Real-Time Physics

John,

Is the future then an already present destination, only yet to be reached? (using the analogy you used of moving along a spatial dimension). Old age for example is a certain destination (configuration) in the future, can it be reached earlier other than at the usual pace? Or again perhaps one can live a 100 years and still look 50? Also see my post on Nov. 14, 2013 @ 10:35 GMT. Like you John, are you operating on Proper Time or which Time are you personally using to count your days?

Akinbo

Akinbo,

Think in terms of just energy in all its forms, moving about in space, like a thermodynamic medium. Since we exist as particular point of reference and function by being mobile, our thought process is to funnel as much information in and then process it how it is useful for our survival. The brain is divided into two basic parts; the left linear side and the right non-linear, scalar side. Since there is so much information, the non-linear side processes in bulk. Sort of like throwing everything together and seeing what emerges as the most important, interesting connections, etc. We refer to this as intuition. The linear side tries to place everything in its proper coherent order, but since the larger reality is not linear, this requires editing and adaption. For example, to make our measures of time all fit in the same frame, we change the number of days of the months to fit the year, rather than the actual cycles of the moon. So this sense of everything happening in sequence is very much hardwired into our minds, yet just as we experience days as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, it is a function of our experience, not of the larger reality. Those events are simply the energy coalescing some form in our minds, of some approximation of external conditions. It is they that are coming and going, ie. future to past. They don't pre-exist because the energy only comes together to form them. Like seeing a super nova is the experience of that light traveling for billions of years, only to strike the lens of the telescope at a certain moment. It is that coming together that is our experience of reality.

Regards,

John M

Real and Global Time in Einsteiniana

"Many physicists argue that time is an illusion. Lee Smolin begs to differ. (...) Smolin wishes to hold on to the reality of time. But to do so, he must overcome a major hurdle: General and special relativity seem to imply the opposite. In the classical Newtonian view, physics operated according to the ticking of an invisible universal clock. But Einstein threw out that master clock when, in his theory of special relativity, he argued that no two events are truly simultaneous unless they are causally related. If simultaneity - the notion of "now" - is relative, the universal clock must be a fiction, and time itself a proxy for the movement and change of objects in the universe. Time is literally written out of the equation. Although he has spent much of his career exploring the facets of a "timeless" universe, Smolin has become convinced that this is "deeply wrong," he says. He now believes that time is more than just a useful approximation, that it is as real as our guts tell us it is - more real, in fact, than space itself. The notion of a "real and global time" is the starting hypothesis for Smolin's new work, which he will undertake this year with two graduate students supported by a $47,500 grant from FQXi."

$47,500 were not enough and Smolin failed to establish the "real and global time". He ranted some more, just to sell his new book:

"Was Einstein wrong? At least in his understanding of time, Smolin argues, the great theorist of relativity was dead wrong. What is worse, by firmly enshrining his error in scientific orthodoxy, Einstein trapped his successors in insoluble dilemmas..."

"And by making the clock's tick relative - what happens simultaneously for one observer might seem sequential to another - Einstein's theory of special relativity not only destroyed any notion of absolute time but made time equivalent to a dimension in space: the future is already out there waiting for us; we just can't see it until we get there. This view is a logical and metaphysical dead end, says Smolin."

In the end Smolin returned to the one and true religion:

QUESTION: Setting aside any other debates about relativity theory for the moment, why would the speed of light be absolute? No other speeds are absolute, that is, all other speeds do indeed change in relation to the speed of the observer, so it's always seemed a rather strange notion to me.

LEE SMOLIN: Special relativity works extremely well and the postulate of the invariance or universality of the speed of light is extremely well-tested. It might be wrong in the end but it is an extremely good approximation to reality.

QUESTION: So let me pick a bit more on Einstein and ask you this: You write (p. 56) that Einstein showed that simultaneity is relative. But the conclusion of the relativity of simultaneity flows necessarily from Einstein's postulates (that the speed of light is absolute and that the laws of nature are relative). So he didn't really show that simultaneity was relative - he assumed it. What do I have wrong here?

LEE SMOLIN: The relativity of simultaneity is a consequence of the two postulates that Einstein proposed and so it is deduced from the postulates. The postulates and their consequences are then checked experimentally and, so far, they hold remarkably well.

Pentcho Valev

Pentcho,

Why do you stubbornly ignore the possibility that the second postulate (constant c) may be correct if the first postulate contains a wrongly interpreted conclusion. My essay explains:

"Was Einstein right? Definitely yes, when he postulated a good old insight [10]: There is no preferred point of reference in space.

