Quantum asymmetry between time and space

Discussion in 'Physics & Math' started by Plazma Inferno!, Jan 29, 2016.

  1. Plazma Inferno! Ding Ding Ding Ding Administrator

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    In a paper published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A, Associate Professor Joan Vaccaro challenges the long-held presumption that time evolution—the incessant unfolding of the universe over time—is an elemental part of Nature.
    In the paper, entitled "Quantum asymmetry between time and space", she suggests there may be a deeper origin due to a difference between the two directions of time: to the future and to the past.
    According to the paper, an asymmetry exists between time and space in the sense that physical systems inevitably evolve over time whereas there is no corresponding ubiquitous translation over space.

    http://phys.org/news/2016-01-space-universal-symmetry.html
     
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  3. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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    Much of what professor Vaccaro says rings true, but far too many here object so strongly to such popular science literature that ultimately I found that I needed to place them on permanent ignore status. And for the record, I do take the sources of popular science literature into account in terms of the degree of rigor I attribute to the source.

    Space as light travel time to me has always been sufficient. Space is no more real than a wavelength, and time has meaning much deeper than the speed of light.

    Quantum entanglement clocks hundreds if not thousands of times both more precise and accurate than clocks based on counting wavelengths have been the subject of intensive physics research since about 2002, and I have no doubt that eventually, they will succeed in producing what I regard as the ultimate clock.

    I also have no doubt this will have consequences that far exceed anything published at any level of scientific rigor in the pages of Nature for the last 40 years. Nothing beats idle speculation about science quite as thoroughly as an inductive improvement to the available instrumentation. Look no further than how the LHC has managed to overturn ideas about SUSY this decade. SUSY was formerly a top dog theory in particle physics for no good reason other than it was "pretty." Anything published about it in the pages of Nature or elsewhere less rigorous is now as dead as a proverbial doorpost.

    Nature herself apparently does like symmetry except with respect to the arrow of time. When we finally understand it's true nature, I'm certain that will be "pretty" also, but there is really no reason to expect it to be aesthetically pleasing by any standards set by mere mortals.
     
    Last edited: Jan 29, 2016
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  5. Q-reeus Banned Valued Senior Member

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    Annoyingly no mention of an obvious parallel and maybe contrast with Lee Smolin's tilt at this 'fundamental issue': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Reborn
    Just what differentiates the two? Who knows, and more importantly, who really cares. Book sales suggest quite a few do, and if there was the slightest hint of a useful technological breakthrough coming out of any of such deep speculations, I probably would.
     
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  7. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    "Time's arrow" is just that highly probable changes are more likely to occur than low probabily ones. For example shake a closed box containg 6 black and 6 white balls. The box has a tent like floor with area for only six balls on each side of the central ridge. I.e. Always when static and horizontal again, there are 6 balls on each side of the ridge. Occasionally (you can calculate how often) all the white balls will be together on one sides of the ridge (as are the black balls).

    If there were 6 million balls of each color in a bigger tent-floored box, you could not live long enough to see this perfect separation - that is all "time's arrow" is - We live in a macro world of billions of atoms. When we make non-quantum experiments, we see high probablity result - entropy increases almost all the time.
     
    Last edited: Jan 30, 2016
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  8. quantum_wave Contemplating the "as yet" unknown Valued Senior Member

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    You don't have to have the underlying science right in order to use the known physical connections for technological advancement. However, when the topic is about the underlying forces of nature that we do not yet understand, and cannot directly observe, you end up seeking a consensus that works mathematically but that lacks a foundation in mechanical knowledge. It is obvious that each step of the advancement we make into understanding that quantum nature of things leads to technical advances that we didn't even imagine were possible beforehand.

    The century old debate between symmetry of space and time (spacetime), and the asymmetry of space and time, has come to be about the quantum nature of things because the action resulting from the foundational laws of nature is quantum, and spacetime is not. I say, if you have the inclination and interest, restart from that assymetric perspective and see what kind of universe you come up with.

