Q&A with Paul Davies: What is Time?

Matt,

I agree time doesn't 'exist' in the way 'exist' applies to matter or effects (as my above comments).

Unfortunately that means I had no time to watch your videos. However I found it also allowed way round assumptions and am still listening to your 'light clock' video as I write this.

The technique also seems to have allowed me to draw some diagrams a few years ago agreeing with your synopsis, and indeed derive a full description of exactly what may be going on at the quantum level to produce the effects found.

I think the Fig attached below is largely self explanatory, but as it was drawn some time ago so will need much updating and expansion. I've just popped back and put some consistent comments in my 2011 essay "2020 vision", which suggests that after some 10 circuits of the sun mankind may be able to understand it!

fqXi 2020 Vision.

The subsequent essays expand. But of course you seem to already be aware of much of it!

Thanks. Enjoyed what I saw. Score coming. Thanks for a great time.

Peter

Hi Peter,

Very nice to hear from you, i hope you can check out each of the videos re scoring ( they work as a set ), I`ll have a look at your essay, seems interesting,

My first thoughts are that whether Nature is Continuous or Discrete shouldn't conflict with what i am suggesting.

it seems to me we have a tremendous amount of confirmation bias instilled in the area of science that assumes a thing called time must exist, i.e. many people may jump to the conclusion that pretty much everything confirms their conjecture ans assumption that an invisible intangible thing called time must exist.

(this is why I see the theory of time as analogous to "the emperors new robe".

Re your paper, (imo) nature may be Continuous or Discrete, but this may not prove there is a past, a future and a thing called time that may 'flow' in a Continuous or Discrete way.

my first thought on your text is re,

"A glass box with mirror floor and ceiling is in uniformmotion with respect to an external observer O. A light pulse reflects, vertically with respect to the box,which represents an inertial frame. But as it moves, O must observe the pulse at more than c on a diagonaltrack, so time must dilate to slow the pulse down,"

re "time must dilate"

i would say only that "the oscillator oscillates in a dilated way, or more 'slowly' than expected".

this is extremely different to suggesting there is a thing called time, which is dilated in its passage from a past to a future,

re this i think it is extremely important to consider how Einstein only seems to assume time exists in "on the electrodynamics of moving bodies" - and in no way proves this in relativity - but - many many people assume time is proven in relativity.

you can find more inf on this at my www.timelessness.co.uk site ( cant get links to work here :(

Specifically

https://sites.google.com/site/abriefhistoryoftimelessness/special-relativity

and

https://sites.google.com/site/abriefhistoryoftimelessness/comments-on-time-books/-einstein-s-relativity

yours

Matthew Marsden

(auth: a brief history of timelessness)

Matt,

The comment; "so time must dilate" was Einstein's view (along with the box "contracting" not the coherent solution which followed.

It appears you didn't understand or rationalise the solution. No length contraction or dilation of 'time' is needed. The 'signals' emitted by n mechanisms we call 'clocks' can indeed be Doppler shifted (but only 'on arrival'), so giving the same results.

It seems I forgot to add the attachment. I've stuck it below here. Let me know if you understand it. It's all abut Raman scattering (1930 Nobel), which is absorption by electrons and re-emission each time at the new c using the electron 'centre-of-mass' rest frame as the datum. Far too simple to be understood it seems!

It seems community members can only score as 'public'! bit I'll try to find some time to look through the other video's and score them. The trouble is I don't appear to have any. Any ideas where I can find some?

Best wishes

PeterAttachment #1: Light_Box2.jpg

Science needs relevant and feasible clarifications rather airy-fairy opinions:

Is time an objective and ubiquitous measure? Obviously yes, if we ignore SR:

Correction for delay and Doppler shift provided, the time seen by A equals to the time seen by B and vice versa. This corresponds to the assumed equality of A and B as well as to any experience so far.

While there is no known natural point of reference in space, and any (usual) event-related time scale does also need an arbitrarily chosen point zero, current elapsed time and time to come have a natural zero, the point now. See my last but one essay

While future durations cannot be actually measured in advance, not just any clock is designed to measure duration of something that happened in the past.

