Q&A with Paul Davies: What is Time?

John M,

Best wishes for improving your computer abilities! According to Magicpedia, Alvin Duane Schneider was born in 1943 and has a BS in physics. This seems to confirm that Al Schneider offered in his BB video his own reasoning rather than already scrutinized careful work. However, I am not aware of better presented alternatives to the BB. Perhaps, you can point us to such heresy.

Pondering about your distinction between static and dynamic, I see the latter corresponding to the Heraclitean view in contrast to Einstein's Parmenidean view. An a priori given timescale is static; this structure was imagined to extend eternally from minus infinity to plus infinity until the hypothesis of a BB reintroduced the belief in genesis. According to Augustinus, God's BB created the time. Seeing the future, Bee Hossenfelder's video mystifies the logical way out: The universe must be deprived of its original all-inclusive meaning and vaguely envisioned as onion-like embedded into something infinite. For my taste, such hopes for ultimate unitarity provide a questionable basis for physics.

Instead, I maintain my suggestion to conceptually distinguish between what can be measured and what was abstracted from this measure and then extrapolated.

You are calling the only measurable, reality-bound actually elapsed time dynamic but Einstein's abstract and therefore arbitrarily modifiable event-related ordinary time static. Don't you?

Common to both scales is the notion of a positive temporal distance alias delay. Just the chosen points of reference and the directions of increase are different. Natural reference is zero elapsed time. Ordinary time needs an arbitrarily chosen point zero. So called flow if time refers to the latter.

Regards,

Eckard

Eckard,

I have to say I'm following the dynamics of the status quo, as much as those offering alternate viewpoints, because so much of it is group psychology and how they deal with these increasingly fantastical solutions to the many problems, since questioning the foundations isn't tolerated. It is somewhat similar to the current political and economic dynamic, where they have themselves so buried in the consequences of short term thinking and patching over past mistakes that the detachment from reality is becoming obvious to all, but it cannot be admitted.

I posted a short version of what I see as most obviously wrong with cosmology on the Why Quantum thread, Sep. 13, 2014 @ 02:32, on a subthread that starts Sep. 12, 2014 @ 09:01, but you have probably heard it before.

I think the whole issue of measurement does have to be put in context of what is being measured, or it takes over the whole debate and the underlaying reality is lost. It becomes all map and the territory becomes incidental. For one thing, time is dynamic, so any point zero has to be conditional.

As I keep saying, there really are two, opposing directions. Energy goes from prior forms to succeeding ones, past to future, while these forms go from potential, to actual, to residual, thus future to past. So would you consider the zero point in terms of the energy, which is physically present, but doesn't have a point of reference that is not in some way transitional form, or is the zero point a particular configuration which will rapidly fade into the past?

Measurement creates its own limitations.

Regards,

John M

Ps,

Of course there have to be measurements, maps, models, etc, but they are descriptive, not some platonic basis for what is being described. It is human ego to assume these mental constructs are more real than what is being perceived.

Hi Eckard,

in reply to

Maybe, I didn't understand what "very significant error" you are referring to. I maintain that SR denies an ubiquitous objective now.

The post attached below, that I made on the "what is space-time" video, may explain what i mean.

(I realllly cant type it all out again in a different format :)

Essentially I am suggesting there may be some serious, false assumptions right at the start of SR, which change it's entire meaning.

critically, if the paper does not in fact prove the existence of "time", but just calls motion time, and moves on, then all talk of (ubiquitous) simultaneity , or non- simultaneity is moot.

we can line up the rotating pointers on numbered dials, as much as we want and move them around as much as we want, and observe that some may move slower than others in transit ( dilate) - but...

in my opinion...unless you, or others can point to an actual proof that there is a thing called "time" that is indicated by a rotating hand, then Relativities assumptions about such machines called "clocks",(or more sophisticated version of them) , do not imo, show

-that there are "different nows", or

-"anything but now", or

-"that a thing called time exists and can be dilated"...

m,marsden

auth "A Brief History of Timelessness" > http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00I09XHMQ

-----------the "what is space time?" post ----

Dear Mr Durand,

Thank you very much for your very well presented video "what is space-time?"

I wish you luck in the contest, but rather excitingly, our entries are in direct conflict, (which at least makes for interesting science).

Concerning this, I would like to take this opportunity to ask you a question, which I believe, if you can't resolve, may show that your presentation may not be about a genuine phenomena at all. i.e. with respect how it may be wrong.

