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What's Ultimately Possible in Physics?
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The Nature of Time
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read/discuss • winners
Current Essay Contest
Contest Partners: The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation, SubMeta, and Scientific American
Previous Contests
Undecidability, Uncomputability, and Unpredictability Essay Contest
December 24, 2019 - April 24, 2020
Contest Partners: Fetzer Franklin Fund, and The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation
read/discuss • winners
What Is “Fundamental”
October 28, 2017 to January 22, 2018
Sponsored by the Fetzer Franklin Fund and The Peter & Patricia Gruber Foundation
read/discuss • winners
Wandering Towards a Goal
How can mindless mathematical laws give rise to aims and intention?
December 2, 2016 to March 3, 2017
Contest Partner: The Peter and Patricia Gruber Fund.
read/discuss • winners
Trick or Truth: The Mysterious Connection Between Physics and Mathematics
Contest Partners: Nanotronics Imaging, The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation, and The John Templeton Foundation
Media Partner: Scientific American
read/discuss • winners
How Should Humanity Steer the Future?
January 9, 2014 - August 31, 2014
Contest Partners: Jaan Tallinn, The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation, The John Templeton Foundation, and Scientific American
read/discuss • winners
It From Bit or Bit From It
March 25 - June 28, 2013
Contest Partners: The Gruber Foundation, J. Templeton Foundation, and Scientific American
read/discuss • winners
Questioning the Foundations
Which of Our Basic Physical Assumptions Are Wrong?
May 24 - August 31, 2012
Contest Partners: The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation, SubMeta, and Scientific American
read/discuss • winners
Is Reality Digital or Analog?
November 2010 - February 2011
Contest Partners: The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation and Scientific American
read/discuss • winners
What's Ultimately Possible in Physics?
May - October 2009
Contest Partners: Astrid and Bruce McWilliams
read/discuss • winners
The Nature of Time
August - December 2008
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RECENT POSTS IN THIS TOPIC
Peter Jackson: on 10/6/12 at 19:04pm UTC, wrote Edward You confirm my own issues with sidereal and astronomical time...
DANIEL ALVES: on 9/28/12 at 16:01pm UTC, wrote Dear Edward I have read a lot of your papers, including your phd thesis...
Yuri Danoyan: on 9/8/12 at 0:23am UTC, wrote yuri@danoyan.net
John Merryman: on 9/4/12 at 2:28am UTC, wrote Edward, Since time is the subject of my own entry, I naturally had to see...
Edward Anderson: on 9/3/12 at 13:26pm UTC, wrote Essay Abstract ``It is utterly beyond our power to measure the...
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Peter Jackson: on 10/6/12 at 19:04pm UTC, wrote Edward You confirm my own issues with sidereal and astronomical time...
DANIEL ALVES: on 9/28/12 at 16:01pm UTC, wrote Dear Edward I have read a lot of your papers, including your phd thesis...
Yuri Danoyan: on 9/8/12 at 0:23am UTC, wrote yuri@danoyan.net
John Merryman: on 9/4/12 at 2:28am UTC, wrote Edward, Since time is the subject of my own entry, I naturally had to see...
Edward Anderson: on 9/3/12 at 13:26pm UTC, wrote Essay Abstract ``It is utterly beyond our power to measure the...
RECENT FORUM POSTS
Jim Snowdon: "What about the dinosaur bones Steve? They are still here with us in the..." in The Quantum Clock-Maker...
Lorraine Ford: "P.S. Clearly, a situation symbolically representable as: ..." in The Present State of...
Lorraine Ford: "So, in reply to the posts by Stefan Weckbach and Steve Dufourny above,..." in The Present State of...
Georgina Woodward: "If considering existence rather than appearances, the time dimension..." in Anatomy of spacetime and...
Georgina Woodward: "That is about the 'anatomy"" of spacetime." in Anatomy of spacetime and...
Steve Dufourny: "Hello Jim, yes indeed in a sense we have these motions and we have invented..." in The Quantum Clock-Maker...
Georgina Woodward: "Thank you. Good luck." in The Nature of Time
Lorraine Ford: "Rob, As you have not replied, I take it that you now concede that the..." in 16th Marcel Grossmann...
RECENT ARTICLES
click titles to read articles
The Quantum Clock-Maker Investigating COVID-19, Causality, and the Trouble with AI
Sally Shrapnel, a quantum physicist and medical practitioner, on her experiments into cause-and-effect that could help us understand time’s arrow—and build better healthcare algorithms.
Connect the Quantum Dots for a New Kind of Fuel
'Artificial atoms' allow physicists to manipulate individual electrons—and could help to reduce energy wastage in electronic devices.
Can Choices Curve Spacetime?
