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Dear Johnathan Kerr,

I have read your essay. I too am very interested in the topic of time. It is good that more and more people seem to be taking "the time problem" seriously, taking apart the issues and thinking about it. It is clearly written and comprehensible and relevant to the essay question. So it ticks all those boxes.

I would have enjoyed your essay much more if it was not...

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Dear Johnathan Kerr,

I have read your essay. I too am very interested in the topic of time. It is good that more and more people seem to be taking "the time problem" seriously, taking apart the issues and thinking about it. It is clearly written and comprehensible and relevant to the essay question. So it ticks all those boxes.

I would have enjoyed your essay much more if it was not a topic very close to my heart. After years of concentrating on finding the solution and talking about it extensively and painstakingly here on FQXi blog discussion threads.Countless hours of comments and explanations.(If you are interested a high definition file of the necessary explanatory framework is in my essay discussion thread, what it does is listed in my current essay.)

There are many more people who have not given the topic as much thought, time and dedication as I have, who do not understand the solution, and so will find your essay very thought provoking. Which is a very good thing. A solution can't be readily accepted until the need for it is grasped.

Good luck in the competition.

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Jonathan,

I've been offering up a very basic solution to these problems, but it hasn't garnered much attention. To quote the abstract of my own essay;

"Time is experienced as a series of events and with its philosophy of measurement as reality, physics treats time as a measurement from one event to the next. I argue that time is the changing configuration of the extant, turning...

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Jonathan,

I've been offering up a very basic solution to these problems, but it hasn't garnered much attention. To quote the abstract of my own essay;

"Time is experienced as a series of events and with its philosophy of measurement as reality, physics treats time as a measurement from one event to the next. I argue that time is the changing configuration of the extant, turning future potentialities into current events and replacing them. It is not the present moving from past to future, but action turning future into past. While this may seem a fairly basic observation, it means time is an effect of action, similar to temperature, not the basis for it. This would mean the geometry of spacetime is correlation of measurements, not causation of actions."

The reason time flows at different rates is simply because it is an effect of action. Speed of the level of activity, ie. temperature and the rate of change increases. The one twin ages faster because the increased level of atomic activity yields an increased metabolic rate.

As for one event happening in the past of one frame and future of another, that is just a signaling issue. Both the observer frames are in the future of the frame of the actual event.

As for the multiworlds issue, the future is probabilistic and it is the actual collapse of probabilities that yields actualities. Time emerges from the process of stuff actually happening. Prior to a race, there may be ten winners, but after it, only one. The fate of the cat is determined by events.

Admittedly much of the essay is devoted to the psychology of understanding, since I've been raising this issue for years, to little notice and much argument, so the issue has taken on psychological issues. It also delves into some of the consequences for other physics assumptions, such as the nature of space, but that's a broader issue.

(It's been my experience that it is wise to copy posts before sending them, as about one third seem to not go through. Such as this one, which I did copy, thankfully.)

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Dear Jonathan:

I like your essay. I think you present an interesting analysis of a concept that is very muddled. In particular, I was glad to see you repeatedly bring up the problem with the supposed illusion of time in a block universe. You might like my favourite quotation from Milic Capek, which I think expresses this problem beautifully:

"We shall deal only briefly with an...

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Dear Jonathan:

I like your essay. I think you present an interesting analysis of a concept that is very muddled. In particular, I was glad to see you repeatedly bring up the problem with the supposed illusion of time in a block universe. You might like my favourite quotation from Milic Capek, which I think expresses this problem beautifully:

"We shall deal only briefly with an extremely serious epistemological difficulty which arises when time is deprived of an ontological status and reduced to a mere appearance. For in relegating time into the phenomenal world an intolerable dualism is created between the realm of appearances, occurring in time, and the realm of timeless noumena. All static systems from Parmenides to Bradley and McTaggert are plagued by the same problem: If true reality is timeless, *where does the illusion of succession come from?* If time has no genuine reality, why does it appear to be real?

"No solution can be found which would not introduce surreptitiously the reality of time *somewhere*. If the illusory reality of time is nothing but a gradual rising of the curtain of ignorance which separates our mind from the complete and timeless insight, then at least *this process of rising is still a process which unfolds itself gradually without being given at once*; but, by conceding this, we admit the reality of time either in our mind or *between* our mind and the allegedly timeless reality."

For it is this surreptitious element of "time" that enters into the description of a block universe that leads to the intolerable dualism that you've also discussed, which leads to all kinds of paradoxes in working with and interpreting the theory. As you've correctly noted, "in taking that view, the number of phenomena that must be demoted to unreal is large. It amounts to anything that could be called a *process*, and that includes a lot of our world."

But, for this reason, I also think that your description of a block universe doesn't get all the way down to the heart of the issue with it, although I'm certain you do know what that issue is. You described: "The universe is a motionless 4-dimensional block, with no moment called ‘now’ moving through it anywhere. Instead it has many events and equally important ‘now’ moments, all sitting alongside each other in a static spacetime grid. This unchanging object it is just *there*." But the thing is, that although we can't avoid the use of verbs in describing what a thing "is", every verb that is used in describing a block universe actually falsely represents it. It's a true dilemma, and I'm not saying anyone could describe a block universe better than you have, but I think that any description of a block universe, which will inevitably require words like "is", needs to be supplemented by saying something like "although we say that a block universe physically 'exists' in its absolute entirety, from the beginning to the end of all four dimensions of spacetime, 'existence' is clearly the wrong word to use in describing a block universe, because although it contains within it a timelike dimension, it no more 'exists' in a temporal sense than a block of wood that comes in and out of existence in an instant; it is temporally singular."