    The logical staring point is about preconditions to the Big Bang and a presumption of the asymmetry of space and time. So my thanks to Plazma Inferno! for the thread, and the interesting topic.
     
  9. quantum_wave Contemplating the "as yet" unknown Valued Senior Member

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    Reading the article leads to the thinking about preconditions. I would like to ask one simple question about preconditions to our Big Bang, and that is, if there was one Big Bang, and the redshift evidence supports that there was, and that it is now an expanding galaxy filled arena that fills our entire Hubble view, why not multiple big bangs and their resulting expanding arenas filling the landscape of the greater universe?
     
  10. quantum_wave Contemplating the "as yet" unknown Valued Senior Member

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    There is a lot of asymmetry in nature. Look at the cosmic microwave background for example. WMAP and PLANCK Surveys both show hemispherical asymmetry in the background temperature. Asymmetry in preconditions to the Big Bangs is consistent with what we observe and measure, and why wouldn't it leave a detectable footprint in the background that we observe today? ...

    http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.2567
    "The cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) shows a hemispherical power asymmetry with excess power in the southern ecliptic hemisphere compared to northern ecliptic hemisphere [1–9]. The signal is seen both in WMAP and PLANCK data and indicates a potential violation of the cosmological principle. ..."

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  11. quantum_wave Contemplating the "as yet" unknown Valued Senior Member

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    This video by Sean Carroll does a good job of addressing the question, "Did the universe have a beginning?", and if not, which is the growing consensus, what do we know about preconditions?

     
  12. danshawen Valued Senior Member

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  13. quantum_wave Contemplating the "as yet" unknown Valued Senior Member

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    It is interesting to watch the way changes in our consensus occur. That article, and the link in the OP, show some trending. If you are going to look at asymmetry between space and time, instead of symmetry, then as the Sean Carroll video points out, you don't have the basis from which to derive General Relativity. Without the precise conditions of GR, i.e. the hot, infinitely dense, zero volume, point-space singularity, the presumption of spacetime fails, and you have space and time.

    Also, the current consensus toward General Relativity/spacetime means you are taking a path that tracks back to a singularity, where the math doesn't work, and where there is no possible scientific explanation; i.e. no preconditions. Religions have been pointing to that quandary as a loophole in the scientific method that is big enough to slip in the possibility of the "God did it" explanation for the existence of the Universe. The Supernatural, as well as out-right fantasy like pink unicorns, is of course excluded from consideration by the scientific method; I'm just sayin'.
     
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  14. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    General Relativity requires that all clocks tick forward in time, never backward. I don't think you understand what's meant when physicists say there's a Relativistic symmetry between space and time, because it doesn't involve being able to return to the past.

    What on Earth are you talking about? If the universe didn't have a Big Bang, then all of General Relativity fails, period, because it arises as a natural consequence of the theory when modelling a realistic universe. GR still allows you to model universes without a Big Bang, but they're not physically plausible or realistic (i.e. a universe with nothing other than a perfectly symmetric black hole which has existed for eternity), and of course the theory doesn't say anything about possible quantum corrections. Whether the Big Bang actually occurred or not has nothing to do with the direction assymetry of space and time required by Relativity.

    The scientific method doesn't exclude any explanation, as long as the explanation can be tested against reality and its predictions are subsequently verified. The only problem with postulating supernatural causes for things is that it generally puts those causes beyond the realm of testability, rendering them no more useful than any other fanciful guess at how things work. From a scientific viewpoint, the Big Bang theory as it currently stands, without modifications, requires no underlying explanation other than to accept that existence itself may have a finite past history and no prior causes.
     
  15. quantum_wave Contemplating the "as yet" unknown Valued Senior Member

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    I never thought otherwise.
    I didn't mean to imply that there was no Big Bang. My earliest study and thinking about cosmology lead me to accept that a Big Bang happened. Nevertheless, nothing that I have studied or thought about seem to present any realistic possibility that time didn't always go forward.
    If you say so, lol. However, you just said that the scientific method doesn't exclude any testable or verifiable explanation, and went on to say that Supernatural causes "generally" puts those explanations beyond the realm of testability. I was thinking that invoking the Supernatural always put those explanations/causes beyond the realm of testability. Do you agree?

