Real-Time Physics

Pentcho,

You reminded us of Smolin's project in 2011. I am not aware of a result, and I was skeptical because Smolin, instead of dealing with basic fallacies, focused on desired solutions solving "the problem of quantum gravity, which is the problem of unifying the physics of the quantum with the physics of spacetime, the problem of the interpretation of quantum mechanics and the problem of how the laws of physics, which are observed ... govern our universe".

Look at how my current essay was rated (3.8 and 1.5) while nobody except myself and a provoked comment by Christian Corda criticized it.

Klingman spontaneously wrote:"I agree with you 100%."

Fisher wrote:"I found myself openly gaining deep insights into exiting truths I had never even thought of previously."

Jackson wrote:"Another victory for realism over the fantasies emerging from careless initial assumptions."

Mishra wrote:"Your essay is as much a pleasure to read".

Hai wrote:"there is nothing to blame the teacher's essay."

Ryan wrote:"Thoroughly enjoyed reading it - thanks for a great essay!"

Perez Wrote: "... your well structured and written essay. You raised several interesting issues".

Dickau wrote:"I have admired your ability to argue your points clearly and passionately, for not accepting a half-baked answer as truth".

N wrote: "... you are not siding with Wheeler's 'anthropic view' but maintain your realistic objective point of view."

Rogozhin wrote:"Excellent essay in the spirit of Descartes".

Borrill wrote:"Eckard - excellent description of time and photon propagation."

Tamari wrote: "I ... comment ... on your very interesting endnotes."

I guess, Shannon's (and my) view is indeed the most obvious starting point of an antithesis not just to Einstein's first postulate of special relativity but also to misuse and mutilation of mathematics. Christian Corda did ignore my argument that a singularity has no measure as does also not have any other fictitious physical object, for instance the middle-point of earth. He will perhaps win the contest for what he wrote elsewhere about unitarity.

Eckard

Doublethink in Divine Albert's World

John Norton knows that, according to Maxwell's theory, the speed of light relative to the observer varies with the speed of the observer:

John Norton: "That [Maxwell's] theory allows light to slow and be frozen in the frame of reference of a sufficiently rapidly moving observer."

John Norton teaches that the speed of light relative to the observer does not vary with the speed of the observer. He explains that this invariance is the essence of Einstein's 1905 light postulate and that Einstein took the idea from... Maxwell's theory:

John Norton: "Why Einstein should believe the light postulate is a little harder to see. We would expect that a light signal would slow down relative to us if we chase after it. The light postulate says no. No matter how fast an inertial observer is traveling in pursuit of the light signal, that observer will always find the light signal to be traveling at the same speed, c. The principal reason for Einstein's acceptance of the light postulate was his lengthy study of electrodynamics, the theory of electric and magnetic fields. The theory was the most advanced physics of the time. Some 50 years before, Maxwell had shown that light was merely a ripple propagating in an electromagnetic field. Maxwell's theory predicted that the speed of the ripple was a quite definite number: c."

George Orwell: "Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably necessary. (...) It need hardly be said that the subtlest practitioners of doublethink are those who invented doublethink and know that it is a vast system of mental cheating. In our society, those who have the best knowledge of what is happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as it is. In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion ; the more intelligent, the less sane."

Pentcho Valev

Doublethink in Divine Albert's World II

The acceleration suffered by the travelling twin is responsible for her youthfulness. The turning-around period is essential:

John Norton: "Then, at the end of the outward leg, the traveler abruptly changes motion, accelerating sharply to adopt a new inertial motion directed back to earth. What comes now is the key part of the analysis. The effect of the change of motion is to alter completely the traveler's judgment of simultaneity. The traveler's hypersurfaces of simultaneity now flip up dramatically. Moments after the turn-around, when the travelers clock reads just after 2 days, the traveler will judge the stay-at-home twin's clock to read just after 7 days. That is, the traveler will judge the stay-at-home twin's clock to have jumped suddenly from reading 1 day to reading 7 days. This huge jump puts the stay-at-home twin's clock so far ahead of the traveler's that it is now possible for the stay-at-home twin's clock to be ahead of the travelers when they reunite."