Specifically, re your video "What is Space-Time?" you say at the start...

"One of the fundamental discoveries of Relativity is that contrary to what our senses tell us we do not live in a 3 dimensional space but a space-time that has four dimensions".

The validity or not, of the concept of space-time has massive consequences, and many, many scientists accept it, so I'm sure as a physicist it's important to you to be certain via your own analysis, that its foundations are actually solid.

So, to check our most basic assumptions as to what "Special Relativity" reasonably proves (and does not prove), concerning "Time", we check Einstein's seminal paper on Special Relativity, "Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper".

In English. "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" (http://goo.gl/FzwvmB),where,

section 1 "The Definition of Simultaneity" clearly says...

If we wish to describe the motion of a material point, we give the values of its co-ordinates as functions of the time... [so we must be]... quite clear as to what we understand by "time."

...If, for instance, I say, "That train arrives here at 7 o'clock," I mean something like this: "The pointing of the small hand of my watch to 7 and the arrival of the train are simultaneous events."

And here, either I have missed something, or there is a potentially massive, unverified, yet critical assumption at the heart of SR, which (imo) changes the essential meaning of the paper very significantly.

Specifically, the paper says... "if we wish to describe the motion of a material point, we give the values of its co-ordinates as functions of the time"

... but the paper in fact, clearly only describes comparing the values of the [spatial] coordinates of one material object ( a train), to the values of the spatial coordinates of another material object - i.e. "the tip of a motorised hand rotating on a dial"

- so, in fact, effectively electrodynamics, just refers to one example of motion, "motion", and another example of motion "time".

-------------------------- Questionable assumptions

In other words, at this precise point, in an extremely important paper, leading to the conclusion of "space-time", that your own, and countless other talks, refer to at the start:

- "The existence of a thing called Time, is in no way explained, but just, and only assumed".

As far as I can tell, all that could be said to actually be observed in the "train" scenario is that...

-One material object/point e.g. "a train", exists, and can be moving or stationary...

-Another material object/point, "the rotating hand", exists, and can be moving or stationary.

-And, the location and/or velocity of two objects can be being compared, if one so chooses.

What does not seem to be observed, but seems only to be (unscientifically) just assumed is...

-It is assumed, but not shown that as an object exists and/or moves, a thing called "time" exists and passes.

-it is assumed but not shown, that a rotating hand on a numbered dial, marks the existence and "passing" of this time thing.

-It is assumed The concept of "time", and, apparently "different times" (i.e. non- synchronous events) is legitimate.

Critically, concerning the motorised hand, the paper calls it a "watch hand", and if we take "dimension" to be "A measurable extent of a particular kind" (OED), then (imo) Relativity seems to just take the "dimension" of pure and simple motion in a physical direction... and just consistently refer to is as a "dimension called time"

- i.e. correct me if I'm wrong but the paper seems to just "call" motion, time.

For well understood reasons Special Relativity shows us that the components of any moving oscillator will have further to travel, and thus interact in a dilated fashion ( e.g. photons between opposing mirrors).

But (imo) it is not shown in the paper how the proof that moving things, are changing more slowly, confirms the (blind) assumption, that "a rotating hand" marks the passage of an invisible intangible thing called "time", through an invisible, intangible 4th "temporal/spatial" "dimension".

Likewise it is not shown in Relativity how a rotating hand, or the (agreed) fact moving objects are changing more slowly, proves that there is "time", and that the concept of "different times" is valid.

------------------------- Critical conclusions

As you yourself note at the start of our video, 'our senses tell us we live in 3 dimensional space', to which I would add, "in which matter/energy seems to exist, move and interact in any physical direction".

So, given what our senses tell us, and your belief that the concept of "an extra dimension of time" is valid, and the fact Einstein's "Electrodynamics" paper itself only "assumes", but does not "confirm" the existence of a thing called "time", my question to you is...

Q- Professor Durand, with respect, can you in fact justify your statement that,

"One of the fundamental discoveries of Relativity is that ... space-time that has four dimensions".

do you have a specific reasonable proof, as per the scientific method, that, extra to just matter, space, and motion, an extra "thing", or "dimension", called "time" also exists?...

Or,

Is your reason for assuming this "extra dimension" exists, based on the assumption that, by referring to motion as "time", and, by showing how moving things are changing more slowly than expected, - Relativity itself proves there is a "temporal past", and/or "future", and thus time, and four dimensional "space-time"?

