Editor's Choice: The Illusion of the Expanding Universe

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Time is merely a temporal system of measure which requires an observer

Time measures the distance between events much the way space measures the distance between objects

Both require and active observer to determine the starting coordinate, i.e.; to denote the event or object for study

There is no "space-time" - the fourth dimension is a fourth coordinate that is only theoretical since we live in a 3-dimensional universe

Motion is the fundamental quanta - it is the building blocks of all else and is not merely an attendant property of objects or forces

- Jeff Softley

author, The Fundamental Quanta, c 1987

[deleted]

Dear Jeff

you say:Time measures the distance between events much the way space measures the distance between objects

There is no physical distance between events, the only "distacne" exists is in numerical order of events. This numerical order we measure with clocks.

"Before", "now" and "after" is measured as a strean of physical events that run in timeless quantum space i.e. gravity field.

yours amrit

eternity is now

[deleted]

I still like the idea of an "Evolving Block Universe" similar to the George Ellis model. As John Merryman has said, time is an "effect" of motion, in the sense that changes we observe in systems/configurations are what we perceive as advancing instants & store in memory as particular "times". Traditional "time" simply cannot be quantified other than in terms of spacial displacement calibrated by cyclic processes (clocks).

The evolving block is a space of configurations in relative motion & with objects having trajectories (relative velocities). The motion of any object is only fully determined by the motion of all other objects The boundaries would be dynamic & determined by c relative to any arbitrary inertial frame. What we need though to fully define the configurations from any and all local frame is a way to recover all relativistic effects, "time dilation" etc, without referring to the traditional notion of time. Has anyone looked seriously at re-defining for example, a form of Lorentz transformation without a time coordinate? This model of course implies a spacially finite Universe, enabling a fully "Machian" treatment of the dynamics in a timeless way.

This is not a "block time of events", but an evolution of unique configurations that have no "permanence" and so cannot be "accessed" again as they no longer exist, thus precluding time travel & causality violation. "Events" could be considered as particular local configurations or

sub-systems according to an observer/object. Issues relating to gravity & the various GR singularity and time-loop solutions will of course need to be disproved. In this model, timelike singularities should be obviated, however, spacelike singularities might remain a problem, but perhaps one that can be solved with a fully spatial treatment of the relevant equations?

Lawrence raised the question of connections between quantum mechanical wave interpretations and relativistic time which made me think that something like the above model may potentially be well described by a Bohmian Mechanics type theory, if one could be formulated to be relativistic and Lorentz invariant??

Cheers

Roy J

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Anon,

Subjective situations are not time reverseable, but there is a constant recycling of energies, as gravity consolidates and radiation disperses it. Even Big Bang theory requires that initial energy of the singularity to happen, without going into how it originated.

Jeff,

Time doesn't require an observer. In fact, the subjective observer is the source of confusion. As mobile organisms we are moving about in space and so we equate that with moving from one situation to the next. Because we do not have an objective perspective, we don't perceive the equilibrium of all other points of reference moving about and balancing our actions. So we tend to think of time as that sequential series of events we observe and thus move forward from one to the next, not the objective energy changing its configuration, so that it is the particular events going from being in the future to the past.

[deleted]

Dear all ,

What do you think about the average coefficient of volume expansion

av vol exp = change of vol per unit of vol/change of times .Considering the pression constant .We can link with isothermal compressibility .

If we insert the increase of mass ...

The calculus can be optimized with x y and z in three coordonates ,with x like a function of y and z,y can be imagined ...f(x) and f(z).......the substitution thus can be made thus and we continue in correlation with the thermdynamics laws and its constants .

If we make a difference between the dark matter and the volume of mass ,the density in a limited sphere in evolution ,thus the physical quantities can be extrapolated with Lorentz laws ,always the thermal conductivity will rest invariant even with an increase of mass .

Thus all that can be correlated with the principle of the increase of entropy .Let's assume the irreversibility of the adiabatic system ,logic the unknew will rest unknew.The process is isotherm....INT ln(u+vx)dx=1/b(u+vx)ln(u+vx)-x...the S and the mass ,density ,...increase Q W T are linked too like all .

All has the maximum energy quantity ,and the rule of human is to use it with pragmatism ,we are going to these entropy more we are going far in the quantum and the cosmological dimensions in 3D .

The time is a constant ,primordial ,necessary to implies the evolution in a psecific space in evolution .Without time ,any movment thus any evolution ,thus any mass ,thus any entropy .Our physical sphere has its universal laws and the time is important ,it's the only thing which is ubiquity like the constants .

Sincerely

Steve

[deleted]

Hi all!

1/ Note how often you use the word "motion".

