Is There A Universal Now?

Discussion in 'Physics & Math' started by Cyperium, Jun 14, 2022.

  1. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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  3. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    HiNT - PLEASE GO AWAY I DON'T LIKE YOUR STYLE OF POSTING IN THE SAME WAY I DID NOT LIKE THE STYLE OF WRITE4U BUT WHILE I COULD USE IGGY KRIPTONITE ON WRITE4U YOU HAVE THE IMMUNITY OF MODERATOR. THE ROLE WHICH ALSO APPEARS TO GIVE IMMUNITY AGAINST HINTS

    PLEASE GO AWAY

    PLEASE PLEASE PRETTY PLEASE WITH SUGAR ON GO AWAY

    LEAVE ME TO THE SLINGS AND ARROWS OF OTHER POSTERS

    PLEASE GO AWAY

    MODERATE ME SURE THAT IS YOU JOB ÀND HAVE NO OBJECTION TO BEING MODERATED (WOULD NOT DO ANY GOOD EVEN IF I HAD ANY OBJECTION)

    BUT FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THE GODS WHICH HAVE BEEN CLAIMED TO HAVE EXISTED

    PLEASE GO AWAY

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  5. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Oh, it's my style of posting that's the problem here. I see. Interesting.

    Well, if we're done with the personal chatter, then I'll leave this thread for now. I might pop back in with further on-topic observations if it takes my fancy, though.

    Have a nice day, Michael!
     
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  7. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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  8. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    I like the style you speak for yourself, Michael ......

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  9. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    OK had some coffee beverage

    Going to start with the definition of exist

    Google provides this

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    Exist

    verb

    1.
    have objective reality or being.

    is what I will be using

    have objective reality or being ie have a presence, touchable, even capable of being taken to a laboratory and examined

    Some stuff which exists may not be susceptible to the above but are known to exist due to the property of being detectable ie any of the frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum, audio spectrum if not by our senses but equipment built for the purpose of doing so

    And last gravity know to exist from the the effect it has on other stuff

    Have been asked, a few times "What about
    happiness, and other such words sadness, anger, rage, love and such, do they exist?

    Google gives this

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    So my answer becomes NO because
    happiness and other such words do not conform to the criteria set out under

    Exist

    verb

    1.
    have objective reality or being.

    I put such words under a label "Exist by being defined“
    ie they are only words (really more labels) with what they label having no objective reality or being or presence

    Ummmmm enough for the moment more coffee needed

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    Last edited: Oct 23, 2022
  10. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    It is known time (ie the time we invented - not TIME the FUNDIMENTIAL stuff) goes faster the higher your location. The further away from lasge masses hence in a weaker gravity region

    What we invited is an agreed upon system of synchronisation and while we call this time it is not

    TIME as a FUNDIMENTIAL (and the TIME many physicist argue does not exist (as does this Minion)) fits in with a Universal NOW

    At every single instance throughout the Universe events are happening. Not a single event is able to happen either ahead or behind any other event

    So yes everything does happen all at once. However the distance between events means events do not happen all in the same place (which some posters seem to confuse with all at once)

    And since there is a finite speed limit to the transfer of some information some posters confuse that with events occurring outside of the Universal NOW

    No event can happen in the future or the past of any other event. This can only happen in a case of our fixed value system of time. The Universe has no compunction either a speeding up or slowing down our version of time

    FUNDIMENTIAL TIME would not show any variation being (if it existed) FUNDIMENTIAL

    Are there any FUNDIMENTIAL aspects of the Universe showing variations?

    I understand the Gravitational Constant is becoming weaker due to the expansion of the Universe ie the mass (its gravitational effect being required to operate over increasingly further apart gravitational mass bodies)

    With gravity there is something (mass) with the property of gravity with which to measure such a change

    If TIME was FUNDIMENTIAL there would be some starting point to start any measurement from. The Big Bang??? Nope. The Big Bang has been retro fitted with our invented version of time

    The scientists and humanity, as regards a starting point (or any other aspect of FUNDIMENTIAL TIME) "ain't got nufink"

    Me go get coffee

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    Nealy 4:30 am

    5 am coffee is great but hope it not stir up any more edits

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    Last edited: Oct 26, 2022
  11. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    The only problem is that you're not currently 2 years old and 15 years old and 40 years old, all at the same time. All the evidence shows that you were 2 years old before you were 40 years old, for instance.
    Possibly, but physicists are quite clear on the distinction between the time and event occurs and the time that information from that event reaches the position of some observer or other.

