Is space and time just a human created thing?

This really confuses me but how do we know that we are actually in 3d space and not a flat 2d space? plus how do we know time exists if it is a human created measurement?

 

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Being the observer within the system your talking about, negates what we see as observers as to what the system is, if you get me.

I am sure plenty have asked the question you have. But science assumes that we are here, and then they make judgements on that. Science cannot answer the question you asked, unless they get outside the system, and of course they never will.

No other animal we know of yet relates to any time like us, so i think you have a justifiable question there. The problem is answering it, and we cannot. Even when we make robots or computers we will program them as we see the world, and we have no way of knowing that is really the true way of seeing the universe or not.

So i am sure plenty have asked what you just asked, and science cannot answer it, and you know that.

Like all our dates are made up rubbish, so ignore dates. Just us measuring us going round the sun, does not matter in terms of the universe, so in fact all our dates are rubbish, and mean nout.

How animals relate to time, who knows.

I cannot see how science will ever answer what you just asked, as being observers and science is based on observation, then no real answers will ever come.

 

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Space-time is analogous to the windshield display on a jet fighter. It allows us to see, plot and anticipate the relationships between objects within the viewing area. Like a jet windshield display, it takes pilots some time to adapt, but eventually the display and what is outside the jet will merge within the mind until thy appear to be one connected thing. We are trained to abstract with space-time and a mind merge occurs early. The new pilots, who never got to fly old school, but always knew the display merge, can't see anything but merge.

One way to prove this is to save some space and time in a bottle. This is as easy as saving a jet windshield display LED read-out in a bottle.

 

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It is immediately obvious from observations we're in a domain with at leasy 3 spatial directions, since we can move in 3 different, independent directions. The question is not "Are there less than 3?" but "Are there more than 3?". Space-time could have more dimensions than the 3+1 we are immediately aware of, additional spatial directions could either be curled up very very tightly, much like a water pipe looks like a line when viewed from far away but is actually a cylinder with a curved surface, or are unfurled but we are just unable to move about in these extra directions, like an ant on a table cannot jump into the air.

A number of theoretical physics ideas attempt to make rigorous models of such scenarios and then determine ways in which we might test such ideas. For example, within string theory there are compact dimensions and/or brane models. The former says spatial directions are wrapped up too tiny to observe directly but if they change their curled up structure it would manifest in ways such as the charge of the electron changing. The latter, brane models, are extensions of the flatlander idea, ie we're stuck on some 3 dimensional 'surface' which resides in a higher dimensional space. In string theory this manifests as deviations in gravity from the \(\frac{1}{r^{2}}\) behaviour, as well as certain particles being able to 'leak' out of our observable space-time. Such systems might be observable due to their creation of variations in the CMB or gravitational wave fluctuations of a particular type.

As for time and whether it exists that is a question which has consumed the thoughts of a great many physicists, philosophers and logicians for centuries.

 

Yes, our understanding of numbers and time are human created things. 6 o'clock is an idea, not a concrete object. The whole notion that it is 6 o'clock is arbitrary, and dependent on where you are. Think through how we got this notion.

First what is a 6? Can you reach out your hand and touch a 6? Can you cut it open and figure out what it is made of? You can show me 6 fingers, but how does this apply to 6 nuts? When did 6 look like 6? Something is going on in our heads to make 6 something that has meaning to us, and we are the only animal that can hold such a notion of 6.

Without 6 there can not be 60, and without 60 there can not be an hour consisting of 60 seconds.

We treat this abstract notion of time as though it were concrete reality, but it is not. It is abstract and there is no substance to it. Not only is it not 6 o'clock on Mars when you think it is 6 o'clock, but neither is it 6 o'clock two states over. To make the notion of 6 o'clock workable, we had to make time zones, and arbitrarily decided when it would 6 o'clock in each time zone. I wonder what it is like to live on the edge of time zone, and drive a few miles down the road into a different time zone?

 

Consider the concept of space. Space is the void or the nothingness that exists between substance. If we kept on magnifying a area of space. space is always that which is left over after you take away even the tiniest of substance. If space contracts, the void or the nothing between various substances contracts. Nothing equals zero, and zero divided by anything is still zero, yet nothing contracts a finite amount?