And this is really why any attempt to reconcile the illusion of time with the block universe, as in perdurantism, is a false-start. And it's also the biggest indication that the block universe theory has to be incorrect, because no matter how we try to avoid it, we do commonly get a sense of temporal existence that can't really be reconciled with that singular block. Since the requirement of a block universe can be deduced directly from special relativity theory, something must be wrong at the heart of the theory.

This is all very closely related to the problem that's at the heart of the essentially paradoxical notion of time travel, in which science fiction writers begin with the idea of things actually existing throughout spacetime, (sort of) as in a block universe, but then allow that the events in that "spacetime" are also able to change. Clearly, the notion of a physically existing spacetime that changes requires another temporal dimension---and this is where that surreptitious Newtonian concept of an absolute time comes in; i.e., because the changes that are thought to be able to occur within spacetime, due to a time traveller's influence, are also thought to simultaneously effect all of spacetime. If you could go back in time and kill your grandfather before he met your grandmother, then you never would have been born, so you clearly can't do that---a well-known paradox. But as I see it, my grandfather doesn't exist before he met my grandmother: the event is no longer real. What's real is my typing this right now, which will be past, and therefore unreal, when you come to read it.

Elsewhere on this blog, you've made comments that indicate to me that you think I haven't carefully thought this problem through, and that you think I've been too quick to suggest what I think lies at the heart of the problem with the relativistic implication of a block universe, when I say it is the problem that, along with the assumption that there can be no privileged observers, it is the interpretation that synchronous events, described by constant values of the time-coordinate in any frame, truly occur simultaneously according to observers who remain at rest in those frames---which is what leads directly to the *inference* "that an event can be both past and future in two different viewpoints". Or else, when I say that there must instead be an absolute (global) simultaneity-relation amongst *all* observers in a three-dimensional enduring (i.e., flowing) universe.

This is a difficult stance to argue for, which involves not only having to reconcile with the principle of relativity and the relativity of simultaneity, but also having to justify the need to forsake the principle that there can be no privileged observers (which seems to agree so well with both the principle of relativity and the Copernican viewpoint), and show that the scientific evidence does actually support this.

This is what I concentrated on accomplishing in my essay; but I assure you that I have subjected the problem of the nature of time to rigorous analysis, dedicating nearly eighty pages of my (184 page) thesis to an analysis of the historical, philosophical, epistemological, and physical factors associated with this great problem. Although it may appear that I have presented something that simply works (I can hope you at least saw it that way), I have by no means simply chosen, without a great deal of thought, to reload assumptions that were previously cast off with good (but I think imperfect) reason. This is my response to your remark that "In relativity I'm often suspicious of views in which the weirdness in the theory is removed by pointing out errors that everyone else failed to see for a century. Usually when physicists allow a theory to be weird for that long, it's because they couldn't go anywhere else, and not from lack of trying."

You also wrote to Edwin: "I felt that unlike many, you were grasping at an underlying reality by looking at the clues. That's what makes a paper of interest to me these days, if it's looking for ways forward for physics - it's not enough for it to be trying to rejig existing theory into something it wasn't before. Like you, in my essay I'm grasping at an underlying reality by looking at the clues, and the real clues are external things like observations, not internal things like elements of existing theory.

"To me, for an approach to be relevant in the present situation it also has to be open to there being bits of the jigsaw missing, that we haven't yet found. Many of the essays I've read have implied within them the idea that the pieces we have are enough to finish the puzzle, if we can only organise them in the correct way. And yet a careful look at the clues shows that this idea is unavoidably wrong - new conceptual elements are needed."

I agree with you here, except for the part where I fear you're considering me with the "many" who are unlike you. To use your analogy, if we think of physics as closing in on the completion of one area of a puzzle (say, just for instance, with about ten pieces left to put together), you know that without fitting the remaining loose pieces into the puzzle correctly you can only jam about half (say, five or six) of them in the remaining space. These few pieces are all connected at points, and touch on the completed part that surrounds them in a number of places, but the picture is obviously imperfect and sparse. However, the pieces that have not been carefully fit into their right places *can* be put there by taking a careful look at their shape; but this may require one or two of the other pieces that were set aside because they didn't fit when the first five or six were jammed in without enough care.

Just because I have, in my essay, attempted to take a piece of the puzzle that I think was out of place, and fit it into its correct spot, that should not be taken to indicate that the argument has implied within itself "the idea that the pieces we have are enough to finish the puzzle." To my notion, space-time is, by the definition I've given of an enduring three-dimensional universe, *not* real. It is a graduating map of the events that occur in the universe, which contains within it the effects of things that occurred in the (absolute; purely *ideal* or mental) past. Now, in general relativity, space-time is described as a four-dimensional physical field that is moulded by mass which in turn follows geodesics, so that there is a reciprocal interaction. "Space and time are now dynamic quantities: when a body moves, or a force acts, it affects the curvature of space and time---and in turn the structure of space-time affects the way in which bodies move and forces act. Space and time not only affect but are also affected by everything that happens in the universe."

In my opinion, this quotation from A Brief History of Time poses just as paradoxical a notion as the theory of time travel---which Hawking also considered realistic enough, according to standard relativity, that in 1992 he invented the chronology protection conjecture. For the idea is the same: four-dimensional space-time exists, and bodies dynamically move through it, shaping it moment-by-moment in their presence. Since it is in fact space-time that's warped in the presence of gravitational mass according to general relativity theory, then according to the cosmological interpretation of relativity that I've discussed in my essay, all that might actually be warped is the perception of that unreal coordinated map of events.

