Time and the Multiverse

[deleted]

Lawrence, yes. I also regard proper time as physically real.

Tom

[deleted]

John, I want to point you to a sounder basis for you idea that " ... these vibrations, representing units of time, are first potential, then actual, then residual information in the measuring device."

transactional interpretation

Unless we find a suitable context, our discussion can't go anywhere. I only know that relativity is not the context.

Tom

[deleted]

Tom,

It will take more than a lunch break to go over that.

[deleted]

Tom,

My point about strawmen had unnecessary connotations. I realize you are coming from a position of current physics and framed your view of what I was saying in that context. I brought it up in light of the end of the earlier thread about Definition: Energy, where it seemed as thought you were considering I was describing time reversibility.

As for a frozen moment being a photograph of reality, consider your earlier mention of reality as a bunch of point particles in nearly empty space. If these particles were to be frozen and lose the energy of their motion, we would have far less then a photograph of any reality we would recognize.

If compression reduces temperature, then wouldn't the center of the earth be much cooler than the surface?

[deleted]

Hello,

Hhiihihihi indeed Ray I am like a child who plays now, ........

ps I haven't a concrete answer about these extradimesions ....I wait still ....we wait still .....

ps2 the entanglement is finite and the number is specific.....the volume of the spheres increase towards the main central sphere......all in 3D because the rotations of the spheres are since the begining in dynamic for a polarization of evolution.....

Regards

Steve

[deleted]

If we tease, we catalyze, if and only if, the real respect is now out of a certain vanity.

Personaly I respect all people with a sincere heart.

The simplicity of roads thus draw into harmonic curves.

Friendly

Steve

[deleted]

John, when you take a picture of something moving, do you think the motion actually stops?

Time reversibility is merely a convention to assure us that the sequence of pictures we take is continuous. By continuous functions, we mean increments of small step changes; i.e., we observe apparently continuous functions in nature when we "photograph" events in an iterated sequence. Is this illusion? Is deep reality really discrete? If so, we have to explain why the illusion produces classical physics that matches our observations, while sitting on our hands.

The Earth is a thermodynamically open system. It continually absorbs and dissipates heat from the sun. The center of the Earth isn't compressed, like a gas. Think of liquid nitrogen. The center of the earth is actually radiating heat energy.

Tom

[deleted]

Dear Steve,

Were you waiting on a response from me? I'm sorry. - I thought I had presented my reasons for extra dimensions fairly clearly over the months.

Does time exist as an independent dimension? I think so. Certainly we experience a change in "time", and Newton's Laws (F=ma, a is the second time derivative of position x) and Einstein's Relativity are based on the ability to measure changes in space with rulers and changes in time with clocks.

IMHO, the Wick rotation and the Minkowski metric (and, of course, the proportionality constant of c, Delta(x)=c*Delta(t)) imply that time is radically different from space - thus we have another broken symmetry. But please, don't worry, I love broken symmetries almost as much as I love unity symmetries. It is not a problem - it is simply a puzzle.

It seems to me that Amrit has "replaced" time with an equivalent tool: a numerical ordering of events within his block. If the mind causes time to move (as Amrit claims), then I would like to slow time down the next time I'm on a nice vacation - maybe stretch a week out into at least a month. You have also used extra degrees-of-freedom in the rotations of your spheres. I don't fully understand your model, but I think that you have concealed time and mass within these degrees of freedom.

Regarding extra dimensions - past 4-D. OK - it is true that we cannot directly see or experience these dimensions without a Black Hole. Read my "What is Ultimately Possible" essay paper from last year (topic 520), and you will see that I have correlated conserved quantum numbers with extra dimensions. Peter Van Gaalen (your Dutch neighbor) did something similar with fundamental units and extra dimensions in his essay paper.

I have asked these questions many times: "Where is Hilbert Space?" "How does every electron 'know' that it has a rest mass of 511 KeV/c^2, an intrinsic spin of 1/2 h-bar, and an electric charge of -e?" We use these conventions so often that we take them for granted. Many physicists just crank the math, and don't ask the philosophical questions. I am proposing that this information, and these quantum numbers, are projected into our Spacetime from Hyperspace - perhaps through the Event Horizon, string interactions, and "spooky" action-at-a-distance (and its not "spooky" - its caused by "scalar fermion" tachyons and conserved quantum numbers).