The acceleration suffered by the travelling twin is not responsible for her youthfulness. The turning-around period can be ignored:

Gary W. Gibbons FRS: "In other words, by simply staying at home Jack has aged relative to Jill. There is no paradox because the lives of the twins are not strictly symmetrical. This might lead one to suspect that the accelerations suffered by Jill might be responsible for the effect. However this is simply not plausible because using identical accelerating phases of her trip, she could have travelled twice as far. This would give twice the amount of time gained."

The acceleration suffered by the travelling twin is responsible for her youthfulness. The turning-around period is essential. On the other hand a discussion of acceleration is not required to quantitatively understand the paradox, that is, the turning-around period can be ignored, insofar as there are scenarios in which there is no acceleration at all:

Introduction to Classical Mechanics With Problems and Solutions, David Morin, Cambridge University Press, Chapter 11, p. 14: "Example (Twin paradox): Twin A stays on the earth, while twin B flies quickly to a distant star and back. Show that B is younger than A when they meet up again. (...) For the entire outward and return parts of the trip, B does observe A's clock running slow, but enough strangeness occurs during the turning-around period to make A end up older. Note, however, that a discussion of acceleration is not required to quantitatively understand the paradox, as Problem 11.2 shows."

Why do Einsteinians practice doublethink so diligently? Because that's the way ahah ahah they like it, ahah ahah.

Pentcho Valev

Lakatos' Protective Belt : Justification of Dishonesty

Theoreticians don't abandon false postulates (core assumptions, axioms) in the face of refuting experimental evidence - rather, they surround them with a wall of ad hoc hypotheses which "serves to deflect refuting propositions from the core assumptions". Imre Lakatos described the phenomenon and called the wall the "protective belt":

"Lakatos distinguished between two parts of a scientific theory: its "hard core" which contains its basic assumptions (or axioms, when set out formally and explicitly), and its "protective belt", a surrounding defensive set of "ad hoc" (produced for the occasion) hypotheses. (...) In Lakatos' model, we have to explicitly take into account the "ad hoc hypotheses" which serve as the protective belt. The protective belt serves to deflect "refuting" propositions from the core assumptions..."

In 1887 the Michelson-Morley experiment UNEQUIVOCALLY confirmed the assumption that the speed of light varies with the speed of the emitter (c'=c+v). That is, at that time, Newton's emission theory of light was the only theory able to explain the null result of the experiment. Then FitzGerald, Lorentz and Einstein performed a revolution by replacing the Newtonian assumption with its antithesis - the false assumption that the speed of light is independent of the speed of the emitter (c'=c). They also devised a protective belt - "contracting lengths, local time, or Lorentz transformations" - that quite successfully deflected refuting evidence from the false assumption:

"Relativity and Its Roots" by Banesh Hoffmann, p.92: "Moreover, if light consists of particles, as Einstein had suggested in his paper submitted just thirteen weeks before this one, the second principle seems absurd: A stone thrown from a speeding train can do far more damage than one thrown from a train at rest; the speed of the particle is not independent of the motion of the object emitting it. And if we take light to consist of particles and assume that these particles obey Newton's laws, they will conform to Newtonian relativity and thus automatically account for the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment without recourse to contracting lengths, local time, or Lorentz transformations. Yet, as we have seen, Einstein resisted the temptation to account for the null result in terms of particles of light and simple, familiar Newtonian ideas, and introduced as his second postulate something that was more or less obvious when thought of in terms of waves in an ether."

The "protective belt" is a universal tool in scientific theorizing and in this sense it is something normal - any different science would be anomalous. Yet... a dead organism emits a specific smell which is again... normal.

Pentcho Valev

Pentcho,

Michelson's 1881 and 1887 experiments disproved Maxwell's idea of an aether relative to which the earth was imagined to move. However, they did NOT confirm what you are stubbornly reiterating, and it is NOT a false assumption that the speed of light is independent of the speed of the emitter. Read the endnotes of my current FQXi contest essay.

