What's this all about?

It's about you, Archy. Didn't you get the memo?

In my opinion, we already have too many topics. If anything, we should have cut it down a bit not added another one.

The purpose was to add a specific topic for discussion of the Sciences, as requested by many members here: http://ravingatheist.com/forum/viewt...hp?id=3267&p=1

Sweet!

Anyone up for some Cosmology? Tim posted a while back on the no-boundary condition, but the most I've read about it was from before the discovery of the accelerating universe. It seems to me like the finite-but-boundless universe theory is no longer consistent, but I don't pretend to know much more about it.

Discuss!

I'm in the "There is no time" camp, therefore I cannot subscribe to anything that delineates a condition based on rods and clocks.

There, that should get things started. ;)

I can't count all the early-morning conversations I had in college trying to convince people that the notion of "time" is just a human invention. Trying to explain that there is no such thing as an "hour" or a "week" that exists in reality.

Everything we think of as "time" is based on nothing more than an observable natural phenomena:

One second = 9,192,631,770 vibrations of a Caesium-133 isotope (since the minute and the hour are based solely upon the second, they are equally fabricated)
One day = originally sunrise to sunrise
One month = originally one lunar cycle
One year = originally summer solstice to summer solstice

The only real aspect of time that I've noticed is the notion of the past and the future, but that's really nothing more than a psychological division between things that have happened and things that will/might happen. When people invent constructs like timelines, they create the illusory perception that we somehow "move forward" in time. But really it's just things happening that creates a linear narrative of memory.

That's why time travel, while mathematically possible, can never happen. The past and future do not exist as places to which one can go in the same way that one can go to Rome or Liverpool. The past, effectively, does not exist at all; we know that certain things happened because photographs and documents exist now that can be scientifically shown to represent authentic historical events, but those events themselves are irretrievably gone.

I've always just thought of "time" as a way to ensure that anyone who needs to be somewhere gets there when they're supposed to.

I know you've mentioned that before, but how do you deal with time dilation? Is it not at least convenient to see time as a dimension when considering supermassive objects or the need for GPS satellites to correct for relativistic effects? I could understand dismissing the concept if it were constant, but relativity seems to throw a rather large wrench in.

no it doesn't becvause time dilation (and associated effects) only stretch the relative timelike interval between events a little bit, and they are strictly confined to a light cone that cannot have any causality effects, which means that relativity, while making the idea more interesting, does not materially affect the proposition.

(by causalioty effects I mean that causality is maintained. No effects preceeding causes).

Isn't Time Dilation evidence that time is a dimension of the physical universe? If we can effect the speed of an object through dimension t, it seems like we're actually interacting with a physical construct of the universe, and not just some abstract a priori notion of convenience (but again, I'm no scientist, so I'm probably wrong :P).

no

Uhm, could you be more specific?

no

:mad:

Ehhhhhhh...sorta?

A second is measured as a given number of vibrations of a given isotope; if moving that isotope at one-tenth the speed of light changes the vibration frequency (whereby one could say that the second has become longer or shorter), does that really change the second?

Or, conversely, does calling a given number of vibrations of a given isotope a "second" make a "second" any more a tangible thing the way that a rock or a blade of grass is a real thing? The vibrations are tangible; calling 9-billion of them (and change) a "second" is as arbitrary as finding a heretofore unknown species of bird in the rainforest and calling it a "gringleblatt." It's just the word we assign to the natural phenomenon.

The fact that physical changes to the basis of our time-measurement standards can change those measurements -- speed causing a second to slow down -- to me at least, indicates that the "time" we're measuring isn't anymore than our own arbitrary construct.

I wouldn't call it an arbitrary construct. Those Caesium atoms vibrate more slowly than other Caesium atoms in a measurable way. The word may be arbitrary but the concept seems to provide a measurably accurate model of the natural phenomenon, which is all we can ask of our theories.

I only subscribe to conditions delineated by rods and clocks.....

All your examples are of human measurements of time, and yes things like a "second" or a "year" are arbitrary constructs. What of a Planck Second (the time it takes the speed of light to cross the Planck Length)? That doesn't seem like an arbitrary unit of time (though it is another human measurement). From what I understand, you have (simply) your spatial dimensions x, y and z, and your temporal dimension t. The speed of any "object" in the universe through all 4 dimensions is equal to C. By increasing speed along one axis, you reduce speed along another axis (if you accelerate a spaceship close to the speed of light, you remove some of that spaceship's velocity along t in relation to the rest of the universe and transfer it to x y or z). This seems to make time less of an abstract and more of an actual part of the physical universe.

Also, wouldn't your arguments against time work equally well against space? The length from the king’s nose to his outstretched hand is tangible; calling one of them a "meter" is arbitrary (this reminds me of a logical conundrum where "The Meter" is not equal to the length of a meter). So, would you be in favor of calling all of "space" that we're measuring an abstract as well (and if you do, can I start calling you Kant?)?

:lol::lol::lol::lol:

later. too busy now

you're hung up on definitions. Time is what it is. If you want to know how many muons are going to be left in a cosmic shower at a certain altitude you had better factor in the propor time of the muons or you will get the wrong answer. It is irrelevent what you call a unit of time; atoms don't know or care, but they do follow certain rulesa that have the concept of time embedded in them, and if you want to be able to make any meaningful predictions regarding such systems you need to account for it. The rest is just semantics. Years may not exist, but I know that my sodium 22 (which is the source of the positrons I need to do my work) decays with a half life of 2.6 years. That means that after 2.6 years I have half as many positrons and my experiments are much more difficult. I also know that is my sodium 22 were to go on a trip at great speed and come back in 2.6 years there would be more than half as many positrons.

When did this pop up? Has this been here all day??


A clarical error: "General Discussion about the Natural Sciences, including Biology and Physics " but no period (.) at the end.

First you have to define time. I see it as no more than the delta between configurations.

