Is Time Real?

[rajnz00]

Is Time Real?

By that I mean, is there a flow of Time from the present into the past, as it seems from our common experience? Or is it an illusion?

The laws of Physics give no indication of the Arrow of time. The mathematical equations of Classical Mechanics and SR and GR work equally well in the forward and backward direction, leading Einstein to famously say “…People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

Science has repeatedly exposed the common conceptions from our senses as illusions, a flat Earth, the Sun and stars rotating about the Earth. Science has dispelled these illusions with compelling evidence. Yet the “illusion” of the flow of time from the present into the past persists, with no compelling scientific explanation why this should be so. And at the same time science can produce no evidence of the future.

The arrow of time according to mainstream physics is caused by the 3rd law of Thermodynamics. Entropy always increases.

In his book “TIME REBORN: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe”, Lee Smolin argues that time is “real”

He defines that to mean that:

1. Whatever is real in our universe is real in a moment of time, which is one of a succession of moments.

2. The past was real but is no longer real. We interpret and analyse the past, from evidence in the present.

3. The future does not yet exist and is open. We can infer some predictions, but we cannot predict the future completely and the future can produce phenomena that are novel, no knowledge of the past could have anticipated them.

4. Nothing transcends time, not even the laws of nature. Laws are not timeless. Like everything else, they are features of the present, and they can evolve over time.

What are your views?

[Forest_Dump]

As an archaeologist (i.e., one who studies the past) I might be able to provide some insights here.

1. Whatever is real in our universe is real in a moment of time, which is one of a succession of moments.

Sure. While the flow of time is real and I would definitely say unidirectional, how we decide to measure time is more arbitrary and/or relative. There really aren't any "moments" except as a purely arbitrary dissection of the flow of time (by the way a metaphor based on specific culture-history perceptions and/or heuristics of a river) compunded by assumptions, etc., of human perceptions and decisons of what is real or significant.

2. The past was real but is no longer real. We interpret and analyse the past, from evidence in the present.

Definitely a core philosophical idea in my discipline but also in many others. I guess it is an important mechanical principle to keep in mind as a premise but I do not see a ton of significance in it as yet.

3. The future does not yet exist and is open. We can infer some predictions, but we cannot predict the future completely and the future can produce phenomena that are novel, no knowledge of the past could have anticipated them.

This gets a bit odd because it is only partly true. There are many processes that I think we can certainly predict with limitations only based on the limits of our knowledge. Our knowledge of all the processes that involve humans is certainly limited so that I can't predict many things that will happen to or be caused by specific people but I think I can predict with absolute accuracy that gravity will continue tomorrow and that energy will continue to dissipate, etc. Bottom line, the uncertainty is not due to uncertainty about how the world will work but rather with limitations on our knowledge of it. By the way, invoking a deity or supernatural, etc., does not really impact any of this as near as I can see. Nothing here implies that a god, etc., won't do what it will only that we humans lack enough knowledge to make any kind of valid or reliable predictions of future actions. Sure lots of people claim to be able to predict or even influence supernatural deities but that is something you need to take on faith and is outside any viable definition of science, etc.

4. Nothing transcends time, not even the laws of nature. Laws are not timeless. Like everything else, they are features of the present, and they can evolve over time.

Bit of a mishmash here but bottom line for me is that I would agree because "laws" are purely a cultural-historical construct drawn from (and actually historically used to support) a specific political ideology and the idea of "laws" are therefore perhaps better termed linguistic (semantic) tricks (metaphors, heuristics, etc.) used to describe regularities in what we see around us. (I actually am equivocal about whether the concept of "laws" is useful or valuable - sometimes it is useful to make things easier to work with but sometimes it can also hide what should be under investigation.)

[rajnz00]

Hi Forest_Dump.

That was an amazingly thoughtful reply, from the unique perspective of your profession.

It needs a more comprehensive reply, but quickly, I need to clear one misunderstanding. I have tried to follow Occam's razor, and Einstein's principle to make things as simple as possible, but not simpler, ie, not leave out anything essential.

"laws" are purely a cultural-historical construct drawn from (and actually historically used to support) a specific political ideology and the idea of "laws" are therefore perhaps better termed linguistic (semantic) tricks (metaphors, heuristics, etc.) used to describe regularities in what we see around us. (I actually am equivocal about whether the concept of "laws" is useful or valuable - sometimes it is useful to make things easier to work with but sometimes it can also hide what should be under investigation.)

