CAT,
Yes, maybe ultimately Barbour is heading down the wrong path, in that he is merely searching for understanding of the nature of time and the universe in a conventional manner. I don't think he purports to be seeking the key to time travel. Then again, he sort lives in a state of timelessness, since he makes his home at College Farm in Oxfordshire, England which was "built at the end of the Commonwealth in 1659". Evidently it is an island of history among a modern community. He has stated that it has significantly affected the kind of scientist that he is.
To me, I find his backround and knowledge of the classics interesting.
But I enjoyed his ability to abstract his notions with a clarity,ie. by stepping outside of his own existence and making the hypothesis that time is an illusionary construct of man, derived from the way in which man's brain strings together memories. He steps outside of that construct and conceives time as distinct "nows" that are not linear, only our perception of them are linear. He uses the model of these discrete "nows" as pages from a book, all torn out and thrown into a bag in no particular order. From this he goes further, using reason and logic, to conceive of the shape of the universe as an infinite pyramid. The apex point delineating the "Big Bang", and the pages of the book of time expanding outward from that apex infinitely. By doing this, he is able to both describe a defined universe, that has a shape (incidently, he effects this shape by eliminating all the "nows" that are possible but not held to the known laws of physics) and are also infinite. I thought taht was so cool! An infinite shape!
As to the GRAIL you are looking for, (a hole with spiral recursive compresion while fractally imploding through space and time), this interests me as well.
Since I was in college (I was a painting student with broad interests) I have been intrigued and almost haunted by thinking about the spiral shape. Occasionally, I seem to have revelatory insights into what this shape could be seen as, mathematically or otherwise. And it did seem connected somehow to another fascination of mine since adolescence, time travel.
What exactly do you mean by "fractally imploding"? Fractals, fractals, fractals....what about a "Fractal Equilibrium"? I would think initially, one would have to "fractally implode" to initiate a worm hole, but then the trick would be to acquire a "fractal equilibrum" to ensure stability.
FRACTAL EQUILIBRIUM: Imagine a sine wave with infinite intricacy, which is governed physically by the laws of nature (fractals), yet, that old "Pattern in Chaos" (Scientific American 1985) would serve to regulate the wave. Sort of like the game theory simulations people have been doing on forest fires or earth quakes, found in the book "Ubiquitous" which just was issued.
I hope this explantion makes sense, I tend to understand things in visual images, and struggle to grasp the words...sort of like the struggle to grasp the grail, HA!
stargate stargate my kingdom for a stargate........
Persephone