A bouncing ball has no inherent property of motion. Each successive image captured by your eyes builds on the previous image to reinforce the sense that the ball is moving. There is nowhere that the ball exists previously to the considered moment, other than as a memories in your mind and maybe the air molecules it interacted with.

Time dilation is a difference in the measured rate of time between two entities, hence the term relativity.

The timeless theory is more aligned with quantum logic, and does not require a pre-defined shape space within which to operate.

Yes, but as I stated above, couldn't you make the same argument for space (I had no idea there were so many Kantian's here :P)? The only contemporary physicist I've read who endorses timeless theory is Julian Barbour, so I can't claim to be an expert on the subject.

I should state I'm a Presentist, a theory where time exists, but only the present moment of time has ontological status, the past and the future are non-existent.

That's like being a time-agnostic. C'mon, Rhino, give it up! :)

Barbour puts forth the best layman's description of timelesness. His book is a good start. You might have recognized my bouncing ball example as his kingfisher in flight example.

but tenspace, the motion of your ball will precisely follow the least action principle, which contains an explicit statement of the behaviour of the ball as a function of time. In that sense the motion of the ball itself contains the "memory" of where it has been

All this talk of time not existing makes me nervous. Is there any way to test this idea or is it purely conceptual? The point I was trying to make (poorly) is that if the idea of time as a dimension is helpful (and it certainly is with the concept of velocity shared in four dimensions) and practical (GPS wouldn't work without it), why bother with making such a claim as "time doesn't exist". Does it make more sense that way in situations I haven't heard of? Is there a thought experiment we can do that might distinguish between no-time and time?

Go to london and get pissed up in the boozer. At about 10.15 you will become acutely aware of time. It will seem to accelerate until you reach the no-event horizon at 11.00 when the barman calls out that most profound statement: "time gentlemen please"

When is the last time you read the title of a book and there was a fuckin period a the end of it? Huh, huh? Notice the capitalization not included in all of the other (short) sentances provided for descriptions of the categories.

K, I'm off to bed. The clock, which provides me with a manufactured time, says it's almost the beginning of a new day.

You're right in that time exists as a practical tool; it exists in the same way that language exists. That tall plant in the back yard with the leaves and branches and bark is a tree insofar as we assign the word "tree" to objects in that specific class of things. Had humans not evolved language, there would be no "tree" concept, because we would simply see that tall plant with the leaves and branches and bark and accept the object.

Language is a second level of interpretation that takes an object -- such as a tall planet with leaves and branches and bark -- and assigns a group of letters to that object -- such as TREE. The classic example is colors: the color you think of as "red" is only red insofar as you assign that word to that color. If you raised a child without external influence to assign the word "blue" to the color classically thought of as "red," then when I asked that child to think of the color blue, they would think of the same hue that you would think of if I asked you to think of the color red.

The concept of time is similar; it takes a phenomenon -- like 9-billion vibrations of a Caesium atom -- and assigns a word to that phenomenon -- like SECOND. A second does exist as an idea in much the same way, coincidentally, that gods exist purely as ideas despite the fact that they do not exist in reality. If we had assigned the word "second" to, say, 7-billion vibrations of a Xenon atom, then our concept of time would be completely different despite still being based on a completely natural phenomenon.

Try this; it'll take a while, but it'll probably be worth it. Probably.

Set up a tank of water in your backyard a few feet off the ground, and set a valve that drips water slowly by consistently. At sunrise, place an empty bucket under the drip and let it collect water until sunset; at sunset, switch out the bucket with another empty one and allow that one to fill until sunrise. Measure the volume of water in each bucket and repeat this process for one calendar year. I told you it would take a while.

You'll notice a few things:

1) Adding together the volumes of any two consecutive "sunrise-to-sunset" and "sunset-to-sunrise" buckets (in that order) will give roughly the same number; this establishes the natural phenomenon of the "day."
2) Chart the volumes of just the "sunrise-to-sunset" buckets, or just the "sunset-to-sunrise" buckets; you will find a broad sine curve. The highest point on the curve -- the point at which the light part of the day is the longest (since "more water" = "more light") -- is the summer solstice; the lowest point on the curve -- the point at which the dark part of the day is the longest -- is the winter solstice.
3) The two points on the curve that represent the two days with equal volumes of light and dark are the two equinox days; the one after the summer solstice is the autumnal equinox, while the one after the winter solstice is the vernal equinox.
4) Take the number you acquired from 1) -- the length, or "volume," of one day -- and divide that number by 24; you just invented the hour. Divide that number by 60; you just invented the minute. Divide that number by 60; you just...well, you get the idea.

If you begin a new curve on the summer solstice -- which you've identified simply by marking the period of light with the largest volume of water -- and chart the curve until the next summer solstice, you just invented a solar year that corresponds with nothing more than the rising and setting of the sun. To invent months, simply track the appearance of the moon; full moon to full moon gives you a lunar month.

Now cross-reference your solar year with your lunar months, and you've invented a calendar with nothing more than a couple buckets of water and drawings of the moon. Congrats! (Well, technically I invented it, but I'll let you tell the hot chicks at the party that you did if it'll help you get some play :D)

Awsome experiment :)

And thanks for letting us tell people it is our own idea to achieve "personal gain." That's what I love about real science. The willingness-- and eagerness-- to share data :D

Time-agnostic? Blasphomy! I actually believe that time exists, you silly Kantian.

You never answered my question on whether you think that space exists. You could construct an argument similar to your bouncing ball/kingfisher in flight but for space. The great thing is, this was done already 2500 years ago! One of Zeno's paradox's was about how you can never reach a destination because before you go the complete distance, you need to go half the distance, and before that half that, etc., etc. So space must be an illusion, as if it existed you would never actually be able to get anywhere.

How do you answer this? Zeno's thought experiment seems as valid as Barbour's, so is all of time and space an illusion (and since it's actually space-time, it would seem if one were illusory the other, by definition, would be as well)?

