TIME EXPLAINED (v2.1)

[Buffy]

I don't really remember what Hawking said about the directionality of time but if it was that we are being carried by the torrent of the 4-th dimmension and we as 3-d creatures can't do anything about it because that's how the time works then it's not much of an explanation, it's more like a description.

Well, I just mentioned the description, I'll have to look it up, but no it is indeed a "why it does it." But of course you're right to dismiss it out of hand: Yah, Stephen is *such* a simpleton!

With the introduction of time slices you can picture that "time" doesn't have a direction however each slice still looks different and you can track a progression.

I see you don't like the idea that it just goes in one direction. Some people still have a problem with Einstein's speed of light speed limit too, and there have been endless proposals for why Uncle Albert was "wrong." Many of these are facinating of course as exercises, but until they start showing some sort of superior explanatory power, they're still just more complicated ways of explaining reality to *allow* the possibility of physical light speed, which seems to be the only goal...

These differences can only be accounted for by laws, whatever they might be.

<gilbert_and_sullivan>Whatever they might be! </gilbert_and_sullivan>

Let's say we start with a uniform universe and introduce a law that forcess all the matter to go to the "left" and settle there...

Settle where? Time doesn't settle! It keeps moving! Its a freight train of love! No seriously, this line portrays the usual misunderstanding of time as *something that moves* which it does not. It does not "move" any more than the length dimension of a 2x4 "moves along that dimension." *We move* through time, unidirectionally and at a fixed speed (unless we accellerate our reference frame of course!), but time is just the meter stick!

So if nothing else the idea of time slices at least seems to make it easier to understand why the laws work the way they do and why whe can have memories of the past and therefore perceive time.

Maybe for you, but to me its just added a layer of complexity to the idea that its a dimension and I move along it.

 

We don't need no steeenking time slices,

Buffy

[hardkraft]

Settle where? Time doesn't settle! It keeps moving! Its a freight train of love! No seriously, this line portrays the usual misunderstanding of time as *something that moves* which it does not.Buffy

This thought experiment was not meant to illustrate the workings of time but how an arbitrary law can foster memories only when read in one particular direction and that's why we have memories in only one particular direction. And yes, you are correct, things don't fly to the left and there is no there there to settle on ... At least the last I checked ...

 

And time slices are cool. You should like them too since you are such an Occam's Razor lover. Isn't it easier to accept a world composed of a finite number of slices than an infinitely divisible one? They also get rid of the idea of moving time that you so hate. Time slices could be your new meter stick. It's not a 2x4, I know but come on, try a slice, you'll like it

[Boerseun]

Sorry - been away for a bit, only caught up now...

 

Interesting comments, all. But I have one thing bugging me still, apart from the fact that I don't buy the "there is no time, only motion" bit (I can't see motion defined without time being in the equation).

 

The smaller we probe, things tend to get fuzzy. This is because of the limiting nature of the wavelength of light. So we switch to using light with a shorter wavelength to probe our sample. Eventually we end up using electron microscopes instead of light, so that we can see ever smaller things. And so on. And eventually we get to the Planck length, at which point the universe starts to "pixellate" like a .jpg file if you keep on enlarging it. And it's at this level where its said that we're living in a "block" universe, if I'm getting it right.

 

Quick analogy: If the best tool you have is a backyard microscope and you look to the surface of Mars, you'll see icecaps and surface streaks. But it'll be pretty fuzzy. Are you going to conclude that the surface of Mars is, indeed, fuzzy, because all the evidence point in that direction, or are you going to conclude that seeing as you can enlarge the picture (you have been doing so, proceeding from eyeball to binocular to telescope) and everytime you do so, it becomes more detailed and sharper, that Mars is not fuzzy, but you're simply lacking in equipment?

 

Same with the nature of matter. We infer the fuzziness starting at the Planck length, because we can't measure the time it takes for anything to happen to a precision greater than the time it takes a photon to travel the planck length - because we're using photons to measure it. We can't see the details on the surface of Mars to a precision greater than what our crappy backyard telescope would allow, because we're using our crappy backyard telescope. Using our crappy backyard telescope as the final yardstick, would deny the existence of all the surface features on Mars.

 

We are inferring properties to Nature based on the limitations of our tools. In my opinion, the fact that we can't measure shorter than Planck length says nothing about the properties of matter at smaller scale than the Planck length. It does, however, say a lot about the tools we're using. And inferring the 'blockiness' of Nature at the Planc scale, or the pixellation of time, is simply jumping to conclusions. But that's just me.

