Q&A with Paul Davies: What is Time?

"It is not that time and temperature are the same thing, anymore than frequency and amplitude are the same thing, yet they are complimentary features of the process."

You can back fit temperature into a time. The question is whether this will be useful or not and my feeling is that temperature as time will be very complex. Since what we have now is already very complex and internally inconsistent, it is hard to see how temperature as time will improve that situation.

"...I have no problem with accepting axioms, but if they seem to be explained by other axioms, it would seem they are not a first order."

You are correct and I have been a little sloppy in my wordage. The symmetry of three is just such a powerful allure that it really almost demands a presence. The three axioms are really matter, time, and the action equation, but matter, time, and quantum action complete the universe so nicely. Any two of these axioms determines the third as emergent from the other two as long as the action equation is really the third axiom.

I like keeping the three as axioms, a trimal, since even though only two are really axiomatic, you can choose which two according to the problem that you want to solve as long as the action equation remains the third axiom. This is what I call a trimal tautology, but I am still searching for better words.

"We try measuring time in terms of particular changes, such as frequency of a cesium atom, yet the cumulative effect of change is a lot of such rates and the problem is we assume there must be some universal clock/rate of change, but the only universal rate is cumulative."

Perhaps a definition of time is in order. With the trimal of matter, time, and action, the differential of action by matter defines time without using time to define time. Therefore, time has both an action and a matter, once again, time is kind of two dimensional.

In terms of a clock, each moment of the cesium clock is 1/9,192,631,770th of a second and is equivalent to matter moment of 1.1e-41 kg, which is the matter equivalent of one photon of the Cs-133 hyperfine line. Then, we accumulate those moments as matter and that is the action of that clock. Thus we can hold the past action of any clock as matter in our hand or in our memory. The quotient of that action and the moment of matter provides time as a count of moments.

This serves to define time and to define the nature of clocks. What we assume is that there is a time as an axiom and that we can measure its passage.

Steve,

It's not a matter of fitting time into temperature. Would you try and squeeze frequency into amplitude? As Einstein said, simple as possible, but no simpler. (or something to that effect)

The problem is our logical thought processes are based on temporal sequence, so it takes some looking into the mental mirror to think of it as the changing configuration turning future into past. My experience with trying to explain this, is the more educated someone is, the more it grinds their gears. A cardiologist friend of mine told me I was hurting her head when I pointed this out, while a teenager responded, 'Well, duh.' Keep in mind we still live in a reality where the sun rises and sets, but we can also think of it as the world turning.

I also see the tripartite relationship as foundational and as you describe it; The two fundamental sides defining a larger/complex whole. Eastern philosophy/religion is largely based on that with the yin and yang comprising a larger whole. The Christian trinity as another obvious example and, I suspect, grew out of the nature of time; That God the Father represented the past order, God the Son to represent the present state and when things didn't pan out as they planned, God the Holy Ghost as hope for the future. I was first seriously puzzling over the nature of time, back in the early nineties, when Complexity theory started to emerge from Chaos theory and it did seem to correspond to the issues with time. With order as the past, chaos as the future and complexity as the present, that line between order and chaos. I would though, use 'energy' as a replacement for chaos and information goes in the order category. This goes to my entry in the essay contest.

Energy tends to seem chaotic because it is complimentary to order. When something is very ordered, it is not dynamically changing and so its constituent energy is very stable and addition of more energy is limited. So excess energy is destabilizing to order. Now think of this in terms of the past, which is logically ordered and unchanging, the present, which is the conflict state between prior order attempting to define the energetic state and then the future, which is wherever the energy flows, since it must manifest the physical reality, even if it destroys prior order. So we have those two directions of time; The order coalescing out of the present and receding into the past, while the energy is constantly moving onto succeeding configurations.

Another point I'd make is this leaves space in its own category. It seems there has been an effort over the generations to dismiss it as nothing more than an abstraction, since it lacks any physical aspect to grasp. I think that eventually we will have to accept space as far more of an elemental axiom than just about anything else. Even the speed of light as C is measured in the vacuum of space. Math dismisses it as three dimensional, but three dimensions are a coordinate system. Unless you specify the actual set of coordinates, space is infinitely dimensional, since any set of coordinates can be used to define the same space. For example, the Israelis and Palestinians use different coordinates, growing out of different temporal narratives, to define the same space.

