Editor's Choice: The Illusion of the Expanding Universe

Barbour is right saying that universe is timeless, and wrong saying that there is no physical time.

Physical time is run of clocks in timeless universe.

yours amritAttachment #1: 1_In_what_way_are_related_psychological_time_and_physical_time__sorli_2010.pdf

I have been thinking about the gravity problem. Does it exist? I say no. I suggest, rather a spatial displacement caused by all matter. This displacement thereby creates a pressure zone which pushes matter towards the center of the displacement zone. Perhaps: energy=matter=displacement=pressure=order; also mass=matter x accelleration. If I am reasoning this out correctly this should resolve the quantum gravity problem.

Stuff I wrote some years ago. May help in your exploration of time ..

Here are 12 properties associated with the nature of Time as may be deduced from known physics

1-Spontaneity: Time runs by itself. Nobody makes time run. Time is spontaneous. We know we can't rush time. This is why our time measuring instruments are based on spontaneous processes; sand falling in the hourglass, mechanical relaxation of quartz crystal, spontaneous electronic transition in atoms etc. In this, we trust that a spontaneous process does represent the nature of the passage of time. In that sense, the clock is actually driven by time. In theory, if time stopped, so would the clock! (Well, this can't happen because the clock would cease to exist as well. In the monistic approach, matter is just a conjugate set of time derivatives that exists only by replacing locally the passage of time. If time stopped, matter would cease to exist altogether.)

2-Universality: It is safe to assume that time runs everywhere in the universe. Its pace or rate may differ in different location and circumstances.

( see Necessity below)

3-Rate: Time passes at a certain pace or rate. The passage of time being a dynamic concept, it requires that it passes at a certain Rate.

4-Complexity: The passage of time passes at a certain rate, and this rate can vary in various location and/or circumstances as can be deduced from General

Relativity. For example, for a successively accelerated and decelerated body, this rate of passage of time is decreasing and then increasing. We may suspect the existence of other derivatives of variations in the rate of passage of time corresponding to a jerk, a Snap? A Crackle? A Pop? etc.

5-Relative: Relativity tells us that time is relative. This means that "measuring time" consists in making a relative comparison between the duration of two events; one is the observation, and the other is the clock. The meaning of Relative also suggests that there is no causal connection between the clock and the event i.e. one is not driving or causing the other. They are rather assumed as sharing the same local rate of passage of time, hence the use of one clock for two locations (comparison).

6-Locality: The logical conclusion of the relativity of the passage of time is its next property; locality. To a specific location corresponds a specific set of properties of time.

7-Size: Now, if the passage of time is local, how big is the size of the passage of time, locally? What is the size of a moment in time? In other word, what is the size of the natural set of joint locations that has no time between any of its parts? The concept of space-time tells us that a moment in time is infinitesimally small. Any distance in space corresponds to a distance in time as well.

8-Shape: What is the shape of the passage of time? In what shape does it evolve? If a moment in time is an infinitesimal point, and if time evolves from this point without preference or, in all directions without constraint, then, it behaves as a little explosion. Does it expand without end or does it stops and explodes again from its new projections? At a macroscopic scale, the passage of time can assume some pseudo-static structures. For example, since the rate of passage of time is lower in a gravitational field, this rate varies away from the source of gravitation. We therefore can deduce the existence of a gradient in the rate of passage of time, increasing away from the source. We could associate a different pseudo-static structure with the centre of mass of rotating bodies like the Earth and the Moon.

9-Fluidity: This gradient structure extends away from Earth and will be affected by the influence of one or more celestial bodies. The three body system of Earth, Moon and Sun must have an ever fluctuating complex gradient. In other words, these influences and the gradients resulting from them do not paint gravitation as a line of sight phenomenon. Over large distances, it resembles a weather system, one that is driven by masses, motion and distances. One could also see fluidity as an inescapable consequence of a speed limit c and resulting non-instantaneity.

