The Fundamental Nature of Time by Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Richard J Benish,

As you note elsewhere, we both have high regard for Tom Phipps' contributions to physics, despite certain disagreements with his approach. You further point out something I believe often goes unnoticed:

"...understanding a theory about gravity (i.e. GR) is often confused for understanding the physical phenomenon of gravity itself."

As you say with reference to "matter tells space time how to curve, and space-time tells matter how to move", no academic physicist bothers to point out that we have no idea how these orders are carried out. You extend this line of criteria to "quantum gravity", and to how "gravitons" work, in that they make no physical sense. Just part of quantum field theorists attempt to force the universe into a bookkeeping scheme.

With respect to your comments above, your first paragraphs effectively summarize the situation. I agree that one-way measurements are hard, perhaps impossible, hence the average back-and-fourth measurements predominate. I have designed an experiment that should be capable of measuring the velocity of the local frame from within the context of the local frame with no outside information. This should establish whether my approach is valid or invalid.

The experiment you discuss has never been done, yet, like other 'gedanken' experiments, it is typically accepted as reality. It's not quite clear to me why achievable experiments that question the status quo are not performed. I hope both of our experiments will be performed.

You then discuss maximum geodesics and accelerometers. My own perspective is that "curved space-time" outside matter is equivalent to energy density distributions in flat space. As you probably know, Weinberg, Feynman, and others have shown that iterated flat space approaches lead to Einstein's field equations in "curved space" so my inclination is to reject "curved space-time" (incapable of dealing with "density" or with "self-interaction energy") and this bias extends to rejecting higher dimensional theories of physics. You identify the motion as not through space, but of space, and view this as curvature in (4+1)D. My perspective on the gravito-magnetic ('C') field is analogous to electro-magnetic circulation, i.e., circulation of the field with characteristic angular momentum. Circa 2006 Martin Tajmar used accelerometers to measure gravito-magnetic field circulation. I reject higher dimensions of space, from 4 to 11, however it might be possible to interpret circulation in space as a fourth dimension. This is more a mathematical representation, like the Minkowski representation, than a true description of the physics. Clearly n-dimensional representations are of utility in physics. Having read your essay several times I'm still not exactly clear on how your (4+1)D model is to be interpreted. My 3D mind, operating in time, works well with n-dimensional math, but does not grasp spatial models greater than 3D.

As for the accelerometer questions (ignoring gravito-magnetic issues) it is probably not purple-winged horsies, but the gravity gradient dG/dt that imparts momentum and induces local gravito-magnetic circulation. How this registers or not on an accelerometer is not clear to me, having not studied accelerometers in ages. The equivalence principle that falling 'cancels' gravity, does not prevent the accumulation of kinetic energy.

In summary, I do not intuitively grasp how a gravitation field 'pulls' and I don't think 'gravitions' is the answer, nor do I accept 'curved space' explains anything physical. 'Pushing' seems to bring with it another set of problems, and might work for a universe with only one central body, but I can't envision a many-body dynamics in such a case. Gravity to me is the great mystery, acceptance of which seems to unlock other doors big time. Neither gravitons, curved space-time, 'dynamic space' nor (4+1)D do it for me, yet I feel the field as I just sit here typing. It's real, and when I accept the reality, and play with the equations, lots of the universe falls out. I know this doesn't answer your questions, but it's a mystery to me.

I appreciate your many comments. If we ever meet, let's drink to Tom Phipps.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Gary,

Not sure I understand the question. Since energy = work = force x distance, the distance the earth moves, for the reaction force, will be much less than 6 inches. When you reach the height, and fall back, presumably the earth is falling back to you. Don't try to measure it.

I live on the coast, and to get to Silicon Valley I cross a reservoir/lake which is on a fault line. On my side the ground is moving north, on the other side of the lake the ground is moving south (if one believes plate tectonics). I never experience a jolt, and I've never seen them repair the bridge. Some things we almost have to take on faith?

Best regards, Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Gary,

You're correct of course that if you move 6 inches away from Earth, the earth is now 6 inches away from you. But the movement is measured from the ground you stand on. You move 6 inches away from the initial ground surface, while the earth moves an infinitesimal distance away from the initial origin. Since initially there was zero linear momentum in the system, the momentum of you moving up is theoretically canceled by the momentum of the Earth moving away from you. Since momentum is mass times velocity, the velocity of the Earth moving away is infinitesimally small, which means it will not have moved very far by the time you reach 6 inches (ignoring gravity). This is essentially in the frame of the earth. Special relativity is not concerned with this, only with your velocity relative to the Earth (and the speed of light c, relative to each of your inertial frames).

