The Times They Are A-Changin'

WHY TIME IS NOT DIMENSION

1. there is no one experimental data in science time is dimension

2. with clocks we measure numerical order of material change i.e motion

3. X4 = ict where t is tick of clock

4. clock tick in space only, not in time

5. linear time "past-present-future" is not dimension in which we live, it is a mind model through which we experience life

6. space is timeless

7. in the universe past, present and future exist only as numerical order of change

8. universe does not run in time

9. time run in the universe as numerical order of change of the universe

10. if you do get 9 points than you know

ETERNITY IS NOW

Is there any hope someone will wake up in FQXI?

yours amrit

Imaginary time is a way of looking at instantons or quantum tunnelling states. The Schrodinger equation for a particle moving in one dimension with some potential V is

iħ∂ψ/∂t = -(ħ^2/2m)∂^2ψ/∂x^2 - Vψ.

If we consider a stationary case with a phase ψ(x,t) = ψ(x)exp(-iEt/ħ) the left had term just becomes Eψ, where E is the energy of the particle. Now let us rearrange things so that

-(ħ^2/2m)∂^2ψ(x)/∂x^2 = (E - V)ψ(x).

For a particle moving in space we set ψ(x) ~ exp(ikx), do the two derivatives and cancel out the ψ(x).

k^2 = (2m/ħ^2)(E - V).

The funny thing is that for V > E we have an imaginary k. This means that the kinetic energy is in a funny sense negative, which is not something you expect in classical mechanics. For a system of this sort it is in a classically forbidden region, and in more general systems there may be some dispersion ω = ω(k) = vk ... , this leads to an imaginary frequency. The phase for the system is exp(iφ) = exp(iωt). The imaginary quantity associated with the angular frequency ω may be reassigned to the time t, that is a mathematical triviality. So in some of these problems it is useful to use this and work with imaginary time, or what is sometimes called Euclideanized time.

Cheers LC

I don't think it will make a difference to you, Amrit, but let's pick up where Lawrence left off, at Euclideanized time.

You know that the flat Euclidean plane is two dimensional. When we do complex analysis, in two dimensions of the complex plane, points in the Euclidean plane become lines. The time metric is one dimensional, like a line. Real time is a one dimensional line in the real part of the complex plane. When we compactify the complex plane, C, with one point at infinity, we get C*, the complex sphere. Because the complex sphere has only this one simple pole at infinity, a metric beyond that point is entirely within the imaginary part of the complex plane; time is thus "spatialized." Hawking explains it as "north of the north pole." I.e., we know that one cannot, in ordinary space, go north of the north pole. In complex space, it is natural, and imaginary time is as natural as so called real time.

Tom

Spatial dimensions are static creations of our perception and basically describe the fact of the punctual observer. He stands at the center of a sphere of perception that simply and conveniently parts into x y z. But in this universe everything is dynamic and changing.

Time for example is dynamic. It has many dimensions but they are not static dimensions. They are dynamic dimensions. What the heck is that? Well, time passes at a certain rate and that is your baseline. That is the nature of time. And we know that this rate varies from place to place like in a gravitational field. This rate varies in the ball at the moment you accelerate it and throw it away. So the rate of time passing can have different values, change from one value to another etc. These are the actual dynamic variations of time. They are made of the various time variations (derivatives) of this rate, positive or negative.

Lets recap. Time is dynamic and therefore its dimensions are dynamic as well. You have the base rate with a variable value. You have its change of value, increasing or decreasing. Even increasing and decreasing will have different values of acceleration. And you finally have all the other time derivatives up to Nth ...

Now, the time rate in one place cannot change forever. This is why increasing time is connected with its opposite conjugate that brings it down back. A lump of increasing time rate has to be connected to an equal and opposite lump of decreasing time. This simple situation can be created spontaneously into the "vacuum" as short lived directionless dip and dimples (above or below the local base rate). If you match the opposite dips and dimples then you get a wave with direction! This is because this conjugate of dip and dimples is "motion" for lack of a better word.

When one superimposes a model of time rate variation of the EM wave, as above, over the classical electro-magnetic model .. one gets an interesting rule of correspondence. The magnetic vector is the time rate in the process of changing. The electric field is where this change in the time rate changes direction; from increasing to decreasing or vice-versa. This is up to par with the known rules of induction.

The field from your bar magnet or the static electricity from your comb are just different dynamic dimensions of time...... This is no surprise if you understand that the whole universe, by reason of logic, must be made of only one thing of one nature. If this thing is dynamic then you have all its variations as bonus ... which makes for a more interesting emerging universe.

Marcel,

Marcel you wrote: Time for example is dynamic. It has many dimensions but they are not static dimensions. They are dynamic dimensions. What the heck is that? Well, time passes at a certain rate and that is your baseline. That is the nature of time.

That is philosophy, no physics, no data foe what you say.

Wiht clocks we measure numerical order of change.....this is wahat time is.

Yours amrit

Every point is the center of its own three dimensional coordinate system and every clock is its own dimension of time. Why? Because dimensions are a modeling tool, not the basis of reality.

