energies of electrons do not make many particles with different energies, hyperspin would not make many particles with different hyperspins. Fundamentally my arguments here bear on your claim that we will NEVER find any trait which causes us to decide that electrons differ. Suppose that we presently couldn't measure the difference between hyperspins, and several varieties of electrons existed with different hyperspins. What makes me feel very wary of your claims about electrons comes first, because I can imagine theories in which even the notion of electron ceases to be useful, and second, because such arrogant statements about how the physical world behaves have had a sad (though sometimes amusing) history. I do not know or claim to know what physics we'll meet with when (and if) we are someday revived. But past history makes me think that if we remain suspended for long enough, we'll find ourselves comparing present ideas to Ptolemaic astronomy. And we will do so with a database far wider than anything imagined today: telescopes the size of the solar system, direct and close observation of black holes, the knowledge of how to manipulate dark matter (which some suggest instead comes from the falsity of our theories of gravity), and many other direct experiments quite impossible today. Best wishes and long long life for all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=21060