Executive Summary
Time does not exist. Change happens now without needing a time dimension in reality. At a human scale, time is practical as a summation of changes.
Abstract
Time is not a dimension for a foundation of a physic. There is no past. There is no future. Time does not exist as a fourth dimension, it is imaginary as a fourth dimension. It does not flow like a river. The universe is now a reality that changes. All changes are quantum changes and this theory proposes an explanation of that. The statistical dynamics of quantum changes are perceived by humans to be time. The speed of light is in the foundation of physics, but time is obsolete.
Summary
Time is obsolete as a fundamental dimension in physics. Everything exists now. Time travel is impossible. The speed of light allows illusions of time travel to be proposed. Time has never been measured or observed. Change has been observed, not time. At the scale of human beings, time seems to exist in memory and for predictions, but this is only because atoms are made from smaller particles which obey the rules of quantum changes. The only changes in the universe are quantum changes and they create the illusion of time. An example quantum change is described which uses electrical charges in sub-atomic particles to explain why quantum changes are sequential. The sequential nature of changes occurs because some changes are not allowed.
The Quantum Change Speculation
Quarks must be considered to be a candidate to possess the states for change that account for the time illusion. That is because they are basic particles. Maybe there are smaller and more important particles than quarks. Electrons are an important candidate, also. They are as small as a quark, maybe. I wish. Each electron has a negative charge while three quarks give a positive charge to protons. But this theory proposes the possibility that electrons are complicated at a scale so small that people cannot observe it. I wish the electron is much smaller than 10E-15 meters. It is proposed to be 10E-50 meters and to oscillate in space, generating a magnetic field that opposes the change of position of the electron. This opposition is a quantum limitation that prevents instant collapse and it gives the quality people call "change after a time". But at the small scale, it is a change in position, not a change in time. There is no time. The only thing like time is now. Time does not exist. What does exist mean? Who cares about a meaning?
Conclusion
The illusion of time is really the evidence of change. Observations of clock atoms show that any change of the time reported is only due to quantum changes, some of which are not allowed. This is what creates the illusion of time being consistent. All atoms in the universe share the same quantum changes, so time seems to flow as fast here as in the Andromeda Galaxy. Gravity is proposed to be due to quantum effects that change space.
Time is not in the Foundation of Physics
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• Page 1 of 1
Time is not in the Foundation of Physics
by muon200 » Fri Sep 12, 2014 8:22 pm
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Re: Time is not in the Foundation of Physics
by Joy Christian » Fri Sep 12, 2014 9:55 pm
Executive Summary
Time (or becoming) is one of the most fundamental features of our universe.
Abstract
Contrary to our immediate and vivid sensation of past, present, and future as continually shifting non-relational modalities, time remains as tenseless and relational as space in all of the established theories of fundamental physics. Here an empirically adequate generalized theory of the inertial structure is discussed in which proper time is causally compelled to be tensed within both spacetime and dynamics. This is accomplished by introducing the inverse of the Planck time at the conjunction of special relativity and Hamiltonian mechanics, which necessitates energies and momenta to be invariantly bounded from above, and lengths and durations similarly bounded from below, by their respective Planck scale values. The resulting theory abhors any form of preferred structure, and yet captures the transience of now along timelike worldlines by causally necessitating a genuinely becoming universe. This is quite unlike the scenario in Minkowski spacetime, which is prone to a block universe interpretation. The minute deviations from the special relativistic effects such as dispersion relations and Doppler shifts predicted by the generalized theory remain quadratically suppressed by the Planck energy, but may nevertheless be testable in the near future, for example via observations of oscillating flavor ratios of ultrahigh energy cosmic neutrinos, or of altering pulse rates of extreme energy binary pulsars.
Full Paper
http://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/0610049.pdf.
