Does time exist?

[Mike_Fontenot]

I think there is a philosophical component that shouldn't be ignored in these discussions of time. We are all definitely aware of the one-way passage of time in our own life. I think it's unlikely that that "is just an illusion". It's only when questions are raised about simultaneity at a distance, after accelerations have occurred at a distance, that things get complicated. Even though Einstein weighed in on the ages of the two twins when they are reunited, as far as I know he never discussed what the accelerating twin concludes about the current age of the home twin, when they are separated, and after his velocity change at a distance. If anyone has a reference to any such comment by Einstein, I'd like to know about it.

 

[ralfcis]

comment by Einstein, I'd like to know about it.

You'd like the truth, you can't handle the truth. Nobody can.
Here's a Minkowski diagram (Md) of what nearly everyone believes.



The blue lines of perspective simultaneity join how Bob, the stay home twin ages, and Alice's aging. It suggests Alice loses .2 yrs for every year Bob ages until they re-unite. This seems to be equally true, from Bob's perspective, whether Alice turns around or not. Alice's red lines of perspective show a sudden jump forward in Bob's age when Alice turns around. According to Einstein's discussion with Besso's widow, Besso is still alive from Alice's perspective before the jump because her present is simultaneous with his past. Also, after Alice turns, her present can see Besso's future rotted corpse before his corpse rots in his present because her present is now simultaneous with his future. Past, present and future all exist concurrently and our view of them is an illusion, although a persistent one according to Einstein.

All this is spelled out as gospel truth in Brian Greene's course https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLj6DWzIvBi4PFDXCCV1bNhVUgDLTwVbFc. Look at the 2 videos of past, present and future. That's Einstein's interpretation of his math and I have another which no one seems able to understand.

Alice does have a more orderly progression of relative age to Bob after the sudden jump and they both agree at reunion that Alice has aged 2 yrs less than Bob. But if she doesn't turn around, her age is 12.5 when Bob is 10 from her perspective. So unlike Bob's view, Alice produces different numbers for turning and not turning.

This may be the common misunderstanding but Greene does go into a better explanation of how the twin paradox works to establish an agreed upon age difference from both perspectives at re-union. Very few are aware of this. Even fewer are aware of the Rindler metric explanation. Mine is none of the above.

 

[Mike_Fontenot]

You'd like the truth, you can't handle the truth.

Actually, I prefer the CMIF (c0-moving inertial frames) simultaneity method (which is what Brian Greene's "alien" example so clearly describes) to any other method (including my own method). But quite a few people dislike the instantaneous ageing of the home twin that the CMIF method gives. And even more people dislike the instantaneous NEGATIVE ageing that the home twin can have in the CMIF method with some scenarios ... i.e., she can instantaneously get YOUNGER, according to the accelerating traveler. Those characteristics don't bother me at all. Some of those people that ARE bothered seek refuge in the belief that simultaneity at a distance is just a meaningless concept. I'm convinced that simultaneity IS meaningful (and is "real"), purely from philosophical considerations.

There are (at least) three simultaneity methods (in contrast with the CMIF method) that I'm aware of that don't have any instantaneous ageing (positive or negative). Two of them (Dolby & Gull's, and Minguizzi's) violate the principle of causality, but the third (my method) doesn't. I DO believe that there is a single, correct simultaneity method. But there doesn't seem to be any way (via physics) to determine which one it is.

 

[Dennis Tate]

Time is a physical entity, right?
We use clock to measure time, but what clock shows us is movement.
So, what is time?
Could it be an illusion?

Baby -> Kid -> Teenager -> Middle age -> Oldman

This is process changes, but not time itself.

Could TIME... in any way shape or form.......
be an INVENTION.....SOMEWHAT comparable to a bicycle, sailboat, yacht, or 747..... designed by a fundamental or nearly fundamental energy Intelligence......

to take lower energetic spirits / souls / entities.......

from point A to point B to point C... with an ultimate goal of something like "Eventual Universal Salvation".... and could the word
salvation... be somewhat challenging to define?

Yes, time is a physical entity.
Time is my favorite subject, but ...

A "physical" entity.......so does that mean that time would be different in a five dimensional continuum..... than it is in a four dimensional continuum where electromagnetism, gravity, weak and strong nuclear force are separate?

