There May Be a False Assumption in the Minkowskian Geometry That Led to Block Time, Which Disagrees With Quantum Theory on Whether the Future Already Exists - A Short Look Through the Clues About Tim

Dear Johnathan Kerr,

I have read your essay. I too am very interested in the topic of time. It is good that more and more people seem to be taking "the time problem" seriously, taking apart the issues and thinking about it. It is clearly written and comprehensible and relevant to the essay question. So it ticks all those boxes.

I would have enjoyed your essay much more if it was not a topic very close to my heart. After years of concentrating on finding the solution and talking about it extensively and painstakingly here on FQXi blog discussion threads.Countless hours of comments and explanations.(If you are interested a high definition file of the necessary explanatory framework is in my essay discussion thread, what it does is listed in my current essay.)

There are many more people who have not given the topic as much thought, time and dedication as I have, who do not understand the solution, and so will find your essay very thought provoking. Which is a very good thing. A solution can't be readily accepted until the need for it is grasped.

Good luck in the competition.

David Morin further claims that the gravitational redshift Pound and Rebka measured was due to gravitational time dilation:

http://student.fizika.org/~jsisko/Knjige/Klasicna%20Mehanika/David%20Morin/CH13.PDF

David Morin (p. 4): "This GR time-dilation effect was first measured at Harvard by Pound and Rebka in 1960. They sent gamma rays up a 20m tower and measured the redshift (that is, the decrease in frequency) at the top. This was a notable feat indeed, considering that they were able to measure a frequency shift of gh/c^2 (which is only a few parts in 10^15) to within 1% accuracy."

On the other hand, Banesh Hoffmann suggests that the gravitational redshift "arises from what befalls light signals as they traverse space and time in the presence of gravitation":

http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Its-Roots-Banesh-Hoffmann/dp/0486406768

Banesh Hoffmann: "In an accelerated sky laboratory, and therefore also in the corresponding earth laboratory, the frequence of arrival of light pulses is lower than the ticking rate of the upper clocks even though all the clocks go at the same rate. (...) As a result the experimenter at the ceiling of the sky laboratory will see with his own eyes that the floor clock is going at a slower rate than the ceiling clock - even though, as I have stressed, both are going at the same rate. (...) The gravitational red shift does not arise from changes in the intrinsic rates of clocks. It arises from what befalls light signals as they traverse space and time in the presence of gravitation."

Who is right - Morin or Hoffmann? Both of them?

Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com

Dear Kerr,

I'm interested in your essay. I hope you read my essay http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1272 . I discussed your topic in a comprehensive sense, and I solved all the contradictions between quantum and relativity depending on the latest experimental result. My latest paper http://vixra.org/abs/1208.0018 solved the contradiction regarded to GR and quantum field theory.

Jonathan,

I've been offering up a very basic solution to these problems, but it hasn't garnered much attention. To quote the abstract of my own essay;

"Time is experienced as a series of events and with its philosophy of measurement as reality, physics treats time as a measurement from one event to the next. I argue that time is the changing configuration of the extant, turning future potentialities into current events and replacing them. It is not the present moving from past to future, but action turning future into past. While this may seem a fairly basic observation, it means time is an effect of action, similar to temperature, not the basis for it. This would mean the geometry of spacetime is correlation of measurements, not causation of actions."

The reason time flows at different rates is simply because it is an effect of action. Speed of the level of activity, ie. temperature and the rate of change increases. The one twin ages faster because the increased level of atomic activity yields an increased metabolic rate.

As for one event happening in the past of one frame and future of another, that is just a signaling issue. Both the observer frames are in the future of the frame of the actual event.

As for the multiworlds issue, the future is probabilistic and it is the actual collapse of probabilities that yields actualities. Time emerges from the process of stuff actually happening. Prior to a race, there may be ten winners, but after it, only one. The fate of the cat is determined by events.

Admittedly much of the essay is devoted to the psychology of understanding, since I've been raising this issue for years, to little notice and much argument, so the issue has taken on psychological issues. It also delves into some of the consequences for other physics assumptions, such as the nature of space, but that's a broader issue.

(It's been my experience that it is wise to copy posts before sending them, as about one third seem to not go through. Such as this one, which I did copy, thankfully.)

Jonathan,

Although I disagree with your conclusion that "the starting wavelength is different at different heights", I am impressed with the clarity with which you present the problem.