Zeno's paradox resolved here. http://www.mathacademy.com/pr/prime/articles/zeno_tort/

Basically, Zeno was mistaken about some of the mathematical implications of infinite series. Not too suprising, considering tthe Greeks were having to invent a lot of their maths as the problems came up.

Yes, I'm familiar with various solutions to Zeno's paradox's, but this solution will not help Ten. Here's a quote from the link:

Now the resolution to Zeno's Paradox is easy. Obviously, it will take me some fixed time to cross half the distance to the other side of the room, say 2 seconds. How long will it take to cross half the remaining distance? Half as long – only 1 second. Covering half of the remaining distance (an eighth of the total) will take only half a second. And so one. And once I have covered all the infinitely many sub-distances and added up all the time it took to traverse them? Only 4 seconds, and here I am, on the other side of the room after all.

The solution appeals to the existence of Time to banish the paradox, and Time is something that Ten is claiming is illusory. You're not off the hook Ten. Give me a solution to Zeno that doesn't appeal to the exstence of time.

True, but the motion is not tangible, therefore it cannot store memory. Time is so intertwined in our existence that it's hard to give it up. The motion is nothing more than the realization of the next consecutive best-matching probability of the considered shape space, and as the ball's motion through time can be derived from Newton's formulae, the balls motion can also be derived using Schrodinger's tiime-independent wavefunction... not the best tool in the box, but no different than using Newtonian mechanics for gross calculations, and relativity theory for the granularity.

Time can still be considered a dimension in the timeless theories; it's just the way we string the moments together that make the difference. This, to me anyway, is as crucial to our understanding of reality as relativity.

As for empirical observations and testing, or even thought experiments, go back to the "space loaf" visualization, where the length of the loaf represents time, and each 'slice' is a moment in time. In this analogy, relative motion between two observers delineates the angle of the slice (greater motion, the greater the angle from perpendicular; at rest would be a normal slice).

It's easy to comprehend this example showing time as a dimension, but now, consider what links each slice together. If there's a worldline running through the loaf from past to future, and each moment is a point on this line, what links the points? What is the physical mechanism that makes time flow?

I posit that it is nothing more than, as mentioned in my reply to Choobus, the next best-matching configuration of our shape space.

Okay, maybe you're a time-theist. :D

Space exists as a configuration of the matter/energy in our universe. In this argument, the ball's atoms are being reconfigured each moment. The atoms are real, the reconfiguration is real, and the ball's position is predicted by the ball's previous position through best-matching.

Zeno's paradox ignores quantization. My example requires it.

Show me an example of Zeno's paradox where his logic holds when the time duration being examined is Planck time. Zeno's paradox relies on the seemingly infiniteness of reduced space, and is therefore invalid at Planck scales. Hell, Democritus coulda taught him that.

Problems I have with this:
1- You're taking the stance of having access to an Archimedean point (an objective point of reference/observation) to be able to construct your "time-loafs" or "snapshots/moments of matter/energy configurations". There is no such point one has access to in order to construct (even conceptually) such a configuration of the universe.
2- This theory has ontological excess. If there is no time, only different configurations that are "linked" somehow through "best-matching", all of existence, past-present-future, has equal ontological status. If this is true, then "Where is Sept. 26th, 1977 right now?" is a legitimate question with an answer that is truth-functional. Each "moment" in this configuration has a problem of location that proponents of Barbour's (and others) theories need to deal with. Under a "Timely" (:P) universe, this problem can be resolved by appealing to a "when", relegating "Sept. 26th, 1977" "location" to the "past" (don't you love "scare" quotes?).
3- It is unclear how one particular "moment of configuration" follows from another particular MoC. The snapshots of the ball/bird in motion can be arranged into a history through "best-matching", but this assumes that all of the snapshots all-ready existing for them to be ordered (which leads to the ontological excess in 2). This also assumes that order only exists as "mental phenomena", meaning the construction of a history of the distant past applies only to the phenomena of a mental construction of the history, not to the universe itself (you have moved reference from "things actually in the universe" to "propositions constructed about the universe"). (Also, if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around, does it make a sound?)
4- I don't have time to address the points on Zeno and the Planck scale at the moment, I'll return to this later today or this evening.

Now, isn't this more fun than running around in circles with Carico? :D

going back to time travel, if it were possible has anyone actually thought that they would have to travel back to the place in SPACE that actual event happened, space is rapidly expanding and i assume we are moving with it, surly this is a logical thing to think, Not to mention we are orbiting the sun at a great rate of Knotts!
The time its taken to write this, i am probably thousands of miles away from when i first started writing! thus rendering time travel imposible.

I once wrote on a short story about time travel in which actual time travel was only possible after a huge transmitter beacon the size of the Washington Monument was built in Arizona. Time travelers could only travel to a point along the timeline at which the beacon was operational, because otherwise they would reappear in the same point in space, which would not, of course, be anywhere close to the surface of the Earth. The beacon allowed the time machine to locate the Earth and reposition the time machine before it re-entered the timeline.

The story ended with a hapless time traveler trying to go too far into the future in an effort to learn how humanity goes extinct. The time traveler overshoots and winds up at a point in the timeline after which the beacon had failed. He ends up floating through the darkness of space because he can't power his time machine enough to jump back.

how about the fact that space is not a contiuum and therefore cannot be infinitely divided. As soon as you have a minimum distance the paradox goes away.

So Anthony, what i understand is, if there was a theoretical GPS system for the universe which recorded time (as we know it) and events, then we could theoretically send our selves back to that point? presuming of course the technology will ever exist!

Sorry I didn't finish addressing this last night, I had a friend drop by and as I'm a good host, we smokumed um peace pipe through the night. :P

On Zeno, I think we can leave this to the side. I agree that understanding the universe as having a minimum distance (The Planck length) puts Zeno to rest.