Motion is at the center of your inner thoughts!

2/ Yet in the footsteps of physics, our human exchanges ignore the reality of motion:

Uniform motion is identified to rest (to nothing) in physics inertia law.

Then Einstein claimed that a roofer falling of the roof is not accelerated because he feels no force.

Motion is simply sidestepped or set aside and forgotten in physics and the fundamental ingredients are (arbitrarily) chosen to be space, time, forces and mass.

3/ Is that not a blatant discrepancy?

The discrepancy is between our inner thoughts and our writings and discussions.

On these premises my own interpretation of Nature (my imagination of "objective reality" to use Georgina words), is based on motion.

Think a minute about it:

I/ Even though speed, physics interpretation of motion, is distance over time, motion is thought instead to occur in space (over distance) and time.

Just inverse this arbitrary tradition, think on the contrary that space and time occur-in or make motion, and bingo you fall back on physics mathematical definition of speed!

By the way this is in line with Einstein's time dilation in which "motion" (speed) controls time!

II/Then look at an object falling: is not the phenomenon of gravitation motion? Now the "idea" expressed in I/ matches "objective reality"; gravitation, space and time are merged into one entity that of motion. By the way this is the idea behind the word gravimotion.

And that is also in line with the alleged expansion of the universe! On a grand scale the universe is in motion through the red shift observed in our telescopes!

III/But that's not all!

Let us turn our attention toward light and electromagnetic waves, which characteristic is to "move" while having no mass! Is that not the definition of motion! Light rays are pure motion.

Now if you decide that the fabric of electromagnetic fields is identical to that of electromagnetic waves, the electrical aspect of matter is made of motion!

On these simple observations one can build the whole world out of motion!

There is only one thing missing: mass! So this interpretation of Nature may remain valid (among all other) as long as the Higgs boson remains undiscovered or which is the same until mass remains a fantasy of human imagination.

Note that abolishing time seems to go along Julian Barbour's own interpretation, yet asserting that motion is real goes against his claim that only static flashes in space occur.

Another problem is that nobody knows what is motion!

If we make a mental U-turn, and decide that space and time are illusory, then motion in our minds becomes as mysterious as space and time.

The big difference though is that motion is physical, motion belongs to "objective reality", time and space do not!

Motion as the fabric of the universe is much more credible than space and time are!

And amrit is getting to the same idea (post Sep. 5, 2009 @ 15:08 GMT)

Henri

Visit: gravimotion site

PS: Thank you Steve (Steve Dufourny post Aug. 26, 2009 @ 17:11 GMT ), I am honored by your visit (to my site) and your comments as my understanding of physics' science is certainly not up to par with yours!

[deleted]

Steve, time is not constant, time is run of clocks.

Change is constant.

yours amrit

[deleted]

Hi all ,

Dear Henry ,

Nice to meet you .

Happy to see you here ,your website is super .We are all honored to speak together hihihi

You know I liked a lot the discussions which are written on you website ,we read the real words of scientists ,scholars and it's fascinating ,thanks to have created this kind of web site .

We could extrapolate some links with the rotations of spheres and the spherical waves .There are many works to do still ,how to well superimpose all that .

Sometimes I ask me,why these beatings of Heart ,and if the changement of sense was the aswer ,or two main central spheres or an other explaination ....

Amrit ,

but how can I imagine a time different than a constant .It's impossible .

It's a run of clocks of course but the time is the time ,a constant of evolution .With all the human possible systems ,the time rest the time .Its frequence is constant like the velocity of the light and others universal constants .

I can understand the fact what the time is not palpable ,but it doesn't change .The physical Universe evolves and without time ,it exists any evolution and any motion ,linear ,local ,centrifugal ,...thus any mass thus any logic .When Einstein said the space time is linked ,he understood what all was linked in a specific dynamic of polarizatiions towards the complexification of creations.But this understanding needs limits in the interpretations .The fourth coordonates are falses ,the dilatation of time impossible ....and all that just because the misunderstandings of the whole are reals .

All is linked and have a specific rule of complemenatrity ,even the time ,the time was a necessity to build the Universe .We can't raise any constant or law it seems to me .

And this time continues to build and polarise the mass .

I have difficulties really Amrit ,could you convince me ,

Sincerely

Steve

[deleted]

Steve, If I may; Motion causes change. Time is a measure of change.

The dimensional paradigm of time creates the presumption that other points in time co-exist, similar to how different points in space co-exist, i.e, block time and that if we can find ways to warp these dimensions, we can travel to these other points in time. It's as if time is a book and we can open it up to different pages.

