Time is the denominator of existence, and bits come to be in it by Daryl Janzen

Dear Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta,

Thanks for your post. Your essay sounds interesting to me, as I think we'll see eye to eye on some fundamental issues. I hope you do enjoy my essay when you read it!

There was one particular statement you made that raised a red flag for me though. You wrote "The main stream community people want magic from science instead of realty especially in the subject of cosmology. We all know well that cosmology is a subject where speculations rule", and really I couldn't disagree with that more. Out of all the areas of physics, I think cosmology is the one that's done the best to maintain a grasp on reality. I believe this is why, despite being more inclined towards philosophy, as my main interest lies in searching for a clearer and more realistic understanding of nature, I persevered through the "shut up and calculate!/purely hypothetical mathematical derivations leading to descriptions of observable events are all that matter/etc." attitude in modern physics, to a PhD in cosmology.

Don't get me wrong: I do think the model is fundamentally flawed, and people are reading too much into the measured parameters; but modellers in every science are prone to doing that, and I think with cosmology the heart's in the right place. Cosmology aims to describe the large-scale structure of our Universe; to realistically account for the redshifts, etc., of distant galaxies that we believe really exist, despite the fact that we're only observing images of them that were shone into space millions of years ago---i.e., so we can't really verify that they're actually there "now", in the cosmological sense of "now".

I think the dividing line in this contest is between people who strive for a sensible, realistic, and self-consistent description of nature that would agree with all observations we can make, and those who care more to push the limits of nonsense, to derive a theory of reality that's not inconsistent--i.e. is technically compatible--with observation, despite possibly being nothing like experience. Personally, I'm in the former camp, and while I can appreciate to some extent the sense of scepticism that motivates the latter, I think it's been more damaging than anything, and really defeats the purpose of science and philosophy.

The best example I know of is the Macheo-Leibnizian stance that a Universal frame of rest isn't observable, and is therefore to be rejected from the point of view of relativity. This supports the Einsteinian stance on the relativity of simultaneity, and consequently the description of reality as a block universe in which time doesn't really flow. According to the sceptical stance, this isn't strictly inconsistent with experience, and we have no way of proving that all of eternity isn't real as what we think of in our minds as now, right now, each and every second.

As I argued in this essay, however, this has often led to a very inconsistent way of thinking, in which all of eternity is actually thought of as existing--i.e. another temporal dimension is snuck into the mix--and the whole thing becomes a muddled mess with even more structure, which is even further from being scientifically defendable than the one bit of structure--the ultimate cosmic rest-frame--that they wanted to deny at the outset. In short, those who argue in this way can't even get their story straight, but that's generally okay by them because it's all a bunch of abstract unobservable gibberish, which they think is a good thing because they anyhow take quantum physics to support the idea that reality really is a bunch of nonsense. In short, its stances like the one that there is no cosmic rest-frame, that lead physicists into rabbit holes where they're happy to play around with math and make a complete mess of things and deny the notion that reality could even possibly make sense.

But then, as I argued in my previous essay, the Macheo-Leibnizian stance is actually DEAD WRONG! For the past 80 years we've reasoned from the cosmological data that there is actually a cosmic frame of rest--an absolute rest-frame--and the CMBR provides unprecedented scientific evidence that this is so. The observation of a cosmic rest-frame more than motivates the idea that only the three-dimensional Universe exists, and therefore time actually passes, etc., and the events that occur in the Universe as it exists make up the space-time map of all observables, which we describe with four-dimensional physics.

Sorry if this sounds like I've gotten my back up. I really don't agree with a lot of what cosmology is supposed to have established. But I do think cosmologists have done a better job of *striving* for a realistic and sensible theory than physicists in other areas. Mis-attributing the meaning of measured parameters isn't the same as pushing abstract magic as something better than a sensible description. I still think cosmology is, at its heart, a realist's theory.

Daryl

Dear Eckard,

I really couldn't agree more with this sentiment. I also agree with Ed's optimism that the disagreements we may have are very likely the result of simple misunderstandings, because I think we do have the same idea about things. Also, I want to say sorry that my actions or inactions have ever offended you---that's never been my intent.