It is argued in math that an infinite number of dimensionless points make a line, but that's flawed. Even an infinity multiplied by zero is still zero, so you would have to give those points some dimension, ie. space, in order for them to add up to anything. One only has to go out on a cloudless night to appreciate the enormity of space and no matter if it is filled with waves of energy and matter, all vibrating at their different amplitudes and frequencies, creating the effects of temperature and time, it is still the frame of all frames.

Obviously this then gets into issues of cosmology and since I'm already arguing against 'the fabric of spacetime' being physically real, the notion of an expanding universe becomes problematic. For instance, in order for this expansion to actually be relativistic, the speed of light would have to increase as space expands, in order for it to remain constant. Otherwise it's not expanding space, but simply increasing distance in stable space, as measured by the speed of light. Yet that would refute the premise of explaining expansion, since it would not appear to expand, if the speed of light increased.

Then there is the fact that overall space appears flat, as gravity and expansion balance out. This must mean those galactic 'space sinks' are not just inert points of reference in an expanding universe, but effectively contracting that which expands inbetween them at an equal rate. This suggests much more of a convection cycle of expanding radiation and contracting mass. Two sides defining a larger whole

I will leave it at that, since it has probably started to grind a few gears.

Regards,

John M

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

Our rotational surface motion is approximately 1600 kilometers per hour at the equator. We live on a gigantic merry-go-round. We are physically immersed in this constant motionary milieu, at the same time, as we use this same motion, to measure duration elapsing.

We use the constant period of duration of our planet`s rotational motion, as the measurement baseline for our time keeping system. Duration elapsing is what our clocks measure. Duration elapsing is what we consciously experience.

Man, is this blog a challenge or what? Links keep getting gathered and posts reordered, it is difficult to keep up with what is what.

I like where you are going...except for space. Unless you view space as emergent and time as axiomatic, you will be stuck in the same blind alley that space time is now, beating their heads against the brink wall of the infinitely divisible nature of the empty void of space.

Once you accept space as emergent, the universe will then open up, but you will lose your temperature...but that is okay. There is a new thermodynamics of pure matter coming...internal matter, entropy matter, and free matter.

You mentioned the yin and yang, but forgot the qi, the essence of the dao that completes its trimal. you got the Christian trimal right, but failed to mention Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva of the Hindu Vedic tradition. Then there are the three jewels of Buddhism as the trimal of Buddha, Dharma (teachings), and Sangha(teachers). And don't forget the three quarks that make up each bayron and the three dimensions embedded in the standard model!

The symmetry of three is actually an inherent piece of reality, but it is that symmetry that projects space. Space is a result of the basic symmetry of the primitive universe and emerges from it and does not cause it.

As far as the speed of light varying, of course it varies...along with the fine structure constant and Planck's constant, they all vary together and since they all vary together, the galaxy spectra appear to be red shifted when in fact they are just from an earlier time.

Steve,

I like the way you think as well, but my opinion on space is the opposite. It doesn't have to be emergent because, lacking any physical features to explain, it doesn't need explanation. This lack of physically malleable features means it doesn't move and has no limitations, therefore it is absolute, as in zero and infinite. These are the yin and the yang of the universe, with the energy/mass cycling between the inertia of structure and the radiation expanding to infinity as the qi contained within it.

Otherwise we are left trying to explain how space emerges from a dimensionless point, ie. the lack of space. The idea this expansion of space is relativistic overlooks the fact that in order to be relative, the speed of light would have to increase proportionally, in order for it to remain constant, but since it is assumed to be stable and those distant galaxies move away in terms of lightyears, this begs the question of where that vacuum defining the speed of light comes from. Since it seems to be the actual denominator of this equation, that makes the expansion the numerator and that is just an increasing amount of stable space.

Regards,

John M

That space is emergent and not axiomatic in matter time is a very tough thing to swallow I admit, but the math works with beauty and simplicity. For you (and everyone else on the planet less one) space is axiomatic and space is self evident and space seems therefore to be the most natural and intuitive of all of the axioms. Einstein certainly believed in space as an axiom.

