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 Jonathan,

Thanks for the response, and I'll look forward to your remarks on my essay. I can already anticipate some of your potential criticism, but the criticism of the wise is far more valuable than the agreement of the ignorant!

Regarding the question of whether time or causality is "more fundamental," or if they are two different ways of talking about the same underlying structure, I note your emphasis on the permanent effect of time dilation as an important clue regarding the nature of time. The "pure causal" response to this might focus on the "objects" that are "aging," examining what an "object" really is in the context of a single fundamental structure (at the classical level). Something which I don't yet know your view on is whether "matter-energy" is something that "lives in spacetime" or if "spacetime" and "matter-energy" emerge together from some sort of microstructure, which is the case for many approaches to quantum gravity.

In any case, perhaps we can discuss this more when you have had time to compare our ideas. Take care,

Ben

Jonathan,

You wrote: "I've said in my essay that the false assumption is that an event can be both past and future, in two different viewpoints."

This is part of some people's interpretation of spacetime, not a (physical) assumption from which (physical) conclusions can be deduced. If that is the problem, then there is no additional feature of spacetime that can be logically or experimentally falsified - spacetime is just as perfect and falsifiable as special relativity. The problem is with the interpreters, not with spacetime.

Pentcho Valev

Hi Jonathan -- Sorry I couldn't respond sooner. But I don't agree that the "block universe" view follows from Minkowski "unavoidably" or otherwise. Stein's argument has been picked up and elaborated many times since the '60s, most recently in the George Ellis paper you and he were discussing in the comments to his essay. You're right that the "block universe" does seem to be rigorously proved to many physicists, for reasons I discuss in my essay.

I think you and George and I all agree (as you said in your 9/9 comment to George) that the problem with Rietdijk-Putnam "is in the assumption that simultaneity across a distance has meaning (beyond the light cone)." George quoted from his paper:

"...the physical events that shape how things evolve are based on particle interactions, and take place along timelike or null world lines, not on spacelike surfaces, which are secondary. The concept of simultaneity is only physically meaningful for neighboring events; it has no physical impact for distant events, it is merely a theoretical construct we like to make in our minds. What we think is instantaneous makes no difference to our interaction with a vehicle on Mars. What is significant is firstly what happens over there, secondly what happens here on Earth, and, thirdly the signals between us. Simultaneity does not enter into it."

But the three of us draw different conclusions from this. The point I try to make has to do with what you wrote above in responding to Daryl: "an event 4 minutes ago on Mars has zero separation in spacetime from right now where you are on Earth. All this may have no physical meaning. And because it leads to block time which requires illusions, spacetime is very questionable."

I think the "zero separation" on any light-like interval most definitely does have physical significance. And it very clearly shows that Minkowski spacetime is very different not only geometrically but topologically from a 4-dimensional "block". The problem is that from the usual objective standpoint -- envisioning the universe as if "from outside" -- we can easily imagine the "block spacetime" but not the spacetime Minkowski describes.

What I tried to say in my essay was that what Minkowski describes is exactly the spacetime any actual observer experiences, in the ongoing present moment.

So I end up agreeing entirely with your rejection of the "block universe" at a fundamental level. But like George, I believe the problem is not with Minkowski but in the careless, unphysical way his equations are interpreted to correspond with our "common sense".

Taking this common view "from outside", you think it's a problem that for some observers an event has already occurred, while for others it hasn't. But there's no contradiction between the worlds the observers actually see, in their respective present moments, only between the way each of them retrospectively reconstructs the set of supposedly "simultaneous", spacelike-separated events that took place at a certain past "point in time".

My disagreement with George is that he still wants to imagine the past as a "block", which only perpetuates the misunderstanding about how space and time are physically connected in Minkowski's spacetime.

I know my treatment of this in my essay was probably too abbreviated to be clear. If you get the chance, I'd appreciate it if you'd give me your comments on what parts of my Section 3 made sense to you and what didn't.

