Q&A with Paul Davies: What is Time?

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.

All of this is the context for Time.

As illustrated by the Twins' paradox from Relativity, the data show each thing has its own time. And in such a context it would be easy to install more structure into Time (for further mathematical analysis)--

Now = ( theUniqueMonadOfTime, Now )

where

theUniqueMonadOfTime = ( nonstandardPast, standardPresent, nonstandardFuture)

("nonstandard" per Abraham Robinson's book.

"non-wellFoundedSets" in Vicious Circles by Barwise and Moss)

And,

Each thing that exists has its own Now.

(Later the Nows will be linked together by various gearing interactions between relative possibilities.)

The process is "unfolding."

Unfolding a Now, we find aUniqueMonadOfTime, and the Now is like a flower--

The flower unfolds, but all the while, it is still one and itself, never stopping being the flower it is during the entire unfoldment.

Unfolding a "Now," you, the being, are at each instant always within the same Now, as long as you exist. So when you unfold a Now, Now stays with you throughout the entire process. That is to say, as something that exists in the Universe, you have to yourself a unique experience of unfolding your Now.

Each cycle of unfoldment may reveal a UniqueMonadOfTime, if you are so lucky as to maintain existence in the Universe.

After all, anything created, can be destroyed in a very clean fashion, as above.

But in this Universe, my awareness of Now unfolds into UniqueMonadsOfTime, one after another in a stream of unfoldment...

"UniqueMonadOfTime"

"UniqueMonadOfTime"

"UniqueMonadOfTime"

And so on.

While for each Unique Monad, I am aware of experiencing Now as always being itself within me, being for me the same and unchanging throughout the process of unfolding UniqueMonadsOfTime, for each thing that exists in the Universe.

Lee,

Time is how we experience this process of assembly and disassembly. Since we are only one point of perspective, we frame this process into a continuum of events and so we think of it as this now moving from past to future, yet it is these configurations being created and dissolved which come and go, so it is actually the future becoming past. To wit, it isn't the earth traveling some vector or dimension from the event that was yesterday to the event that will be tomorrow, but this planet turning relative to its light source which creates and dissolves these events called days.

As you say, each event is an unfolding, a blooming. Like the previous event was the seed casing from which the current event springs. That is because the energy is leaving that prior event, like the energy leaves a day, as the sun moves around to other's sunrises, so it fades from ours, as the new one gathers force. We think of one event leading to the next, but this sequence isn't causal. Yesterday doesn't cause today, but simply precedes it. Energy is causal. Light shining on a spinning planet causes these events of our perception called days. and it pours into us from all directions and we radiate it back out in all directions. It is just that we are mobile organisms and not plants, so we think of direction and momentum as being more elemental than they are, so we like sequence and narrative as explanations. Nature is much more thermodynamic.

Regards,

John M

I get the idea from Dixon's work on the normed division algebras that more basic than particles, waves, or strings are *systems* made of parts, which can be assembled (by multiplication) and disassembled (by division). But this still leaves us with the parts to think about. I will make the attempt!

I get the idea from Barwise's work on non-well founded sets that a formula for time which is maybe more intuitive, but less amenable to calculation, would be the stream Now = (monadOfTime, Now). Where by "monadOfTime" I mean Abraham Robinson's nonStandard monad. MonadOfTime has a central standard point and a halo of nonStandard points. To be compatible with the received model of time as point moving on line, in front of the standard point in the monad there must be a halo of nonStandard points I've taken to calling the nonStandardFuture. And behind the standard point in the monad there must be a halo of nonStandard points I've taken to calling the nonStandardPast. Which in effect posits a tiny room of time that accompanies each system (something different than a manifold).

After thinking about it I have to admit that assembly and disassembly of systems comprised of parts is not really the creation and destruction of the parts themselves. Some more thinking about it--

From Herbert Green's, student of Max Born, book Matrix Mechanics I get the idea that complex numbers in quantum physics

represent possibilities.

