I did not claim space does not exist
Space can be seen to be defined as a line (distance) between two objects, ie Earth - Moon, surrounded by a non defined area (region)
Einstein view of time
- Thread starter Dinosaur
- Start date
Space can be seen to be defined as a line (distance) between two objects, ie Earth - Moon, surrounded by a non defined area (region)
Time can be seen to be defined as the period (seconds) it takes 2 objects, ie Earth-Moon, to complete 1 orbit.
Time is a dimension and it exists, to say it doesn't exist is silly. It is just as real as space, but whatever, you want to make it a semantic and/or philosophical argument. So that means you can believe whatever you want. I know for a fact that you will continue to use time even though you profess that it does not exist.
We can talk again a little later in time...
Mike_Fontenot
Registered Senior Member
I'm not sure I can do it justice, but I'll try. His new theory is that, similarly to the way it is now believed that new space is constantly being created (causing the observed expansion of the universe, and the relative speeds greater than the speed of light), that TIME is also being newly created, and that newly created time is what produces the "now". He says that his theory is in principle testable, and might actually BE tested in the not too distant future. His refutation of the increasing entropy argument for causing the progression of time from past to present is essentially that LIFE works by DECREASING entropy (which Schrodinger pointed out long ago). He argues that the increasing entropy that MUST happen overall is actually harmless, because it basically gets dumped into vast empty space via infrared radiation, without negative consequences for life. (Hopefully I haven't mangled his words too badly).
One of the things that make his book so interesting and unusual is that his arguments require bringing together lots of different areas of physics into one book. And he does that while not requiring any advance knowledge of physics by the reader. Very well done, I think.
I think the biggest glaring error in that statement is, 'life decreases entropy', which is not true. Unless you mean locally, which is trivially true of thousands of processes.
Last edited:
Then you just shot yourself in the foot!I did not claim space does not exist
Space can be seen to be defined as a line (distance) between two objects, ie Earth - Moon, surrounded by a non defined area (region)
For, suppose a rocket launched from Earth to Moon (this is not fantasy - it has been done). Then, by your own definition, if the rocket is launched NOW (which is all you accept), then it must arrive in the FUTURE (which you reject). Conversely, if the rocket arrives NOW then must have been launched in the PAST (which you also reject)
Can you offer an alternative explanation?
exchemist
Valued Senior Member
Thanks. I think you must mean Richard A Muller. (We've all got Robert on the brain at the moment). I've tracked down the book.
Like origin I struggle with the idea that life reduces entropy, I must admit. It does so locally when an organism grows from a seed or egg, but once it is in steady state I would not have thought it did. In any case the argument about entropy and time has nothing to do with living things: it is quite general. But this is not fair on you, as I did ask you the impossible, in summarising someone else's book in a paragraph. I'd better read around it a bit more myself.
NOW is the only moment in existence
Unless you are proposing the moment the rocket launched is still in existence and the landing spot was in existence before it left the launch pad
Mike_Fontenot
Registered Senior Member
Yes, you're right ... sorry for that error. Thanks for that correction.
It's just that the raw materials used in the construction of any living thing are much more disorganized than the resulting material in the living organism. (So the living organism itself is much more highly organized than the materials from which it was made). That process DOES of course produce additional entropy (apart from what ends up in the life form, and apart from what existed in the original raw materials), so that the total entropy increases, but that increase eventually ends up as heat being radiated into empty space where it does no harm. At least, that's what I THINK Muller is saying.
What do clocks measure, then?
Why does it seem to be the case that things are different now than they were 10 minutes ago?
How is change possible at all if time does not exist?
Please explain.
Not according to the standard international system of units that we use. In that system, we define distance (length) units as the distance that light will travel in a given time. That is, distance units logically come after time units, not before. It's not the only way it could be done, of course, but this is the way we do it.
No. The second is not defined in terms of a distance (wavelength, or any other distance). It is defined as the time in terms of the oscillation frequency of a particular transition in caesium atoms. Roughly speaking, we wait for the caesium atom to complete a chosen number of oscillations and call the time taken 1 second.
ct is a distance, not a speed. Multiplying t by c just puts the time axis of the spacetime diagram on the same footing as the (three) space axes, which is especially useful because time and space coordinates get mixed up when we change frames of reference.
In other words, a good clock reliably records the same numerical value for the same time duration.
Note that Einstein was using the term "imaginary time" here in a specific mathematical sense (i.e. involving complex numbers involving the square root of negative one, etc.). He was not saying that "time is imaginary" or anything like that. Using an imaginary number for time is not the most elegant way to handle the difference between time and space in relativity, so generally we don't do it that way any more.
Causative factors are events in spacetime. Time itself is never the cause of anything. Time (and space) is the background against which things happen, including things causing other things.
I'm not sure what you're saying here. The nova certainly happened in 1910, according to clocks on Earth. It doesn't matter that it took 100 years for us to find out that it happened back then. There's no problem back-dating the event to the time it happened.