I still have other problems with Barbour's theory of timelessness (and such theories in general). We actually experience time passing; if this is an illusion, what is causing us to have the illusion? Also, if the "constructed histories" are only mental phenomena, and no such "temporal history" exists in the universe, this seems like putting the cart before the horse. What we are is our consciousness, mind or whatever, that is the result of our brain functioning through time. If time is a construct of our minds, how does the process of mind come about in the first place?

Only in fiction. Those moments of past-time (or, more correctly, those events which we only remember in the past tense) no longer exist in anyway that would make traveling to them possible. They only exist insofar as you or I can remember them.

If you somehow figured out a way to translate human neural activity into a physical representation of a past event, then maybe you'd be onto something. But you'd still be looking at a memory of the event and not the event itself; the memory would almost certainly be different than the actual event in at least minor ways, and it would still exist only in the "present" as a physical reconstruction of a memory of a past event.

The answer to your first question is most likely tied deeply with consciousness. I have to drop it at that point, for lack of better education. ;)

For the second, don't forget that the historical past is not only in our minds. It is also in the configuration of the shape space. Think of the air molecules displaced by the beating of the kingfisher's wings or the bouncing ball. They are recorders of history as well. Anything that can cause decoherence records history and adds information.

Our past is not a string of events. It is cumulative based on past histories. We accumulate the past - in our minds, in the configuration of reality around us.

Bump. Lots of points I want to address, but I don't have the time right now. Don't let me brush this aside, Rhino. If I don't address it by tomorrow, bump it again.

And where do you stand on the matter of entropy, oh timeless one?

In what way? In regards to the amount of energy unavailable for work in a closed system; or in regards to the increase in disorganization in the universe (which, I realize, are two sides of that thermodynamic coin)?

Or are you addressing this to Ten?

It fits quite nicely into my theory. Why wouldn't it? Attaining equilibrium isn't time-dependent. No different than consecutive snapshots linked through probability wavefunctions.

Maybe you could tell me specifically why you think entropy defines time, positronium boy.

You're more welcome to jump in, AJ. Are you from the timeless camp, too?

I'm not saying I advocate it, I'm just curious how the so-called "arrow of time" [increasing entropy] fits into your gay theory.......:lol:

Yessum.

Regarding entropy as the tendency toward disorder, then entropy has nothing to do with time. The notion of disorder exists only when a conscious mind exists to view the condition; a system is only ordered when a conscious mind identifies patterns in it, and is disordered when a conscious mind cannot identify patterns.

In the example below:

A B

X X X X X XX X X X
X X X X X X XX X X
X X X X X X X XXX
X X X X X XX XX X
X X X X X X XX XX


We say that condition A is "ordered" because we identify a pattern, and we say that condition B is "disordered" because it contains no readily discernable pattern. But without a conscious mind to identify any perceived patterns, conditions A and B are qualitatively identical; both contain 25 identical particles within the same given space. The arrangement of those particles is only ordered/disordered when an external viewer assigns those labels.

Easy. Take a time-independent Schrodinger wavefunction. Solve it. Note the highest probability amplitude. Take another one. Solve it. Repeat.

The peak amplitudes, when strung together will resemble the Arrow of Time. The arrow points right at your anus. That's why it's a gay theory, Mr. "I Love To Shoot Relativistic Particles At Gold Foil In My Garage" :D

We need not identify any pattern. From wiki, " Entropy is "a quantitative measure of the amount of thermal energy not available to do work" within a closed thermodynamic system." In the case of your diagram, the energy could be quantified in terms of kinetic energy (temperature). Bringing a conscious mind into the equation is a matter for philosophy, not physics, and you're confused on the latter.

More problems with Timelessness:

If it is only the human mind that is "recognizing patterns" of the order/disorder of entropy, or the "string of peak amplitudes", then entropy is a phenomena of the human mind (as well as all of physics, as the laws of physics would become descriptions of relations between configurations of space-shape and not descriptions of processes). The math is ambivalent to the direction of the Arrow of Time (the symmetry of physical laws in regard to the direction of time), so the order of the configurations can justifiably be A-B-C (when laid out on a temporal line), or C-B-A. So the question becomes "Why do we only experience time in one direction if the order of configurations is valid in both directions?"

Second (or what would this be, 6th?), let's assume something like string theory is correct. If the particles of the universe are simply vibration patterns of strings, how does a collection of configurations of the sting-positions become an "electron" or "Gary Heart"? It seems like string-theory would necessitate the existence of time, as objects are emergent from processes (though I readily admit that I'm over my head insofar as physics goes on this point), and without time, there are no processes.

The time-loaf analogy is simply convenience for visualizing spacetime. Like many scientific analogues, its usefulness breaks down beyond the original explanatory intent. The first paragraph of any description of the time-loaf (hmm... time-loaf, time-cube... ;)) usually states that the observer is in an unobtainable position of being outside the loaf.

September 26th, 1977 exists in the accumulated memories of human minds and anywhere else information is stored. If, for example, a sausage entered a black hole on this date, the black hole's surface includes information on that sausage.

There is no past, just an accumulation of memories of previous configurations.

I have a memory of that date. You do too, apparently. Does that require that there is a manifest past spacetime out there? Can't the past just be the traces left on the present?

No, it doesn't require pre-existing configurations. Take a box. Fill it with a gas. Take a picture of it (yes, we're assuming the gas flouresces or is visible in some way). You've captured a configuration. Now, take another picture. You've captured another configuration. With three of these points, we can calculate the probability of the arrangement of the next configuration. Because of quantum principles, we won't be a hundred percent sure. But that's what this is all about. The next configuration is the most likely configuration. If there is randomness built in, such as a measurement of spins states between configurations, it still does not change the probability outcome of the next configuration. It's gonna be a box. Full of gas, with the molecules in the most likey configuration based on their previous ones. And there are a few probability amplitudes which could be valid realizations of the next configuration. Which one gets realized after collapse? Hey, I'm not a magician. Ask Feynman. ;)

Again, I don't think you're fully grasping my points. Anything that interacts leaves a memory. If I shoot a photon at a calcite crystal, where do those two resulting photons come from? The memory of the original photon is stored in the energy state of the crystal. If the kingfisher flaps his wings, the memory is in the heat of the air molecules and their changes in momentum and position. It does not require a recording device to ascertain that order exists, or a storage mechanism such as neurons for the history to exist. Everything is a recorder. The keys on my keyboard record the relative frequencies of the letters I type. The "A" is much shinier than the "Z". I could provide a thousand examples of the past being recorded in the configuration of objects.

