|
|
|
FQXi BLOGS
CATEGORY: Blog
[back]
TOPIC: The Nature of Time? You tell us.
[refresh]
|
|
|
|
I believe that Henri Bergson, one of my favorite philosophers, once said that "Time is what prevents everything from happening at once." I've also heard it remarked that this clearly is not working anymore.
This isn't just a (true) comment on my own schedule, but also to point out that as well as announcing the results of the second round of large FQXi grants, we're also simultaneously very excited to launch FQXi's first essay contest, on "The Nature of Time."
I'm very much looking forward to hearing what some really careful thinkers really think about time (when encouraged by the possibility of some cash and fame) as well as to the opportunity to take part in what I hope will be a really fun and interesting discussion of a foundational question that is at once both intimately familiar and deeply mysterious. Have at it!
Finally, as another piece of current news, we're happy to welcome Zeeya Merali (from whom you've already seen blog entries) as both a new sometimes blogger and editor-in-chief of the FQXi community site.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
This looks like just the sort of thing I have been waiting for and I hope I can qualify. You see I have been posting about an alternate theory for some time now on sci.physics and a few other related forums with very few responses nether for or against the theory.Its as if the readers do not know what to say and or its as if their questions were answered and they cant find any arguments against the theory.
The theory looks at what happens if the type of time dilation we get with gravity could contract matter in such a way that it also expands the surrounding space and ended up with a new way to explain how the big bang and the beginning of time could happen.
Later on after realizing that this alternate theory also gives at least one easily testable prediction I decided that it does indeed deserve to be classed as a theory and not just as a hypothesis.Subject to falsification after all.
Its to be reminded that the space expanding effect of gravity must be due to its time dilating effects and while similar is not the same as the Lorentz contractions on a moving rod.The theory does suggests that we are indeed inside of a black hole within another universe with a faster relative time.
I have a few gedankens on my web site to start readers getting an idea on how the theory works but remember the site is incomplete so for a more detailed review see my postings in sci.physics and sci.physics.relativity in Google or Usenet but look at least a few months back. Also on the blog site http://eclipseedge.org/msgboard/default.asp you can find a few of my postings under The Big Bang and Vacuum / Nothing , look for postings by ultranerd they are mine.My website is alttheories.com.
It leads to some far out speculations too for the reader interested in this as it also suggest actual white holes and ward drive possibilities. And if you want to really speculate then remember the Drake equation an advanced version of it relating to this theory suggest an increased possibility for an advanced civilization having even better chances of having existed.Leads to some very interesting arguments for the increased possibility of at least one synthetic god like civilization.
I do want any questions or advice.
Dale
|
|
|
|
|
|
I think time makes more sense as a consequence of motion, rather the dimensional basis for it.
Consider; If two atoms collide, it creates an event in time. While the atoms proceed through this event and on to others, the event goes the other way. First it is in the future, then in the past. So which is the real direction? If time is a fundamental dimension, then physical reality proceeds along it, from past events to future ones. On the other hand, if time is a consequence of motion, then physical reality is simply energy in space and the events created go from being in the future to being in the past. Time as consequence of motion means it has more in common with temperature, then space, since they are both descriptions of and methods for measuring motion, rather then dimensional basis for it. This relationship between the matter/energy moving forward in time, as the events created move back in time applies to all scales, whether the earth rotating and creating days, or a cesium atom going through transitions, or strings and their vibrations. This isn't presentism, because as a measure of motion, it would be meaningless to describe time as a point. The only absolute temperature is the cessation of all motion and the same would apply to time.
If energy is always perfectly conserved, ie. neither lost or gained, there is no time function for the energy, because it simply is, so the only time function is a consequence of the energy, not basis for it. Just as temperature is a consequence of energy and when temperature changes, it is because energy is dissipated to, or consolidated from other areas. So with time, when one potential direction of events prevails, others are reduced or eliminated, so the energy consolidates to what prevails and dissipates from what doesn’t. Time as a consequence of energy is information going from future to past, ie. potential to actual.
The sun appears to travel east to west, but it’s the earth rotating west to east. To the extent reality just is, a clock to reflect that would have a stable hand to represent what is, with the face rotating the units of time past it. Currently the clock represents the sun moving east to west, so it has the hand moving left to right/east to west, across the top.