The "laws" I have referred to are "natural Laws", in other words, the laws of physics, which include those "governing", (describing), gravity and energy. Thus when you say " I think I can predict with absolute accuracy that gravity will continue tomorrow and that energy will continue to dissipate, etc. Bottom line, the uncertainty is not due to uncertainty about how the world will work but rather with limitations on our knowledge of it, the hypothesis posits, that while gravity, electricity, nuclear forces, will continue tomorrow, they may not be the same as existed during the Big Bang, or several billion years from now, but evolve in a relational manner, much the same way as life does.

So yes the "how the world will work" will change, but in small incremental steps, imperceptible to our brief human life-spans. There will not be "absolute accuracy". In fact, as Special relativity has shown, there is nothing that is absolute, not even time or distance, and as Quantum Mechanics has shown there is no absolute certainty.

[rajnz00]

PS If you say that "There really aren't any "moments" except as a purely arbitrary dissection of the flow of time (by the way a metaphor based on specific culture-history perceptions and/or heuristics of a river) compunded by assumptions, etc., of human perceptions and decisons of what is real or significant." this is contradicted by the first part of your statement "..the flow of time is real and I would definitely say unidirectional"

The flow of time from the present into the past can only be real if the present moments are real. Your "NOWS" are real. For example, YOUR NOW is the moment you read these words, which immediately slips into the past. You can re-read these words and those will be different NOWS. Heraclitus said something like, We never step into the same river twice, because it is not the same river, and we are not the same person. The same applies to moments of time. We travel in different times and different spaces.

Time along with space is being continuously created, which enables us to act in the present, the only thing that is (briefly) real.

[Forest_Dump]

The "laws" I have referred to are "natural Laws", in other words, the laws of physics, which include those "governing", (describing), gravity and energy.

It is worth noting that the use of the word "laws" comes from Comte who distinguished natural laws from other laws and that there was a definite reason why he chose that word based on his religious and political beliefs even if he was not really aware of what he was basing that choice on. I agree there is a need to re-appraise the definition and continue to draw distinctions with other definitions as well as continue to challenge the premises, etc., as we move along (conceptually evolve albeit in a non-Darwinian way). So, most of the time I really have no problem with the use of the term "laws" as it certainly is a useful heuristic but I also think it is vital to remember that it is simply a heuristic.

Along those lines, then, I also agree that philosophically and heuristically we must beware of claims about absolute knowledge, absolute confidence in predictions, etc., but still that doesn't also mean we need to completely slip down that slippery slope into hyper-relativity or nihilism unless you really want to slip into some pure or modified fantasy world of the Walking Dead, etc. As I mentioned elsewhere, I definitely like the concept of "modified gravitational theories" but that definitely doesn't mean I have any intentions of jumping off bridges to test whether gravity still works here.

[Forest_Dump]

PS If you say that "There really aren't any "moments" except as a purely arbitrary dissection of the flow of time (by the way a metaphor based on specific culture-history perceptions and/or heuristics of a river) compunded by assumptions, etc., of human perceptions and decisons of what is real or significant." this is contradicted by the first part of your statement "..the flow of time is real and I would definitely say unidirectional"

The flow of time from the present into the past can only be real if the present moments are real. Your "NOWS" are real. For example, YOUR NOW is the moment you read these words, which immediately slips into the past. You can re-read these words and those will be different NOWS. Heraclitus said something like, We never step into the same river twice, because it is not the same river, and we are not the same person. The same applies to moments of time. We travel in different times and different spaces.

Time along with space is being continuously created, which enables us to act in the present, the only thing that is (briefly) real.

I am not sure where either I or you have a problem here but maybe it is a fault with my communication and this might actually be a case where philosophers actually have done a better job of communication of some of the relevant concepts. Yes, any "moment" or slice in time tends to be relatively arbitrary slices. As an archaeologist, I look for what are called single-component sites which were occupied by a small group of people for a short period of time (i.e., as short as possible so as to avoid contamination from different times). But how short? With some of mine, an occupation of a few weeks or even months would be great - if I could prove that. But very tough. And then I might compare that with a site from the same time period. But that could well be within 1000 years. If I were a paleontologist I might be happy to be able to compare two dinosaurs that lived within 100,000 years or even 1,000,000 years. The further we go back in time, relevant time slices tend to get thicker until you get back to the Big Bang when we talk about things that happened within a billionth (?) of a second. What counts as a relevant or measurable time slice?