Can we directly see extra dimensions? NO

Do extra dimensions influence our physics? YES

Have Fun!

[deleted]

Tom,

I also realize that if the shutter speed is set at zero, there is no picture.

Since what I describing is the changing configuration of the same content, it would obviously be continuous.

"The center of the Earth isn't compressed, like a gas."

Maybe you should tell that to BP. I'm sure they would be happy to now that oil isn't under any pressure and shouldn't be pushing up out of that hole in the sea floor.

Liquid nitrogen is produced by cooling, which removes energy, not by compression.

Let's say we have a cloud of cosmic gas and it collapses, forming a star. Less volume, more heat.

[deleted]

John, you wrote:

"Liquid nitrogen is produced by cooling, which removes energy, not by compression."

Cooling means that the heat energy of fast moving molecules has been released, so that the gas may be confined in a smaller volume where the molecules have less room to move. So much for your claim about a relationship between temperature and volume, unless you mean that a smaller volume of gas stores more potential energy. That has nothing to do with temperature, however.

"Let's say we have a cloud of cosmic gas and it collapses, forming a star. Less volume, more heat."

Okay, let's say that. Let's say that the star, whose gravity is balanced by its radiation, collapses to a white dwarf and eventually to a black hole. (Before Hawking's results, it was thought that black holes radiated no temperature at all; now we think that Hawking radiation can lead to black hole evaporation.)

Seriously, John, perhaps we ought to discuss some more basic physics before getting into relativity.

Tom

[deleted]

Hello,

Nice to know you.

Personally I find these multiverses , the most stupids things invented.....it's all our entropy, our laws, our constants, our pure irreversibilities which are in confusions .....because our universe is unique ....it's all our uniqueness which is taken without rationality with these multiverse and time reversibility....no sense ...any sense.

A pure joke for the global sciences community.

Regards

Steve

[deleted]

Dear Dr Cosmic Ray,

I am persuaded like your strings friends that if you study all sciences, like the evolution and the biology, you shall see the 3D and its truths,......these ideas dear Ray are a lost of time....tachyons...Dr cosmic Ray.....these tachyons do not exist....strings falses....time reversibility and extradimensions...do not exist....and so on...

I critic simply the conclusions, not your works and competences....it lacks like others models (Lawrence,Th , Lisi.....it lacks the generality Ray, it lacks the whole, it lacks the essentials dear Dr Cosmic Ray, the evolution of the mass inside a closed system in evolution, it lacks the universal entropic link, it lacks the causes ....these rotations of these spheres which polarises the light spheres......

fURTHERMORE THE ORIGIN OF MASS IS NOT INTRINSIC ...that has no sense all thats like the strings events and horizons.....let's be pragamatic please about our reality in 3D.

Never the LHC will find that in this line of reasoning purely false physically speaking.Many confound the maths creativity and the sciences, physicals Ray.

It's not due to competences but utilization of skills.

Really, When we study chemistry, physics, biology,.....we see the whole ...if not the details are imaginaries and without universal coherences.

I liked a lot your book really Ray , I respect the method and the work, several relevances of alcuisl are there.....but your referential, your topology is purely false in my humble opinion,, of course it's just my opinion and you are free to continue but be sure all that is false Ray.

The complexity is the sister of the simplicity when the harmony is the road of this rationality.......we observe , we shut up, we calculate, we reobserve and finally we make the conclusion of these observations.But never we shut up and we calculate without the real referential , it's like to calculate the serie of pi .

Friendly

Steve

[deleted]

Dear Steve,

I completely agree with you that the origin of mass is intrinsic.

The origin of mass, the quantization (or non-quantization?) of mass, and the origin of gravity are critical questions. I think that a SM complex Higgs scalar doublet, or even an MSSM complex Higgs scalar doublet pair, is far too simple to explain all of our observed mass spectra.

I think that the 5-brane of Hyperspace is the origin of Mass and Quantum Gravity, and that these effects are holographically translated into the observed geometrical gravity of Spacetime.

Perhaps this is simply my "Affirmation of Faith", and you are welcome to agree or dis-agree with me. It won't hurt my feelings if you dis-agree. You think you understand something that I don't, and I think I understand something that you don't. Confusion is the way of our world...

Have Fun!