Conclusion
One of the perennial problems in natural philosophy is the problem of change; namely, How is change possible? Over the centuries, this problem has fostered two diametrically opposing views of time and becoming. While these two views tend to agree that time presupposes change, and that genuine change requires becoming, one of them actually denies the reality of change and time, by rejecting becoming as a “stubbornly persistent illusion." The other view, by contrast, accepts the reality of change and time, by embracing becoming as a bona fide attribute of the world. Since the days of Aristotle within physics we have been rather successful in explaining how the changes occur in the world, but seem to remain oblivious to the deeper question of why do they occur at all. The situation has been aggravated by the advent of Einstein’s theories of space and time, since in these theories there is no room to structurally accommodate the distinction between the past and the future—a prerequisite for the genuine onset of change. By contrast, the causal structure of the Heraclitean relativity discussed above not only naturally distinguishes the past form the future by causally necessitating becoming, but also forbids inaction altogether, thereby providing an answer to the deeper question of change. Moreover, since it is not impossible to experimentally distinguish the Heraclitean relativity from special relativity, and since the ontology underlying only the latter of these two relativities is prone to a block universe interpretation, the enterprise of experimental metaphysics of time becomes feasible now, for the first time, within a relativistic context. At the very least, such an enterprise should help us decide whether time is best understood relationally, or non-relationally.
Joy Christian
Time (or becoming) is one of the most fundamental features of our universe.
Abstract
Contrary to our immediate and vivid sensation of past, present, and future as continually shifting non-relational modalities, time remains as tenseless and relational as space in all of the established theories of fundamental physics. Here an empirically adequate generalized theory of the inertial structure is discussed in which proper time is causally compelled to be tensed within both spacetime and dynamics. This is accomplished by introducing the inverse of the Planck time at the conjunction of special relativity and Hamiltonian mechanics, which necessitates energies and momenta to be invariantly bounded from above, and lengths and durations similarly bounded from below, by their respective Planck scale values. The resulting theory abhors any form of preferred structure, and yet captures the transience of now along timelike worldlines by causally necessitating a genuinely becoming universe. This is quite unlike the scenario in Minkowski spacetime, which is prone to a block universe interpretation. The minute deviations from the special relativistic effects such as dispersion relations and Doppler shifts predicted by the generalized theory remain quadratically suppressed by the Planck energy, but may nevertheless be testable in the near future, for example via observations of oscillating flavor ratios of ultrahigh energy cosmic neutrinos, or of altering pulse rates of extreme energy binary pulsars.
Full Paper
http://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/0610049.pdf.
Conclusion
One of the perennial problems in natural philosophy is the problem of change; namely, How is change possible? Over the centuries, this problem has fostered two diametrically opposing views of time and becoming. While these two views tend to agree that time presupposes change, and that genuine change requires becoming, one of them actually denies the reality of change and time, by rejecting becoming as a “stubbornly persistent illusion." The other view, by contrast, accepts the reality of change and time, by embracing becoming as a bona fide attribute of the world. Since the days of Aristotle within physics we have been rather successful in explaining how the changes occur in the world, but seem to remain oblivious to the deeper question of why do they occur at all. The situation has been aggravated by the advent of Einstein’s theories of space and time, since in these theories there is no room to structurally accommodate the distinction between the past and the future—a prerequisite for the genuine onset of change. By contrast, the causal structure of the Heraclitean relativity discussed above not only naturally distinguishes the past form the future by causally necessitating becoming, but also forbids inaction altogether, thereby providing an answer to the deeper question of change. Moreover, since it is not impossible to experimentally distinguish the Heraclitean relativity from special relativity, and since the ontology underlying only the latter of these two relativities is prone to a block universe interpretation, the enterprise of experimental metaphysics of time becomes feasible now, for the first time, within a relativistic context. At the very least, such an enterprise should help us decide whether time is best understood relationally, or non-relationally.
Joy Christian
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Re: Time is not in the Foundation of Physics
by muon200 » Fri Sep 12, 2014 11:34 pm
Hello Joy, I skimmed over your paper, "Absolute Being vs Relative Becoming" and I will read it more thoroughly tomorrow. It contains the conventional ideas about time and it is educational for me to read. Thank you.
This link is appropriate to support the radical idea that time does not exist:
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/in-no-time/
But what does exist mean? I can take time and use space, even use a vacuum, but they do not exist. muon200.
Part of that linked Discover Magazine says,
" physicist John Wheeler, then at Princeton, and the late Bryce DeWitt, then at the University of North Carolina, developed an extraordinary equation that provides a possible framework for unifying relativity and quantum mechanics. But the Wheeler-DeWitt equation has always been controversial, in part because it adds yet another, even more baffling twist to our understanding of time.