This conceptual inconsistency is more a convention based on a mental construct that simplifies math for applied science. But from a conceptual POV, where logical consistency is important (horse leads the math cart), multiplication or division of zero by anything is always zero. If zero or space becomes non-zero it is no longer space.

Many people sense this conceptual problem of the modern traditions, which attempt to give finite expression to a concept that is void or nothing by its very nature. They create and destroy nothing all the time.

It is sort of like the little girl having a tea party with her dolls. If you participate with her, you start to learn the quirks of each character in her mental construct. Other people, not in her loop, will have a hard time seeing what cannot be seen (void/zero by definition). People out of the physics inner loop tend not to see the talking doll, way before those who always play tea party.

Don't get me wrong, the construct is very useful even if space means nothing.

 

Huh? I don't think nothing can contract. Only something can contract. Nothing can do nothing.

Zero is not space. Before there was a symbol to represent zero, those doing math left a space blank to indicate the existence of nothing, but this was not a usable zero as the zero we use today. Zero probably came from the Indian culture where philosophically people were okay with the concept of nothingness, but this was not true for those outside of India. It just was not okay to think of nothingness. All was manifest reality. One mark on a bone. No mark, no symbol, for that which is not.

 

in my opinon time is real, it exists whether humans experience it or not.
rocks will continue to weather (erode), bullets and other objects will still follow ballistic trajectories, the earth will still take approx 365.25 days to complete an orbit.

 

They're real in the sense of being part of experience, or the interpersonal world we are represented as living in on an everyday basis (although time might have to be adjusted to "change" or carrying around less baggage). Hypostatizing formal descriptions abstracted from that, which may share the same words, is another matter, since there will always be nominalists and realists feuding over whether or not certain concepts or constructs are truly objects or effective agencies that are independent of consciousness and the intellectual inventiveness that accompanies the former. The greater or underlying question might be why people want to plant the flag of real in an aloof place subject to varying opinion and future revisions and upheavals, rather than settling for "this works for this or is useful in this context / practice" and keeping real confined to hanging on the familiar, easily verifiable coat rack of the perceivable external world.

 

Change is real and occurs whether we are there to measure and observe it, or not.

Time is a comparison of observed change with the rate of a previously agreed standard rate of change. All clocks we have represent a constant rate of change, against which we measure "other" events.., or observable change. Time by this definition is a conceptual construct, we create.., or which we at least have come to recognized.

 

Look straight ahead. Now look to your right. Now look up.

Ta-Da.

 

It depends a bit on what concept you're referring to. 6 o'clock, as a means of identifying a particular time, defines some region of space-time, as it stipulates a coordinate value for how we describe events within space-time. The notion of what 6 is, which is what you then discuss, is a separate concept.

I remember having exactly this discussion my first lecture in university. The professor asked someone to define what a number is. What is 3? It was to illustrate there is some notion of '3-ness' which we have and the concept of 3 is the formal, distinct concept associated to 3 sheep, 3 fingers, 3 miles etc.

Defining locations within space-time is done, in part, by giving a time for something (setting aside issues from relativity about the notion of 'now' and frame variations). Though the concept of time is, by definition, non-physical (all concepts are conceptual, not physical, by definition) there is something about the time and space which is different from tables or sheep or people or bricks. All of those things, physical things, need an arena within which to exist. The arena, space-time, is therefore a sort of different 'thing', it is in a different category of type, from physical objects but at the same time it is not purely conceptual. 'Physical' and 'conceptual' are not a dichotomy. True dichotomies would be physical and non-physical or conceptual and non-conceptual. Space, time and space-time I'd argue are all in non-physical and non-conceptual*. We might not have a word for their 'type', particularly if they are the only examples and thus we have had no linguistic motivation to create category labels for them.

* There's also the concept of each of them, just as there's a concept of a table or my concept of another person, but there is also the things themselves which the concepts are conceptualisations of. God this is getting convoluted....