The classical relativistic system in which you are the rest frame and the Earth is moving away from you, or the Earth is the rest frame and you are moving away from Earth is not a very useful formalism here; in the 'space-time' perspective the energy is ignored. In theory, from the Earth's rest frame perspective, your clock will run slower, whereas if you are the rest frame, a clock on the Earth will run slower. Similarly, in the special relativistic formulation where you are one inertial frame and the earth is the other inertial frame then the speed of light with respect to you is c, where your velocity is the equal zero. At the same time when the Earth is viewed as the rest frame then the speed of light with respect to the Earth is c and the velocity of the Earth is considered equal to zero. This makes about as much sense as Einstein's railway based gedanken experiments.

In special relativity the energy that got you moving or got the Earth moving is not really the issue. What is at issue is your velocity and the speed of light. If you are at rest it is the velocity of the Earth and the speed of light that is the issue. The relative energies (and gravity) are ignored. Particle physics treats relativistic energies in terms of the Lorentz transformation, but doesn't treat where that energy came from -- for example how long one had to accelerate a particle in a collider to reach that energy. Similarly, as I interpret what you're asking, if you wish to say that you are at rest and the Earth is moving away from you at a certain velocity, the energy required to move the Earth away from you is not part of the problem. Special relativity assumes that one frame is at rest and the other is moving. It does not ask what it took to get the other frame moving. It's assumed moving when one formulates the problem.

What my essay focuses on is 'time dilation' and I claim that you and the Earth share one universal time. In this case your atomic clock will run 'slower' than the clock in the rest frame of the Earth, but that is an energy-time effect, not a space-time effect. In special relativity the view is symmetric however in reality, for example in the GPS system, the symmetry is not found. The clock on earth is always the fastest clock. This is because you were initially at rest and then your energy changed, in such a way that your atomic clock measures a different frequency, or energy, which special relativity falsely interprets as measuring your 'time dimension'.

That's probably enough answer for a comment. Is this more what you had in mind?

Best regards,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Flavio,

Thank you for reading my essay and commenting. Your invited me to read your essay and compare and contrast. It's difficult for me to summarize in a few words. My last essay, The Nature of Mind, offers nine pages that address the issue of intuition, which you appear down on. You seem to lump determinism and absolute simultaneity, local realism and conservation laws into the same category of 'prejudice'. My current essay argues for absolute simultaneity, and I elsewhere argue for local realism, while I have a more nuanced view of determinism, and I have argued against conservation as a consequence of symmetry, as all symmetries I am aware of are approximate.

I recently watched a YouTube discussion between Jordan Peterson and Camille Paglia, a goodly portion of which dealt with Derrida, Foucault, and other deconstructionists and radical relativists. For a number of reasons I feel this nonsense is beginning to infect physics, probably because physics is chaotic in the extreme, based (in my opinion) on fundamental false assumptions and prejudices that have endured for about a century, both in relativity and QM.

Once one discards intuition, one is left with 'word hash', combining words/equations in 'narratives' [see Gibbs] and having no idea how to discriminate reality from story. My current essay focuses on one non-intuitive narrative, while previous essays address other such instances. As you spend quite a bit of time on Bell I will address Bell.

You refer to Bell's theorem as "momentous no-go theorem" and spend a couple of pages on his logic. If you look at his first paper, his first equation determines the outcome: A = +/-1, B = +/-1, where A and B are measurements on Stern-Gerlach. This is based on the (prejudiced) assumption of quantum qubits. You clearly state that QM provides only probabilistic predictions. Many-body experiments on spin yield qubit outcomes, as should be expected. Stern-Gerlach does not yield qubit outcomes but smeared results that match 3D spin dynamics in an inhomogeneous field. However Pauli's mathematical projection of qubit mechanics: O|+> = +|+>, O|-> = -|-> is Bell's prejudiced assumption of reality. In other words Bell claims to look for a classical (local variable) description of Stern-Gerlach, but then constrains the problem to quantum results based on the mathematical projection of Pauli, not on the empirical results of Stern-Gerlach.