“One finds that time just disappears from the Wheeler-DeWitt equation,” says Carlo Rovelli, a physicist at the University of the Mediterranean in Marseille, France. “It is an issue that many theorists have puzzled about. It may be that the best way to think about quantum reality is to give up the notion of time—that the fundamental description of the universe must be timeless.”
No one has yet succeeded in using the Wheeler-DeWitt equation to integrate quantum theory with general relativity. Nevertheless, a sizable minority of physicists, Rovelli included, believe that any successful merger of the two great masterpieces of 20th-century physics will inevitably describe a universe in which, ultimately, there is no time. "
...
In fact, says Lloyd, clocks don’t really measure time at all.
“I recently went to the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder,” says Lloyd. (NIST is the government lab that houses the atomic clock that standardizes time for the nation.) “I said something like, ‘Your clocks measure time very accurately.’ They told me, ‘Our clocks do not measure time.’ I thought, Wow, that’s very humble of these guys. But they said, ‘No, time is defined to be what our clocks measure.’ Which is true. They define the time standards for the globe: Time is defined by the number of clicks of their clocks.”
...
"Rovelli, the advocate of a timeless universe, says the NIST timekeepers have it right. Moreover, their point of view is consistent with the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. “We never really see time,” he says. “We see only clocks. If you say this object moves, what you really mean is that this object is here when the hand of your clock is here, and so on. We say we measure time with clocks, but we see only the hands of the clocks, not time itself. And the hands of a clock are a physical variable like any other. So in a sense we cheat because what we really observe are physical variables as a function of other physical variables, but we represent that as if everything is evolving in time.
“What happens with the Wheeler-DeWitt equation is that we have to stop playing this game. Instead of introducing this fictitious variable—time, which itself is not observable—we should just describe how the variables are related to one another. "
----------- end of magazine excerpts ------------------
muon200 finishes this post:
Physicists usually avoid discussions of time. Thank you Joy Christian for arguing for the conventional view of time. But I find the focus on "becoming" in your paper to be only a synonym for "changing". You have quoted authorities who promote time, but my goal is to advance beyond the present myths and to fabricate new ones.
From that link to Discover Magazine:
"Einstein, for one, found solace in his revolutionary sense of time. In March 1955, when his lifelong friend Michele Besso died, he wrote a letter consoling Besso’s family: “Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”"
This link is appropriate to support the radical idea that time does not exist:
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/in-no-time/
But what does exist mean? I can take time and use space, even use a vacuum, but they do not exist. muon200.
Part of that linked Discover Magazine says,
" physicist John Wheeler, then at Princeton, and the late Bryce DeWitt, then at the University of North Carolina, developed an extraordinary equation that provides a possible framework for unifying relativity and quantum mechanics. But the Wheeler-DeWitt equation has always been controversial, in part because it adds yet another, even more baffling twist to our understanding of time.
“One finds that time just disappears from the Wheeler-DeWitt equation,” says Carlo Rovelli, a physicist at the University of the Mediterranean in Marseille, France. “It is an issue that many theorists have puzzled about. It may be that the best way to think about quantum reality is to give up the notion of time—that the fundamental description of the universe must be timeless.”
No one has yet succeeded in using the Wheeler-DeWitt equation to integrate quantum theory with general relativity. Nevertheless, a sizable minority of physicists, Rovelli included, believe that any successful merger of the two great masterpieces of 20th-century physics will inevitably describe a universe in which, ultimately, there is no time. "
...
In fact, says Lloyd, clocks don’t really measure time at all.
“I recently went to the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder,” says Lloyd. (NIST is the government lab that houses the atomic clock that standardizes time for the nation.) “I said something like, ‘Your clocks measure time very accurately.’ They told me, ‘Our clocks do not measure time.’ I thought, Wow, that’s very humble of these guys. But they said, ‘No, time is defined to be what our clocks measure.’ Which is true. They define the time standards for the globe: Time is defined by the number of clicks of their clocks.”
...