10-Quantity: The dimensionality of time is still the hardest aspect of its study. For each property or aspect of the passage of time we may deduce, this property must be studied by experience, and experience requires units and quantities. Even the theoretical approach requires such units. The case is most likely that these units of quantities already exist in one form or another within the body of physics. Note that in theory, these quantities must be conservative in order to support a logically expected conservation law for the derivatives of the passage of time.(Time itself is not conserved as being continually generated in a spontaneous way; the derivatives are.)

11-Notation: For many, this is the main stumbling block on the road to accepting the passage of time as a real (but non-physical) entity. What would be the units of the rate of passage of time? Second per second s/s ? This seems to make no sense to them and therefore is a sufficient reason to discredit the existence of a rate for the passage time. It is not easy to integrate our physical notion of the passage of time with words and mathematics. Let me try to answer this. In physics, events are said to happen at a certain rate as "per second". In that respect, we could say that the rate of passage of time can be described as "per second" or 1/t. If the rate of passage of time decreases, then the denominator "t" should increase, relatively speaking. It so happens for particles whose half-life is increased in a measurable way at near light speeds, because the passage of time local to the particle is slower relative to an observer...

12-Necessity: Is time a requirement for this universe? Is it necessary for what exists and happens around us? Or can we do without time? The answer could be in the following questions. Can we say that something exists without understanding that it does so with a minimum (non virtual) persistence in time? Can we say something happens without doing so at a certain rate, hence, in a certain amount of time? No. The passage of time appears to be an intricate dimension of what exists and happens.

Marcel,

re-post from the Maths Durham forum. This is intended to help people make the difference between physics and metaphysics. A question about the Nature of something is a very specific Metaphysical question; it is not physics!

Science is empirical. What does it mean? It means that we recognize not knowing about the underlying reality. It means that we accept this ignorance because we have found about 300 years ago a pragmatic approach to this situation. We simply treat this universe as a black box. We ignore the content of the box and concentrate our study on our interaction or experience (empirical) with the box. By studying our experiences with the box we have come up with regularities and some possible image and idea of what the box contains. These are our laws of physics and the models that we can infer from them. But no matters how pointed our empirical method is, no matters how sharp and detailed our models are, they are still modeled and framed on the requirements of proof within the empirical system. In other words, the empirical method was meant to study our experience of the box, never to find its content, which must be addressed in a metaphysical approach. No matter how wonderful our science may appear, it is just child's play. Without knowing the content of the box, we do not have any idea of what we are really doing. This is the limit of physics. We don't do or understand as much as we could and should. The content of the box is about the two following metaphysical questions; what is the universe made of and what makes it evolve by itself? The two pillars of metaphysics: substance and cause.

Somehow on the way, we forgot half of the question. We feel today the price of this ignorance/oversight.... and we are very late ..

Marcel,

Here is another way to explain the previous post: Physics vs Metaphysics

Since the early Greek philosophers, we have understood the distinction between two important concepts: the underlying reality and our perceptual experience. Over the centuries, we have always mixed the two concepts at the same time and amounted to nothing. Around the time of Newton, Descartes and others, the empirical method was born. We would forget for now/for now about the underlying reality and would consider the universe as a black box. We would concentrate our study on our experience of the black box, i.e. the empirical concept and approach and find the laws that best described our experiences. But no matter how successful the empirical concept is in this year 2010, the other concept (underlying reality) is still sitting on the back burner where we left it 300 years ago. Because we do not know what the universe is made of (what is the substance) and what makes it work by itself (the cause), all of our best science remains an educated guess on outcomes. And, that is the limit of physics.

Marcel,

if the universe is not expanding then the big bang never happened. if this is true the universe needs a cycle to keep itself in being. a mechanism would have to exist for hydrogen to be burnt in stars then the matter produced turned back into hydrogen. if the universe does this then it could be true perpetual motion. i find it very hard to see how anything can be created from nothing as the big bang implies or that matter or energy can be made into nothing as in black holes. if light slows down as it moves through space producing more red shift the further travels it would explain why the local galaxies are not expanding

clocks measure the rotation of the planet. calenders measure how many rotations it takes to orbit the sun.this is not anything to do with time or the measureing of time.there is only one time and that is the present which lasts for all eternity.energy matter and space move but time must by its nature stay still.

their seems two main sides when studying the universe. those that believe it was created by god, big bangs or some other method. the other side believe it has always existed. is it really possible to create something from nothing or to annihilate matter into nothing. i was always told making things appear from nothing is called magic and not science.