Thanks - Conrad

Jonathan

I am also thinking about two levels of time.

Levels o Parmenides and level of Heraclites

You can read my essay 1413

Yuri

Jonathen

A handful of the missing jigsaw puzzle pieces emerge from applying the structures of logic (TFL and PDL) to the evolution of interactions over no zero time at a qauntum scale. I try to describe these in my essay, but as motion is difficult to visualise many haven't assimilated the complete ontology. I think you will. I hope you'll get to read it as I think it may be foundational.

I look forward to your comments (and possibly your book). Do you like a bit of theatre?

Best wishes

Peter

Jonathan --

It's very heartening to me to get such a positive response; thanks very much. The block time idea clearly needs to be overcome, and I look forward to seeing how you deal with it in your book. Your essay does a fine job of pointing out the difficulties of treating "now" as an illusion, a matter of perception. If such a basic aspect of all our experience is illusory, what are we supposed to trust, as a basis for empirical science?

And I can hardly blame you for believing what's been an almost unquestioned consensus about the meaning of Minkowski spacetime. Nearly everyone has focused on the notion of spacetime as a 4-dimensional manifold, and dismissed as merely incidental the fact that it has a -+++ signature rather than ++++ or --++ or some other arbitrary combination. So people call it a "block universe" and rarely even mention that it happens to have a "hyperbolic" geometry... since that's just one more "count-intuitive" aspect of fundamental physics, or maybe even a technicality "without physical significance."

There's a lot to be said about this, which I had to abbreviate in my essay down to the bald statement that Minkowski's geometry is nothing like that of a 4-d "block". But I suggest that Minkowski's spacetime is a web of intersecting light-cones in which there are no spacelike intervals between events. The so-called hyperplanes of simultaneity are figments of our rational imagination, due to our erroneously embedding Minkowski spacetime in a 4-d block. Not only do all the laws of physics ignore spacelike intervals; even mathematically we have to use imaginary numbers to represent them. So for me, the problem is one of seeing what Minkowski's mathematics is telling us, rather than rejecting or revising it.

In your essay you wonder whether "there may be a rule we don't yet know about that prohibits relating 'now' moments across a distance..." I suggest this "rule" is already given by the light-cone structure of spacetime, and it's just our habit of thinking about the world "from outside" that makes this difficult to see. I don't mean to underestimate that difficulty, though. I'm still struggling to find good ways to illustrate the spacetime geometry we all experience "from inside."

In any event, it will take some time before it seems natural for any of us to think about physics "in real time" -- and I'm very glad you're working on the problem.

Many thanks -- Conrad

Dear Jonathan - thank you for your explanations and your good wishes in your last message above that I have just seen.

----

Hello. This is group message to you and the writers of some 80 contest essays that I have already read, rated and probably commented on.

This year I feel proud that the following old and new online friends have accepted my suggestion that they submit their ideas to this contest. Please feel free to read, comment on and rate these essays (including mine) if you have not already done so, thanks:

Why We Still Don't Have Quantum Nucleodynamics by Norman D. Cook a summary of his Springer book on the subject.

A Challenge to Quantized Absorption by Experiment and Theory by Eric Stanley Reiter Very important experiments based on Planck's loading theory, proving that Einstein's idea that the photon is a particle is wrong.

An Artist's Modest Proposal by Kenneth Snelson The world-famous inventor of Tensegrity applies his ideas of structure to de Broglie's atom.

Notes on Relativity by Edward Hoerdt Questioning how the Michelson-Morely experiment is analyzed in the context of Special Relativity

Vladimir Tamari's essay Fix Physics! Is Physics like a badly-designed building? A humorous illustrate take. Plus: Seven foundational questions suggest a new beginning.

Thank you and good luck.

Vladimir

Jonathan,

It is very undiplomatic to tell someone to "leave" it, on their own thread.