"Rovelli, the advocate of a timeless universe, says the NIST timekeepers have it right. Moreover, their point of view is consistent with the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. “We never really see time,” he says. “We see only clocks. If you say this object moves, what you really mean is that this object is here when the hand of your clock is here, and so on. We say we measure time with clocks, but we see only the hands of the clocks, not time itself. And the hands of a clock are a physical variable like any other. So in a sense we cheat because what we really observe are physical variables as a function of other physical variables, but we represent that as if everything is evolving in time.
“What happens with the Wheeler-DeWitt equation is that we have to stop playing this game. Instead of introducing this fictitious variable—time, which itself is not observable—we should just describe how the variables are related to one another. "
----------- end of magazine excerpts ------------------
muon200 finishes this post:
Physicists usually avoid discussions of time. Thank you Joy Christian for arguing for the conventional view of time. But I find the focus on "becoming" in your paper to be only a synonym for "changing". You have quoted authorities who promote time, but my goal is to advance beyond the present myths and to fabricate new ones.
From that link to Discover Magazine:
"Einstein, for one, found solace in his revolutionary sense of time. In March 1955, when his lifelong friend Michele Besso died, he wrote a letter consoling Besso’s family: “Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”"
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Re: Time is not in the Foundation of Physics
by Q-reeus » Sat Sep 13, 2014 1:19 am
muon200 wrote:Executive Summary
Time does not exist. Change happens now without needing a time dimension in reality. At a human scale, time is practical as a summation of changes.
Abstract
Time is not a dimension for a foundation of a physic. There is no past. There is no future. Time does not exist as a fourth dimension, it is imaginary as a fourth dimension. It does not flow like a river. The universe is now a reality that changes. All changes are quantum changes and this theory proposes an explanation of that. The statistical dynamics of quantum changes are perceived by humans to be time. The speed of light is in the foundation of physics, but time is obsolete.
Summary
Time is obsolete as a fundamental dimension in physics. Everything exists now. Time travel is impossible. The speed of light allows illusions of time travel to be proposed. Time has never been measured or observed. Change has been observed, not time. At the scale of human beings, time seems to exist in memory and for predictions, but this is only because atoms are made from smaller particles which obey the rules of quantum changes. The only changes in the universe are quantum changes and they create the illusion of time. An example quantum change is described which uses electrical charges in sub-atomic particles to explain why quantum changes are sequential. The sequential nature of changes occurs because some changes are not allowed.
It is typical, even mandatory, that block-universe-as-timeless-physical-reality advocates need to erect a straw-man caricature they call 'time', before ceremoniously knocking said straw-man down. Apparently, the uneducated man-in-the-street believes in time as literally 'flowing like a river', yet I have never met such a man-in-the-street. Anymore than I have met a man-in-the-street who believes the sun literally 'rises and sets' - yet such is common vernacular even among well educated scientists.
How about defining proper time as rate of relative proper change. With proper use of relativity taking care of the rest. The sane relational position. Get your definition right at the start and the rest of the 'no time' argument dissolves into meaningless sophistry. While I respect Julian Barbour's efforts in reshaping GR, his 'timeless Platonia' ideas are another thing. Just for fun, watched Barbour interview 'Killing time' at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKsNraFxPwk
He starts off with 'time and motion don't really exist'. Oh well, at least he said it, plain and clear. But not quite 5 minutes in and there is a distinct shifting of ground going on. Now we are being told time is a relational thing - the comparison between a huge number of fundamental clocks. Time is suddenly real after all - just redefined. Sort of weaselly to me. So, as above, we have this setting up and then knocking down a straw man - 'everyone believes wrongly that time flows'. Just how Barbour's 'timeless Platonia' can exist without having become via process is a Grand Problem with an obvious solution - time (properly defined) necessarily just is. The idea it can be possible to experience anything - have thoughts & sensations etc. - without involving time is just truly absurd. So on this issue, agree with the thrust of post #2 entirely.
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Re: Time is not in the Foundation of Physics
by muon200 » Sat Sep 13, 2014 8:55 am
Q-reeus wrote, "How about defining proper time as rate of relative proper change"?
Yeah, "proper" makes it sound like true time, something better than time. I am limiting this essay to time, and I will leave proper time ideas to the proper people: physicists. I will look for a proper watch before I write an essay on your new subject. Maybe that is what is so fantastic about the Apple Watch: it shows proper time.