Feynman later put the final nail in this coffin by assuming that his favorite two-slit photon experiment could be carried over directly to a two-slit spin analog (the SG experiment). Of course the same equations apply, because he's making the same mathematical projection, but the actual physics of the photon in two-slits is vastly different from the physics of atoms in a homogeneous magnetic field, and Feynman's extended SG model has never been tested.

Since Feynman and Bell's math and logic have been accepted as gospel, local realism has been excluded from physics. A no-go theorem based on atoms in a magnetic field, constrained to never-tested single-qubit spin results, is then "proved" by photon-based experiments which actually do produce two-state results: on/off detections.

I repeat - the entire industry is based on the erroneous assumption that the results of the Stern-Gerlach atomic experiments are +1 and -1 deflections, "tested" by photonic experiments that use +1 and 0 detections. The atomic data produced by Stern-Gerlach clearly conflicts with Bell's initial assumption, but instead of trying sophisticated tests of Stern-Gerlach using modern technology the whole entanglement industry is based on 1922 experiments that clearly do not yield +1 and -1 results. The confusion of 1920s quantum mechanics is locked in. Here is your fundamental 'prejudice'.

My suggestion is if one wishes to 'deconstruct' physics, look for the basic assumptions that violate intuition and that lead to nonsense. Of course that is dangerous for those toiling in the establishment, so generalizations are preferred.

This is how I would contrast your approach with my approach.

Good luck in the contest and in your careers.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Peter,

Special relativity means different things to different people (I know this from a year of discussions). In your opinion light is to define a 'preferred' reference frame. I cannot believe this makes sense in reality, and as I point out, the nonsense flows from space-time symmetry [i.e., light as 'preferred' frame] and vanishes with energy-time asymmetry.

You're also of the opinion that one needs to understand quantum gravity to appreciate your point. You claim to understand quantum gravity; I have an understanding that I'm sure differs from yours.

For many I talked with last year, the first statement that they disagree with tends to shut them down, rather than try to understand how their belief may be reinterpreted. Although quantum mechanics has probably a dozen interpretations, almost all of which yield the same calculations, there is surprising resistance to an interpretation of special relativity that makes sense, but differs from the received wisdom. I'm disappointed that you "didn't dig into the remainder of the paper" but with 200 essays, it's hard to study them all.

I'm fairly knowledgeable about GA and I do not see an E8-type assignment of GA product terms to the standard model as meaningful, so we do agree on the significance of GA, but not on all physics. On your thread you were happy to hear about Arthur's "Understanding geometric algebra for electromagnetic theory". I suggest after you read this book you may wish to reread my essay.

Best regards,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Avtar,

I hope you will read my essay again, as I do not believe you have understood its potential significance for your work. You say your photon model depends on special relativity, as it matches the observed universe expansion data. But that is not based on the relativity of simultaneity as you imply. Cosmic microwave background on which all cosmology models are based is essentially Machian, and time is considered absolute with respect to this background. So contradicting "the relativity of simultaneity" does not seem relevant, as it is not involved in cosmological 'universe expansion' models. My impression is that you reached this point and decided not to go further. This is unfortunate, as Hertz's extension of Maxwell's equations address the problem you address, but as "disturbances in the ether", with implied local energy density. Moreover, the recent observation of colliding neutron stars has demonstrated that gravitational disturbances propagate at the same speed as electromagnetic disturbances in the field. There is no "acceleration time" involved!

This Hertzian extension of Maxwell's theory envisions energy flow in a body, while Maxwell/Einstein envisions energy flow between systems. It seems de facto true that cosmology 'universe expansion' observations concern energy flows within the cosmological frame, not simultaneous flows between frames. (When one frame is the universe, what is the other frame?)

The problem here for your model, is that there is no acceleration. As soon as a disturbance occurs in the field, it immediately propagates at the speed of sound (the generic term for perfect fluid models) - no acceleration.

The significance for you is that this lack of acceleration required to reach speed c implies that light never has value v < c. Of course you refer to recent experiments in which light impinges on a semiconductor material and is absorbed, whence it photons become 'excitons'. In my opinion, such interactions are phonon-like, not pure photons, and are more likely explained as many-body phenomena, rather than pure photons. Of course I may be wrong, there is not enough information to determine this yet. If the phenomenon is essentially one of absorption and re-emission then formulas with the inverse square root of (1-(v/c)**2) are undefined. These are in most of your equations, since you seem to conceive of local 'photon' mass density as a material body, instead of the equivalent mass density of the disturbance in the field. The v-based equations for the photon are inappropriate in the Hertzian framework, which you seem not to have understood in my essay. In spite of this, and for reasons too long to include in a comment, I do find your Postulate 1 on page 5 to be is very astute and appropriate to the problem. It is that which first excited me about your essay.