We can't do without time in physics. There is a difference between me sitting in my chair at the computer now and me sitting in my chair at the computer 10 minutes ago. My position hasn't changed (much), so how are we going to describe the difference without using some notion of time?
exchemist
Valued Senior Member
Yes I agree with that entirely, when it is developing. But when an organism is fully grown, its (local) entropy reduction processes are basically repair mechanisms trying (and failing, eventually) to compensate for the entropy increase due to degradation of the organism due to the environment (physical, chemical and biological). And meanwhile, its metabolic processes are used for straight entropy-increasing activity by the organism: motion, maintaining body heat etc.
But the harder thing to understand, for which I might need to read the book, I suppose, is why the entropy change of an organism should affect its perception of time having a direction. What we see around us is irreversibility: that a cup falling from a table breaks into pieces and never that the pieces coalesce into a whole cup. That is perception of the external world, not related to our own personal thermodynamics. Or so I should have thought, at least.
What has been picked (the so called units of time) are pure arbitrary units and measure AGE not time
Change occurs in the NOW wHICH is the only moment which EXISTS
Unless you subscribe to the PAST still existing or the FUTURE existing, waiting for us to step into it
Stuff which exists has/have properties
Please list the properties of time
''Einstein's view of time''
Gödel, a friend of Einstein, came up with a solution to Einstein's field equations.
This solution modeled a rotating universe which allowed travel into the past by travelling in a space direction and not travelling through time. Although it may not apply to our universe, it seems to open up another view of time different from the usual ''been and gone'' time, so to speak.
Gödel, a friend of Einstein, came up with a solution to Einstein's field equations.
This solution modeled a rotating universe which allowed travel into the past by travelling in a space direction and not travelling through time. Although it may not apply to our universe, it seems to open up another view of time different from the usual ''been and gone'' time, so to speak.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel_metric
Note that Michael is shifting has stance. There is yet hope of sanity!
Michael post #13 states plainly that time is "none-existent"
Michael post #24 states clearly there is "no past and no future"
Now our present Michael states a banal truism - neither the past nor the past exist in the present.
Hardly contentious, I would say
Michael post #13 states plainly that time is "none-existent"
Michael post #24 states clearly there is "no past and no future"
Now our present Michael states a banal truism - neither the past nor the past exist in the present.
Hardly contentious, I would say
Please explain how that is a shift?
TIME does not exist PERIOD
NOW exist and is the only moment of existence
Frequently post seem to indicate the postee thinks past and future do exist
NOW is not TIME
AGE is not TIME
Stuff which exists has properties
No one has given any list of the properties of TIME
Is it a wave? Some sort of force? Can you boil eggs with it? Weigh it? Measure it?
Measure it seems to be the closest posters get to giving TIME a property but again the reference is to AGE not TIME
Something is said to be X (seconds, minutes, hours, years) old and that's is how/why TIME exist
Change occurs in NOW, not in the future, not in the past, NOW
Again, someone, list some properties of TIME, how said properties are detected
It's 5am, and coffee does not appear until about 9am and no I am not posting about TIME these are just two arbitrary NOWs I have given a name to
Asexperia
Registered Senior Member
That's right. That is why real time is defined as the duration or permanence of things in a certain state or position. I also want to leave the perceptual definition of time: it is the continuous succession of irreversible moments that goes from the past to the future.
Michael - endlessly repeating the same assertion does not make it true. You need a coherent argument, which you haven't given us.
Enjoy your stay in the institution (just kidding!)
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
What are the properties of Time?
If you can give me one single (causal) property of time, you'll receive a free trip to Stockholm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time
The reason no definition of time exists is the fact that time does not (cannot) exist independent of another causal event. It can only become measurable as an emergent measurable bi-product of a sequential action. (2 + 2 = 4 + 3 seconds).
Hence the term spacetime, where time exists only as an emergent phenomenon of the continued existence of space. Take away space, you take away time, no?
There is no independent thing named Time. It is an emergent phenomenon associated only with duration of change.
The idea of time-travel is ludicrous. We can go back and forth in space, but we can never go back in time, because without space time does not exist. The "arrow of time" always points toward the future as an emergent property of duration into the future.
You cannot go back and undo an event or sequence of events which have already happened.
That's pure scifi........
I can't believe science messes with this at all. It is trying to define "God" by its other name "Father Time". Science doesn't bother with that does it?
Last edited:
Again with the confusion of TIME with AGE (sorry)What are the properties of Time?
If you can give me one single (causal) property of time, you'll receive a free trip to Stockholm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time
The reason no definition of time exists is the fact that time does not (cannot) exist independent of another causal event. It can only become measurable as an emergent measurable bi-product of a sequential action. (2 + 2 = 4 + 3 seconds).
Hence the term spacetime, where time exists only as an emergent phenomenon of the continued existence of space. Take away space, you take away time, no?
There is no independent thing named Time. It is an emergent phenomenon associated only with duration of change.
The idea of time-travel is ludicrous. We can go back and forth in space, but we can never go back in time, because without space time does not exist. The "arrow of time" always points toward the future as an emergent property of duration into the future.
You cannot go back and undo an event or sequence of events which have already happened.
That's pure scifi........
I can't believe science messes with this at all. It is trying to define "God" by its other name "Father Time". Science doesn't bother with that does it?