Readers' Choice: The Crystallizing Universe

Very interesting article by Tony Rothman in American Scientist:

http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2011/3/the-man-behind-the-curtain

"What's more, by resorting to a classical optics analogy of the experiment, authors are forgoing any explanation whatsoever. "Explanation" in physics generally means to find a causal mechanism for something to happen, a mechanism involving forces, but textbook optics affords no such explanation of slit experiments. Rather than describing how the light interacts with the slits, thus explaining why it behaves as it does, we merely demand that the light wave meet certain conditions at the slit edge and forget about the actual forces involved. The results agree well with observation, but the most widely used of such methods not only avoids the guts of the problem but is mathematically inconsistent. Not to mention that the measurement problem remains in full force.

Such examples abound throughout physics. Rather than pretending that they don't exist, physics educators would do well to acknowledge when they invoke the Wizard working the levers from behind the curtain. Even towards the end of the twentieth century, physics was regarded as received Truth, a revelation of the face of God. Some physicists may still believe that, but I prefer to think of physics as a collection of models, models that map the territory, but are never the territory itself. That may smack of defeatism to many, but ultimate answers are not to be grasped by mortals. Physicists have indeed gone further than other scientists in describing the natural world; they should not confuse description with understanding."

Another clue:

https://webspace.utexas.edu/aam829/1/m/Relativity_files/RitzEinstein.pdf

Alberto Martinez: "In sum, Einstein rejected the emission hypothesis prior to 1905 not because of any direct empirical evidence against it, but because it seemed to involve too many theoretical and mathematical complications. By contrast, Ritz was impressed by the lack of empirical evidence against the emission hypothesis, and he was not deterred by the mathematical difficulties it involved. It seemed to Ritz far more reasonable to assume, in the interest of the "economy" of scientific concepts, that the speed of light depends on the speed of its source, like any other projectile, rather than to assume or believe, with Einstein, that its speed is independent of the motion of its source even though it is not a wave in a medium; that nothing can go faster than light; that the length and mass of any body varies with its velocity; that there exist no rigid bodies; that duration and simultaneity are relative concepts; that the basic parallelogram law for the addition of velocities is not exactly valid; and so forth. Ritz commented that "it is a curious thing, worthy of remark, that only a few years ago one would have thought it sufficient to refute a theory to show that it entails even one or another of these consequences...."

Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com

Dear Pentcho,

Thank you for the link to the Physics in Perspective paper. You might be surprised, I wrote an unpublished manuscript "A still valid argument by Ritz". While you seem to entirely agree with emission theory, I merely consider Lorentz transformation and Poincaré "synchronization" most likely wrong. I was surprised that already Planck and Boltzmann disputed the issue of past and future. The latter committed suicide instead of admitting being possibly wrong. Why did not Planck or somebody else came to the conclusion to distinguish between abstracted usual time and measurable elapsed time? Do you have further information on this?

Regards,

Eckard

Joy Christian has written an interesting paper Absolute Being vs Relative Becoming on this topic.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Please read my comment on it from Apr. 14 on topic 963.

Eckard

The block universe with a dynamic occurrence of time, or this crystallizing of time in various present periods on a spatial sheet of 3-dim, invokes a funny thing. Quantum mechanics is noncontextual in that the basis of vectors is not determined by anything in quantum mechanics. It is selected for by the experimentalist. Hence the contextual aspects of a quantum measurement are what quantum interpretations are centered upon. In the Copenhagen interpretation (CI) the cut is the classical-quantum dichotomy. Of course for this to be "absolute" you need an apparatus which is absolutely non-quantal, meaning its mass must be infinite, and you need an infinite number of experiments. That is fictional of course. The many worlds interpretation (MWI) indicates there is a splitting off of world according to eigenbases selected. The idea is then that the world continues to be quantum mechanical. However, that is still funny, for the world is split off according to the contextuality of the wave function decoherence, or equivalently by the eigen-basis chosen by the experimenter. So this too is not a complete picture.

Quantum interpretations attempt to reduce the mysterious nature of quantum mechanics to our classical understanding, which has an intuitive sensory aspect to how we perceive the world. Yet at the end if the universe is entirely quantum mechanical it is unlikely that any of these schemes can ever work completely. The hidden problem is that QM is inherently noncontextual, but how we interpret QM is contextual. This is a contradiction.