My best regards,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Hi Jonathan,

You say, "I've seen quite a few attempts to explain the direction of time, where the given cause turns out to be a process, needing another flow of time underneath it. I don't know about your idea that the direction of time arises from the self-interaction of the gravitational field"

I just posted a variant of the following on Phil Gibbs page:

At one point Phil suggests that "quantization as a sum over histories is more fundamental than particles or field or even time and space." What is history without time or path without space? He then asks if there is a fundamental law which is not derived from anything deeper? Well, if we assume that a law governs something, there must exist at least one thing. Since I cannot conceive of this one (and only) thing being a particle, I assume it's a field, or at least a continuum. Phil then says that such law must be as it is because it could not be any other way, and asks "Why would those answers be incomprehensible to us?"

Conscious experience is our contact with the universe; Phil says "information is everywhere" crossing the universe. I prefer "energy is everywhere" crossing the universe. When energy triggers a change in structure (absorb the photon, switch a logic gate, ...) the structure is 'in'-formed and becomes a record (~bits of information). It has no meaning absent a codebook or context: "one if by land, two if by sea." Thus it's hard for me to find meaning in the statement: "the information in a wave function is conserved." Most wave functions describe situations in which energy is conserved, so in that sense "information" might be conserved. He notes we're dealing with idealizations. If information implies energy and change of structure, where is the energy of the wavefunction and what does it change? Phil notes that such "informative" 'records' are more real than the 'past'; "Our reality is what we experience."

Phil then sets up the problem, noting that recursion can take us places independent of the starting point:

"... we must define this recursion... in algebraic terms and see how the physics of space, time, and particles can emerge..."

He notes this iteration will be algebraic without a Lagrangian, and conjectures that the holographic principle may argue for 'complete symmetry'. I believe one can formulate the holographic principle in terms of energy, with no mention of information. Would this imply such symmetry?

Phil suggests a "free algebra" generated from a vector space V and says that "if it requires information to specify how it works then a theory can't be fundamental"; concluding by expecting to find symmetry in a pre-geometric meta-law that transcends space-time, taking a purely algebraic form, beyond which point it will be emergent.

Jonathan, based on Phil's formulation of the problem, I suggest how this might work?

I don't believe a 'lattice' can satisfy his requirements for 'fundamentalness', so I assume a continuum, f. "Pre-geometric" must mean there is only one such, else we would have two different things and can subtract f1 from f2 and begin geometric correlations between continuums (kind of like Einstein's inertial reference frames). So if there is only one continuum, f, it can only interact with itself, as there is nothing else to interact with! This provides a basic principle for the pre-geometric, primordial law, based on algebra only:

The Principle of Self-interaction is that any operator O acting on the continuum f must be equivalent to the continuum f acting on itself, represented as

Of = ff.

This iteration is fundamental, not derived from anything deeper, and is infinitely recursive. One can solve this for characteristic features of the continuum, and the operator spectrum might determine the feature spectrum. Let one operator be the essential derivative d/dq and the second operator be the generalized derivative 'Del' = d/dp. [it's hard to find symbols that don't bring something to mind, so I've already biased you.]

As it turns out we have two unique solutions corresponding to these two operators. For O = d/dq we find that f = 1/(-q) solves the algebraic equation, Of = ff, and for O = d/dp we find that f = 1/p solves Of = ff. We assume geometric algebra (Clifford/Hestenes) is our context. Therefore we need only interpret q and p. These may of course be anything we can get away with that agrees with our experience, but I believe the most fundamental (or at least the most useful) fundamental interpretation's are q = time t and p = spatial vector r.

Jonathan, please note that there is only one solution to the self-interaction equation of the form 1/t, and that is 1/(-t). That is, if t is time, then only one 'direction' of time solves the self-interaction equation!