    Time is not caused by the speed of light.
    A minute ago, you hadn't read this sentence. Now you have. That shows you that your having read that sentence happened in the future of your not having read it.

    This isn't a hard concept to grasp. Why do you struggle so? Or, at this point in the discussion, is it just sheer bloody-mindedness?
    I'm not aware of any variation in G, if that's what you mean.
    ---

    On a side point, if you're going to insist on capitalising the word "fundamental", perhaps now might be a good time to learn how to spell it. I wouldn't ordinarily be picky, but it keeps cropping up in your posts. Unless you're trying to invent a new word, that is.
     
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  12. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    So all events must happen at the same time. But they don't.
     
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  13. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    So it takes time for information from A to reach B, ok everyone accepts that.

    And what happens to the time the information from the exact moment of an event @ B reaches A?
    It seems to me that information from B to A would travel just as far and take just as much time as information from A to B.

    Therefore......., A and B become aware of the exact same NOW (in each other's past) at the SAME TIME.
    A shared (reciprocal) experience NOW of a past NOW by both A and B, no?


    I believe that is called relativity?
     
  14. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Well can you explain how any event can happen ahead or behind Universal NOW ie in the future or in the past

    Remember in the future, or past, of a FUNDAMENTAL TIME (which many physicist consider non existent) not the future or past of the contrived arbitrary synchronised system humans invented

    A Universal NOW means there is no need of a FUNDAMENTAL TIME, no flow of time, no pondering why time seems only flow to the future and never flows to the past even though in theory physics has no objection to it doing so

    A Universal NOW eliminates all the above

    So I am interested in how you can arrange any event to be in the future or past of any other event

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  15. Kristoffer Giant Hyrax Valued Senior Member

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    If everything is happening all at the same time, how come I'm not being born, growing up, dying etc right now?
    Accept that things happen sequentially, Michael.
    It's why you're older now than you were when you started reading this post.
     
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  16. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    L.P. Horowitz, R.I. Arshansky, & A.C. Elitzur: It seems that Einstein's view of the life of an individual was as follows. If the difference between past, present, and the future is an illusion, i.e., the four-dimensional spacetime is a 'block Universe' without motion or change, then each individual is a collection of a myriad of selves, distributed along his history, each occurrence persisting on the world line, experiencing indefinitely the particular event of that moment. Each of these momentary persons, according to our experience, would possess memory of the previous ones, and would therefore believe himself identical with them; yet they would all exist separately, as single pictures in a film. --On the Two Aspects of Time: The Distinction and Its Implications, ... Foundations of Physics, 1988 ​

    Michael, are you simply saying in a way which perhaps gets obscured, due to the repeated emphasis on NOW (which is usually associated with rival presentism), that you advocate eternalism?

    Take a look at the graphic that Sean Carroll has on his blog page (link below) that is titled "3 Metaphysics of Time", and relate which one of the three corresponds to your view. (There's actually a 4th option called the "shrinking block universe", but virtually no one champions it, so it's neglected. "Possibilism" is normally referred to as GBU [Growing Block Universe]).

    If your temporal orientation is none of these options, then that will still clarify the situation as an "unknown other".

    Sean Carroll: "The reality of time"
    https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2015/04/03/the-reality-of-time/

    - - - - - - - -

    Here are some tidbit quotes concerning the eternalism view. Not going to bother with "presentism slash nowism" since that is usually the commonsense view that one's neighbor to Jasper the gardener and Eunice the cook holds.