If we choose to postulate absolute time in place of the postulate of the absolute world (according to Minkowski, since the relativity-postulate "comes to mean that only the four-dimensional world in space and time is given by phenomena..., I prefer to call it the *postulate of the absolute world*"), at the sake of having to accept that there *is* a fundamental rest-frame in our Universe, as cosmology came to demand anyway, many of our previous notions will have to fall. But the empirical facts still have to remain the same, so it's true that we will still have to reconcile the physical theory---our interpretation of the mathematics---with the evidence. Therefore, this requires a certain amount of "re-jigging" in order to maintain consistency.

I hope you don't mind this long note: I've found both your essay and your comments to be thought provoking, and I had a lot that I wanted to say in response. I hope you've found my comments to be thoughtful, and that we can continue to have intelligent discussion if you've got anything to add or criticise in response. I think we do have a common goal in mind; therefore, for now, I'd like to leave you with a quotation from Bertrand Russell, which I included in my thesis as an epigraph to the chapter "Against Einstein's Relativity: A Doxographical Analysis":

"I cannot believe---and I say this with all the emphasis of which I am capable---that there can ever be any good excuse for refusing to face the evidence in favour of something unwelcome. It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth."

Daryl

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[As Daryl's post was also added to the discussion on Edwin Eugene Klingman's page, my post is here and there too:]

Thank you Daryl for your kind and interesting comments on my essay, also the same to Edwin. Daryl, I wasn't referring to your essay before, having only flipped through it until just now. I think it's very good, and unlike many of these essays, I agree with you about some...

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[As Daryl's post was also added to the discussion on Edwin Eugene Klingman's page, my post is here and there too:]

Thank you Daryl for your kind and interesting comments on my essay, also the same to Edwin. Daryl, I wasn't referring to your essay before, having only flipped through it until just now. I think it's very good, and unlike many of these essays, I agree with you about some things.

I don't see the linguistic thing you mention as a problem with block time, it might be a slightly different use of the word 'is', but to me the question of whether or not we have the language to describe it doesn't affect the question of whether block time is true or false.

I don't agree with a universal present moment - I think the concept of simultaneity at a large distance is always questionable. In Newtonian time it has some meaning, in Einstein's version it has less. I think it has even less than that - no meaning beyond the light cone. The reason is that in the universe we have different time rates locally. Relating them clearly doesn't work in different frames, as I mentioned in the essay. They're thought to be relatable in the same frame, but we can't easily check that.

Two clocks a million light years apart and not moving in relation to each other might keep the same time and run in sync. But that doesn't prove simultaneity. It just proves that two local time rates at a distance are in step with each other. To me relating the times of events with meaning is saying that an event is before another one if it can affect it by getting a light signal there in time to influence it. That means within the light cone, at short range.

This would explain why block time is wrong - what led to it depends on long-range simultaneity having enough active meaning to allow an event to be in the past to one observer but in the future to another. Without that, there's no block time, and a lot of the confusion about time goes away. Hope this makes sense...

Best wishes, Jonathan

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Hello Chris,

you have it right where you say that in relativity speed affects the passage of time. Where you mention time travel, I'd say don't think about that for now, it's confusing everywhere you find it, from physics to hollywood. And we don't know if going back in time is possible. Also leave many possibilites to one side, and many universes, which are also confusing ways of looking...

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Hello Chris,

you have it right where you say that in relativity speed affects the passage of time. Where you mention time travel, I'd say don't think about that for now, it's confusing everywhere you find it, from physics to hollywood. And we don't know if going back in time is possible. Also leave many possibilites to one side, and many universes, which are also confusing ways of looking at things, and they're not backed up by experiment.

What we do know, from experiments, is that motion through time has its rate affected by objects moving through space, as you say. The trouble is, the same theory that tells us that, in the way we interpret it at present, also produces a picture of the universe frozen up, called block time, with all of time and history already laid out like a dimension. And that picture seems to tell us that this motion through time (that varies its speed) can't be real.

But we observe this apprent motion every day, or seem to. There's a sequence to events somehow. No-one has found a good explanation for this apparent motion through time, but the standard view, in as far as there is one, is that it doesn't exist, and that it must be some kind of illusion. But physicsts don't normally look closely at the possibility that it's an illusion (it seems to go outside our field), so instead that idea often gets swept under the carpet. In my essay, I've looked at this idea of an illusion, and found that it doesn't work easily at all.

I've argued that only one of the two pictures of time we know of can be real, the frozen universe, and the moving through time universe. Thinking about possible future events, one of these pictures means we're contributing to shaping what happens, as we seem to be. That's the one with motion through time. In the frozen universe of block time, we're not, because all events in history are already set in place, and they already exist.

But there's a lot of evidence for cause and effect, and motion through time. The block time picture goes against an enormous amount of evidence and obsevation, and if only one of the two pictures of time can be true, as I've tried to show, then block time would remove the laws of physics, and really the foundations of science. That's a high price to pay, just to have our present interpretation of relativity exactly right. I've argued that it might be slightly wrong, and that this would remove the problem. It would also mean that we can be affecting events, as we seem to be.

