On The Flow of Time by George F R Ellis

[deleted]

Dear Peter,

Let me propose something that I think is both constructive and fair - publish your objections against the BU view. If you do not wish to criticise other people, you are welcome to criticise my position - you can choose some of my publications on the BU view and start with them. Then I will be able to respond.

Despite that I have followed the debates on this forum I have failed to see your arguments; to me, any of your claims was supported by another claim. For instance: "If your thought experiment holds, I think this is simply what it shows. That is, I think you are misappropriating the existence of 3-dimensional dynamic bodies with the existence of worldtubes." I do not see an argument here - just claims.

Since I guess you may disagree I think the fairest thing is to publish your arguments and prove me wrong.

All the best for the holidays,

Vesselin Petkov

[deleted]

Dear Vesselin,

Thanks. In relation to my arguments, and although the BU vs. change issue isn't the main focus of it, you really just need read my essay (and notes).

All the best for Christmas too. If you possibly see this George, all the best to you as well.

Peter

[deleted]

On Dec. 22, 2008 @ 01:55 GMT, Vesselin Petkov wrote to Peter Lynds:

"Let me propose something that I think is both constructive and fair - publish your objections against the BU view."

The BU hypothesis suffers from an incurable logical error: Non sequitur.

Neither STR nor GR can detect the Heraclitean flow of time, because the latter is supposed to *emerge* along with the *emergence* of 3-D space. These unresolved issues are clearly outside the applicable limits of GR.

If the flow of time were some 'observable in GR', there should be some kind of material content left from it as 'observable in GR', and Einstein's field equations (EFE) would NOT guarantee "the conservation of total energy-momentum": see Eq. 2 in [George F R Ellis and Henk van Elst, arXiv:gr-qc/9812046v5], and notice that it is valid only if the cosmological constant [lambda] "is constant in time and space" [ibid.]

R. Penrose explicitly stressed (The Road to Reality, p. 777) that "any non-constancy in [lambda] would have to be accompanied by a compensating non-conservation of the mass-energy of the matter."

It should be agonizingly clear that GR cannot address these "dynamic dark energy" (DDE) issues of the Heraclitean flow of time. If GR could detect DDE as some Dirac observable, the latter would make the *perfectly smooth* DDE 'observable in GR', and the ether would come back.

Any definite statement about the flow of time, derived from STR and/or GR, is logically inconsistent. GR is still too "far away" from quantum gravity and quantum cosmology.

If you claim that 'fish cannot ride bicycles, therefore we should "forget" about bicycles', you will make the same logical error, non sequitur. C. Rovelli, J. Barbour, and many other people already made it in their publications.

If you, Peter, or anyone else at this forum cannot understand the text above, it will be entirely my fault, so please don't hesitate to ask questions. Then please tell your students all about the logical error in BU: kids have the right to know everything we know. I hope you all agree.

D.C.

[deleted]

This will be my last posting, for a number of reasons: I believe I have said all I have to say, and my postings are now in effect just repeatng what I have already said. There are a number of different positions held by different people making postings on this thread; they have been adequately expressed, and are apparently not going to change. At the root are philosophical rather than scientific differences; those philosophical positions shape the scientific discourse, but are not themselves testable.

I am also ceasing because I am tired of the level of aggression that is apparent in some of the postings, combined with a considerable lack of humility. The essayist who answers postings on this forum is exposed to a considerable degree of unpleasantness if they continue answering: so why should they do so? Carlo stopped answering a long time ago, I suspect for this very reason.

My last substantial comment is the following: my very useful debate with Vesselin has brought out into the open a key issue as regards how we do science. He states

"You take for granted that "the experiences of ordinary every day life" can be explained and understood only in terms of an objective flow of time. As the stakes are at the highest possible level - our view of reality - I do not like to take anything for granted. All (even purely logical) options should be on the table." I agree.

Vesselin continues "We have nothing to lose if we do that, but we may have a lot to lose if we do not do it. Then rigorous analyses of all relevant or potentially relevant *experimental* facts confirming predictions of the modern physical theories should tell us what is the dimensionality of the world (at least according to relativity) and whether *macroscopic* bodies are completed or growing worldlines (or rather worldtubes since those bodies are spatially extended objects). That is why, in my postings here I have tried to concentrate only on experiments; in line with that I had in mind the real EPR *experiments* ". It is the "only" which I simply cannot accept. Yes we must take into acount rigorous scientific exsperiments; but I regard all of ordinary life also as an "experiment" revealing important aspects of the nature of the world and the universe. Indeed the mind works by a process of making and testing hypotheses about the way the world around us functions; this is made explicit for example in the book "On Intelligence"by Jeff Hawkins. We have to subject that daily experience to rigorous anaysis, as it is well known that our senses and understandings can deceive us, but nevertheless in the end they are all we have; they are in particular what we rely on as we do scientific experiments.

