Why we know a lot of the past but little from the future by Luca Valeri Zimmermann

Luca,

I first submitted this concept to the first FQXI contest, in 2008, The Nature of Time. Much of my subsequent thinking on the topic has been formed by arguing with people, mostly on FQXI forums, usually Tom Ray, who disagreed with the premise. So while I don't think I'm wrong, I am certainly willing to consider where I could be mistaken.

What I don't like is having the idea ignored, because it would seriously alter much in current physics and more importantly, give us a better understanding of the world in which we live.

I would add that Julian Barbour won that contest with an essay which essentially argued the only universal measure is a composite of all actions. As he put it, the path of least action between different configuration states of the universe.

Regards,

John

Hi Luca,

I'm a little tired so I'm going to have to re-read your essay later.

One of the problems with present day physics is that space/time is not separable in mathematics representation. Space/time is inherent to the variables used.

Consider the differences in Energy and Momentum, not physically, but in terms of representation. Notice the recurring nature? What other processes have a recurring nature, virtually everything. A good example is crystal growth in the presence of an impurity.

My attempt at relating the recurring nature of physics to mathematics is found at:

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

Probability lumps together and hides causality. This is where space/time is thought to be separable, both in representation and manipulation.

Luca,

Regarding the space between objects.

In an environment of relativity, empty space does not exist. Nowhere in our universe will you find empty space. Our observations are based in causal connectedness, we cannot directly observe anything outside of our system of relativity. The manifestation of empty space seems to be related to weak causal connectedness to space, time, or both. Still connected, but weakly.

Consider the space between subatomic particles, there is none. Subatomic particles overlap.

How is this possible? Observable artifacts are systems of space/time. But every observable artifact is connected to every other observable artifact in the universe; by what?

That is the purpose of "Axiom of Choice extended to include Relativity". This potentially provides a state space in which set theory can be used to develop experiments that can treat space and time as independent variables instead of mutually dependent variables.

Dear Mr. Zimmermann,

I thought that your essay was very well written and I do hope that it does well in the competition.

You were exceptionally sagacious in wondering if there was another explanation of the workings of the real Universe other than physics.

INERT LIGHT THEORY

Based on my observation, I have concluded that all of the stars, all of the planets, all of the asteroids, all of the comets, all of the meteors, all of the specks of astral dust and all real things have one and only one thing in common. Each real thing has a material surface and an attached material sub-surface. A surface can be interior or exterior. All material surfaces must travel at a constant speed. All material sub-surfaces must travel at an inconsistent speed that has to be less than the constant speed the surface travels at. While a surface can travel in any direction, a sub-surface can only travel either inwardly or outwardly. A sub-surface can expand or contract. Surfaces and sub-surfaces can be exchanged by the application of natural or fabricated force. The surfaces of the sub-sub-microscopic can never be altered. This is why matter cannot be destroyed. This is why anti-matter can never be created. It would be physically impossible for light to move as it does not have a surface or a sub-surface. Although scientists insist that light can be absorbed, or reflected, or refracted, this is additional proof that light cannot have a surface. It would be physically impossible for a surface to absorb another surface, or reflect another surface, or refract another surface.

Abstract theory cannot ever have unification because it is perfect.. Only reality is unified because there is only one unique reality.

Light is the only stationary substance in the real Universe. The proof of this is easy to establish. When one looks at an active electrical light, one must notice that all of the light remains inside of the bulb. What does move from the bulb is some form of radiant. The radiant must move at a rate of speed that is less than the "speed" of light, however, when the radiant strikes a surface it achieves the "speed" of light because all surfaces can only travel at the constant "speed" of light. When a light radiant strikes a surface, the radiant resumes being a light, albeit of a lesser magnitude. While it is true that searchlights, spotlights and car headlights seem to cast a beam of light, this might be because the beams strike naturally formed mingled sub-sub and sub-atomic particles prevalent in the atmosphere that collectively, actually form a surface.

In the Thomas Young Double Slit Experiment, it was not direct sunlight that passed through the slits. Light from the sun is stationary and it cannot move because light does not have a surface. Radiants emitted from the sun went through the slits and behaved like wave radiants.

Einstein was completely wrong. His abstract theory about how abstract observers "see" abstract events differently is wrong. This is what every real observer sees when they look at a real light. They see that all of the light remains near the source. The reason for that is because light does not have a surface, therefore it cannot move. This happens to real observers whether they are looking at real fabricated lights such as neon, incandescent or LED. This also happens when real observers observe real natural light such as from the real sun or reflected from the real moon, or from a real lightning bolt, or from a real fire, a real candle, or light from out of a real lightning bug's bottom.

Regards,

Joe Fisher

Luca,

Thank you for the essay. You are a good writer (there are many poor writers out there). I think there was an "m" that I could not figure out where it belonged.

I do need to re-read your essay. Please tell me how far off I am in my understanding. You have an interaction at a fundamental level in Physics which you say must exist and you indicate God might exist from that interaction. There are many interactions in Physics, I don't see how an interaction in spin states is more fundamental than gravity, as an example. I am trying to understand how this interaction relates to anything else. I will re-read your essay tomorrow with fresh eyes.

Hope you do well,

Jeff

Dear Luca,

I read your essay with great interest. I fully agree with your conclusion:

«Given the uniqueness of each human being and of humanity also moral categories come into play. Something completely out of the scope of physics. We have to take responsibility for our future. How to steer the future of humanity? Use science in the best way possible but know its limitation in describing what is really out there.»

