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

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 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

Dear Jonathan,

As your essay demonstrates the question of time is undoubtedly a major stumbling block when trying to simplify and unify the theories of physics. What if time is not a dimension at all, but is imposed on physics by us, sentient beings with memory who saw the world around us change, and needed a book-keeping method to label the different states of this world? A timeless universe works quite well from the point of view of physics if all changes are local linear and causal as in some models like mine. It is only when we try to measure things that relativity enters the picture, but SR is not the only possible relativity!

For example let Lorentz transformations regulate the length of measuring rods, not of space itself (as in SR) nor time itself contract, just clocks slow down. It can be argued that Einstein did no service to physics by declaring the speed of light constant. This made measurement absolute, but the universe became relative. More sensibly let the speed of light have a maximum but be otherwise variable (measurement is relative) while the universe is absolute - ie a universal 'now' can be imagined. Einstein himself said that a variable speed of light is required in GR.

A timeless universe seems feasible in Beautiful Universe Theory , and was discussed in my fqxi essay Fix Physics! - I will be happy if you have a look at these qualitative and speculative papers.

With best wishes,

Vladimir

Dear Jonathan:

I like your essay. I think you present an interesting analysis of a concept that is very muddled. In particular, I was glad to see you repeatedly bring up the problem with the supposed illusion of time in a block universe. You might like my favourite quotation from Milic Capek, which I think expresses this problem beautifully:

"We shall deal only briefly with an extremely serious epistemological difficulty which arises when time is deprived of an ontological status and reduced to a mere appearance. For in relegating time into the phenomenal world an intolerable dualism is created between the realm of appearances, occurring in time, and the realm of timeless noumena. All static systems from Parmenides to Bradley and McTaggert are plagued by the same problem: If true reality is timeless, *where does the illusion of succession come from?* If time has no genuine reality, why does it appear to be real?

"No solution can be found which would not introduce surreptitiously the reality of time *somewhere*. If the illusory reality of time is nothing but a gradual rising of the curtain of ignorance which separates our mind from the complete and timeless insight, then at least *this process of rising is still a process which unfolds itself gradually without being given at once*; but, by conceding this, we admit the reality of time either in our mind or *between* our mind and the allegedly timeless reality."

For it is this surreptitious element of "time" that enters into the description of a block universe that leads to the intolerable dualism that you've also discussed, which leads to all kinds of paradoxes in working with and interpreting the theory. As you've correctly noted, "in taking that view, the number of phenomena that must be demoted to unreal is large. It amounts to anything that could be called a *process*, and that includes a lot of our world."

But, for this reason, I also think that your description of a block universe doesn't get all the way down to the heart of the issue with it, although I'm certain you do know what that issue is. You described: "The universe is a motionless 4-dimensional block, with no moment called 'now' moving through it anywhere. Instead it has many events and equally important 'now' moments, all sitting alongside each other in a static spacetime grid. This unchanging object it is just *there*." But the thing is, that although we can't avoid the use of verbs in describing what a thing "is", every verb that is used in describing a block universe actually falsely represents it. It's a true dilemma, and I'm not saying anyone could describe a block universe better than you have, but I think that any description of a block universe, which will inevitably require words like "is", needs to be supplemented by saying something like "although we say that a block universe physically 'exists' in its absolute entirety, from the beginning to the end of all four dimensions of spacetime, 'existence' is clearly the wrong word to use in describing a block universe, because although it contains within it a timelike dimension, it no more 'exists' in a temporal sense than a block of wood that comes in and out of existence in an instant; it is temporally singular."

And this is really why any attempt to reconcile the illusion of time with the block universe, as in perdurantism, is a false-start. And it's also the biggest indication that the block universe theory has to be incorrect, because no matter how we try to avoid it, we do commonly get a sense of temporal existence that can't really be reconciled with that singular block. Since the requirement of a block universe can be deduced directly from special relativity theory, something must be wrong at the heart of the theory.

