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

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

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

Hi Israel,

It's nice to see you here as well! Thanks for reading my essay and commenting. I see much to clarify based on your comments, so I'm glad you've given me a chance to do that. I'll address things point-by-point.

"...based on the mathematical formulation of special relativity (SR) one can conclude that the world doesn't evolve."

Yes, I'm arguing that one can, and often does--but really doesn't have to--conclude this.

"So, to solve this problem you're suggesting to add an additional absolute time dimension, is this correct? As I understood, the idea that you expose in your essay is that the four dimensional space-time of relativity should be embedded in an absolute time dimension?"

No, that's the point of confusion. I'm saying that very often people *do* think of space-time as existing, and that's a five-dimensional concept that's not acknowledged. I quoted Weyl and Ehlers in the essay; above, I've quoted a few paragraphs from Brian Greene's Life of the Cosmos, which really illustrates this. See the big long post that's two above here, on Jun. 29, 2013 @ 23:30 GMT.

To understand what I mean by this, think of a block of wood that's just sitting somewhere. That's a four-dimensional concept. It occupies a three-dimensional place as time passes. The space-time concept that's often been derived erroneously from relativity is a similar five-dimensional concept, extending throughout all of space-time as some extraneous time passes. There are two important differences, though: there is some flow of thought through the timelike dimension of space-time, like a river where the map stays the same but there's a constant flux through it; and, due to general relativity, space-time usually isn't thought to be just a frozen block, but something that changes. Think about it: space-time has to be thought to exist, in an extra dimension of time, in order to be able to change.

Consider the following from Einstein's autobiography: "It is a wide-spread error that the theory of relativity is supposed to have, to a certain extent, first discovered, or at any rate, newly introduced, the four-dimensionality of the physical continuum. This, of course, is not the case. Classical mechanics, too, is based on the four-dimensional continuum of space and time. But in the four-dimensional continuum of classical physics the subspaces with constant time value have an absolute reality, independent of the choice of the reference system. Because of this the four-dimensional continuum falls naturally into a three-dimensional and a one-dimensional (time), so that the four-dimensional point of view does not force itself upon one as *necessary*."

In a completely analogous way, I'm arguing that because of relativity and a really sloppy way of thinking of things which has a lot to do with the complete inconsistency of our languages with the whole block universe concept, people do very commonly think of space-time five-dimensionally, which is a very wrong way of thinking. They think of space-time existing, as a four-dimensional view of things, in much the same way that people used to incorrectly think of classical mechanics as describing a three-dimensional view of things.

Does that make sense? I'm just arguing that the whole concept is completely muddled and wrong. That's what I meant in my abstract when I said the concept of time in physics is a mess. I then offered just the existence of the three-dimensional Universe, as a way out of the mess that's motivated by cosmology.

You then asked how I would define time. I'd define time in terms of existence, and I'd say that the three-dimensional Universe exists; it evolves from one time to the next, continuously. All that exists is the three-dimensions of reality--and that is a four-dimensional concept, described by four-dimensional physics with time as one dimension. Do you see what I mean?

"You discuss the issue of simultaneity and the twin paradox"

I don't think I wrote anything at all about the twins paradox. I searched the PDF to be certain, and the word "twin" isn't there. Perhaps you're referring to the discussion of time dilation and the relativity of simultaneity. That was meant to illustrate that Einstein's interpretation of the relativity of simultaneity is wrong.

"...I just wonder if you are aware of this."

I'm well aware of the literature on the relativity of simultaneity and its implications.

With regard to the rest, I prefer to keep a chin up. Reason based on sound logic and empirical evidence will prevail. And in that regard, thank you for recommending my essay to Daniel and others. I appreciate that.

And I very much look forward to reading your essay. Thanks very much for commenting, and if you would like further clarification on any points in my essay, please don't hesitate to ask.

Best wishes,

Daryl