Returning to the subject of time, this will be short. My idea is that time is not needed to explain changes. All material changes can be explained by quantum changes. No time dimension is needed for an atom to stay in one state before achieving a second state. That is because the second state is not allowed for the particle. The second state will be achieved if positions, spins, charges, and fields change to allow the second state. Without disallowed states, all changes would occur at one instant.
Gravity, light, and energy will be covered in subsequent essays of my hopes and wishes. In short, quantum changes cause gravity and light with no need for time. If I were a god, I would create a more compact sub-universe in a proper vacuum and I would include a compact time to satisfy traditionalists.
Yeah, "proper" makes it sound like true time, something better than time. I am limiting this essay to time, and I will leave proper time ideas to the proper people: physicists. I will look for a proper watch before I write an essay on your new subject. Maybe that is what is so fantastic about the Apple Watch: it shows proper time.
Returning to the subject of time, this will be short. My idea is that time is not needed to explain changes. All material changes can be explained by quantum changes. No time dimension is needed for an atom to stay in one state before achieving a second state. That is because the second state is not allowed for the particle. The second state will be achieved if positions, spins, charges, and fields change to allow the second state. Without disallowed states, all changes would occur at one instant.
Gravity, light, and energy will be covered in subsequent essays of my hopes and wishes. In short, quantum changes cause gravity and light with no need for time. If I were a god, I would create a more compact sub-universe in a proper vacuum and I would include a compact time to satisfy traditionalists.
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Re: Time is not in the Foundation of Physics
by Joy Christian » Sat Sep 13, 2014 9:29 am
muon200 wrote:Hello Joy, I skimmed over your paper, "Absolute Being vs Relative Becoming" and I will read it more thoroughly tomorrow. It contains the conventional ideas about time and it is educational for me to read. Thank you.
If you think my paper contains "the conventional ideas about time" and "change", then you haven't really understood my argument.
On the other hand, your claim that "time does not exist" is only as new as Parmenides of Elea, if not his even more pre-Socratic ancestors.
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Re: Time is not in the Foundation of Physics
by muon200 » Sat Sep 13, 2014 9:31 am
I am retracting my ideas about time. I was wrong. Time does exist. I feel that I should apologize, but I will wait for the proper time.
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Re: Time is not in the Foundation of Physics
by RArvay » Sat Sep 13, 2014 10:44 am
The question of whether time exists depends on definitions.
I can say that the past does not exist in the sense that I cannot go there.
On the other hand, if I define past in terms of its effects on the present,
then it certainly does exist, and therefore so does time.
Past is in my memory, and therefore it exists in my consciousness.
Time also exists in terms of mathematics. It is necessary in the formula for calculating speed.
Therefore, time can be thought of as having both objective and subjective dimensions.
Time as we consciously perceive it is not the same as time that we calculate.
Conscious perception of time is, however, at the heart of physics.
Were there no conscious perception of time, then there would be no past, no present, and no future.
The universe would be a fog of potentialities, none of them resolved.
Here is a thought experiment to demonstrate that.
Imagine a parallel universe that we could observe without affecting it.
That is of course impossible, but the reasons why illustrate the nature of time.
If we could somehow observe that parallel universe, AND if that universe had no
conscious entities within it, then what would we see?
We would either see an arbitrary point in its space-time, or else,
we would see all of its space-time as a single, unresolved unit of potentials.
If we saw only an arbitrary point in its space-time, we could get no further,
because we would have no synchronicity with it.
Its clock would tick either faster or slower than ours, and possibly backward.
Of course we would then have a conscious perception of its space-time, thereby ruining the experiment.
Time, being a conceptual fundamental, cannot be adequately described, since we cannot
step outside of time for comparison and contrast.
The paradox of time:
It is always now. It is never now.
.
I can say that the past does not exist in the sense that I cannot go there.
On the other hand, if I define past in terms of its effects on the present,
then it certainly does exist, and therefore so does time.
Past is in my memory, and therefore it exists in my consciousness.
Time also exists in terms of mathematics. It is necessary in the formula for calculating speed.
Therefore, time can be thought of as having both objective and subjective dimensions.
Time as we consciously perceive it is not the same as time that we calculate.
Conscious perception of time is, however, at the heart of physics.
Were there no conscious perception of time, then there would be no past, no present, and no future.