[deleted]

No Ray ,

Forget your vanity, and the business please Ray......Yes I understand something that you don't understand but I don't consider me like superior than you even if I understand better than you, like many here who use these referentials of pure business maths, it's purely false ,and furthermore the most impressing, these people give curses ahahaha

I understand it's difficult for you and others to return at the begining because there are friends from USA generally or a kind of team.

A kind of team which agrees even when it's false.....even curses are given in Universities and this and that(let's be serious, you iùmagine even at the LHC they search bizare irrationalities) .... ......it's like a product, we invent a product and even if it's a bad inventions ...the team continues to sell , it's logic because it exists dear Friendfs all over the world a strategy, logic it exist scchools for that....and these people speak in private, they fear to loose their credibility or their monney or investmenst, it's the world dear Ray ......

But the real problem is what these people, a little skilling in maths , give curses and the most impressing they don't know the generality and the evolution, bizare no Dr Cosmic Ray.

The confusions is the way when it lacks the generality .

Frankly and sincerely

Friendly

Steve

[deleted]

Tom,

If you want to discuss basic physics, I'm certainly willing.

My point was that if you compress the gas, its temperature will rise. Obviously, if you cool it first, this changes the situation entirely.

By cooling, the energy level is being lowered, so there isn't as much energy in the same quantity of gas. A car moving at sixty mpg cannot be as easily contained as one not moving at all.

It's like the point about the motion of the particles being a major component of the "picture." Particles in motion and particles at rest contain different levels of energy.

Re: Your observation about a dimensionless point of time being a photo of reality as we know it. What would be the shutter speed of a dimensionless point of time? As should be evident, reality is an emergent effect in which motion is a fundamental component. Presumably a dimensionless point of time would have to be, at the very least, faster than light.

[deleted]

John,

We can get off the temperature thing. Temperature simply measures the average kinetic energy of a group of particles. That's it. There's nothing mysterious or fundamental about it.

And wherever did you get the idea that I said "...a dimensionless point of time being a photo of reality..."? That's just nuts. I can't figure out what the heck you are even trying to say, and especially what it has to do with anything I said.

Tom

[deleted]

Tom,

I use temperature as an analogy for non-linear behavior. My shorthand, sorry if it doesn't translate.

I guess I was paraphrasing this, from 6/29, at 8:09;

"The mathematical treatment of a frozen moment does not _create_ a "non fluctuating vacuum." It is a picture, a photograph, of the moment. Even if time is an emergent property, it's in the photograph. An iterated series of photographs is the moving picture. Once again, the deep question is over discrete quantum moments vs. continuous field."

[deleted]

Tom,

And in answer to the question posed;

"Once again, the deep question is over discrete quantum moments vs. continuous field."

I would say the "moment" is the present and the transition from one configuration to the next is continuous, or at the very least, all the potential leaps between "moments" overlap, since the "picture" is an emergent effect of innumerable quanta.

[deleted]

I don't mean t jump in, but I think that John Merryman is referring to adiabatic heating when talking about compressing a gas results in increased temperature. is that correct?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adiabatic_process

[deleted]

I don't think so, a.m. From what I could understand, John was posing a direct relation between volume and temperature, treating temperature as an intrinsic property of matter that supposedly increases with decreased volume, rather than as the measure of average kinetic motion that it is.

Tom

[deleted]

Tom,

I understand what temperature is. You don't seem to understand the point I keep trying to make.

Temperature is a scalar level of molecular or atomic activity. It is an effect of motion. I have been trying to point out that time is also an effect of motion, ie. the changing, serial configuration which results from motion. I compare the theory that time is another dimension of space, to saying temperature is another parameter of volume. I realize it is a ridiculous argument, but I'm using it as an example of why time as another dimension of space is a ridiculous argument.

[deleted]

Dear John,

Did you read Peter van Gaalen's "What is Ultimately Possible" contest essay at

http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/509

He bases "dimensionality" on units and, based on my interpretation of his essay, he would probably say that your Temperature argument is a good argument for new dimensions due to the existence of Time AND Temperature (although Peter explicitly counts energy rather than temperature).

So I ask "Is your counter-example a good reason to consider ONLY 3 dimensions, or is it a good reason to consider MORE than 4 dimensions?" I fall into the latter category. I think Tom and Lawrence would agree with me - although they probably have different perspectives. I know that Amrit and Steve have supported 3-D as staunchly as you.