Again from Barwise (Information and Impossibilities), I get the idea that a possibility is really a possible *state.* I now realize that when I say that a system comprises parts, I most likely connote that the "parts" are "particles." But that would be wrong. The parts involved are really *states." Further a system of states is really itself a state (actually, a "possible state" or a "possibility").

Now back to creation and destruction of system parts. I wonder if what I'm seeing inside the above tiny room of time for each system is what's called "wave function collapse" in the Schrodinger picture (where the wave function changes continuously in time). However to visualize the collapse I have to see it by looking at the Heisenberg picture, where the wave function is constant in time. Here's the idea:

The Born rule is a map from a complex number to a real number:

c -> r r

time has only a math exitence, see www.fopi.infoAttachment #1: 1_On_the_origin_of_the_observer.pdf

Things happen. Real things, occur. Real things, endure. Real things, happen.

Time is not a real thing.

What actually happens, is that duration elapses. Our clocks measure duration elapsing. Our conscious experience is of duration elapsing.

The Earth`s rotational motion is the fundamental physical mechanism responsible for maintaining our confusion over the true nature of time.

We do have motion in our timeless universe.

Feynman Wrong about the Twin Paradox

Tim Maudlin: "...so many physicists strongly discourage questions about the nature of reality. The reigning attitude in physics has been "shut up and calculate": solve the equations, and do not ask questions about what they mean. But putting computation ahead of conceptual clarity can lead to confusion. Take, for example, relativity's iconic "twin paradox." Identical twins separate from each other and later reunite. When they meet again, one twin is biologically older than the other. (Astronaut twins Scott and Mark Kelly are about to realize this experiment: when Scott returns from a year in orbit in 2016 he will be about 28 microseconds younger than Mark, who is staying on Earth.) No competent physicist would make an error in computing the magnitude of this effect. But even the great Richard Feynman did not always get the explanation right. In "The Feynman Lectures on Physics," he attributes the difference in ages to the acceleration one twin experiences: the twin who accelerates ends up younger. But it is easy to describe cases where the opposite is true, and even cases where neither twin accelerates but they end up different ages. The calculation can be right and the accompanying explanation wrong."

Einstein also taught that the youthfulness of the travelling twin was due to the turn-around acceleration:

Dialog about Objections against the Theory of Relativity, 1918, Albert Einstein: "During the partial processes 2 and 4 the clock U1, going at a velocity v, runs indeed at a slower pace than the resting clock U2. However, this is more than compensated by a faster pace of U1 during partial process 3. According to the general theory of relativity, a clock will go faster the higher the gravitational potential of the location where it is located, and during partial process 3 U2 happens to be located at a higher gravitational potential than U1. The calculation shows that this speeding ahead constitutes exactly twice as much as the lagging behind during the partial processes 2 and 4."

John Norton teaches the same story:

John Norton: "Then, at the end of the outward leg, the traveler abruptly changes motion, accelerating sharply to adopt a new inertial motion directed back to earth. What comes now is the key part of the analysis. The effect of the change of motion is to alter completely the traveler's judgment of simultaneity. The traveler's hypersurfaces of simultaneity now flip up dramatically. Moments after the turn-around, when the travelers clock reads just after 2 days, the traveler will judge the stay-at-home twin's clock to read just after 7 days. That is, the traveler will judge the stay-at-home twin's clock to have jumped suddenly from reading 1 day to reading 7 days. This huge jump puts the stay-at-home twin's clock so far ahead of the traveler's that it is now possible for the stay-at-home twin's clock to be ahead of the travelers when they reunite."

Feynman, Einstein and Norton are wrong of course but the problem is more serious than that. We all live in a schizophrenic world where the youthfulness of the travelling twin is due to the turn-around acceleration, on the one hand, and is not due to the turn-around acceleration, on the other:

Don Lincoln: "Some readers, probably including some of my doctoral-holding colleagues at Fermilab, will claim that the difference between the two twins is that one of the two has experienced an acceleration. (After all, that's how he slowed down and reversed direction.) However, the relativistic equations don't include that acceleration phase; they include just the coasting time at high velocity."