With the block universe it seems reasonable to say the progression of time involves decoherent events, or what has been called wave function collapse. Yet in a subtle way this model has the above contradiction, just as does MWI or CI. This suggests a number of things. I think the primary one is that quantum cosmology should not focus primarily on the issue at all. The question is with the equivalency between quantum entanglements and spacetime configurations. I further suspect this issue of what constitutes a present time and issues of a "flow of time" may simply not be appropriate questions to ask. This may be similar to tinkering around with aether theories and the like before 1905.

Cheers LC

Yes, the fact that quantum measurement unavoidably depends on classical parameters breeds consequences that are frequently swept under the rug of metaphor.

This was the case in suggesting the history of the world on a DVD (or any finite instrument). I agree with the question of equivalence between "... quantum entanglements and spacetime configurations."

That would necessarily move the problem to n-dimension Hilbert space and the string theory extension of quantum field theory. One does not encounter the histrionic objections to "mainstream science" in physics forums outside this one. As elusive as the answers are, the basic formalisms are correct.

Tom

The main point of a physical theory is to make predictions about measurable observables. The question on how we perceive time does far not a measurable quantity, at least at this time. We might even imagine there are intelligent life forms on other planets which perceive space and time in very different ways. If a quantum gravity theory is arrived at it might from there tell us about how it is we observe time, at it might be a dynamic block or crystallizing world. On the other hand it might not do that, but still gives answers to question or problems that have some measurable observables which can be probed.

Cheers LC

LC, You wrote: "The main point of a physical theory is to make predictions about measurable observables. The question on how we perceive time does far not a measurable quantity".

I see any performed measurement of time not a question of perception but clearly related to two more or less distant events in the past.

If someone attributes traces to the past then he considers the past as part of the abstract notion time that includes both past and future. Actually measurable are only the traces of past processes. This memory of traces altogether constitutes the unchangeable reality called the past in the sense of a contextual entity of partially predictable influences.

Is it correct to attribute observability to a concrete physical quantity? Definitely yes inside a model, however definitely no in reality. Predictions are more or less uncertain.

Eckard

Because English is not my mother tongue, I wonder why you wrote "far not". May I understand "not far" as almost?

Eckard,

The perceptions we have of space and time are in a way mental constructions. Barbour argues that time does not exist due to the fact the ADM Hamiltonian and momentum constraints NH = 0, N^iH_i = 0 have not time content. This extends to the Wheeler DeWitt quantum version HΨ[g] = 0. The set of diffeomorphisms of the theory are removed on the moduli space, and so identification of Diff(M) with time can't be established. However, I could equally suppose that time is a one dimensional space with a fibration of three dimensional manifolds we think of as space. I can further work out how these two pictures are in fact quantum complementarities.

In either case what we call space and time are not written in concrete at all. They are an aspect of an external degree of gauge freedom, or a coordinate choice on a frame bundle, which are chosen by the analyst or observer. They are not at all gauge covariant, and hence really do not constitute anything which can be called physically real. They are artifacts of a gauge choice, or in some sense constructed by the observer. In effect we "make them up."

As for the "far not," that is a mangled re-edit. The sentence "The question on how we perceive time does far not a measurable quantity, at least at this time," probably should read "The question on how we perceive time does not so far address a measurable quantity, at least currently."

Cheers LC

Supersymmetry is a way of interchanging internal symmetries with external symmetries. The internal symmetries are local gauge changes which introduce forces. External symmetries are the Lorentz group of boosts and rotations in spacetime. We are all familiar with the idea that internal symmetries are fictional: Take an electromagnetic vector A and add a gradient of some scalar A' = A gradX and we then have that the magnetic field B = -curlA' = -curlA - curl gradX, and the last term is zero. The difference is that with the external symmetries we have a sense of them and an arrangement of objects and ourselves with respect to each other in a spatial arrangement. Yet if internal and external symmetries are interchangeable it must mean their physical statuses are equivalent.

We are all familiar with curved spacetime, after all general relativity is nearly 100 years old now, but in fact we see little immediate presence of it. The curvature of spacetime due to Earth's gravity is 10^{-27}cm^{-2} --- tiny. By the same token we hardly have much sense that space is just a configuration variable for fields, and time is a parameterization of fields --- which are Lorentz covariant. Black hole change things a bit, for the observer outside the black hole witnesses physics according to an S matrix with a different domain than an observer who falls in with the quantum field of interest. The two observers witness the process according to entirely different representations, and yet in the end the core physics is the same. What is different is how the physical fields are "dressed," or should we say the particular moduli used.