As I have told Amrit and Steve, they are replacing a 4th dimension of "time" with other contraptions that still contain time's degrees-of-freedom. If it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.

Have Fun!

[deleted]

It's a ridiculous argument, John, because while we did not invent volume, we did not invent time, we did not invent motion -- we DID invent temperature. That it's a scalar quantity at the instantaneous time of measure doesn't mean anything; when it changes, it is a VECTOR. It is our way of differentiating hot and cold -- we could just as easily have made the scale 0 to 1, where zero is the theoretically unobtainable absolute absence of molecular motion. Every measurement of temperature partitions the real line (0,1) into one cold and one hot part, with the hot molecules moving toward the cold, toward equilibrium in a closed system. Once again, this is not esoteric physics.

No, time is not identical to temperature. And yes, time is also scalar, except when it isn't.

Tom

[deleted]

And BTW, John, time is not "another dimension of space" in general relativity, in any other than a colloquial sense.

Time is treated as an added parameter to the geometry of a coordinate system in which the metric signature +++- clearly prescribes a role for time distinct from space. The signature is derived from x^2 + y^2 + z^2 - (dt)^2, with the negative term represented as the distance-time coordinate. That's how we get "curved space," although space is actually Euclidean except at the most extreme relativistic conditions.

Tom

[deleted]

Tom,

"We" "invented' a scale for measuring temperature based on various physical realities, such as celsius being between freezing and boiling points of water, or fahrenheit for our biological comfort zone.

It's not like we invented our body temperature, just the scale used to measure it.

The fact is that we do the same thing with time. We use convenient measures, such as the length of the rotation of the earth, cycle of the moon, or that of the earth around the sun to coordinate our understanding of this process of change.

I didn't say time was identical to temperature. Temperature is the measure of the level of activity. Time is the measure of change wrought by that activity. If we put a clock in one situation where it runs at x and then put it in another situation where it runs at x, ie. the twins paradox, we say time runs faster in the second situation because more change has been measured. It's really no different than having a candle burn faster in one environment than another. Which was essentially the argument put forth by Carlo Rovelli, in his Nature of Time entry: http://www.fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Rovelli_Time.pdf?phpMyAdmin=0c371ccdae9b5ff3071bae814fb4f9e9

"we re-think mechanics as a theory of relative evolution of variables, rather than a theory of the evolution of variables in time."

Ray,

I understand your point, having just made it as a counterexample, but for one thing, I don't think of space as three dimensional, but infinitely dimensional. In that dimensions are a reductionist coordinate system we apply to space, but is only a map of space. Longitude, latitude and altitude are just such a coordinate system, yet obviously if we applied a Euclidian dimensionality to every point on the surface of the planet, we would all exist in different sets of three dimensional systems, thus infinitely dimensional. Since I see time as an effect of motion, rather than the basis for it, then every clock is effectively recording its own time and thus, if we wish to model time as dimension, it would be infinitely dimensional too, as every clock would be its own dimension. As for temperature, we at least recognize it is simply a scale of non-linear behavior in the first place and don't try thinking of it as some form of fundamental property.

[deleted]

Ray,

This raises the question of just what are dimensions? Did we discover them, or invent them? Einstein said space is what we measure with a ruler. He didn't say space is a ruler. Are dimensions a property of the ruler, or of the void we seek to measure with the ruler? I think they are a mapping device, rather than a fundamental element of the territory.

[deleted]

Ah, John, temperature is _nothing but_ the "scale used to measure it"!

If you don't like the arbitrary phenomenological demarcations of Celsius and Farenheit, use the Kelvin scale, which is absolute. Its degree size is identical to Celsius.

For the last time, temperature is _our_ convention, not nature's. Nature only knows the difference between hot and cold, i.e., the direction of molecules, and it's always in the direction of cold. That's how we get radiation, and temperature is the degree of radiation. Our biology has nothing to do with it -- we are warm blooded animals, equipped with mechanisms to regulate our body temperature within an optimum range; this means nothing special--cold blooded animals tend to equilibrium with the ambient temperature.

If you really understood what Carlo Rovelli is saying, you would know that his relational view substitutes motion "in time" for a theory of interacting fields in which neither space nor time are physically real. This is a page straight out of Lee Smolin's view of a purely relational universe, and key motivation for loop quantum gravity theory. I expect that you can find papers referencing this by visitng the Perimeter Institute site; I also reference the idea in my papers, but apparently you don't believe a word I say.