Depends. If Carico was hot, naked, and willing, it might be more fun to chase her around in circles. ;)

Once you grasp that anything stores "memories" of the past, you'll see that this is not limited to a human phenomena.

The math is more than ambivalent. Time is expressly bi-directional, just like space coordinates. The timelessness theory actually was germinated by thoughts about the arrow of time. Why won't it run backwards? According to T theory (my name... I just coined it! :lol:) there is a much higher probability that the next event in a measured configuration will always follow a specific direction. Entropy describes it. Why would there be a higher probability for our gas molecules to acquire a more ordered state?

Just call it n+1. Okay, let's assume the Princeton String Quartet's on the right track. Point particles really don't exist. When poked at Planck scales, they are actually vibrating strings of various sorts and configurations. Different harmonics represent different fundamentals.

Again, why would this negate timelessness? The universe is a configuration. If at t+300ms, electrons formed out of the primordial plasma, it is becuase that was the most probable event to occur in the consecutive observation of the shape space we call the universe. If the most probable next configuration of Mr. and Mrs. "Heart" doing the nasty was germination of Mrs. Heart's egg by Mr. Heart's sperm, then that would explain where Gary came from.

Objects are emergent from processes... hmm... if the Big Bang was a process, how does this refute T theory?

A process assumes the passing of time (an event happening through time), so it refutes T-theory in that T-theory lacks time.

OK, let's consider a thought experiment. For simplicity, consider a bouncing ball and the room the ball is in. In a timeless universe, you have a series of configurations of space-shapes of the bouncing ball, though not all of them (as you shouldn't need every single configuration to construct a "time-series"). Say these configurations are A, B, C, D, E, and F. If we "watched" the ball bounce, we would see the configurations lay out as:

Down UP
A
F
B E

C D

(With the series starting at A, the ball dropping to C, rebounding up at D, and continuing up through E and F). Take C to be the "moment" immediately prior to hitting the floor, and D the "moment" immediately after hitting the floor. These shapes (as well as B and E) should be identical (the configuration of shape-space should be exactly the same). So in arranging the configurations, it seems you would run into the problem of A-B-C-D-E-F being identical to A-E-D-C-B-F. You (and possibly Barbour) claim that problems such as this would not arise as everything stores "memories" of the past. I can only assume that for these memories you are appealing to the laws of physics. The problem with this is that the laws of physics can only be applied after the configuration series is established. The Laws Physics in a timeless universe are descriptions of the relations between configurations of space-shapes. To appeal to the laws of physics to establish the order, you are assuming that the laws of physics are a priori to the laws actually taking effect (the laws of physics exist independently to them being applied to anything, and we can know them prior to knowing the configuration series). This would make the actual laws of physics a necessary component of the universe (it would be logically impossible for the laws of physics to be any different otherwise there would be no way to order a configuration series). This is not a new theory; this is Kant with some modern language. Kant appealed to the existence of God for the existence of order/laws in the universe; I fail to see what you and Barbour can appeal to for the existence of these a priori laws that allow us to generate a series of configurations.

Also, how does a particular configuration take into account Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle? If you have a configuration of shape space, you know the locations of everything in that configuration, so you know nothing about its velocity (and hence you cannot appeal to motion across configurations as there is no possible way to have information about motion prior to examining the relations between particular shape-spaces).

*Pulls off glove, smacks Ten across the face, calmly puts glove back on*

I demand satisfaction!

Hang on there, Rhino.... I am literally foaming at the mouth right now. Do not want to think hard.

I picked a bad week to quit sniffing glue... or was that smoking? I'll have to watch Airplane again.

Any clinicians out there explain to me why the elimination of nicotine from my body MAKES ME SO FUCKING ANGRY KILL KILL KILL STAY THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY!!!!

Ah, I feel better now. For about ten more minutes.

Rhino wrote, "A process assumes the passing of time (an event happening through time), so it refutes T-theory in that T-theory lacks time."

T-theory is to time as relativity is to Newtonian mechanics. One does not negate the other, but provides deeper explanations than the 'classical' forumations.

Yes, I'm working on those deeper explanations, so don't fucking bother to ask right now.

And a process is not necessarily time-dependent. Did you lose your Quantum Mechanics decoder ring?

Oh, and thanks for bumping this thread. I was meaning to look it up and respond.

Right now there's a nug with my name on it. It's calling me...

"Tennnspppaaace... smookke meeeeeee"

Good thing I only gave up nicotine.

Hang in there, Tenspace. The first five years ar the toughest.

Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening simultaneously. ]Author unknown]

"There is no past, just an accumulation of memories of previous configurations."

what is meant by the word "previous" here?

Good luck quitting smoking Ten (at least the nicotine type). I've tried and failed a few times. Damn you nicotine!

As for quantum processes being time-dependant, I'd say they're time-dependant only insofar as they necessarily exist in (or through) time (though I think the concept of "time-direction" to be flawed; I think of it more as "temporal expansion", in the same way space expands "out" (but not really out, as what would it expand out to)).

Ignore any of my objections Ten, and answer this: Why do you think a timeless universe is a better description than a "timely" universe? What benefits do you think this theory has?