However, the concept of space has its many problems dating back to Zeno's paradox and how space can be the infinitely divisible nothing that it seems to be.

"It doesn't have to be emergent because, lacking any physical features to explain, it doesn't need explanation."

Space has many features that need explanation and today we have quantum entanglement issues and, of course, gravity still resists the renormalization, which by the way, is an artifact of space. How do you explain the space inside of a black hole?

You and the whole world have simply grown accustomed to space as we all have, myself included. Space is a very deeply imbedded projection of our Cartesian mind and even though our projection of objects in space is necessary and very useful for nearly all of what we do...that is all space is...a projection.

The beauty and symmetry of zero and infinity, of a single point, a line with zero radius, an plane with zero thickness, and an empty volume are all very useful infinitely divisible idealizations, but that is what they are... Euclidean idealizations, albeit useful ones.

"Otherwise we are left trying to explain how space emerges from a dimensionless point, ie. the lack of space."

Space does not emerge from a dimensionless point...you see, that very statement already has the Euclidean logic of a point built in since there are an infinity of points that exist as an empty space. The action of a point moving becomes a line, a line sweeping is a plane, and a plane revolving is a volume. These are the actions that we actually sense as objects change or their image edges form details and then we project those changes as Cartesian objects in our mind.

In matter time, all objects exist as matter that is changing in time, i.e., matter, time, and quantum action predict all changes for objects without any direct use of space. You see, the universe itself is an object as a pulse of largely boson matter in time and we fermions are just along for the ride.

The three axioms of matter, time, and quantum action result in three dimensions as the norms of matter and time along with a phase that ties them together. It is from those three primal dimensions that the machine of our Cartesian mind projects the three dimensions of space.

So the question, "What is space filled with?" is preloaded with the answer-space must be full of something and the question already presumes that space exists as an axiom. The real question is what separates objects from each other and not what fills space. For the matter time scheme to work, though, the universe is an object that is made up of mostly boson matter, about 1e7 times more boson matter than fermion matter. Actually, the math works quite well...or at least I have not yet found a fatal flaw.

And it is such a pretty and simply theory of three, the trimal of matter, time, and action. One immediate consequence of this approach is that all action is Lorentz invariant by definition. All of the dilation effects of relativity apply to matter and time and so their projection into space means that space dilation therefore follows.

There are two things to look for in any TOE: falsifiability and utility. You need to have a way to falsify the model with an observation or test to show that it is more than just pure belief, and even if it passes that test, the model must still be more useful than what exists. Matter time passes both tests...

Steve,

The only way Zeno's paradox even makes sense is if the runner and the tortoise are slowing in proportion to the percentage of distance they cover. Otherwise both cross the finish line at the rate they are traveling.

"all objects exist as matter that is changing in time,"

If there was no change, would time still exist? The reason time doesn't exist at the speed of light is because there is no change for anything traveling at the speed of light, since any internal processes have stopped. I'm still seeing time as a measure of change, not some dimensional basis for it.

"The real question is what separates objects from each other"

We can look out across space, but we can't look out across time, as we only see evidence of prior changes, not even future ones.

"How do you explain the space inside of a black hole?"

I see black holes as mathematical artifacts of only looking at the matter falling into them, not the energy radiating away from them. Since Einstein's time, we have detected enormous amounts of energy ballooning, jetting and just plain radiating away from the cores of galaxies. Star sized black holes are the sources of pulsars. Like I've said, it seems to be a cosmic convection cycle of expanding radiation and collapsing mass. Two sides defining the larger whole.

"In matter time, all objects exist as matter that is changing in time, i.e., matter, time, and quantum action predict all changes for objects without any direct use of space."

If the occupation is space, but then wouldn't that logic also refute the need for time, that its action is time?

"so their projection into space means that space dilation therefore follows."

"projection into space"? You don't seem to be able to completely shed the need for space.

What if you have two completely independent projections and they happen to encounter one another; would that imply a common space?

Regards,

John M

You are very patient to have stayed with me for so long. Usually I get thrown out of the bar by now... Space has been around a long time and it is not easy to see through the powerful illusion of our machine. Look, we really do not understand our mind or consciousness very well yet, and the amazing machine of cognition allows us to imagine and predict action with sometimes great precision.