Furthermore, as I have stated, above, I wish to understand how science underlies ordinary daily life, and one can hardly do that on a philosophical basis that excludes as evidence the nature of that ordinary daily life. There is a real problem with scientifically based treatises that take that stance, and then proceeed to make magisterial statements about the nature and meaning of life, as often happens. If one wants to understand the full depth and nature of ordinary life, including its relation to its scientific underpinnings, one must take into account *all* the evidence: and in particular one must take as evidence the way our daily life experiences can occur.

The upshot is that I regard the experience of daily life as conclusive evidence about the nature of spaceetime: if one's theory does not adequately explain this as well as the full range of scientific experiments, one should go back to the drawing board. The scientific basis needs to be rexamined to see how it can be developed so as to be compatible with ordinary life experience, as well as with the scientific experiments.

Happy Christmas to all.

[deleted]

This is my first and last reaction to your never ending posts. It seems you never try to understand what the other people write. In this sense I admire George Ellis for his enormous patience with you.

You even quoted above what I suggested; so follow it. If you really think you have something to say professionally, publish it and you will have my answer.

Vesselin Petkov

[deleted]

The first part of my posting (above) was not displayed - that is why I am posting the text again.

______________________________________

Dimi Chakalov wrote on Dec. 22, 2008 @ 04:51 GMT

On Dec. 22, 2008 @ 01:55 GMT, Vesselin Petkov wrote to Peter Lynds:

"Let me propose something that I think is both constructive and fair - publish your objections against the BU view."

The BU hypothesis suffers from an incurable logical error: Non sequitur.

______________________________________

You even quoted above what I suggested; so follow it. If you really think you have something to say professionally, publish it and you will have my answer.

Vesselin Petkov

[deleted]

Vesselin Petkov wrote (Dec. 22, 2008 @ 06:02 GMT): "If you really think you have something to say professionally, publish it and you will have my answer."

About twenty years ago, I had a long discussion with two members of Jehovah's Witnesses, and because it was going nowhere, I asked them to formulate the conditions under which they will accept my viewpoint and convert to Catholicism. Never heard from them.

But since Vesselin Petkov is doing science, and is responsible for teaching students (=kids), I respectfully ask him to formulate the conditions under which he will accept that the "block universe" (BU) viewpoint is indeed logically inconsistent, being formulated on the logical error 'non sequitur'.

To the best of my knowledge, Carlo Rovelli and Julian Barbour haven't done it. In the context of the fish & bicycles metaphor (cf. my posting from Dec. 22, 2008 @ 04:51 GMT), they propose to "forget" bicycles, but fail to acknowledge that the "sea" has to have some kind of "boundaries" which nobody has so far managed to *derive* from the "sea" alone (references available upon request).

Stated differently, the first off task toward rejecting the Heraclitean flow of time is to show rigorously the "boundaries" of spacetime. If you can't solve it, you have no logical grounds to expand the applicable limits of STR and GR, and speculate about some "block universe".

Please put *your* cards on the table, and also promise that if I prove BU logically inconsistent, you will tell your students all about it -- kids have the right to know everything we know.

I wonder if you have the guts to do it. You will be the first person to receive my manuscript.

If you can't meet this requirement for scientific research, please note that I am too tired to discuss issues based solely on faith and emotions.

D.C.

[deleted]

George Ellis wrote (Dec. 22, 2008 @ 05:42 GMT):

"There are a number of different positions held by different people making postings on this thread; they have been adequately expressed, and are apparently not going to change."

Please exclude me from this set of people who "are apparently not going to change." I am ready to change my viewpoint, and am flexible enough to accept yours, if only you can make it clear by responding to my critical remarks, hence convince me that I got it wrong.

Merry Christmas to you and all participants in your forum.

D.C.

[deleted]

Dear George and Dimi Chakolov,

Firstly, George, I enjoyed your essay very much - and many of the comments you have contributed in this forum - since as always you put your finger on the essentials. Indeed, my viewpoint on the nature of time accords very much with the evolving block universe idea you put forward, as you are probably already aware. I understand that you won't be contributing more to this forum; and I think the correspondents here have been extremely lucky to have had you give so generously of your time, and to have exercised such a degree of patience. I think that in itself deserves a prize.