"To get a handle on Mach's viewpoint, imagine a particle spinning out in space. If there were no stars forming a backdrop against which to measure the particle's motion, can we really say that the particle is moving? To Mach, the answer was no, in an empty space there is no distinction between the particle spinning and the particle being stationary."

Of course it's hard to imagine a controlled experiment to test the above idea. The other problem is that virtual quanta inside the vacuum gravitate. Actually virtual fermion-antifermion pairs gravitate attractively like dark matter and virtual bosons anti-gravitate repulsively like dark energy. The point is that at most 4% of the stuff of the world are real quanta excited out of the covariant aether quantum vacuum. Therefore, Mach's picture of Newtonian bodies appears a bit naive in the hindsight of quantum field theory.

Einstein told Heisenberg in 1925 that the theory determines the observations as much as the observations determine the theory. In terms of Einstein's geometrodynamics there is no conceptual problem at all with the expansion of space as operationally defined by the temperature of the microwave background.

Of course, if Barbour & Company attempt to re-invent the wheel they must show how the conventional Einstein theory is a classical limiting case of their new paradigm, but perhaps they may have already done that? I have not read Barbour's papers.

I plan on commenting on this article in greater detail at a later time (oh but if time doesn't exist, does that really make sense...?) but this statement demanded an immediate response -

"To get a handle on Mach's viewpoint, imagine a particle spinning out in space. If there were no stars forming a backdrop against which to measure the particle's motion, can we really say that the particle is moving? To Mach, the answer was no, in an empty space there is no distinction between the particle spinning and the particle being stationary."

This is the kind of thing that just makes me groan. If the particle is spinning out in space, the stars aren't going to give me any reference in relation to the particle spin unless the we think of spinning with the particle and seeing the stars whirl by, as if being on a merry-go-round. If the particle is moving in a trajectory through space, as the phrase "a background against which to measure the particle's motion" seems to imply, there's other ways to determine velocity.

That statement is meaningless. Why can't I use some instrument to measure its motion? Since when were the spin of particles determined by what was in the background? Let's say I have a ball in a dark room with no light except from the ball, which is that glow in the dark, kind. The dark room is large enough for me not to see any reflection coming from the light of the ball. Is the ball spinning in place? How to tell? I can bounce something smaller off of it. If it bounces straight back off, then the ball has no spin. If, however, the smaller object bounces off at an angle that deviates from what would be allowed if the ball were stationary, then the ball is spinning.

Good grief..

if hydrogen is cooked in stars to produce all the other heavier elements does that mean everything in the universe is made from just one basic material.

Marcel you wrote:

Stuff I wrote some years ago. May help in your exploration of time ..

Here are 12 properties associated with the nature of Time as may be deduced from known physics

1-Spontaneity: Time runs by itself. Nobody makes time run. Time is spontaneous. We know we can't rush time. This is why our time measuring instruments are based on spontaneous processes; sand falling in the hourglass,...

No evidence time run by itself..........Universe is timeless. Time is run of clocks.

Yours AmritAttachment #1: 1_Physical_Time_Is_Run_Of_Clocks__Quantum_Dream.pdf

Dear friends,

Understanding of time nature requires exact distinguishing between physical time and psychological time.

yours amritAttachment #1: Exact_Understanding_of_Time_Nature_FQXI.pdf

Marshall,

Saying time is real does not make it a foundational element of universal structure. Unfortunately it is as you say misunderstood. It is a muddle of a number of different concepts. It is therefore difficult to get other people to understand what exactly is meant by saying time is not real, when our subjective experience is clearly that of time passing.

The pituitary gland in the brain regulates biological circadian rhythms so we are aware of a sense of time passing even without clocks to observe. Most arguments for the reality of time revolve around that undeniable perception. Memory, mental sense of a passage of time and prediction are useful for survival of an organism. That does not mean that the past or future exist outside of the mental model of reality.Existential time realms are nonsense and are a product of the brain and its processing, rather than foundational to the universal structure, imo.

