Q&A with Paul Davies: What is Time?

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

"Yet where is that dimension (time) physically, since wherever it is manifest, is the present."

The present moment is just one part of time and has no meaning without a past action. That is, we live in a world of objects that are the past and without those objects, there would not be a universe nor a present moment.

"Duration is simply the state of the present between the particular designations of events."

Duration or the present moment is very well defined for each action. What is it? It is matter, a matter moment. All objects are after all integrations of matter over time, i.e., action. So if we know the matter moment and know that that object grew uniformly in time, that is what we call a clock and that is what we call time.

What is the human moment? For our bodies, a moment is the matter equivalent energy of a heartbeat. For our minds, it is the matter equivalent energy of the EEG delta wave, i.e. the heartbeat mode.

"They are constantly trying to put ever more circuits in an ever smaller space."

...and they are also therefore trying to put more and more information as structure into the mass of a silicon chip. If you want, I can tell you the volume, but I don't need volume to say or predict that.

And if you ask where the electron matter is in the silicon, quantum effects are even easier to do without space than are gravity effects since we already have an exchange force for action.

"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."

The reason that gravity is difficult is that it is not renormalizable into an exchange force. In so many words, all that means is that paths in GR are deterministic save for chaos so there is need or even a way to renormalize. Quantum paths for action have infinite possibilities and so we just ignore most of them by renormalization.

When you simply invent a gravity boson, a graviton, its simple presence in space means that it will collapse into itself and form a microscopic black hole due to that pesky singularity at r=0. This is the conundrum of space time and gravity and the crux of Xeno...as long as you can infinitely divide 4-space, there is no room for anything else.

So what matter time does is set space aside and then a gravity exchange particle is actually the same as charge force, just scaled to a folded universe in proper time by the matter size of the universe. Now that is just one action law, quantum, for matter, time, and quantum action.

In principle, you can turn time and space around and do the same thing with gravity in space. Without time, there will be no collapse for the graviton. What I did not make clear before is that these two approaches, one with time and another with space, are logically complementary and therefore not different. Space as an axiom is just as self evident as time as you rightly point out.

By the way, space without time has the same two dimensional logic as time without space. In other words, there would be a proper space that represented the integration of all action in the past and an emergent space that would be a matter particle. Otherwise you run into the Xeno thing again...

Steve,

"we live in a world of objects that are the past"

Yes, but they are not in the past. Only those objects whose physical form has not been dissolved by prior events continue to exist in the present.

"Duration or the present moment is very well defined for each action. What is it? It is matter, a matter moment. All objects are after all integrations of matter over time, i.e., action. So if we know the matter moment and know that that object grew uniformly in time, that is what we call a clock and that is what we call time."

Very much so. As those actions occur, they then fade into the past and new actions occur. It is the physical being of the actions which come into being and fade, that we are measuring, as they coalesce out of integrations and dissolve in separations.

We all have our models to explain the world around us and they are not always the same model, because we all have different needs. For me, I live in a very spatial world and if I were to ignore it, I would get quite disoriented. To go back to my argument against conventional theory, it argues space is collapsed by gravity and intergalactic space is expanding and these balance out in an overall flat space. Which is perfectly alright by me. But then they go and insist the universe as a whole is expanding, because the space between galaxies is growing and eventually the distant galaxies will no longer be visible because their light can no longer reach us. The problem I have with this is that it completely overlooks the relative nature of space put forth in the first part and assumes some form of absolute space in which those other galaxies move away in absolute terms, rather than one in which the growth of intergalactic space is balanced by the contraction of galactic space. Consider that the light of the more distant galaxies that we see, is only that which managed to travel between intervening galaxies and thus mostly through the expanded areas.

Put this in terms of the rubber sheet and a ball description of gravity and place the sheet over water, so that in the areas where the ball is not pushing it down, the water pushes it back up and the overall effect is balanced. So this push back up amounts to Einstein's cosmological constant, balancing the effect of gravity. The light from those distant sources has to travel this 'high ground,' otherwise it falls into the gravity wells. So the light we see is only that light which has been expanded, not the sum total, that has been balanced out.To use a rough analogy, this light has had to walk down the up escalator. The floors are not moving apart, even if it seems so to the light. When light is bent around gravity wells, we say the space is curved, but we don't argue that it actually moves and distorts the source of the light, only the path it has taken. The same applies here. It's not moving the source, only expanding the path its taken. All this is reflective of the fact that what we measure is mass and energy and while mass contracts, energy expands and so the same applies to the space being measured by using them as reference.