My other reason for this post is to address Dimi Chakolov, who has been pestering you quite excessively here. Dimi: the subjects you raise are ones that are treated to some extent in my essay, though for more details, such as my working definition of finite infinity you will have to look at my paper Cosmic clocks, cosmic variance and cosmic averages, New J. Phys. 9 (2007) 377. I believe that the subject of gravitational energy, and its quasilocality - a consequence of the equivalence principle - is indeed important for a detailed quantitative understanding of the nature of time on cosmological scales.

I agree with George on almost every point, and in particular with his reply to you of December 21 in which on he identified the key unsolved problems of general relativity as being the definition and nature of gravitational energy and the related issue of coarse graining in GR. The only place where I differ somewhat is that contrary to some of George's statements under "3. Gravitational entropy and gravitational energy", it is my view that a successful quantitative description of gravitational entropy, which fully deals with coarse graining in GR, will necessarily entail a first law of thermodynamics. A first law must relate the difficult notion of gravitational entropy to the difficult notion of gravitational energy. While one can legitimately try to approach the problem other ways, as George suggests, I think any of these approaches can only work if they confront the issues raised by the "phenomenological approach" since the equivalence principle and general covariance are the core concepts of GR.

The fundamental unpredictability of quantum mechanics, and its consequences as depicted in Figure 1 of George's essay, are an essential justification for the EBU. Equally important for any approach to coarse graining in this context is the fact that GR is a causal theory. The geometry in a region near any event can only depend on events within the past light cone at that event: the events which have been made real among past possiblities and have actually occured within the finite realm of that evolving block. Regions of the universe which are not in causal contact evolve independently until they come into causal contact, and then some process of self-averaging takes place as the domain of the causal past increases. Rather than assuming a simple exact geometry for the whole universe (whether a single solution of cut-and-paste exact solutions), it is my view that we have to understand the statistical coarse graining and self-averaging, given observed structure and the limitations of the initial conditions at last scattering when the universe was very smooth.

I do not have an answer to the definition of gravitational energy or gravitational entropy - nobody does - but I believe that progress can be made by returning to the foundations and thinking harder about the equivalence principle, as I have done in my essay and related work. (My hypothesis is that the proper time on your wristwatch, Dimi, is not identical to one one universal cosmic time parameter measured by all isotropic observers, though they are correlated.) A criterion for a physical theory is that one comes up with testable and falsifiable predictions; which I have done. Thus my proposal can certainly be ruled out by future cosmological observations. However, whether this proposal is ultimately successful or not, I believe that the fundamental issues about the nature of time, and ultimately of quantum gravity, can only be addressed by isolating key conceptual holes in our understanding and attempting to address them with quantitative physical models. George asks all the right questions, and his work has inspired me I think more than anyone else's.

Dimi - should you read my work and have any further questions - then since George has closed his discussion, I guess you should continue over at my not-so-active thread. I am afraid I do not have quite as much time and energy as George, but will try to answer any reasonable question.

Merry Christmas to all.

[deleted]

PS - sorry; thers's a silly typo in my post above; where I wrote

"he identified the key unsolved problems of general relativity as being the definition and nature of gravitational energy..."

should read

"he identified the key unsolved problems of general relativity as being the definition and nature of gravitational entropy..."

[deleted]

Dear David,

On Dec. 23, 2008 @ 10:22 GMT, you wrote: "My other reason for this post is to address Dimi Chakolov, who has been pestering you quite excessively here."

There is a typo in your sentence. And if you wish to address the arguments and critical comments I posted here, please do it at your thread, and I will respond there.

Please feel free to "pester" me as much as you wish.

I only expect from you to respond professionally to the specific critical comments I made here. George has failed to do it, nor has he responded to any of my email messages sent privately in the past *eight years* (there is no typo here).

Please go ahead, and make your best shot.

Dimi Chakalov

[deleted]

P.S. Please see my posting at your thread from Dec. 23, 2008 @ 19:32 GMT.

D.C.

[deleted]

At first Merry Christmas to George Ellis.

I voted for him while I do not share his the idea of an EBU.

At least he did not sacrify time and the "flow" of time for the sake of possibly flawed theories.

To me Christ(mas) and (John McTaggert) Ellis stand for eternalism, presentism, BU, etc.

What I am claiming to have found out is radically different, and it requires to abandon very deeply rooted belief.

Nonetheless my family also enjoys Christmas.

To Dimi Chakalov:

Can you please point me to your own essay. I did not find the name Chakalov in alphabetic order.

