Vitaly, in one of your papers you transformed t = i(tau). What is imaginary time? What is it like to go through it? What happens as you go back in time?

You two are great! On the one hand, physicists find relationships beteen information and on the other, there are no mysteries...

I still don't know the difference between particles and atoms "knowing" information (i.e. what that means) and atoms and particles just being and doing, according to their kind, within the contexts they encounter. How do the different ways of thinking differ so that "knowing is the preferable understanding of what is happening?

Knowing information necessarily means neural action potentials. Atom and particles do not know, but do make up the neural action of the brain. Without neural action, there can be no free will or free choice, only determinism with the randomness of chaos...

Steve, Lorraine is writing about a simpler "knowing " rather than the knowing of human beings/ higher animals. I am trying to understand what that "knowing" means.

10 days later

On the permanently dark side of the Earth, the stars would appear to stay in the same place in the sky.

Of course, the stars would, very slowly, move across the sky as the Earth revolved around the Sun.

9 days later

A View to Time, inter alia

The Big Picture - Universal Time

Carlo Rovelli presented in his book "The Order of Time" the fundamental idea that universe is consisting solely of processes, also matter is a process, chancing by time. Some processes might be reversible, so that of their point of view it makes no difference witch direction time flows. This are not Carlo's words, but universe itself is also a process, the mother of all processes, chancing by time. Universe is not a reversible process because it has continuously increasing entropy, therefore the time of universe is unidirectional. Particles may have different relative times, but it doesn't affect to universe's aging. GR's far observers time can be regarded as universe's general time, indicated f.e. by CMBR's aging, redshift, and entropy. Beyond cosmological horizon, universal time is flowing normally, we just cannot communicate there because of slow EM media.

Extreme cases - Zero Time

According to GR, in spacetime there exists objects of witch time flow goes to zero compared to far observers time.

The first case are particles at apparent (event) horizon of black holes. These seem to freeze to horizon and their time flow to stop. Their time does not proceed in practice at all, in Planck's time unit of the their proper time the hole universe could advance to the end of it's lifecycle, if particle would stay at horizon that short moment. In this zero time state, events are not finding time to proceed, all chemical and quantum processes would be stopped. And because of wave-particle duality, the matter stops acting as normal matter, and couldn't therefore either be contagious by gravity anymore. Matter's energy would all be transformed into gravity field, as bent spacetime. Therefore this timeless and energyless state is continuing inside horizon, too. The hole inside horizon would be filled by some kind of dead non-vibrating null energy, but information preserving, fluff or fuzz. It could awake to living matter again if touched by positive time, f.e. by the collision of black holes, therefore not allowed to escape.

The second case is light. At light's speed time stops too and traveler at light speed would also seem to froze from outer observer's point of view. But light's inner wave motion does not stop. This could be explained so, that light's energy doesn't go to absolute zero, it's not dead fluff or fuzz as in previous case. Light has a vanishing small mass-energy and therefore it's time flow doesn't go down to absolute zero.

There is also third exceptional phenomenon according to time flow, tangling. Tangled particles seem to be in two distant sites simultaneously, so that the information delivery about it's status is not spending any time at all. In this case, transferred information seems to be completely massless, no energy is transferred. Therefore the delivery speed is faster than light's speed, witch is transmitting mass-energy. GR is ok for massive particles, but real massless information could move faster, actually without spending any time at all.

Neither the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics nor those phenomenons described above are affecting to the big picture of time, there ain't no evidence of time travel.

a year later

1. Conspicuously lacking in this whole forum is discussion of McTaggart's A-series and B-series. It is necessary, in my opinion, to understand these to be up to date on the philosophy/physics of time as of 2020.

2. There are recent semi-popular books about time from Smolin, Carroll, Rovelli, and probably some others I am missing, that are interesting.

3. I hope I may be forgiven for referring to two of my own unpublished papers, but I think these might be of interest:

A Mathematical Definition of the Present and its Duration

https://philpapers.org/rec/MERAMD-4

Non-locality in the AB-time interpretation of quantum mechanics

https://philpapers.org/rec/MERNIT

    10 days later

    There exists no known evidence of the presence or elements of, an actual thing or force, called time. There is no practical reason for an actual thing or force called time, to exist.

    Hi Kuyukov,

    The universe (spacetime continuum) is about 150 billion light years across. 13.7billion years ago, at the big bang, it was smaller than a pea (some say it was even smaller, approaching the Planck scale). Yet the speed of light is the speed limit of the universe; in fact, we're told that all inertial frames are subject to the invariance of the speed of light. So how can the universe be 12x larger than its age in light years?

    Another question is: we're told that quantum mechanics and general relativity should be able to unify. I think it can. I think the graviton actually does exist. I just think we will be surprised to find out how it really behaves. The very idea of describing the graviton as a particle, as if were something that will always be small, is how nature has fooled us. There is no reason why the graviton cannot have a radius that changes in time, dr/dt = c or r = ct. The graviton probably comes from the Planck scale and expands outwards with a spherical geometry. There are 10^80 particles in the universe; all of which are part of one or more quantum systems. Every quantum system is solved for by calculating the wave function solution to the Schrodinger equation. Yet, the philosophy of the physics community says that the wave function is only a mathematical calculation and has no existence beyond that.

    There are operators in quantum mechanics for momentum, position, spin states. The whole idea of calculating [eq](PSI^*)(PSI)[/eq] is to get the probability that a particle is in one of those states. Sort of like if you lose your keys and you're trying to figure out which room they're in. It looks to me like particles of made up of the excitations states of gravitons.

    I think that gravitons are not conserved. They are constantly being created. They are quanta of spacetime. They begin as a point, expand at the speed of light. They become part of quantum systems and become the "things" that wave functions are describing. Or, they can expand very quickly, overlap, interact, and become part of spacetime.

    Jason

    One would imagine that a graviton has gravitational potential energy built into it in the form of eigenstates for momentum. When the graviton is just a wave function, those momentum states are randomized. But when the graviton participates in spacetime curvature, there momentum states are ordered in a way that supports an acceleration of gravity. A quantum entanglement between two photons is actually a graviton with two photons connected to it. If the photons are centrifuged using optical fiber, then the graviton (entanglement) can store a gravitationl potential energy.

    Our planet`s rotational motion, holds our lives immersed in that constant rotational motion, which is about 1,000 miles per hour at the planet`s surface.

    Our daily time measurements are based on the constant consistent motion of the rotation of the Earth. Time passing and the constancy of rotational motion provide the tools for measuring time.

    Although, since time does not actually exist, there is no time passing. What there is, is simply duration elapsing.

    It`s accurate to say, that duration elapsing and the constancy of the Earth`s rotational motion provide the tools for measuring duration elapsing.

    At the rate we're going, it will probably take between 500 and 1000 years for humanity to develop gravity drive propulsion. 500 years minimum to figure how easy it was to unify quantum mechanics with general relativity. ET comes to Earth, plays cat and mouse chase games with the US Navy, but you guys don't care. So what if time is related to entropy. It doesn't actually do anything for you. But if you understood that gravitons have properties of gravitational potential energy; if you understood that quantum entanglement between photons is actually a graviton, maybe you could figure out how to control gravity fields. But for the life of me, I can't figure out what you're looking for.

    Jason

    The graviton is the wave function. The wave function is the graviton.

    The graviton is the mathematical solution to the Schrodinger's equation. But physically, it's describing a trapped graviton.

    The graviton is the mathematical solution to the Schrodinger's equation. But physically, it's describing a trapped graviton.