Time is only useful within physics as a measurement tool for spatial or energetic change, which is occurring within space not space-time. You say that "if you have change then you have time" However that is an imposition of an entirely mental concept onto matter, particle or medium changing position within quaternion space or such a change identified as an energy change, it is not necessary to claim that it is a foundational dimension or component of the universal structure.

Space-time is a mathematical representation of reality built upon a misunderstanding. It is my opinion that there is only quaternion space within which continuous change in position of matter particle and medium occur. Every change in spatial position being an energy change, and every energy change being a spatial change in position of something. This can be represented by the use of 4 orthogonal spatio-energetic dimensions rather than 3 space and 1 time dimension.

You said "Again, "space-time continuum". Minkowski - "from this point on, time and space are inextricably connected". There is zero credible evidence to the contrary." I would say there is zero credible evidence that the imaginary realms of past and future have any existential reality. We do not look into the past when we view light from stars . We see an electromagnetic image of a spatial configuration which no longer has any material existence. It is an illusion not the material reality of the universe.The em radiation has changed position within quaternion space enabling it to be viewed and the matter of the universe has changed configuration within quaternion space, so the material existential universe is not the observed universe.

Dear friends,

keeping Clock as a Measuring System Concept of Time can be abandoned completely.

Yours AmritAttachment #1: Keeping_Clock_as_a_measuring_System_Concept_of_Time_can_be_abandoned_completelly.pdf

Georgina:

Like most time deniers your own comments are self contradictory. When you say that time is only useful as a tool to measure change you're ignoring the obvious - the change would have no place to happen if it weren't for time. You're cutting off your nose to spite your face. It's pretty sad, actually. For example:

"Every change in spatial position being an energy change, and every energy change being a spatial change in position of something. This can be represented by the use of 4 orthogonal spatio-energetic dimensions rather than 3 space and 1 time dimension."

Look up the word "change". I know you think you know what it means but clearly you have forgotten. The changes that you are trying to relate as being energies are not happening congruently. So against what background is this change taking place? Time. Time is what allows change, regardless of the type of change. Energy does not equal time because we know that energy takes place inside of space-time. That is how special relativity was used to develop energetic technologies like radar. Energy happens within the time dimension as well as space.

You can represent many things many different ways but they will only be representations. Mathematics does this all the time. But I'm not talking mathematics, I'm talking physics, and when I talk physics I mean things that have a basis in physical reality and not simply a mathematical representation on a piece of graph paper, nor some psychological construct.

We know special relativity works, hence my reference to Minkowski. All the Barbourish word games in the universe will never change the fact that regardless of how you describe it, I can always pinpoint in every time denier's argument where their rant falls apart. In this case it's your inability to use the word "change" without having a temporal context, no matter how much you may want to wish it away. That simple reason is that all "change" happens in time. Time is where change takes place. Time is not change itself because you can have time with no change, but change needs a dimension within which to happen. That dimension is time.

I've spent 10 years with the nature of time as my fundamental area of research with the full intent to tackle, deconstruct and solve all the major issues. I've read all the arguments against time and the major writers, from Zeno to Barbour, and found them all wanting. In contrast I have developed a theory that can be viewed in line with relativity and quantum mechanics that matches observational and experimental results. It does not replace any of them but reveals additional insights and information. I am about to conduct an experiment that will prove that time is a dimension within which change takes place, much as relativity suggests. The results will also match the predictions of my own theory. In fact, my experiment will disprove your response from above to, that the idea to have change requires time:

"is an imposition of an entirely mental concept onto matter, particle or medium changing position within quaternion space or such a change identified as an energy change, it is not necessary to claim that it is a foundational dimension or component of the universal structure."

Who knows. Perhaps I will name the experiment after you.

My work has resulted in a book proposal that has found an agent. The intent of the book is to meet head-on the debate over the issue of time and settle the argument over its existence, once and for all. As I am in the middle of a series of major projects dealing with my research right now, I'm not going to have the time to keep debating the issue here. When my work is released, it will speak for itself as it will certainly address all aspects of this whole issue of a timeless universe, to devastating effect.