Tom

[deleted]

Dear John,

You ask a very good question. Do we assign the definition of "dimension" to the three or four that we can see/ measure/ experience? Or do we assign the definition of "dimension" to every degree-of-freedom in the system - a very large number, perhaps ~10^500?

Personally, I consider my fundamental basis vectors to be "dimensions", and I am looking for the minimum number of such dimensions that yields observed and/ or implied particle and force symmetries. As a simple example, Standard Color theory has the eight 3x3 Gell-Mann matrices with two diagonal basis vectors, g_3 and g_8, so I consider Standard Color theory to be two dimensional. We still must add in the basis vectors for Electroweak, Gravity, Supersymmetry, and whatever other basis vectors are required to transfer mass and/ or gravity from Hyperspace into Spacetime. This is an intermediate number - perhaps something between 10 and 32. My current favorite model seems to be 28 dimensional, but a couple of these dimensions might trivially decouple from our Spacetime solution. Should we count them as dimensions if they are required by the model, but can never be observed?

Have Fun!

[deleted]

John,

It's fortuitous you should bring up Rovelli, and then ask what dimensions are. In fact, my ICCS 2006 paper suggested self-organized dimensions, consistent with the non-ordered field of complex numbers in which "relative evolution of variables," as Rovelli puts it, replaces mechanical order (i.e., "variables evolving in time" as described on a 3 1 dimension continuum of physically real spacetime.

If you understood Rovelli's thesis, you should understand mine, but you must understand the physics rather than what you think the physics is, because your imterpretation is wrong.

Where Rovelli's (and Smolin, et al) idea differs from mine is that -- while we agree that time is relational, I find that the origin of time is the 2-dimensional surface of the complex sphere, i.e., C*, and that the algebra compels time to be a physically real quantity; "If nature appears to be self-organized, and mathematics appears to be the language of nature, what can we mean when we suggest that mathematics (at the level of Analysis) is itself self-organized? Suppose we mean: the self-organization of spatial dimensions. We are obliged to show, then, how dimensions are self-similar and self limiting. And we are obliged to show how the physical quality of time relates to the mathematical quantity of number." [ICCS 2006] Thus I give time a specific physical definition and let it evolve, finding that only n-dimensional evolution, n > 4, is consistent with the universe we actually observe.

Tom

[deleted]

Tom,

If temperature is only in the direction of cold, then this curvature of space and time which creates gravity and the resulting stars is, what? A convention?

I agree the scale we apply to energy levels and call temperature is a convention we use to understand a far more complex phenomena, but to what degree does that apply to all information? Consider dimensions: One is direction, two is area, three is volume, then four is the sequential series of events and yes, harmonies do emerge, but then we are examining some deeper reality that is likely continuous at levels we don't quite appreciate. So how much do we really know and how much are we chasing our own logical circles? It seems to me there are many concepts, such as Inflation theory and multiworlds that are blatant patches to cover enormous cracks in a model that has spun much further out of control than anyone cares to admit.

Yes, I don't have the time to follow this up as well as I should or would like, but I suspect some parts of modern physics are going to have to be rebuilt. This isn't really an answer to the questions raised, because I haven't the time at the moment to examine them with the care they deserve.

[deleted]

John, you're right that you haven't given these questions adequate care, if you believe that heat doesn't radiate toward cold.

And I have tried to explain to the best of my ability that "curved spacetime" does not imply the overly concrete spatial geometry that you imagine. It's a mathematical curve.

You've just got the physics wrong, John.

Tom

[deleted]

Tom,

I certainly realize heat radiates. I also realize mass contracts.

I've just spend the last several posts explaining how I consider the four dimensional geometry to be a modeling of deeper processes, so I'm not sure how you think I'm arguing it is physical. The only possibility might be how you see my argument for space as having an inertial effect, but that's not geometry.

If anything, I've been arguing the reliance on modeling and measurement can obscure as well as reveal.

"In fact, my ICCS 2006 paper suggested self-organized dimensions, consistent with the non-ordered field of complex numbers in which "relative evolution of variables," as Rovelli puts it, replaces mechanical order (i.e., "variables evolving in time" as described on a 3 1 dimension continuum of physically real spacetime."

From this, it would seem we are making similar arguments in the first place, just from entirely different perspectives.

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