(in other words, can you yourself cite a reasonable proof (e.g. actual experiment), that matter is not "just" existing and interacting, as actually, and only observed, but, that Relativity is right to just assume the existence of a thing called "time"? And thus, that matter is in fact, not just existing, moving and changing, but "evolving through a [4d] space time"? )

And as I say, with respect, I think if you don't actually show workings to address the critical issues these questions (imo) expose, it may appear that the conclusions, your video indicates you accept, may not actually be in accordance with the scientific method.

(And (imo) with a claim that an extra "dimension" called "Time" genuinely exists, showing actual logical reasoning, as opposed to just accepting foundations that others seemed to have "just assumed", and accepting conclusions based on those assumptions, is, in meaningful science, critically important).

Yours very sincerely,

Matthew Marsden.

Auth: A Brief History of Timelessness

(My entries to the competition)

Time Travel,Timeless Answers to Prof Brian Cox's Science of Dr WHO

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2243

Answers to Prof Brian Cox's Science of Dr WHO

Does Time exist? How 'Time travel Paradoxes' can't happen without "the past".

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2245

'Time travel Paradoxes' can't happen without "the past".

Time travel, Worm hole, billiard ball' paradox, Timelessly. (re Paul Davies- New scientist article)

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2244

billiard ball' paradox, Timelessly

"A Brief History of Timelessness" > http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00I09XHMQ

M.Marsden. www.timelessness.co.uk

timelessness.co.uk

Temporal distance differs from spatial distance mainly in that it is forward directed while space has no naturally preferred direction. Both distances are independent of chosen objects and always positive measures in contrast to measures like e.g. velocity of motion that refer to a particular chosen object.

I see the very significant error in the application of the biased because observer-related and therefore paradoxically asymmetric so called Poincaré synchronization on two objects that are moving relatively to each other. Compare Fig. 2 with Fig. 1 in my last essay. This so called conventional synchronization corresponds to length contraction which was hypothesized by Lorentz in order to explain Michelson's Potsdam/Cleveland 1881/87 null result.

Therefore I don't see SR a discovery.

Eckard

John M,

If we say reality is always right, we are referring to a dispute of physics or other models with reality.

I prefer the metaphor of family trees as to illustrate different properties of past and future. While everybody has exactly one mother and one father, predictions are always more or less uncertain. You mentioned the future that becomes past. I would like to object: Is there really just one future as there is only exactly one past?

I maintain, causality means: Only existing effects (traces of previous processes) may influence new effects. Even an existing expectation does already belong to reality, i.e. to the past. The physically relevant time is the actually elapsed one, not the anticipated one, cf. Fig. 1 in this essay.

Regards,

Eckard

Eckard,

The future as not determined also goes to space being foundational, in that all these currently existing effects are scattered about space and since they can only communicate at the speed they can travel, the speed of light limits communication of input into any event. So we can perceive potential input that travels much less than the speed of light by light transmitted from it, but there can be no knowledge of input traveling at the speed of light.

We could only postulate the existence of some all-knowing frame that can communicate instantly between all points in space to truly know the future.

Now obviously much physical input has great material inertia, whether it is mass, or a pre-existing source of light and the laws governing the outcomes are, by definition, laws, so there is much that is predictable.

It is only our consciousness that is most in the present, while our perception and intellect has to function from the input into these senses and we function best with those most trained, so these trained in the physical senses can better operate very close to the present, while those trained to mental abilities, "think too much" and so exist much more in a determined reality.

Regards,

John M

Then keep in mind while those events in the past do not change in theory, they do provide that information while makes continuing events predictable and so are constantly being recycled.

Part of this is even the act of memory, which is itself an event and so becomes a lens through which the particulars become further infused with additional connections and input.

Even on their occurrence, events are a consequence of being perceived from a particular perspective and so further reflection amounts to a change of perspective.

So while we tend to think of the past as a linear accretion, the reality is far more dynamic and fluid.

John M,

Does the future really go to space? My dictionary tells me that the future is understood as "the period of time that comes after" the current moment. In other words, the position of the current moment on the abstract time scale divides this line into a growing backward arrow of past and a shrinking arrow of future.

Therefore the notions past are never independent from that moment. The future can only become the past if we change its meaning by attributing it to an event.

