It\'s the Temperature! by Buz Craft

Mr. Craft,

It is obvious that you've given this topic a great deal of thought. While I may not agree with all of your views, I also do not disagree with all of them. Regarding your comments about time and time travel, for example, may I suggest that you might be interested in reading my own essay, which appears elsewhere among this collection of essays; it is titled 'On the Impossibility of Time Travel.' If you enjoy reading that essay, I'd also recommend reference 4 at the end of my essay for your reading enjoyment.

I'm sure that the good citizens of Dallas owe you a debt of gratitude for your long service as a firefighter there, just as we all owe a debt of gratitude to those who work to keep us out of harm's way. Thank you, and good luck.

jcns

A hydrogen atom cooled to absolute zero has zero thermal energy. Its electron and proton will together continue to be unremarkable. Helium cooled to absolute zero under its vapor pressure is still a liquid that will flow in your claimed frozen Time. It is worse than that. Cryogenic atom fountain clocks do not run slow vs. heated cesium and rubidium atomic clocks. But it is much worse than that. **Negative temperatures Kelvin** are real world trivially achieved in lasing media, NMR and EPR spectroscopy, MRI imaging, and old fashioned adiabatic demagnetization of paramagnetic salts for deep cryogenic refrigeration.

Your equation Temperature/Mass = Time/Energy rearranges toTime=Temperature(Energy)/Mass, Time = Temperature(mc^2)/(Mass), Time = (scaling constant)Temperature(c^2). Unit consistency aside, DvD players' laser diodes do not travel backwards in time (nor do their electrons become positrons). Laser pointers did not appear before they were invented, the nominal 4 megajoule 500 terawatt National Ignition facility is not a time machine.

Mr. Craft,

I'm taking the liberty of posting this to the thread for your essay as well as to the thread for mine, because I'm not sure whether or how often you check back on the thread of my essay where you posed the excellent question, "What is the duration of Present Time?" I'd like to add to the reply which I offered there, which I fear was not very helpful. If you have a deep and burning desire to understand the concept of time, the best advice I can give you is to read the book 'The End of Time,' which was written by Julian Barbour and published in 1999. It is now available in paperback. While I don't necessarily agree with all of Mr. Barbour's thinking, I find his book to be an excellent source, a veritable treasure trove, of information about time.

Relevant to your question about the duration of the present time, for example, Barbour writes, ". . . Einstein's approach to relativity led him to an explicit theory of simultaneity but an implicit theory of duration. It is the latter that is important for this book, but it never got properly treated in relativity. . . . Poincare's 1898 paper showed that [the theory of time] must answer two main questions: how simultaneity is to be defined, and what duration is. Associated with the second question is another, almost as important: what is a clock? Because of his approach, Einstein answered only the first question at the fundamental level." (pp.133-135 of 'The End of Time,' hardback edition.)

The best news is that Barbour apparently is about to publish an eagerly anticipated update to 'The End of Time.' (See the essay about him at the main FQXi Community page.)

Good luck with your reading!

jcns

Thank you for sharing your ideas. I think the relating of oxidation of matter in general in the earth environment to increasing temperature is interesting. I do not know if there has been any research into how relevant increase in direct thermal input to the environment, via combustion and decay etc. is, compared to co2 levels , or variation in solar output or cloud cover etc. My guess is that this will have been considered by researchers in global warming science. I do not know, do you ? Some statistics would have been interesting here.

I also do not know how much matter lands on the earth annually. I assume that it is an insignificant amount compared to the mass of the earth, but I do not know. I should think that the fuel that would have to be burned to eject that matter back into space would far exceed any benefit from jettisoning the matter itself.Again some facts and figures, even assumptions used, to give a clearer idea of the cost benefit in thermal reduction of the exercise versus extra thermal output of ejection vehicle would be helpful.

It seems to me that temperature is related to change in position of matter in 3D vector space and also related to volume occupied in 3D space. Whereas the experience of time is related to loss of potential energy along the 4th dimension. This energy change being related to change in 4th dimensional position and is therefore also related to gravity but not temperature. Is it just the lack of mass associated with the passage of time and temperature change that led you to the hypothesis of a connection between these two? There are many scientists who use the thermodynamic arrow of time assumption and it is often mentioned as if it were fact. Was that influential in your thinking? Did you rule out other possibilities prior to writing this paper?

Despite disagreeing with much of the content of your essay, I must say that you have at least proposed something that ultimately may be possible, even if the benefit is highly questionable. Your ideas were also clearly expressed.

It did not take too long to read and understand. Time is precious, so thank you for that.