Best wishes, Jonathan

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Jonathan,

You wrote: "We may have been held back by too often assuming that Minkowski's assumptions about the time dimension are inseparable from SR. But a theory can be absolutely right without its interpretation being right, and only the core of SR has been confirmed by experiment."

Has it? The core of special relativity is shielded by what Lakatos calls "protective...

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Jonathan,

You wrote: "We may have been held back by too often assuming that Minkowski's assumptions about the time dimension are inseparable from SR. But a theory can be absolutely right without its interpretation being right, and only the core of SR has been confirmed by experiment."

Has it? The core of special relativity is shielded by what Lakatos calls "protective belt":

http://bertie.ccsu.edu/naturesci/PhilSci/Lakatos.html

"
Lakatos distinguished between two parts of a scientific theory: its "hard core" which contains its basic assumptions (or axioms, when set out formally and explicitly), and its "protective belt", a surrounding defensive set of "ad hoc" (produced for the occasion) hypotheses. (...) In Lakatos' model, we have to explicitly take into account the "ad hoc hypotheses" which serve as the protective belt. The protective belt serves to deflect "refuting" propositions from the core assumptions..."

Without the protective belt ("contracting lengths, local time, or Lorentz transformations") the Michelson-Morley experiment would have unequivocally confirmed the emission theory's tenet that the speed of light varies with the speed of the light source (c'=c+v) and refuted the assumption that the speed of light is independent of the speed of the light source (c'=c):

http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Its-Roots-Banesh-Hoffmann/d
p/0486406768

"Relativity and Its Roots" By Banesh Hoffmann: "Moreover, if light consists of particles, as Einstein had suggested in his paper submitted just thirteen weeks before this one, the second principle seems absurd: A stone thrown from a speeding train can do far more damage than one thrown from a train at rest; the speed of the particle is not independent of the motion of the object emitting it. And if we take light to consist of particles and assume that these particles obey Newton's laws, they will conform to Newtonian relativity and thus automatically account for the null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment without recourse to contracting lengths, local time, or Lorentz transformations. Yet, as we have seen, Einstein resisted the temptation to account for the null result in terms of particles of light and simple, familiar Newtonian ideas, and introduced as his second postulate something that was more or less obvious when thought of in terms of waves in an ether."

Pentcho Valev pvalev@yahoo.com

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Hello again Pentcho,

it can be a matter of taste what constitutes the core of a theory, but it is comparatively clear what has been confirmed by experiment. In SR a key part of the core is the time dilation equation, from the Lorentz-Einstein transformations. This has been confirmed many times, a good example being the experiment with muons at CERN in 1976, in which travelling near to c led...

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Hello again Pentcho,

it can be a matter of taste what constitutes the core of a theory, but it is comparatively clear what has been confirmed by experiment. In SR a key part of the core is the time dilation equation, from the Lorentz-Einstein transformations. This has been confirmed many times, a good example being the experiment with muons at CERN in 1976, in which travelling near to c led to the fixed lifetimes of the muons being multiplied by around 29.3.

This looks like time itself being affected, because the lifetime of the muon in its restframe had been measured accurately before then. And as Einstein arrived at time dilation from a fixed speed of light (which was also implied in Maxwell's equations), this looks very much like confirmation for that whole part of SR. There are many other experiments, see

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/exper
iments.html

and for tests of light speed from moving sources

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/e
xperiments.html#moving-source_tests

I always hope people will admit the clues we have and get on with solving the puzzle, instead of trying to deny them, get around them, or just to ignore them. Even clues that look very weird can turn out not be quite so weird once the puzzle is solved, as past experience has shown.

The constant speed of light in relation to motion time dilation seems definite to me, but in relation to gravity it's not so certain. Einstein suggested a variable speed of light in a gravity field well after SR, in 1911, during a transitional phase when he was trying to splice SR with gravity. And others have done the same - experimental results in relation to a constant speed of light within a gravity field are more ambiguous.

But returning to what you mentioned in your post, it's very clear that spacetime hasn't been confirmed, but that the core, or some of the core, of SR has. The spacetime interpretation of SR is untestable, incomplete at best, and a cul-de-sac that has caused a century of confusion at worst.

Best wishes, Jonathan

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Hello Pentcho,

In most areas of science people are simply trying to find out the truth. But there are a few areas where sadly people have a bias about what they hope to find.

In those areas, to put it mildly, you can't believe all you read on the internet. Relativity is one of them. In areas such as that there are people trying to show the standard view to be wrong, for reasons...

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Hello Pentcho,

In most areas of science people are simply trying to find out the truth. But there are a few areas where sadly people have a bias about what they hope to find.

In those areas, to put it mildly, you can't believe all you read on the internet. Relativity is one of them. In areas such as that there are people trying to show the standard view to be wrong, for reasons other than scientific ones. Yes, in the case of relativity there's bias in both directions, so you have to check everything carefully, but the people trying to deny SR are sometimes cleverly distorting the facts.

I think you have been taken in by these websites you read, and they can't be trusted. Whether or not Eddington got a measurement wrong, we know the restframe lifetime of the muon. Modern measurements are where you should look, and there was one made at NIST in 2010, in which they measured the time dilation of a moving object, at a speed of only around 10 m/sec. There have been other experiments recently which confirm SR very accurately, and our conversation is going to be unscientific if you don't look at them. Try this one:

Chou, C. W. et al, Optical clocks and Relativity, Science 24 Sept 2010: Vol. 329 no. 5999 pp. 1630-1633

In fact, I suspect it might not really be a discussion of physics even if you do look at the evidence. But I'd like to warn you about these websites you read, and help you to be more aware of the pitfalls in the landscape. Physics is very hard even if you get all the clues in front of you. If you don't, it's impossible. So you must work hard to get at the real clues, check everything you can, then you can try to solve these puzzles with some chance of success.