Gary W. Gibbons FRS: "In other words, by simply staying at home Jack has aged relative to Jill. There is no paradox because the lives of the twins are not strictly symmetrical. This might lead one to suspect that the accelerations suffered by Jill might be responsible for the effect. However this is simply not plausible because using identical accelerating phases of her trip, she could have travelled twice as far. This would give twice the amount of time gained."

Pentcho Valev

The twin paradox has a simpler (one way) version in Einstein's 1905 paper:

ON THE ELECTRODYNAMICS OF MOVING BODIES, A. Einstein, 1905: "From this there ensues the following peculiar consequence. If at the points A and B of K there are stationary clocks which, viewed in the stationary system, are synchronous; and if the clock at A is moved with the velocity v along the line AB to B, then on its arrival at B the two clocks no longer synchronize, but the clock moved from A to B lags behind the other which has remained at B by tv^2/2c^2 (up to magnitudes of fourth and higher order), t being the time occupied in the journey from A to B."

SCIENCE AT THE CROSSROADS, Herbert Dingle, p.27: "According to the special relativity theory, as expounded by Einstein in his original paper, two similar, regularly-running clocks, A and B, in uniform relative motion, must work at different rates. (...) How is the slower-working clock distinguished?"

Dingle's question is rhetorical - the slower-working clock cannot be distinguished on the basis of Einstein's 1905 postulates alone. The postulates entail that, as judged from the respective system, either clock runs slower than the other. That is, for an observer in the moving clock's system, the stationary clock at B lags behind the moving clock; for a stationary observer, the moving clock lags behind the stationary clock at B.

So Einstein's famous conclusions that made him a superstar, "moving clocks run slow" and "travel into the future is possible", are based on two flaws. Initially Einstein advanced his false constant-speed-of-light postulate, which allowed him to validly deduce that:

moving clocks run slow, as judged from the stationary system.

Then he illegitimately dropped the second part of the above conclusion and informed the gullible world that:

moving clocks run slow, that is, travel into the future is possible.

Pentcho Valev

Every era of the scientific realm is endowed with masters or progenitors ;each with his own truth that cannot be ignored.The Upanisads constitute an often overlooked set of that truth that must needs be explored.

Best Wishes,

Lloyd Tamarapreye Okoko.

Brian Cox (03:56): "Time travel into the future is possible".

Comment:

Pentcho Valev 3 months ago:

Jim Al-Khalili is no time traveller in this experiment - the postulates of special relativity do NOT entail time travel into the future. The confusion goes back to 1905 when Einstein informed the gullible world that, although time dilation is symmetrical (either observer sees the other's clock running slow - this is what validly follows from the two postulates), it is still asymmetrical - the stationary clock runs faster than the moving one (this does not follow at all from the postulates):

ON THE ELECTRODYNAMICS OF MOVING BODIES, A. Einstein, 1905: "From this there ensues the following peculiar consequence. If at the points A and B of K there are stationary clocks which, viewed in the stationary system, are synchronous; and if the clock at A is moved with the velocity v along the line AB to B, then on its arrival at B the two clocks no longer synchronize, but the clock moved from A to B lags behind the other which has remained at B by tv^2/2c^2 (up to magnitudes of fourth and higher order), t being the time occupied in the journey from A to B."