"John,

I'll bring this to your page, and try to explain, for the nth and last time, what - to be fair - you genuinely don't seem to understand. No-one else will tell you that your ideas simply don't fit the evidence or the physics, they'll all go on letting you think the ideas could be right. Only I am boring enough to try explain it to you.

Time dilation is a single effect, described by a set of equations, and if only the observed time rate is needed, then it's just one equation. That equation works for many situations, it's very general. To explain the effect, you have to come up with a conceptual picture that works for all those situations. You can't have it fading evenly and steadily into a different explanation in some situations, and then fading back again into your original explanation on the other side. The equation shifts by degrees you see, from one situation into another. So any explanation needs to cover all situations. That's why I made the point about the two observers passing each other in the street, going in opposite directions. Each sees the other in slightly slow motion, and your explanation fails there.

Each is in fact observed with a slower metabolism than the other, because every process is observed slowed down - this may be an illusion, or each may somehow actually be slowed down from the other point of view. But citing changes to metabolism as the CAUSE of time dilation simply doesn't work.

If that was the cause, we wouldn't have pondered this for a century, it would have been very much simpler to deal with. The reason is that the mathematics would be different! And it would allow a whole range of possible explanations of that kind, but no-one even considers them, because they don't fit. Being a good mystery, it rules out a lot of intuitive explanations.

Your last post was full of errors, no-one will point them out, not even me.

Please leave this now, thanks, and good luck.

Best wishes, Jonathan"

Jonathan,

First off, my point is not about relativistic measures of duration. It is about whether time emerges from action, ie, the changing configuration of what exists/the present, such that it is events going future to past, or whether it is simply a measure of duration from one event to the next, past to future, resulting in such concepts as blocktime.

If you can figure that out, then maybe we can consider what causes duration to vary in different situations and from different points of observation. Is it because of the geometry of spacetime, or because duration is subject to context, whether actual, such as with gps satellites, or perceptual, as with those observers you are fixated on.

That you don't seem able to understand it is a different issue might go towards explaining why those schooled in the established paradigm haven't considered this. I think Edward Anderson provides a very vivid example of this disconnect, as he first explains time as manifestly Machian, then delves into how it is best measured. The issue is not measurement, the issue is cause!!!!!!

Regards,

John

Jonathan,

Not a problem. I only pointed out our communications in response to his suggesting raising the subject with you.

I don't know that we have reached a point of disagreement, since we seem to be talking past each other, on slightly different issues.

If you do not understand why your rating dropped down. As I found ratings in the contest are calculated in the next way. Suppose your rating is [math]R_1 [/math] and [math]N_1 [/math] was the quantity of people which gave you ratings. Then you have [math]S_1=R_1 N_1 [/math] of points. After it anyone give you [math]dS [/math] of points so you have [math]S_2=S_1+ dS [/math] of points and [math]N_2=N_1+1 [/math] is the common quantity of the people which gave you ratings. At the same time you will have [math]S_2=R_2 N_2 [/math] of points. From here, if you want to be R2 > R1 there must be: [math]S_2/ N_2>S_1/ N_1 [/math] or [math] (S_1+ dS) / (N_1+1) >S_1/ N_1 [/math] or [math] dS >S_1/ N_1 =R_1[/math] In other words if you want to increase rating of anyone you must give him more points [math]dS [/math] then the participant`s rating [math]R_1 [/math] was at the moment you rated him. From here it is seen that in the contest are special rules for ratings. And from here there are misunderstanding of some participants what is happened with their ratings. Moreover since community ratings are hided some participants do not sure how increase ratings of others and gives them maximum 10 points. But in the case the scale from 1 to 10 of points do not work, and some essays are overestimated and some essays are drop down. In my opinion it is a bad problem with this Contest rating process. I hope the FQXI community will change the rating process.

Sergey Fedosin

Yes Jonathan we disagree on what's wrong with relativity but I somehow feel either of us has the potential to get on the right track (if he's on the wrong one now).

You get maximum rating from me.

Pentcho Valev