So in your world, space may not be as important as time and it can be disregarded, but in my map of reality, space remains foundational and I put time in there with temperature, as an effect of action.

Regards,

John M

""we live in a world of objects that are the past"

Yes, but they are not in the past. Only those objects whose physical form has not been dissolved by prior events continue to exist in the present."

Well, yes they are the past because that is what the past means. The object represents its past at each moment of time.

Remember that you said that time was both the hands of a clock as well as its face. The clock face an object that represents the past while the movement of the hands are the matter of the moment.

"As those actions occur, they then fade into the past and new actions occur."

The action of a grain of sand in an hourglass becomes the integrated sand of the hourglass, which is an object that represents the past for each grain of time. So the grain becomes part of an object that is the past and does not go out of existence. Neither the sand grain alone nor the accumulated sand of the hourglass have meaning independent of each other, but together they define time.

"So in your world, space may not be as important as time and it can be disregarded, but in my map of reality, space remains foundational and I put time in there with temperature, as an effect of action."

I must admit that I also find the intuitive notion of space quite useful and that is because it is the way our minds work. But accepting the limitations of space as an axiom is no more counterintuitive that accepting the very counterintuitive concepts of time and space dilation. On this note, we can then simply agree to disagree...

I have a question for Paul Davies, on illusion time/emergent time. Either approach takes the apparent flow of time as a comparatively superficial effect, which presumably arrives 'after' the deeper physics, in the ordering of the layers that make up the world. It is block time, which comes directly and inevitably from Minkowski spacetime (via the Rietdijk-Putnam argument), that leads to this idea of time as a more superficial effect.

The problem with this is that some physical laws, like simple laws of motion, need time if they are to work. If the underlying structure is the block universe, which is what led many to this idea of time as a superficial effect, then my question is this. What were the laws doing there, implied in the ordering of the slices in the block, and apparently waiting for some more superficial effect to come along later and make them work, by running the slices in a sequence? Because something did run the slices in a sequence, or make them appear to run in a sequence. And if this illusion (or emergent effect) appeared 'later' it was very appropriate in what it happened to do. The laws were merely implied before it arrived, but they were implied in a very specific mathematical way. They were waiting in the block in a 'just add water' sort of way, for something to run them in a sequence. That looks contrived.

If the world is seen as a series of layers, each more superficial than the last, and each emerging from the deeper one underneath it, then it seems some sort of flow of time (however hard to define that is) must come before laws of physics like laws of motion - even though Minkowski spacetime seems to be telling us to put the flow of time after the laws of physics.

Special relativity is of course right, and has been extremely well confirmed by experiment. But spacetime is untested and untestable, and leads to major contradictions of the kind I've mentioned.

Another is that the future already exists in the block universe, but in quantum mechanics it doesn't yet exist, because of the fundamental randomness we find, accepted by the large majority for 80 years. If a given small-scale event is truly random, then what will happen is not decided until a certain point, even if the exact position of this point has been blurred by aspects of QM. That basic randomness still means an unfixed future, which allows us to be shaping what happens, as we seem to be.

A slight error in the spacetime interpretation - and it is only an interpretation - and ALL of these major conceptual contradictions could go. And spacetime was founded on a set of assumptions about time, ie. a set of assumptions about something we don't yet understand. Spacetime creates no problems on the mathematical side, on the contrary, it has simplified many theories. But for those of us who are concerned with the conceptual side of physics, it plays havoc with the conceptual picture. The mathematics is a kind of shorthand for the full conceptual picture, and in spacetime we treat time as very like space. This works fine in the mathematics, but it has arguably failed in conceptual physics, and with the time issues, we have to get to grips with the conceptual side.

That is why a rapidly growing number of us are now questioning spacetime, and block time, including Lee Smolin, George F R Ellis and others. It may be that to move forward we must let go of an untestable, unfalsifiable set of assumptions about time. Any comment from Paul Davies on this, whose work I have respected for many years, would be much appreciated, thank you.

