Thank you very much for your Words.

I agree about the theories, they evolve and it is important to add and optimise our extrapolations, and also to study still and Always more the maths , physics and sciences to see a better generality. We search answers after all with humility inside this physicality like humble travellers from stars where our consciousness and knowledges evolve also. It is fascinating I must say, I cannot stop to search these answers, maybe the most important is to accept these limitations and accept only the proved things and make a difference with these assumptions mathematical, physical and philosophical that we cannot affirm in fact, it d be very odd and vanitious to affrim things not proved by experiments or mathematical proofs after all. This infinite eternal consciousness bless you also Professor Klingman, happy to know you , wish you also all the best for all, take care, friendly

Hi Edwin,

I wrote my essay to conform to the contest specifications. If you want to look at an actual article on my conceptual model, (which I hope you will) click here to download

Best Regards,

Harrison

Dear Edwin,

I have just finished reading your essay for the second time, and I must say I am impressed. I believe you are absolutely correct when you advocate focussing on ontology in order to make progress in physics. Be sure to read Israel Perez's essay as he makes some very similar points.

As you may have noticed in Marts Liena's essay on the aether, where he quotes some work of mine on time, I also developed a time-energy theory seven years ago. It works best when there is a preferred frame - so in your essay example with the kiddie car in the railcar, my time-energy theory totally supports your observation re the stationary observer looking through glass walls.

The support of ontology in developing physical theories is that we help dismantle paradoxes. The twin paradox is easily explained without resorting to using 'space-time' in the answer, as Einstein did.

There are no time paradoxes in my theory, but it is best explained when an aether is considered as a preferred system of reference (borrowing that term from Perez). I liked your quote from Mermin "...the concept of time is nothing more than a convenient...device for summarizing compactly all relationships holding between different clocks."

It is a concept I hold as well, as I believe in an infinitude of clocks, (a clock being any defined volume of space, each with its own individual tick depending on the embodied energy of that space).

I am interested in the physicality of dimensions (as distinct from their mathematical being). I think I understand three dimensions of space, as that is the world I inhabit. However, I do not understand zero, one or two, or four or more dimensions of space from an ontological point of view. To my point of view there is only volume, down to the smallest of scales, and volume means 3 space dimensions. String theories propose multiple curled up space dimensions, (comes from the maths), but I have no idea what these can be, as in my humble view there are only 3 space dimensions, and anything curled up inside a volume must have some other property that defines it. I do not mind having other types of dimensions (time, temperature, pressure, energy, etc) as long as their meaning is made clear.

I like your point "I am ever more convinced that many of our nasty problems in physics have very little to do with the issues on which this essay contest is based", which is also made by Perez.

As my entry was my first ever FQXI essay, I tried to stick to examples of undecidability, computability and unpredictability, in my considerations of a TOE, although I do wander on to the philosophical time topic of presentism which I currently endorse.

I am currently reading some of your previous FQXI essays and look forward to further discussions with you. Good luck in this one, your essay is most interesting.

Lockie Cresswell

    Dear Edwin,

    I've been reading your essay and finding it of interest, have a few comments. I'll also rate it - btw, I'd appreciate it if you'd rate mine, as you said it was of interest, and it has only had one rating so far.

    You say that if time runs differently in different frames, being able to look inside the railcar at the small car would violate the principle of relative simultaneity. Firstly, one thing SR does not have a problem with is self-consistency. It's counterintuitive, like a lot of things (the Earth is spinning, but it doesn't seem to be). Whatever else it is or isn't, SR is self-consistent.

    And it's a description of the real world, including what we see, if you're prepared to calculate the light travel times.

    It's worth pointing out that all three things in the example - the station, the train, and the small car, have relative velocities. Any pair of them have a relative velocity. These three velocities don't add up in the expected way, but you could look through glass walls and see everything for that reason.

    The simultaneity aspect is even less related to what we see - the visible picture gives no direct clue as to when the event we see happened. Hence galaxies are seen as they were a long time ago. So what you see won't be affected by simultaneity issues.

    In answer to another point, I think the goal of physics is both a mathematical and conceptual description, and that the conceptual side is not axiomatic, but more like a visual picture. And it's very much part of science, and should not be relegated to philosophy. Some people tried to boot it out of science, because the conceptual side started doing very badly in the 20th century. But that wasn't its fault, we just weren't yet ready to interpret all the mathematics we had.