[Farsight]

hardkraft, I refute it thus: SLAP. Sorry buddy, but that was my hand. Now tell me there is no motion.

 

Turtle: Willco re the Buckminster Fuller material. Thanks.

 

Leo: Hi. Farsight here. I have a problem with rotation and the planck length. I can't quite put my finger on it, but maybe Boerseun's post applies. No block universes here please, those slices are slices of a length that's merely in your head.

 

Buffy: Well said about the snapshot.

 

All: the point of all this is where it leads. Here's an example: you know spacetime curvature? Well, there isn't any. There can't be. There's no fundamental time, so the stuff out there is space not spacetime. The curvature is the path followed over the "course of time". It's the effect, not the cause. To find the cause you take the time derivative of the curvature. You get a gradient. A tension gradient called gravity, orthogonal to the stress of matter/energy. Voila, I give you the secrets of the universe toppling like dominoes right under your nose! :D

 

http://hypography.com/forums/search.php?searchid=127969

[hardkraft]

Yeah, I have to take some of the stuff back. After further consideration I can see that reading the "time" in reverse would not reverse the laws of physics, it would simply break them and make everything illogical, at least to us. My simple thought experiment worked only because it was, well, simple.

The "slices" however are not so easily refuted. They would have to be directional though and you wouldn't be able to travel in reverse through them. In that case it doesn't really matter if they are created all at once at the beginning or one by one as the need arises.

 

And Popular, how is your formula for the curve that objects follow any different for the formula of curvature of spacetime. At least with the spacetime we have something "tangible" to imagine.

[Leo]

Leo: Hi. Farsight here. I have a problem with rotation and the planck length. I can't quite put my finger on it, but maybe Boerseun's post applies. No block universes here please, those slices are slices of a length that's merely in your head.

 

Hi Farsight/Popular. I raised the block universe thing only to show that the concept is not easily defendable, and is probably a child of cinematography and Lorentzian boost taken literally. Regarding rotation, Pauli rejected the notion of particle spin at the beginning because it implied superluminal velocities, but this is not what you have in mind, is it? If we assume that rotation is necessarily a product of at least two interacting elements, then what happens if the interactions are quantized? Is this what bugs you?

 

All: the point of all this is where it leads. Here's an example: you know spacetime curvature? Well, there isn't any. There can't be. There's no fundamental time, so the stuff out there is space not spacetime. The curvature is the path followed over the "course of time". It's the effect, not the cause. To find the cause you take the time derivative of the curvature. You get a gradient. A tension gradient called gravity, orthogonal to the stress of matter/energy. Voila, I give you the secrets of the universe toppling like dominoes right under your nose! :D

 

Yes, that's the scheme R.L. Collins gets out of Newtonian gravity combined with relativistic mass/inertia/energy. Time dilation and Lorentz contraction follow nicely out of it. He doesn't seem to mention that they arise as naturally also for moving bodies in the absence of a gravity field. So yes, bendings and slants are probably just metaphors.

 

EDIT: I disagree with Collins' simplistic method for deriving Lorentz contraction, which leads to isotropic contraction. The directionality of gravity and/or motion has to be taken into account to explain the anisotropy of energy exchange and matter shape change. This doesn't invalidate Collins' general view though.

[Turtle]

This thought experiment was not meant to illustrate the workings of time but how an arbitrary law can foster memories only when read in one particular direction and that's why we have memories in only one particular direction. And yes, you are correct, things don't fly to the left and there is no there there to settle on ... At least the last I checked ... :eek:

 

Then>>>

No block universes here please, those slices are slices of a length that's merely in your head.

 

I watched a PBS special last night which centered on the search for life in space and I heard something quite surprising. Not being adept at chemistry perhaps it's common knowledge, but taking the above two quoted statements together it seems germane.

 

To whit, all proteins that originate from living things are left-handed. Given that right-handed proteins do exist, maybe our thinking about time and physical properties is biased in a limiting way by our inherent protein structure. So positing, we can no better understand it than putting our right hand into a left glove. :D B)

[Buffy]

...maybe our thinking about time and physical properties is biased in a limiting way by our inherent protein structure. So positing, we can no better understand it than putting our right hand into a left glove. :cup:

My goodness! What, pray tell, do handedness of proteins have to do with time? We can build organisms with such proteins, are you saying such beasties go backwards in time? :xx:

 

Always buttering the bottom of the toast,

Buffy

[hardkraft]

I know Popular is getting edgy because we are getting too much off his topic but I thought that since we are dicussing time and it only being in our heads it's important to ask why and how it is in our heads. Only special kinds of physics will allow life and only special kinds of physics will allow memories, our time detectors. It's interesting to ponder which physics is responsible for what. Thinking about that made me realize how assimetrical laws are. Changing gravity to antigravity will not make a world where things simply fly up, it would make a world that is completly different from ours, where life and memories are probably not possible.