[DragonFly]

Smolin feels that while there has to be relationalism qualia would be intrinsic in that they are always about the 'now' and can't come from any relational structure. Energy an momentum may be intrinsic exceptions, too. His temporal naturalism opposes the block universe (timeless naturalism).

[DragonFly]

Both time and space are of discrete bits, ridding us of Zeno's Paradox.

There isn’t anything outside of Totality (or it wouldn’t be Totality), such as clocks, rulers, gods, or directions; thus, Totality is wholly relative and relational to its internals. that is, all its properties are described in terms of relationships between its events, such as causality, in the main, as the most important. An ‘event’ is defined as the smallest possible change, as a part of a process.

There cannot be an infinite number of relationships between events, as in a smooth, continuous space; thus, Totality is discrete. Events are discrete entities that can be enumerated, thus space and time themselves are not continuous. One cannot divide time indefinitely, for there are elementary events, as the simplest possible things that can happen, such as during the Planck time.

The Bekenstein bound shows that the amount of information that can be contained in any region is not only finite, it is proportional to the area of the boundary of the region, in Planck units, thus all must be discrete on the Planck scale, for were it continuous any region could contain an infinite amount of information.

If Totality really were continuous, then every volume of space would contain an infinite amount of information. In a continuous reality it takes an infinite amount of information to specify the position of even one electron, much less particles divided infinitely. This is because the position is given by a real number that requires an infinite number of digits to describe. Further, we would see variations in our supposed elementals as much as we do for the planets, but all our elementals are the same.

That something just ‘is’ there is not true, this being an illusion, for it is ever changing. Process is more important than, and comes before, any apparent equilibrium or seemingly static object.

Change is not optional. No particle can sit exactly still, for this would violate the uncertainty principle, for a particle has no precise position, nor could this never moving particle have a precise momentum (zero). We cannot know both position and momentum to some precision. Even if we could remove all the energy from a particle, there would remain some intrinsic zero point motion. Stillness is prohibited; change and process are a must.

So, there must be action, and thus Totality is composed of processes. Time, then, is the same as causality. A set of events caused the past and a set of events will cause the future.

There are not a collection of independent entities living in some fixed, static background of space and time, but instead, there is a connection of relationships the properties of every part of which are determined by its relationships to the other parts, which may be a whole lot of connections.

The universe is not made of material things of stuff in stasis, but of processes by which things happen. Even the elementary particles are not static objects just sitting around here and there, but are processes carrying little bits of information between events at which they interact, giving rise to new processes, in a way like the elementary operations in a computer do. Banish the image of an eternal atom as a completed thing.

All that one ever views is the inside of the brain. We only imagine we are seeing into an infinite three-dimensional space, but this is only an inside construct, for the brain paints a face upon reality. One does not reach out and probe objects, but rather, their photons come to you. Each object you see is from a process by which information travelled to you in the form of photons and the farther away the object is, the longer it takes the photons to get to you. So, you do not see space, but instead you are looking at history, as information from a process. Our Reality is always a bit behind the actual.

There isn’t anything static at all; it is something created and recreated by an unbelievable number of processes per second. A scene is the collective result of all the various processes. We cannot believe in any principle which expresses the world in terms of things. There isn’t anything but processes by which information is transported from one part of the universe to another.

[rajnz00]

Forest_Dump, thanks for the information on the origins of the word "laws". The flow of time may seem obvious to you, but in mainstream physics, it is so unacceptable at the moment, that I cannot discuss it on a Physics thread.

All the equations of physics fail to show to show the direction of time. The present moment, to most physicists, is nothing special and the past present and future exist for all time, in space-time. I think they are mistaken, just as surely they think I am. As an archeologist, you could confirm that Hitler and his cohorts are no longer alive, and thus real, not so mainstream physicists.

[Dave_Oblad]

Hi Raj,

I think Time is as Real as Distance. In fact, I see Time as only being Distance. That if I were to locate myself near a Black Hole, that we both progress into the Future at exactly the same Rate or Speed. Even though clocks nearer the Black Hole are running slower than Mine. The point is that neither of us can reach the Future faster than the other. We are both locked into the same Speed or Rate.

The common view is that Space-Time is expanding by the addition of New Space-Time. It is worthy of debate if that addition is being inserted "into" Existing Space-Time or being added on a Surface.