Let's check his conclusion: The laws of nature should therefore be the same for any inertial system. This would be correct in this sense: If two bodies A and B in motion relative to each other with a velocity v then A obeys the same laws as did B if it was instead chosen the object of consideration. Fig. 1 shows A and B moving. Body A sees B with the same delay as B sees A. Given the distance AB is increasing then light from A is seen at B red-shifted as is light from B at A too. Both bodies had already a common reference position S where their clocks got synchronized. Einstein used a different synchronization. Why?"

Eckard Blumschein

Is Spacetime Doomed ?

The Doom of Space Time by Nima Arkani-Hamed: "Back then it was determinism that had to be lost. Today it is spacetime that has to be lost, and we have to figure out how to make do without spacetime. (...) By insisting on describing the physics in the way that makes spacetime front and center, we hide things, we obscure things, we make things that are simple complicated... (...) The structure of standard physics are clues to a new way of thinking about physics without spacetime."

Spacetime (as devised by Einstein and Minkowski) is a consequence of Einstein's 1905 constant-speed-of-light postulate, so if the consequence is unacceptable, the postulate must be false. Nima Arkani-Hamed is still exercising himself in crimestop but sooner or later he will have to start thinking about this simple postulate-consequence relation:

"Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity."

Pentcho Valev

Oh for goodness sakes...really? Einstein's relativity is based fundamentally on the equivalence of mass and energy. That equivalence then means that there are different clocks for each moving frame.

That the speed of light is independent of motion is simply a consequence of matter-energy equivalence. What all of this has to do with multiverses or string theory is simply a matter of belief, not science. It is not that these disciplines are not fun, it is just that they do not have any results that that are useful to help us predict action.

Space time has one perspective, matter time has a different perspective and both depend on matter-energy equivalence. Taking matter-energy equivalence away really does create a large number of pathologies. How do you explain nuclear matter defects?

The NIST latest and greatest cool clock is the 199Hg at 282 nm, a wonder with several orders of magnitude improvement over the existing 133Ci clock at a lowly 32 mm, some 10 orders of magnitude difference in frequency.

If you raise the Hg clock one meter, its frequency changes by exactly that expected by GR. That is so cool...Micelson-Morley, eat your hearts out.

Look, there are problems with GR, that is true. But it is decidely unhelpful to throw the baby out with the bath water. We need to build on the science that we know in order to discover the science that we do not yet know.

Can you tell me how I can buy one of these your 'cool' clocks so I can verify myself that it works as you claim. One should avoid depending on hearsay. In the event that it is only for the exclusive use of mainstream people, if you have a link I can read more about the latest rabbits being cooked for us to eat.

Don't misinterpret me. I don't intend throwing the baby away with the bath water but to give the baby a proper name not the one by which it is currently called.

In the quote I posted before, Einstein said velocity of light varies with position. Why then are you surprised that the frequency changes at one metre altitude? If c = fL that should not surprise you but what may be surprising to you is how light velocity can be invariant, a sacred principle to some and at the same time be said to vary with position. Certainly both can only be true in the Republic of Einsteiniana.

Regards,

Akinbo

This stuff is really fun...it is incredible what they can measure today and there is no doubt about a small variation in alpha over time. Here are the Hg and Al clocks.

Recent atomic clock comparisons at NIST

Improved Limits on Variation of the Fine Structure Constant and Violation of Local Position Invariance

Here are two different Dysprosium isotope clocks, so this stuff is great.

New limits on variation of the fine-structure constant using atomic dysprosium

I looked at these papers and others very closely in doing my alpha variation analysis. NIST is now using the measured variation in alpha to characterize their different clocks.

The clock frequency changes with elevation, but remember the speed of light in each of those two frames was constant. It is their clocks that vary relative to each other. Don't get your rabbits mixed up...

Also you might like to see other papers that show the alpha variation not only with clocks, but with cosmological line shift ratios.

The value of the fine structure constant over cosmological times

...and this 2000 paper discusses the math of the alpha shift in a very useful way...

Some possibilities for laboratory searches for variations of fundamental constants

Although there is much controversy over whether universal constants evolve over time, especially alpha the fine structure constant, the evidence for a change is overwhelming, albeit quite small. If alpha changes, well, everything changes. However, even though c and alpha change over time and space, that is still consistent with Lorentz invariance.

Lorentz invariance is a clock change with velocity that comes along with the equivalence of matter and energy. The speed of light can and does change for a large number of different reasons, just not in what we call a rest frame. Note that there really is no such thing as a rest frame since everything moves all of the time.