BTW, your comments sound like you've given up on your Universal Timewave Theory. I perused it quickly yesterday and found a few insights that actually match my own theory, though you seem to have overly complicated them and then veered off the track. Then again, it seems like you were trying to explain everything and my theory is only a description of how space and time work, from quantum up to macroscopic. It's not trying to be a TOE or GUT. Solving the conundrum of space and time, as dimensions, is enough.

Dear Marshall Barnes,

You are obviously passionate about your research , your personal view of reality and how it should be described. I have not read the views of others as extensively as yourself but have spent a very long time thinking for myself. Not just about time but how time, gravity and various other foundational questions can be answered with the correct perspective. I have gone beyond considering my personal experience of reality.I am actually proposing that in order to fully understand physics and the unanswered questions it is necessary to have another non temporal construct that is able to more clearly show the spatio-energetic process of change. It is unfortunate that you do not see that I too am talking about physics.

I too know that relativity works. I am not saying that it does not or it is wrong. Only that there is another way of thinking about and representing what is going on. You say "All change happens in time." Well yes it does, if you are working with a model which has time inseparably woven into it. However if you are using a different way of representing the same things time does not have to be included. Time can be represented as a dimension but it is not just a dimension. As you will undoubtedly know, from all the books you have read, time is lots of things to lots of different people.

Yes, I have come such a long way since the universal Time-wave theory which was my very first attempt to understand time when I first realized what a problem it was for science. I was attempting to use a concept of multi dimensional time because at that time I had not really understood how the 4th dimension works. Unfortunately multidimensional time is a dead end imo. The good thing to have come from that first foray is that it did allowed me to solve the grandfather paradox. Although I do not claim that the current model that I have outlined is necessarily the best and only way to model objective reality this perspective does work. I am surprised that you found a copy of the book, I assumed that most had just been binned. I hope it was at least thought proving and you enjoyed the pictures. It certainly got me thinking.

Goodluck with all of your endeavors.

Georgina:

One of the biggest mistakes one can make is to do their work in a vacuum. You say that you haven't read as extensively on the subject as I yet you have spent a long time thinking for yourself. Ignoring the fact that it could be said that you're implying that I haven't been thinking for myself, taking the path that you have means that you develop theories without having a frame of reference as to how they conflict, accurately or inaccurately with other established work. This sets you up for mistakes.

Like Barbour, because you couldn't understand how time works, you have sought to get rid of it by having a "non temporal construct that is able to more clearly show the spatio-energetic process of change." This statement is the physics equivalent to psychobabble, on its face. If you replace time with a "spatio-energetic process of change" how does this process evolve without time to produce the effect of time, which you are trying to, after all, replace? It's like a dog chasing its tail.

I essentially asked you this same question before and you side stepped it. The reason is that it has no logical answer. There is nothing about time that my theory doesn't address with cogent and well documented evidence. Trying to replace something with a representation that then falls apart under direct scrutiny it a flawed model. My model includes everything - from our psychological perceptions of time, our biological inner clocks, special and general relativity, quantum mechanics, and cosmology all the way back to the moment before the Big Bang. I have spent months scouring the internet for every argument against time being real and every question concerning it and labored to answer or resolve each, because if I couldn't do that, then I knew my theory was not complete.

I know that time is a lot of things to a lot of people, but in physics the goal is to obtain an accurate description of objective reality. That means what people think tim is is irrelevant. However, if what people think is a misperception, how that misperception arises must be addressed and answered. Barbour tries to do this, but because he is psychologically driven by his own child-like (his words- not mine) perception or fear of time, he has chosen to runaway from it and hide in a made-up, make believe reality that he calls Platonia which suffers from the same recursive, self-referencial problems your model does. If you claim to have a model that operates without time but you have elements within it that are time dependent, you don't have a model that works. "Process", "Change", "Energy" are all time dependent concepts. Saying that they can have any role in replacing time is utter nonsense. If it weren't you would be able to show me why, directly. On any issue that can be raised, in regards to time, my model has specific and nonself-conflicting answers that don't require rewriting physics as we know it. In fact, as time goes by, I see others getting closer to my theory in their own fashion.