I've felt just as you have about having to discover the clarity of Newton's insights on my own, after having been told over and again, that Newton was a fool to his senses, and brilliant Einstein showed him for what he was. The formalism of Newtonian mechanics is wrong, but so is the common thinking that 'absolute space and time were stupid and naïve ideas that are inconsistent with relativity'. Newton's definitions of absolute time, space, and motion are formally nothing other than what standard cosmology describes as cosmic time, the spatial sections of its associated comoving rest-frame, and peculiar motion such as we take to be indicated by the CMB dipole anisotropy. Relativistic cosmology implements Newton's definitions, and by extension so should all of relativity theory, since solutions of Einstein's equations should be nothing more than local descriptions of space-time in whatever coordinate system one uses; i.e., the relative and absolute aspects of time, space, motion, etc., that are described by modern physics should be acknowledged as fully consistent with Newton's definitions, even though he didn't implement them correctly in his theory because he didn't--and how could he possibly have justified it anyway?--assume the speed of light should be constant from one frame to the next.

One thing I hope to get out of an exchange with you is why you keep saying you think I haven't considered the consequences of a presentist interpretation of relativity. But maybe it's best if we begin with a standard thought experiment, to see if we're on the same page regarding our stance that "There is only one common time", as you've put it in your endnotes, along with what that should mean for all its consequences. I'll start a new thread for this below.

Best regards,

Daryl

Dear Eckard,

Following up on my first response to your comment on Jun. 28, 2013 @ 04:41 GMT

I thought you might be interested to discuss the following: consider a situation in which two gunslingers about to duel with laser pistols stand at either end of a train and there's some gunpowder at the middle that gets lit by a referee. Someone else watches the whole thing from a field outside, and from his perspective the train is moving to the right.

Do the gunslingers see the signal at the same time, or not? According to which perspective? If no, is it still a fair fight (assuming each stands his ground)? How do you reconcile this with there being one common time?

Cheers,

Daryl

Hmmm... Light doesn't require a medium through which to propagate, and propagates at the same speed in all frames of reference (incidentally, the speed of light through air is c/n, right?), so I'm not really seeing this. I think in a space-time diagram, no matter which frame you're in, the light should be shown to travel from that "one" event in the x-t plane to the back of the train along the same null line. I think it should always get there at the same time, regardless of the frame of reference.

Would your idea differ if it all took place in a vacuum?

snp:

This is a very simple experiment, which you are overcomplicating. There is no need to 'break your head' on it, because it's purposely very clear and very simple. And there have been many tests that have confirmed the validity of SR in its applicable domain, although this particular experiment is so simple that it hardly needs to be carried out.

Eckard:

thanks very much for your post! I'll respond to it over there.

Daryl

To anyone who's interested:

I just added two posts at Eckard's site that I thought I'd put here as well, in case anyone's interested in this discussion we're having and might miss it there. Please feel free to comment.

First of all, here's his reply:

In order to test my understanding of the velocity of light and of simultaneity, Daryl Janzen introduced two gunslingers (this word is not in my dictionary, I just assume receivers of the same signal) who are located on a train with equal distance from the common a source of that signal located in the middle of the train.

Yes, according to the endnotes of my essay, they will see the signal at the same moment. It is reasonable and possible to choose only one co-ordinate system that refers to the train.

An observer on the ground may sees the train moving to the right. This motion does not matter.

Eckard

Here's my first response:

Eckard,

Thanks for your answer. I'm sorry you felt that I mean to 'test' you with this question. I just thought it would be a nice concrete place to start a discussion about relativity and check on what we can agree, as you previously suggested.

And sorry for the confusion over the definition of a 'gunslinger'. From Wikipedia: Gunfighter and gunslinger /ˈɡʌnslɪŋər/, are 20th-century words, used in cinema or literature, referring to men in the American Old West who had gained a reputation as being dangerous with a gun.

In the scenario I posted, which I adapted from Greene's 'Fabric of the Cosmos', the two men are dueling with laser pistols, so their 'bullets' travel at c. And someone observes it all from outside the train. I asked: "Do the gunslingers see the signal at the same time, or not? According to which perspective? If no, is it still a fair fight (assuming each stands his ground)? How do you reconcile this with there being one common time?"

We don't agree on the answer to the first question, so let's consider your suggestion 3: "The velocity of light c equals to the distance d between the position of emitter at the moment of emission and the position of receiver at the moment of detection divided by the time of flight t: c=d/t."

In the frame of the observer outside the train, the signal propagates at c towards both gunslingers, from the place of emission. While the signal is propagating, the guy on the left is approaching that point of emission and the guy to the right is moving away from it. The distance that the light eventually travels in order to reach the guy on the left should therefore be less, in the outside observer's frame of reference, than the distance that the light eventually travels in order to reach the guy at the right. With c constant, this means, by your suggestion 3, that the signal reaches the guy at the left in less time than it takes to reach the guy to the right.