Einstein said space is what we measure with a ruler and time is what we measure with a clock. Well, a ruler can only measure one dimension at a time, so it takes three rulers to measure three dimensions of space, but a clock has two components, hands and face. Relatively speaking, while the hands go past to future, against the face, the face goes future to past, against the hands. So that would make two balanced directions,,er,, dimensions of time.

So, do we travel the fourth dimension from the past into the future, or does the constant rearrangement of what is, turn the future into the past?

"So, do we travel the fourth dimension from the past into the future, or does the constant rearrangement of what is, turn the future into the past?"

The rearrangement of "what is" turns the present into a new and different present. The future does not exist, nor does the past. The past (i.e., a previously objectively real configuration of the universe) formerly existed but has evolved into the configuration which we currently perceive and which we call the present. We infer that the present configuration will evolve into new configurations which we think of as the future, but these hypothetical future configurations have never been objectively real.

Correction: when I wrote "The past (i.e., a previously objectively real configuration of the universe) formerly existed but has evolved into the configuration which we currently perceive and which we call the present."

I should have written, "The past (i.e., previously objectively real configurations of the universe) formerly existed but they have evolved into the configuration which we currently perceive and which we call the present."

The remainder stands as written. Apologies for any confusion.

J.C.,

I basically agree with your position, but I'm thinking part of the problem with physics is we get a little too demanding of what's real and what's not. We agree past and future do not exist, but then we turn around and try to define the present and it becomes this dimensionless point between past and future, but that doesn't work because there would be no duration to affect the change that both creates and replaces the configuration. Then when we try to understand duration, we're back to past and future.

The problem is that time is an emergent effect that if we look too closely at, begins to fade, much as the effect of temperature begins to evaporate when we get to the level of individual activities.

Past, Present, Future

There is no "overall present". The present is the coincidence of multiple signals in one point called the observer. Look at the Moon and it is a second away in time. Look at the Sun (not directly!) and it is about 8 minutes away. Everywhere you look around you is the past. Because the speed limit of light is a limit also for everything ... this distance in time is EFFECTIVE, OPERATIONAL and final. There is no NOW between you and the Moon or Jupiter or even your computer screen... It does not make sense to ask "what is the weather like now on Mars". We may find out in minutes and hours the answer but, .. this is a trick of consciousness and memory and some language thrown in... The observer on Earth and Mars were never part of the same moment or "now". Past and future are equally .... Block ideas ... and time travel suggests moving between two of these blocks that do not exist ...

Marcel,

"The present is the coincidence of multiple signals in one point called the observer."

"Spacetime is a correlation of distance and duration using the speed of light as a conversion factor, rather than a fundamental structure of reality."

Bing, you guys have nailed it. I've tried to make these point on several threads, perhaps less eloquently, but it didn't fly with the few people on here who reject special relativity. It seems that some people just need to think of the universe as a giant shooting gallery of photons ontologically zooming from here to there for billions of "universe-years," like tiny wayward space travelers wondering where they will end up. Even most popular-science magazine articles depict the Cosmos this way. The sooner we realize that this is a false, anthropomorphic view of reality -- a human projection of the "true" universe onto a context that makes intuitive sense to us -- the sooner we'll have a realistic, workable definition of time and what it really means.

Karl,

The irony is that the linear narrative that is the dimension of time, is profoundly anthropomorphic.

Basically Einstein rejected Newton's "God's view" of an absolute flow of time for a subjective understanding, where the individual perspective determines what can be observed. What gets overlooked is that since there is no "God's view" in the first place, what was being rejected was an anthropomorphization of objective reality, rather than an actual attempt at objective reality. The presumed universal narrative was being rejected in favor of the individual narrative, without considering that the very quality of narration might not be fundamental. So that "universal flow" from past to future was replaced by a four dimensional spacetime geometry, in order to incorporate the fact that clocks are inherently subjective. The simple basic fact though, is that similar processes will evolve at different rates under different conditions, as opposed to there being some fundamental geometry of spacetime telling them how fast to evolve.

"We agree past and future do not exist, but then we turn around and try to define the present and it becomes this dimensionless point between past and future,"

It only becomes a dimensionless point between the past and the future if we fail to recognize and understand that particular times are identically equivalent to and are completely defined by, and only by, particular configurations of the universe. The universe always has some configuration, and this configuration changes; it evolves. We, as sentient beings, are able to observe this evolution, and we have given it a special name: "the flow of time."

This word "time" is a human invention, and it is the source of a great deal of mischief and confusion. The existence of this word and the ways in which we use it tend to blind us to the fact that we are simply using the word as a tool to describe the environment in which we find ourselves as it rearranges itself. In our sometimes inelegant and imprecise way of communicating with one another, we have all tacitly agreed to describe various arrangements of the universe which we observe by referring to them as various "particular times." The universe is dynamic; its configuration changes in more or less predictable ways which we strive to understand and which we have dubbed the laws of physics. Unfortunately, our word "time" has become inextricably tangled up with physics in ways which ultimately may not serve it, or us, well. We need to rethink our use of this word and the concept with which it is linked.

I have attempted to offer a more thorough explication of this in the essay which may be found here.