This is the problem with language. We have words for categories or types or things we commonly experience. When an entirely new thing is discussed we try to describe it using a vocabulary which doesn't have the necessary concepts/words within it. This, in my opinion, is why quantum mechanics is made so mysterious to non-physicists, we try to explain entirely new phenomena in terms of our classical understanding. Is an electron a particle or a wave? Why should it be only one of those two? Why are we not considering a new category 'quantum object', which has both particle and wave properties? Trying to pigeon hole new ideas into the boxes of old ideas is never a good way to go about things but unfortunately people like to cling to old ideas, they are more comfortable.

Anyway....

Yes, for 6 o'clock to mean anything you have to stipulate which clock you're using, which amounts to defining your frame or coordinate choice. After that, once everyone agrees on the choice of description, 6 o'clock means something practical, it defines a region of space-time, allowing us to coordinate our behaviour so we can catch the bus to work reliably

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Between? I'd say more that substance exists within space-time. And if we take a cue from various quantum field theory ideas space-time is not the traditional notion of nothing, ie the complete absence of everything. The quantum field theory notion of a vacuum is not utterly empty, as is the case with non-relativistic quantum mechanics, but rather it is a seething ensemble of particles flittering in and out of existence. If quantum gravity bears any resemblance to this then space-time itself is formed from the ensemble behaviour of gravitons (or spin foam networks if you like Loop Quantum Gravity or something else if you go for even more tentative ideas in theoretical physics). Space is only empty space if you don't look close enough, even if you could suck all of the air/gas out of a region using some magically perfect vacuum pump.

This is also manifested by the Unruh effect, which says that from the point of view of an accelerating observer (acceleration is not a relative concept, unlike velocity in relativity) the vacuum glows. Hawking radiation is the equivalence principle's partner of Unruh radiation, ie the acceleration due to a black hole's gravity causes the black hole to emit radiation. Experiencing a similar acceleration in utterly empty space, using thrusters, will result in the same kind of glow except it'll be coming from the vacuum ahead of the object. A pretty quirky and interesting result.

I think we're wandering away from the science and into your somewhat questionable understanding of it.

There is no conceptual inconsistency, other than in your understanding. Come on WW, this is the second time in as many days I've had to comment about how you talk about domains of maths and/or physics you know you don't have a working understand of and yet you have no problem making assertions of inconsistency or problems, as if scientists have missed something you haven't. You should find out what the science and maths have to say before making claims about things simplifying the maths in applied science. You know you don't know any of the maths, simplified or otherwise, in applied science so why do you pretend otherwise?

Since you obviously have no idea what the science says or what the formalisation of it using mathematics is I don't think you're in any position to be concluding such things. You speak of 'the modern traditions' while making it abundantly clear that you haven't familiarised yourself with them before hand.

Space doesn't mean nothing, not in the 'absence of everything' sense. If you want to see what the scientific notion of space's 'nothing' is then watch A Universe From Nothing by Laurence Krauss. 'Nothing' is a lot richer than nothing.

 

When space-time was first defined, these ideas, in the quote, were not part of the concept. Space was the void between substance. I suppose outer space includes space and galaxies, which is more in line with the quote (micro-scale). All these new ideas were created to help address questions like this topic; modifications after the train left the station, it was too far along the track to stop and turn back.

I am not discounting the value of space-time in terms of the math and applied science. I prefer look at the conceptual make-up to make sure the math is based on concepts with logical consistency.

If we work under the assumption that space-time is as real, we should be able to separate space-time into separate space and time, since each can be measured separately and each has been defined, separately. I can measure time regardless of where in space I am. Therefore, I should be able to tweak space-time using only time perturbations.

Let me show you an example. If you look at gravity, as we head to the center of a star, as space-time contracts, time slows down and distance contract. If we focus our attention on the matter/mass of the star, and take the same path to the center, the matter gets closer (denser) but the observed time frequencies speed up as we move from the surface plasma to the very fast nuclear transitions at the core. Material distances follows space-time (contract or get denser) but matter time/frequencies speed up, instead of slow down like space-time. I am looking at the space-time construct side by side with tangible material observations that can be confirmed. Time diverges or goes two ways, slows via GR but matter speeds up via material phase transitions.

