Video Article: Evolving Time's Arrow

I agree up to the statement "physical processes have directionality". Shouldn't we add that they are only imaginable if we demand causality in the sense of interactions here and now of causes leading to irreversibly attributable results even in case of seemingly periodic processes like chicken and egg? Logics of common sense is able to strictly obey this. For that, perception, cognition, feelings, emotions and the like do not matter at all. Of course, predictions are valuable.

Causality implies directionality. Instead of pointing to various arrows of time I prefer speaking of the unique arrow of causality. The second law of thermodynamics is therefore secondary.

My denial of mysticism must not be mistaken as denial of chance or as distrust in probabilistic models. On the contrary, it corresponds to the idea of an open, not yet determined future in contrast to the anticipatory block-universe of spacetime.

Concerning the theoretical basis of spacetime I would like to ask for comments on this.

Eckard Blumschein

Eckard,

No english translation?

John,

Look at the page, find in the middle the address bourabai.narod.ru/shtyrkov/shtyrkov.pdf again, click on it, and enjoy reading the paper Observation of Ether drift in Experiments with Geostationary Satellites. As far as I can judge, it does not look like a poor translation but rather like written immediately in eloquent English by a true expert.

Enjoy,

Eckard

That is, clever philosophers of physics are in a catch-22 situation: The Einstein-Minkowski space-time, the relativity of simultaneity, the block universe etc. have become unbearable and yet without Divine Albert's Divine Theory most of the work in the area would prove pointless. I suspect even presentists would not be quite happy with the official demise of relativity:

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/2308/1/presentism_and_qg_vp_3_dd.pdf

PRESENTISM AND QUANTUM GRAVITY by Bradley Monton, Department of Philosophy, University of Kentucky: "I am a presentist: I believe that only presently existing things exist. Contrast presentism with eternalism: the eternalist believes that past, present, and future things all exist. Assuming that there are three spatial dimensions, the eternalist believes that the universe is fourdimensional, and while there are different events in different regions of this so-called "block universe", the universe as a whole does not change. The presentist, in contrast, believes that the universe is three-dimensional. (...) The point of this paper is not to argue for presentism, but to defend presentism from a particular type of argument that is often taken to refute it. The form of the argument is as follows:

(1) Presentism is incompatible with relativity theory (usually the focus is on special relativity).

(2) Relativity theory is our most fundamental theory of physics.

(3) Presentism is incompatible with our most fundamental theory of physics. (From (1) and (2).)

(4) Presentism is false. (From (3).)

(...) But regardless of the strength of the arguments for presentism, the presentist is not required to endorse a non-traditional understanding of relativity. The presentist can simply say that presentism is incompatible with special and general relativity, and hence special and general relativity are false."

Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com

Hi Amrit,

I read your paper (relation between Physical time and Psychological time) and visted your website. Your ideas have great paralels with the reality-view that I devellopped untill now. As a matter of fact you also take the base of the Planck length and time. You say that a photon does not move in time, it moves in quantum vacuum, but before you pose that it moves from Planck distance d1 to d2, so you mean here that every planck distance is located in quantum vacuum, this is a proposition that in my view is arbitrary, tyou are treating here the term of quantum vacuum like an intermediaire, almost like ...... I "solved" this problem by stepping into a fifth non causal dimension, the so called TOTAL SIMULTNEITY (see my essay, link above). The what you call "neuronal activity of the brain" is what I call CONSCIOUSNESS, consciousness is the intermediare between this fifth non causal total simultaneity and our causal 4D deterministic phychological time experience, so our consciousness lets emerge awareness of the physical universe.

You say that you can only travel in time in a psychological way not in a physical way, here we agree and disagree because I think that time travel is possible ,for example you go back in time and then in some way you are moving to a pralel universe, if you kill there your grandfather , you will not originate in that paralel world on the original world (where you came from) your grandfather is not killed , so everything is just fine, it is your consciousnes that has found this paralel world ads a "new" starting point of your life-line (compare it with the time lines in a block universe, vevery new block gives choices of new directions of life-lines.