In my view, light falls in a gravitational well just as ordinary material objects do, that is, its speed increases in accordance with the Newtonian equation:

c' = c(1 gh/c^2)

where h is the distance between the emitter and the receiver/observer. There is no gravitational time dilation. The starting wavelength is the same at different heights and does not change on the way.

Best regards, Pentcho

Hi Jonathan,

You concluded "block time and the accompanying picture must be false". You correctly realized that the block-time view is rooted in an observer-dependent perspective considering "the same event in the past for one observer but in the future for an other one".

Eckard

Dear Jonathan Kerr,

I enjoyed your essay on time. It's quite surprising that only in the 21st century are large numbers of physicists addressing this problem, that is, questioning the reality of relativity's block time. Your analogy about the car repair may be the best explanation one can come up with. Only in the last few years have I rejected block time. I assume that before that I just accepted it unquestioned as "implied by relativity", but without dwelling on it or its consequences.

Your arguments are excellent and convincing. You seem cautious, almost hesitant to come to your conclusion. Perhaps because you haven't nailed down exactly the faulty step. I think you've come close. You've certainly demonstrated that "remote NOWs" are an ill-defined and unmeasured (almost certainly unmeasurable, even undefinable?) concept. If you haven't already, I suggest you read Daryl Janzen's essay and Israel Perez's essay. Their view of "cosmic time" within the context of relativity seems relevant.

Good luck in the contest,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Jonathan,

The reason for gravitational and velocity based time dilation is because since nothing can exceed C, as the motion of electrons within atomic structure is close to C, when the frame of this structure is accelerated/gravitationally attracted, the electrons slow down, so the combination of internal action and external velocity doesn't exceed C. So the rate of change within the atom is slower, thus reduced clock rate. This also causes length distortion, since the shape of the atoms are shortened in the direction of motion.

If we used the concept of temperature expansively, this slowing of activity within the atomic structure of the moving frame is comparable to its reduced rate of change.

This then goes back to the nature of space, because without the dimensional addition of time, it reverts back to an(infinite) equilibrium state, rather than some form of geometric fluid. Consider centrifugal force: What is the basis of the "straight line," other than an underlaying equilibrium? External references wouldn't cause this effect of spin. It would be this element of space against which the speed of light is constant.

As for predictions, I don't see it as a matter of theory, but observation: Does the earth travel the fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow, or does tomorrow become yesterday because the earth rotates? I, with the help of thousands of years of cosmological observation, see the later. The former seems highly speculative.

As for passing observers, that goes to blue-shifting of action and therefore clock rates shortened.

We could as logically use ideal gas laws to formulate a "volumetemperature," as we use C to correlate distance to duration and come up with "spacetime," but with temperature, we don't confuse the needle with the scale. Duration always occurs within the context of the present, not external to it. What exists, the "present" is the "scale," not the events, which are highly subjective points of reference.

Dear Doctor Kerr,

As a layman, I found your splendid readable essay actually compellingly understandable. In my essay Sequence Consequence, I have taken a position diametrically opposite to the Minkowski spacetime one by insisting that one real Universe could only be existing once here and now. You state: "The readings on clocks and the motion of light at short range might give the impression of general simultaneity links across space. But long range simultaneity might be more hypothetical, and not real in any active way." There is a problem here in that all supposedly separable scientifically fabricated phenomena are automatically corrupted by the insertion of measuring identical unit standardization. Science is a religion that uses numbers.

Jonathan,

Thank you very much.

Dear Jonathan,

Yes, I appreciated why you were cautious, that was not a criticism. As you note in response, so many critics go 'full speed ahead, damn the torpedos' that it was both unusual and refreshing to find caution in overthrowing a century old accepted paradigm.

I am pleased that you will read my essay. Unlike the nature of time (perhaps the final mystery) the nature of the wave function may be succumbing to measurements and even, to some degree, to logical analysis. Just as the implications of block time lead to many hard-to-accept conclusions about secondary issues, the concept of 'superposition and collapse' have led to hard-to-swallow implications, as I note on one of the more recent comments on my thread; 'down the rabbit hole'.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Jonathan Kerr

Nature of time differs as the paradigm of universe we assume changes, in that the emergence of discrete time in accordance with plank time varies. In virtue of this, I think, Minkowski space is expressional only in lambda-CDM cosmology, in that the observer is 0-D; and not with paradigms that have premise of cyclic time.

With best wishes

Jayakar