Think about a thermal medium, say a pot of hot water, with lots of water molecules moving about. If we were to construct a time keeping device out of this we would take the motion of one of these points of reference and measure it against the medium it is moving through. The point is the hand and the medium is the face of the clock. Obviously all the other points are hands of their own clocks, but are medium/face for all other clocks. The motion of any point/hand is balanced by the reaction of the medium/face of the clock. To the hand of the clock, the face goes counterclockwise. At any one moment, the positions of all these points constitute an event, so while any and all of them go from past events to future ones, the medium against which any point is being judged is the overall context, which once created, is displaced by the next, as all these individual points move around, so the events go from future potential to past circumstance. There are innumerable points of reference describing their own narrative and all this activity exists in an equilibrium, so every potential clock constitutes its own measure of time.
This model defines life as well. The physical brain moves forward in time, but the mind is a record of the events receding into the past. Most motion is at the speed of light, but we cannot process it in real time, so our minds create flashes of perception, like frames of film. Thus to us, time does seem like a series of instants. Of course these thoughts go from present to past, as the brain goes on to the next. Ultimately life amounts to a larger organism that is constantly moving on to the next generation and shedding the old like dead skin. It is the units of our individual lives, like markers on the face of a clock, that start in the future and end up in the past.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Time as an Emergent Phenomenon: Traveling Back to the Heroic Age of Physics
In Memory of John Archibald Wheeler
by Dr. Elliot McGucken
ABSTRACT
In his 1912 Manuscript on Relativity, Einstein never stated that time is the fourth dimension, but rather he wrote x4 = ict. The fourth dimension is not time, but ict. Despite this, prominent physicists have oft equated time and the fourth dimension, leading to un-resolvable paradoxes and confusion regarding time’s physical nature, as physicists mistakenly projected properties of the three spatial dimensions onto a time dimension, resulting in curious concepts including frozen time and block universes in which the past and future are omni-present, thusly denying free will, while implying the possibility of time travel into the past, which visitors from the future have yet to verify. Beginning with the postulate that time is an emergent phenomenon resulting from a fourth dimension expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c, diverse phenomena from relativity, quantum mechanics, and statistical mechanics are accounted for. Time dilation, the equivalence of mass and energy, quantum entanglement, nonlocality, wave-particle duality, and entropy are shown to arise from a common, deeper physical reality expressed with dx4/dt=ic. This postulate and equation, from which Einstein’s relativity is derived, presents a fundamental model accounting for the emergence of time, the constant velocity of light, the fact that the maximum velocity is c, and the fact that c is independent of the velocity of the source, as photons are but matter surfing a fourth expanding dimension. In general relativity, Einstein showed that the dimensions themselves could bend, curve, and move. The present theory extends this principle, postulating that the fourth dimension is moving independently of the three spatial dimensions, distributing locality and fathering time. This physical model underlies and accounts for time in quantum mechanics, relativity, and statistical mechanics, as well as entropy, the universe’s expansion, and time’s arrows and asymmetries in all arenas.
“More intellectual curiosity, versatility and yen for physics than Elliot McGucken’s I have never seen in any senior or graduate student. . . Originality, powerful motivation, and a can-do spirit make me think that McGucken is a top bet for graduate school in physics. . . I say this on the basis of close contacts with him over the past year and a half. . . I gave him as an independent task to figure out the time factor in the standard Schwarzchild expression around a spherically- symmetric center of attraction. I gave him the proofs of my new general-audience, calculus-free book on general relativity, A Journey Into Gravity and Space Time. There the space part of the Schwarzchild geometric is worked out by purely geometric methods. “Can you, by poor-man’s reasoning, derive what I never have, the time part?” He could and did, and wrote it all up in a beautifully clear account. . . .his second junior paper . . .entitled Within a Context, was done with another advisor, and dealt with an entirely different part of physics, the Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky experiment and delayed choice experiments in general. . . this paper was so outstanding. . . I am absolutely delighted that this semester McGucken is doing a project with the cyclotron group on time reversal asymmetry. Electronics, machine-shop work and making equipment function are things in which he now revels. But he revels in Shakespeare, too. Acting the part of Prospero in the Tempest. . . ” --John Archibald Wheeler, Princeton University, Recommendation for Elliot McGucken for Admission to Graduate School of Physics
Dr. Elliot McGucken’s Biography: “Dr. E” received a B.A. in physics from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in physics from UNC Chapel Hill, where his research on an artificial retina, which is now helping the blind see, appeared in Business Week and Popular Science and was awarded a Merrill Lynch Innovations Grant. While at Princeton, McGucken worked on projects concerning quantum mechanics and general relativity with the late John A. Wheeler, and the projects combined to form an appendix treating time as an emergent phenomenon in his dissertation. McGucken is writing a book for the Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology (artsentrepreneurship.com) curriculum he created.
| | attachments:
Time_as_an_Emergent_Phenomenon.pdf |
|
|
|
|
|
Hi All,
Thanks for your enthusiasm -- I think you'll agree this is a fun topic.
