ark said:
Probably you are right, but I do not have enough data to draw a conclusion. We are told about the shapes, but not about their orientation. Is the orientation random? Or are these structures oriented always the same way (or almost the same way) with respect to the Earth axis, Sun, stars?
I don't know Ark. The way, I have understood the experiment, the orientation of the shapes appearing on the bottom of the spinning bucket is not random. It is perpendicular to the axis of spinning, and I thought that it spins at the same speed as the water itself is spinning. I can be wrong here, but I "understood" those pictures were made either with the help of a stroboscope, or with a very short exposure time, or with a camera that spun at the same speed as the water (bucket). Much like the pentagon shaped cloud in the hurricane's eye. That too was turning, I think. Please correct me if I am mistaken here! Anybody. So I think it has nothing to do with the rotation of the earth around its axis, around the sun, or of any other planets whatsoever. It only results from the fact that the water spins, which is relative to the mass of the universe. It is possible that there could be a minor theoretical influence of the spinning of the earth (think pendulum of Foucault), but that would be entirely negligible, and fall far below the signal noise level, because we are looking at the effect of the rotation of at least once per second compared to once every 86.400 seconds.
What's interesting in this experiment is that it demonstrates nicely how external factors can destabilise a certain macroscopic state to suddenly shift to another state. Only a minor increase in revolutions results in the sudden change from a tree-pointed star to a square for instance. It demonstrates the illusion of reductionism. Although the entire shape is made up of all these separate water molecules that are forming clusters, and having hydrogen bonds and ionic bonds that break and reform, they have little say in this. It is not the water molecules as such that will determine the final shape at the dry bottom of the spinning bucket. The force of gravity and the centrifugal force that the separate water molecules experience is completely negligible when compared to the chemical bonds just mentioned. In other words, it is not the water molecules that will suddenly rearrange themselves in relation towards each other that will magically create the shapes at the bottom of the bucket. There is no bottom up organisation here in contrast to the growth of say a crystal where the macroscopic shape of the crystal does reflect the ionic or molecular arrangement at an atomic level.
One can only learn about that meta-level when looking at that meta-level, which in this case is about a mass, of a fluid (water), that is contained in a bucket, that is attracted due to the gravitation of the earth, and that is spinning relative to the universe. Only in this context I have extracted a relation to a part of the article you have cited (
A.P. Levich, "A substantial interpretation of N.A. Kozyrev's conception of time"), where a plea is made to consider different "time measurements", such as "detlaf" as the time unit for embryological development instead of the "second" as the time unit for "physical" time. I have to say that it has cost me some energy to plough through the "academic" baroque style of part of the article and I haven't finished it yet. Of course that could be me as well, as I am not trained to use their jargon.
The spinning bucket shows how minor changes of the parameters that determine a system on a meta-level can cause sudden changes within that system but only on that meta-level. The transition (theoretically
) is sudden, instantaneous. It is as if all water-molecules are informed instantaneously (faster than light???) to change the state of the water column from one state to the next. In this case, there is no influence of the lower level watermolecules up into the meta-level (the water column), nor is there an influence from the sudden change at the meta-level (spinning water column) that would reflect back at the lower level. If it would always be like that, it would make things much easier of course, and than it would be evident to use different units of "time measurement", each for a different level. Alas, alas, its not always like that. There's plenty of examples how small changes at a lower level of organisation have profound effects at the meta-level and vice versa. Going back to the spinning water column, the shape of the central air column will determine the temperature change of the watermolecules in case the temperature of the water was substantially different as the one of the surrounding air (due to a change of contact surface). But there's plenty of other examples of course which demonstrate influence from higher to lower and vice versa with much more dramatic effects. And in light of those "catastrophies", the arbitrary use of different "time measurements", each for its own level, is not going to be of much help I think.
One thing I do know is that my subjective experience of time, or my personal experience of the processes of life can change dramatically, as that one time when I crashed my car and had to see the asphalt pass by my (drivers window), with sparks, the shrieking of metal and all, as my car kept sliding on its side for maybe 30 meters. The compression of time started just before the accident happened, but once I was in it, it seemed to go on for ages. Hey, relax people! Noone got hurt :). I only had to dust my cloths from the shattered polish.