According to pre-Einsteinian understanding, there is only one common current moment for all locations in the universe and no paradox-free alternative to this reasonably postulated and confirmed in all experience so far ubiquitous synchrony.

You imagine time as something like a signal that propagates. Don't you take a subjectively biased position as did Einstein's use of Poincaré synchronization?

Eckard

"Therefore the notions past are" should read "Therefore the notions past and future are"

I agree on that FQXi invited and hopefully will go on inviting new questions that may shutter tacit basic assumptions of science. Questioning the existence of time is certainly not new. Most winners of the first contest demonstrated their academic proficiency by efforts to defend space-time and denying some time notions of common sense.

If you ask whether or not something exists you mean is it something real, something actual. Mathematics shows that this is often a tricky and rather futile question. Does the square root of a negative number exist? Obviously not, unless one allows for imaginary numbers.

I feel ignored because I consider the usual, so called scientific notion of event-related time insufficient as soon as one considers how something exists in reality. Common sense has it: There is a complemenrary notion: elapsed time.

Einstein is often quoted having said: "Time is what the clock reads". Nobody can read future time. Any clock shows always only past time.

Eckard

John M,

You often argued that the future becomes past because the earth rotates. Let me object to a second flaw in this utterance. How fast the earth rotates does measurably depend on influences, if for instance the shape of earth changes because the ice at its poles is melting. The measure time is independent from what gave rise to introduce the notion time. Please don't take my corrections amiss.

If clocks are running equally fast then this is not based on any permanent exchange of information between them but we have little reason to doubt that this quality is inherent to the universe.

Eckard

Eckard,

Actually what I said is tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth turns. This is not any general reference to future or past, but a specific, common occurrence and the effect creating it.

Time is an effect, not foundational, so possibly a way to understand it is as it functions.

As I relate it to the concept of temperature, consider how you would perceive temperature. You know it is energy being transmitted as the rate at which lots of molecules and even their atomic basis are vibrating and so shedding energy. In a pot of water they are also moving about.

Now in this perception, did the idea of change and thus time necessarily occur? I would say not necessarily. There is just the impression of activity in a particular frame.

As change does occur, how would you measure it? There could be lots of methods. If you could attach a meter to each molecule and record every vibration, that would be one way. You could record the rate steam leaves the pot, or the slowly declining weight of this body of water, as it boils away.

Now all that is really occurring is changes of state. Energy and water radiated or evaporated and gone elsewhere. Stuff moved about. None of this occurred in some extra dimension. It all happened in the present. One set of relations evolved into another.

So this state of the present moves from one configuration to another. We think of it as the present moving from past to future, but it was actually these changes occurring in the present, so it is they which go from being potential, to actual, to residual.

Neither past or future physically exist, because they are not present. It is only our sense of memory and continuity which makes this complicated, since we are like just one of those molecules of water, bouncing from one encounter to the next, in what we experience as a single sequence of events and our memory is that record of encounters we experienced. So we have this sense of moving from distant past events to recent past events and think of it as then moving to future events, but past is residual and future is potential, so it doesn't make sense to think of it as moving from residual to potential, but then we have forgotten all the past possibilities that didn't happen and only remember what did actually occur and so those past events now seem more real than they are, given the physical material moves to other events and there is only the dust and smoke of memory, as these events move ever further into the past, driven by that continuous activity of what is present.

Hope this helps some.

Regards,

John M

John M,

Davies doesn't call time an effect. Perhaps you are at best one of very few people to believe so. I rather understand elapsed time as the measurable delay between a moment A attributed to a cause, and moment B attributed to its effect. This distance is always positive if counted from B to A. In so far, elapsed time is indeed similar to temperature which also has a natural absolute zero. Units of elapsed time are arbitrarily chosen as also are units of temperature. Both scales are reasonably considered continuous (IR).

However, the natural zero of elapsed time, i.e. the actual moment cannot be pinpointed at a particular moment, and intervals of time can endlessly be added. When Newton imagined God winding up again and again his big clock the universe, he attributed God as the cause to time. Your idea of time as an effect of motion like temperature provides a still naive but already less mystical explanation of obvious simultaneity. I doubt that such speculative analogy is of any use. Instead it might be necessary to clarify how event-related and now-related time relate to each other and to reality. Doesn't a question become foundational if something of relevance can be based on its solution?