Mr. Smith, thank you for your good suggestions. Actually I had read "The End of Time" and was pleased to see that Mr.Barbour had referred to "Now" as being a vital consideration. Thinking his "Now" was related to my "Present Time Duration," I e-mailed him, and he was gracious enough to respond. In short, he said that he did not consider the "Present Time Pulse" as I posited it.

Simply, I believe that no "thing" can happen twice--so even the infinitesimal number one pulse of present time is "different" from the number two pulse, and so on. Likewise, the required Anti-Pulses are different from each other--and may or may not be "similar" in duration to the pulse they tag! Buz

Uncle Al, thank you for commenting on my post. I understand that an atom cooled to Absolute Zero would have Zero Energy. But I conjectured that such a cooling could not be "physically" achieved. My thinking was that any object cooled to absolute zero would necessarily exit this universe--and this, of course, would break the "rules." Buz.

Dear Georgina Parry. Thank you for your response. I believe our understanding and acceptance of four dimensions is largely a psychological reaction. Present Time, I say, is too minuscule to experience. On observing the remaing three, we notice that "depth" must be imagined. This leaves only height and width, but wait! we cannot see in two dimensions either. In fact, we only see points. These enter our psyche as particles (not photons). Our brain is so slow, we are presented with a glob-painting to examine, that was produced by the incoming points. Thus, dimensios aside, the only practical way to examine an object is to take its temperature!

Georgina, my posit is simply that TIME IS TEMPERATURE. Any object we know has TEMPERATURE; that object IS TIME!

Buz Craft, thank you for explaining your thoughts.

You said "Present time is too minuscule to experience." I would argue that there is no present time but that time itself is a muddle of a number of different mental concepts. Historical time which includes past, present and future is one of those concepts. Neither past nor future have material existence and the present is different for each observer, being made up of a composite of inputs that have taken various lengths of time to reach the observer. There is no universal "Now". Past, present and future are just ways of ordering information in the mind and have no real external existence.Changes of position of matter in quaternion space and corresponding energy changes do exist externally.

The mind does an amazing job of creating a subjective reality experience of externally existing reality using the input received, filtering and internal processing. How exactly this is achieved is an interesting area of research at the boundary between the physical and biological sciences.

You say that only the property of temperature can be observed and therefore this must be the property of time and therefore the object is time. That is a logically incorrect argument.

Temperature is a measurement of energy. Time is a confusion of mental constructs used to explain observations of change and relating those changes to a regular change in 3D vector space such as ticking of a clock or relying upon the internal "biological clock". Not all of the observed changes are due to kinetic energy that can be measured as temperature. Gravity is not, in my opinion, best explained by temperature. (Although there is a relationship.) Nor are most of the other foundational questions.

I am biased in my opinions. Particularly of what time is and how gravity works but that also impinges on many different areas of physics. As my ideas are not accepted physics I should not really judge other people's ideas by whether or not they agree with my own. Which is a big temptation.So putting aside my own conflicting ideas, any alternatives must still be logically or mathematically correct (and self consistent). The proposition is based on a logically incorrect argument. Perhaps developing a rigorous logical and self consistent argument in support of your idea might help readers to overcome what appears to be an illogical foundational premise.

Dear Georgina. Wow, it seems we are "almost" walking in the same woods together--however your journey obviously goes about one step further than I would dare to go. I have to accept a "Present Time," however brief it may be [I think, therefore I am], but, as you suggest, I may be all alone in my world--both figuratively and literally!

I realize it is pushing the envelope to suggest that Temperature, a seemingly simple measuring tool, IS the object it is measuring! But that is just what I am considering: Simply, Time IS Energy and Temperature IS Mass.

TIME/ENERGY = TEMPERATURE/MASS. If you look at the pencil in your hand and accept that it is "alive," with energy, you have my premise: A pencil without Mass/Energy, i.e., Temperature, cannot exist in Time. Buz Craft.

PS: Abstract numbers make our days (An empty egg carton IS minus 12 eggs), but we could never "pick up" minus 12 eggs--because they exist only in our minds.

Buz Craft,

your suggestion is not logical because you have not given any argument to demonstrate that all of the energy an object possess can be considered as kinetic energy, measurable by temperature. You have not taken into account other forms of energy, such as angular momentum (that is rotation) or potential energy. If you are able to provide reason why all of the energy an object possesses should be regarded as kinetic energy measurable by temperature then it would no longer be illogical. That is not however to say that it would be correct. It would mean however that your idea could not be so easily rejected on philosophical grounds.

Georgina, addendum. I had assumed questioners would realize a disproval of my idea could easily be provided by producing one material object that does not have a Temperature.