This is all very closely related to the problem that's at the heart of the essentially paradoxical notion of time travel, in which science fiction writers begin with the idea of things actually existing throughout spacetime, (sort of) as in a block universe, but then allow that the events in that "spacetime" are also able to change. Clearly, the notion of a physically existing spacetime that changes requires another temporal dimension---and this is where that surreptitious Newtonian concept of an absolute time comes in; i.e., because the changes that are thought to be able to occur within spacetime, due to a time traveller's influence, are also thought to simultaneously effect all of spacetime. If you could go back in time and kill your grandfather before he met your grandmother, then you never would have been born, so you clearly can't do that---a well-known paradox. But as I see it, my grandfather doesn't exist before he met my grandmother: the event is no longer real. What's real is my typing this right now, which will be past, and therefore unreal, when you come to read it.

Elsewhere on this blog, you've made comments that indicate to me that you think I haven't carefully thought this problem through, and that you think I've been too quick to suggest what I think lies at the heart of the problem with the relativistic implication of a block universe, when I say it is the problem that, along with the assumption that there can be no privileged observers, it is the interpretation that synchronous events, described by constant values of the time-coordinate in any frame, truly occur simultaneously according to observers who remain at rest in those frames---which is what leads directly to the *inference* "that an event can be both past and future in two different viewpoints". Or else, when I say that there must instead be an absolute (global) simultaneity-relation amongst *all* observers in a three-dimensional enduring (i.e., flowing) universe.

This is a difficult stance to argue for, which involves not only having to reconcile with the principle of relativity and the relativity of simultaneity, but also having to justify the need to forsake the principle that there can be no privileged observers (which seems to agree so well with both the principle of relativity and the Copernican viewpoint), and show that the scientific evidence does actually support this.

This is what I concentrated on accomplishing in my essay; but I assure you that I have subjected the problem of the nature of time to rigorous analysis, dedicating nearly eighty pages of my (184 page) thesis to an analysis of the historical, philosophical, epistemological, and physical factors associated with this great problem. Although it may appear that I have presented something that simply works (I can hope you at least saw it that way), I have by no means simply chosen, without a great deal of thought, to reload assumptions that were previously cast off with good (but I think imperfect) reason. This is my response to your remark that "In relativity I'm often suspicious of views in which the weirdness in the theory is removed by pointing out errors that everyone else failed to see for a century. Usually when physicists allow a theory to be weird for that long, it's because they couldn't go anywhere else, and not from lack of trying."

You also wrote to Edwin: "I felt that unlike many, you were grasping at an underlying reality by looking at the clues. That's what makes a paper of interest to me these days, if it's looking for ways forward for physics - it's not enough for it to be trying to rejig existing theory into something it wasn't before. Like you, in my essay I'm grasping at an underlying reality by looking at the clues, and the real clues are external things like observations, not internal things like elements of existing theory.

"To me, for an approach to be relevant in the present situation it also has to be open to there being bits of the jigsaw missing, that we haven't yet found. Many of the essays I've read have implied within them the idea that the pieces we have are enough to finish the puzzle, if we can only organise them in the correct way. And yet a careful look at the clues shows that this idea is unavoidably wrong - new conceptual elements are needed."

I agree with you here, except for the part where I fear you're considering me with the "many" who are unlike you. To use your analogy, if we think of physics as closing in on the completion of one area of a puzzle (say, just for instance, with about ten pieces left to put together), you know that without fitting the remaining loose pieces into the puzzle correctly you can only jam about half (say, five or six) of them in the remaining space. These few pieces are all connected at points, and touch on the completed part that surrounds them in a number of places, but the picture is obviously imperfect and sparse. However, the pieces that have not been carefully fit into their right places *can* be put there by taking a careful look at their shape; but this may require one or two of the other pieces that were set aside because they didn't fit when the first five or six were jammed in without enough care.