I hope you will read my essay also, and comment it

wilhelmus.d@orange.fr

keep on thinking free

Wilhelmus

"Heresy" in Einsteiniana's schizophrenic world:

http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Simultaneity-Routledge-Contemporary-Philosophy/dp/0415701740

Einstein, Relativity and Absolute Simultaneity (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy), Craig Callender et al: "Unfortunately for Einstein's Special Theory, however, its epistemological and ontological assumptions are now seen to be questionable, unjustified, false, perhaps even illogical. (...) It is remarkable that the Special Theory has thus far managed to survive largely unscathed the collapse of its essential epistemological underpinnings. One wonders how this can be so. (...) Physicists would be at a loss as to how to proceed if they rejected the Special Theory as unjustified, since they (for the most part) believe that this would require them to reject QFT. In the light of this dependence on Special Relativity, physicists are not likely to abandon it unless it is observationally disconfirmed and there is an observationally adequate theory available to replace it. In fact, there is a theory that is not merely observationally equivalent to the Special Theory, but also observationally superior to it, namely Lorentzian or neo-Lorentzian theory. Lorentz's theory is regarded by many physicists who have studied Lorentzian theory, such as J.S. Bell, to be observationally equivalent to the Special Theory. However a Lorentzian or neo-Lorentzian theory is, in fact, observationally superior to the Special Theory (a fact that Bell, surprisingly, did not point out), since a Lorentzian theory, in contrast to the Special Theory, is consistent with the relations of absolute, instantaneous simultaneity..."

Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com

Wilhelmus

There is no such a thing or event as TOTAL SIMULTNEITY.

In the universe events follow each other......not in time, in quantum vacuum only.

And time is a numerical sequence of events in quantum vacuum.

Time is real, in the universe time is a mathematical sequence of change.

Sure gravity is an event related to the density of quantum vacuum and is immediate....so has no numerical sequence...

yours amrit

The only problem with SR is that people do not get it. Craig Callender is one of them.

Yours Amrit

Hi Amrit, : you say : in our 4D causal universe ther is no such thing as Total Simultaneity. That is right. Becuase Total Simultaneity is a step further as our time arrow universe, it is the scale (behind the Planck Wall) where string physisists create their 11 dimensions, where Loop Quantum Gravity originates, so is my view of Total Simultaneity. I am not saying that I am right neither are the others it is just my way of thinking in this era with the facts that we know at this very moment, perhaps in the future we all will say "nonsense", but that era has not arrived yet, so please to understand the idea read my essay (see above).

keep on thinking free

Wilhelmus

Craig Callender does get special relativity and knows it is false but this "theory" is like the old rat in "The Little Prince" - Einsteinians will always reprieve it since it is "the only one" they have:

http://faculty.spokanefalls.edu/Prince/chapitre10.htm

"Hem! Hem! dit le roi, je crois bien que sur ma planète il y a quelque part un vieux rat. Je l'entends la nuit. Tu pourras juger ce vieux rat. Tu le condamneras à mort de temps en temps. Ainsi sa vie dépendra de ta justice. Mais tu le gracieras chaque fois pour l'économiser. Il n'y en a qu'un."

http://www.angelfire.com/hi/littleprince/framechapter10.html

"Hum! Hum!" said the king. "I have good reason to believe that somewhere on my planet there is an old rat. I hear him at night. You can judge this old rat. From time to time you will condemn him to death. Thus his life will depend on your justice. But you will pardon him on each occasion; for he must be treated thriftily. He is the only one we have."

Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com

Amrit wrote: "The only problem with SR is that people do not get it. Craig Callender is one of them." According to the last essay's winner, Newton got it.

Eckard

Sirs,

Time and energy are the same thing. "Time" means simply that matter is enegized. Into an hypothetical system not energized, no time is elapsed.

"Time arrow" means that particles (and parts) are spinning; moving (are energized). Into spinning, they occupy different places into space in a 'before' than an 'after' (No part can occupy different places at the same time, as well as two bodies can't occupy the same space as the same moment).

So, this 'arrow of time' has no alternative. Is an 'arrow' that can just run ahead, in the 'future' direction.

Talking about 'travel to the past' is the same as talking about an smashed egg coming back to its integral form by itself. Truly impossible! A nonsense.