The point amrit, myself and others have been making is that time is not a dimension, along which events exist, but is the consequence of the activity of existing energy moving about and thus causing change. Other points in time do not co-exist, because it is the same energy, different configurations. You can't have your cake and eat it too, because the material of which the cake consisted is now in your stomach. It is no longer in cake form. There is no other dimension in which that cake permanently exists because that would require a universe worth of energy to manifest every moment and Ockham's razor wouldn't agree.

To repeat the point I keep making; Time is these changing configuration states and the present is not traveling along them from past to future. They are flowing through the present, so that what is future becomes past. We are not moving from one tick of the clock to the next. The ticks happen, then fade into the past.

Time is an effect of motion. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist, because as long as motion exists, it is creating change and thus time.

Nor is "now" a dimensionless point in time, since the motion would have to cease, to freeze time.

[deleted]

Hi John ,

I can understand your point of vue .

Thanks for this explaination.

Could you develop a little how the future becomes past through this flow in present ?

I have already seen what you use the rotation for the past and future ,and if we insert the others rotations thus ?

I try to encircle the whole of yours ideas .Thus for you the time is an effect of the motion energy implying the change .

This interpretation is a specific serie where the sequence is a part of the time .In fact it's the same explaination ,it's a specific oscillation ,constant it seems to me.

Thus the motion of energy undergoes too a specific constant oscillation which is the not palpable time .

If the motion of energy ,mass is the cause thus the effect is balanced too in the same irreversible laws No? where this constant is invariant .I think really what the motion and time like the space are main pieces for the evolution.

I fact that doesn't change our reality of evolution.It's only the local interpretation which can caused some problems of extrapolations .

Thus if I understand well without time the motion continues ?The cause without effect .Thus we can move in a pure atemporality .It's poetic but how?

About the rotations of my quantum spheres implying mass and rule,thus the motion around itelf(the sphere)in your model can turn without time and have a mass without the time because it's just an effect of the motion of energy .

I need some explainations really to admit this correlation between this cause and effect .

Sincerely

Steve

Sincerely.

[deleted]

Steve,

"Thus the motion of energy undergoes too a specific constant oscillation which is the not palpable time."

It is time, whether it's the oscillation of an atom, or the rotation of the planet. There is nothing atemporal about it. Time is the measure of the series of events. The problem is equating this series with space, as if we are walking down a hallway, past a series of doors, because future and past events do not physically exist, as those doors do. Only the energy exists and it changes shape. As new shapes form, old ones dissolve, so they are first future potential, then present reality and then past. If you stare down that hallway and someone walks through one of the doors, by the time the information reaches your brain, the event is already in the past, just as light from a distant star carries information of events from the past. So that series of doors is a very poor comparison to the reality of time.

Consider the idea of Schrodinger's cat as it would apply to those doors. Every door you walk past, there is some chance you might enter it, so according to the multi-worlds concept, you split off into multiple people and walk through all of them. But it doesn't work that way, because you are not an independent observer moving towards the multiple possibilities of the future. The future and all its possibilities are collapsing onto the present, of which you are an integral part and out of that is emerging the events which quickly recede into the past.

[deleted]

John,

I feel there is a problem with your statement:-

"It is time, whether it's the oscillation of an atom, or the rotation of the planet. There is nothing atemporal about it. Time is the measure of the series of events."

I think statements like this are what perpetuate the "assumption" that our clocks are measuring something other than the "series of events", which are the changing configurations. Clocks are themselves just physical objects forming part of the system/configuration which they are "measuring" by relative *spatial* displacement. This first statement seems to be almost contradictory to your following words, which I basically agree with:-

"because future and past events do not physically exist, as those doors do. Only the energy exists and it changes shape. As new shapes form, old ones dissolve, so they are first future potential, then present reality and then past."

So only an instantaneous configuration exists, representing our "present" reality (subject to inertial frames), there are no "future" or "past" instants for a "time" interval to measure. The "intervals" are spatial only, with relative frames of reference differentiated by their relative motion. Paul Davies in his book "About Time" I think makes the same mistake in his discussions on relativistic effects, eg time dilation, where he says something to the effect, "skeptics might protest that it is only our clocks that are affected in these ways, but clocks measure time, they are our only way to do so."

On time dilation, Henri said,

"By the way this is in line with Einstein's time dilation in which "motion" (speed) controls time!"

This is partly true, but it is the *spatial asymmetry* of motion between the inertial frames, ie acceleration & additional "spatial" motion, that causes the effect, acceleration causing spatial contraction.

The problem to be solved is replacing (x,y,z,t) with (x,y,z,?) in purely spatial terms, with "?" being the "interval" determined by relative displacement?