The only other thing to say is that as you know, I believe SR to be right but the spacetime interpretation to be wrong. This can explain some of the confusion about SR, but not all of it. Some people are against the physics establishment because of what it represents to them, rather than for better reasons.

Good luck, Jonathan

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Of course Minkowski spacetime is not a deductive consequence of any part of SR. A good relativist would never claim that it is, but people often imply it. It's just that spacetime looks like it might well be true, and if you make time a dimension as similar to the other dimensions as possible (and it still isn't very similar), then you get what looks like a few things clicking into place. And what...

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Of course Minkowski spacetime is not a deductive consequence of any part of SR. A good relativist would never claim that it is, but people often imply it. It's just that spacetime looks like it might well be true, and if you make time a dimension as similar to the other dimensions as possible (and it still isn't very similar), then you get what looks like a few things clicking into place. And what comes out works very well mathematically, and allowed us to simplify many theories.

But there are probably humdreds of other possible interpretations of SR out there, well - ones that look possible initially. But when you pursue them, you might find contradictions come out around sixty years later, as we did with spacetime.

As I said, physics is full of equivalence. Often more than one conceptual picture can be described by the same mathematics. The mathematics of SR is like Pythagoras' theorem - three speeds are in the same relationship as the three sides of a right angle triangle. No-one knows why.

best wishes, Jonathan

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Hello Yuri,

thanks, will read your essay.

Hello Pentcho,

It's you that must be joking! You're saying that you can rule out ALL possible interpretations other than spacetime? How do you know? What kind of thinker would say that all possible interpretations, including all as yet unknown and unimagined ones, are ruled out? John Norton certainly isn't saying that, he's a...

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Hello Yuri,

thanks, will read your essay.

Hello Pentcho,

It's you that must be joking! You're saying that you can rule out ALL possible interpretations other than spacetime? How do you know? What kind of thinker would say that all possible interpretations, including all as yet unknown and unimagined ones, are ruled out? John Norton certainly isn't saying that, he's a reputable scientist.

He's also very careful not to say that spacetime is an unavoidable consequence of SR. He implies it, but he doesn't actually say it. Look at his careful wording. First he says SR gets 'expressed geoetrically' that way. That says nothing much at all. Then he says:

"So if we mean a spacetime that also behaves the way special relativity demands, then we have a Minkowski spacetime".

The word 'demands' might seem to imply that it's an unavoidable consequence. But the initial phrase "If we mean a spacetime that..." gets him out of saying that it's unavoidable - he knows very well that it isn't, and there's no way he's going to say that. Because according to what he says, if we mean a particular spacetime that suits SR, then we mean Minkowski spacetime. But of course, if we don't mean a spacetime at all, then we can have another interpretation for SR.

I should say, as I did in the essay, that it's impossible to disconnect block time from spacetime. The Rietdijk-Putnam argument is a rigourous proof that one leads to the other. But it's very possible to disconnect SR from spacetime, although they might not tell you that.

Best wishes, Jonathan

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Dear Jonathan,

I have read your essay and I appreciate your novel viewpoint. Even though our views regarding SR may not fully coincide, I agree on the main thrust of your argument regarding time. All authors in this contest have presented their viewpoints in different styles. In the grand maze of the unknown it is important to consider all possible alternatives and different viewpoints for...

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Dear Jonathan,

I have read your essay and I appreciate your novel viewpoint. Even though our views regarding SR may not fully coincide, I agree on the main thrust of your argument regarding time. All authors in this contest have presented their viewpoints in different styles. In the grand maze of the unknown it is important to consider all possible alternatives and different viewpoints for building a consolidated common approach. I wish you good luck in the contest.

Recently, I have noticed some wild variations in community rated list of contest essays. There is a possibility of existence of a biased group or cartel (e.g. Academia or Relativists group) which promotes the essays of that group by rating them all 'High' and jointly demotes some other essays by rating them all 'Low'. As you know, we are not selecting the 'winners' of the contest through our ratings. Our community ratings will be used for selecting top 35 essays as 'Finalists' for further evaluation by a select panel of experts. Therefore, any biased group should not be permitted to corner all top 'Finalists' positions for their select group.

In order to ensure fair play in this selection, we should select (as per laid down criteria), as our individual choice, about 50 essays for entry in the finalists list and RATE them 'High'. Next we should select bottom 50 essays and rate them 'Low'. Remaining essays may be rated as usual. If most of the participants rate most of the essays this way then the negative influence of any bias group can certainly be mitigated.

I have read many but rated very few essays so far and intend to do a fast job now onwards by covering at least 10 essays every day.

You are requested to read and rate my essay titled,"Wrong Assumptions of Relativity Hindering Fundamental Research in Physical Space". Kindly do let me know if you don't get convinced about the invalidity of the founding assumptions of Relativity or regarding the efficacy of the proposed simple experiments for detection of absolute motion.

Finally I wish to see your excellent essay reach the list of finalists.

Best Regards

G S Sandhu

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"But when one thinks of the present as enduring, with the ideal past emerging in its wake, as an unreal thing about which records exist in the present, and the ideal future as something that's anticipated in the present,"

Jonathan, Daryl,

Sometimes the best mysteries are when the answer is hiding in plain sight. It's not that the present "moves" from past to future, but that what...