In analogy with the dressing of quantum states and moduli, I could tomorrow put on a suit and head out to work. I could instead try something a bit different and put on a women's suit dress. The difference is superficial, for it is how the material folds and hangs on the underlying frame that is different --- the basic frame is the same, nothing fundamentally is different. Yet we tend to see the clothes, how the quantum states are dressed or the phase of the entanglement, as equal to the underlying quantum bits. Space and time share this property of being like the clothes.

Cheers LC

LC,

All your reasoning fits to the currently mandatory assumption of a block universe which is for instance explained in an extensive while nonetheless not convincing to me manner by Lebovitz in http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Time%27s_arrow_and_Boltzmann%27s_entropy

Lebovitz admits that his view is opposed to the camp of "those who regard the passage of time as an objective feature of reality, and interpret the present moment as the marker or leading edge of this advance."

Lebovitz continues: "Some members of this camp give the present ontological priority, as well, sharing Augustine's view that the past and the future are unreal". Unfortunately I did not manage to convince proponents of this view that the present is a deliberately imprecise notion.

Lebovitz adds: "Others take the view that the past is real in a way that the future is not, so that the present consists in something like the coming into being of determinate reality". I see this view in accordance with Claude Shannon and the only reasonable view. I just wonder why apparently nobody dealt seriously with it.

Isn't my reasoning extremely uncommon but a bit more consequent and compelling? We both may agree on that the usual notion of time is just a mental construct while admittedly a very successful one. However, isn't it based on experience? Experience is necessarily restricted to the belonging past. Future events evade observation and measurement. Therefore, there is NO flow of time but a steady growth of elapsed time.

Reality is not invariant under shift. Invariance, covariance etc. are based on abstraction and therefore restricted to models. Physicists should learn to correctly interpret the results of their calculations.

Elsewhere I fond the utterance: "Mathematics dictates physics." I would like to object: It does definitely not dictate reality if its essence is its freedom.

Regards,

Eckard

Block time only makes sense in a classical setting. The idea of the crystallizing block time, or dynamics block time, involves the reduction of quantum states so that the present is something that is materializing. The hitch with this idea is that it means there is some contextual aspect to how quantum states decohere. In a measurement this contextual framework involves the eigenbasis the observer chooses according to how she orients an apparatus. Yet we know that quantum mechanics is non-contextual. This is one problem with the many world interpretation MWI). MWI posits the splitting off of the world according to separate eigenstates, but this can only happen in a contextual framework. Yet if the world is fully quantum mechanical there is no such context by which it splits itself off. So MWI buries the quantum-classical dichotomy more apparent in the Copenhagen interpretation in this subtle contradiction. This is the problem with the whole model here.

My main point is that we impose time as well as space onto the universe. What is physically relevant are the obstructions to flatness which might occur, which we call curvature. These are chosen according to the particular frame we elect to work in and observe the universe. There is no physical prescription which tells us how space is laid out or how time is to organize event in space.

Cheers LC

The attached represents my theory.

I have named my own model of the Universe, the Minverse Model (previously Coney Island Green, the name of the theory). See all below & attached.

I would be much greatful if the community consider this new model.

It is named Minverse (miniverse) because each mass entity acts as its own Universe, capable of creating space from mass.

Do not be afraid to believe in the theory.

Any questions, please contact me.

Douglas Lipp

Here are its claims (see also attached)

To Cosmologists and Theoretical Physicists,

The attached theory welcomes intense scrutiny and comment by experts.

Though the paper remains in need of further revision, nonetheless its current content is sufficient to promulgate research directed toward its firm confirmation. It is a "new model" of the Universe/Multiverse. The suggested term is the: "The Minverse Model" (short for miniverse, while at the same time in honor of my grandmother, Minerva).

The theory includes a mass to space quantification. It should be noted that the great physicist Faramarz Ghassemi was pursuing a similar mass to space view of nature. It is time other physicists take a serious look.

