Is there a physical mechanism responsible for what we perceive as time? by Chris Kennedy

Chris,

You are making good argument for a point that has been running through various threads in this debate; Which is that time is an effect of motion, similar to temperature, so that if something affected the level of activity which is generating the unit of duration, it affects the measure of that duration. In Carlo Rovelli's comments, a hotter candle burns faster. Gravity and acceleration work to slow atomic activity because the combined rate of atomic spin and velocity can't exceed C. A photon is timeless because it cannot have any internal motion.

What I've always wondered, is what does that really say about space? It does seem as though space exists as some fixed void which sets the upper limit of velocity.

John,

Thank you for reading the essay. I just recently discovered this contest and since then have put my effort into completing my essay. Now that it is submitted, I have the "time" to read what others are saying. It looks like you have got the main point (and I think we are in agreement based on what I got from your essay) but I will add this to be sure, since I could have gone on for another 5000 words: I think that time is a macro effect of the most fundamental behaviors among particles, forces and fields. I think these behaviors define time and in fact are time. Now, if the most fundamental behaviors can all be accurately described as motion, then - okay by me. But if some behaviors on the quantum level (maybe in a gray area around uncertainty and entanglement) no longer make sense to be described as motion, then it is safer for me to refer to the fundamental activities as "behaviors." In either case, committing to that is different than simply using motion to measure time. Because even if time were something other than what I believe it to be, it would still be possible to use motion to measure time and compare times. In other words, if particles, forces and fields existed "in" time in a more passive sense and their behaviors were just a visible symptom of what "time" they existed in due to their local environment, then we could still measure their motion to tell us the rate at which their time is flowing.

I think this contest is great. What a great opportunity to exchange ideas with people who are interested in this and other related issues. My guess is that the next few years will provide some startling answers to some nagging questions. Photons having mass in superconductor experiments - and their similarity to W particles having mass in a Higg's field will be a concept to keep an eye on after the LHC scientists reports their results.

To answer the space comment - I'm reminded of something a coworker of mine says occasionally: Space exists so that everything doesn't happen in the same place and time exists so that everything doesn't happen at once.

Take care,

CJ

Your coworker made a shorter than mine but true demonstration that Einstein's theories are wrong. French Scientists H. Poincaré noticed that the symmmetry which is necessary in 'General Relativity' for making the measurement of 'simultaneity' as Einstein says, this symmetry is based on Space and if Space is 'relative' as the theory is concluding, the measurement of a symmetry is not possible.

H. Poincaré did not go longer in this way like your coworker because he was not clearly understanding what was driving Einstein to this strange ratio of speed (Used by Zeno of Elea to ground exactly the opposite idea 2500 years ago!).

This is the problem around which John Merryman is turning too and I give the answer in my own statement ('Square Wheels or Real Dynamics?').

Therefore Carlo Rovelli is falling from Scylla into Charybdis because changing the speed scale for the temperature scale to avoid metaphysics or cognitive questions is nothing else than an illusion that these two different scales are different. Best proof is that Helmholtz used this thermic scale to study 'gas particles motion/behavior', just because it was more practicle in the case of gas. Why not 'music scale'? In fact Superstring theory is related to music and Einstein himself made analogies with an organ's pipes.

It is a very surprising attitude in my opinion to try to avoid the question of the Nature of Time, because of the subjectivity that Time is introducing... without trying to understand from where Einstein's or Quanta Physics' subjectivity is coming from! Because the subjectivity of an 'informational Time' is obvious -see the short but precise statement or our Russian colleague Gunn Quznetsov on this point.

Chris,

I can understand why "motion" might be best applied to macro effects and quantum behavior might be less distinct. Here is a thought to consider; There are natives of South America who view the past as in front of them and the future as behind them. This is because their point of reference is the energy, not the observer. So the arrow of time is that an event happens, then it is observed, then the energy goes past the observer. As opposed to our view of the observer as the point of reference, traveling from past events to future events. Put this in the context of Schrodinger's cat; The timeline goes from the quantum event, to the poison, the cat, the door of the box, then the observer. Just as tomorrow becomes yesterday, the future becomes the past. The only reality is the earth rotating.

It is an interesting contest, with a broad range of perspectives. Welcome to the fray.

JBMJr.