Two teams are developing ways to detect quantum-gravitational effects in the lab.
The Quantum Engine That Simultaneously Heats and Cools
Tiny device could help boost quantum electronics.
The Quantum Refrigerator
A tiny cooling device could help rewrite the thermodynamic rule book for quantum machines.
FQXi FORUM
September 17, 2021
CATEGORY:
Questioning the Foundations Essay Contest (2012)
[back]
TOPIC: Machian Time Is To Be Abstracted From What Change? by Edward Anderson [refresh]
TOPIC: Machian Time Is To Be Abstracted From What Change? by Edward Anderson [refresh]
Essay Abstract
``It is utterly beyond our power to measure the changes of things by time. Quite the contrary, time is an abstraction at which we arrive through the changes of things." Ernst Mach [1]. *What* change? Three answers to this are `any change' (Rovelli), `all change' (Barbour) and my argument here for the middle ground of a `sufficient totality of locally relevant change' (STLRC) giving a generalization of the astronomers' ephemeris time. I then use STLRC as a selection principle on existing and new approaches to the Problem of Time in Quantum Gravity. Emergent Jacobi-Barbour-Bertotti time can be interpreted as arising from a STLRC, resolves the classical Problem of Time and has an emergent semiclassical counterpart as regards facing the QM Problem of Time.
Author Bio
Edward Anderson studied theoretical physics at Cambridge and London, before holding research positions at Cambridge, Alberta, Madrid and Paris. Edward's other main interest is in forms of university welfare that actually work for the shy and the different.
Download Essay PDF File
``It is utterly beyond our power to measure the changes of things by time. Quite the contrary, time is an abstraction at which we arrive through the changes of things." Ernst Mach [1]. *What* change? Three answers to this are `any change' (Rovelli), `all change' (Barbour) and my argument here for the middle ground of a `sufficient totality of locally relevant change' (STLRC) giving a generalization of the astronomers' ephemeris time. I then use STLRC as a selection principle on existing and new approaches to the Problem of Time in Quantum Gravity. Emergent Jacobi-Barbour-Bertotti time can be interpreted as arising from a STLRC, resolves the classical Problem of Time and has an emergent semiclassical counterpart as regards facing the QM Problem of Time.
Author Bio
Edward Anderson studied theoretical physics at Cambridge and London, before holding research positions at Cambridge, Alberta, Madrid and Paris. Edward's other main interest is in forms of university welfare that actually work for the shy and the different.
Download Essay PDF File
Edward,
Since time is the subject of my own entry, I naturally had to see what your entry says.
You make what seems to be the classic physics mistake of first recognizing that time is an effect of change, then obsessing over how it's measured. If you want to understand time, ask what change is, not how to measure it. Hint: The earth doesn't travel the fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow. Tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates.
report post as inappropriate
Since time is the subject of my own entry, I naturally had to see what your entry says.
You make what seems to be the classic physics mistake of first recognizing that time is an effect of change, then obsessing over how it's measured. If you want to understand time, ask what change is, not how to measure it. Hint: The earth doesn't travel the fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow. Tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates.
Dear Edward
I have read a lot of your papers, including your phd thesis which I find fascinating. I will have to read your essay again to go through all the technical details. One question: why are Mach´s thoughts so compelling? If distinct philosophies of motion lead to distinct physics, would it be possible that advances in Mach´s thougths could lead to advances in physics? Particularly, are we restricted to absolute or relational philosophies of motion? Please see my essay , I think your opinion would be very valuable. Thanks
Daniel
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I have read a lot of your papers, including your phd thesis which I find fascinating. I will have to read your essay again to go through all the technical details. One question: why are Mach´s thoughts so compelling? If distinct philosophies of motion lead to distinct physics, would it be possible that advances in Mach´s thougths could lead to advances in physics? Particularly, are we restricted to absolute or relational philosophies of motion? Please see my essay , I think your opinion would be very valuable. Thanks
Daniel
Edward
You confirm my own issues with sidereal and astronomical time conventions, but I was quite surprised, although closing in a little on the question of locality of time, that you didn't explore of analyse 'Proper Time', and the consequential existence of what I may then christen 'improper time' and it's rationalisation. Do you have a view?
I'd also be interested in your views on the rather new temporal analysis and findings within my own essay.
Best wishes.
Peter
report post as inappropriate
You confirm my own issues with sidereal and astronomical time conventions, but I was quite surprised, although closing in a little on the question of locality of time, that you didn't explore of analyse 'Proper Time', and the consequential existence of what I may then christen 'improper time' and it's rationalisation. Do you have a view?
I'd also be interested in your views on the rather new temporal analysis and findings within my own essay.
Best wishes.
Peter
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