The theory offers in a "single view of nature", and "simultaneously", the following:

Varying Cosmological Constant

Possible explanation of Virtual Particles

Combination of the Spacetime Continuum with the Mass-energy equation

Quantification of mass to a spatial quantity

Solution to Dark Matter

Solution to Dark Energy

Solution to Horizon Problem

Solution to Red Shift Anomalies

Solution to Double Slit (Young's) Wave-Particle Duality Quantum Confusion

Physical explanation as to what E=mc² actually represents

New Interpretation of Einstein's Field Equations

True reason for Hubble expansion

Fourth Law of Motion Equating Gravity to Other Forces

Possible meaning of Plancks Constant

Lipps Law of Proportionality

Offers a New Explanation of Pressure

Is Relativitivistic in nature and therefore builds upon current science

Does not rely on extra dimensions

Does not rely on speeds greater than "c" as does current inflationary theory

Combines the Fundamentals (Matter, Time, Space)

Coherently respects conservation of energy (current view of expansion of space does not)

Above all else, the theory is experimentally verifiable.

Comments are welcome and can be delivered here or to lippfamily@earthlink.net

For a hard copy, please email the author.

Once again, the author apologizes for what appears to be a paper not altogether written in scientific/academic protocol.

Enjoy the "Fun" section as well.

Please open the attached to find: "The Coney Island Green Theory".

Thank You,

Douglas W. LippAttachment #1: 3_MTSFINAL15Rollover12.doc

LC,

Don't you consider Vesselin Petkov correctly stating that the timelessly existing block universe is the only one that is consistent with special relativity?

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/2408/

Regards,

Eckard

As a classical theory I could be disposed to this perspective. The block world in special relativity is of course the most direct. In general relativity this is a bit more complicated, but the block world is still the simplest to think about. The ADM approach to general relativity has some applicability, but I will not quibble the point here.

The problem comes with quantum mechanics. If reality is quantum mechanical all the way down, then the block world, even relational block world or crystallizing block world, becomes problematic. This depends upon some subtle issues with the foundations of quantum physics. In particular it depends upon an interpretation which has a problem with non-contextuality in QM. This puts a relational block world view in the same category as a quantum interpretation.

I suspect that quantum interpretations are in general false on some level, and this means all of them: Copenhagen, Bohm, Many Worlds, Consistent Trajectories and so forth. These quantum interpretations are also not testable, for they have no prediction of an observable consequence which can be observed to support them. They are not really theories in a proper sense.

The problem is that these interpretations are ways of trying to make quantum mechanics transparent within a classical mode of thinking. This really is a sort of intellectual security blanket or teddy bear. In order to pursue quantum gravity we are going to have to lay these things aside.

Cheers LC

LC, As I understood, the Hamiltonian formalism of ADM describes spacetime as space evolving IN time, and Lee Smolin comes from Deser.

Doesn't already the word IN imply an a priori existing time alias block time? When I was confronted with Ellis' emerging block universe, I appreciated the criticism of tenseless spacetime. However, up to now I did not understand how something emerging can be an priori given block. To me the two possibilities exclude each other, and the various attempts to unite them are altogether doomed to fail.

I tend to agree with Vesselin Petkov in that, the unrealistic block universe is an indisputable precondition for SR. While I am fully aware of the consequence to be put into the drawer of many many cranks, I see no reasonable alternative as to question SR and already Lorentz transformation. I will read arguments by Lucas and by Popper who, as I was told, called Einstein a Parmenides.

What about the foundations of quantum mechanics, I already investigated what I consider improper use of complex calculus by Heisenberg/Jordan/Born, Schroedinger/Weyl, and Dirac.

Regards,

Eckard

Lawrence,

So all curvature is a function of horizon effects, that it is subject to one's perspective?

How do we know this bias doesn't underlay such assumptions as the current cosmology of an expanding universe?

It is tempting to identify the foliation of spaces with a "time." However, what ADM relativity describes are a set of spatial surfaces which are related to each other by diffeomorphism. What has not really been done, as far as I know, is to demonstrate explicitly that this is time.

Classically the block time does make sense. It does have to be realized this is a model system, it is not necessarily the universe at its foundations. When you bring quantum mechanics into the picture this model gets shaken to its core. Attempts to revise the block time picture with MWI or other state reduction schemes runs into the subtle questions I outline above.

Cheers LC