Hello Chris,

i enjoyed reading your paper. like you, i'm finding the wide range of perspectives here very rewarding. i've occasionally found myself a little intimidated by the depth of scholarship in some of the work and the mere language involved [thank you for writing in plain English], but it's not possible for one person to know all this stuff and it's the entire body of work here as a whole that i'm finding most interesting.

there's a lot of reading here...

re: gravity and velocity being two distinctly different influences on time, this isn't entirely so. what happens under both gravity and velocity is a change in the mass of matter - energy stored in matter changes and is represented by what we call mass. it has been observed elsewhere here that there is a relationship between mass as it changes with velocity and the metric of time.

Cantor's 'Coherent Space-Time' paper has an interesting modeling of this derived from electrical engineering, ascribing an 'electrical resistance' equivalency to mass. works kind of nice.

thanks for your paper.

re. John's:

"What I've always wondered, is what does that really say about space?"

hey, John.

seems the answer to that depends on what flavor of physics you prefer.

going with Relativity here, which seems to have had the most to say about such things:

if:

-'time/space'

and:

-'time' emerges from velocity,

then:

-'space'_______________________

i'll leave you to fill in the blank.

coming to suspect that matter arises from the same source.

and suspecting a potential for a happy resolution of the gravity question between Relativity and QM might be had with a new term for some a priori sort of 'velocity'.

re. Dr. La Rouge's:

"...that Einstein's theories are wrong."

not to dismiss them entirely, they're still extraordinarily 'useful', but without a doubt not without some significant dubiousness as a 'last word'.

Hello Chris,

oh, PS,

i especially appreciated the notes about the challenges with the GPS satellites; it goes a long way to explaining why my satellite set clock is occasionally off by hours, days, months...

they must have a bunch of druids working double-time or something keeping up with the corrections...

;-)

matt kolasinski

Matt,

There is the vacuum and there are fluctuations. Dimensions and volume describe the vacuum. Time and temperature describe the fluctuations.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16095-its-confirmed-matter-is-merely-vacuum-fluctuations.html

Hello Chris,

Nice essay!

You ask, "Who knows? At high velocities, different particle behaviors may not all be affected to the exact same degree? An inertial frame which contains all types of particles and their force carriers moving through various fields at near-light velocity, may one day be able to detect its own inertial motion by observing various fundamental behaviors operating at different relative rates as compared to rates in low velocity."

Well, so far, in all our cyclotrons and atom-smashers--in all our observations of cosmic rays and muons and other high-velocity particles, relativity has never been violated. OF course it might some day, but unless we have a good reason to think it should be violated, there doesn't seem to be much gained by supposing relativity might be violated. Someday I might replace Axl Rose as the lead singer in Guns and Roses, but I have no real reason to think so.

I love your title!

"Is there a physical mechanism responsible for what we perceive as time?"

Yes! That physical mechanism is provided by a fundamental universal invariant--the fourth expanding dimension. The fourth dimension is expanindg reltaive to the three spatial dimensions, distributing locality and fathering time.

You would enjoy my essay which shows how time naturally emerges from a deeper physical invariant:

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/238 "Time as an Emergent Phenomenon: Traveling Back to the Heroic Age of Physics by Elliot McGucken"

Einstein's Relativity may be derived from dx4/dt= ic, which represents a more fundamental invariance of this universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions. Einstein introduced relativity as a principle--as a law of nature not deduced from anything else, and well, I guess I was dumb enough to ask, 'why relativity?' And I found the answer in a more fundamental invariance--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt = ic.

And not only can all of relativity be derived from this, but suddenly we are liberated from the block universe and time and progress in theoretical physics are unfrozen. And change is seen in a most fundamental equation that weaves change into the very fabric of space-time, where it needs to be, as change pervades every realm of physics and all acts of *physical* measurement. And suddenly we have a *physical* model for entropy, time and its arrows and assymetries in all realms, free will, and quantum mechanics' nonlocality, entanglement, and wave-particle duality. The fourth expanding dimension distributes locality, fathering time. MDT accounts for the constant speed of light c--both its independence of the source and its independence of the velocity of the observer, while establishing c as the fastest, slowest, and only velocity for all entities and objects moving through space-time, as well as the maximum velocity that anything is measured to move. And suddenly we see a physical basis for the dualities--for space/time, wave/matter, and energy/mass or E=mc^2. Energy and mass are the same thing--it's just that energy is mass caught upon the fourth expanding dimension, and thus it surfs along at "c."

