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John: "Time is an emergent phenomena, in which the changing configuration of the state creates events which go from being future potential to past circumstance."

I still don't see the connection between time and emergent behaviour. You say thet "...even such basic structures as mass, space, and time are viewed as emergent phenomena..." So why not saying: mass is an emergent phenomena?

I believe that a 'particle' before measurment has no position nor momentum. But in the description of the wavefunction quantities like 'length' and 'momentum' are still used.

Energy and time both are scalar quantities. I wonder if the flow of time and the positive energy theorem have some connection. I think there has to be also a 'positive time theorem', for the same reasons there is a positive energy theorem.

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Peter,

The first three paragraphs were reposted from the article I linked.

Specifically I compare time to temperature. Space and energy/mass are a more complicated problem.

Thought experiment: Take some pool balls and rearrange them. You have two events, the original and the second state. These are not different balls, but their relationships to one another have changed, but the balls did not travel in anything other than in the volume of space. The arrangements are what came and went. First they were in the future and then in the past. So time emerges as an effect of motion, but it is the future becoming the past, not a fourth dimension along which events exist and the present travels. We just happen to think in terms of the ordering of events, from past events to future ones, not the process of their coming and going, which is from the future into the past. The wave of future potential is collapsing into the circumstances of the past.

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Lawrence you say: I just follow my nose on this stuff. Time is measured by counting accumulated intervals on a clock. Space is measured by units on a ruler. The theoretical description of what is measured is a four dimensional metric space with hyperbolic transformations. That is all I am concerned about. I don't worry about the ontological status of these things.

There is no time existing that is measured with clocks. Clock run itself is this time. We measure with this time/clock material change.

This has nothing to to with ontology. This is pure experimental physics.

Do you have one experimental data that prove existing of time behind clock run ? Present it here.

yours amrit

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John you say: Time is an emergent phenomena, in which the changing configuration of the state creates events which go from being future potential to past circumstance.

Sorry, No evidence for that. Our debate should be based on facts. What is not a fact can not be considered real. Time existing behing clock run is pure imagination.

yours amrit

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Peter

There is no observation of "flow of time". This is pure imagination.

We can only observe "flow of change" that we measure with clock/time.

yours amrit

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The question of time is far more subtle than this. I wrote on the open blog page:

http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/230

something about time and spacetime intervals. There are some questions about travelling faster than light. I indicate towards the end there are issues involved with "time operators" and the structure of quantum mechanics and relativity.

I am not sure how to communicate this further. I am not arguing that time exists as such, even though it is something we subjectively experience on an almost universal level, and we do measure it with clocks. My point here has been that physics is not in the business of telling us whether geometric constructtions, whether time or space, have a certain ontological status or relativity.

Cheers LC

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Lawrence

At a Planck level information and energy transfer is immediate. Timeless quantum space is a medium of immediate information and energy transfer.

By imediate transfer "thick" of clocks is zero. We have several data of physical events that are immediate. Speed of transfer there is faster than light. See my essay.

- Planck level - immediate transfer (gravity, EPR experiment and others. Time/clock "t" iz zero.

- Photon level - light speed transfer (electromagnetic radiation)

Time/clock "t" more than zero

- macro level - slower than light speed

Time/clock "t" more than zero

Yes, linear time exist on subjective level.....about that I say here in particularities.

It is physics business what time is and what space is from phenomenology point of view. I see that extremely important because being aware what is model and what is physical reality is distinquishing physics from philosophy.

Physics is a natural science. I think in physical terms, I'm aware that mathematical terms are only a support for description.

Today you can publish an article in peer rewieved physics journal only having a good mathematical formalism. A question of how this model corresponds to the physical reality is secondary. I see this as a weak point of physics. Physics is not only mathematics, pysics is much more. Physics is a scientific picture of reality we live in, we are part of it.

yours sincerely amrit

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Why Godel is right ?

In Special Theory of Relativity space and time are intrinsically linked, united into one manifold called "space-time". The three coordinates X1, X2 and X3 are spatial the fourth one X4 is temporal. Gödel introduced idea that X4 is spatial too. Profound analysis of the fourth coordinate shows that X4 is composed out of "c" light speed, imaginary number "i" and time "t" that represents "thick" of a clock:X4= ict. Time "t" that we gain with clocks describes numerical order of material changes. Clocks are reference systems for measuring frequency, velocity and numerical order of material changes. Gödel is right: fourth coordinate X4 is spatial too. Space itself is timeless. Mathematical time "t" is only an element of X4 and represents physical time that is run of clocks in timeless 4 dimensional space.