This is tantamount to saying that, although elephants are unable to fly, they can still do so by just flapping their ears. Yet the breathtaking impliciations of Einstein's blatant hoax (time travel into the future etc) enchanted the public:

John Barrow FRS: "Einstein restored faith in the unintelligibility of science. Everyone knew that Einstein had done something important in 1905 (and again in 1915) but almost nobody could tell you exactly what it was. When Einstein was interviewed for a Dutch newspaper in 1921, he attributed his mass appeal to the mystery of his work for the ordinary person: "Does it make a silly impression on me, here and yonder, about my theories of which they cannot understand a word? I think it is funny and also interesting to observe. I am sure that it is the mystery of non-understanding that appeals to them...it impresses them, it has the colour and the appeal of the mysterious." Relativity was a fashionable notion. It promised to sweep away old absolutist notions and refurbish science with modern ideas. In art and literature too, revolutionary changes were doing away with old conventions and standards. All things were being made new. Einstein's relativity suited the mood. Nobody got very excited about Einstein's brownian motion or his photoelectric effect but relativity promised to turn the world inside out."

_________________________________________________

[end of quotation]

Pentcho Valev

Einsteiniana: The youthfulness of the travelling twin is due to the turn-around acceleration, but at the same time it is not due to the turn-around acceleration:

Dialog about Objections against the Theory of Relativity, 1918, Albert Einstein: "During the partial processes 2 and 4 the clock U1, going at a velocity v, runs indeed at a slower pace than the resting clock U2. However, this is more than compensated by a faster pace of U1 during partial process 3. According to the general theory of relativity, a clock will go faster the higher the gravitational potential of the location where it is located, and during partial process 3 U2 happens to be located at a higher gravitational potential than U1. The calculation shows that this speeding ahead constitutes exactly twice as much as the lagging behind during the partial processes 2 and 4."

John Norton: "Then, at the end of the outward leg, the traveler abruptly changes motion, accelerating sharply to adopt a new inertial motion directed back to earth. What comes now is the key part of the analysis. The effect of the change of motion is to alter completely the traveler's judgment of simultaneity. The traveler's hypersurfaces of simultaneity now flip up dramatically. Moments after the turn-around, when the travelers clock reads just after 2 days, the traveler will judge the stay-at-home twin's clock to read just after 7 days. That is, the traveler will judge the stay-at-home twin's clock to have jumped suddenly from reading 1 day to reading 7 days. This huge jump puts the stay-at-home twin's clock so far ahead of the traveler's that it is now possible for the stay-at-home twin's clock to be ahead of the travelers when they reunite."

Don Lincoln: "Some readers, probably including some of my doctoral-holding colleagues at Fermilab, will claim that the difference between the two twins is that one of the two has experienced an acceleration. (After all, that's how he slowed down and reversed direction.) However, the relativistic equations don't include that acceleration phase; they include just the coasting time at high velocity."

Gary W. Gibbons FRS: "In other words, by simply staying at home Jack has aged relative to Jill. There is no paradox because the lives of the twins are not strictly symmetrical. This might lead one to suspect that the accelerations suffered by Jill might be responsible for the effect. However this is simply not plausible because using identical accelerating phases of her trip, she could have travelled twice as far. This would give twice the amount of time gained."

Subtle practitioners of doublethink

"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably necessary. (...) It need hardly be said that the subtlest practitioners of doublethink are those who invented doublethink and know that it is a vast system of mental cheating. In our society, those who have the best knowledge of what is happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as it is. In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion ; the more intelligent, the less sane."

Pentcho Valev

Einstein's 1905 postulates entail that, as shown in this picture, a single MOVING CLOCK SHOWS LESS TIME ELAPSED than multiple stationary clocks as it passes them consecutively. However, if the single clock is stationary and the multiple clocks moving, Einstein's postulates entail that this time the STATIONARY CLOCK SHOWS LESS TIME ELAPSED than the multiple moving clocks. Clearly Einstein's 1905 postulates do not entail that moving clocks run more slowly than stationary clocks, or that the travelling twin will return younger than his stationary brother.

Pentcho Valev

Important to realize is that the clock device itself is never seen but an image is produced, from the sensory data emitted or reflected from the device. Sensory data is received and processed by the observer and the output of that is what is seen, within a space-time Image reality output.