Time is a measure that permanently grows and doesn't loop.

Even if there was a Big Bang, further speculations are unfounded and useless.

Objections? Additions?

Eckard

I forgot mentioning that Heaviside managed to seemingly provide future data by analytic continuation in order to use complex Fourier transformation with nonsensical integration from minus to plus infinity.

Use of real-valued Cosine transformation is sufficient if one prefers to analyze only the already available past data.

This avoids redundancy and imperfections in signal processing, in particular of the spectrogram, and it has been successfully used in coding, e.g. MPEG.

Eckard

Matt,

you wrote quoting me"( this (with respect Georgina : ) may avoid confusions like

"Tomorrow doesn't move Akinbo it doesn't exist. When it comes into being it is -Now." That is not at all a confusion but a response to Akinbo's particular question worded in a particular way which you have read and taken out of contexrt. I replied further to Akinbo, "Comes into being" is just a turn of phrase. I mean when the configuration of nexttoday exists it isn't tomorrow it is today. It doesn't exist as tomorrow except in our minds. It is it because it refers to the material configuration of the Object universe, material patterns and relationships not disembodied time.

Maybe, quantum physical tenets are effected? Let me first explain something correct but not very obvious: Redundancy in the sense of too much of data, does not contradict to incompleteness, i.e. not enough data.

I criticize that the use of time as a line that is infinitely extended to both sides instead of the two half-lines (rays) of past time and time to come implies using a (redundant) complex-valued rather than real-valued description.

That's why I early suspected that Schroedinger's heuristic trick (cf. his 4th communication in Ann Phys. 1924?) might be to blame for being a redundant i.e. incomplete description. Meanwhile, I got aware that Einstein correctly asked what does determine the lifetime of an atom if its description is complete, and he had the idea of a guiding (Fuehrungs-) wave even before de Broglie. Einstein's rejection of any spooky action at distance is certainly also correct, even if I question his SR.

Pleas check these arguments carefully. They may have unwelcome to many consequences.

Eckard

Matt,

My argument against time is that as individual beings, we experience change as a sequence of events and so think of it as this point of the present moving from past events to future ones. Physics then further reduces this impression to measures from one event to another, as compared to the progression of other, seemingly more stable units of duration, but there doesn't seem to be an actual, universal measure and all specific measures seem to vary according to physical circumstance.

Yet since it is this dynamic of change, these events are being formed and dissolved, so that it is the events which are actually going from future to past. To wit, the earth does not travel some dimension from yesterday to tomorrow, rather tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth turns.

The obvious problem is that since the linear, rational component of our brains evolved as a navigation tool from this sense of linear sequence, this observation doesn't compute for very many people. (Plants don't have that linear rational thought process, but are largely thermodynamic.)

Now what this means is that time is an effect of motion, similar to temperature. In fact, time is to temperature, what frequency is to amplitude. It's just that we experience time as an individual sequence, while we experience temperature as a cumulative effect, but this goes back the realization that there is no universal measure of time, but only the cumulative effect of lots of different rates of change. A faster clock rate doesn't move into the future more rapidly, but ages/burns quicker and so fades into the past faster.

Also the non-linear, emotional side of the brain is effectively a thermostat and so functions as a scalar, as in pressure and temperature, hot cold, stress, etc. Effects like intuition come from the wave effect of these actions creating connections, interactions, etc that don't have an obvious linear sequence.

This linearity is why we associate time with motion and thus space.

Regards,

John M

PS, Sorry I haven't seen the videos. I live out in the country and have a lousy satellite connection and slightly out of date computer, so video is more trouble than its worth, even when it does program.

I enjoyed Al Schneider's video "Is the Big Bang a Hoax" because of the possibility to easily understand the argumentation even without sound. I would appreciate the possibility to discuss with him anything of relevance concerning time.

