The Problem: We See Time Backward by John Brodix Merryman

I thought I would add this as a recent example of cosmological findings which push up against the envelope of what's possible within Big Bang Theory;

http://phys.org/news/2012-06-rare-case-gravitational-lensing.html

"The giant arc is the stretched shape of a more distant galaxy whose light is distorted by the monster cluster's powerful gravity, an effect called gravitational lensing. The trouble is, the arc shouldn't exist."

"The chance of finding such a gigantic cluster so early in the universe was less than one percent in the small area we surveyed," said team member Mark Brodwin of the University of Missouri-Kansas City. "It shares an evolutionary path with some of the most massive clusters we see today, including the Coma cluster and the recently discovered El Gordo cluster."

An analysis of the arc revealed that the lensed object is a star-forming galaxy that existed 10 billion to 13 billion years ago. The team hopes to use Hubble again to obtain a more accurate distance to the lensed galaxy."

Hi John,

"It is as though the thread of time is being woven from strands frayed off from what had previously been woven and the past ultimately becomes as unknowable as the future."

That is poetry, John, in the finest sense of the word, and also an accurate description of reality, in my opinion. Well written. Your ideas are always interesting and wide-ranging, but I've never previously known them to be so beautifully poetic. Thank you for that. With your permission, I might like to quote that line sometime, crediting you as the author, of course. May I have your permission to do so?

"It is not the present moving from the past to future, but action turning future into past."

On this point, I would suggest a somewhat different formulation. For what it's worth, I believe it would be a more accurate description of reality to say "it is not the present moving from the past to future, but action turning present into different present."

Regardless, thanks for the essay, and good luck in the competition.

jcns

Hi John,

You've written an enjoyable essay. I found one of your statements quite insightful: "the two forms, energy and structure, represent opposite directions of time."

You also "venture to consider the wave function" and seem to conclude that the standard use of time leads to multi-worlds and also that "collapse of probabilities yields actualities."

For a somewhat different approach I hope you will find time to read my essay on the Nature of the Wave Function.

I'm glad you submitted an essay and hope you enjoy this contest which looks to be producing some interesting ideas.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Hi John,

I am glad you wrote this essay. It is good to have your personal perspective and so many of your good ideas- and beautiful expression of them, in one piece of writing. I hope you get lots of appreciative readers. Good luck in the competition.

Thanks all! I've been trying to read some of the other essays, but am having to work two jobs currently and haven't had the time and mental capacity to absorb much beyond current events.

J.C.N,

I read your comment earlier on my phone and it set some wheels turning. You are correct that it is a series of presents, or rather the changing configuration of what is present, but the gist of my essay was not so much just a description of time as effect, but why we understand it the way we do and how what seems so evidently obvious, isn't so clear on further reflection. The basic understanding of time is that progression from past to future; For example, Sean Carroll's book was about how entropy caused the direction to emerge from action and Julian Barbour's winning essay in the first contest was about how an accurate measure of units of time could be deduced from the theory of least action. So my efforts are to counteract this presumption of linear progression from past to future as fundamental and to do that means to emphasize the nature of the events as particular configurations that are being created and replaced. Many people do spend much of their present fixated on events other than the present, to the extent the real present can be quite nebulous. In order to deconstruct that mindset, I have to use the tools in the toolbox.

You are certainly welcome to use any of my ideas, attributed or otherwise. I certainly take others and mix and match them. That particular comment might be considered a rephrasing of the uncertainty principle, in that a present "measurement" requires affecting some prior piece of information. The past being used in order to inform the present and being altered in the process. I would say the line I liked the most was the closing one, that neither academic or religious authority could turn an ideal into an absolute. As I was writing the essay, I realized I was getting further away from the specific point about time, but knew I needed to explore the psychology more than the physical logic. Thus the points about epicycles and how something so evidently factually obvious, such as the sun moving across the sky, might still be an effect of some equally simple cause, but be overlooked because there is no way to be completely objective and then why objectivity can be a fallacy. So, in that final sentence, I was trying to express how our desire for ultimate truth becomes one more chimera.

Georgina,

Thank you. It can be a bit of an obstacle course in trying to got something cogent written, with all the distractions and often fragmented ideas. It probably would have been a bit different, given more time, but I didn't want it to be too rambling.

Ed,

I did start to read your paper, but as J.C.N. observed, I'm good with the poetic. The problem is my nuts and bolts are more organic than scientific. Will try again.