"It was not until 1920 that the idea of linking electromagnetism and
gravity resurfaced. At that time a new theory of gravitation had been proposed by Albert Einstein (1879-1955), called the general theory of relativity. It was a replacement of Newton's theory, which had stood unchallenged since 1687. Inspired by Einstein's work, a young German mathematician named Theodore Kaluza was seized by a curious idea. The theory of relativity links space an time together to form a four-dimensional space-time continuum. What would happen, mused Kaluza, if general relativity were formulated in five rather than four dimensions? This is what Kaluza did, and to everyone's astonishment it was discovered that five-dimensional gravity obeys the same laws as
four-dimensional gravity as well as Maxwell's laws for the electromagnetic field. In other words, gravitation and electromagnetism are automatically unified in five dimensions, where electromagnetism is merely a component of gravity!"

The only drawback of the theory concerns the extra dimension. Why
don't we see it? An ingenious answer was provided by Oskar Klein. A
hosepipe viewed from afar looks like a wiggly line, i.e. one- dimensional.
However, on closer inspection it can be seen as a narrow tube. It is, in fact,
two-dimensional, and what was taken to be a point on the line is actually a
little circle going around the tube. In the same way, reasoned Klein, what we normally regard as a point in three dimensional space could in reality be a little circle going around a fourth space dimension. Thus Kaluza's extra
dimension might well exist, but be impossible to detect because it is closed
(circular) and rolled up to a very small circumference. In spite of
these bizarre overtones, it seems probable that in future a "theory of everything" will make use of the idea of unseen higher dimensions."

......
"The real burden in the next three centuries will not be the development of fancy mathematics, but the experimental testing of these ambitious theories. All current thinking about total unification assumes that the effects of linking all the forces and particles together will only become manifest at energies that are some trillion times greater than those currently attainable in particle accelerators. Probably we shall never reach such energies directly" ( A Theory of Everything" Volume 21 of "The World ofScience)

 

[Dennis Tate]

Does time exist in the room when there is nothing in the room?

Since a room.. .by any definition that I can think of involves at least some "space".....
it is impossible to create "space" without simultaneously creating at least some sort of "time."

 

[Dennis Tate]

time = distance/speed.

Time is the process of waiting for an object to pass a distance at a certain speed.

Do you understand it?

I just sent you a message on your blog.

Are you interested in the topic of there perhaps being TWO as opposed to one fundamental form of energy
when thinking in terms of Grand Unified Field Theory as proposed by Stephen Hawking and others?

Basically.... I suspect that gravity as a second fundamental energy could perhaps explain why String Theory has gone off in five major directions??????

 

[TonyYuan]

I just sent you a message on your blog.

Dennis, which blog?

is this?
https://www.academia.edu/45604411/Gravitational_Fields_and_Gravitational_Waves

 

[Dennis Tate]

Dennis, which blog?

is this?
https://www.academia.edu/45604411/Gravitational_Fields_and_Gravitational_Waves

I don't think it was that one... because it made it easy for me to send you a message. That one looks kind of complicated to reply to.

 

[TonyYuan]

I see.

 

[Dennis Tate]

I see.

Take a look toward the upper right hand corner of this page.....
you will see your name "TonyYuan" then "Inbox" then "Alerts"... please click on "Inbox."

 

[phyti]

Write4U;

Mathematics is an inherent functional potential of spacetime.

[It's a shorthand language by humans. Every math expression can be translated into words of a common language.]

Higgs boson was predicted strictly via mathematics.

[Not quite. The profile for the Higgs boson was determined by the accumulated research on other particles and expressed as math shorthand. Similarly the quark properties had to agree with those of the nucleons when assembled. As usual, math had to verify that experience matched prediction.]

Yes from a subjective human perspective. From an objective universal perspective they are "unnamed" processes involving inherent objective "values" processed via objective mathematical "functions" (universal constants).

[All we have is perception, reality confined to the mind. There is no objective perspective. Who or what would make that observation? Particles don't have cognition. Every occasion an electron absorbs a photon, it's the 1st instance for the electron.
I'll agree on existing processes in place that cause events (not 'time'). It's the consistency of the physical laws that allows prediction. We do not know the nature of those laws, and can only speculate.]

The only time Time is in evidence is with "duration" of existence or change. Time does not exist in the future, but emerges along with the chronologies of sets of the present.