Time is elapsed because matter is naturally energized. Time is just an aspect of energy. Energy is motion. All matter is in motion.

Cheers,

JCN Smith,you are right.

The administration seems bizare. A lot of publicity and bizare marketing. It is sad, I beleived that FQXi was more rational and universal.

Mr Aguire and Tegmark. What do you do ?

A real sorting is necessary in your administrations and responsabilities. What is all this circus ?

You have a responsability !And the business and the monney has nothing to do with the sciences.

The evolutionary and psychological aspects of this are largely about avoiding the physics issues, as they have not been solved. So instead of admitting that the problems have not been solved, and tackling them head on, people try to explain them away by resorting to other areas, and areas that are conveniently blurred, and can't lead to anything solid. The funding sometimes goes to projects that make us feel better about the problems in physics, rather than projects that might actually lead to progress.

Prof. Callender is my Prof at UCSD and he does an outstanding job teaching the philosophy of physics, hes so great!!!

Baggott[Farewell to Reality: How Fairy-Tale Physics Has Betrayed The Search For Scientific Truth] and even more spot-on Unzicker-Jones[Bankrupting Physics: How Top Scientists Are Gambling Away Their Credibility] critiques shame physics' shameless rock-star media-hype P.R. spin-doctoring veracity-abandoning touting sci-fi "show-biz" trending viral exacerbated by online social networks veritable diarrhea via proliferation of uncritical "pop-sci" science-writers where all is spectacle versus little is truth. Lacking Kant-Popper skepticism and falsification, lemming-like stampedes infect not only "pop-sci" science-writers to the abandonment of reality, quantitatively and much worse qualitatively qualified by adverbs: might, could, should, may,... rather than a simple factual is. Scientific societies and universities and government agencies/laboratories, motivated by their mutually-interdependent but greedy financial needs/wants, are swept up in their very own hype, routinely touting by claiming that whatever is "the next big thing", "cutting-edge" bombast... ad infinitum, ad nauseum!!! Allogorically an Indian tribe where all members are chiefs, with multi-feathered bonnets versus few braves with single-feather bonnets each. The result? Lots of angry naked birds freezing in the bushes. The result turns serious physics into a mere carney sideshow, full of fury but signifying absolutely nothing(except the latest trendiness)!!! Witness recent GIGO claims that string-theory holographic-universe affects high-Tc superconductors Drude-Lorentz optical conductivity. Witness failed Anderson resonating valence-bond(RVB) high-Tc superconductivity theory, at the time denuding the Brazilian rainforest with gazillions of papers published on a mere ego-driven double Nobel prize fantasy, versus Keimer experimental discovery that all cuprates dominant intermediate-coupling-bosons are "paramagnons" aka Overhauser(RIP) spin-density waves. Witness recent Overbye NYTimes article on holographic universe (rediscovery of duality of Stokes-theorem) so full of jargonial-obfuscation to prompt many frustrated comments, including one from emeritus APS journals editor-in-chief, as to its jargonial-obfuscation unintelligibility, full of fury but signifying absolutely nothing INTELLIGIBLE! Witness Bak/BNL/DOE self-organized-criticality(SOC) "tad late" rediscovery of Newton's F = ma mere algorithmic-renaming of Barkhausen-Tatro-Siegel burst acoustic-emission! Witness 2007 physics Nobel-prize Fert-Gruenberg decade-later rediscovery without prior attribution of 1970-1977 Siegel[JMMM 7, 312(1978); https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=GIANT-MAGNETORESISTANCE] granular-GMR. Each was the trendy "latest big thing" modulo either lack of prior attribution or "inadvertent", aka out and out bombastic chicanery!!! Siegel caveat emptor "Buzzwordism, Bandwagonism Sloganeering for Fun Profit Survival and Ego" extant is classic John Bradshaw[Healing the Shame That Binds You, Hazelden(1980s)]-Brian Martin jargonial-obfuscation exacerbated sociological-dysfunctionality!!!

Physics or Schizophrenia ?

"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."

Yet the postulates of special relativity are true, Divine Einstein, yes we all believe in relativity, relativity, relativity:

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