Dale:
There's no need to 'qualify' -- if you enter a serious essay on the topic of the nature of time that satisfied the rules, it will be part of the competition.
Others:
There's no need to post essays here -- if you enter an essay using the submission form and it is approved it will be posted. However, we have decided to accrue the first 10-20 essays before posting them all at once, probably sometime in the next couple of weeks as they are already rolling in.
|
|
|
|
|
|
- To John Merryman: 'If two atoms collide, it creates an event in Time'. Why not tell that you are computing this collision in your Mind or a Reference on a chronological scale? And if there are two collisions you can put them on the same binary scale or choose another order.
The collision is real but the Time Scale is just a convention like you say 'dog' to speak about a 'dog' between English or US people, but only the dog itself is real.
I am surprised that in the fq(x)i competition some competitors are speaking about 'the intuition of Time as a flow' as there was no other idea of Time.
To A. Aguirre: problem of Bergson is that he was fighting against Descartes Empiricism, what was in my opinion a good thing, but he stayed at in intermediate position which is untenable. For instance his idea against Time reference of mechanic Science is 'duration', but duration is nothing else than a piece of the Time reference as Aristotle said. In other words: a vector is not stronger than a dot (or blocks than vectors). There is just a factor inside.
|
|
|
|
|
|
What is Time?
To understand time, it is necessary to understand its components.
Time is energy, with the same energy density as solid mass. Time is a function of energy, and so identical to energy.
Energy in three-dimensional space is understood as mass, energy in the fourth Minkowski axis, as time, this means:
Each spatial dimension is held within the next, in this setting, the three ordinary dimensions of space are combined within a single dimension of time, to form a four-dimensional manifold, representing a space-time reality.
So multiplying an amount of time (t) (in seconds) by the speed of light squared (c˛) gives the decompressed spatial energy (E) of transduced (changing one energy pattern to a different energy pattern) time (t), in short E = tc˛.
Mass is just a special form of energy. Mass is energy, however only time mass exists, so the concept of mass as perceived as existing independently of time as a physical object is false.
Energy can move across the boundary of three-dimensional space, into the other spatial dimensions, referred to as an open system, in contrast to a closed system(not a single, closed energy system exists within our entire universe), which would isolate energy within three-dimensional space. So all energy circulations are facilitated through the fourth-dimensional manifold of time.
Negentropy, states that the natural system is self-ordering (i.e., freely receiving energy from the active environment), while entropy, is a measure of disorder in a system (i.e., freely giving energy to the active environment) both these states work in balance.
So accompanying entropy within three-dimensional space is the Negentropy of time energy, in the time envelope of three-dimensional space.
And accompanying Negentropy within three-dimensional space is the entropy of the time energy, in the time envelope of three-dimensional space.
The system functions through the broken symmetry of opposites, the poles of a magnet or a dipole, it’s the point of union that allows the energy of time(released from the virtual, into the physical) to pour out at the speed of light, expanding into infinity.
The entire universe functions on the conversion of energy, that being the transformation of the frequency of the energy, time energy is virtual, meaning we cannot observe it as it is held within the manifold of the fourth dimension.
The totality of photons(both virtual and observable) is the connection between all four dimensional planes, and so its interactions with mass creates that masses motion through time, this is why the photon is neither a wave nor a particle, it is within the two planes, both three dimensional space and the manifold of time.
Charge is the continuously active entity, which performs the processes of energy transduction between the time manifold and three-dimensional space. An example:
A Star is a vast dipole, which extracts transduced electromagnetic energy(virtual) from the time manifold and pours it out in all directions at the speed of light, without ceasing, this means a star pours out time-polarised electromagnetic waves(virtual), this applies an electric charge to the gas (ionising the hydrogen), generating a vast plasma ball emitting photons(observable light) and heat, the dipole continues in a circulation as the longitudinally polarised electromagnetic wave or photon discharges into three dimensional space.
Plasmas vary according to temperature and density, and have characteristics that scale over many orders of magnitude, this means to create a star the density of the ionisation of the hydrogen would be enormous, above 10łł charged particles per metered cubed. This range of ionisation density explains why for example Jupiter remains as a gas ball, as opposed to a plasma ball.