The reason for this divergence in time (slows relative to space-time but speeds up relative to material frequencies) is space-time is one part distance and one part time. But gravity is a force and an acceleration which is two parts time and one part distance. The second part time; time potential, is connected to the pressure amplified frequencies of matter.

In special relativity, you don't get pressure, since SR is based on velocity, which is one part time and one part distance. Space-time construct can be tweaked with excess distance and time potential, since space and time are also separate entities associated with matter.

In the quote above, is has potential within empty space; excess distance and/or time potential to make substance. One of my problem amounts to the needed update that extends space-time to excess time and distance potential.

 

i think time is all about human perception of the world around us that match with the way we sense and record information

 

An explanation I once heard had to do with the increase in volume (of an expanding gas, for example); things behave as if volume were expanding into three dimensions, mathematically. The coefficient of volume expansion is three times the coefficient of linear expansion.

 

It's fair to say humans created the symbols, but the rest is perception of a world created long before there was any sensation to perceive it, much less the need for symbols.

Humans are only one of many species equipped with spatial processing in the parietal lobe which endows depth perception, among other things. The perception of time can be associated with memory recall.

While it may be true that the perceptions are local to the brain doing the processing, we've also learned to perceive the difference between normalcy and illusion by comparing notes with each other, and even within ourselves. To awaken with the realization that you were dreaming - and to experience temporary confusion during that momentary confluence of real and imaginary versions of the world - works on the cognitive faculty, which can not help but to integrate the data and make inferences. That of course assumes a healthy mind. In the many altered states of mind, there may arise a sense of confusion over what is real, or, worse, uncontrollable hallucinations that redefine the personality and may render the person dysfunctional and even dangerous. All of this we incorporate, too, into that general sense of what it means to be normal.

It probably wouldn't matter if there were other worlds unknown to us, that is, that we are simply limited by the evolutionary causes of developing spatiotemporal processing as a consequence of the minimum needs for survival (eat that food over there now, etc). I say it probably wouldn't matter since it's already obvious that our own world is just a speck in an unfathomably large space, so we are already in overload as it is.

But while perception is "manufactured" in the brain, it's made from "raw materials" that arrive from outside of ourselves. If we're asking here if those materials are real, then that's a case of the dog chasing its tail, since the premise and the conclusion are mutually dependent.

 

Are you confusing change, which occurs with or without notice, with time which is a comparrison of change with some standard of change, usually a clock?

Time is to change, as a mile or kilometer is to distance. They are both measurements of something that exists whether it is measured or not.

 

There is definitely a problem with this statement. Maybe several problems.
For instance, it's self-referential since it contains words that a priori assume time (exists). Also, "who" or "what" defined space-time?

The title also has a similar problem: does it infer that space and time aren't perceived by animals other than humans? That's really anthropocentric, isn't it?
Perhaps the question should be asking when did humans define space and time 'mathematically"? But then the question only shifts to what "mathematical" means.
So again, it appears to revolve around the meaning of different words. and since the meaning of words depends on the context they're used in, we have a problem.

As Alphanumeric points out above, much of the "mystery" of quantum processes is related to this "word context"; we struggle with the process of attaching appropriate labels, more or less, and with our anthropocentric intuition.

 

The scientific method is based on experimental evidence. What I need is a bottle of space and a bottle of time to run some experiments. Is this possible and can anyone help me? Can you name other "tangible variables" we can't store and save?

Say I had an ice cube. I will use my clock and time how long it takes to melt. I can speed up the melting time by using heat. If we compare, time speeded up. Heat is like a time warp.

Say I was watching a space ship moving near the speed of light. They place an ice cube on a heater. From my slower reference it appears to take longer to melt due to the time dilation. On the repeat experiment, they crank up the heat and I measure again. This time, the measured time to melt is now the same as in my stationary reference. They must be stopped. I can use heat to neutralize the measured time dilation using the same clocks.

Your freezer time dilates your food so its freshness expectancy lasts longer. We start with twin fish, with one frozen in the time dilator freezer. One year later, the frozen twin will look younger. I am using heat-time to get the same effect. This is way cheaper.

I can play with time because it is a reference variables. But tangible variables don't play that way. Since we can't put time in a bottle we can't really differentiate if this is different.