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amrit,

"John you say: Time is an emergent phenomena, in which the changing configuration of the state creates events which go from being future potential to past circumstance.

Sorry, No evidence for that. Our debate should be based on facts. What is not a fact can not be considered real. Time existing behing clock run is pure imagination."

The potential exists that we will still be having this discussion tomorrow. Whatever the case may be, whatever we write now, will at that point be yesterday. That is what is commonly referred to as a fact.

The only physical reality is what is present. Events go from being in the future(tomorrow), to being in the past(yesterday).

"Yes, linear time exist on subjective level.....about that I say here in particularities."

Ref: Emergence.

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Amrit, what basal quantities exist according to you?

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It was Minkowski who introduced spacetime and the four dimensional hyperbolic metric. Godel derived later a solution to the field equation of Einstein's general relativity. Minkowski's geometry introduced the light cone and the projective geometry of null world lines for massless particles or photons.

The Planck distance is a limit to the information that can be obtained about the universe on a small scale. There really is nothing particularly different about this scale when it comes to geometry. There is nothing about this scale which indicates in any clear way a timelessness. In fact along with Planck length there is a Planck time.

Cheers LC

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PS

If Einstein would publish in 1905 a paper in Analen der Physic where he would interpret fourth dimension of space as a product of light speed and run of clocks, this today would be basic statement of physics.

If I would wrote an essay on FQXI where I would propose idea of forth dimension of space being time all would be against, would say that I have no basic knowledge about foundations of physics.

This is possible because of unconscious observer.

Conscious observer is the future of physics.

Lawrence Planck time is a basic value for measuring numerical order of physical events. With measuring numerical order we obtain duration that is result of measurment.

In fact nothing in universe has duration on its own without measurment, universe is NOW.

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As a rule in science you don't want to explain an unknown with another unknown. In doing so you really explain nothing. In the case of consciousness we really don't know what it is exactly. We have no scientific understanding of consciousness. So attempting to explain quantum gravity with consciousness at this time will accomplish nothing.

Cheers LC

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Hi Amrit,

I don't see any difference between your fourth spatial dimension X4 and 'ict' Minkowski invented. Minkowski called it a 'proportional imaginary quantity'. Minkowski invented/discovered this a hundred years ago. I think we all agree that ict is essential in describing the spacetime continuum.

Amrit, you call the fourth spatial coordinate X4: I don't have problems with that. "time is thick of clock": I can live with that description of time. You can keep repeating "time is thick of clock" but you can't ignore "length is point of ruler".

I like to have your opinion about this:

You call 'ict' the fourth spatial coordinate X4, but we also can write proportional time as -tc2 and proportional spatial coordinates as ilxc, jlyc, klzc). So spacetime is not temporal nor spatial. It is a matter of choice. And there are other ways how to write proportional time and proportional length, all in accordance with time-like solutions. It is a matter of choice how to represent proportional time and proportional length.

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Peter

Yes length we measure with ruler.

Proportional time -tc2 is not time, is a dimension.

My point is that time is not a dimension, not a distance, time is run of clocks.

Dimensions and distances are a product of velocity and time.

yours amrit

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Whether you regard time as real or not, time is modelled in spacetime physics as what is called a 4th dimension. The ontological status of this dimension is not terribly relevant, but the geometric model does result in working physics.

Cheers LC

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Lawrence yes, real is what works. 4-th coordinate in not time. I hope we all agree on that, mathematical formalism shows that X4=ict, where t is only clock thick.

I encourage all physicists here stop thinking in terms that physical events happen in time, because it is wrong. Time is a measuring system merely.

yours amrit

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Lawrence,

"Working" is a somewhat subjective term. There have been any number of models, throughout history, that worked. Up to a point. The problems start to arise when the adherents to these models start proposing increasingly fantastical extensions of these models to explain contrary evidence, rather than re-examine the premises on which they operate. Knowledge, like much of nature, is a process of expansion and consolidation. The discipline of physics seems ready for a consolidation phase.

Possibly the convenience of modeling time as a dimension has reached the limits of its effectiveness.

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I presume by clock "thick" you mean "tick." Look, this is a lot of philosophical interpretation here. x_4 = ict in the Minkowski metric is spacetime. That is all there is to it. One just works with the formal system of relativity theory as it is without worries over the ontological status of time or any geometrical structure.

Cheers LC