Take the analogy of the Balloon having a surface with Matter mixed in. Mainstream may believe that expansion is adding more Rubber into the existing Rubber.. causing it to expand in size. That would seem to be a bit disruptive to any Matter mixed into the Rubber. An alternate view would be the addition of a new Layer of blank Rubber painted on the surface of the Balloon. This allows Matter to Bleed through to the new Blank Layer of Space-Time just added. This would allow Matter to progress in its Dancing Geometry without self interference with it previous Geometry. A very important aspect many overlook.

Said addition of new layers of Space-Time on such a surface sets a Rate of Expansion and forces a Speed Limit on how fast Matter can move on that Surface. Such Matter can't move laterally on said surface faster than New Surface is being made to travel on. We observe this as the Speed of Light limitation. Can't travel on a road faster than the pavement is being laid ahead of it.

In each addition of new blank Surface Space-Time being painted, it has a specific relative thickness called the Plank Interval. But it's not really an Interval but actually a new layer of distance/thickness. If you were on that surface near a Black Hole, you would both progress towards the Outside Future at the same Rate.

Finally, since all Matter that Bleeds through on to this expanding surface has relative distance between each other, one would not be able to locate any Center to such a Universe. Every Major observable object would appear to be receding from everything else due to expansion (addition of new blank Space-Time surface). Information traveling on that surface would have a speed limit and the Surface would appear Flat, because the only reference to curvature has to follow that surface.

Now the most interesting question becomes: How "Thick" is this surface? It has to be thicker than 1 Planck Interval membrane because Matter and Fields carry no inborn knowledge of what transpired previously. Where to go next and how fast? Momentum is directly connected to History (previous layers).

Once this aspect becomes obvious then the next question is what is the Minimum Thickness of said Membrane to provide all the freedoms we observe in regards to Speed and Direction. Let's pretend it is only 1 seconds worth of Thickness (300,000 Km). That might be good enough.. if you can explain what mechanism erases or removes the Rubber back 1 second in Time. If it seems unnatural to erase history within the Balloon, then it is no longer a Balloon, but a solid Rubber Ball. Such a Ball has a Center that we call the Big Bang. A surface dweller, being a Surface Dweller, can't point in that direction.. nor outwards either (the Future).

Now all we have to do is up the Ante and stop treating this Ball as a 3D object with a 2D surface. We shift up a Dimension to a Hyper-Sphere. This Ball now has a 3D surface and Time is the 4th Dimensional Thickness. On such a surface you have freedom to move in any of three directions (X,Y,Z).. none of which move you any closer or further from the center or outside.

We cant' travel physically into the past, as we would be interfering with our own previous Geometry and we can't Travel into the Future, because that surface hasn't been Painted yet.

Anyway, this Model has Time as being Physical Thickness and that is just as Real as Physical Distance. Thus Time is a bit "More" than just a simple evolving sequence of events.. it has real Thickness as its own Distance.

Anyway.. the above reasons is why I accept this simple Model. It complies with the Observable Universe, explains Relativity, the Arrow of Time, Entropy and Thermal Dynamics. What more can one ask from a simple Model? Well.. there is Quantum Mechanics.. are we ready to go there yet? That gets even more fun.

Ok, I've made my contribution here.. any debate or other opinions are most welcome.

Wow, just noticed many more posts submitted here during my period of Typing this. I'll just submit this now and read those in a bit.

Best wishes,
Dave :^)

[rajnz00]

DragonFly, nothing makes sense unless compared with something else. So everything is relational - big, small, strong, weak, fast, slow.

Time seems to be something very fundamental to the universe. I think we need to, (try and), define Time if we are to discuss it.

On another thread I had said - Time is that “thing” that separates the present from the past, for each object in space-time. It is that “thing” that makes interaction with the past impossible. It is that “thing” that provides the environment in which we think, act, move and interact with other objects in space-time. It is that “thing” that makes the future indeterminate.

And definitions of Present (Now), Past and Future:

Now – The moment/instant of a new interaction, creating new information.

Past – The decay of this information, in a linear fashion, which is what we measure in our clocks. Would this also not indicate that the accuracy of our clocks are also defined by the rate at which their information decays? So the vibrations of caesium would decay less slowly than those of quartz.

Future – interactions yet to happen

A question - when we measure Time with our clocks, what exactly are we measuring?

Are we not measuring the past? Or, more precisely, the rate at which the present slips into the past?