The universe would be a fog of potentialities, none of them resolved.
Here is a thought experiment to demonstrate that.
Imagine a parallel universe that we could observe without affecting it.
That is of course impossible, but the reasons why illustrate the nature of time.
If we could somehow observe that parallel universe, AND if that universe had no
conscious entities within it, then what would we see?
We would either see an arbitrary point in its space-time, or else,
we would see all of its space-time as a single, unresolved unit of potentials.
If we saw only an arbitrary point in its space-time, we could get no further,
because we would have no synchronicity with it.
Its clock would tick either faster or slower than ours, and possibly backward.
Of course we would then have a conscious perception of its space-time, thereby ruining the experiment.
Time, being a conceptual fundamental, cannot be adequately described, since we cannot
step outside of time for comparison and contrast.
The paradox of time:
It is always now. It is never now.
.
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Re: Time is not in the Foundation of Physics
by Q-reeus » Sat Sep 13, 2014 10:27 pm
muon200 wrote:Yeah, "proper" makes it sound like true time, something better than time. I am limiting this essay to time, and I will leave proper time ideas to the proper people: physicists. I will look for a proper watch before I write an essay on your new subject. Maybe that is what is so fantastic about the Apple Watch: it shows proper time.
That cynical tone suggests you are not familiar with the relativistic definition of proper time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proper_time
And yes fapp that Apple Watch on your wrist does read proper time. But if in motion relative to you or in a gravitational potential different to that you are in, it will not be reading proper time for you. And likely you are well aware of such.
Returning to the subject of time, this will be short. My idea is that time is not needed to explain changes. All material changes can be explained by quantum changes. No time dimension is needed for an atom to stay in one state before achieving a second state. That is because the second state is not allowed for the particle. The second state will be achieved if positions, spins, charges, and fields change to allow the second state. Without disallowed states, all changes would occur at one instant.
So, by use of the word 'change(s)', the notion of time (or rather 'elapsed relative time period') has somehow been abolished?! Semantics vs sensibility. Try: time = rate of relative change. And your use of 'before' above is typical of the conundrum 'no timers' find themselves in - however hard one tries to abolish the notion of time, one cannot escape either directly or indirectly implying time in one's alternate view.
Gravity, light, and energy will be covered in subsequent essays of my hopes and wishes. In short, quantum changes cause gravity and light with no need for time. If I were a god, I would create a more compact sub-universe in a proper vacuum and I would include a compact time to satisfy traditionalists.
Can hardly wait - and other bad jokes about time this subject naturally engenders.
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Re: Time is not in the Foundation of Physics
by muon200 » Sun Sep 14, 2014 11:24 am
Review of the Essay "Absolute Being vs Relative Becoming"
Attributions
The essay was written by Joy Christian, a physicist, in 2007 and this review is written by Alan Folmsbee, an electrical engineer, in 2014. The essay is on the web at http://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/0610049.pdf
Teminology
The subject of the essay is time. At first, I quickly skimmed over the 32 page essay to judge if I am qualified to understand it in a full reading. Some simple words and phrases seem to be loaded with meanings from past philosophical debates about rigorous scientific modeling of time. Here are the loaded simple phrases used in the context of research physics:
becoming
relational
block universe interpretation
oscillating flavor ratios
proper time
Eleatics
Parmenides
Heraclitus
These words and phrases are discussed at the end of this review. On the internet, sciphysicsforums.com is where this review will be posted before it is finished. This publication style allows an interactive development of this review so that other people can influence it before it is finished.
Purposes of the Essay
The essay proposes experiments to "decide whether time is best understood relationally, or non-relationally". Also, a generalized theory is given in which "proper time is causally compelled to be tensed". These purposes will be explained using different words.
The essay rejects time as being a "tenseless linear ordering of temporal moments by a transitive, asymmetric, and irreflexive relation precedes—is deemed incapable of describing a genuine change or becoming."
"The purpose of this essay, first, is to disentangle the notion of a becoming universe from that of an absolute time, and then" to show the time-related differences in special relativity and the general.
Introduction
This review is inspired by discussions of my retracted theory that "time does not exist". The essay by JC was used as a rebuttal against my theory. I now claim that my theory is wrong. Time does exist. Time is tensed so that past and future times have meanings in reality.