    Robert Geroch: "There is no dynamics within space-time itself: nothing ever moves therein; nothing happens; nothing changes. [...] In particular, one does not think of particles as 'moving through' space-time, or as 'following along' their world-lines. Rather, particles are just 'in' space-time, once and for all, and the world-line represents, all at once the complete life history of the particle." --General Relativity from A to B

    Paul Davies: "Peter Lynds's reasonable and widely accepted assertion that the flow of time is an illusion (25 October, p 33) does not imply that time itself is an illusion. It is perfectly meaningful to state that two events may be separated by a certain duration, while denying that time mysteriously flows from one event to the other. Crick compares our perception of time to that of space. Quite right. Space does not flow either, but it's still 'there'." --New Scientist, 6 December 2003, Sec. Letters

    Hermann Weyl: "The objective world simply IS, it does not HAPPEN. Only to the gaze of my consciousness, crawling upward along the life line [4D "worm" version] of my body, does a certain section of this world come to life as a fleeting image in space which continuously changes in time." --Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science

    H G Wells: "There are really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time. There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between the former three dimensions and the latter, because it happens that our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter from the beginning to the end of our lives." --The Time Machine
    - - - - - -

    That Mysterious Flow (Paul Davies, 2006)
    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/that-mysterious-flow-2006-02/

    From the fixed past to the tangible present to the undecided future, it feels as though time flows inexorably on. But that is an illusion.

    EXCERPT: The most straightforward conclusion is that both past and future are fixed. For this reason, physicists prefer to think of time as laid out in its entirety--a timescape, analogous to a landscape--with all past and future events located there together. It is a notion sometimes referred to as block time. Completely absent from this description of nature is anything that singles out a privileged special moment as the present or any process that would systematically turn future events into present, then past, events. In short, the time of the physicist does not pass or flow.

    _
     
    Last edited: Oct 27, 2022
  17. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    A lot to digest

    Thank you

    Busy at the moment

    Will try to find a moment to give a longer answer (no promise) which will give it justice

    Short thought on my mind's visual view of NOW

    I'm looking at a Planck unit thickness curtain (akin to looking at curtain of bubbles which appears to be boiling)

    This activity is the change occuring at NOW

    Cheers

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  18. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Ummmmm you appear to be confusing
    • everything happens at the same time" ie billions of occurrences happening to billions of individual units seperated (one from any others) by small distance to galactic sized distances with
    • sequential changes occurring to a individual unit ie changes occurring to individual units is what you wish to claim you can call call
      FUNDIMENTIAL TIME Already done and dusted. The second (¹/60 th of 1 hour) has been settled as
    One second is the time that elapses during 9,192,631,770 (or 9.192631770 x 109 in decimal form) cycles of the radiation produced by the transition between two levels of the cesium-133 atom.

    https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/second-s-or-sec?amp=1

    Do you wish to change it to someone other reoccurring frequency? Some sort of frequency involving the human body which you appear to have a fixation with? Good luck with
    • consistent and
    • stable frequency associated
    • with the human body, correct?

    Changing to any such frequency does (will not) produce FUNDIMENTIAL TIME,

    only a different version of human Minions version of time

    And FUNDIMENTIAL TIME will remain non existent

    Repeat of what I have asked for a few times - those who claim FUNDIMENTIAL TIME exist.

    Put on display a lump of FUNDIMENTIAL TIME
    "Oh it can't be seen"
    OK show the machine display (readout) which detects FUNDIMENTIAL TIME

    So so easy but an occurrence which has never occurred

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    Last edited: Oct 27, 2022
  19. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    then each individual is a collection of a myriad of selves

    Sorry that sounds like a new person is being reproduced every ? so often which I am sure your intention is not for others to interpret it that manner

    Sorry not so

    Until you brought it to my attention I was unaware externalism was (is) in the philosophy of time

    In the philosophy (I do not see myself as a philosopher) of space and time, eternalism[1] is an approach to the ontological nature of time, which takes the view that all existence in time is equally real, (hardly considering I am of the view time does not exist) as opposed to presentism or the growing block universe theory of time, in which at least the future is not the same as any other time.[2] Some forms of eternalism give time a similar ontology to that of space, as a dimension, with different times being as real as different places, and future events are "already there" in the same sense other places are already there, and that there is no objective flow of time.[3]