I was actually surprised and impressed initially with your multidimensional time approach and you will probably kick yourself when you see my theory come out because you were on the right track until you veered off and took a few wrong turns. That is why you ended up thinking it was a dead end. My theory also has multidimensional time in it but is handled a little differently and doesn't try to start explaining other phenomena with it that is beyond direct observation. That's what I meant about not over reaching. As for your solving the grandfather paradox, if you don't believe time travel is possible to begin with then that automatically resolves the grandfather paradox. That's no big deal. The GP was actually solved with the Everett Wheeler Hypothesis, but you don't like parallel universes either. I do. It's also one of the things that my theory shows arises inherently from space-time.

I didn't find a copy of your book, I found your web site that has references from it. At some point I'll read it, probably more toward the end of the month. I'm just too busy to study it right now, but I did scan enough of it to see where you started and where you were going.

At any rate, it is now on me to put up or shut up, which I now have to get busy with. I'll probably announce some of my events coming up here in the calendar section, which will allow you to find references to articles and papers on the net. Then you can see how my work and ideas fair in the arena of ideas.

Regards,

Marshall Barnes

P.S. Please excuse any typos as I did this in a hurry...

Dear Marshall Barnes,

With respect I did not say that I have not researched this subject or taken an interest in the views of other people.I said that I have not read about it as extensively as yourself. I have not the slightest idea how you choose to spend your time when you are not reading. Your lack of comprehension of what I am doing is clear from your second paragraph. I have written quite extensively about this on recent blogs and the idea is very clearly explained by myself, Mr. smith and John Merryman. I suggest if you are really interested in how we manage without time you read some of the recent blog material.

The space-time model has been constructed so that within it there is an inseparable fabric of space-time. It is a model of how space and time are experienced. There is temporal separation of objects, which is how we experience objects around us. It takes time to walk across the room from this chair to that window . So they are separated in both time and space. Likewise it takes time for light to be reflected from an object back to the eye. However the objects are not actually separated in time they all exist simultaneously in space without temporal separation. If this space rather than space -time is modeled it is more like a normal map. Where everything is contemporary rather than getting further into the past the further away from the position of the observer. This timeless space is the objective reality in which physics occurs. Not within the spatio-temporal model of space-time nor the spatio-temporal world that is generated by the mind and experienced. Within the objective model I have been setting out on this site energy is a change in spatial position. A change in spatial position is an energy change. All processes occur as a result of spatial changes, which are also energy changes.

You said "I was actually surprised and impressed initially with your multidimensional time approach and you will probably kick yourself when you see my theory come out because you were on the right track until you veered off and took a few wrong turns. That is why you ended up thinking it was a dead end." Thank you so much I am glad you appreciated it. I get so little positive feedback here that I must gratefully accept even the crumbs thrown by my detractors. The initial time sky diving concept is still relevant, imo.As well as the marble on the table top. That is to say even when one marble reaches the end of the table the table is still all there. I can see now that the table can be regarded as just space and the marble matter changing position in space and time need not enter the discussion at all. Since the change in position can be regarded as an energetic change rather than a temporal change. Where as in that book I was considering the table to be time.

It was not merely discounting the possibility of time travel that solved the Grandfather paradox but realizing that it is nonsensical to believe that matter can replicate itself so as to exist in multiple time places rather than just one. When there is no physical mechanism for such replication to occur. By what process can matter just manifest so as to exist in both the present and past not to mention the future. How many tea cups must exist if a new one is created every second as time passes and every other piece of matter too. It is complete nonsense. That is what was set out in "Eternity found". The past does not exist but is remembered or imagined only and can be modeled ito mathematics. The Grandfather paradox is a misunderstanding caused by a misinterpretation of the space-time model.Thinking that the observation and experience is the same as the existential objective material reality. It is not.

There are lots of different ways of explaining ideas and perhaps when you have completed your research and fully explained your ideas I will have a better understanding of your approach. Thank you for taking the time to converse. Good luck.