As to the direction in which the proteins are twisted, it's an interesting idea and I am sure they limit us in some ways but I think larger structures than that are responsible for our thought precesess. Turtle, did they say what happens if you eat a right handed protein? Do you get mad cow desise?

[Turtle]

My goodness! What, pray tell, do handedness of proteins have to do with time?

Exactly what I want to know! :shrug:

We can build organisms with such proteins, are you saying such beasties go backwards in time? :xx:

I am not saying that, no.

 

Always buttering the bottom of the toast,

Buffy

 

The better to eat it while standing on my head. ;)

 

Turtle, did they say what happens if you eat a right handed protein? Do you get mad cow desise?

 

No; they only mentioned it in relation to finding right-handed proteins in meteorites. Since living organisms are built of only (virtually only?) right-handed proteins then that is indicative of building blocks of life at large in the Universe.

 

Having written it that way now, I have confused myself about whether they said only life 'makes' right-handed proteins, or that it only 'uses' them? :cup: I have fallen, and can't get up! Little help here? :huh: :xx: :Nurse:

[Turtle]

Proteins, handedness, and time? :

http://hypography.com/forums/physics-mathematics/7400-calorimetric-test-general-relativity.html

[infamous]

Thinking about time on the grand scale, say from the view point of a photon created at the Big Bang itself, no time has passed what-so-ever. Incredible as that may sound, if you could have hitched a ride on one of those first photons created at the Big Bang, you would have experienced no passage of time since you first left. This would ofcourse be true because you would have been traveling at the speed of light and we all know that traveling at this speed eliminates the passage of time. At least that's what I've been lead to believe as a result of the phenomonon called time dilation.

 

Let's assume for an instant that a photon created at the Big Bang lasts until the theoretical heat death of the universe. I realize that this theory has it's short comings, but nevertheless, let's assume this thought experiment just for the sake of argument. One could surmise that, at least from the perspective of this photon, no time would have passed between it's creation and the end of the universe.

 

This raises an unusual question. From the view point of this photon, is the past, the present, and the future are all rolled into one? In fact, I quess one could say that for this photon, the future has already been determined and processed. That sure destroys the concept of randomness in my humble opinion..............In any case, the concept of time most certainly is a very relative thing; To speak in Einsteinian slang...........................Infy

[Leo]

Time dilation effectively begs more questioning about what we call time, Infamous. When saying a photon experiences no time or all times at once, what do we mean? Does time pass for a wave on the ocean? What is a wave? A perturbation that advances. The water changes, but the wave does not change. The very concept of time does not apply to the wave. It applies to the water. The photon experiences nothing. The universe experiences the photon. Matter is a different beast. It evolves at different rates, but the fundamental forces that cause its evolution keep working at maximum speed.

 

Regarding protein handedness, it's a bit like why we have much more electrons than positrons in our corner of the universe. We really don't know for sure but the safest assumption is that it's random distribution. A slight imbalance at the start of an ecosystem, and we go one way rather than the other. There might be planets where living beings work on the other proteins. And galaxies born of anti-hydrogen clouds.

[arkain101]

I know Popular is getting edgy because we are getting too much off his topic but I thought that since we are dicussing time and it only being in our heads it's important to ask why and how it is in our heads.

 

The best thing I can say is that it is not time that is in our heads, but the direction of the flow of time is in our heads.

 

Change happens, often we say that is time, but it is not as accurate as to say there is only two options for time.

 

It's either frozen, forward, or reverse in the dimension our mind makes sense of it.

 

You know our old saying:

 

"You cant change the past"

 

Well; There is only 1 way to experience change, and that is if data as in light travels towards your frame. This creates change and although it seems to be forward in our way of thinking, there is also time/change going the other direction.

 

Yon cant change the past, is as true as to say you can not see, or change the light that has left your frame.

 

So there is always time flowing negetively from your position to distant frames, and distant frames past's that reach you are forming an observable future.

 

This is occuring all the time in all directions, however there is only two options,

1)events of time that are gaining distance from you.

2)events removing distance between you.

 

You can never experience events that create distance from you, it is an observable past.

 

So for the universe time flows in sparatic directions all the time, But our mind is so used to considering time to be one directional linear, but this here is the point that is in our heads.