[By examining the purpose and application of 'time', it is obviously a human convention.
Just as we use a standard of distance to measure spatial intervals, we measure activity with a standard unit of time, provided by a device/clock. It is a practical necessity in today's complex world of social interactions; loans, marriages, regulations, travel, etc.

Presenting all this evidence however, does not deter those who insist 'time' is something physical behind the scenes like an event planner. Their motive is not physics but psychological security. No one wants to run out of 'time'.]

 

[Write4U]

Write4U;

[It's a shorthand language by humans. Every math expression can be translated into words of a common language.]

Yes, as can every expression of reality.

[Not quite. The profile for the Higgs boson was determined by the accumulated research on other particles and expressed as math shorthand. Similarly the quark properties had to agree with those of the nucleons when assembled. As usual, math had to verify that experience matched prediction.]

OK, but it was not proven to exist by trial and error.. The maths predicted that certain conditions would result in the production of the boson and the mathematics were correct.

[All we have is perception, reality confined to the mind. There is no objective perspective. Who or what would make that observation?

Of course there is an objective perspective.

Universal Mathematical functions are objective functions, completely independent of human interference.

1 + 1 = 2 , regardless of how you want to represent it symbolically. The Fibonacci Sequence is a naturally occurring mathematical sequence. Moreover it is a self-referential progression (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13,.....etc)

Natural selection creates the expressed mathematics in nature such as symmetry, equality, growth, balance, repeating patterns, etc.
Human have nothing to do with those naturally occurring phenomena. We have symbolized these functions with human symbolic translations.

Particles don't have cognition. Every occasion an electron absorbs a photon, it's the 1st instance for the electron.

But the event does not produce random effects. Particles have "values" which determine the results.
IOW, there is a deterministic mathematical function in play which yields predictable results.

David Bohm proposed that the spacetime geometry mathematically determines how chronological events must occur.

He posited a hierarchy of (mathematical) orders and used the terms "Implicate Order" and "Explicate Order".
i.e. in it's simplest form; 1 + 1 implies a deterministically explicated result of 2.

I'll agree on existing processes in place that cause events (not 'time').

It's the consistency of the physical laws that allows prediction. We do not know the nature of those laws, and can only speculate.]

Is there an alternative to inherent values (potentials) and mathematical functions?

[By examining the purpose and application of 'time', it is obviously a human convention.

I agree.

Just as we use a standard of distance to measure spatial intervals, we measure activity with a standard unit of time, provided by a device/clock. It is a practical necessity in today's complex world of social interactions; loans, marriages, regulations, travel, etc.

I completely agree. IMO, time is a result, it is measurable only after the chronological event has occurred. IOW time does not exist in the future. The future is an as yet timeless permittive (virgin) condition, undisturbed by any activity.

Presenting all this evidence however, does not deter those who insist 'time' is something physical behind the scenes like an event planner. Their motive is not physics but psychological security. No one wants to run out of 'time'.]

I agree! Moreover, no one can outrun time!

 

[Dennis Tate]

Write4U;



[It's a shorthand language by humans. Every math expression can be translated into words of a common language.]

[Not quite. The profile for the Higgs boson was determined by the accumulated research on other particles and expressed as math shorthand. Similarly the quark properties had to agree with those of the nucleons when assembled. As usual, math had to verify that experience matched prediction.]



[All we have is perception, reality confined to the mind. There is no objective perspective. Who or what would make that observation? Particles don't have cognition. Every occasion an electron absorbs a photon, it's the 1st instance for the electron.
I'll agree on existing processes in place that cause events (not 'time'). It's the consistency of the physical laws that allows prediction. We do not know the nature of those laws, and can only speculate.]



[By examining the purpose and application of 'time', it is obviously a human convention.
Just as we use a standard of distance to measure spatial intervals, we measure activity with a standard unit of time, provided by a device/clock. It is a practical necessity in today's complex world of social interactions; loans, marriages, regulations, travel, etc.

Presenting all this evidence however, does not deter those who insist 'time' is something physical behind the scenes like an event planner. Their motive is not physics but psychological security. No one wants to run out of 'time'.]

Wow!!!!!!!!

One near death experiencer was told by the "Being of Light" who spoke with him that.....
he could be taken into what would appear like a higher energetic invisible dimension of space and time......
shown more than he could learn in a month or two or three.....
and then taken back to his body.......
five minutes before his consciousness was taken outside of his body........
and then he would watch his body there sleeping for five minutes......
before he would wake up!