Hi John,

You make some very good points in your essay. It's a welcome addition to the competition.

Dear Mr. Merryman,

I was fascinated by the subject of your essay and the masterful skill it was written with. I just wish to make two points. I do not believe that natural visible light as from the sun moves at all. Judging from photographs taken in outer space I have seen, the sun seems to be a large dull spherical glowing red cinder that is probably emitting huge amounts of radiation. It is only after waves of this radiation hit the surfaces of the molecules that comprise earth's atmosphere that visible light might appear. Secondly, as I have thoughtfully pointed out in my essay, Sequence Consequence, everybody lives for a different duration. Everything seemingly can only exist for a duration that is different from that of everything else. I maintain that just as the Universe stays in one place because all of its integral parts are in motion, the Universe must be eternal because all of its integral parts exhaust all known aspects of duration.

Joe Fisher

Thanks Alan. The topic of the contest was just too compelling to pass up.

Joe, While I haven't read your essay, I'm not in agreement with your first point, but generally agree to the second. Any photo of the sun has been extremely filtered, as the bright light/radiation that would wash out any detail would be filtered out and is just as real as the red end of the spectrum which the photo focuses on. I do think there is an analog nature to light that is difficult to measure and quantify, because of the particulate, physical structure that emerges and turns into matter at less than lightspeed. Since any device necessarily consists of such structure, it can only measure discrete properties that emerge on contact, either wave effects or bound up as quantum particles. Knowledge is a function of distinctions, yet reality is a consequence of connections. We see the details, not what holds them all together.

I do think the universe is not a singular entity which came into being and will eventually disperse, but is an ecosystem, in which entities interact and exchange energy. Matter contracts into galaxies over hundreds of millions of light years and radiates energy back out over billions of light years. I think we will eventually realize that trying to explain what we see as having come into existence in a mere 13.7 billion years is about as logical as trying to explain all the earth as only being 6000 years old. Currently we are seeing large galaxies and galaxy clusters out to 13 billion years. Assuming they coalesced and ignited out of the cosmic background radiation created by inflation, in only 700 million years, or less, stretches the imagination far beyond the breaking point, but those able to influence the consideration of this are already fully invested in current theory.

John,

Please excuse my ignorance, but every televised launch of manned rockets into space seems to show the rockets quickly ascending into darkness even if they are flirted up there in broad daylight. I also seem to recall that the electric lights on the space station are powered by solar radiation and not by emitted solar light. I fail to understand the concept of believing that the farther away an object is, the older it must be. When the first atomic clock was introduced, it was claimed that it was incapable of losing or gaining a second for 300 years. It is modestly claimed for the most recent atomic clock that it cannot lose or gain a second for a billion years. I guess we now only need to build an atomic clock that cannot gain or lose a second for 13 and three quarters of a billion years and we will get to know more about the Big Bang than we have so far ever suspected.

Joe,

Both the solar radiation and the visible light are moving from the sun. If you were out in space and staring at the sun, it would be far brighter and radioactively intense than it appears from earth, because the atmosphere and magnetosphere filter out a lot of the energy. Yet your backside would be much colder, because there is no atmosphere to distribute the energy around you, as both the light and the radiation would be hitting from the direction of the sun. And yes, it would appear very dark in other directions, because there is little energy coming from those other directions.

John

What is physically happening is that any given physically existent state in any given sequence, alters. That is, it is superseded by another and ceases to exist. There can only be one such state at a time in existence (ie a present), because otherwise the successor could not occur, and there would be no physical existence. In other words, there can be no form of change within a physically existent state (a physical reality). Change relates to difference, which is only identifiable when more than one is compared, so it is a characteristic relating to the difference between more than one, not of one. Change has substance (ie what altered) and frequency (ie how quickly it did so when compared to other changes). Timing is the measuring system which compares the rate of change (ie the number of changes in one circumstance against the number in another) irrespective of the substance of the change. Time does not physically exist.

Paul

Joe

"I fail to understand the concept of believing that the farther away an object is, the older it must be"

That is because nothing is 'older', wherever it is. Nothing, except elementary particles by definition, persists in existence. There is re-occurrence of existence, ie it is always 'new'. The present is that which was in existence as at any given point in time. But we pick on selected superficial characteristics, ie conceptualise reality at a higher level, and thereby invoke the incorrect illusion that things continue to exist, albeit change, which they do not.