Eckard

Hi Matthew Marsden,

Thanks for sharing your ideas about Time. Your post was a bit lengthy and contained links to sites that I wanted to visit to make my response coherent. Yes, I agree that Time is a useful notion but I disagree that it is just that and no more. A careful scrutiny of the meaning of words used in your own description may be enough to show up some inadequacies, viz.

"Time does not really exist", "that matter exists", "matter is able to move, interact and change".

What does 'exist' mean in physics? Is it only things that are made of atoms that exist?

What does 'move' mean? You Matthew is matter and you are also a place. Does Matthew move from Matthew? Or is Matthew not always in a place called Matthew Marsden? And if you advocate that in Matthew Marsden, there are two places, one made of matter and the other not made of matter, when the one made of matter moves, it must move to another place not made of matter leaving the previous place not made of matter behind. When you scrutinize the absurdities further, you will find that you actually do not move. What happens is that your destination and yourself approximate each other because what lies between you and destination disappears giving you the illusion that you Matthew are leaving that place which is your inalienable and inseparable property.

Further, if Newton is correct that matter remains in a position of rest, what makes matter move? Don't mention force from an impacting matter because the follow up question is what moved the impacting matter as well... ad infinitum

It is my view that we cannot fully apprehend what Time is, whether and how it exists, until we equally apprehend what 'move' is, which by implication knowing what space or a place is? And I have my pet theories about this.

Regards,

Akinbo

Hi John Brodix,

RE Sorry I haven't seen the videos. I live out in the country and have a lousy satellite connection

sorry to hear that, but fyi if you are interested the www.timelessness.co.uk site is pretty low bandwidth - ie mainly text and simple diagrams and pictures. ( also the ebook 'a brief history of timelessness' is on kindle and not a big file.

thanks for your comments , ill get back to you in more detail.

yours matt marsden

Matt,

"If matter could just exist ,move, and change... would this be enough to explain all that we observe and attribute to 'time'?"

We seem to be in agreement on the physical premise, though I would emphasize time as an effect, very much like temperature. That process of change does create a sequential effect and our rational thought processes are based on it, so there is a strong intellectual and emotional bias toward viewing time as fundamental.

As you say, it undermines the "whole fabric of spacetime" premise, while explaining how clock rates can vary. It also explains why time is asymmetric, due to basic inertia. Much of reality is that energy propelling change and it doesn't stop and go the other way.

But the human mind is deeply wrapped up in narrative and this point of view seems to mostly cause irritation.

Regards,

John M

Steve,

While Einstein's theories effectively made gravity the direction of time, Hawking stated the expansion of space amounted to a direction of time as well. I would argue they are complimentary.

Think in terms of a factory, where the product goes from start to finish, while the production line points the other direction, consuming raw material and expelling finished product.

Now relate that to biological organisms, where the individual goes from birth to death, while the species is constantly moving onto the next generation, while the old dies off.

So defined entities, like the product and individuals, start in the future and eventually fade into the past, as the dynamic process constantly moves into the future.

This then ties into the argument I've been making over on the Why Quantum forum posting, as to the dichotomy of energy and information, in that energy is constantly creating and dissolving form. So that while energy moves from prior forms to subsequent ones, thus past to future, the forms come into being, then dissolve, thus going future to past.

Which then goes to the observations about gravity and light/energy, as being two sides of a larger cycle. So the energy, as Hawking said, is constantly expanding out, leading onto the new. Meanwhile gravity is first coalescing form, then eventually crushing and dissolving it, radiating away the energy.

Of course, Einstein had it all ending in the black hole, but I think that amounts to a vortex and what energy hasn't been previously radiated away, such as by starlight, is ejected out the poles.