Time is duration of change which run in a timeless quantum vacuum

see our book at NOVA and article attached

https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=48104Attachment #1: 2_Special_theory_of_relativity_postulated_on_homogeneity_of_space_and_time_and_on_relativity_principle.pdf

Time is diration of change which run in a timeless space.

Duration does not run in time, duration is time.Attachment #1: 3_Special_theory_of_relativity_postulated_on_homogeneity_of_space_and_time_and_on_relativity_principle.pdf

Time for sure is not 4th dimension of space. SR can be described in a 3D Euclidean space.Attachment #1: About_a_new_suggested_interpretation_of_special_theory_of.pdf

Jonathan,

We cannot both physically describe and logically understand the same subject matter at the same time. They are two different and mutually exclusive approaches. How something appears and is conceived by us is way different from what things need to exist and operate logically and spontaneously as a universe.

Each time science has asked "why" the procedure has returned a "how". It is an asymptotic curve reaching for something outside its grasp. The conceptual, understanding and metaphysical lies beyond that line.

The question remains. What do YOU want?

Do you want to know the universe enough to be able to DO something with it?

(science, engineering, physics...)

Or, do you want to know what the universe is made of and understand logically why it DOES what it does?

(logic, material methaphysics,...)

An answer is always determined by the question. The proof must be tested within the system and domain holding both the question and the answer.

Marcel,

What will really boil the physics community's noodle is that the laws of general relativity, the physics constants G, h and c appear to have been imprinted upon something that closely resembles "spirit". Energy is stored in a tiny rolled up space-time; but when the laws of general relativity are created, they can only begin from nothingness: which is what happened with the big bang. I would say that the odds of a Creator are very good.

Hi Marcel,

In order to explain things like the origin of the big bang, how the physics constants are sustained, and why the standard model is it's present configuration, I decided to borrow from the paranormal. There are countless reports of activity of ghosts, spirits, grey aliens, psychic phenomena, remote viewing, astral projection, near death experiences, angels, demons and the list goes on. All of these things, including God, require the existence of an invisible substance called "spirit". Wave-functions, quantum fields and Higgs fields are all as ghostly as the ghosts that haunt their victims. Since Michelson-Morley can be discredited by realizing that they were looking for a particulate medium, not a quantum field medium, then really physics can quite easily steal "spirit" from the spiritualists and call it an n-dimensional field of unlimited n. Lots of strange and eerie things can happen in invisible n-dimensional fields, including the creation of the laws of physics and physics constants. By some strange mechanisms, the physics constants, Maxwell's equations, Einstein Equations and other necessary physics laws are imprinted upon spirit. Whether as a planned event by a Creator or just the laws of the universe in action, a clump of spirit became so imprinted by the natural laws of nature that it exploded and and gave birth to our universe.

The multiverse that gave birth to our reality can be as mysterious and inexplicable as it wishes.

Jason Wolfe

Marcel,

If you think that an underlying spirit or aether is unfathomable, then take a look at the wave-function solution to the hydrogen atom.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hydrogen_Density_Plots.png

Truthfully, doesn't it look fuzzy, aetheric? Now imagine that the quantum vacuum also look the same way.

When ghosts are proven to exist, the intellectual madness of the scientific community will be revealed. How can you all fail to see that the building blocks of reality are particles and fields. If lifeforms can be made of particles, then why can't they be made of quantum fields. Quantum field theory suggests that lifeforms made of quantum fields should exist.

Referencing Quantum Entangled Singularities

QESdunn

Time is the numbers of evolving quantum causality step events relative to Space as systems of non-evolving systems of quantum causality step events; all moderated by a space/time singularity. As a crude model, similar to a crystal growing in a causal media where impurities moderate crystal growth.

Non-evolving steps of quantum causality moderated by a causally connected relativistic singularity in relation to non-evolving steps of quantum causality forming Space/Time relationships used throughout most expressions of energy, power, force, momentum ... physics.

The problem with using the relative perspective (observable physics) is that one cannot see the underlying non-relativistic foundations. Locking perspective in observable physics hides the foundation of causal relationships.

The Big Bang is proposed to represent a cycling through a shift in alternate dimensional states; the shifting of physics constants (relativistic singularities) as quantum causality systems of conjoined non-evolving connected systems evolve toward the next system of relativistic physics constant shifts.