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"But when one thinks of the present as enduring, with the ideal past emerging in its wake, as an unreal thing about which records exist in the present, and the ideal future as something that's anticipated in the present,"

Jonathan, Daryl,

Sometimes the best mysteries are when the answer is hiding in plain sight. It's not that the present "moves" from past to future, but that what exists changes, creating current configurations out of constant interaction. Not the earth traveling a fourth narrative dimension from yesterday to tomorrow, but tomorrow becoming yesterday because the earth rotates. The present is simply what physically exists and its action. We think of it as a dimensionless point between past and future, but 1) There is no such thing as a dimensionless point. Anything multiplied by zero is zero. It is a mathematical convenience. A dimensionless point is as real as a dimensionless apple. 2) Also if you were to truly freeze time, then the very action causing it would cease to exist. It wouldn't be a snapshot of reality, but a state of absolute zero. It's just that light is very fast and we need to sense it in very brief frames in order to see clearly.

Duration isn't a timeline external to the present, but what is present between measured events.

Clock rates vary because levels of activity vary in different environments. Gravity and velocity slow and warp atomic activity and structure, which explains both time dilation and length contraction. This argues for space as an inertial state as evidenced by centrifugal force, which is the effect of inertia on spin. That is another topic though.

A faster clock isn't traveling into the future more quickly, but into the past, since it is aging faster.

We are not building up an immutable past, as George Ellis and Joy Christian have argued, because with every passing moment, prior events recede ever further into the past, altering any conscious or physical record of them. Remember reality is relativistic! There is no objective perspective, so the past is as much a construct of subjective perspective as any currently observed event! So adding events to the past doesn't push the present into the future. It pushes prior events further into the past!

This argument against simultaneity because perception is relative is nonsense. One might as well argue that since the people of Kansas City learned of Lincoln's death before the people of San Francisco, he must have died earlier from the perspective of KC. All observations are in the future of the event.

That damn cat is not both dead and alive, because it is the collapse of future probabilities which yields current actualities. It is only due to QM using an external timeline that a determined past is projected onto a probabilistic future. While the laws governing any outcome might well be exact(or they wouldn't be laws), the total input into any event cannot be known prior to the event, because the lightcone of input is only completed by the event.

As you read these words, you progress from prior to succeeding words. Much as the hands of a clock move from one mark to the next. That linear narrative is the basis of our intellect. From the dawn of life and mobile organisms, we move along a singular path, encountering sequences of events. Does that mean sequence is fundamental, or only fundamental to perception? Does yesterday cause today? Or is that as sensible as saying one rung on a ladder causes the next? Now my typing on these keys does cause letters to appear on the screen, because there is a definitive transfer of energy from the action to the consequence. Just as it is the energy of the sun shining on a rotating planet which causes the sequence of events called "days." The future is not where the information points, which is only referential to the point of perception, but where the energy goes.

We create knowledge inductively, future becoming past, but use it deductively, projecting the past onto the future.

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Hello John,

I have to say - someone who thinks they have an answer no-one else could find might not have understood the question.

The bits of your post that aren't more suited to a poetry site include a point I refuted two weeks ago in a clear way. You then changed what you were saying completely, but have now gone back to your original approach, and have posted it on my page again....

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Hello John,

I have to say - someone who thinks they have an answer no-one else could find might not have understood the question.

The bits of your post that aren't more suited to a poetry site include a point I refuted two weeks ago in a clear way. You then changed what you were saying completely, but have now gone back to your original approach, and have posted it on my page again. I'll refute the point again, but once I've done that I want no more discussion - thanks for communicating anyway, and I'll wish you all the best.

You said yesterday, and two weeks ago, that local time rates are caused by atomic activity, leading to metabolic rate differences among observers. If you knew the physics you'd know that doesn't fit the facts. The clues to the time puzzle are very specific, and anything that doesn't fit them simply doesn't fit them. I pointed out that two observers moving in opposite directions in a symmetrical way each see the other slowed down, but it's impossible for each to have a slower metabolism than the other. You then wrote back to say that that was caused by a blueshift - you must surely have meant redshift. But you've now returned to your original position. Better to discuss this with someone else.

Best wishes, Jonathan

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Hello John,

it seems to me you're not interested in a real discussion, that's why I've given up trying. You say:

"Your response though, to take a minor feature of the larger argument, assert it's wrong without specifying why, than dismiss the entire argument on that basis, is the usual reaction I get from those who think there are no fundamental issues to discuss".

But what...

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Hello John,

it seems to me you're not interested in a real discussion, that's why I've given up trying. You say:

"Your response though, to take a minor feature of the larger argument, assert it's wrong without specifying why, than dismiss the entire argument on that basis, is the usual reaction I get from those who think there are no fundamental issues to discuss".

But what really happens is very different. When I try to zoom in on one area of what you say, and do what we do in physics, ie try to pin something down, and start the laborious and time-consuming task of showing you what no-one else may bother to tell you - that there is nothing substantial underneath this or that idea - then instead of taking my points head on, you dance away somewhere else. You've done this several times. Not interested in really pinning anything down, but without that it's mostly poetry, and not the best I've read.

Your idea about metabolism I've shown to be wrong, in a clear, specific way. If the clues were such that that was possible, it would be simple, and by about 1940 there would have been a theory of that kind, with many adherents. There isn't because that idea doesn't work, nor do many others of yours. I've shown you exactly why with one, but you don't want to know. Perhaps it's more fun thinking the ideas work. Well, I've tried.