Technical Innovation
The inverse Planck time is used. It "necessitates energies and momenta to be
invariantly bounded from above, and lengths and durations similarly bounded
from below, by their respective Planck scale values".
The inverse Planck time "perhaps... should be taken to be more primitive in physical theories than the usual assumption of absolute upper bound c on possible speeds of motion."
The speed of light "c is merely a conversion factor between the dimensions of time and space."
"It is this state-dependence of time that is essentially what mandates the causal necessity for becoming in the present theory".
Criticism #1
The purpose of the essay indicates that time is assumed to exist as an important dimension and that the elimination of time as a dimension is not evaluated.
Criticism #2
Proper time is emphasized but time is assumed to be too slippery for dissection.
Praise #1
Time is a subject that is so basic that the English Language is not suitable for rigorous proofs of its existence. But that author has bravely attempted to explain some aspects of time. Mathematics are difficult to formulate that can take t apart and use t to test t. The author has made an effort to manipulate proper time, which has more features than t. Congratulations are appropraite for the author of the essay that descibes how t has its hooks into reality.
Interpretation of the Purposes of the Essay
Conclusion
I have read up to page 23 of 32. More Later...
Glossary
becoming
relational
block universe interpretation
oscillating flavor ratios
proper time: a duration of time measured with a tough method
Eleatics: Change is nothing but an illusion; a sequence of states. Now.
Parmenides: Change is nothing but an illusion; a sequence of states. Now.
Heraclitus: Becoming is important. Past, present, and future flow like a river. See McTaggart.
Attributions
The essay was written by Joy Christian, a physicist, in 2007 and this review is written by Alan Folmsbee, an electrical engineer, in 2014. The essay is on the web at http://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/0610049.pdf
Teminology
The subject of the essay is time. At first, I quickly skimmed over the 32 page essay to judge if I am qualified to understand it in a full reading. Some simple words and phrases seem to be loaded with meanings from past philosophical debates about rigorous scientific modeling of time. Here are the loaded simple phrases used in the context of research physics:
becoming
relational
block universe interpretation
oscillating flavor ratios
proper time
Eleatics
Parmenides
Heraclitus
These words and phrases are discussed at the end of this review. On the internet, sciphysicsforums.com is where this review will be posted before it is finished. This publication style allows an interactive development of this review so that other people can influence it before it is finished.
Purposes of the Essay
The essay proposes experiments to "decide whether time is best understood relationally, or non-relationally". Also, a generalized theory is given in which "proper time is causally compelled to be tensed". These purposes will be explained using different words.
The essay rejects time as being a "tenseless linear ordering of temporal moments by a transitive, asymmetric, and irreflexive relation precedes—is deemed incapable of describing a genuine change or becoming."
"The purpose of this essay, first, is to disentangle the notion of a becoming universe from that of an absolute time, and then" to show the time-related differences in special relativity and the general.
Introduction
This review is inspired by discussions of my retracted theory that "time does not exist". The essay by JC was used as a rebuttal against my theory. I now claim that my theory is wrong. Time does exist. Time is tensed so that past and future times have meanings in reality.
Technical Innovation
The inverse Planck time is used. It "necessitates energies and momenta to be
invariantly bounded from above, and lengths and durations similarly bounded
from below, by their respective Planck scale values".
The inverse Planck time "perhaps... should be taken to be more primitive in physical theories than the usual assumption of absolute upper bound c on possible speeds of motion."
The speed of light "c is merely a conversion factor between the dimensions of time and space."
"It is this state-dependence of time that is essentially what mandates the causal necessity for becoming in the present theory".
Criticism #1
The purpose of the essay indicates that time is assumed to exist as an important dimension and that the elimination of time as a dimension is not evaluated.
Criticism #2
Proper time is emphasized but time is assumed to be too slippery for dissection.
Praise #1
Time is a subject that is so basic that the English Language is not suitable for rigorous proofs of its existence. But that author has bravely attempted to explain some aspects of time. Mathematics are difficult to formulate that can take t apart and use t to test t. The author has made an effort to manipulate proper time, which has more features than t. Congratulations are appropraite for the author of the essay that descibes how t has its hooks into reality.