On the other hand, in the gunslingers' proper frame of reference on the train, they never move relative to the place where the signal is emitted, so the distance that the light travels is the same in either direction, takes the same amount of time to get to both gunslingers, and is therefore observed by each of them at the same time.

Do you disagree that the signal will be observed synchronously in the gunslingers' frame, but the gunslinger on the left will see the signal before the one on the right in the frame of the observer standing outside the train? If we can agree on this basic picture, which doesn't say anything about what's *really* going on, but only demonstrates the issue that Einstein and others realised, then we can move on to discuss how we would interpret it. The key, in my opinion, has to do with what Paul brought up in his first post above, on Jun. 12, 2013 @ 18:47 GMT. As I keep saying, synchronicity and simultaneity are different things.

Regards,

Daryl

And here's the second:

Oh I can't help myself. Can I say already what I think is the problem with Einstein's proposal that synchronous events are simultaneous? It's perfectly exemplified in the following quotation from Greene (next three paragraphs):

"So: *if you buy the notion that reality consists of the things in your freeze-frame mental image of right now, and if you agree that your* now *is no more valid than the* now *of someone located far away in space who can move freely, then reality encompasses all of the events of spacetime*. The total loaf exists [he's been chopping up space-time like a loaf of bread]. Just as we envision all of space as *really* being out there, as *really* existing, we should also envision all of time as *really* being out there, as *really* existing, too. Past, present, and future certainly appear to be distinct entities. But, as Einstein once said, "For we convinced physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent." The only thing that's real is the whole of spacetime.

"In this way of thinking, events, regardless of when they happen from any particular perspective, just *are*. They all exist. They eternally occupy their particular point in spacetime. There is no flow. If you were having a great time at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, 1999, you still are, since that is just one immutable location in spacetime. It is tough to accept this description, since our worldview so forcefully distinguishes between past, present, and future. But if we stare intently at this familiar temporal scheme and confront it with the cold hard facts of modern physics, its only place of refuge seems to lie within the human mind.

"Undeniably, our conscious experience seems to sweep through the slices. It is as though our minds provide the projector light referred to earlier, so that moments of time come to life when they are illuminated by the power of consciousness. The flowing sensation from one moment to the next arises from our conscious recognition of change in our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. And the sequence of change seems to have a continuous motion; it seems to unfold into a coherent story... The intuitive image of a projector light that brings each new *now* to life just doesn't hold up to careful examination. Instead, every moment is illuminated, and every moment remains illuminated. Every moment *is*. Under close scrutiny, the flowing river of time more closely resembles a giant block of ice with every moment forever frozen into place."

People do think of space-time as existing, but not always just as such a frozen block. In the general relativistic picture, objects are more often thought to move around, warping space-time as they go. How often have you heard that when something falls into a black hole, it has to keep falling towards the singularity at r=0 because r is the timelike direction within the event horizon, so even light can't escape it? It can move in any spatial direction it likes, but even light has to keep going towards r=0. Let me ask you: if one of these gunslingers we're talking about jumped into a black hole, could he shoot a laser bullet towards r=2m and one towards r=0 (say he's got two guns and fires them simultaneously in either 'direction') so that, although they'd both fall towards the singularity out of necessity, the latter bullet would actually get there 'first'? Should that be any more possible to do than for you to take a gun and point it towards the past and another and point it towards the future and have the latter make it to 2014 before the former? The whole concept is so completely inconsistent and blatantly wrong!--and it's truly remarkable that it's persisted as long as it has.

So, the first point I addressed in my essay--which I couldn't avoid having to address because nothing else I could say would make any sense from the point of view of the current incorrect paradigm in physics--is the blatant inconsistency in this common way of thinking of space-time as something that exists: due to the "relativity of simultaneity", people *do* think of space-time as existing, as the Greene quotation illustrates, *but the idea smuggles in an extra dimension that's not formally part of the theory*! They think of a block universe--all of space-time--as existing, which sneaks in the same sense of temporality as we think of when we think of a block of wood as existing. Just as a 3D block of wood sitting somewhere as time passes is a 4D concept, described by 4D physics with three spatial and one temporal dimensions, a 4D block universe existing as Greene has described it is a *5D* concept, described by four space-time dimensions and one temporal dimension. There's more unobservable (and completely unjustifiable) structure in this view than there is when we just assume absolute simultaneity and a true rest frame, which is what Einstein rejected from the point of view of parsimony; i.e., he was so parsimonious that his theory led to a conception of reality with *more* added junk than if he'd just accepted what's *obvious* from the beginning.