Eckard

Regarding the Ballad of Pentcho and Eckard (8/19/13) Einstein related his epiphany of SR as time stopping at light speed. While this is true for an observer at light velocity it cannot be true of time itself. Rather the Equivalence Principle must be interpreted as the faster an observer goes, the more closely he-she approximates the limit velocity to which time can extend. Otherwise EMR would have to create more time to be able to continue in its propagation.

Hi John Cox,

Isn't Epiphany a Christian festival held on January 6th which commemorates the arrival of the three wise man who came to see Jesus Christ? I wonder, why did you write epiphany instead of Epiphany? Did you intend ridiculing Einstein?

A ballad is a long song which tells a story in simple language. Why did you use this metaphor in connection with my rather short post of Aug. 19?

I don't share Einstein's (and your) opinion that time is stopping for a hypothetical antenna/receiver which is thought performing a relative motion away from an antenna/sender.

Eckard

Yes, Eckard.

Webster also defines epiphany as (2) a manifestation, esp. of divinity. The Eureka moment if you will. Pardon my quip of 'Ballad' referring to the disagreement between you and Pentcho Valev, There is an old country-rock song about a deal in Mexico that went way south, titled The Ballad of Poncho and Lefty.

As I said, I do not agree with the metaphor that Einstein employed, time 'stops' for no man. It is independent of the emitter. My point I seemed to have failed to make is that light velocity is that specific velocity and an observer approaching that limit would experience time seeming to extend less quickly. Fitzgerald remarked that the speed of light was 'astonishingly' low, which given a common Newtonian belief of it being instantaneous, the M&M results and the calculated distance to the sun would have been astonishing to many at the time.

The gist of my remarks were that time is local to any discrete mass, and our human experience is a second order effect in aggregate. But also that time itself in relation to gravitational domains apparently has an upper limit to the rate of its extension. Corrections to synchronization for SR and GR effects in Global Positioning satellites * Peter Galison; Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps - Empires of Time pp287-89* are more proofs of both theories. An observer, human or otherwise, cannot exceed the upper limit of velocity to which time can extend but that does not mean that time always extends at equivalent light speed. The common joke that the speed of time is one second per second is true enough in any gravitational reference. That said I'll risk outcry by suggesting that some value might be found in a mathematical construct where the 'speed of time' is equivalent to escape velocity of the local gravitational reference.

Thank you for your explanations, John.

Poncho does hopefully not remind too much of Sancho Pansa. Being a lefty (in the sense of left-handed) is something that I share with Einstein, and, if I recall correctly, also with Obama, Clinton, Bush, and others.

I do not imagine time propagating.

Eckard

My Bad, Eckard,

I do tend to be glib among a few friends with eclectic tastes, but must apologize for not thinking. This site is so generally well spoken that I forget that it is a truly international audience and what might be quickly grasped as a playful use of words culturally for me, can be gibberish to others. Also I'm an old dog and computerized communication is a really new trick, I'll try to be more careful in my choice of words.

I do like this thread, the concept of time being a fundamental constituent of natural physical reality is neither radical or revolutionary to me, perhaps because I came to physics more from a philosophic approach than mathematic. I've therefore given some serious thought over the years as to why physics has come to think of time as something other than a natural phenomenon, and in truth it took me a long, long time to realize that conceptually the reason why I struggled to understand many aspects was that generally physics has treated time as a quantum or relativistic effect, or a manifestation of abstract mathematics.

Long before Newton the old questions of time arose as to whether it was like a river carrying us along with it, or was it like a static state which we move through. Both concepts have problems but there seems little else to choose from. And the roots of arguments for 'non-real' time can be found in those problems. The river of time implies that someone has passed this place before it is being written by me, what intersections with that can there be? multiverses become a possibility. If it is static why can't we move around space and eventually wind up back here now? quantum entanglement comes to mind.

So the right question to ask is: what have we been missing? What nuance can be distinguished? I long ago thought that times arrow flowed past us yet carried us along at our own pace, not that we are tethered to an anchor other than our own relative mass. Time has become fundamentally localized for me, and I have no difficulty in imagining it continually recreating in seeking equilibrium with space yet also existing in a static distribution of continuum variation of rate of extension. That probably sounds pretty weird.