Another approach to this point is to recognise that we receive physically existent phenomena (eg light, vibration, noise, etc). So if proven that they has been in existence for some duration, what that proves is that the reality with which there was an interaction, which resulted in those physical phenomena, was in that physical state of existence (as represented by the received phenomena) some duration before the point in time at which receipt occurred.

Paul

Paul,

Our difference on this is that you are focused on the distinction between one state and the next, while I'm focused on the connection between them. To me the reality is the dynamic process of what is occurring and while we mentally assess differences, they are effects of the dynamic, not the basis for it.

"Nothing, except elementary particles by definition, persists in existence."

To me, the dynamic is the elementary particles and energy being manifested by them. They don't exist in a series of frozen states, but are in constant motion.

"They don't exist in a series of frozen states, but are in constant motion."

For whatever it's worth, I side with John on this one. I've never been enamored with the series of frozen states concept. The universe is dynamic and ever evolving. That evolution is governed by rules which we strive to understand and which we refer to as the laws of physics.

jcns

John/JCNS

Let me address your points jointly.

Yes it is a "dynamic" process, obviously, otherwise nothing would happen! But the dynamics is in the difference between, not of. "Frozen" sounds all wrong, static is better, involving no form of change whatsoever is perhaps better still. The point being that, within any given sequence (which is not a trick caveat, just an inherent condition reflecting physical reality) there can only be 'one at a time'. For the successor to occur, its predecessor must cease. It's that simple. Within either of those, or indeed others in the sequence, there can be no change. [Note: within, or of, not between]. Because change is about more than one, it is about the difference between two (or more) 'ones'.

So John, it is perfectly OK for you to focus on the difference between them, ie a comparison of them, and then why did one become another one. So long as 'them' constitutes a set of 'ones'. Or, you consciously ramp the analysis up some levels, maintain the sequence, and consider conceptual 'ones', which you know really involve many in each. Which is what we do all the time, and indeed must do. It would probably take an eternity, was it even possible, to define this entity-monitor-in front of me, in its true physical form as at a given point in time that was of such a short duration that only one physically existent state is being considered. We would all go mad. But our 'uselessness' does not mean that this is not how reality physically exists. It can only occur this way, given that something occurs, not least because we receive input to our senses from a physical interaction (a point you picked up JCN in Karl's blog). I am of course not interested in any beliefs, philosophies, etc.

One occurs. Then another one, which when compared with the previous one has difference(s), but the previous one has ceased, otherwise this one could not have subsequently occurred. Then another one, ditto. The speed of this is probably beyond our comprehension, which is why we instinctively jar at the concept and like a more fuzzy sort of sequence.

And yes, there is some innate property (or properties) causing this alteration, whether it be what is conceived of as energy or whatever. But they cannot be in any form of "motion", albeit "constant", ie alteration in spatial position, unless they have one specific state which then becomes another (ie one spatial position is different to another. It only looks 'constant' because of the turnover rate. A simple turn of phrase is: a difference is a difference is a difference. It's yes/no, not 'well only a little bit' or 'infintesimally small'. I often used to wonder why pigeons left it until the last moment to get out of the way and avoid being run over. Then a TV programme pointed out that their rate of sight processing was much more rapid then ours. So to them there is nothing 'last moment' about it. we are operating at a very slow film speed.

Paul

Paul,

You have had this argument many times, but I still don't see your reasoning, other than "it's the way it is." We both recognize mental comprehension requires this strobe effect in order to synthesize information from the flows of energy around us, yet I fail to see why the continuum is to be considered the illusion, while the digitalization is the reality. Yes, physics has argued reality is only what we measure, but the question keeps coming up as to what is being measured. The map vs the territory analogy. This informational reductionism isn't just temporal. To use the camera analogy, there is speed(time), aperture(intensity) and lensing(spectrum). We can break these aspects of vision into all sorts of perspectives, but does that make it fundamentally digital? Some do argue that at the Planck scale reality is composed of bits of information, but the contradiction to that theory is that in order for these bits to be distinct, there has to be an even smaller scale of structure to define and confine these basic units.

As I pointed out, this was largely the subject of the previous contest and many took your side of the argument, so if you want to develop a stronger reasoning, you might read through some of them.