In a causal system Entropy is an indicator of changing from one system toward another system. From the creation of the "properties of causality" of our physics constants toward a shift in the "properties of causality" of those same physics constants. This includes one or more physics constants that may not be dominant in our systems of relativity (everything observable).

So relativity as systems of relative causality evolve with reference to non-evolving connected systems toward another Big Bang.

Big Bangs are just "Relativistic" (observable) perspectives within smooth and continuous systems of non-relativistic quantum causality as Relativistic perspectives (observable physics) cycles from one alternate dimensional space to the next.

Foundation of mathematics related to relativistic physics:

Axiom of Choice extended to include Relativity

http://vixra.org/pdf/1402.0041v1.pdf

Fatalism and Non-Deterministic Cosmology Concurrently Existing

http://jamesbdunn2.blogspot.com/2014/05/fatalism-non-deterministic-physics.html

Proposal for creating the economic systems to build the tools for manipulating space/time

http://vixra.org/pdf/1205.0021v1.pdf

Based on the ability to create tools to manipulate space/time relationships (warping space, singularity power production, remote manipulation, teleportation, weapons to kill anyone anywhere in the universe, weapons to annihilate civilizations ...), who is going to control who has access to these tools?

Top/Down method to eliminate all corruption and self-destructive tendencies before tools to manipulate space/time are produced:

Elected doctors of science and philosophy developing & managing equilateral ethical use of NSA collected data

http://eliminate-all-corruption.pbworks.com

Bottom/Up method to eliminate all corruption and self-destructive tendencies before tools to manipulate space/time are produced:

Teaching Common Sense

http://www.ua-kits.com

Common Sense = Self-Esteem (social group skills) Logic Predicting Consequences

CORRUPTION = UNETHICAL/ILLEGAL ALLOCATION OF RESOURCES AND/OR OPPORTUNITIES

END TREASON IN THE UNITED STATES

TREASON = ANY REPRESENTATIVE OF THE UNITED STATES ACTING WITH INTENTION TO WEAKEN NATIONAL SECURITY FOR THE PURPOSE OF PROMOTING UNETHICAL/ILLEGAL ALLOCATION OF NATIONAL RESOURCES AND/OR OPPORTUNITIES

RACKETEERING = ANY COALITION OF TWO OR MORE PERSONS AND/OR CORPORATIONS ACTING WITH INTENTION TO PROMOTE UNETHICAL/ILLEGAL ALLOCATION OF RESOURCES AND/OR OPPORTUNITIES

We have motion in our timeless Universe.

Nobel Laureate David Gross in an interview "What is in the space-time" talking about the need to build "general framework structure". In my essay "The Absolute Generating Structure" I gave an extended version of the ontological conception "general framework structure", substantiation of structure and the nature of space. In my essay «Return of Logos: Ontological Memory-Information-Time» I defined the nature of "informtion" and "time" as a multivalent phenomena of the Ontological (structural, cosmic) memory substantiating the essential unity of the world on the "horizontal" and "vertical". To "grasp" the nature of time is necessary to return to dialectics and ontology "coincidence of opposites" -the absolute (unconditioned) states of matter and the generation of new structures.

For English speakers, the David Gross interview is also here

Hello Akinbo! Thanks for the link! Conceptual crisis, understanding crisis is available. Deepening in the ontologic beginnings of the Universum is necessary. Key concept in both interviews - "structure". It is necessary on the basis of a method of ontologic construction to "grab" primordial structure of the Universum. Here it is necessary to go on the way of ontologic unification of a matter on all levels of the Universum as whole. It is necessary to "grab" the nature of all forces of the Universum, the nature of fundamental physical constants. Therefore it is necessary to "dig" more deeply in philosophical ontology, in dialectics of Nature. Today actual as never before becomes the philosophic legacy of A. Einstein: "At the present time, physicist has to deal with philosophic problems to a much greater extent than physicists of the previous generations" and the philosophic legacy of J. Wheeler "Philosophy is too important to be left to the philosophers".

Philosophical ontologic revolution in the physics base is necessary. When physicists will construct "the general framework structure" Universum, then the nature of time, forces, fundamental constants, information will be clear. Here the first assistant - "language of geometrical representations", instead of formulas.

Can you tell me why DB Larson's Reciprocal Sytem theory of time (having 3 dimensions) is wrong?