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time)

    Really this is my view, based in my view, that NOW - throughout the Universe only NOW is in existence

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    I would contend that the view events happen at different times depending on each observer's frame of reference is (while such is correct) is dealing with moving frames of reference

    NOW should be treated as a stationary frame since nothing exist either side of NOW

    Nothing is flowing (collectively ie everything within NOW), NOW is not moving en masse

    So treat NOW en masse as being stationary

    Edit - Forgot to add it is 3 am and coffee moment

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  20. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    You wrote that in our past, I am a bit concerned that you don't seem to realize this.
     
  21. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Please explain how they don't

    Just incase you missed this in a recent answer consider this please

    I would contend that the view events happen at different times depending on each observer's frame of reference (while such is correct) is dealing with moving frames of reference

    NOW should be treated as a stationary frame since nothing exist either side of NOW

    There is a bit more but that should be enough for you to get the nub of the idea

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  22. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    I occured to me while making the coffee I should put (ask to be shown) a lump of FUNDIMENTIAL TIME at the end of each post in this thread

    Also do so as a parody of Tom Cruise SHOW ME THE MONEY

    Here goes

    SHOW ME FUNDIMENTIAL TIME

    OK
    Parody done ✅
    Girlfriend in Bali finished selling Roast Pork, closed shop, heading home ✅
    I've finished coffee ✅

    Good night to all

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  23. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    Okay, so you're simply asserting what the average person implicitly believes: There is no past or future, only now (the present state) exists, which is immediately replaced by the next now (change, different state). Presentism or "nowism" might be controversial to the applicable "we believing" physicists (as Einstein put it), but not to the population at large.

    There is obviously no "flowing" in the presentism view because there is no future moment to transit to, nor a past moment if "going backwards" was instead the norm. This sets aside the issue of whatever would otherwise be "flowing" in the first place.

    And with respect to some of the quotes, you can see that there is also no "flowing" in the block-universe or eternalism conception. Aside from that specious depiction of one's consciousness "moving" through the 4D version of one's brain/body -- figuratively akin to the light beam of an old movie projector illuminating frame by frame the film running over it. But that putative "movement of awareness" through spacetime is likewise a cognitive illusion (but too potentially difficult a detour to venture into here).

    With respect to your "now" being global or not compromised by relativisitic effects, maybe you could borrow something from Julian Barbour's conception to sort that out (The End of Time). He likewise seems to advocate universal nows, but it's somewhat unclear how he accomplishes that. I can only envision some objects changing slower or faster relative to other objects as the differences unfold through the succession of individual Nows.

    Interview with Julian Barbour (1999)
    https://www.edge.org/conversation/julian_barbour-the-end-of-time

    [...] JB: Didn't Einstein abolish Nows?

    BARBOUR: In fact no. He only showed that they do not follow one another in a unique sequence. There is no absolute simultaneity in the universe, or at least not in the classical universe. But relative simultaneity remains, and Nows as I define them form an integral part of Einstein's theory...

    [...] B: What is distinctive about your approach?

    BARBOUR: My basic idea is that time as such does not exist. There is no invisible river of time. But there are things that you could call instants of time, or 'Nows'. As we live, we seem to move through a succession of Nows, and the question is, what are they? They are arrangements of everything in the universe relative to each other in any moment, for example, now.

    We have the strong impression that you and I are sitting opposite each other, that there's a bunch of flowers on the table, that there's a chair there and things like that — they are there in definite positions relative to each other. I aim to abstract away everything we cannot see (directly or indirectly) and simply keep this idea of many different things coexisting at once in a definite mutual relationship. The interconnected totality becomes my basic thing, a Now. There are many such Nows, all different from each other. That's my ontology of the universe — there are Nows, nothing more, nothing less.

    _
     
    Last edited: Oct 27, 2022

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