MDT provides your *physical* mechanism for time and all change, and a while host of other physical phenomena.

Indeed, MDT finally provides, in Feyman's words, "the thing that makes the whole phenomena of the world seem to go one way."

Feynman stated, "Now if the world of nature is made of atoms, and we too are made of atoms and obey physical laws, the most obvious interpretation of this evident distinction between past and future, and this irreversibility of all phenomena, would be that some laws, some of the motion laws of the atoms, are going one way - that the atom laws are not such that they can go either way. There should be somewhere in the works some kind of principle that uxles only make wuxles, and never vice versa, and so the world is turning away from uxley character to wuxley character all the time - and this one-way business of the interactions of things should be the thing that makes the whole phenomena of the world seem to go one way. But we have not found this yet. That is, in all the laws of physics that we have found so far there does not seem to be any distinction between the past and the future. The moving picture should work the same going both ways, and the physicist who looks at it should not laugh."--(The Distinction of Past and Future, from The Character of Physical Law, Richard Feynman, 1965)

Best & keep asking those questions!

Dr. E (The Real McCoy)

Einstein's theories are useful indeed in the Hollywood movies for Superheroes to travel in Time like on a Highway.

But other industries, weapon industry for example does use tests to check the new products because the equation that says that Energy is involving mass and speed is a little bit too empty.

François - What an essay!

It's not every day that you see someone discussing the limits of relativity through the analysis of Bugs Bunny, Tweety and the Pussycat (who I assume you mean to be Sylvester). And here I thought you guys sat around watching Jerry Lewis movies all day. Man, was I wrong. While we are at it, we could show the limits of Quantum Mechanics by knowing that Sylvester the cat will live before the piano actually falls on his head. This premature collapse of the cat's wave function is not really allowed, yet somehow we know he will live to see another day in advance of the unfortunate accident. (That is Blanc's constant.) However, my favorite line from your essay is: Dynamism leaked from this, as the Olympic Games became an absurd competition for a handful of space-time dust.

Are you sure you're not Jim Morrison? He was last seen in France you know? Anyway, I am doing my best to read as many essays as possible. I know you mentioned Rovelli's essay - I read it quickly, but to be honest, I need to read it again before I can form some sort of opinion. I do appreciate the Scylla and Charybdis reference though, especially since I haven't heard it since The Police song - Wrapped Around Your Finger. Some might have a better appreciation for a Rolling Stones: Rock and a Hard Place reference, but not me. Do you have other writings?

CJ

John,

The South American natives you refer to sound familiar? I think I remember running into them a few years from now.

CJ

Matt,

I liked your essay. A nice job covering the history, physics and philosophy of time. You covered a lot of ground. I read Cantor's Essay too. Interesting. It hinges on two hidden dimensions though. I may ask him if the velocity simultaneously affects mass and time or if he is proposing that velocity affects mass which in turn affects time?

CJ

Hello Chris,

glad you liked my paper, thank you.

re: Cantor, the two hidden dimensions didn't i didn't find terribly disturbing; while there's a lot that is useful in much of the modeling, none of the models are 'it' - nothing to get all religious about. it was thinking about the data in a different sort of context that seemed very interesting; a different and constructive way of thinking about the dynamics involved.

about his views on the order of chickens and eggs, you'll have to check with him. still thinking about that myself, but at least to say velocity is saying something.

John had cited an article about fluctuations of a vacuum... tiny velocity... where's it come from? it's right on the edge...

and a nagging sense that what adds up to macro 'gravity' needs to not be overlooked in this.

happy hunting,

:-)

matt.

Dr. E,

Thanks for reading my essay. I found yours very interesting. Regarding your comments on mine, I'll say this: If I went on a high-speed journey and brought with me, a suitcase full of muons and other suitcases filled with various unstable particles - would my ultra-high velocity affect all behaviors for these various particles to the same extent? If not, that fact may present itself more clearly if me and all of my particles are moving together as the same system. My muons may live a little longer right before my very eyes (or shorter). I could then turn on a radio in my space ship and hear you singing "Welcome to the Jungle." But if I don't detect any differences - that does not disprove my theory, it simply means that if my theory is correct then all behaviors are affected equally as they rip through the Higgs field (or whatever) at high velocity. That's not too much of a stretch considering that any suspected force unification would imply some commonalities anyway. Interestingly - if we become aware of the field we are moving through, but have no way to detect its effect on the particles, forces and fields moving through it, this would mean that Galileo would be right and wrong at the same time. The laws of physics would still appear to be the same for the traveler even though something different is in fact happening.