Time is built into quantum mechanics at a fundamental level. Heisenbergs uncertainy principle, a cornerston of QM can be formulated in a number of ways, each involving a pair of operators which do not commute (when acting on a weavefunction, obviously). The most well known examples are momentum and position and energy and time. The details of non-commuting operators is a bit involved (it basically means that the order you use them in matters). That means that energy and time have the same uncertainty as position and momentum: i.e., knowledge of one can only be gained at the cost of the other (sort of). An example of this in use is the stability of nuclei or atoms. If you excite an atom or a nucleus it will eventually decay back down to it's ground state (unless you excite it to a state that needs to dump some momentum or something, in which case it will stay there for along time (in nuclear physics these are called isomeric states). The point is, in most cases the lifetime of the excited state depends on the energy width. The decay of the excited state will release a photon that has a linewidth based on the energy width of the excited state from which it came. The linewidth of the photon and the lifetime of the excited state obey the energy-time formulation of the uncertainty principle. This is very important in laser physics. So, I don't see how this fits in with a timeless universe unless you also get rid of space as well.

Gee, thanks. I'll remember that.

Thanks for identifying the chink in my theory. First, there is no real understanding of the reason we humans experience time in a unidirectional linear manner; some even say that consciousness is the realization of each moment in spacetime.

Multiple multidimensional configurations represented by a mechanism which gives the appearance of consecutive moments to our 3+1 reality. That is the best description I can offer right now.

And Choob, I understand what you're saying in the other post regarding non-commutation. I shall post at length on this subject in the near future. I'm still slogging through maths I haven't seen in years.

Barbour's example uses the time-independent Schrodinger equation to represent each 'Now' moment.

Rhino said, "Ignore any of my objections Ten, and answer this: Why do you think a timeless universe is a better description than a "timely" universe? What benefits do you think this theory has?"

Because it gives us something to investigate. Time is always taken for granted, accepted and used but never prodded or poked. The few times we do poke at it, we find it's just as malleable as matter.

And it's not really "timeless universe" vs timely - it is quite possible that our "timely universe" is part of a grander timeless existence.

Weak. Hella weak. I'm not attacking you for investigating theories of a timeless universe, I'm attacking you for defending a view of a timeless universe. :D

I agree that Time is something we need to investigate, and something we still know little about. I just think the "timeless" route is barking up the wrong tree. It doesn't seem to provide a "better" explanation/description of the universe than a "timely" one.

If our universe exists as part of a greater "multi-verse" where time, and the laws of physics, don't apply, there's nothing you can say about it that would be true. You run into the same problem as Deists, where you claim something exists "out-there", but you can't say anything true about it (as any such propositions would fall outside of the scope of reference and truth-functionality).

Though this thread is dead, I thought I'd post that Scientific American is currently running a special issue on time. I picked it up this weekend, and it looks pretty good (haven't had time to sit down and read through it yet).

Isn't it about time?

But.. first, I didn't say the laws of physics would not apply - those are your words. Second, I am not just assuming something is "out there" in the sense of something immeasurable and untestable like a god. I stand firm in my belief that these timeless scenarios will allow objective testing, and may even provide a mechanism for realizing facts about those other universes.

I suppose in your timeless universe the "near future" doesn't mean anything!

Jeez, I just got my computer back up and running... and yes, near future does mean something to me, but it is relative, just like my morality.

Let's start off with this: can you tell me how the time-independent Schrodinger wavefunction equation differs from the time-dependent function, specifically with regard to the framing of complex Hilbert space? If each unit vector describes a state of the system being analyzed, and represented by a Hamiltonian, then can we not consider subsequent Hamiltonian states as strung together probability densities linked in spacetime through eigenstate potentials?

just got your computer up and running indeed. We have all seen the power of electronic chuck norris!

I have to think about your question for a while but on first reading it seems to contain unnecessary buzzwords and so I wonder if you might frame it in a more palatable form....

Sounds like Ten, Cal and Phil had a three-way cranial collision while consuming some of Phil's finest! :D

Yup........but while comsuming it, it is essential to puff on a finely ground anadenanthera leaves using an alkaline additive made out of the shells of snails. Suddenly Ten, Phil and yours truly will see the Lord and Savior ( I'll see Iulius, while Ten and Phil will see a naked bleeding Christ) approaching us, surrounded by angels and the "saints that appeared unto many" according to the author of the "night of the ancient living Dead", Matthew. " Can I join you dudes?"- he'll ask-...while Ten will say......hmmmm...good stuff Cal...pass the snails and the consecrated Grolsch, so Satan would join us..........:lol:

I dunno, Cal. If we offered Jeebus a toke, He might say something like, 'No way man. My father will kill me -- again.' =|

P.S. I can perform the miracle of turning Grolsch into urine.

:lol:...hmm..I've dome the same miracle with Lowenbrau while walking over the tremulous waves of lake Oneida that had succumbed to -10 C weather during my education at Cornell 45 years ago.........:) AHHH..it is great to be a creator....

Well, Chuck's motherboard went tits up two weeks after I finished building him. I have received the replacement (props to zipzoomfly.com), and he is now better than ever. :)

Of course it contains many unnecessary buzzwords. That was my intent. I'm surprised you didn't make fun of me.... which means you're still open to serious consideration of a timeless theory.

Let me reprhase it:

Einstein faced the same problem with mass - Newton did a damn fine job, and no one really cared anymore about the fundamentals, except for a few anomalies. But Albert knew that if he could envision a different way of looking at matter and energy, he could reformulate the fundamental laws in a self-realizing manner - he gave physics the "why", and that meant gifting spacetime with plasticity.

I personally think we're in the same era, but with regard to time, not space. I'm definitely not the Einstein, but someone out there is, someone willing to think of time in a non-linear manner, to attempt to lay an explanatory foundation underneath the functional utility that is time when considered in the realm of the Standard Model.

With that said, let me ask my question again:

can you tell me how the time-independent Schrodinger wavefunction equation differs from the time-dependent function

Okay, simple enough so far...

specifically with regard to the framing of complex Hilbert space

Our playing field is a infinite representation of Euclidian space

If each unit vector describes a state of the system being analyzed, and represented by a Hamiltonian

Every moment of time, when described to the benefit of quantum physics, is realized using vectors within said Hilbert space, right? And when the a system's state measured, the whole system's state is represented by a Hamiltonian... am I still on track?

then can we not consider subsequent Hamiltonian states as strung together probability densities linked in spacetime through eigenstate potentials?