While at the keyboard, I would like to open one other can of worm holes: I cannot accept that a particle and a wave can occur at the same instant. It seems to me that Quantum Mechanics might be related to, and could possibly serve to validate, my own posit about a Universal Pulse and an Anti-Pulse that happen at such a rate we can never comprehend. This idea, I have noted, would be perceived as Time or Space, not Time and Space. So, I would argue that in the final analysis, it is particle or wave, not particle and wave. [This wave, of course, is Zero].

Likewise, this would be my belief concerning that old bottled up cat we hear so much about: That is, show me a cat that is dead and alive at the same moment.

As a fire fighter, I often was obliged to look at death head on. Many times I held a person, man, woman or child, while they expired, in some cases by a terrible death. But, thank God, I also was able to save the lives of some. I'm convinced that a living creature can actually die and then be alive, and then die and be alive, and so on until the final death. So I would conclude said cat in the box could be alive or dead, but never alive and dead. Buz Craft.

Buz,

If all spatial description is discounted, then potential energy must be considered as latent kinetic and angular momentum as just another form of kinetic energy that need not be distinguished, as it is only vector direction that is continuously changing and spatial directions are not part of the description. I do not have a particular problem with saying that all matter is energy because I have been proposing that the 4 dimension be considered spatio-energetic. So that any object can be described either in terms of quaternion spatial co-ordinates and changes or corresponding energy values and fluctuations.

I recall no clear reason in your ideas of why there should be a pulse of present moments. Why does the energy pulse? Is it only the need to retain the reassurance of a present moment, rather than give up on the concept of time entirely? Or is the pulsation of the energy foundational to the universe and all matter within in this model? Or another reason? In my own model there is specific change in quaternion spatial position of matter, which is a specific corresponding kind of energy change that gives rise to the changes we observe as passage of time and generally measure against a regular change on a clock. Time is inferred from spatial and energetic changes, it is not a foundational phenomenon in that model.

I think the statement "if an object has temperature then it is time itself" is rather controversial in quite a few ways. That may have been your intention. An object is something that can be defined by its geometry or the space it occupies. If all spatial description is being discounted, the term object does not apply. Unless you say something like "energy regarded as an object in 3D space...". It would also be less contentious to say that energy must have duration in order to exist rather than "it has temperature and so is time itself". You are inferring that without energy there is no duration or elapsed time, (rather than without energy there is no existence). This is either not logical or you are not actually talking about time at all but existence itself. Can an object exist without time? Yes, if its existence is fully defined in another way that does not require the inference of time.

An interval between events can be measured without existing as energy. To use your form of analogy , the holes in the flames can have duration. Just as we can measure the empty space between objects existing within space, which would be a positive measurement. One could, if using your thought process, say that nothingness is also time. There are no negative durations, as time is always positive, even when it is empty.

Time or duration is a measurement, just as distance is a measurement. It seems a little unfair to do away with all spatial measurement but retain the measurements of temperature and time. Energy embodying time may seem a superior, cleaner kind of reality compared to dirty old matter in space but I am not convinced that it is a superior model. In its current form it gives less information, flexibility of description and useful function than a model that retains a means of giving spatial description as well as energetic description.

We can never directly observe objective reality to confirm our descriptions, because all observations are processed to provide a subjective reality experience. Therefore all we can do is model it. The question is then what is the most useful model, that can explain or correctly predict the most. I can see why your ideas are appealing but the model it produces is less informative though perhaps more aesthetically pleasing, especially to one who has spent much time in the presence of and contemplating fire. It is about a beautiful vision of the universe (thank you for sharing it) rather than scientific usefulness, in my opinion.

I hope you have not found this too critical. It was my intention to point out those areas where I think the model could be improved in terms of its logic and completeness of the description, and possibly give further food for thought. Your essay gives a thought provoking alternative viewpoint and as such is interesting and therefore worthwhile, though it is not "what's ultimately possible in physics."

Buz, thank you. It interesting to me that you consider the pulse foundational. I agree that there must be a change that gives rise to passing of time but I regard that as an energy change or corresponding change in 4th dimensional spatial position, that leads to inference of passing of time. (I did not mention massless particles (quarks, anti-matter, etc) here.)

The more I think about the foundational description of the universe the more I think that there is not only a problem with deciding what it is but also how it should best be described. Very often the same sort of things are described by different people from a different perspective or using different words but ultimately it is all the same.I have not encounter4ed your description before.

Your essay fits a lot of the criteria on which the essays are to be judged.

It is foundational, original and creative. It is accessible, clearly and well written. Good luck.

Georgina, thank you so much for your comments. I would like to put my idea as succinctly as possible: The melding of the Universal Pulses and the Universal Anti-Pulses spawns changes that we eventually notice. We have named this phenomenon, TIME. Thanks again, Buz