 

[Write4U]

Speaking of time, similar objects tend to synchronize their time.

 

[phyti]

I think there is a philosophical component that shouldn't be ignored in these discussions of time. We are all definitely aware of the one-way passage of time in our own life. I think it's unlikely that that "is just an illusion". It's only when questions are raised about simultaneity at a distance, after accelerations have occurred at a distance, that things get complicated. Even though Einstein weighed in on the ages of the two twins when they are reunited, as far as I know he never discussed what the accelerating twin concludes about the current age of the home twin, when they are separated, and after his velocity change at a distance. If anyone has a reference to any such comment by Einstein, I'd like to know about it.

This is from his 1905 paper, par.4.

"If we assume that the result proved for a polygonal line is also valid for a continuously curved line, we arrive at this result: If one of two synchronous clocks at A is moved in a closed curve with constant velocity until it returns to A, the journey lasting t seconds, then by the clock which has remained at rest the travelled clock on its arrival at A will be 1/2tv^2/c^2 second slow."

This is from Wikipedia June 2006.

The twin paradox, sometimes called the "clock paradox", stems from Paul Langevin's 1911 thought experiment in special relativity: one of two twin brothers undertakes a long space journey with a high-speed rocket at almost the speed of light, while the other twin remains on Earth. When the traveler returns to Earth, he is younger than the twin who stayed put.

Or, as first stated by Albert Einstein (1911):

If we placed a living organism in a box ... one could arrange that the organism, after any arbitrary lengthy flight, could be returned to its original spot in a scarcely altered condition, while corresponding organisms which had remained in their original positions had already long since given way to new generations. For the moving organism the lengthy time of the journey was a mere instant, provided the motion took place with approximately the speed of light. (in Resnick and Halliday, 1992)

[The basic idea is processes involving em interactions run slower when in motion relative to light. Biological functions are chemistry, which is a subset of physics focusing on the electron cloud. If the clock runs slower, so does the observer.]

 

[phyti]

W4U;

Universal Mathematical functions are objective functions, completely independent of human interference.

[Where you see math functions, I see processes. Plants, animals, and humans develop from genetic programs that make use of existing physical processes. The programs are written with molecules. If there is anything resembling math in the behavior of the universe, it's far more complex than what humans have developed.]

1 + 1 = 2 , regardless of how you want to represent it symbolically. The Fibonacci Sequence is a naturally occurring mathematical sequence. Moreover it is a self-referential progression (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13,.....etc)

[And it's humans who are making measurements, which only have meaning to them.]

Human have nothing to do with those naturally occurring phenomena. We have symbolized these functions with human symbolic translations.

[Which means, it's just human interpretation. If you consider the history of science, the naive, simplistic, ideal interpretations are revised over time. The scientists themselves periodically state "it's more complicated than we originally thought'. There is an abundance of new discoveries. Anyone thinking of forming a 'Theory of Everything' should consider becoming an Uber driver, since we will never know what 'everything' is.]

David Bohm proposed that the spacetime geometry mathematically determines how chronological events must occur.

[I eat lunch when it's convenient for me. People have free will, so everything isn't determined. Remember, degreed professors are expected to promote themselves and their universities via lectures, books, etc.]

[We have some common ground.]

 

[Mike_Fontenot]

This is from his 1905 paper, par.4.

"If we assume that the result proved for a polygonal line is also valid for a continuously curved line, we arrive at this result: If one of two synchronous clocks at A is moved in a closed curve with constant velocity until it returns to A, the journey lasting t seconds, then by the clock which has remained at rest the travelled clock on its arrival at A will be 1/2tv^2/c^2 second slow."

Einstein is giving the conclusions of the unaccelerated observer at position A about the time that has elapsed on the non-inertial clock. There is no dispute about that. As I said in my previous post,

"Even though Einstein weighed in on the ages of the two twins when they are reunited, as far as I know he never discussed what the accelerating twin concludes about the current age of the home twin, when they are separated, and after his velocity change at a distance. If anyone has a reference to any such comment by Einstein, I'd like to know about it."

This is from Wikipedia June 2006.

The twin paradox, sometimes called the "clock paradox", stems from Paul Langevin's 1911 thought experiment in special relativity: one of two twin brothers undertakes a long space journey with a high-speed rocket at almost the speed of light, while the other twin remains on Earth. When the traveler returns to Earth, he is younger than the twin who stayed put.