Regards,

Eckard

Eckard,

Physics values precision over explanation, so measurement matters more than what is being measured. What is being measured are particular events that come into being and dissolve, but what creates them is that underlaying process and energy. Remember energy is conserved, even if it doesn't have some exact shape or form. So the present is that energy, but all that can be measured is the form it takes. So measures of time are that energy transitioning/evolving from one form to another. Duration is just what the energy is doing between one event and the next.

As I argued in the recent contest, not only is reality that dichotomy of energy and information, but it manifests in our physiology, with a central nervous system to process information and the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems to process energy. This then manifests on many aspects of our social functions, with academics and other thought based disciplines largely concerned with products of the information process and thus distinctions, more than the dynamic creating them. So there is a natural bias toward platonic ideal forms, even though they are evidently emergent. Since we can't measure the basis, the reductionist position is to just ignore it. "Shut up and calculate."

Regards,

John M

Steve Agnew,

On Sep. 13, 2014 @ 00:18 GMT you stated in Why Quantum:

1) There is a past because we have a memory of it, and so the matter of our memory represents an object of past time.

2) All objects represent past time and that is called proper time.

3) The present moment is just as you [John M] suggest, the second dimension of time, action time.

4) The future only exists as the possibilities of an object and there is no single future that is certain.

While I am aware that mainstream physics postulates a fatalistic closed block of time and space which is the opposite of (4), I as an engineer cannot see any good reason to perform Fourier analysis of a signal by an integration that includes not yet existing in reality future data.

Writing in (1) "there is a past because" you did perhaps mean "there is a past, we know it because". I understand the past as something objective. As Shannon explained it, past processes are unchangeable but in principle measurable. I accept that you used the word "memory" for what I prefer calling material "traces".

Your interpretation in (2) of past time as proper time is close to my view that elapsed time includes all past and has therefore a natural point of reference, the actual moment. Presumably, you are still following the convention to count time increasing from earlier to later. Elapsed time counts in opposite direction, and it doesn't relate to an arbitrarily chosen event.

When you used the expression "proper time" in (2), did you distinguish it from coordinate time in the sense of SR?

The "action time" that you introduced in (3) seems to be meant as an actual value at the scale of conventional time. Aren't you aware that conventional time is block time?

I agree on that the conventional time scale is insufficient as to describe reality. However, if you dare introducing a point on a scale that is moving relative to it as a dimension, then I would expect you to clarify what the notion dimension does mean in physics. Orthogonality?

I consider Fig. 1 of my essay 1364 a more radical alternative that clearly reveals how the abstract block time differs from original reality.

Eckard

For some reason years ago I bought a book from a library sale for an old corporate research lab in physics-- Geoffrey M. Dixon's Division Algebras: Octonions, Quaternions, Complex Numbers and the Algebraic Design of Physics.

The idea seemed so simple. The Universe is made of distributed information systems, which follow the basic law of the Universe: Whatever's been created, can be destroyed.

I keep scanning the book for high school student level reading, but can find none. Turning the pages is like looking at a kaleidoscope. I'm blinded by spinning fibers of light and color. They draw me closer and closer the faster I turn the pages of the book. The pages spin like a wireframe water wheel, in an architecture of glittering mathematical intricacies.

Clearly, there was structure enough here, and a clear description of how one creates systems from parts, without damaging any of the parts.

And, how one can destroy a system simply by disassembling it, part by part, without damaging a single part.

For example, multiplying would be a model for assembling a system. Dividing would then be disassembling the system, very cleanly, by factoring a part away.

Each part was never harmed during assembly.

And each part was never harmed during disassembly.

That was all of the story I needed. Dixon had handled all the details.

And now it seems the same has happened in string theory.

So it seems

The Universe isn't made of particles and neither is it made of strings.

The Universe is made of systems that can be nondestructively assembled and disassembled into parts.

The Division Algebras model this kind of Universe in terms of multiplication and division.

Lee,

We exist at a very complex, intermediate level. Would those recycling information systems exist in an even broader spectrum of creation and dissolution? What is conserved is energy, but our only knowledge of it is as information. It seems the breakdown in our information models, uncertainty principle, quantum theory, etc, are because the dynamic energy cannot be fully encompassed/modeled within the context of an inherently static information paradigm.

Regards,

John M

cannot be fully encompassed/modeled within the context of an inherently static information paradigm, no matter how small the scale, or complex the pattern.