Thus our Self-interaction Principle leads to a unidirectional time and a general 3D space. One feature of the continuum is the frequency f ~ 1/t and another feature is a 1/r spatial dependence, with appropriate gradient, ~1/r.r . All of this is easy to prove (except the identification of q with time and p with space) once one adds a 'connector' c ~ r/t then ccf is an acceleration and f is a frequency. The dimensions thus associated with f and f are those of the gravito-magnetic field: G ~ cc/r, C ~ -1/t --- acceleration and frequency. When one brings rotation into the picture the self-interaction equation generates a quantum solution, and the minus sign associated with the frequency yields a fundamental left-handedness such as that characterizing neutrinos and amino acids.

The equations that govern these fields are in my essay's equation (1). A result of iteration is figure on page 12. Of course there's much more of interest than will fit into a comment. For example, the Self-interaction Principle leads to Newton's law, Einstein's equations, and the Klein-Gordon equation, for starters, when augmented by E = mcc. I do believe "we arrive at a final level where everything is possible and the whole theory is described with zero information."

My very best regards,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Terry Bollinger,

Thanks for your gracious comments. I'm pleased that you got so much out of it, although as you note, it could take a while to follow all the lines of thought. You're probably correct to criticize the essay for veering from the assigned topic. You actually do address the topic in specific manner in terms of Kolmogorov complexity, but many focus on generalities, and reading 200 such is painful to contemplate. FQXi is a unique forum, offering reasonable visibility, archival storage, and a very effective comments scheme that cross-fertilizes. Establishment physicists probably come here to win a few bucks, but those who left academia long ago, or are otherwise locked out of establishment journals, see a venue for their own theories, which as you have discovered, span a wide range. Some, taking advantage of feedback, improve their ideas year after year, and often twist their theme into the current essay topic.

Your interpretation of my essay is essentially correct --- that all causality unfolds at the "same time" [as measured by perfect clocks, i.e. clocks not subject to local conditions.] Your use of 'curved' and 'space-time' are probably orthodox. Weinberg, Feynman, and others have derived GR from flat space, and I prefer flat space energy density distribution to curved geometry, although they are interchangeable in theory. Space-time as 4D is so misleading that I prefer 3D +1, as elaborated on in many of the above comments. The CMB approximates absolute space, and time is time - orthogonal to space. x,y,z can project onto each other, but time projects only onto itself.

Your discussion of the CMB frame as the only frame that "sees" the minimum energy of the universe is well stated. My focus has been less global and more local in the sense that I wish to explain the muon, the global positioning system, Einstein's railway cars, and other specific phenomena relevant to SR. I view the entire 3D universe as existing "now", i.e. it is the same time everywhere in the universe. Messages from one part of the universe to another flow at the speed of light through gravity. Einstein and recently others postulate that the speed of light may vary as a function of strength of the gravitational field through which it propagates, but I am uncommitted on this idea. We do have proponents of 'block time' among our FQXi essayists, but, as you note, mine is not a block-time theory. Your statement that "single simultaneous time" will be the fastest possible time in the universe is compatible in a sense. In reality (according to my approach) all time is the same time and has the same "speed". Local clocks cannot measure time -- they measure oscillating systems whose oscillating frequency is a function of local energy, so that changes in frequency show up on clocks as "changes in time". But in fact there are no changes in time; time flows equably throughout the universe. I don't believe any other scheme could have endured for 14 billion years with time willy-nilly changing relative to all the moving parts.

I will look at your test. I too, have a proposed test, and welcome others.

I've read your essay and will comment on your page.

Best regards,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Jonathan,

Thank you. I agree with you that the implied flow of time is inherent in 'change', and the only universe of interest is the one that is changing now. You are correct that 'interaction' contains "change", hence time, in its meaning. My comment to Phil was based on his desire for an algebraic 'meta-law' from which time and space 'emerge'. I began with such a general meta-law Of = ff where O and f are unspecified except that O 'operates on' f. Biased by this algebraic relation, we find that two solutions involve a 1D directed scalar and a 3D vector. I then choose these to be 'uni-directional time' and 'space'.

I understand what you're trying to say, but to cast out 'moving parts' and replace it by 'mechanism' is not overly convincing. When you say your analysis led to "the possibility of becoming unblocked", it's not clear whether you solved this or just became convinced that a solution exists. If you solved it, I'd like to know the solution.

In any case, it's been a pleasure discussing this topic with you.

Best,

Edwin Eugene Klingman