There is never any dispute about simultaneity at zero distance. It's just simultaneity at a distance, according to an accelerating observer, which is at issue.

Or, as first stated by Albert Einstein (1911):

If we placed a living organism in a box ... one could arrange that the organism, after any arbitrary lengthy flight, could be returned to its original spot in a scarcely altered condition, while corresponding organisms which had remained in their original positions had already long since given way to new generations. For the moving organism the lengthy time of the journey was a mere instant, provided the motion took place with approximately the speed of light. (in Resnick and Halliday, 1992)

Again, that quote has nothing to say about the accelerating traveler's conclusions about the home twin's age at specific instants of the traveler's life after he has accelerated when they are separated.

 

[Write4U]

[And it's humans who are making measurements, which only have meaning to them.]

I never said that mathematics have any meaning to the universe. It and everything in it just seem to function that way.

The scientists themselves periodically state "it's more complicated than we originally thought'. There is an abundance of new discoveries. Anyone thinking of forming a 'Theory of Everything' should consider becoming an Uber driver, since we will never know what 'everything' is.

Hence the coined phrase "most scientist believe the universe has some mathematical properties, I believe the universe has only mathematical properties", which IMO, does not really place a limit on the complexity of the mathematics.

[I eat lunch when it's convenient for me. People have free will, so everything isn't determined. Remember, degreed professors are expected to promote themselves and their universities via lectures, books, etc.]

[We have some common ground.]

Thank you for the acknowledgement....

Question: Based on the apparent fact that all complex patterns seem to have started as extremely simple patterns (1 + 1 = 2), and my personal view that there is no such thing as "irreducible complexity", why do we need to assume that universal mathematics are intrinsically very complex, instead of just incredibly large sets of simple values (Numbers) and relatively few fundamental equations (Constants).

If we look at the "Table of Elements" everything seems to be made from just a few (3) fundamental quantum values.

Atoms, the fundamental building blocks of all molecules, consist of three types of particles: protons, neutrons, and electrons. Of these three subatomic particle types, two (protons and electrons) carry a net electric charge, while neutrons are neutral and have no net charge.

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-physics/chapter/overview-2/

Plus, Minus, Neutral. Cannot get much simpler than that, IMO. The universe does not care about the resulting complexities, we do!

It does not appear that the universe has any problem with processing mathematical relational values via mathematical functions. All we need is look at the beginning and the levels of order currently observable.

And I totally agree that due to our sensory limitations, it's humans who struggle to comprehend the emergent complexities of self-ordering patterns from initial chaos.

This is why I strongly believe that something as fleeting as time is a "result" rather than "causal" to change.

p.s. all spacetime we observe today is from the past!

 

[Write4U]

I like this algebraic sequence.;
a + a = b , b + a = c , c + b = d , d + c = e , e + d = f........etc. Fibonacci was genius for recognizing this naturally selected self-organizing self-referential mathematical function and the functional structural benefits this simple guiding rule produces.

I eat lunch when it's convenient for me. People have free will, so everything isn't determined

Is FW a product of the physical brain (physics) or an emergent autonomous mind (psychologics)?

Is "time" not also a subjective human symbolism for objective duration?

 

[phyti]

Mike;

Again, that quote has nothing to say about the accelerating traveler's conclusions about the home twin's age at specific instants of the traveler's life after he has accelerated when they are separated.

"If one of two synchronous clocks at A is moved in a closed curve with constant velocity until it returns to A, the journey lasting t seconds, then by the clock which has remained at rest the travelled clock on its arrival at A will be slow."

[I misread your post. Einstein didn't analyze it any farther, because there wasn't anything else to say regarding this example. He was familiar with all the previous work done, including doppler effects, which he covered in par.7.]

[In the case of a closed course, all signals are conserved, so A and B only need to count the ones received vs their own count.
Both A and B will agree the B-clock has a slower rate. The B motion is absolute, and there is no reciprocal A frame. Each will see doppler effects which only indicate clock rates. Accumulated time (aging) is only known after a comparison at a common location. My answer is still the same to your idea of simultaneity at a distance. There is no instantaneous knowledge.]

[The B clock has to move in 2 dimensions to maintain constant speed while changing direction, as shown. The spacetime path (red) is projected onto the xy plane. The B clock will show less elapsed time than the A clock due to translational motion. Time dilation is a function of v/c, not direction.]