    Hope this makes sense, just my own opinion. Best regards,

    Jonathan

      Dear Jonathan,

      If by 'self-consistent' you mean that all,of the conclusions derived from Einstein's axioms agree with each other, then I agree. By inventing multiple time dimensions, one per frame, and providing a 'standard unit', c, common to all frames, he enabled the Lorentz transformation, a simple 4D group operation on 4D geometries. Not only is mass not considered in Lorentz, but Einstein, incredibly, resets mass to rest mass in every frame, an unphysical act if there ever was one.

      As for being a description of the 'real' world, recent articles in Foundations of Physics state that the dimensionality of the world is underdetermined by special relativity. My point is that one must choose an ontology, i.e. reality. That is a theme that a number of authors support in this contest.

      As you mention, relativity only works with pairs, as this is the only way to define 'relative velocity' in a way consistent with Lorentz. Nevertheless, as Smolin states, once learned, relativists mentally organize the world differently. I think it's probably the fact that the Lorentz group, acting on only two entities, has an inverse [it's a 'group'] that will always get you back where you came from, that 'feels right' as there is nothing else I can see that feels right.

      You say that in the 20th century we just weren't ready to interpret all the mathematics we have. I believe that we projected math structure onto physical reality and mistakenly came to believe that reality actually matched the math, which, I believe, it does not.

      I do thank you for reading and commenting. If we're not challenged it's hard to make progress. I got rid of that ridiculous 1 someone gave you [i got one too].

      Best regards,

      Edwin Eugene Klingman

      Dear Hector,

      You say "We agreed that what is slowed down is not the "so-called time" but the clocks, the physical reason of such slows is the speed inertia and or gravity that slows the internal movements of the clock respect to the similar one on the earth surface."

      That's a key point, as I believe that 'time dilation' is the aspect of relativity that has had no alternative interpretation, thus convincing many physicists that relativity is correct, warts and all.

      Another point that I believe is consistent with you is that we experience subjective time but objective time is essentially a measurement. There is really no reason to expect that we can capture the experience of time with a clock, but it's nevertheless less necessary to make it objective if we want to use it in physics.

      Thanks for reading and commenting, and good luck in this great game we play.

      Edwin Eugene Klingman

      Dear Lockie,

      In your essay you note that Laplace's demon cannot collect all the required info "at a certain moment " as special relativity eliminates a universal present across all space. Yes, physicists seem to compartmentalize, using, at any given moment, only a subset of physics theories that support their current effort, yet defending others in other contexts.

      Your view of presentism in terms of "causal relations between energy forms (...) in the Now" matches my view.

      As for ether, I believe that light propagates as disturbances in the local gravitational field, while the gravitational field defines the volume of 'space', which is an abstraction. I agree with Einstein that "There is no space absent of field."

      Per your remarks on TOE's, in my opinion a TOE need not compute everything. Schultz's essay distinguishes between algorithmic patterns (essentially computable) and non-algorithmic patterns which do not place necessary limitations on knowability. I think Feynman said: "More can be known than can be proven.

      I think you misunderstood my Merlin quote. Our experience of time is real, not illusion, but we must objectify as measurements to be useful in physics. Nevertheless, Mermin's approach, in order to justify SR is absurd, in my opinion. But I do agree with your summary, that clocks read time as a function of their energy, not as a function of multiple time dimensions.

      What I like most in your above comment is your observation about volume, or 3-space, as real, with 1 and 2 dimensions of space being imagined. I agree completely, but haven't seen it stated that way before. Time and energy are complementary or dual, and necessary to have change. Energy, with equivalent mass, evolves in the Now, making things 'happen' in 3-space, as a consequence of being unevenly distributed. This addresses the problem of 'persistence' of local identities while pieces of persistent entities change from moment to moment (Ship of Theseus). I know that you're interested in gravity, so you might like a treatment of dynamic space: A Primordial Spacetime Metric

      Welcome with your first essay. You did address fqxi's topics nicely, while adding numerous insights that I found very interesting. I hope you find my other writings interesting as well. I scored your essay, so please remember to do mine.