Just because I have, in my essay, attempted to take a piece of the puzzle that I think was out of place, and fit it into its correct spot, that should not be taken to indicate that the argument has implied within itself "the idea that the pieces we have are enough to finish the puzzle." To my notion, space-time is, by the definition I've given of an enduring three-dimensional universe, *not* real. It is a graduating map of the events that occur in the universe, which contains within it the effects of things that occurred in the (absolute; purely *ideal* or mental) past. Now, in general relativity, space-time is described as a four-dimensional physical field that is moulded by mass which in turn follows geodesics, so that there is a reciprocal interaction. "Space and time are now dynamic quantities: when a body moves, or a force acts, it affects the curvature of space and time---and in turn the structure of space-time affects the way in which bodies move and forces act. Space and time not only affect but are also affected by everything that happens in the universe."

In my opinion, this quotation from A Brief History of Time poses just as paradoxical a notion as the theory of time travel---which Hawking also considered realistic enough, according to standard relativity, that in 1992 he invented the chronology protection conjecture. For the idea is the same: four-dimensional space-time exists, and bodies dynamically move through it, shaping it moment-by-moment in their presence. Since it is in fact space-time that's warped in the presence of gravitational mass according to general relativity theory, then according to the cosmological interpretation of relativity that I've discussed in my essay, all that might actually be warped is the perception of that unreal coordinated map of events.

If we choose to postulate absolute time in place of the postulate of the absolute world (according to Minkowski, since the relativity-postulate "comes to mean that only the four-dimensional world in space and time is given by phenomena..., I prefer to call it the *postulate of the absolute world*"), at the sake of having to accept that there *is* a fundamental rest-frame in our Universe, as cosmology came to demand anyway, many of our previous notions will have to fall. But the empirical facts still have to remain the same, so it's true that we will still have to reconcile the physical theory---our interpretation of the mathematics---with the evidence. Therefore, this requires a certain amount of "re-jigging" in order to maintain consistency.

I hope you don't mind this long note: I've found both your essay and your comments to be thought provoking, and I had a lot that I wanted to say in response. I hope you've found my comments to be thoughtful, and that we can continue to have intelligent discussion if you've got anything to add or criticise in response. I think we do have a common goal in mind; therefore, for now, I'd like to leave you with a quotation from Bertrand Russell, which I included in my thesis as an epigraph to the chapter "Against Einstein's Relativity: A Doxographical Analysis":

"I cannot believe---and I say this with all the emphasis of which I am capable---that there can ever be any good excuse for refusing to face the evidence in favour of something unwelcome. It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth."

Daryl

Dear Jonathan

I liked your clever explanation above about the order in can which one takes up various assumptions and try to make them fit together. One can term it your Theory of Theories. But surely not all starting points are equal or even will work at all in some cases? The resulting theories are subject to certain criteria - that they work in all levels, obviously, but also that Occam's Razor applies - how simple will the resulting scheme be? And even Beauty (Dirac's own criterion on whether a theory is correct). For example of the latter : SR is beautiful in its own little sphere of applicability, but it becomes ugly when it complicates things like GR for no good reason. Starting out that a speed of light is constant creates complications down the line it is not a good starting point.

The crack about the Gordian Knot was a poetic comment on my article by a friend, but I see that I should have qualified it as such. Physics works well enough now not to attempt to destroy it in one sweep, without building an alternative theory!

About Time: Starting out with Minkowski spacetime is a non-starter for me. I will keep trying to make sense of the starting points I have assumed in my theory and see where it leads. If there is no time dimension one can say that everything is simultaneous - is that what is meant by block time?

Thanks, and with best wishes,

Vladimir

Daryl and Jonathan,

Thanks for these comments. I had been tending to take the view that time is 'emergent' somewhat in the sense of Julian Barbour's essay in which one can simply 'factor out' time and retain only actions and distances as in his equation 5 (page 8) and his final equation. But that seems to reduce everything in the universe to 'local' action, and I now think that that is just not sensible. In fact, I suspect it essentially demands simultaneity. I have not put the effort into this that either of you have, so I cannot defend this idea as well as either of you, but I'm pretty sure that Daryl's 'Cosmic time' or 'flow of time' is on the money. This semi-infinite universe cannot possible hang together as local actions and local distances with time only a way to keep local score.

Best,

Edwin Eugene Klingman