Eckard Blumschein

[deleted]

Dear Dr. Blumschein,

I learned accidentally about FQXi Contest on December 2nd, and was too late to submit my essay. I emailed you about an hour ago, with details about my essay on QM (cf. my first posting from Dec. 2, 2008 @ 07:02 GMT.

Best - D.C.

[deleted]

George Ellis wrote: "This will be my last posting,..."

The evolving block thread has stopped to evolve. All the postings now exist in an unchanging block thread :)

[deleted]

RE: the meaning of imaginary numbers & MDT & quantization

Hello George,

I just now saw your post from Dec. 4th, where you write, " George Ellis wrote on Dec. 4, 2008 @ 10:00 GMT

Dear Dr. E (The Real McCoy)

I agree with the spirit of what you do in your essay, which as you point out is going in the same direction as mine. The main point where I differ is in the use of the imaginary time coordinate. I prefer to see it all done with a real time coordinate (see e.g. my book with Ruth Williams entitled "Flat and Curved Spacetimes"). So a key element is how proper time relates to coordinate time as we move to the future, which is what your key equation establishes; I think one can do this without introducing the imaginary quantity "i"."

I contend that the "i" is there for a reason, and that rather than get rid of it, our job is to ponder what "i" *physically* means.

Here is a great passage from Max Born's book on relativity, which you will enjoy, regarding imaginary numbers--he agrees that they have real physical meaning:

http://books.google.com/books?id=Afeff9XNwgoC&printsec=frontcover&dq= Einstein%27s+Theory+of+ Relativity&ei=i7ZCSbaIKoqakQT5tenUDg#PPA306,M1

Born writes, "It is true that in the domain of ordinary number one cannot extract the square root of the negative quantity -c^2t^2; hence u has no elementary menaing. But mathematicians have long been accustomed to overcoming such diificulties. The imaginary quanity "i" has been firmly established in mathematics since the time of Gauss. We cannot here enter into the question of how the doctrines of imaginary numbers can be rigorously established. These numbers are essentially no more "imaginary" than a fraction such as 2/3., for numbers with which we number things or count properly comprise only the natural intergesrs 1,2,3,4. . . The number 2 is not dividsible by 3, so that 2/3 is an operation that can be carried out just as little as (-1)^(1/2). Fractions such as 2/3 signify an extension of the natural concept of numbers; however, they have become familiar through education and custom, and excite no feeling of strangeness. The introduction of imgainary numbers is a similar extension: all formulae that contain imaginary numbers have just as definite a meaning as those formed from ordinary "real" numbers, and the inferences drawn from them are just as convincing." --p. 306, Einstein's Relativity, Max Born

So it is that both time and the fourth dimension are very, very real. Time is a parameter, often measured on our watches, which emerges because the fourth dimesnion is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c, or dx4/dt=ic.

Attached please find some figures illustrating the *physical* meaning of "i" in dx4/dt=ic (attachment#1).

The fourth dimension is expanding at the rate of c in a manner perpendicular to the three spatial dimensions, manifesting itself as a spherically-symmetric, nonlocal expanding wavefront--which perfectly describes the photon's motion!

That is why we see:

dx4/dt = ic (MDT's equation, underlying relativity)

and

xp - px = ih (fundamental to quantum mechanics)

Both equations contain "i". Both equations represent the fact that something is *physically* changing in a manner perpendicular to our three spatial dimensions.

dx4/dt=ic posits that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c.

xp - px = ih

also shows that spacetime is changing--the fourth dimension is expanding in units of Planck's length--in a manner perpendicular to our three spatial dimensions, as both x and p are measured in our three spatial dimensions; and yet, when one considers xp-px, one sees a quantity lying beyond our three spatial dimensions!

MDT's new universal invariant--the expansion of the fourth dimension, at the rate of c in units of the Planck length, sets both h and c, while weaving change into the fundamental fabric of spacetime for the first time in the history of relativity; and also providing a deeper physical model from where Einstein's principle of relativity naturally emerges, and also accounting for time and all its arrows and assymetries, all quantum/wave/particle behavior, entropy, and quantum nonlocality and entanglement.

In the second attachment, please see how MDT accounts for the gravitational slowing of light and time, as well as the quantum nature of all measurement--the fourth dimension has a nonlocal, wavelike, quantized quality via its invariant expansion in units of the Planck wavelength--something that is attested to by every photon which 1) is timeless and ageless, 2) moves at the speed of light, 3) remains fixed in the fourth dimension, and 4) is described by a nonlocal, spherically-expanding wavefront.