Karl, John,

Let's not forget the partition of the different truth systems. That I can see at the same time both the Sun and the Moon in the sky remains a truth for me, the observer and his truth system. What we talked about and agreed with above is another truth system that belongs to the ontology of the universe. What I am saying is that within a specific truth system the truths do not agree with other truth systems, this is normal and logical. No one is wrong if he specifies to which truth system the absence of choice a.k.a. facts a.k.a. truths it belong to. Many arguments and paradoxes are eliminated by recognizing this partition.

Marcel,

flow of time is flow of numerical order of materal change running in a timeless space

M-M,

Innumerable truth systems are very necessary. Often opposing ones even support each other, like opposite sides of the same coin. What would conservatives and liberals be without the other? Reality is a function of distinction and often these distinctions become immensely complex, to where no one mind can encompass the multitude of perspectives without completely melting down. There is quite literally no God's eye perspective on the entire reality.

That said, often opposing perspectives do clash and one might well prevail over the other, because just as new views are born, old ones can die.

J.C,

I pretty much agree with your description. My main point all along is that since this universal configuration we commonly refer to as the present is more fundamental than the units of time being created, then it is the present which is the constant and the units which move. Thus, on this fundamental level, it isn't the present moving from past to future, but future configurations becoming past configurations, due to the universal change.

It seems counterintuitive from our perspective as individual sentient beings, because by comparing it to space, it seems equivalent to moving from one situation to the next, much like walking along a path. But when we consider that we exist totally within our context and are in no way separate from it, then our motion is part of the larger change and the events of our lives recede into the past, as new ones replace them.

"Thus, on this fundamental level, it isn't the present moving from past to future, but future configurations becoming past configurations, due to the universal change."

The problem with phrasing the issue as you've done here is, in my opinion, that it gives an undeserved (and potentially misleading and confusing) ring of substance and reality to "future configurations." Yes, it's true that we can imagine future configurations, and we can even predict with some varying degree of certainty the rough form which some of them undoubtedly will have. But they are no more "real" than ghosts. They do not "become" or "do" anything.

Perhaps a thought experiment will help explain my thinking on this. Imagine for the sake of argument that the universe is a shoebox containing a few billiard balls. Now, the billiard balls will always have some configuration relative to one another and to the shoebox. But where are the past and future configurations? They are nowhere to be seen. They are not objectively real.

Now, if the shoebox were shaken, for example, the configuration would change, and if we have studied our physics textbooks diligently we might even be able to predict how the configuration of our small universe should evolve. We can infer with some varying degree of precision the likely nature of its evolution. But what we refer to as past or future configurations still are nowhere to be seen.

If we are willing to become somewhat speculative at this point we can add that any sentient creatures such as ourselves who might inhabit this small universe might have a "memory" of once-real but no-longer-existing configurations. Those creatures might think of those configurations as the past. And they might imagine possible configurations which they have never observed and imagine them as the future. But where are these past and future configurations? If we peek into the shoebox we will see only one configuration. That configuration is what our sentient creatures probably would think of as their "present."

Your thoughts on this are invited.

Wow! John, Eckard, and Marcel in particular.

Brilliant perception from the misty gloom! May I attempt a floodlight? but be careful as most are blinded; Some time ago I had a moment of inspiration which I'm fearful to share. But in truth I have no choice but to ask those with vision if they can see it.

Eckard, as usual, it's your Localised Observer, in each and every inertial frame, which as Weinstein said we haven't considered well enough. Now bring in Marcels's 'each EM field as just different dynamic dimensions of time.' and consider how each massive particle (or group) in motion has it's own EM field. With local limits. And every point, as John says, is the centre of it's own 3D co-ordinate system, each being one of the essential 'innumerable truth systems.' This is the same as the "infinitely many 'spaces' in relative motion" which Einstein described, but never did quite find the link to his "all mass is spatially extended" .. but with limits, which brings us back to the EM and other fields around all mass, behaving differently with relative motion through it's 'next field up' background.

Marcel again; "Observers on Earth and Mars were never part of the same moment or 'now'. They are in real and physically different inertial fields and thus will have their own local time, as each of the infinitely many spaces in relative motion' does. And EM waves must change speed at each of these EM field limits to maintain 'c' locally as it moves into the next. The laws of physics are the same in all inertial frames, including 'c'. And here is where we've been blinded.

Light changes speed moving from, say, water into a vacuum, or from air into ice. All we need to prove is that when we move that ice cube, relative to the air, the light within it passes through it at a constant speed wrt the ice cube, i.e. locally, no matter which vector we choose or which way the planet is moving. Then we have a whole new simple physics. Discrete fields in relative motion resolving anomalies. Acceleration changes frames, and conservation is served in balancing frequency with wavelength.

But wait, we have already proved this! We've just been blinded. We even have both quantum and classic processes for the speed change between inertial frames. Ah! But there is no Lorentz/Fitzgerald contraction, and we'd be able to observe gas jets at 6c or more, and 'lensing' delays of years! (that's observing two 'times' at once!) so of course it can't possibly be correct. Are there any not blinded yet?

Very best wishes

Peter