But the 5D idea that Greene describes really is a misrepresentation of what Einstein's SR is actually supposed to imply. So: what does Einstein's proposal that simultaneity is relative *really* mean? The block universe that's a logical consequence of the proposal is *just* a 4D slice of that 5D reality. The block universe doesn't exist; it's just a temporally singular thing that pops in and out of that 'existence' in an instant.

My point is that when one finally understands, and makes this clear distinction, and denies the temporality that our thoughts always want to sneak into the idea, then it should be very clear that the Einsteinian view, that synchronous events should be simultaneous, *must* be wrong. The reason is obvious: *something* exists; there is *some* sense in which time passes, because right now is earlier than right now is earlier than right now, etc.--or at least it's not all on par as we perceive it. That much is true, even if it's because all of eternity *exists* in the 5D sense described by Greene, and our consciousnesses simply flow through our worldtubes like a river that flows everywhere and never runs dry. For that consciousness to flow, and the block to exist, that fifth dimension is required. The pure 4D block universe, unadulterated by our thoughts, is impossible to reconcile with any realistic sense of the world, and those who argue for it always do fall back on the 5D concept at one time or other, if not always so overtly as Greene does.

So, what I propose is that only the three-dimensional world around us exists, and there is only one true sense of simultaneity. In the gunslingers example, the signal either reaches them simultaneously or it doesn't, regardless of whether that is described as synchronous in the chosen frame of reference or not. This bit of structure that's necessary to form a coherent theory of existence that's consistent with the apparent flow of time, etc., precludes any informational bits that might come to be. Above all else, without *existence*, bits can't exist--for bits that exist can't be the cause of their own existence.

So how do we reconcile the results of the gunslingers example with the notion of absolute simultaneity? Take the outside observer to be perfectly at rest in the cosmic rest-frame. Now consider the perspective of the two gunslingers. Is it so difficult to see that from their perspective, if they'd just lift the blinds so they can see the world around them, then they too would realise that the guy to the left is going to see the signal first, because he meets it part-way between his position at the time of emission and the signal's position at the time of emission?

Of course it's not difficult to see that that's going to be their perception. Just because everything can also be described as if the train were at rest and the Universe were zipping past--just because he can bounce a ball on the floor, or toss it in the air, and have it come right back to his hand--doesn't mean the gunslingers are unable to come to grips with the fact that they're actually moving, and the sense that the guy to the left is going to see the signal first.

But this is the rock that the whole relativity church was built upon: Mach's failed argument that even if there is a cosmic rest frame we could never observe it; Einstein's wrong argument that it's just superfluous structure and the theory's just as good without it. WE HAVE A VERY PRECISE OBSERVATION OF A COSMIC REST-FRAME, and all the relative motion between galaxies, which is very small compared to the speed of light, is full well understood to be motion through the Universe.

So let's go back to Greene's statement: *if you buy the notion that reality consists of the things in your freeze-frame mental image of right now, and if you agree that your* now *is no more valid than the* now *of someone located far away in space who can move freely*. This statement has been fed to us for a hundred years, and it's just plain wrong. For which freeze-frame mental image of right now are we supposed to say is the valid one for the gunslingers to hold: the one with the blinds shut or the one with them open? If the former is no more valid a mental image to them than the latter, and acceptance of the latter in light of all the cosmological evidence we've found over the past century is also consistent with the apparent fact that time does flow, then why the **** should we hold the former up as the crown jewel of objective thought, which proves to us without a doubt that there's no such thing as the passage of time, and all eternity 'exists'? If the freeze-frame mental image of right now that's held by the gunslingers when they've blocked out the evidence from the world around them leads to an unrealistic description of physical reality when we assume that it's a true representation of "right now", then we should instead assume that the true representation of "right now" is the freeze-frame mental image of right now that's held by the gunslingers when they've opened the blinds!

Cheers,

Daryl

Thanks, Ed.

I skimmed through his essay earlier and couldn't see how he was proposing something different from teleparallelism, but I'll have another look. Also, I don't see why he's setting the cosmological constant to zero. It doesn't have to (and I think it shouldn't) be interpreted as dark energy, but can be treated as a geometrical constant. The full vacuum Einstein equation is R_ab=Lambda*g_ab.

Daryl