Multiple configurations of the system's space, (set aside the time evolution of the Hamiltonians for a moment) - is there logic in looking at time-independent Schrodinger equations as a valid measure of a snapshot of reality? I find the requirement of an time evolution as an rvalue in the Hamiltonian to be my sticking point in all this.

Is it any clearer? I'm sorry if I said eigenstate.. I didn't mean to pull all my fancy QM words out of the bag. I don't know how that one got there. :)

Damn... after that, I think I shall repair to the veranda, where there is a lovely "MINT JULEP" (wink wink) awaiting me.

Now, Rhinoq, I feel it is time you stepped back into the fray; apparently, I have reached some further conclusions in my squishy lobes and I would like to tackle your refutations once again. With the further consideration of my additional statements, wherefore art thou, oh Timely One?

Only if I was one of the Levis throwing rocks at that false prophet! :lol:

Fair enough. however, I think it's really really difficult to imagine where the next paradigm shift is going to come from (brother, can you spare a cultural revolution?). I can see the logic in expecting it to come from time, but the fact is, it's very tricky indeed because this shit tends to grab you by surprise (although in retrospect it's always soooo obvious...). Also, our current concepts are simply dripping with built in temporal assumptions, which makes it all the more difficult to elucidate and possible changes in the way we think, let alone change the way we think in the first place. (Theists are off the hook, because thinking is frowned upon in their circles).

Err, it's pretty much all to do with the time dependance.

However, let me add that the schrodinger wave equation (SWE) does not lend itself to a relativistic formulation precisely because of the time dependance. When Dirac re-wrote it to incorporate the relativistic energy formulation of Einstein (i.e., E^2 = M^2C^4+P^2c^2, which reduces to E= mc^2 when momentum, p = 0 (i.e., there is no kinetic energy) he had a problem with time and had to make a significant change. As I'm sure you recall, the time dependant SWE has a second order differential for the spatial component of the wavefuntion (hence the "del" squared), but only a first order component for the temporal part. This is obviously going to be problematic when you try to use the Enistein formulation in which space and time are essentially the same thing. Thus, Dirac was forced to introduce time and space in a similar way, which meant making up the Dirca matrices. Notice the the dirac matirces do not commute. thus, I think if you want to include relativity in your timeless world view you need to talk about the "Dirac wavefunctions" not the Schrodinger ones. Of course you'll never see "Dirac wavefunctions" in the literature because they are the same wavefunctions, it's just that the SWE is quite limited in scope.

What of it? I see this as a smokescreen.

The representation you use to describe the state vectors doesn't actually have to be a Hilbert space, it just turns out that that is a pretty good description. It has lots of handy properties (like easy ways to define orthoganality), but at it's core it's not fundamentally different from good old Euclidean space (with or without the parallal postulate). Quantum gravity theories are always trying to come up with a different topographical systems, but they seem to be much of a muchness as far as I can tell (which, I confess, is not that far).

you may be on track, but I think you might also be on crack [by the way, I have it on good authority that "crack is whack"] as I have no clue what you mean by this. I thought we were not allowed to talk about moments of time...... If you are comparing "successive" hamiltonians to a time series of states defined by a sequence of hamiltonians I would then ask what you meantr by successive, series and sequence.

I really don't think there is much validity because the SWE is not properly set up to describe time when relativistic considerations come into play.

It's all good dude. I won't ask you if you do anal because
a) I know you have an exit only policy &
b) you raise some good points.

I think the main thing I would say about this is that I actually don't disagree that time might be something quite different from our present notions, but I have a feeling that it won't be all that different. Einstein may have changed our understanding of mass-energy, but these kinds of changes usually incorporate our previous conceptions quite well. Also, the SWE is not the best platform to attack these issues. If you can ask the same questions using the Dirac equation then theremight be someting to it, but you can't because the Dirac matrices do not commute, and therefore there is not (and cannot be) a time independant Dirac equation. The conclusion I draw is that you cannot really use QM to shoo away time when the only QM theories that incorporate relativity in a useful (that is, proven) manner don't support your argument.

innit.

I just got slammed with one hell of a chest cold, and I'm coughing so much I can barely read right now. I have a feeling I'll be taking a sick day tomorrow, so if I'm not too doped up on cold medication, I'll try to take a stab at your new posts tomorrow.

Rest up... it's been going around here, too. At least you don't smoke anymore, right?

Choobus, thanks for the thoughtful reply. I shall digest this, and take a closer look at Dirac's work.

Syracuse U. here, similar time frame, and I can see Oneida lake from my front window. -10 C (30.9 F), must have been late June. -10 F would be typical for mid-March. Hail Cal.

If you don't mind Ten, I'll leave the musings of theoretical physics to you and Choob, and I'll stick with waxing the metaphysical (as that is what I'm trained in).

A few questions for you Ten.

1- From Einstein's theories, we can view time and space as being two sides of the same coin, hence space-time. If the universe is truly timeless, what do you think this means for space? Wouldn't spatial extension disappear along with temporal extension?

2- We experience the passage of time. If this is merely an illusion, what is it that is causing us to believe that time exists? What we essentially are (consciousness emerging from the functioning of our brains through time) is time-dependant; I fail to see how personal identity (or any type of consciousness) can be maintained in a timeless universe.

3- The laws of physics in a "timely" universe are descriptions of events. In a timeless universe the laws of physics would become descriptions between arrangements of shape-space (as there would be no processes to describe, only various shape-spaces that have relations to each other). Wouldn't this needlessly complicate what physics essentially is?

4- Lastly, I'd like to know why a timeless universe is more attractive to you than a timely one. What do you think timelessness explains better over a timely one?