[Forest_Dump]

Forest_Dump, thanks for the information on the origins of the word "laws". The flow of time may seem obvious to you, but in mainstream physics, it is so unacceptable at the moment, that I cannot discuss it on a Physics thread.

All the equations of physics fail to show to show the direction of time. The present moment, to most physicists, is nothing special and the past present and future exist for all time, in space-time. I think they are mistaken, just as surely they think I am. As an archeologist, you could confirm that Hitler and his cohorts are no longer alive, and thus real, not so mainstream physicists.

Sadly time is something that not all archaeologists grasp equally. I once (and perhaps still am) was involved in a debate on the transition from one archaeological time period to another. The earlier spaned about 1000 + years while the second spanned about 500 years (yes, there are also debates about whether when and why these should be called periods or traditions, etc.). A few years later I submitted a paper on a short term site (2 - 3 years of occupation +/- 50(?)) with an AMS date of about 400 years into the second period. An anomymous (scholarly?) reviewer of this high-ranked journal asked me to comment on how this site related to my ideas on the transition. After being puzzled for a bit I decided to add, in my paper that this was 400 years after the transition, about the same span of time from the times of Galileo or Henry VIII to now.

Yes, sometimes (always?), even in the most rigorous of sciences, language does structure thought and we must be aware of that. Even in physics, an arbitrary slice of time must be clarified especially because this slice of time is arbitrary. Processes that happen during a nuclear explosion probably have to be described within tiny fractions of a second while the same processes over the life of a star might take millions or billions of years and lets leave out the question of the speed of the nuclear bomb or star relative to the speed of light.

[rajnz00]

Hi Dave,

When you say "I see Time as only being Distance", how can that be? Distance we measure with a ruler, and time we measure with periodic motion.

Without time being separate from distance, we cannot measure speed or momentum.

Kind regards

Raj

[rajnz00]

Forest_Dump: language does structure thought

Absolutely. There are Amazonian tribes who do not have the words for, I think, three and beyond and so cannot count for more than two. (one, two and many), They do not have the language for the past tense, so do not remember it. They truly live in the present.

Newton invented calculus because mathematics did not have the language to describe the concepts he thought of in his head. When he did invent the language, he and others used it in ways he couldn't have thought of at the time (like all great inventions). It is the same with Shakespeare. As we evolve, we will have to evolve our language to describe the more intrinsic realities of nature.

[Dave_Oblad]

Hi Raj,

But "periodic motion" is Distance.. what is a wavelength?

If we see the Sun as the center and the Earth Orbits the Sun then that's a 3D View. If we were 4 Dimensional, we would see that same thing as the Sun being a Column and the Earth as being in a Spiral around that Column.

For example.. let's go to a simple 2D Flatland. Here is a Flatlander Bouncing a toy Circle. He only has Up/Down and Left/Right.. that he can perceive. Sorry.. it's not animated.. use your imagination. He can't point towards his past or future.. he doesn't bend that way..lol

Photo of Flatlander Man Bouncing a Circle.

Now, if we give this guy a 3rd Dimension as Time, then we can see his History behind him as 3D Distance. We can see the cyclic period of his Circle Bounces as Distance.

Photo of same Flatlander in 3D.

The current moment (Now) in 3D Time is the Surface we see closest to our Camera. Each time his hand contacts the Circle is an event. We can see a string of such events behind him in his past. The separation between such Events is a true (and Real) Distance.

That is what it means to see Time as Distance.

If I Tried to show our 3D Reality with 4D Time, it would make little sense to us. We would appear like Blurry 3D Snake-Like objects while we move about. The closest we can come to this is a long exposure photo of something/someone moving about.

Regards,
Dave :^)

[rajnz00]

Hi Dave,

Periodic motion is motion repeated in equal intervals of Time.

Wavelength is length, multiplied by frequency we get speed. Example λν=c - the speed of light.

How would you get speed or momentum without time?

Kind regards

Raj

[rajnz00]

In other words, any location in the Universe (Space-Time) needs time.

If you went on a date, you would have to tell your "date", I will meet you at such and such place, (Space), at such and such Time. Telling her one without the other would leave you with a very frustrated (and bewildered) date.

[DragonFly]

Now – The moment/instant of a new interaction, creating new information.

Yes, with the interactions/information/process, which is change, taking at least the Planck time. There can be no Stillness because energy is always up to something.

