Amrit,

"Eternity is contained in the present moment"

You would like the movie "Slaughterhouse Five" and the Tralfamadorians ...???

Maybe Billy pilgrim only traveled in his mind. In this sense, our lives do not shrink, they actually expands since we get more and more places to travel to.

Marcel,

Dear Amrit,

We do discuss this, you and I, on many thread and websites like FQXI and ISST.

You can never convince real physicists of what you say. Physicists work with the empirical approach and this mean by testing with experiments in our physical reality. In order to do experiments, they need to retain both space and time since the testing of these requires the dimensions of the reality we experience.

Physicists may discover things about the universe, but they always express them in terms of space and time or space-time for the purpose of testing or making their ideas testable. They don't have a choice. So, to say that time does not exist is irrelevant to them. Space-time is a hybrid concept that reflects what they know about the universe but in terms of space and time so it remains testable in our reality.

If you want to tell someone that time does not exist, you have to declare your statement as metaphysical i.e. not of the domain of physics. My essay does that. It declares that physics is right but, under a metaphysical approach there is no time duration and no space. Then, because I declare my statement as belonging to a different system (metaphysical truth system) the testing has to be based on logic, not on some test bench in a lab.

Even at the speed of light, the photon in its travel to the moon is never at the same moment. To call the "distance" or "space" of this travel between Earth and moon is to sum up this journey that took a second as a single moment in time. Space is just our way to integrate or sum up this travel as if it were instantaneous! There is really no space! And there is no block time. The passage of time is universal but the value of its rate is a local property.

So, I would say that YOU are not aware of your words!

All the bests,

Marcel,

    • [deleted]

    "Journey that took a second" -- Photons do not embark on journeys that take time to complete. Photons do not experience proper time. For the photon itself, space traveled and time experienced contract to zero (offsetting each other) according to special relativity.

    So, if the photon were the one doing the empirical bench testing, it would find no evidence of time or space. Both are experienced only by non-photon observers.

    Karl,

    That is true for photons. But for the rest of us sub-luminal entities, as matter, people, observers, the reality is different.

    The photon travels at the speed of expansion of time itself and therefore does not experience time. For that very reason, every point along its wavelength is in fact at the same moment and constitutes the only dimension that corresponds to our notion of space; an aligned collection of points all at the same moment. Any other notion of space applied elsewhere is perceptual/conceptual.

    Marcel,

    8 days later
    • [deleted]

    We have duration and motion in our timeless universe.

    Does duration elapsing, have a dimension?

    • [deleted]

    Hailton should be Hamilton

    • [deleted]

    There is no time at all,

    and it has two dimensions.

    (at least)

      • [deleted]

      It is a deep misunderstanding that time is part of the space.

      Time we measure with clocks is only a numerical order of change.

      Time we measure with clocks is exclusively a mathematical quantity.

      Sincerely Yours Amrit SorliAttachment #1: Time_measured_with_Clocks.pdf

      • [deleted]

      Dear Georg,

      I have been playing with F-theoretic models and agree that there are at least two dimensions ("real" and "imaginary") of time (possibly 4, but I don't understand "Quaternionic" time unless it is somehow related to Supersymmetry), but I don't understand how you can also say "There is no time at all". If time is one or more dimensions, then it does exist - it simply has a different sort of metric/ geometry/ Lie algebra from spatial dimensions that may depend on the famously-regular 8-D Gosset lattice or the 24-D Leech lattice, but it still needs to be accounted for. I think that every type of time corresponds to something similar to a photon or graviton, therefore something "real" (at least "real" in the sense of Second Quantization and Feynman diagrams) does arise from time's existence. Consider the fact that the speed-of-light would not be one of our limiting scales if "There is no time at all".

      Have Fun!

      Ray Munroe

      • [deleted]

      but I don't understand how you can also say "There is no time at all".

      Dear "Dr. Cosmic Ray",

      You only have to read some popular physics papers like SCIAM

      or some blogs. "Time is an Illusion" , "Time does not exist"

      are some rather popular statements recently.

      And if You read about Pauli and Dirac, You might find some

      quip of Pauli on not existing god and who is his prophet.

      Dr. Georg

        • [deleted]

        Dear Dr. Georg,

        Ouch! You hit close to home talking about Dirac. I attended Florida State University while he was a Prof Emeritus here, and I visit his family grave on occasion (because he is buried within 50 meters of my grandparents and 5 km of my home). In my current work, I am trying to keep Dirac's Large Number of ~10^40 relevant. I have great respect for Dirac's works, but Dirac is not my God.