The visible Universe is 99.999% plasma. The Sun is about 100% plasma, as are all stars. Plasma makes up nearly 100% of the interplanetary, interstellar and intergalactic medium.
Electro luminescence of the plasma, by emitting photons(observable), both illuminates the universe and connects three-dimensional space to the time manifold, manifesting relativistic time.
Three dimensional space is a reality generated from the time manifold itself, the manner in the generation of this physical space means it will constantly expand this three dimensional universe at an ever accelerating rate. As every event, no matter how insignificant, is permanently stored within the electromagnetic field of the time manifold as quantum bits of information, these quibits of energy form braid like structures possessing length and width which twist together within the time manifold and expand the volume of the physical universe. This means the older the universe the greater its volume, being an ever greater amount of stored time events, as space expands it has more space to create events in time, this generates the acceleration.
The mass of the universe works in a similar way; this is quibits of energy (information) within three-dimensional space, which twist together to form particles, clockwise or anti-clockwise along their length to produce positive or negative charge.
So the time manifold is a natural quantum computer that uses inconceivable amounts of information to generate physical reality.
The emitted light energy in turn is absorbed by the nearby positive charge of mass, say, the planet earth for example, and retransduced into time-energy, and re-emitted back to the time manifold. This ongoing energy circulation is an example of a scalar potential, both being and doing, at every spatial point of itself, inducing vacuum polarisation (an example of polarisation would be opposite poles of a magnetic field).
There exist continual communication between particles which takes place in the time manifold, which holds this three dimensional universe, which holds all the particles of this physical reality.
Matter depend on knowledge, it needs a cosmological clock provided by the frequency of the electron waves, the waves also perform the role of communicating in addition to time, length and mass.
Every particle communicates its wave state with all other matter, so that energy exchange and the laws of physics are properties of the entire matter ensemble. The behaviour within matter arises from the fixed knowledge, from the source consciousness. Every element of this existence are interdependent, just as each cell of the human body is interdependent on every other cell, just as each element of an eco system is interdependent on every other element, a recurring pattern of nature.
There are two real and coexistent realities participating in the physical behaviour of matter. We see one reality as our familiar 3D environment, governed by the natural laws. The second reality is composed of energy so densely compressed it boggles the mind, this energy mass of unseen quantum waves which form the structure of the fundamental particles: electrons, protons, and neutrons, and also, all three dimensional space, and action, in truth, everything, emanates from the time manifold.
We cannot observe these waves of energy, although they fill the apparently empty space around us. We only know of their existence when two particles change their quantized wave states (energy patterns) in concert. For example, one particle in a star and the other in the retina of our eye. This exchange we call 'light'.
The energy of existence in all its many patterns and forms is of a single source, a conscious and infinite fountain of knowledge and imagination, without limit or constraint, as the understanding you have read expresses, only this conscious energy exists, nothing else, it guides and controls its energies, seemingly without effort.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Francois,
Time can be thought of as either linear, or cyclical, because it is a consequence of motion and motion can be linear, or cyclical.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Time is a funny thing. On November 31st 2008 I made a small but significant discovery about the nature of proper time while studying the properties of motion in the spacetime below the event horizon of a black hole. How could I tell the world about my discovery? On December 1st 2008 I received a message from fellow physicsforums member Chris Clyde, that he had entered an essay competition about ‘the nature of time’ at FQXI. This was the first time I had heard of FQXI. What I wonderful coincidence! What great timing! Unfortunately I then discovered that the closing date for the competition was the same day and I did not have enough time to put a coherent essay together for the competition. What bad timing! It is ironic that someone like me that is always in the wrong place at the wrong time, should make a discovery about the nature of time in black holes that has eluded the experts for such a long time. Anyway, having lost my chance for fame and cash in the competition, I would still like the opinions and feedback of the members of FQXI and the interested public on my new interpretation of proper time and particle motion in the strongly curved spacetime of a black hole. The website I have produced includes equations, diagrams, interactive applets and a new metric that elaborate on the new concepts involved and is the result of many hours of my time. It will probably only take a few minutes of your time to review the material.
That is all I ask.
Some introductory articles are posted here in my physicsforums blog and the website can be found here.
Any feedback here or in my blog would be most appreciated.
All the best for the holiday period and have a good time!
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Time is what prevents everything from happening at once"
an alternative is:
Time is what prevents us to experience everything into present.
yours amrit
|
|
|
|
|