 

If you hold a clock in front of you for 1 minute, there is a view of the clock view 1 min ago @ 1 light minute distance behind you. The clocks past measurement is skimming along experiencing no time, untill eventually hitting something and forming another observers "mental future'.

[arkain101]

Assume that an object is moving away from an observer.

 

(observer rest)-------------->o (object)

 

The object fires a blast of light at a given moment (n)

 

For simplicity purposes we will say the object moves the same speed as the light happens to move.

 

It fires a second blast of light when the first blast reaches the observer (we view this in the manner of a 3rd hypothetical observer.

 

Each moment a previous blast of light reaches the observer the object releases another blast. (yes, It just so happens that the timing works out that way from our observation.)

 

we see this.

< is light blast

| is position blast shows

o is actual material object.

First blast:

(observer rest)--------------o

(observer rest)-------------<|-o

(observer rest)------------<-|--o

(observer rest)-----------<--|---o

(observer rest)----------<---|----o

(observer rest)---------<----|-----o

(observer rest)--------<-----|------o

(observer rest)-------<------|-------o

(observer rest)------<-------|--------o

(observer rest)-----<--------|---------o

(observer rest)----<---------|----------o

(observer rest)---<----------|-----------o

(observer rest)--<-----------|------------o

(observer rest)-<------------|-------------o

(observer rest)<-------------|--------------o

 

Second blast:

 

(observer rest)<-------------|--------------o

(observer rest)<-------------|-------------<|o

(observer rest)<-------------|------------<-|-o

(observer rest)<-------------|-----------<--|--o

(observer rest)<-------------|----------<---|---o

(observer rest)<-------------|---------<----|----o

(observer rest)<-------------|--------<-----|-----o

(observer rest)<-------------|-------<------|------o

(observer rest)<-------------|------<-------|-------o

(observer rest)<-------------|-----<--------|--------o

(observer rest)<-------------|----<---------|---------o

(observer rest)<-------------|---<----------|----------o

(observer rest)<-------------|--<-----------|-----------o

(observer rest)<-------------|-<------------|------------o

(observer rest)<-------------|<-------------|-------------o

(observer rest)<-------------<--------------|--------------o

(observer rest)<-----------<|---------------|---------------o

etc...untill

(observer rest)<-------------|--------------|----------------------------<|o

 

 

 

As such we see n=0,1,2,3,4,5...

 

(observer rest)<-------------|"0"---------------|"1"-----------------------------|"2"---------------------------------------------|"3"------------------------------------------------------------|"4"---------------------------------------------------------------------------|"5"

 

We can do this for each wave front of light to show that when it meets and reports to the observer, the object or source of that wave front has moved just as far. (the object is going same velocity as the photons)

[Dov Henis]

I posted elsewher in this forum my thinking about replacing E=mC^2 for the universe with E = m(1+D), the relationship between cosmic E,m and D(distance of space expansion since big-bang). I dispense with time (component of C^2) because I consider that m is affected by E and D but not by time, and that time just happens to be a term proportional to D, as time is proportional to distance in every dituation in which distance changes, in which there is motion, at a "mathematically expressable regular" rate.

 

I could'nt have dispensed with time in a situation of "irregular" motion, where time and distance are not continuously proportional. Time and motion need both be there when each of these two factors effects its own distinct contribution to the result.

 

Dov

[infamous]

Time dilation effectively begs more questioning about what we call time, Infamous. When saying a photon experiences no time or all times at once, what do we mean?

Simply put, if a photon had eyes, they wouldn't have time to blink.

 

 

The photon experiences nothing. The universe experiences the photon.

I wouldn't go so far as to say the photon experiences nothing' date=' the fact remains it exists and therefore experiences that existence. For those interested, here's a wild thought for you to chew on; Because the photon experiences it's existence in the proverbial flash, maybe the passage of events we refer to as time are only the memory of this flash played back to our consciousness in slow motion? Maybe all events have already happened and we are just watching a re-run?

 

I've offered this different view of reality as a thought experiment only and understand it borders more on Philosophy than Physics. It is true that if we are to explain time, this approach will provide no scientific evidence. I offer it only as a method to provoke deeper thought into the difficult adventure we are undertaking.

 

Because time is such a variable thing, I doubt the reality of any substance associated with the notion of time as a [b']thing[/b]. For me, time only refers to a procession of events and is as varied as the difference between the speed of light and the pace of a snail. We humans assign a value to it and the value is an arbitary construct that only suits our particular invention.

 

Time is our way of explaning the division of preceived events within our brain...............................Infy