John

"it's the way it is." Or more precisely, 'it must be that way', seems a pretty solid reason to me. The point is, one runs out of the ability to have more than that at some stage. And this is where it is. We are confronted by, as far as we can possibly establish, physical existence. Indeed, we are a component of it, so too are the sensory systems. We cannot escape this, and there is definitely 'something there', in the sense that we are not 'dreaming it up'. So we have a given: physical existence. Given that given, which we cannot explain in the sense of 'why' (other than by beliefs), the first question is: how. And that leads from: given that it 'is', then 'is' must occur 'one at a time'. This is not a philosophical argument. It is a physical truism, given a substantiated physical start point.

It is not about "mental comprehension", none of what I write includes anything that happens after a physical phenomenon interacts with the receiving organ of the sensory system. This is about physics, not biology, physiology, psychology, or sociology, and certainly not philosophy which I regard as an utter waste of time.

"coming up as to what is being measured". Yes, and that cannot be 'continuous', because immediately the question arises as to what is continuous? One has to have something, that becomes something else, and so on, in order to have occurrence first. What frequency that alteration is happening at is the next question.

Paul

Paul,

"And that leads from: given that it 'is', then 'is' must occur 'one at a time'.

There is a rather large leap from 'is' to 'is' must occur 'one at a time'. This does go to my point that while we experience time as a series of occurrences/past to future, the physical reality is the changing configuration of what 'is' turning future into past. The 'is' is the present. It doesn't go from one present to another present. The one present just has changing physical arrangements. This present isn't moving along the time vector, the time vector emerges from action within the present. We are not traveling some vector from yesterday to tomorrow, tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth is rotating relative to the sun. Just as it is not the sun moving across the sky from east to west, but the earth spinning west to east.

Now you are going to dispute all this, so take it one step at a time. If time is a series of distinct presents, where do they come from and go to? Do they have some prior and succeeding reality? If not, then how are they coming into and departing reality? What is this underlaying mechanism? Is it the 'fabric of spacetime,' with some extra-dimensional 'blocktime,' Are we actually moving along it, or is every point equally real? It's not that I'm doubting you, but just trying to examine all the questions which arise from your model.

John

"There is a rather large leap from 'is' to 'is' must occur 'one at a time'"

Not so. It is all the same thing. It is an inherent feature of existence ('is'). For physical existence to occur, and then re-occur differently, which it does, and which is where we must start with science, that can only happen 'one at a time'. Because unless any given physically existent state in the sequence ceases, its successor cannot occur.

We do not "experience time as a series of occurrences/past to future". We experience a sequence of representations of presents with a duration delay when comparing when they each existed, with when they were each received. Physical reality is not "turning future into past", it comprises a sequence of presents. When any given present is superseded, it then constitutes a past. The future does not physically exist.

"The 'is' is the present. It doesn't go from one present to another present"

Not so. Obviously it must do, whatever is existent at any given point in time was the present at that point in time. There are only presents, that is why the word is used.

"The one present just has changing physical arrangements."

Not so. What are "changing physical arrangements" then? They are the physically existent state which occurred as at a point in time (a present). What you are alluding to there is whatever fundamentally comprises physical existence. But this is 'just' the 'stuff', it has a particular physically existent state as at any point in time.

"Now you are going to dispute all this, so take it one step at a time"

Yep, I have just done so! [But I would take this opportunity to acknowledge the way you, JCN, and others on occasions, keep the discussion going]. "If time is a series of distinct presents". But it is not. Time is nothing, it is a false concept. The sequence of presents involves change (which can be identified when comparing one with another) which has: a) substance (ie what changed) and b) frequency (ie how quickly it did so). Timing is a measuring system which calibrates the latter, by comparing the number of changes in one circumstance against the number that occurred in another, over the same duration.

"where do they come from and go to?"

The next one in the sequence is the previous one superseded (which involves its cessation-by definition). This is the point, nothing in terms of physically existent state, "comes from" or "goes to" anywhere, only is.

"What is this underlaying mechanism"

Now that is a question. What innate properties are causing this sequence of alteration, how do they work, etc, etc.

"Is it the 'fabric of spacetime,' with some extra-dimensional 'blocktime,'

No, both of these are flawed models of physical reality. Just stick with the above question. Whatever ultimately comprises reality (and there may be different types) and hence is the 'substance' of physical existence, must have properties which cause alteration, either of themselves, or when interrelating. And don't ask me what they are, because I have no idea!

"It's not that I'm doubting you, but just trying to examine all the questions which arise from your model"

As stated above, I very much appreciate your questions. Hopefully, in the same spirit that I expect people to operate in, I too provide relevant and reasoned responses.

Paul

PS: Murray tennis match is now underway