So to clearly illustrate what is happening and avoid the confusion of time the regular interval change of hands on clock face or digital output could be replaced by a not temporally associated, visual, Object universe configuration origin tag ( CO -tag ). Have a single coloured em source that changes tag at appropriate intervals, a symbol of any kind (e,g, geometric shapes, animal outlines, alphabet etc.) from a sequence, representing the actualised configuration of the Object universe, each symbol matched to a colour chart. The tags received can be converted into the matching colours. With overlaid texture to indicate observed red or blue shift, that is showing alteration of data input rate, not alteration of data CO-tag

Motion towards the source increases the frequency of encountering em waves, so data is input sooner ( data receipt delay reduction ) but this is also advancing in time terms of the experienced present output, as younger data is being incorporated into the present that is output. Due to change in spatial position relative to source. Moving away from the source deceases the frequency of waves being intercepted, data is input later ( data receipt delay increase ) but also older data is incorporated into the present output due to change in spacial position relative to the source.

There are thus differences in the colours of the outputs, related to the tags of the sensory data received. And different textures relate to advances and delays in receipt.

The space-time output produced from data emanating from a number of differently located sources in relative motion will be a multicolored and textured 'map' indicating the differences in Object universe configuration origin of the recieved data and alterations in signal input rates of the various signals. Whereas each uni-temporal -Now relates to just one CO stamp and one corresponding colour. All of the output reality represented by the coloured textured space-time map is within uni-temporal -Now, the existing configuration of the Object universe.

As the speed of light is so fast this only becomes important at high speeds and at large distances.

Having replaced the clock time in the output space-time Image reality, replacing it with a not temporally associated tag, it is easy to see that the reality that emerges from processing of that data is an amalgamation of data pertaining to different configurations of the Object universe, an emergent space-time map.

The sense of vision that allows production and utilization of such maps is an important survival attribute for living organisms. That the map is emergent space time is just a consequence of its production from received sensory data but that distant objects also appear smaller due to visual angle enables decisions about proximity of predators, competitors and resources to be 'calculated' which is greatly advantageous for a living organism. Not only does light take minutely longer to reach an organisms sensory system, so does it take time for a predator or competitor to traverse that space interval and it also takes time for the organism to move itself towards resources. By time I am referring to sequential change in the arrangements of the constituents of the Object universe.

Non simultaneity of events for different observers can be regarded as a difference in their emergent space-time maps that have been produced from sensory data within the uni-temporal external reality.It is not an indication that the events witnessed in each observers present still exist as interactions of substantial bodies in external reality, IE persisting for all time within an external space-time continuum.

It is very nice to see how close you are getting to the truth and all without math.

Georgina Woodward replied on May. 16, 2015 @ 04:38 GMT

"Important to realize is that the clock device itself is never seen but an image is produced, from the sensory data emitted or reflected from the device. Sensory data is received and processed by the observer and the output of that is what is seen, within a space-time Image reality output."

Remember also...all objects are clocks. Some objects are more useful for keeping time because they have very regular actions, but all objects tell time. You need not tie telling time to a particular sensation like sight. After all, our neural clock tells reasonably good time and that clock we sense as moments of thought along with the decay of memory.

There are two fundamentally incompatible ways of telling time; quantum and gravity. Once science can tell the same time between gravity and quantum times, presumably that will be a unification of those forces.

Pentcho,

"the more intelligent, the less sane."? Could this provide a link between G. Cantor and Einstein? No, I strongly object. While Cantor's "more than infinite" is as insane as is Einstein's "Relativity of time", their fallacies have clearly traceable historical roots and are still accepted as hard to grasp genial ideas, Georgina and Steve managed distracting from the logical contradiction your sources pointed to and mystify the notion of time. Are they therefore more intelligent?

Steve can perhaps not provide links to serious arguments for his guess "incompatible ways of telling time; quantum and gravity" in order to explain twin and grandfather paradoxes away.

I maintain my opinion: Revelation of mandatory fallacies is a hard but necessary work, even if the required line of reasoning is seemingly obvious.

Eckard