Physics experiencing a "crisis of interpretation and representation" (T. Romanovskaya), "crisis understanding", deep methodological crisis that was well said Carlo Rovelli article SCIENCE IS NOT ABOUT CERTAINTY: A PHILOSOPHY OF PHYSICS:

«This is a standard idea of how science works, which implies that science is about empirical content, the true interesting relevant content of science is its empirical content. Since theories change, the empirical content is the solid part of what science is. Now, there's something disturbing, for me as a theoretical scientist, in all this. I feel that something is missing. Something of the story is missing. I've been asking to myself what is this thing missing? I'm not sure I have the answer, but I want to present some ideas on something else which science is.

This is particularly relevant today in science, and particularly in physics, because if I'm allowed to be polemical, in my field, in fundamental theoretical physics, it is 30 years that we fail. There hasn't been a major success in theoretical physics in the last few decades, after the standard model, somehow. Of course there are ideas. These ideas might turn out to be right. Loop quantum gravity might turn out to be right, or not. String theory might turn out to be right, or not. But we don't know, and for the moment, nature has not said yes in any sense.

I suspect that this might be in part because of the wrong ideas we have about science, and because methodologically we are doing something wrong, at least in theoretical physics, and perhaps also in other sciences.»

In your essay key concepts "structure" and "state". Here it is necessary to add a third concept, a single for "lLfeWorld" (E.Husserl) and the world of physics - the concept of "meaning." In Heidegger, "the meaning is in the direction of what ...". that is

meaning its deep essence - "vector" (in Latin - "carrier"). To understand ("grab") the primordial structure of being and then "grab" the essence and nature of the information and time necessary to build (construct) absolute (unconditional) generating structure (David Gross: " general framework structure"), the same for all levels of whole being of the Universe . Then we get a unified picture of the world as physicists. and for lyrical, meaningful "LifeWorld." Unified picture of the world gives hope to mankind more reliable steer the Future.

I invite you to my forum and my essay FQXi Essay 2012-2013.

I wish you good luck!

All the Best,

Vladimir

Dear Luca,

Rating system works and I appreciate your essay.

Thank FQXi that brings together people for "brainstorming" on very important topics of modern Humanity and modern Science!

It would be interesting if it was still a topic of "Models of the Universe: modern ideas" to gather here on the portal FQXi, with all models of the Universe and discuss them ...

High regard,

Vladimir

Luca,

"this time structure is realized as informational relations in the physical world in order to give us that the impression of the time structure we experience."

Since physics currently tends to think of everything as information, then this structure becomes paramount, while the energy creating these relations is dismissed, leaving theorists with this notion of blocktime as physically real.

It is similar to the notion that epicycles proved there were giant cosmic gearwheels powering the motions of the planets and stars. What was missed was that the earth is in motion as well. What is missed now is this process of creating and dissolving events makes them go from future to past, not the present moving from past to future.

Regards,

John

Yes, this is the key issue -- that "the definition of the object and its interaction with other objects is highly connected."

As to the a priori -- Kant was the first to ask this new kind of question. Instead of just asking about "what is the case," as science always does, he also asked "how does this become possible? What does it take to make something like this work?"

Kant was of course thinking about the structure of our subjective experience. My concern, and perhaps also yours, is rather with the structure of the physics that makes anything like "experience" possible, whether for a human being or a measuring apparatus.

Kant took over Newton's concept of a world governed by immutable laws, and tried to derive those laws from the preconditions of experience, which he also imagined to be absolute and immutable. Then Hegel envisioned a kind of evolution of these preconditions, through many stages, but still following an underlying absolute logic. Darwin's version of evolution is more purely historical -- anything might happen, but there is an a posteriori selection for the kinds of structures that work... to keep the species reproducing and evolving.

So, as you wrote in your essay, "in evolution we cannot know how mankind will evolve but we can retrodict how the species must have been."

The advantage of an evolutionary schema is that it allows for many essentially different kinds of structures to emerge, each setting up new "preconditions" that allow for the emergence of other new structures. And to me, that fact that physics has so many very different kinds of basic laws and principles suggests this kind of schema.

But maybe the most important thing is just that we're able to ask this sort of question -- given a particular kind of system, what does it take to make such a thing possible? I wonder if you might have had something like that in mind when you wrote above, "I'm not sure if it is so different," the a priori and evolutionary approaches.

Thanks -- Conrad

Luca,

I tend to view it more bottom up. That energy/action is what manifests and animates information.

Since science is very measurement/observation oriented, it necessarily 'sees' this information as what can be recorded and analyzed, while energy is much more nebulous and hard to quantify. That is why I think the resulting models are so hard to comprehend. Consider that even a moving car does not have an exact location, or it would not be moving. The problem is that energy is inherently dynamic, while information is necessarily static and it is much harder to observe, measure, quantify, qualify, etc. something which is dynamic, than it is something that is static. So there becomes this process of trying to chop reality up into smaller and smaller units, in order to measure them as static units. Now the result, with all its patches, from dark energy, to multiverses, is reaching a point of reductio ad absurdum.

With time, not only do these events coalesce out of energy and its information arriving at the moments the event occurs, but then this energy moves on to other events and so very quickly, even much of the past is unknowable to any degree of detail. It is as though reality were a tapestry being woven from strands being pulled from what had already been woven.

We are that elemental sense of awareness, looking out through this constantly changing kaleidoscope and we are each different lenses of it, all seeing slightly different and changing patterns, as a form of swarm intelligence.

Regards,

John