Interpretation of the Purposes of the Essay
Conclusion
I have read up to page 23 of 32. More Later...
Glossary
becoming
relational
block universe interpretation
oscillating flavor ratios
proper time: a duration of time measured with a tough method
Eleatics: Change is nothing but an illusion; a sequence of states. Now.
Parmenides: Change is nothing but an illusion; a sequence of states. Now.
Heraclitus: Becoming is important. Past, present, and future flow like a river. See McTaggart.
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Re: Time is not in the Foundation of Physics
by Joy Christian » Mon Sep 15, 2014 3:24 am
Hi Alan,
I look forward to your full review. Good to know that you are actually reading my paper and trying to understand my argument. In my experience people tend to have strong opinions about my work without having read (let alone understood) a single word of it.
I look forward to your full review. Good to know that you are actually reading my paper and trying to understand my argument. In my experience people tend to have strong opinions about my work without having read (let alone understood) a single word of it.
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Re: Time is not in the Foundation of Physics
by Q-reeus » Tue Sep 16, 2014 5:08 am
Joy Christian wrote:...In my experience people tend to have strong opinions about my work without having read (let alone understood) a single word of it.
Which was perhaps an oblique reference to my earlier post comment: "So on this issue, agree with the thrust of post #2 entirely."
For the record, all that was meant there was agreement with the very basic position:
...Time (or becoming) is one of the most fundamental features of our universe...Contrary to our immediate and vivid sensation of past, present, and future as continually shifting non-relational modalities, time remains as tenseless and relational as space in all of the established theories of fundamental physics...The other view, by contrast, accepts the reality of change and time, by embracing becoming as a bona fide attribute of the world.
My own view is that in a non-trivial thus non-empty universe containing a plurality of necessarily dynamical fundamental objects/entities you cannot logically have either time or space 'emerge' from something more primitive. Space and time and fundamental objects/entities are all primitives that form an inseparable package deal. Only by miscategorizing or improperly defining can silly notions arise. One can 'cancel time out of the equation' as per Wheeler-deWitt, but is that anything better than simpler situations that imprperly use 'shortcut maths'?:
http://math.stackexchange.com/questions ... n-equation
How has that 2003 paper been received by the physics community in general?
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Re: Time is not in the Foundation of Physics
by Joy Christian » Tue Sep 16, 2014 7:07 am
Q-reeus wrote:Joy Christian wrote:...In my experience people tend to have strong opinions about my work without having read (let alone understood) a single word of it.
Which was perhaps an oblique reference to my earlier post comment: "So on this issue, agree with the thrust of post #2 entirely."
No, my comment was not a reference to anything you have posted. It was a reference to some people (more specifically some of my supposed "colleagues" in "quantum foundations") having strong opinions about my work on Bell's so-called theorem without having read or understood a single word of my argument.
Q-reeus wrote:How has that 2003 paper been received by the physics community in general?
The essay reviewed by Alan Folmsbee is an invited essay, commissioned for a prestigious collection of similar essays by various authors, now published as "Relativity and the Dimensionality of the World" (within the series Fundamental Theories of Physics), edited by Vesselin Petkov (Springer, NY 2007). So I would say that my 2003 paper (which triggered the invitation from Petkov) has been very well received by the physics community in general, especially considering its unorthodox content.
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Re: Time is not in the Foundation of Physics
by Q-reeus » Tue Sep 16, 2014 7:23 am
Joy Christian wrote:No, my comment was not a reference to anything you have posted. It was a reference to some people (more specifically some of my supposed "colleagues" in "quantum foundations") having strong opinions about my work on Bell's so-called theorem without having read or understood a single word of my argument.
Ah ok thanks for that clarification which is a personal relief.
The essay reviewed by Alan Folmsbee is an invited essay, commissioned for a prestigious collection of similar essays by various authors, now published as "Relativity and the Dimensionality of the World" (within the series Fundamental Theories of Physics), edited by Vesselin Petkov (Springer, NY 2007). So I would say that my 2003 paper (which triggered the invitation from Petkov) has been very well received by the physics community in general, especially considering its unorthodox content.
Good to know. Don't know the stats but get the impression block-universe and variants has an unhealthy lead on a show of hands - for all that's worth.
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