      Edwin Eugene Klingman

      Alan,

      You noted that I did not address general relativity at all. I did not think it fit in the very specific example treated in my essay. But I have recently provided a physical interpretation for a 98 year old metric solution to the field equations whose physical interpretation has been "obscure":

      A Primordial Spacetime Metric

      I think you might find it interesting.

      Edwin Eugene Klingman

      Thanks Edwin,

      I appreciate the high score you gave my essay. I think you're right that the title was a mistake - I tried to make a point in the title, but titles aren't for that!

      I've heard you say before that SR has a separate time dimension for each frame, back in 2018. I think that's only one interpretation of it - same with what you say about relativistic mass. In my book I say that SR is like a Rubik's cube, it can be put into many different configurations, but it may be that only one of them leads to a better understanding.

      Relativistic mass is a frame-related effect, which means it's a viewpoint-related effect. So is relativistic energy. The same kind of effects are found in relational quantum mechanics, and in the documentary (the link is in my essay) I point out to Rovelli the similarity between RQM and SR, with those frame-dependent effects.

      It's also worth noting that in SR fixing a frame can bring matter's properties into existence. In my paper I point out that in QM the collapse of the wave function can also bring matter's properties into existence. No-one has pointed out this common ground between SR and QM, perhaps because it's so weird. I'm sure others have seen it, but I didn't for years - it was staring me in the face. According to my interpretation for QM, which I discuss with Rovelli in the film, state reduction fixes a frame (among other things), which shows that the same thing is happening in both SR and QM. Fixing a frame can bring some of matter's properties into existence.

      But returning to relativistic mass, a useful loose analogy is perspective. Matter can have 'observed properties', a bit like an object can have an observed configuration, and it depends on the viewpoint. So calling relativistic mass 'unphysical' is not necessarily right.

      The last point is about experiment. If you're questioning SR, it can't be ignored. Relativistic energy has been confirmed by experiment, and can't be avoided. And it's very like relativistic mass. And so has what you call the 'standard unit', c, common to all frames. There was one experiment with pions at CERN in 1964, that was a bit similar to your example with the station, the train, the small car. But with light being one of the three things. Neutral pions were made to travel at 0.99975c, and then they emitted photons. The photons travelled at c in relation to both the lab and the pions.

      Anyway, best wishes, and wishing you luck,

      Jonathan

        Dear Israel,

        I noted from a previous essay you commented:

        "Definitely the view of space as a fluid can drastically twist our present views of the universe and make a lot of progress for science. I'm quite convinced of this."

        In light of this I would like to link you to my latest work along these lines:

        A Primordial Spacetime Metric

        Cheers,

        Edwin Eugene Klingman

        Jonathan,

        That's what makes horse races: "ya pays yer money and ya takes yer choice".

        I could argue every one of your statements, but if it fits together nicely in your mind, I could almost certainly not change your mind.

        I have a very hard time believing that it's possible to determine "the photons travelled at c in relation to both the lab and the pions." I think some very strong assumptions went into that conclusion.

        Thanks for sharing your analysis with me.

        Edwin Eugene Klingman

        Dear Edwin,

        Once again thank you for your comments. I think we are generally on the same page regarding time but you would need to read my various writings which unfortunately I have never placed on the internet. I concur with Julien Barbour that we can dispense with time altogether, but this is still problematic because all of our theoretical frameworks rely on it.

        I have a non self-referential definition based on energy, derived from the Einstein-Planck formula, that seems to give a better understanding of relativity, so long one assumes an absolute reference frame (aether) to accommodate momentum.

        When I distill the ideas even further it is all about the interaction of matter with the aether. My matter particles have the property of (volume, spin, and charge) and my aether particles have the property of (volume and state). I have borrowed 'state' from John Conway's game of life, as having a binary meaning of 'alive' or 'dead' with respect to the 'state' of the aether particles neighbours.( it is quite involved requiring several rules that form the basis for my TOE). I have a well developed matter theory that I previously mentioned, which has great predictive power. I have been exploring nuclear physics with it and believe I can explain many of the mysteries of how various elements get their atomic structure.

        I do not know of David Mermin's take on relativity, but I liked the quote you gave for the wrong reasons. Maybe we both misunderstand. But misunderstandings are good because they sharpen our reasonings if dealt with properly, just as paradoxes are good. It's good to know that both of us can get rid of all the time paradoxes with our respective energy-time theories.