However, there are flaws in our machine, holes and blindspots and we are subject to any number of illusions. But since we get by just fine most of the time, we ignore the illusions and assume that the reality the machine projects is not somehow fundamentally flawed.

So imagine that I have this TOE and that I can predict all actions and all changes of objects, within some uncertainty, without ever using space as a dimension. Would you believe that is possible? If you believe that it is possible, that would show that space is not therefore axiomatic.

If you ask me where an object is when I am in matter time, I run a machine that will spit out the Cartesian location for you from matter time. That is what I mean by my TOE. I can do that.

"We can look out across space, but we can't look out across time, as we only see evidence of prior changes, not even future ones."

Yes, of course. Now you ask me to predict where that object will go? I use my machine to back calculate where the object is in matter time, use matter time to predict that action, and recalculate the new Cartesian location. Sure enough, my machine agrees with your machine.

And what I would say is that we can look out across time to an object, but I need my machine to project that object out across space.

"What if you have two completely independent projections and they happen to encounter one another; would that imply a common space?"

I am not saying that objects do not exist in the universe...they do. Objects do exist and they are separate and they do collide and they do exist in my machine's projection of space as well. But when I do the calculation of two objects colliding in matter time, I will still use my machine to project their positions in space. Space is still very useful for keeping track of objects since that is how our mind works.

It is very interesting to closely examine exactly what the neural signals are that come from our retinas. Our neurons are keyed to sense motion and difference and therefore action and our whole neural machine is geared up for change. For example, you mentioned the yin and yang, also a favorite of mine. Okay, black and white...or any single color has the exact same retinal signature.

In other words, we cannot actually see pure color with our eyes but we imagine that we do. We actually only sense color changes or get other cues for color. For example, if there is white light, we see objects. If it is dark, we do not see objects, and so on.

Correspondingly, we actually do not see any object directly, we infer an object is where it is by its edges and textures and its difference from the background. In other words, our machine is getting shine from the object and we are shining on the object as well. That matter exchange with the object is therefore a bond with the object and that bond is something that we do not necessarily see. Our machine simplifies the relational complexity of sensation quite nicely with a Cartesian projection that only actually exists in our mind.

The object does exist, but just not quite like our machine works. But the machine works well enough for most predictions of action.

Steve,

Join the club. If you don't ruffle their feathers, you will be ignored. Everyone has their own model and will stand by it, because it is their sense of who they are and how their world works.

"Look, we really do not understand our mind or consciousness very well yet, and the amazing machine of cognition allows us to imagine and predict action with sometimes great precision."

"If you ask me where an object is when I am in matter time, I run a machine that will spit out the Cartesian location for you from matter time. That is what I mean by my TOE. I can do that."

Are you sure these are not the same machine?

"Correspondingly, we actually do not see any object directly, we infer an object is where it is by its edges and textures and its difference from the background. In other words, our machine is getting shine from the object and we are shining on the object as well. That matter exchange with the object is therefore a bond with the object and that bond is something that we do not necessarily see. Our machine simplifies the relational complexity of sensation quite nicely with a Cartesian projection that only actually exists in our mind."

Yet what you describe is light bouncing around in space.

Regards,

John M

I think that they need some work on the mechanics of this blog.

Steve,

What I don't believe in is a theory of everything. A theory is a distilled principle and everything isn't everything if its distilled. As Stephen Wolfram said, you would need a computer the size of the universe to compute the universe. The problem I see with making any predictions about the future is that while the laws determining the outcome are necessarily deterministic, the input into that process/the present, cannot be fully known prior to the event, because much information is traveling at the speed of light, so you would need to have information about the information travel to your machine faster than light and if that were possible, then input into the event could also travel faster than light and you still have the problem of gathering input prior to its arrival. Only the occurrence of the event can fully calculate the outcome of that event. Which is not to say predictions are not valid, but only that they remain predictions.

Regards,

John M

"...you would need a computer the size of the universe to compute the universe. "

The term TOE has simply become a colloquialism and semantically, you are correct, one always must be careful when using particular words. Like everything and nothing...or always and never...or black and white for that matter. Is there every anything that is truly black? No.

"...the laws determining the outcome are necessarily deterministic..."

You slipped into a parallel universe with this statement.