Best wishes, Jonathan

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I agree that one must define Time in terms of motion. Additionally, it seems reasonable to assume that similar physical results must have, at their base, common causes. That is the path I've taken in an attempt to determine the nature of Time. So, Gravitational Redshift, Cosmological Redshift, and doppler shifts must result from the same physical cause. To that end I prefer to look at the nature...

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I agree that one must define Time in terms of motion. Additionally, it seems reasonable to assume that similar physical results must have, at their base, common causes. That is the path I've taken in an attempt to determine the nature of Time. So, Gravitational Redshift, Cosmological Redshift, and doppler shifts must result from the same physical cause. To that end I prefer to look at the nature of spacetime for an answer. Since red and blue doppler shifts involve a change of wavelength caused by a position change of the emitter relative to the receiver, I conclude that some manifestation of spacetime must induce a change in wavelength for the other two types. To that end one very convenient model can be postulated wherein spacetime density increases in the presence of matter (along with a time change) For an emitted light ray leaving a gravitational field its wavelength increases as it exits the field(and enters less dense spacetime) The reverse obviously occurs when the ray enters the field. Time must then be a consequence of the relative spacetime density.

If this is valid then motion must be related to the interaction of matter with its local space. Acceleration must have the same common origin and the same common result in interactions with local spacetime. That is, if gravitational acceleration is caused by an increased spacetime density in the direction of motion, then this also implies that an accelerated object must induce an increased spacetime density ahead of itself.

This comes with a lot of ramifications for Physics! Mach's Principle as an explanation for inertia is only the first Foundational Leg to collapse. But, if that goes then what must be concluded about the FLRW model? Matter here cannot have any gravitationaal influence across the Universe!

As for the two apparent types of time, the entire Universe is in motion and matter densities (and spacetime densities) vary throughout the Universe depending whether one considers a perspective from the point of view inside a Void or within the bound nature of Matter Filaments. Time must be Relative according to ones' motion or relationship to local matter.

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Hello Lloyd,

This isn't meant to be a platform for trotting out our theories, though you'd never know from looking at this site. For that reason, in my essay I've just said that I think we need a new interpretation for SR, and set out a rational argument that the existing one doesn't fit what we observe.

So I'm not going into discussions on theories that land here, unless the...

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Hello Lloyd,

This isn't meant to be a platform for trotting out our theories, though you'd never know from looking at this site. For that reason, in my essay I've just said that I think we need a new interpretation for SR, and set out a rational argument that the existing one doesn't fit what we observe.

So I'm not going into discussions on theories that land here, unless the discussion relates to the general one. But I'll throw my Kent Brockman two cents back, in case it's of interest.

To me, you start with a principle that can be shown to be wrong, and then you don't go by it anyway. You say that similar results must have similar causes, and then you say that therefore all wavelength shifts must be caused by the same thing. But there are several kinds of redshift that are well understood, and they have different causes. There's the Doppler shift, refraction shift, and bremstrallung, for instance. We know their causes, and they're all different. So the general principle you start with doesn't look too good.

But then you don't go by it anyway, which actually helps. You then decide that the gravitational shift, because it must have the same cause as the Doppler shift, is caused by differences to the 'density of spacetime' - this is a completely different cause from that of the Doppler shift.

And it goes on - you don't define spacetime, but you need to not only because its density changes in your picture, but also because it has time in it, and you get time out of it the other side as well - "Time must then be a consequence of the relative spacetime density." So you need to define it early on.

If you want to talk about the general subject matter then do, you haven't so far.

Best wishes, Jonathan

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Dear

Very interesting to see your essay.

Perhaps all of us are convinced that: the choice of yourself is right!That of course is reasonable.

So may be we should work together to let's the consider clearly defined for the basis foundations theoretical as the most challenging with intellectual of all of us.

Why we do not try to start with a real challenge is very close...

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Dear

Very interesting to see your essay.

Perhaps all of us are convinced that: the choice of yourself is right!That of course is reasonable.

So may be we should work together to let's the consider clearly defined for the basis foundations theoretical as the most challenging with intellectual of all of us.

Why we do not try to start with a real challenge is very close and are the focus of interest of the human science: it is a matter of mass and grain Higg boson of the standard model.

Knowledge and belief reasoning of you will to express an opinion on this matter:

You have think that: the Mass is the expression of the impact force to material - so no impact force, we do not feel the Higg boson - similar to the case of no weight outside the Earth's atmosphere.

Does there need to be a particle with mass for everything have volume? If so, then why the mass of everything change when moving from the Earth to the Moon? Higg boson is lighter by the Moon's gravity is weaker than of Earth?

The LHC particle accelerator used to "Smashed" until "Ejected" Higg boson, but why only when the "Smashed" can see it,and when off then not see it ?

Can be "locked" Higg particles? so when "released" if we do not force to it by any the Force, how to know that it is "out" or not?

You are should be boldly to give a definition of weight that you think is right for us to enjoy, or oppose my opinion.

Because in the process of research, the value of "failure" or "success" is the similar with science. The purpose of a correct theory be must is without any a wrong point ?

Glad to see from you comments soon,because still have too many of the same problems.

Regards !

Hải.Caohoàng of THE INCORRECT ASSUMPTIONS AND A CORRECT THEORY

August 23, 2012 - 11:51 GMT on this essay contest.