Regarding your theory: Does this mean that objects accelerated to high velocity are in fact slowing (or coming closer to surfing) with respect to the expanding dimension? If that is true - can you clarify how a gravitational field slows time in your theory?

Take care,

CJ

Hello Chris,

I see what you're saying! You write, "The laws of physics would still appear to be the same for the traveler even though something different is in fact happening."

Yes! For the photon really does not age! A moving clock really does run physically slower!

Now because of all the tautologies that reside in the act of measurement--because the velocity of light is linked to space and time, and the measurement of space and time are linked to the velocity of light--there is no way for an inertial observer to tell immeidately, in their frame, that their clock is running slow. But running slow their clock is! So I agree with you!

All this reality comes from a 3D universe in which the fourth dimension is expanding at the rate of c.

If you look at Einstein's RELATIVITY,

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3409/eBook-PDF-Science-Albert-Einstein-Relativity-1

you will see

x1=x

x2=y

x3=z

x4=ict

Ergo x4 = ict, naturally implying MDT's postulate and equation reflecting a hitherto unsung universal invariant: dx4/dt = ic--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c.

How else would one weave change into the fundamental fabric of spacetime (where it has been longing to be, as without change there is no measurement, and thus no physics), unfreezing time and liberating us from the block universe and granting us free will, while also accounting for quantum nonlocality and entanglement, while providing a *physical* mechanism underlying relativity, entropy, and time and all its arrows and assymetries, thusly unifying physical reality with a simple postulate and equation?

Hello Chris,

Regarding your questions pertaining to MDT: "Regarding your theory: Does this mean that objects accelerated to high velocity are in fact slowing (or coming closer to surfing) with respect to the expanding dimension? If that is true - can you clarify how a gravitational field slows time in your theory?"

Yes! A photon is remaining in one place in the fourth expanding dimension! Thus it is timeless and ageless!

And attached please find a paper in which I "clarify how a gravitational field slows time" in Moving Dimensions Theory.

Best,

Dr. E (The Real McCoy)

P.S. And I promise not to replace Axl singing Welcome to The Jungle, no matter what form of entropic fluctuations this universe encounters. :)Attachment #1: 8_MOVING_DIMENSIONS_THEORY_EXAMINES_THE_GRAVITATIONAL_REDSHIFT_SLOWING_OF_CLOCKS.pdf

I do appreciate your socratic Irony Mr K., which is the first step of Quantic Metaphysics. Of course I was as serious as possible taking the example of 'strong block time' or 'vacuum space' in Looney Tunes.

To each Science there is an Art corresponding. Look at XVIIth century art and you will see mirrors, circles, illumination, music, algebra (new 'ton' is musical 'tune', not color.

The best correspondence I found for Modern Quanta Physics is Bugs Bunny without any socratic irony.

You are true on the point that I do appreciate authors that Jim Morrison loved too (Ezra Pound for example). But 'Rolling Stones' are of course 'platonists' due to their positive idea of motion.

Chris,

I'm not sure how to interpret your response, since the example wasn't about seeing the future, but seeing the past, as we all do, whether it is looking across the room, or across the universe.

Dr. E,

Thank you for the link to your paper on the role of gravity in your theory. I am reading it and rereading your essay as well. I believe one of your comments about this forum was that you likened it to a poker tournament. I couldn't agree more. Our entire planet could learn some valuable lessons from the world of poker. The poker world is filled with many very gifted and seasoned professionals, but on any given day a relatively unknown player can win at a table full of pros if he is intelligent and knows what to do with decent cards. Poker pros are very aware of that and have enormous respect for that fact. We are fortunate that, like the poker world, this forum has such respect for good ideas that they have made this contest open to the public because on any given day....

Altough I like my theory in the essay I submitted, I am reading as many others as I can with the approach that their ideas could be the best ones that lead us to a better understanding of time. I will give equal consideration to the essays I read (until I find inconsistency within their theory or something in the theory that can not be true based on known evidence). I am going to go through your material very carefully and then try to form some intelligent questions for you. When I do, I will put them on your thread. In the meantime, in the words of Mike Sexton: May all your cards be live, and your pots be monsters.

CJ