WOW...you live there?...Awesome...can you imagine a crazy Colombian infected with Christ-psychosis who barely spoke English but knew 6 other languages, drinking beer with crazy gringos while atending Cornell during the 60's...repeating the KEY English sentence he used to pretend he knew what the subject matter was?..The sentence was: ' Are you kidding me?". It fitted any occasion perfectly...till I used the slight variation "Are you shiting me?" on my English teacher wife during a foreign student party....AHHH...but since I laught at my own mistakes, it was the best way to learn this crazy language...the most embarrasing moment for me was when I told another teacher while talking about Germany: "....my grandfather on my mother side was a german 'cunt" instead of Count....no wonder my friends kept laughing at me....:lol:

That reminds me of a phil proff I know from S. Korea. For the first couple years in the States whenever he said Kant it came out as "cunt".

:lol::lol::lol:

No, because both axes are spatial dimensions. I question why we blindly accept our flow through one direction, time at C, knowing that in the complementary direction (space) we move at essentially 0. As we increase speed through space, we must decrease speed through time - conservation of a finite sum. That is why I propose that it would more appropriately be called "spacespace", not spacetime. Both dimensions are reversable (except the Arrow, which is another discussion) and interchangeable. The "time" functions need to be ferreted out for what they are, which will be a whole lot more than just a flow through 3d space.

Consciousness, I agree is the Big One here. We perceive a light wave of 640nm as Red, and we perceive this !T direction as time. Why? That's the direction I take in my atheist home-schooling. Right now, it's evolutionary biology that owns me. When I finish with Dawkins (and re-read Ramachandran), then I will start on Dirac, as Choob suggested.

Our dependence on time is no different than our dependence on gravity, yet we got along just fine between Newton & Einstein. Fundamentally, we should not look at time as relative rivers through space. This is the crux of the biscuit. Our perception doesn't change, but our foundational theoretical models are incomplete with regard to time. I think that if the theorists were motivated to poke it with a stick(stick metaphor (c) Lily 2006) we would possibly see the next great technological revolution on the horizon. As it stands, we're two-thirds of our way through the current one.


Like Einstein complicated Newtonian physics? Newton thought we were measuring two variables in a trajectory, one through time and one through space. Einstein said, "Not really" - we are instead measuring the curvature of a 4-dimensional space called spacetime. I'm saying that the spacetime of Einstein is reallly spacespace and our experience of time is a separate unexplored mechanism.

You might as well ask a sailor to explain why he's attracted to the sea. I'm drawn to discovery, adventure, and knowledge. This subject fills all three vessels.

Forgive my ignorance, but what is the difference?

Bad analogy. Newton-to-Einstein was a re-description of what gravity was and how it worked (a new solution to the ol' spinnin' bucket in an empty universe problem), not the removal of gravity entirely (which I assume is the point of a timeless universe). Even if you can give a complete description of the universe with "timeless" physics (which, while holding to ontological relativity, is something I must admit is possible), you still need to explain what it is we actually experience as "time". I know Barbour didn't present such an explanation, I'm wondering if in your research you've come across an explanation.
I'm having problems putting this point across, and that is my fault. What I'm concerned with is that physics would work entirely different in a timeless universe. Physics would be based wholly on relations, instead of being descriptions of events/processes. I have a feeling this would cause more problems than it could possibly solve (though I'm not sure).

I'm still uncertain what it is that a timeless universe would give us over a timely one. I don't know what solutions we would gain by throwing time out the window (insert bad joke here).

Edit: I forgot to ask you Ten; Does the "future" exist in your timeless universe? I know in philosophy of time, Timeless theories are attractive because they solve "being-becoming" problems (which I don't buy), as well as rapid-property transfer problems (gaining the property of being present and then immediately losing that property to gain one of becoming past, etc., something else I don't buy), by appealing to the ontological equality of past-present-future. Long edit short: does your theory endorse a "block-eternal" universe, where all space-shapes, past, present and future, have equal existence?

Rhino, I am essentially in agreement with you. However, I don't think it is encumbent on a theory that deals with cosmology and particle physics to explain human perception. At least, not until we have a better concept of what consciousness is.

I disagree about the analogy. We didn't know what gravity was in Newton's time. He derived laws of gravitation that were nonlocal. Can we not be in the same scenario with regard to time? It is not analogous with the removal of gravity. It is a modification on existing physical laws, just like relativity. Damn, I'm gonna have to solve this, aren't I. ;) Choobus, can I borrow your copy of Perturbation Theory and Non-Linearity for Dummies? ;)

It all comes down to the granularity, just like gravity. Newtonian laws were fine at gross scales. Inconsistencies were measured at finer scales, and that planted the seed for the next wave of understanding.

Time, as we know it would not cease to exist by the discovery of a fundamental set of theories to describe time in finer detail, but you know that. ;) I see the biggest impact in quantum physics and the realization of a fundamental understanding time's arrow, especially with regard to consciousness. It's not like I can predict whether a new set of equations will solve a problem like Mercury's perihelion, but as I read more about spintronics and quantum computing, I get the feeling that time can be manipulated separate from space, in the sense of calulable information sets. As you can probably tell, that's a weak answer, but then again, I'm not classically trained to present theoretical physical arguments.

The future exists as potential configurations of space. The past exists as realized configurations of space. The present is the current configuration, and they are causally linked through probability functions. Past and present don't exist in a physical plane as they do with existing theories. There is only one shape space called the present. Past and future shape spaces are conceptual representations of a configuration.

Out of time, gotta beat the tourist traffic to the bay bridge so it don't take an hour to get home.

Heh- reminds me of one of my physics profs, who was hard-of-hearing. That was a great class, he was not a native english speaker (from China) and being hard of hearing, he never did pick up the pronunciation. It took awhile for most kids to catch on to what he really was talking about in a topology lecture (a rubber sheet stretching, in this case), as it came out "Robber Shit".