"...the input into that process/the present, cannot be fully known prior to the event ...Which is not to say predictions are not valid, but only that they remain predictions."

Now you have come back into this universe. Welcome back.

Predictions are what it is all about. The better we predict the actions of objects, the better we survive. Science is good with predictions of simple objects, but is still limited by the uncertainty of quantum action. Science is not as good at predictions with the chaos of complex objects, like people and weather and galaxies, but that does not mean that science cannot do any predictions. It can and it does. There is no absolute determinism, but things generally do happen pretty much as we predict.

I look for two characteristics in any theory: falsifiability and utility. A theory is based on axioms, which are self-evident statements of belief. However, if there are too many axioms, that theory turns into pure belief. So although the axioms need to be self evident, we also need to be able to falsify each of the axioms by some observation or test.

However, even if a theory is correct, if it ends up so obscure and complex, it may not therefore be that useful for predictions. So it is important to have the mechanics of model useful for those who need to make predictions.

If matter time is right, atomic time gains one second every 64 years, at 0.28 ppb/yr, and matter decays at 0.28 ppb/yr. This perfect complement is the symmetry that drives all force. Since we hold time constant, that means that matter will appear to decay at 0.57 ppb/yr and the international kilogram standard, the IPK, has inexplicably lost about ~0.53+/-0.05 ppb/yr over the last 110 years.

No one has even suggested that this mass loss reveals a new axiom, rather they blame the measurement. The secondary standards, it is believed, have gained mass because of cleaning artifacts and the primary standard has not changed at all. Now a new measurement, the watt balance, will become our mass standard. The watt balance essentially weighs electricity as the energy equivalent mass gained by an object with an electrical current. In a sense, this is like weighing temperature.

The expected result is that this matter energy equivalent will be constant and matter will not decay after all and so all will return to normal in the universe. But it will still take about five to ten years of measurements to get the precision needed for matter time falsification. If matter does end up constant, I will need a new TOE. There are new atom interferometers that people are developing are really cool and it should be possible to get much higher precision from these devices than the watt balance, but the measurement really needs to be done in space at the Lagrange point.

If science does show that matter decays at 0.57 ppb/yr, the simplicity of matter time will become the basis for all force in the universe. However, things will no longer be normal in the matter time universe...

Steve,

"You slipped into a parallel universe with this statement."

It a matter of the definition of the terms. What is past has been determined, so it is that the processes by which this past are generated that are deterministic. The future remains probabilistic, until it occurs and becomes past.

"Since we hold time constant, that means that matter will appear to decay at 0.57 ppb/yr and the international kilogram standard, the IPK, has inexplicably lost about ~0.53+/-0.05 ppb/yr over the last 110 years."

As I keep arguing, it's a convection cycle of collapsing mass and expanding radiation, so it would be natural that any stable unit of mass, that has no source of input, will still lose energy and thus mass.

Einstein originally argued gravity would cause space to collapse to a point and galaxies do pull mass points into a black hole. Hawking described the expansion of the universe as an arrow of time. So I would argue these are essentially opposing arrows of time. One is structure collapsing and the other is energy expanding. Now consider a clock has two components, the hand(s) and face. The hand represents the present, constantly moving around the face, from one unit of time to the next, so it goes from past to future, ie. prior to succeeding units of temporally limited structure. Meanwhile those units are going the other direction, relative the hand/present. They come into being and eventually dissolve, ie. go from being in the future to being in the past.

So mass is the units of structure, that like Einstein's direction of gravitational attraction, coalesce out of the clouds of radiation and cosmic gases, build up complexity, until they fall into those cosmic vortices and their final forms break down and the energy is radiated back out across the universe. So these two directions balance each other, like yin and yang, the form starting in the future and falling into the past, while the constituent energy is constantly building new forms, building them up and then breaking them down, to go onto another, the present moving from past to future.

The IPK is going future to past.

Regards,

John M

It is apparent that you have a lot of energy on this subject...or I should say that you have a lot of matter on this matter. Your intuition is very good and you articulate your ideas very well...you just have to stop believing so much in space and the universe of matter and time will open up to you.

The past is definitely determined, but deterministic is a term that we normally use in reference to the future, not the past. This is just semantics.

"Now consider a clock has two components, the hand(s) and face."