Past – The decay of this information, in a linear fashion, which is what we measure in our clocks.

It would seem to be in presentism that all the information of the previous 'now' is consumed in making/changing to the information of 'now'.

[Dave_Oblad]

Sorry Raj,

You seem to be fixated on this: "Persistent Illusion Of Time" aspect. I can't tell if your Debate is to draw out greater detail of it from me or.. if I'm fighting against Cognitive Dissonance.

If it's the latter.. I can't help until you see past your bias. I think you know that in SR, one can rotate coordinates between Spatial and Temporal locations. How would this be possible if they had nothing in common (Distance)?

I may have to continue this discussion later.. I need to get some work done (what I'm paid to do.. lol).

Best regards,
Dave :^)

[rajnz00]

Hi Dave,

It maybe a bit of both. Cognitive dissonance and trying to draw out more from you.

Because I may have some of the former, you may have to do more of the latter.

Since I have difficulty grasping your concepts, you will have to show me how mine are in error.

People often have Cognitive dissonance dealing with SR. As I understand it

(c dT)^2 = (c dt)^2 - (dx)^2

Where T and t are the proper and real times.

So it deals with time (Proper and Real) dx is the distance through space.

So how does time become the same as distance?

Regards

Raj

[Dave_Oblad]

Hi Raj,

One application of this is special relativity, as it can be considered to operate in a four-dimensional space, spacetime, spanned by three space dimensions and one of time. In special relativity this space is linear and the four-dimensional rotations, called Lorentz transformations, have practical physical interpretations. The Minkowski space is not a metric space, and the term isometry is inapplicable to Lorentz transformation.

If a rotation is only in the three space dimensions, i.e. in a plane that is entirely in space, then this rotation is the same as a spatial rotation in three dimensions. But a rotation in a plane spanned by a space dimension and a time dimension is a hyperbolic rotation, a transformation between two different reference frames, which is sometimes called a "Lorentz boost". These transformations demonstrate the pseudo-Euclidean nature of the Minkowski space. They are sometimes described as squeeze mappings and frequently appear on Minkowski diagrams which visualize (1 + 1)-dimensional pseudo-Euclidean geometry on planar drawings. The study of relativity is concerned with the Lorentz group generated by the space rotations and hyperbolic rotations.

Whereas SO(3) rotations, in physics and astronomy, correspond to rotations of celestial sphere as a 2-sphere in the Euclidean 3-space, Lorentz transformations from SO(3;1)+ induce conformal transformations of the celestial sphere. It is a broader class of the sphere transformations known as Möbius transformations.

Sorry, need to stay focused on my job. Here above is a quick snatch from Wiki. Lots of such material out on the net. There was a whole thread about this on this site a few years back.. too mathematical for my tastes...lol. I seem to recall special attention is required for Ct, as the scales for Time and Space are not equal.

When I have enough time (or enough distance..lol) I'll look for it.

Gotta run for sure,

Highest Regards,
Dave :^)

[rajnz00]

Dave,
See you at another distance :)
Regards
Raj

PS My date also seems to have cognitive dissonance. I told her he I'd meet her in town at 10 kms. She didn't understand.

[Forest_Dump]

My date also seems to have cognitive dissonance. I told her he I'd meet her in town at 10 kms. She didn't understand.

LOL. I tried something like that with my sig other and, given the movement of her fist over less than a metre, I now know why they call it getting clocked.

[rajnz00]

Forest_Dump wrote: given the movement of her fist over less than a metre, I now know why they call it getting clocked.

That, in Classical and Relativistic physics, is known as connecting you with reality.

Some famous guy said reality is that which kicks you back, or some such thing. For example, if you convince yourself that all about you, including that rock, or that wall, or that tree, is just an illusion, try kicking it. You will experience Newton's third law, first hand. (Every action has an equal and opposite reaction).

In Relativistic terms, her fist and your jaw were in the same place in space-time. There would be no disagreement there by any observer, no matter what their speed relative to you. There was a lot of physics there, velocity, momentum etc. Not so much chemistry though alas.

[Forest_Dump]

Not so much chemistry though alas.

On the contrary, novocaine and some alcohol.

[rajnz00]

"On the contrary, novocaine and some alcohol."

Einstein never thought of that when he drew up his equations. The foolish things of the world to confound the wise - is that from the Bible?