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Dear Jonathan Kerr

Your presented is very interesting.

But it seems you have not decided on the final choice.

Do you think:

Actually, it was too simple to the extent that we can not "doubt" that: that is it.

Let relax with essays and my new theory and hope to get your opinion.

Kind Regards !Hải.Caohoàng of THE INCORRECT ASSUMPTIONS AND A CORRECT...

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Dear Jonathan Kerr

Your presented is very interesting.

But it seems you have not decided on the final choice.

Do you think:

Actually, it was too simple to the extent that we can not "doubt" that: that is it.

Let relax with essays and my new theory and hope to get your opinion.

Kind Regards !Hải.Caohoàng of THE INCORRECT ASSUMPTIONS AND A CORRECT THEORY

August 23, 2012 - 11:51 GMT on this essay contest.

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Jonathan,

You wrote (on Giovanni's page): "Pentcho, briefly, you and I have already discussed this question at length on my page, and I have shown you to be wrong, in a way that even you eventually didn't argue back about. The reason we call it "the spacetime interpretation" is because it's an interpretation. It's untested - unlike SR, which is extremely well confirmed by experiment. People...

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Jonathan,

You wrote (on Giovanni's page): "Pentcho, briefly, you and I have already discussed this question at length on my page, and I have shown you to be wrong, in a way that even you eventually didn't argue back about. The reason we call it "the spacetime interpretation" is because it's an interpretation. It's untested - unlike SR, which is extremely well confirmed by experiment. People often imply that spacetime is an unavoidable consequence of SR, but no-one will actually say that it is, because it isn't."

Then you wrote (on my page): "Hello Pentcho, we can find out the answer to what we've been discussing. I thought I'd got it across, was trying to help to get to what's underneath the picture they imply, which sometimes can be false. Maybe you want to email John Baez, (baez@math.ucr.edu), or some other relativist, with the question 'is Minkowski spacetime an unavoidable consequence of SR, and the only possible interpretation?'. I'd be surprised if any relativist said yes to that. Anyway, please discuss it, if there's any further need to, on my page rather than on Giovanni's page. (Let me know what they say, if you email them.)"

Here is a text where Minkowski spacetime is referred to as an useful diagram allowing one to get "an overall intuitive picture of a setup". Note that "if you want to produce exact numbers in a problem", special relativity is enough:

David Morin: "Minkowski diagrams (sometimes called "spacetime" diagrams) are extremely useful in seeing how coordinates transform between different reference frames. If you want to produce exact numbers in a problem, you'll probably have to use one of the strategies we've encountered so far. But as far as getting an overall intuitive picture of a setup goes (if there is in fact any such thing as intuition in relativity), there is no better tool than a Minkowski diagram."

In my view, if you want to prove that Minkowski spacetime is more than a useful diagram, you will have to find an example where Minkowski spacetime produces "exact numbers in a problem" that special relativity does not produce. I think there is no such example.

Pentcho Valev

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Dear Jonathan - thank you for your explanations and your good wishes in your last message above that I have just seen.

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Hello. This is group message to you and the writers of some 80 contest essays that I have already read, rated and probably commented on.

This year I feel proud that the following old and new online friends have accepted my suggestion that they submit...

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Dear Jonathan - thank you for your explanations and your good wishes in your last message above that I have just seen.

----

Hello. This is group message to you and the writers of some 80 contest essays that I have already read, rated and probably commented on.

This year I feel proud that the following old and new online friends have accepted my suggestion that they submit their ideas to this contest. Please feel free to read, comment on and rate these essays (including mine) if you have not already done so, thanks:

Why We Still Don't Have Quantum Nucleodynamics by Norman D. Cook a summary of his Springer book on the subject.

A Challenge to Quantized Absorption by Experiment and Theory by Eric Stanley Reiter Very important experiments based on Planck's loading theory, proving that Einstein's idea that the photon is a particle is wrong.

An Artist's Modest Proposal by Kenneth Snelson The world-famous inventor of Tensegrity applies his ideas of structure to de Broglie's atom.

Notes on Relativity by Edward Hoerdt Questioning how the Michelson-Morely experiment is analyzed in the context of Special Relativity

Vladimir Tamari's essay Fix Physics! Is Physics like a badly-designed building? A humorous illustrate take. Plus: Seven foundational questions suggest a new beginning.

Thank you and good luck.

Vladimir

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If you do not understand why your rating dropped down. As I found ratings in the contest are calculated in the next way. Suppose your rating is [equation] and [equation] was the quantity of people which gave you ratings. Then you have [equation] of points. After it anyone give you [equation] of points so you have [equation] of points and [equation] is the common quantity of the people which gave...

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If you do not understand why your rating dropped down. As I found ratings in the contest are calculated in the next way. Suppose your rating is and was the quantity of people which gave you ratings. Then you have of points. After it anyone give you of points so you have of points and is the common quantity of the people which gave you ratings. At the same time you will have of points. From here, if you want to be R2 > R1 there must be: or or In other words if you want to increase rating of anyone you must give him more points then the participant`s rating was at the moment you rated him. From here it is seen that in the contest are special rules for ratings. And from here there are misunderstanding of some participants what is happened with their ratings. Moreover since community ratings are hided some participants do not sure how increase ratings of others and gives them maximum 10 points. But in the case the scale from 1 to 10 of points do not work, and some essays are overestimated and some essays are drop down. In my opinion it is a bad problem with this Contest rating process. I hope the FQXI community will change the rating process.

Sergey Fedosin

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