In particular, the matter time contracting universe predicts changes in alpha, but I have just now reconciled the observed changes with matter time. It does look like the alpha change measurements are consistent with matter time, but more on that later...

Really impressive stuff Steve. One can only hope these advances in technology will also advance the cause of truth. Thanks for the links.

Regarding, "The clock frequency changes with elevation, but remember the speed of light in each of those two frames was constant (i.e. at different elevations). It is their clocks that vary relative to each other. Don't get your rabbits mixed up...". I suggest this advice should have been directed at Einstein for saying that, "... the velocity of propagation of light varies with position".

Whatever is the case I think it is all a matter of choice of interpretation.

All the best,

Akinbo

Spacetime, the breathtaking consequence of Einstein's 1905 postulates, is wrong and will have to be abandoned (at least some Einsteinians say so):

WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? Steve Giddings: "Spacetime. Physics has always been regarded as playing out on an underlying stage of space and time. Special relativity joined these into spacetime... (...) The apparent need to retire classical spacetime as a fundamental concept is profound..."

Nima Arkani-Hamed, 14:31 : "We strongly believe that spacetime doesn't really exist. (...) The slogan is that spacetime is doomed and something has to replace it."

NEW SCIENTIST: "Rethinking Einstein: The end of space-time."

"And by making the clock's tick relative - what happens simultaneously for one observer might seem sequential to another - Einstein's theory of special relativity not only destroyed any notion of absolute time but made time equivalent to a dimension in space: the future is already out there waiting for us; we just can't see it until we get there. This view is a logical and metaphysical dead end, says Smolin."

"Was Einstein wrong? At least in his understanding of time, Smolin argues, the great theorist of relativity was dead wrong. What is worse, by firmly enshrining his error in scientific orthodoxy, Einstein trapped his successors in insoluble dilemmas..."

Yet, while Einsteinians apparently want to reject spacetime, the wrong consequence of Einstein's 1905 postulates, they still strongly believe that the postulates themselves are true:

QUESTION: Setting aside any other debates about relativity theory for the moment, why would the speed of light be absolute? No other speeds are absolute, that is, all other speeds do indeed change in relation to the speed of the observer, so it's always seemed a rather strange notion to me. LEE SMOLIN: Special relativity works extremely well and the postulate of the invariance or universality of the speed of light is extremely well-tested. It might be wrong in the end but it is an extremely good approximation to reality. QUESTION: So let me pick a bit more on Einstein and ask you this: You write (p. 56) that Einstein showed that simultaneity is relative. But the conclusion of the relativity of simultaneity flows necessarily from Einstein's postulates (that the speed of light is absolute and that the laws of nature are relative). So he didn't really show that simultaneity was relative - he assumed it. What do I have wrong here? LEE SMOLIN: The relativity of simultaneity is a consequence of the two postulates that Einstein proposed and so it is deduced from the postulates. The postulates and their consequences are then checked experimentally and, so far, they hold remarkably well.

Nima Arkani-Hamed: "When first encountering relativity, what really struck me about it more than anything else was actually how incredibly simple the underlying ideas were. The big point wasn't hidden in some minutiae of some deep mathematics, or these stunning, very striking assumptions - that the speed of light is constant and that physics looks the same in all frames of reference - and from these two seemingly innocuous assumptions come this incredibly different worldview than the standard Newtonian picture of the world."

Conclusion: Spacetime is not and cannot be doomed in Einstein's world. Einsteinians are not going to reject it - making more money is the only goal of the campaign:

QUANTUM MECHANICS AND SPACETIME IN THE 21ST CENTURY, NIMA ARKANI-HAMED, INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2014 AT 7:00PM, PERIMETER INSTITUTE - 31 CAROLINE ST. N., WATERLOO. Tickets for this event are SOLD OUT.

Pentcho Valev

On second thought. Maybe I should be more sportsmanly and use the word 'game' instead of 'business' in above post. Apologies to Nima Arkani Games.

The grey aliens are at work. Hamed instead of Games. The auto correct function changed it without my consent.

Argh. Akinbo, as John R pointed out, these are not "alternative insights," just fundamental physics. When your 'alternative ideas' contradict fundamental physics, we can't as a group get anywhere toward understanding truly alternative physics.

And that's my complaint with members, which includes almost all of them, who don't jump in with their implied authority to set things right for the group. The site has become a mottled collection of cranky physics -- whose interests does that serve?

This clock stuff is really great...why there is not more interest in these amazing new clocks is beyond me. The fact that they have measurable changes in frequency with just a foot or so in elevation is incredible. They also measure the changes in the fine structure constant...or at least some believe there are changes...others believe it is only noise.