Good. All clocks are made up of a moment of matter in the present and the action of that matter, which is an object of past matter. In fact, this defines the axiom time as the differential of action with matter. Your clock hands are my moment and your clock face is my action.

Do we actually agree? My heart be still...

"Einstein originally argued gravity would cause space to collapse to a point and galaxies do pull mass points into a black hole. Hawking described the expansion of the universe as an arrow of time. So I would argue these are essentially opposing arrows of time. One is structure collapsing and the other is energy expanding."

Okay, but now I have to pull a matter time card out of the deck, because that is the game that we are actually playing even though you do not yet know that. In matter time, the universe is shrinking, not expanding, and that shrinkage does indeed point the arrow of time. Time just points in and not out and so my arrows both point the same way.

Distant galaxy light appears red shifted because the speed of light, fine structure constant, and Planck's constant all vary together over time, at 0.26 ppb/yr for c and alpha and 0.26^2 for h. Since they all vary together, distant galaxies appear red shifted because they are from an earlier eon and not because they are in expansion. In fact, the universe is shrinking at the speed of light...in fact, that is what defines the speed of light and why it necessarily changes over cosmic time.

Since matter time shows all force coming from the decay of matter, there are no longer any singularities like black holes in matter time. Instead, the large matter accretions popularly known as black holes actually are boson stars, which are still not widely accepted but that is a large literature on them anyway. Boson matter is the basic matter of the universe and boson stars are the ultimate destiny of the universe, and this is indeed the yin and yang of the universe.

Your intuition led you to expect that the universe should shrink just like the galaxy shrinks and just like the solar system shrinks and just like we shrink. Since the universe shrinks at the speed of light, in matter time radiation is actually the only matter that is not moving. Light is just a form of the basic suite of bosonic condensates that are the destiny of matter in the universe.

Steve,

It's hard not to take space seriously. We live on this little blue orb, in an extremely vast expanse, in which if all matter and energy were equally distributed, would not be much more than the 2.7k of the background radiation. Given that, it seems easier to take what fills space less seriously than space.

As for time, ask yourself; Does the earth really travel some fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow, or does tomorrow become yesterday because the earth rotates? If you think the second seems the more logical answer, then you do see how time rises from action.

so my arrows both point the same way.

"Your intuition led you to expect that the universe should shrink just like the galaxy shrinks and just like the solar system shrinks and just like we shrink. Since the universe shrinks at the speed of light, in matter time radiation is actually the only matter that is not moving."

I think you lost me there, in terms of efficiency of explanation. To say the sun is not radiating energy/light, of which some passes through my eyes, but that everything is shrinking together doesn't seem a very relatable description. How does the very idea of shrinking make sense, when you have eliminated space? And why do you have a thing against space? To say the time arrows all point to shrinkage doesn't seem very balanced. All yin and no yang. It seems your model starts out as lots of space, with very thin mass and then contracts to the point. I do see this as unbalanced as the opposite, that the universe began as a point and expands.

For me, it's not so much a matter of belief, as efficiency. There is this radiant energy that seems to have attractive and repulsive tendencies, giving it the propensity to contract and expand and does this in an otherwise featureless void and relative to this void, is not very dense. I don't see the efficiency in writing off the void.

Regards,

John M

Steve,

There is this tendency in physics to write of intuition, but that only shows a lack of understanding of intuition. It is our cumulative knowledge and how it manifests as a scalar, rather than linear. Such as what rises to the surface of our perception in a given context, as opposed to a specific chain of circumstance and logic.

Everyone possesses intuition, even physicists and it is all different, because we all have different stores of knowledge.

Part of the problem with the process of accumulating knowledge is that our foundational knowledge is much less than that which we accumulate, yet we tend to subconsciously view that much more limited initial knowledge as more accurate and truer than what comes after, because it is the prism through which all subsequent knowledge is filtered. For example, older religions are venerated for their age, yet their foundations are little more than the filtered imaginings and stories of borderline stone age peoples and the primal insights they chose to remember. So what physicists meant when they first dismissed intuition was a lot of cumulative folk wisdom, but this initial insight from a hundred years ago has, like those religions, grown to encompass any form of logic that doesn't accommodate the particular theories of today's theorists.