Thanks, John Merryman,

for the specificity of argumentative questions you pose. I would qualify my response by referring to your preface that "physics treats (time) as a measure of interval". I do not reject that but neither do I accept it as exclusively so. It is the prevalent paradigm in assignment and generation of values in quantitative analysis, but imposes a number line on all such operations.

If I may briefly digress, a fairly recent book 'Where mathematics come from, how the embodied mind brings mathematics into being' (my library lend receipt doesn't list the authors and I've forgotten) presented research showing that precognitive infants have the innate ability to immediately distinguish 1, 2 and 3 objects, and slightly less readily 4. Also infants can readily distinguish between those numbers of objects. It seems we are genetically predisposed to cognitively develop math as a construct of interval and object.

We also possess a capacity, perhaps instinctively, to perceive continuous, nonsegmented motion or change. It is this paradigm in which I find time most accessible. A number line can be applied to it but is not a necessity. Quantitative analysis can be made by rational comparative proportion with space and energy.

I could launch into a wordy monologue but prefer to be welcome, so I'll concisely reply to the questions from a paradigm of continuum.

Time is a frame of action along with space, but covariant in scale. That

covariance induces action of time to extend seeking equilibrium with space, and energy is emergent from the stress between the rigid covariant scales, like temperature.

Duration is more difficult to express as it can be a zero point determined as an instantaneous rate of time extension of any value between nil and light velocity. That point however, is manifold of the existant velocity, the relative energy density proportional to that velocity, and the location spatially along a radial length of a rest mass of energy determined as an exponential function of the difference between the simultaneous existant velocities of nil and light velocity producing a distribution of energy in a continuum of density variation across the mass-energy volume.

So while duration could be said to transcend the point of the present, it is finite as a manifold point of occurrence between relational proportional values.

Energy emerging continuously from the spacetime covariance maintains a cohesion as a discrete mass though the lower energy density values of multiple masses may overlap and meld without loss of cohesive integrity. Those lower density limits can prescribe comparatively vast volumes so in aggregate it is quite applicable to operate in a paradigm of object/intervals as the individual discrete particles can fit right into a number line. The composite field on energy of the sun must reach at least as far as the aphelion of the longest period comet. Hope this was somewhat comprehensible.

John (Cox),

Let's be careful in thinking rather than in the choice of marginal words. You were musing about the question whether time "was like a river carrying us along with it, or was it like a static state which we move through". Admittedly, I don't consider such metaphors. When I was teaching EE students for more than four decades, I used the notion of time as a measure how distant from moment of consideration something will be in the future with the option to arbitrarily shift the point zero of reference. When I dealt with auditory perception, I got aware that only data from the past are available in the moment of consideration. Accordingly I mimicked the auditory function with reference to the (moving relative to the usual scale) "now" because the ear does not know our agreement on Christ's birth midnight in Greenwich. It works based on elapsed time instead.

Let me try and explain why I prefer only one ubiquitous time everywhere instead of a different local time for every inertial system:

Well, I meanwhile distrust the ideas by Lorentz/FitzGerald and fellows because they tried to rescue a guess that was disproved by Michelson. However, there is a compelling reason too:

The measure time is only valuable if it correctly reflects the relationship between earlier and subsequent events, in other words: causality. Any cause precedes its effect. There is no preferred origin in space. Any spatial distance between two locations is positive.

Eckard

John,

I think I get the gist of it.

When I say the "point of the present," it is open to interpretation. I only see the essential reality as energy in space, so if it exists, it is "present." This is difficult to define as a point, because a point in time implies instantaneous and if we were to actually freeze the action, there would be no change and thus no time.

I recall some years ago an experiment done on these large desert ants, where, after locating food, some had their legs clipped and others had tiny extensions glued on. Those with shorter legs stopped before reaching the food and those with longer legs walked past it. The conclusion drawn was that they counted steps as a navigation function.

E.O. Wilson, on the other hand, described the insect brain as a thermostat.

I think both are true, in that the left brain serial function is a form of counter/clock and the right brain parallel processor is a form of thermostat. This allows the individual to both process the larger environment wholistically and to navigate a particular path through it.