    If you haven't had a chance yet, view the Sean Carroll video, and look for his comments about what a Singularity means in terms of the scientific method.
     
  16. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    Well if some guy can predict the weather more accurately than anyone else on the planet, and there's no evidence of them using any methodology other than "praying to Jesus", then the claimed explanation must be at least accepted as viable. The biggest problem with religious claims other than the sources themselves being completely, utterly unreliable, is that they always lack predictive power, other than those claims which have already made testable predictions and been thoroughly debunked, subsequently mocked by anyone possessing a higher IQ than a hamster.

    Well, I've met Sean Carroll in person once before and it's from his textbook that I gleaned most of my technical understanding of GR, so perhaps I shall indeed.

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  17. quantum_wave Contemplating the "as yet" unknown Valued Senior Member

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    Good, I think you will like it. My point is that, given the Big Bang event, if we were to presume there is asymmetry of time and space, GR wouldn't be compatible. GR backtracks to the hot, infinitely dense, zero volume, point space singularity without regard to any preconditions. Without the Singularity of GR, we wouldn't have a spacetime environment; we would have a space and time environment, and I think we would be looking for some preconditions to the Big Bang.
     
  18. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    Sorry, but I don't know of anything in General Relativity which justifies any part of your assertion, unless I'm misunderstanding your definition of assymetry. Big Bang or not, time has never been recorded as doing anything but ticking forward, and General Relativity accepts (and requires) the forward direction of time as a fundamental postulate, whereas you can move any direction you like in space. Also, with or without a Big Bang, there is a fundamental Relativistic quantity known as the "spacetime distance" which can be associated with any pair of events, and this quantity is the same as measured by any observer even when the separate distances and times differ.

    Does your definition of assymetry refer to something else? If so, please define it.
     
  19. quantum_wave Contemplating the "as yet" unknown Valued Senior Member

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    In post #12, I confirmed that all clocks tick forward, never backward. In my initial post, #5, I equated symmetry of space and time with GR and spacetime, and asymmetry as an alternative to GR and spacetime.

    When you say that you don't know of anything in GR that justifies any part of my assertion, ... that is my assertion, lol. My assertion is that GR is built on an inseparable connection between space and time in a way that is described by Einstein's Field Equations, and that if space and time are separate, then GR is a great mathematical representation of relative motion, but it is not the foundational nature of reality.

    My assertion goes on to say that if space and time are separate, then the explanation for the existence of the universe is not the same as that which is implied by Big Bang Theory, i.e. the Singularity of GR goes away, and the Big Bang then has preconditions which I attempt to discuss. That does in any way mean that time doesn't always move forward, but it means that there is an infinite past.

    Also, I was wondering if you picked up on the points that I was referring to in Sean Carroll's video, regarding the problems that the Singularity of GR presents, given the scientific method. If not, let me know, and I'll view it again and write down the time stamp and words, and what I think they mean, if you care to know.
     
    Last edited: Feb 4, 2016
  20. quantum_wave Contemplating the "as yet" unknown Valued Senior Member

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    Preconditions to the Big Bang has been treated as a Fringe topic, and I have expounded on it out there to a tiny Fringe audience where there is little intellectual participation, and in fact almost no participation. That is good in some respects, letting my speculate and hypothesize on my own, at will, lol, but I also like to have the exposure to "on topic" arguments, and that is not a characteristic of what happens on my threads in the Fringe.

    Therefore, I will try to take advantage of the topic here about "Quantum Asymmetry between Time and Space". In my posts here I have explained my take on how such asymmetry might just deny General Relativity, but not the Big Bang itself. I posed the question here in a Science forum, in this thread on the topic of Asymmetry, about if there was one Big Bang, why not others; why not a greater landscape of Big Bang arenas?

    No one chimed in about that?!

    I showed that an asymmetry in preconditions to our Big Bang might have resulted in the hemispherical asymmetry of the background temperature gradient, gave links and images to support it.