More in this in the upcoming book! "HERO'S JOURNEY PHYSICS & MOVING DIMENSIONS THEORY: FROM HERACLITIS, TO PLATO, TO ARISTOTLE, TO COPERNICUS, TO BRUNO, TO KEPLER, TO GALILEO, TO NEWTON, TO PLANCK/EINSTEIN/BOHR/BORN--AND YET IT MOVES! Unifying relativity, quantum mechanics, entropy, and time's arrows and assymetries with a new universal invariant: dx4/dt=ic."

Best,

Dr. E :) (The Real McCoy)

MDT allows us to keep all time and change by weaving change into the fundamental fabric of spacetime with dx4/dt=ic. This means that come 2009, both time and progress in theoretical physics will be unfrozen, and we will be liberated from the block universe and granted free will!

Moving Dimensions Theory is bold, subtle, far-reaching, simple, and consistent. MDT agrees with all empirical evidence and all of relativity and quantum mechanics. MDT has come not to abolish the laws of the founding fathers of physics, but to unite them. MDT liberates us from the block universe and frozen time, while allowing us to keep spacet-time diagrams so as to sell coffee-table books on physics and time travel (although MDT shows that time travel into the past is impossible). MDT goes so far as to show that seeming paradoxes across all realms--from the paradoxes of Godel's block universe to the EPR paradox--can be expalined and accounted for with a novel universal invariant which underlies Einstein's Principle of Relativity, entropy, and emergent time and all its arrows and assymetries.

MDT resembles neither String Theory nor Loop Quantum Gravity, but this should not count against it.Attachment #1: 2_MDT_PERVADES_NATUREIMAGINARY_NUMBERS_IMPLY_PERPENDICULARITY.pdf Attachment #2: 1_5_MOVING_DIMENSIONS_THEORY_EXAMINES_THE_GRAVITATIONAL_REDSHIFT_SLOWING_OF_CLOCKS.pdf

[deleted]

I honestly regret that George Ellis choose to leave this Forum. It is still completely unclear to me how one could falsify his hypothesis about "evolving block universe" (EBU), as compared to the hypothesis about some "block universe" (BU).

I was hoping to see some written statement by George, in which he says something like 'if my conjecture [A] turns out to be wrong, then my EBU hypothesis will be indistinguishable from BU hypothesis'.

In this context, perhaps it is worth considering his statement from Dec. 20, 2008 @ 00:42 GMT above, in which he wrote, in response to Lawrence B Crowell:

"there may not be a timlike Killing vector field, but there is a conformal timlike Killing vector."

The issue of 'conformal timelike Killing vector' has not been mentioned in George Ellis' essay. I will refrain from making any comments, and will instead suggest to the Moderator to ask Claus Kiefer to pass his professional comments on two issues:

(i) the applicability of the 'conformal timelike Killing vector' in cosmology, from the perspective of his latest manuscript "Quantum geometrodynamics: whence, whither?", arXiv:0812.0295v1 [gr-qc], and

(ii) George Ellis' claims that "proper time along world lines is indeed a preferred time variable in GR" (Dec. 12, 2008 @ 20:27 GMT) and "objectively privileged hypersurfaces do indeed exist in standard cosmology" (Dec. 15, 2008 @ 05:16 GMT).

D. Chakalov

[deleted]

Dear Dimitri Chakalov,

Unfortunately, I did not find your email because I suddenly got a huge amount of spam. Maybe I overlooked it. Anyway it would perhaps be better if you made it available to all as an attachment preferably to post in my thread 369 "Let's benefit from special mathematics for elapsed time", provided you do not absolutely deny any relation to what I am considering.

So far I did not at all with the notion BU which sounds to me like possibly unintended mocking about illusions by Dedekind, Cantor, and Hilbert. I rather prefer Galilei's point of view: The relations >, =, < are invalid for infinite quantities.

Just spectral analysis (FT as well as CT) requires all of infinitely much.

Best,

Eckard Blumschein

[deleted]

Dear Eckard,

I'm also getting a huge amount of spam recently. Please see attached my email address (DC.gif).

George: Please excuse me for this irrelevant, to your EBU hypothesis, note. I hope Claus Kiefer (FQXi Member since 2006) will agree to comment on your ideas, as suggested on Dec. 26, 2008 @ 01:44 GMT.

Dimi ChakalovAttachment #1: DC.gif

[deleted]

Dear George Ellis,

In your essay you propose that time flows and spacetime evolves in an irreversible way as the wavefunction collapses. However, you say that this happens pointwise at space-time events, not on spacelike surfaces. This is an apparent contradiction because wavefunction collapse is a non-local process. Can you elaborate on how you reconsile the local vs non-local characterists of the EBU?

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