Regards,

John M

"Does the earth really travel some fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow, or does tomorrow become yesterday because the earth rotates? If you think the second seems the more logical answer, then you do see how time rises from action."

You are mixing decks of the games up again. Obviously the earth travels through the single dimension of time, but not through space so a fourth dimension has no meaning since time is not space...time is time. You have shifted back into space again.

So for time, I don't know why you skipped today but the earth had a yesterday that we can measure and know. Although GR gravity necessarily acts in space, quantum gravity is simply an exchange of matter in time with a phase. A bound or stable orbit or cycle is just where phase is some multiple of 2pi, and so theta is a pure quantum phase. A matter exchange between objects is equal to the total matter decay in time, i.e., KM = PM for a stable orbit, kinetic matter = potential matter.

Notice that I am using spatial terminology, orbit, but this is colloquial since it is a quantum phase, theta. Notice that all energy is matter and so there is no velocity in space per se, there is just a change in mass.

The action time of an orbit of bound objects is periodic, but that bound object is still evolving in proper time and is still moving in the universe in a hierarchy of orbits with other objects and other action times.

The earth's rotation is an equivalent two body orbit with KM = PM with a one day period, but with a quantum exchange action. So the rotation of earth is now a quantum phase theta that projects into the Cartesian phase if we want to, so its no wonder our mind works so well that way.

We can make this prediction without space and we can project back into space whenever we feel like it. So, did earth travel through time from yesterday to today. Yes, that is certain. Will earth travel through time and matter to tomorrow? It is very likely but not absolutely certain.

Now without time, obviously, you can project time from the action of earth in space instead of in time. The problem is that the quantum exchange force for gravity just does not pretty in space...it is ugly. Look at the complexity of GR, for example. It is really amazing that old Al got that beast to work with the patchwork of 4-space.

In order to get action in space to work, you need to reformulate the quantum action without time and that will require a proper or absolute 3-space along with an action 3-space. Then you will need a set of proper 3x3tensors and action 3x3tensors to handle all of the off diagonal interactions between spatial coordinates.

There will be six dimensions of space, two of time, and a 2D spinor for phase or a ten dimensional reality, with another 12 off diagonal tensor elements. It just does not sound like fun, but it should be possible.

"How does the very idea of shrinking make sense, when you have eliminated space? And why do you have a thing against space?"

Shrinking simply means shrinking in matter, not space. The math works very nicely without space and is unworkable with space, so mother nature simply does not quite work the way that our minds work.

Steve,

" Obviously the earth travels through the single dimension of time,"

Yet where is that dimension physically, since wherever it is manifest, is the present. Duration is simply the state of the present between the particular designations of events. For instance, it might be evening here, but morning of the next day in the far east, yet it is still the same present. It is the events and configurations that vary, not the present. So that 'dimension' of time exists within the changing present.

As for the pure quantization of mass and energy, Eric Reiter posted some interesting experiments in his entry in the Questioning the Foundations contest.

A point I keep making about quantization is that we can only perceive and measure distinctions, differences, etc, but if there were not fundamental underlaying connectivity, not only wouldn't the larger reality not exist, but the measurements wouldn't be possible. So there is that dichotomy of distinctions and connections. It's not all quantum nodes, there is a network tying it all together. Just because we cannot precisely measure that network, in the same way we can reductionistically measure/weigh/judge the nodes, doesn't make it any less fundamental. I suspect they will eventually decide it's not supersymmetric particles balancing out quantum particles, but that essential background network.

"Shrinking simply means shrinking in matter, not space. The math works very nicely without space and is unworkable with space, so mother nature simply does not quite work the way that our minds work."

Given that math is reductionistic, the first thing to go is space, when you are seeking to concentrate matter. Think electronics; They are constantly trying to put ever more circuits in an ever smaller space. Gravity is also just such a concentration of mass in less space. I've argued that since releasing energy from mass creates pressure/expansion, chemical/nuclear, etc, wouldn't the concentration of energy into mass have the opposite effect, a vacuum? Therefore the reason gravity is difficult to isolate is because it a composite effect across the entire spectrum of the various forms of energy forming mass and then ever more concentrated mass.

So is it the nature of reality, or simply the nature of math, that space is so ethereal?

Regards,

John M