    Suppose there were multiple big bangs occurring across the greater universe, going on all of the time? We know a lot about how our local Big Bang arena expands, and a lot about the redshift, the CMBR, and the anisotropy in the dipole temperature measurements from WMAP and PLANCK sky surveys. These are indications, circumstantial evidence of preconditions to our Big Bang, and they are consistent with the multiple Big Bang arena landscape that I asked you about.

    My question now is that, given asymmetry in the initial conditions of our Big Bang, might such an asymmetry be characterized by the intersection and overlap of two separate Big Bang arenas out there in the landscape of the greater universe?
     
  21. quantum_wave Contemplating the "as yet" unknown Valued Senior Member

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    That suggested scenario arising from an asymmetry of space and time, when considered in regard to preconditions of our Big Bang, in a multiple Big Bang universe, seems to be a reasonable expectation. I might add that the multiple Big Bang arena suggestion is unacknowledged and uncontested. Without any other version of preconditions mentioned, though there are several, we would be considering a "starting point" in time and space, a Singularity of hot, infinitely dense, zero volume point/space, necessary for general relativity to stand on its mathematical merits.

    However, going with this version of preconditions, there is a conclusion that can be drawn from the scenario of the overlap of two or more expanding Big Bang arenas, which makes good sense if we are going to contemplate preconditions instead of the Singularity.

    The two, or more, "parent" arenas, if mature, are filled with galactic structure. They probably will be of different "ages", which would mean that they should have different overall internal energy density. Interestingly though, when they converge, portions of their individual galactic structure are "captured" in the overlap space, raising the energy density in that space to something higher than the energy density of either parent arena individually; it becomes a high energy density space relative to the densities of the parent areas.
     
  22. quantum_wave Contemplating the "as yet" unknown Valued Senior Member

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    And that brings us to the Hypothesis of the Resolution of the Singularity. The point of intersection between the two spherically expanding Big Bang arenas is the origin point of the new arena, and so there is a history of preconditions; a before and beyond that newly evolving arena in the form of the history of the parent arenas, and of their parent arenas, and so forth infinitely back in time.
    With the new hypothesis of the resolution of the Singularity, the point of intersection between the two spherically expanding parent arenas produces the replacement to the hot, infinitely dense, zero volume point/space which is the impossible singularity of Big Bang Theory. In its place we have a zero volume point of intersection characterized in the last post ...
    And from there, there is a quite common evolution of the new arena, but quite different from the unexplained Singularity.
     
    Last edited: Feb 12, 2016
  23. quantum_wave Contemplating the "as yet" unknown Valued Senior Member

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    How is it quantum asymmetry of space and time when I say we have two or more of nature's biggest waves, Big Bang arenas, intersecting and converging? First there is a point of intersection, and that is a zero volume point at the very moment the new Big Bang arena is (excuse me for sayin')"born". The arena at the first picosecond was a point, and it contained nothing, because points just don't have volume to contain any thing. It certainly is not the hot, infinitely dense, zero volume point/space like the one that comes with BBT, and that one comes with no attempt being made to explain it.

    Oh sure, there are separate theories that try to explain the Singularity, but the Big Bang theory itself starts at ~10^-43 seconds or thereabouts, and until recently, you were a dope if you discussed "before or beyond". Now, not so much. I hope you all got a chance to see the great video on the subject posted by BdS on Futilitist's thread.

    And it is quantum asymmetry of time and space for good reason. The galactic material that each parent arena contributes to the overlap space, as they continue to individually expand and converge, is made up of particles, and particles are quantum objects, and there is every chance that gravity is quantum too. The asymmetry is in the different spatial sizes of the parent arenas, not two are likely to be exactly alike, and the difference in the extent of their individual expansions is a factor of the time since they were individually "born", back billions of years ago, IMHO.

    But there is one thing that survives from parent arena to the new arena that forms when they overlap, and that is that the physics and natural laws that govern them are likely to be the same, given that the heritage is essentially the same process, generation after generation.
     

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