I mentioned before that time has two dimensions, but I was confused about proper time being one of them. Proper time is the norm between rest time and moving time, not the other dimension of time. Likewise, proper mass is the norm between rest mass and moving mass, not the other dimension of mass.

Space time uses 4-space to express its norms, but matter time uses only time and matter, but the math works the same. The differential of proper time is a consequence of mass-energy equivalence. Mass-energy equivalence makes a moving clock different from a rest clock, but really, we are never truly at rest. There are always things whirring and whizzing about inside and outside of us.

What proper time and action allow us to do is to focus on predicting a particular action and action always involves motion and a time center for that action. As soon as we have a time center of action, we have a proper time and proper mass for that action.

The key thing is that there really is no such thing as rest frame nor a moving frame...there is just the concepts of rest and moving frames that we imagine prior to an action. The action has the proper time and mass norms, the object in and of itself..

So we really only imagine rest and moving frames and the only thing that we can really experience is the proper frame of some action. Without action, there is no experience.

Steve,

"Einstein's relativity is based fundamentally on the equivalence of mass and energy." ?? Sequitur? Having His 1905 paper "Zur Elektrodynamik...° at hand I am looking in vain for where He already mentioned this equivalence.

Incidentally, instead of writing "Micelson-Morley, eat your hearts out" you should correctly interpret Michelson's 1881/87 (Potsdam/Cleveland) null result.

What about clocks, even Einstein referred to clocks of exactly the same Beschaffenheit. Elevation may change it, while speed as something relative to a chosen reference at rest doesn't.

Eckard

Steve,

These amazing new clocks, do they tell us if the nuclear vibration changes in frequency with elevation in a gravitational field, or does each fluctuation of the vibration simply have to transit a greater or lesser quantity of time in the same size of nuclear volume as elevation changes? Isaac or Albert? jrc

It might really be a surprise to some, but Einstein, despite all of his great stuff, did not figure out everything, i.e., unification. Einstein did not even believe in quantum theory for example. Quoting Einstein has some utility, but no theory explains all observations...some theories are just more useful than others for prediction of action.

These new clocks are simply incredible. The Japanese AIST have a Sr lattice clock that is very impressive. What I like about these new clocks is not how well they keep time, but that they decay over time. What I like about pulsars is not so much there nice pulses, but they decay in time. Both of those decays validate the decaying and collapsing universe.

The reported variation in the line ratios of two different kinds of clocks reveals a second order variation in the fine structure constant. Many report line ration variations are ~1e-15/yr...this is really small. Well, completely different reports from astrophysics also show variations of ~1e-15 in spectral line ratios over astronomical times.

This seems more than coincidental.

This will be really cool to show as all due to classical 0.255 ppb/yr matter decay of matter time.

Oh for goodness sake...

""Einstein's relativity is based fundamentally on the equivalence of mass and energy." ?? Sequitur? Having His 1905 paper "Zur Elektrodynamik...° at hand I am looking in vain for where He already mentioned this equivalence.

Look, Einstein did not figure out everything, not did he figure out everything he did in 1905. The matter energy equivalence is certainly a major theme in his work, but the 1905 paper you cite does not have it directly, although special realitivity does depend on MEE. Look in the 1915-16 papers on relativity. There mass energy equivalence is all over the place. Not surprizingingly, clocks are all over the place as well. With mass-energy equivalence, clocks vary with velocity and acceleration. This is the basis of Lorentz invarience.

In fact, the speed of light can vary as a function of time like in the decaying universe, but that does not violate Lorentz invariance.

Obviously, you are mocking my current obsession with these clocks...

"These amazing new clocks, do they tell us if the nuclear vibration changes in frequency with elevation in a gravitational field, or does each fluctuation of the vibration simply have to transit a greater or lesser quantity of time in the same size of nuclear volume as elevation changes? Isaac or Albert?"

But, I like clocks...they are useful. Do they tell us about nuclear stuff. In fact, certain of the clocks are very sensitive to nuclear states, those clocks based on hyperfine splitting. These are the Cs and 162,164Dy clocks and the decay of the ratio of the nuclear magnetic moment in time occurs.

Other clocks are sensitive to spin-orbit coupling and the fine structure constant is more important, but for all clocks, the fine structure constant is very important.

Astrophysical line ratios also show a variation in the fine structure constant, but this is controversial. All of this data is still very close to the limits of technology and so of course, there are two diametric camps, for and against fine structure variation in time.

Count me for.