The problem now is that our logic function is largely a serial process, ie. narrative and cause and effect, while the scalar side is dismissed as intuition and emotion. Intuition is simply our cumulative experience reacting to current circumstances and we each have different experiences, so intuition is not just some generalized instinct, but built on the entire body of one's knowledge.

Consider that physicists have a body of knowledge that determines how they respond to fresh input and currently it has them seriously off into fantasy land, so we do need to go back and examine where the "junk in" is, that is causing this "junk out."

Often new ideas just "spring out of nowhere," but that is the scalar function. Much as pressure on a balloon will cause it to pop at the weakest point, so to does this process lead us to the nuances of the larger picture.

I have in these discussions tried making the argument that time is much more like temperature than space, as an effect of action. Time is to temperature, what frequency is to amplitude.

Temperature gets dismissed as a statistical average, yet particles are exchanging energy and seeking that entropic medium, incorporating new input in the process. Meanwhile, time, as the sequential basis of narrative and causal logic, is elevated to foundational property.

Sequence is not causal. Yesterday doesn't cause today, anymore than one rung on a ladder causes the next. Energy exchange is causal. The sun shining on a rotating planet creates these events called days. Just as wind on the water causes waves. So measuring from one event to the next is not indicative of some foundational geometry of the universe. Like temperature, it is simply a measure of change caused by action.

Regards,

John

Like temperature is a scalar measure of action, it is simply a measure of change caused by action.

"Time is to temperature, what frequency is to amplitude."

John, I think because I am myself dyslexic, I continue to be fascinated with how you go on creating logically coherent narrative from false premises. That's what Pauli meant, I suppose, by "not even wrong."

Wave frequency and amplitude are independent. Frequency is actually the inverse of time . That is, a time unit is defined by counting a number of wave cycles, oscillations between up and down amplitudes. Amplitude describes the energy content of the wave. We can have high frequency/low energy waves and low frequency/high energy waves.

Yes, I know you'll have some explanation to follow that makes sense to you. It won't make sense to physics, however, because it's very fundamental logic that if "time is to temperature what frequency is to amplitude," the only possible conclusion is that time and temperature are independent.

Tom

We all know what time is until we try to explain it.

Tom,

I really would like to say; Oh wow! I see your point! But I just don't.

When did I ever say frequency and amplitude are not independent? Turn up the volume on your radio and it raises the amplitude, but doesn't affect the frequency.

You also seem to be agreeing that frequency is the basis of how we measure time.

The "energy content of the wave" is a scalar measure of energy. Yes, temperature isn't a single wave, but I'm not saying amplitude is temperature, I'm saying time is to temperature what frequency is to amplitude. Frequency and amplitude are characteristics of wave action, while time and temperature are far more generalized effects. We can certainly have change and thus the effect of time, without there being any regularity to it. In fact, if it was only regular frequency, there would be no "arrow of time," only a metronome.

And one reason I like you is because I know you will never agree with anything I say. If you did, it would likely kill the conversation.

Regards,

John M

John, your assumption is entirely equivalent to assuming 0 = 1. Your argument is disconnected. It's a mystery to me why *you* don't see that.

Best,

Tom

John M and John C, respectively,

Temperature has an absolute point of reference: zero.

CF v. Weizsaecker referred to Aurelius Augustinus when he wrote the sentence you quoted. He argued that there was no time before God created the universe. Mockers added: Before He made the Big Bang, He made the hell for those who are rising insubordinate questions.

I consider only the duration of an already finished process, i.e. the time that has already elapsed, as an unchangeably fixated measure, as something that can be measured, in principle. The usual notion of time has been an abstracted, flipped and arbitrarily shifted measure.

It is certainly tempting and possibly rewarding for theoreticians to conjecture that the measurable duration of oscillatory elementary processes relates to expectation values and the transfer between kinetic and potential energy and return. However, I did not came across to any fertile and provably consistent suggested mechanism. I doubt that we need such speculations at all.

On the other hand I am sure that it is not necessary to integrate from minus infinity to plus infinity as to calculate the frequency spectrum of measured data. Future data are not available in advance. Expected future influences did not yet become real. Nice theories by Descartes and Fourier (who were still on search), Einstein, Hilbert, Minkowski, and many others do not overrule that experience.

Eckard