        I am well-aware of the popular philosophical concept that time does not exist. I have had many discussions with my FQXi friend, Steve Dufourny about reality *NOT* being strictly 3-D. I have seen Amrit's claims about "block time" and chose not to counter his claims, but I see significant "structure" that is related to, and may have arisen from, the properties of this "non-existant time" such as the speed of light, the photon, and entropic change.

        Personally, I would define time differently from its current negative metric-squared signature. But even if you follow that restrictive definition, the 26-D metric implies 24 space-like (a Leech lattice?), one time-like (TL), and one light-like dimension (LL):

        1^2 + 2^2 +3^2 + ... + 24^2 - 70^2 (TL) = 0^2 (LL)

        Because the light-like metric is *EXACTLY* zero, the slightest purturbation of this metric could make this light-like dimension behave space-like *OR* time-like depending on the perturbed metric sign.

        I am not claiming to be a prophet, but if it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it *MIGHT* be a duck (regardless of popular literature and opinion - that just means that more people *MIGHT* be wrong).

        Have Fun!

        • [deleted]

        Hi

        very interesting all that.

        The reality is in strictly in 3D a,d time is strictly also irreversible.

        The time is not a dimension but a constant of duration for an evolutive dynamic.

        It's totally different.

        All these extrapolations,strings, Mtheory, Ex,extradimensions, reversibilities of time,Multiverses and MWI,even the Hawking radiations, all that is purelly hypothetical.

        These extrapolations insert maths without any respect of our ultim referential.

        The symmetries are bad extrapolated.The time is bad understood.The external cause of mass is not possible.

        read the post of Eckard about the causality please Dr Cosmic Ray.We see any cause of these theories and thus any effect.

        The dimensions aren't a pueril play of decoherences of our foundamentals.If it exists a 3D of our reality , it exists a cause of these laws.

        And all laws are in a dance of harmonization of our constants.

        All our experiments,datas, technologies respect this referential in 3D.If the duration of time is a constant,there is a reason !

        Ray you know the best way to use maths is when they describe the reality around you ! If you insert the 0 the - and the infinity for your perception , never you shall understand the uniqueness and its pure number.

        Regards

        Steve

        a month later

        OUPS!!

        My diatribe of Sept 23 is wrong! Just explained it in another post.

        The photon is a wave, single crest and through.(soliton) Its "length" can be seen as an alignment of adjacent points not at the same moment because it still takes time to go from one end to the other. (it helps to think of a 100km radio wave..) Not being at the same moment, this alignment of points cannot represent space which is the same collection of points pictured(mentally) as if being all at the same moment. But, such a collection of points not at the same moment IS pretty well a true duration of time; a sequence of different moments, here, a.k.a. the period T.

        Marcel,

        17 days later
        • [deleted]

        Einstenin's Timeless Universe book is awailable at:

        https://www.morebooks.de/store/gb/book/einstein-s-timeless-universe/isbn/978-3-8433-7573-3

        6 days later
        • [deleted]

        see also my home page

        www.vetrnica.net

        Please please may it not be so! I am satisfied that time does not exist as a dimension. The idea of multiple time dimensions is an extravagant 'solution' to the problems of unification in physics.

        4 days later
        • [deleted]

        There one dimension for every force and there are four forice for four dimeisons.

        There are also four states for foru dimensions.

        If we have a 360 day circular orbit in the 11 dimensions of M theory and convert it to an elitical orbt in three dimensions plus one of time.

        Then we reverse the equation like Hakwing did with Penrose.

        We can convert EInsteins SPACE/TIME into the SPACE/TIME of 11 dimensions.

        And so find out if time has more than one dimension.

        Maybe there are 11 forces if there is one force for every dimension.

        Can we do this experts in math of Einstein say no because Einsteins 4 D space time cannot be expressed in 11 dimensions.

        OK if not then maybe string theory is wrong because it cannnot be generated from GR.

        But if we redifine time as an eliptical orbit like with Newtons laws rather than use Einsteins definition of time.

        Maybe we can do it................

        I would appreciate your collaboration on this as I cannot do the math.

        I only did social math at school and have only just begun grade 12 math.

        Steve.

        Get back to me

        • [deleted]

        Einstein did not define time as earths orbit around te sun thats why it is not simple to convert earths orbit in three dimensions with one of time to a circular earth orbit in M thoeries 11 dimesions.

        You can write an equation to convert 365 days to 360 days.And an elipse to a circle in higher dimensions.

        But the math is too hard..........

        Can any of you mathematicans do the math.

        I have a tutor Profesor Mikmik working on the problem and I will give you the results.