        There is one thing you may be able to explain to me re time. I have never understood why the concept of a tachyon (faster than c) means backward in time. My definition of time allows faster than c as a concept (but not for electromagnetic radiation), but nothing can travel backward in time. And I particularly do not like Feynman's take on antimatter - time symmetry, where a positron is an electron travelling backward in time.

        Thanks for the link on your paper on the primordial spacetime metric, which I will read when I have finished 'Everything's Relative'

        Keep exploring!

        Lockie

        Hi Edwin,

        Well, what you say about the horse race is a bit like the Rubik's cube I mentioned, with many possible configurations. We try to guess which one is the most relevant. Experiment sometimes joins in the process - there are plenty of experiments that are open to interpretation.

        But it's important not to leave experiment out, because it helps narrow things down a lot. If you look up 'experimental basis of special relativity' there's a page with links to many of the main papers, and if one is prepared to take those results onboard, I'd say you find that the central ideas of SR (though no doubt there'd be some disagreement as to what those are), are correct.

        Most of the people who question SR are prepared to ignore a lot of data. Having said that, the surrounding ideas are far more questionable. Minkowski spacetime, for instance, I think is wrong, and probably untestable. And I think rather like you on simultaneity - to me simultaneity at a distance outside the light cone is comparatively meaningless. So I don't support established ideas for the sake of it, I think it's good to question things.

        Wishing you luck, thanks for the conversation,

        Jonathan

          Dear Edwin,

          As I expected, you proved again to be a very good at writing. I am happy that you try to challenge special relativity, there is no theory in science which should not be challenged. If some physicists use the cartoon ontology you criticize in the way you presented, so bad for them. The correct ontology of special relativity was explained by Minkowski. He explained why spacetime is four-dimensional, and why bodies are in fact four-dimensional, and how this makes it look like a length contraction, and also that the descriptions in various reference frames refer to the same spacetime, not to different nested cartoon worlds with many dimensions of time. You can use as a starting point Vesselin Petkov's essay, Minkowski spacetime - a no-go for objective becoming, because he discusses precisely Minkowski's spacetime. He gives some links to Minkowski's papers. There are many critics of special relativity, and I see you are making more serious efforts than many of them, so I would love to see your take on Minkowski's arguments.

          Cheers,

          Cristi

          Dear Christi,

          Thanks for reading and commenting in detail. As I note, SR is more complex than Lorentz, due to ontology of Minkowski. Lorentz doesn't act on 4D 'bodies' but on every point in space. I've shown 'apparent' length contraction [which is simply Doppler in (3+1)D space] in my ref 8.

          I've looked at Petkov and he several times states that Minkowski in 1908 based his claims on 'experiments', as if that makes it unquestioned. I believe, based on other experiments [Michelson-Gale] that light propagates through local gravity, in which case the 'ether wind' would be almost zero, far below the resolution of the MM experiments. Einstein said that ether would destroy his theory, and only ten years later Einstein believed in ether, and did so til his death. He stated that light cannot propagate without a field.

          Petkov multiple times references pre-1908 experiments as basis of Minkowski, which gravity as ether demolishes. He also talks about length contraction, which has never been directly measured or experimentally proved. Petkov believes experiments 'prove' Minkowski, but I have 57 pages of analysis of experiments in my ref 11 that argues otherwise.

          I believe my analysis of the velocity law [which many people, including Weinberg, deny] is novel, so that formed the basis of my essay. It is impossible in 9 pages to convince someone who believes in special relativity, but I have written over 100 pages in last year or so that might convince you, if you had time to read them. It's not as simple as it's made out to be -- one reason that Found. of Physics published 3 papers in Nov 2019 discussing problems with special relativity, and concluded that the 4D vs (3+1)D issue is under-determined in special relativity.

          You may have missed it, but I have recently derived 'clock slowing' [time dilation] in absolute time and space, yielding exactly the slowing predicted by relativity. That is the first alternative explanation in 115 years, and seems worth thinking about.

          For all the known reasons, my view is not welcome in academia, but I am completely convinced that most treatments of special relativity mix 4D and (3+1)D ontology in analyzing specific instances. That is not physically kosher, but it is the way it's been done for a century.

          Thanks again for advancing the discussion.

          Best regards,

          Edwin Eugene Klingman

          Hi Jonathan,

          I enjoyed these comments, and particularly your last paragraph. In ref 11 I do analyze many experiments and find alternative explanations of them. I'm glad you're thinking about Minkowski spacetime.