[Scott Mayers]

rajnz00,

I'm with Dave above on this. Time is as much interpreted as a 'distance'. I don't share his concern about the balloon example though. The actual analogy that fits is the actual volume of the balloon as it is blown up. The reason for using the surface as an explanation is just an additional way to understand this concept with the added assumption that fits with the Big Bang interpretation rather than the Steady State one that treats expansion eternally occurring. But the essence is correct.

Expansion itself can be thought of as a distance in a fourth dimension FROM EACH point in space, something you can ONLY imagine if you treat each 3D reality as a static 'frame' in a sequence of multiple frames, like motion pictures. Thus time is the corresponding illusion as a kind of 'line' (like an infinite reel of film) in an even 'greater' static-type frame.

You can understand this if you tried to define 'distance'. We cannot do a measure of distance WITHOUT time either. So you could technically also define distances in relationship to time (given a constant maximum 'speed' that fixes the distance to time relationship constant). This is how a 'light year' for instance represents a distance using time.

The idea is to try to reduce explanations to its minimal. Using 'distance' is just as good as any. So to define a distance, take ANY arbitrary length, draw a circle using that as a diameter. Then given the fastest possible means to which anything can traverse that circumference, use that to define the 'distance' of a unit measure of time as that set of 3 dimensional 'frames' (discrete or continuous) between the initial point on the circle to the same point if you count each point around the circumference away from that given point to the original starting point.

The relationship of the circumference (or radius) to the unit 'count' of all the 3D frames in between has a directly proportionate measure if you repeat this process. The constant of proportion being fixed represents that you can interpret time as an extra dimension, which coincides identically with expansion in one given inertial frame. Time and space are thus combined and 'real' regardless. It is just not 'real' if we attempt to treat 'time' as a distinct property separate from space itself. In this way, Special relativity DOES treat 'time' distinct if you treat space as unreal. I think it is better to assume "spacetime" as it is more inclusively defined in General Relativity. In SR, since space is 'unreal' time is also unreal and likely why he adapted GR to treat both time and space as real but intrinsically just ONE. The 'time' factor is a fourth dimension. But I can't be sure if he may have interpreted expansion of space as equivalent or as a distinct dimension separate from the time dimension. (?) What I (and Dave) here hold is that time is just the fourth dimension of an expansion and defines WHAT time and movement are.

[DragonFly]

Being or becoming: that is the question
That haunts Existence’s investigation:
Whether ’tis simpler for the All to offer
The slings and vectors of a told fortune
All at once, as a marble monument,
Or to perform in the sea of actions,
And by disposing ever create them?

[rajnz00]

Hi Scott,

Time is related to space. It cant otherwise be if it is the 4th dimension of space. But it cannot be the same thing as length, except in as we measure it along the axis of the Space-time diagram.

Einstein said time is the order of events. That is not what space is. Space is what tells matter how to move. It curves and flexes with matter.

Regards

Raj

[Scott Mayers]

Hi Scott,

Time is related to space. It cant otherwise be if it is the 4th dimension of space. But it cannot be the same thing as length, except in as we measure it along the axis of the Space-time diagram.

Einstein said time is the order of events. That is not what space is. Space is what tells matter how to move. It curves and flexes with matter.

Regards

Raj

You assume that a fourth dimension cannot be 'pointed' to though. Each point in space moves within our apparent space and so you can still point to where it is now, where it WAS, and where you anticipate where it WILL be. Those points, and the collective set of them, represent different times, ARE real, and don't require interpreting this as being distinct from space. Einstein's spacetime is a reference to a fourth dimension AS time. The only thing I'm uncertain of at this point is if he also interpreted this as expansion or if he separated it.

I'm guessing he at least later DID interpret it precisely as I or Dave mentioned in GR. I just don't know if he did for sure interpret that 'fourth' dimension as the SAME as expansion, which he would also AT LEAST interpret as some dimension. You would be wrong if you assumed that he did NOT think of time as a 'distance'. This is what he meant by a combined 'spacetime' concept as ONE reality. If he did not interpret expansion as the same as the fourth, he would treat it as a fifth or other dimension and 'distance' measure. He however certainly interpreted 'time' (in GR) as a distance. It is the set of distances by a dimension on its own and can't be easily illustrated. Just imagine two images of the same exact event at two or more distinct times being superimposed. It would look like a blur that even cameras sometimes capture when a moving object being pictured is too fast for its shutter and developing chemical 'speed' on the film.