Explaining Time by John Brodix Merryman

amrit,

I wouldn't say time is a mental construct, any more than I'd say temperature is a mental construct. Actually I'd say time and temperature, as linear projection of activity and scalar averaging of activity, are definitive to the process of consciousness. That we function as linearly mobile organisms makes time seem more fundamental to us, but if we considered the situation of life forms which are not memory intensive, such as planets, insects, etc, temperature, the fluctuation of energy in space would seem more fundamental than the projection of series of events. In fact, E.O. Wilson described insect brains as essentially a thermostat.

John, I do not know if you have ever studied entropy but if you came up with this idea on your own I would be stunned. Your descriptions are unique, at times a little confusing, and that indicates you have not studied the subject in depth, simply amazing. Our back and forth discussions have helped me understand some of the laymen descriptions you use to describe physics. I believe our ideas are close and the overall philosophy is identical. I started studying physics with a passion because I wanted to prove a layman idea similar to yours. I started to drop the laymen descriptions as I learned the quantitative physics descriptions. In fact, when I was 17 I wrote a paper for my high school physics class that speculated on absolute zero and time. Thermodynamics says absolute zero will never be reached if it was time would not make sense. I call it change now, but back then I called it motion. This is why I'm interested in low temperature physics like Bose-Einstein condensates. I'll save you the years of trouble I had searching for the right physics ideas and fundamental mathematics.

Our overall idea is the properties of entropy:

Entropy increases: S = Kln(omega) omega never decreases for the universe

Microstates are small scale events: n!

Macrostates are large scale effects caused by smaller scale events: m = n+1

Omega is the microstates relation to the macrostate called the multiplicity: C(n,m)

1) Try to reword this sentence and still capture the big idea:

"If two atoms collide, it creates an event in time. While the atoms proceed

through this event and on to others, the event goes the other way."

The atoms are too large and do not necessarily need to collide for there to be an event in time. I know you were reaching for a small type of matter but I think you need to dig much deeper. The increasing entropy of an ideal gas depends on the motion of atoms but if two atoms do not collide there is still time. For instance, NIST uses atomic clocks that measure the atom's vibration. An electron in an excited state can "jump" to a lower atomic orbital and when it does this it emits a photon. I would describe emitting a photon as an event too as well as some other physical phenomena.

2) You broadly mention entropy in the following sentence:

"Just as temperature is a consequence of energy and when temperature changes, it is because energy is dissipated to, or consolidated from other areas."

An increase in entropy changes energy from a useful form that could do work to a useless form that can not be recaptured. I have always liked a simple analogy that you may find interesting:

Money = Energy

Both are conserved

Happiness = Entropy

The key idea is increasing the total amount of happiness/entropy.

Generosity = Temperature

How willing someone/higher temperature matter is willing to dissipate money/energy to increase the happiness/entropy of the less fortunate/low temperature matter.

3) "This relationship between the matter/energy moving forward in time, as the events created move back in time applies to all scales."

The sentence describes the importance of entropy from the ideal gas to black holes because it applies at all scales. The really hard part is showing it is identical to the wavefunction's properties.

4) "The only absolute temperature is the cessation of all motion and the same would apply to time."

This says absolute zero can never be reached and I have always wondered if there was a connection between temperature and time. Einstein's time dilation comes from relative motion. So would a hot object (relative faster motion) experience time at a different rate than the cold object (relative slower motion)? I think so and I believe there is a deep connection between time and temperature because time and temperature are related to entropy. To prove or disprove it would be a fun and important exercise.

5) "If energy is perfectly conserved, there is no time function for energy, because it simply is"... "temperature is a consequence of energy and when temperature changes, it is because energy is dissipated to, or consolidated from other areas."

I agree, the properties of time = the properties of entropy.

6) "when one potential direction of events prevails, others are reduced or dissipated, so the energy consolidates to the events that happen, not alternatives."

You understand that the many worlds interpretation is flawed.

7) "The energy doesn't collapse, but the information does, as it goes from future potential to past circumstance."

The wavefunction represents all the probability (future potential) information in quantum mechanics. A collapse, an increase in entropy, results in certain outcomes (future potential to past circumstance).

8) "the medium against which any point is being judged is the overall context, which once created, is displaced by the next, as all these individual points move around, so the events go from future potential to past circumstance."

The microstates are the points being judged and the macrostates are the medium represented by probability space. The multiplicity, the number of microstates in a macrostate, gives the probability of obtaining that macrostate (the overall context). The increasing multiplicity causes the wavefunction to collapse and the collapse is the arrow of time.

Good Job,

B^2

Brian,

Thanks for the conceptual support. You are right that I'm not speaking the language required to be taken seriously, but than if I'd followed all the rules, I'd be standing out on the same precipice, staring into the void and wondering what the next step is, like everyone else. It's a problem with all institutional thought, in that the further up the ladder you are, the more restricted by and dependent on that ladder you are.

I really do have a problem with the concept of entropy. It leaves the very large question of where the initial low entropy state came from. I think there is a cyclical pattern which our current reductionist proof driven methods cannot distill. The idea which first led me to question the current model is that gravity causes our measure of space to contract. In fact, Einstein thought gravity would cause the entire universe to collapse to a point and added the Cosmological Constant to keep the equations stable. Now our measures of space, according to redshift of distant galaxies, show that space between gravity wells is expanding. These two effects seem only to be considered as separate, yet I think they are two sides of a larger cycle of expanding energy and collapsing mass. I've covered this in other discussions and not really wanting to get off topic I won't go into detail, at least on Christmas, but it is the basis for my observation about time having two directions, of activity/energy going past events to future ones, while the events/information go future to past. Essentially this cycle of collapsing mass, expanding energy and the two directions of time are both aspects of the same process. Mass is the structural form/information which starts as future potential, condenses out of the energy/activity, grows as long as it consumes energy, then dissipates as it radiates/loses the energy and then is in the past. Energy, on the other hand, is constantly creating new forms, just as the hands of the clock move on to new units of time, causing them to expand and grow, until they can't absorb anymore energy and start to break down as the energy continues to expand by radiating away from these older forms, to be absorbed into new forms.

So if you have followed my thinking so far, this is where I think entropy is only limited to closed forms which are not absorbing more energy and losing what they have. Like Einstein's collapsing space, it only sees one side of the process.

[cross-posted from http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/387]

Hi John,

Thanks for your clarifications, and I think I've got the jist of your theory and I tend to agree. The many-worlds solutions violate one of the basic premises of science: that there is "a" reality to investigate.

It seems like a good idea to point out that there really is no evidence to support the existence of past as a traversable, extant dimension... I appreciate that you have done so.

Damn! I am going away for a few days and went to vote, but discovered I must have erased the code email in a past house cleaning.

At least it saves me having to pick out only three.

Back the second, or there about.