Cheers

Roy J

[deleted]

John: Time is an effect of motion. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist, because as long as motion exists, it is creating change and thus time.

Amrit: Clocks are man inventions to measure change.

Motion and change are existing as a physical reality

and time is existing as a physical reality merely as a tick of clock.

Time as a physical reality is man invention,

motion and change are not man invention.

This in important diffrence that physics should consider.

[deleted]

Roy,

It is difficult to analyze something which is so fundamental to our process of analysis. The fact is that series of events do occur and our perception of them is the effect we call time.

"So only an instantaneous configuration exists, representing our "present" reality (subject to inertial frames), there are no "future" or "past" instants for a "time" interval to measure."

Consider your use of the term "instantaneous." It is a time based concept, so in effect you are using time to describe an atemporal reality. That's why I make the point that there is no such thing as a dimensionless point of time, since it would require freezing the very motion being measured. If such instantaneous configurations of the universe did exist, than we there would presumably be an equally precise movement of energy from one to the next and that would be the basis of absolute time. In fact, that was the essence of Barbour's entry in the essay contest on time.

Our brains function like frames of film, since real motion is effectively at the speed of light, where the mind is a series of frames/thoughts, distilled from the spectrum of information our senses register. So the very concept of "instantaneous" is a mental construct. It's not that those ticks of a clock don't happen and there isn't an interval we can proximately measure, but that trying to correlate this to units of space causes severe confusion, since with space, we move from A to B, but with time, A becomes B. (A dimensionless point is space is an oxymoron as well, as anything factored by zero doesn't exist.)

amrit,

The effect we call time does pre-exist our perception of it. The earth rotates on its axis and revolves around the sun. Rain falls, rivers run, cycles happen. The point is that all these ticks of a clock don't co-exist along some meta-dimension. They are the physical stuff of reality going through changes.

[deleted]

John,

Thanks for this explaination .I understand better the idea of Mr Barbour too and yours .

sincerely

Steve

[deleted]

John: The effect we call time does pre-exist our perception of it. The earth rotates on its axis and revolves around the sun. Rain falls, rivers run, cycles happen. The point is that all these ticks of a clock don't co-exist along some meta-dimension. They are the physical stuff of reality going through changes.

Amrit: Yes, clock tick also when you do no watch it. There is no physical time beyond clock tick. All experimental data confirm this statement.

There is no pre and after existence. Change run in timeless space and the only "pre" and "after" is numerical order of change that we measure with clocks.

eternity is now

[deleted]

amrit,

"eternity is now"

Math likes to use dimensionless points as convenient place holders, because they presumably don't require any further description, but they amount to logical singularities. Consider the idea of Planck units as the smallest possible units of space and time. Yet they cannot be exact units, as that would require defining the limits down to that dimensionless point....

[deleted]

As I recall, Peter Lynds originally made this point about space, in terms of Zeno's paradox.

[deleted]

Regradng Zeno paradox

turtle moves into a-temporal space and Archile moves also in a-temporal space

they start both from the point A towards the point B

with clocks we measure speed of motion into a-temporal space

turtle moves 1m in 10 seconds

in 100 seconds turtle will move 10 m from A into direction to B

Archile moves 1 m in one second

ın 100 seconds Archile will move 100 meters from a towards B

lets say that Archile start moving after turtle moves already 5 seconds

he will pass ıt soon

there is no paradox here

both move into space only and not in time

Zeno paradox is mathematical paradox that makes no sense in physics

[deleted]

John,

You are quite correct that my use of the word "instantaneous" has temporal connotations and I have fallen into the very trap I am wanting us all to avoid! So please substitute "instantaneous configuration" with "unique configuration" or "frame", where even this is really an idealisation based on how our brain perceives change, which you described well when you said..."Our brains function like frames of film, since real motion is effectively at the speed of light, where the mind is a series of frames/thoughts, distilled from the spectrum of information our senses register".

I also agree that the real difficulty comes with trying to quantify "intervals" (config A - config B) in spatial terms. This is the essense of the problem we have to overcome! The processes (physical laws) which govern the changes are quantised (as are any "measures" we make of intervals at any scale) but we perceive those changes as a continuum, this is also the problem of GR being a continuum theory and therefore incompatible with QM. If I understand the rest of your post correctly, this is basically what you are saying? That "time" cannot be quantised (Lynds) and so is treated as a continuum yet our treatment of spatial intervals is inherently quantised/intervallic?

Perhaps too, your statement..."The effect we call time does pre-exist our perception of it", might be more correct by substituting "does pre-exist" with "is a priori to". This may please Amrit, who I think is correct in his issue with "pre".

Cheers

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