          I believe the primary problem with special relativity is that ontology is ignored, and (3+1)D ontology is used when needed while 4D ontology is proclaimed throughout. I don't think this is legitimate, but that's what happens when ontology is ignored. I think that this happens whenever acceleration is introduced into relativity problems. In short, per Smolin, relativists 'mentally reorganize the world', and, once in this 'only two frames' mode of seeing the world, force results that may or may not have much to do with reality, but they toe the line. Sometimes the line is crossed, such as the law of addition of velocity preventing relative velocities greater than c, as happens at the LHC. In these cases one ignores relativity, but quietly, so as not to raise anyone's ire.

          Thanks again,

          Edwin Eugene Klingman

          Dear Edwin,

          I always read your essays with interest and follow the movement and development of your ideas on the basic problems of fundamental science, your original and radical ways of solving them. This is an unusually important conclusion for a future brainstorming session:

          聽"In current approaches the question of ontology (if it even arises!) Is often left up in the air; efforts are focused on mathematics. For those who believe that physical reality arises from mathematics, this probably makes sense. For the rest of us, physical reality (ontology) is a given, which we attempt to model with mathematics. This makes sense and has worked well for centuries."

          Here we have slightly different views on the movement of Mathematics and Physics towards PHILOSOPHICAL ONTOLOGY. But this is good. The main thing is to find a reliable single ontological basis for mathematics and physics. Yes, here, first of all, the problem of understanding space (the nature of space). To understand is to "grasp the structure." (G. Gutner "Ontology of mathematical discourse"). Add: ONTOLOGICAL STRUCTURE. Philosopher Pavel Florensky is right: "We repeat: worldunderstanding is spaceunderstanding." ... I give the highest rating to your ideas. Let's hope that we, all interested participants in the contests, will be able to assemble a team for the global think tank on the ontological problems of modern mathematics and physics. Notice that in the article Physics Needs Philosophy / Philosophy Needs Physics Carlo Rovelli poses first the main ontological questions: "What is space?", and then the question: "What is time?" This is an ontology issue. But the ontology also needs to be pulled out of the crisis... The philosophical ontology requires extreme thinking about reality, about being... Let's remember how Menelaus caught Proteus in the network with the prompts of the "form goddess" Eidothei ... That is the task of physicists and mathematicians is to "grasp" the absolute (unconditional) forms of the existence of matter (absolute states) in their unity, to "grasp禄 the ontological structure of space and then its ontological and gnoseological dimension.

          Best regards,

          Vladimir

            7 days later

            Edwin Klingman re-uploaded the file Klingman_FQXi_2020_time_spa.pdf for the essay entitled "Deciding on the nature of time and space" on 2020-04-25 01:50:05 UTC.

            Hi Edwin,

            thanks for commenting on my essay Je suis, nous sommes Wigner!

            Your notion of a consciousness field (C-field) is something I've been thinking about for some time. I take it the C-field is what gives phenomenal form to our individual empirical experiences, and this physical field would go some way to answering the hard problem of phenomenal consciousness? In other words, the complex (3+1)D world of our waking experience, or say the presumed phenomenal world of a frog with its simpler CNS, would just be a complex perturbation of the self-aware C-field.

            A couple or three questions come to mind:

            1. Is the C-field induced dynamically by the mass flow--and its fluctuating gravitational field--in a neuronal network, such that at some point when our foetal brains reach a certain neuronal threshold the corresponding individual C-field arises specific to that individual physical entity?

            2. Or is the C-field a primordial universal field that is perturbed by matter flows/gravitational fields in general? Our individual neuronal network would then be an evolved physical system that uses the same universal C-field that we share with everyone else and all other sentient lifeforms.

            3. In terms of the feedback loop I can see how a particular neuronal pattern might induce its particular C-field configuration, but not how that C-field then induces a physical change in the neuronal patterning. How would the C-field produce fluctuations in itself that then effect the relevant changes in the neuronal mass flow? Does the self-awareness that arises in the reflection of the C-field and its neuronal patterning have a resonance in the field that then drives the neuronal patterns appropriate to it?

            This physical feedback mechanism would be important to ensure the C-field isn't seen as a merely ideal part of a substance dualism ala Descartes.