Regards,

John M

John, Matt,

It doesn't undermine space-time. It happens as well as. Change in arrangement of the Object universe (what is rather than what is observed) gives passage of time and the asymmetry of time. That is uni-temporal time, the same everywhere in the universe as only one iteration of the universe, the youngest, exists. Spread within the Object universe is EM potential sensory data. Receipt and processing of that data gives the experienced present and the order in which it is received gives the world line of the observer. The observer sees space-time because data that has taken different lengths of time to reach the observer arrive together and are amalgamated into a manifestation. Observers deal with what is seen, the space-time output reality, relying on signal transmission so relativity applies.In the space-time,Image (or visible) universe the position of an object in space relative to an observer is inseparable from its apparent position in time, so time is "Woven In " rather than a process of change.

Georgina,

I very much agree with your understanding of this pattern, but the premise of "the fabric of spacetime" is an entirely different creature.

It assumes what is commonly referred to as "blocktime," that there physically exists this dimension of all events and that through discovering the right mathematical formula, we could time travel through 'wormholes' to other times.

Obviously in the view you, I and Matt are considering, this would be impossible, because those past events have necessarily physically dispersed and we are seeing the evidence, not only of their existence, but their dissolution, since this residue is now in our present reality.

Epicycles were a similarly stable pattern which could be effectively modeled using geometric patterns and relations, but the following assumption that there must be giant cosmic gearwheels to which these points of light were attached, was a flawed assumption. Yet it is conceptually similar to what is being assumed with this concept of spacetime as a physically real property and not just an emergent pattern of how we measure various distance and duration effects.

It is a situation where the measurements are being treated as more real and foundational to the actual properties being measured. The mathematical map is being treated as more real than the physical territory. Then all sorts of physical effects are being attributed to this assumed property, including an expanding universe. Though, as I keep pointing out to Tom, it overlooks its own foundational premise, in arguing space expands, while the measure of time remains constant, since the assumption is that light will take longer to cross this expanded distance and thus is not constant, with a big C, to it.

Regards,

John M

Edit;

" while the measure of time remains constant to a stable dimension, since the assumption is that light will take longer to cross this expanded distance"

John, Matt,

the description I gave is very much at odds with the view of eternalism Quote "Eternalism is a philosophical approach to the ontological nature of time, which takes the view that all points in time are equally "real", as opposed to the presentist idea that only the present is real, Wikipedia. Though it isn't the present that is real but that arrangement preceding the observed present, with no temporal delay component at all. That is not to say observation of former arrangements and events are not real but it is a different kind (or facet)of reality. I think the eternalist block time idea is a mistake, taking the ability to observe past events and objects as evidence of the continued existence of such things. Where it is actually only the EM and other sensory data persisting in the environment. So the past can be seen but not visited, allowing both non simultaneity of events for different observers and no grandfather paradox.

That is why I will not be giving up my view that there are two distinct kinds of reality despite Tom's supposition that I might. Having decided that we are not dealing with the material reality existing -Now, when participating in astronomy we must be dealing with the second kind the output of data processing.What is present to the observer are images of things and events that have already passed. In that space-time image reality things can appear that do not happen to the material source objects in space. For example the image of a galaxy may be stretched out of shape as the sensory data has been affected by the gravity of objects, as the sensory data has passed near, but the material galaxy itself has not been stretched in that way.

Georgina,

I agree with your position that both these understandings of the reality, the perception and its cause, have to be considered. For example, It's not just perceptions of distant galaxies, versus their physical reality, but virtually everything else. We will always see the sun as moving across the sky, from east to west, yet we now know it is the earth turning west to east. As individual beings, we will always perceive change as a sequence of events and so rationally consider it as the present 'moving' from past to future, when it is the creation and dissolution of these events, which moves them from the future column to the past column. As I've been pointing out, it is a form of dichotomy, as energy goes from past form to future form, the form goes past to future.

There are many ways we have to consider reality on different levels and interconnections and not expect it to be just one lump of perception, because this reality isn't an object lump, but connections between different fields, objects, models, etc. There is no one reality, from the perceptual point of view, because perception is inherently subjective. Like taking a picture, we constantly have to focus, to isolate the signal from the noise, while different signals could be extracted from the same or related light/noise, etc, trying to combine them only reduces it back to noise. Knowledge is emergent, not universal.

Regards,

John M