Hello Carlo,

Thank you very much for the paper, which I enjoyed.

However, instead of forgetting time, perhaps we should forget quantum gravity for a moment? For while time manifests itself throughout classical, relativistic, and quantum mechanical physics and our empirical reality, the graviton has never been seen.

Do we have to quantize gravity? Could it be that nature is...

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Hello Carlo,

Thank you very much for the paper, which I enjoyed.

However, instead of forgetting time, perhaps we should forget quantum gravity for a moment? For while time manifests itself throughout classical, relativistic, and quantum mechanical physics and our empirical reality, the graviton has never been seen.

Do we have to quantize gravity? Could it be that nature is as it is, and that God or the Prime Mover/Creator came up with both QM and GR, which seem to coexist perfectly well in their current forms? For instance, this laptop computer is powered by quantum phenonema, and too, it is held on my lap by gravity. Each one has a role, and each seems perfectly content to play it. Perhaps both mathematical predictions and the experimental search for gravitons has fallen short because gravitons do not exist. Now this is no reason to stop looking, but too, it is not exactly a reason to keep looking, and it is certainly not a reason to get rid of time, which does seem to exist, as my laptop's clock tells me I am running late, yet again. :)

A book you would enjoy is Freeman Dyson's THE SCIENTIST AS REBEL. On page 219 Freeman Dyson writes,

"(Brian) Greene takes it for granted, and here the great majority of physicists agree with him, that the division of physics into seperate theories for large and small objects is unacceptable. General relativity is based on the idea that space-time is a flexible structure pulled and pushed by material objects. Quantum mechanics is based on the idea that space-time is a rigid framework within which observations are made. Greene believes there is an urgent need to find a theory of quantum gravity that works for large and small objects alike. . . As a conservative, I do not agree that a division of physics into separate theories for large and small is unacceptable. I am happy with the situation in which we have lived for the last eighty years . . . The question I am asking is if there is conceivable way we could detect the existence of individual gravitons. I propose as an hypothesis that it is impossible in principle to observe the existence of individual gravitons." --Freeman Dyson, THE SCIENTIST AS REBEL, pp 219-220

And yet, it is possible to observe, contemplate, experience, and witness time in multiple manners and ways.

I vote that we keep time. :) All I know is that we never have enough of it.

My simple theory--Moving Dimensions Theory--views time as a phenomenon that naturally emerges because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimenions. Change is fundamentally woven into the fabric of spacetime via dx4/dt = ic, which makes sense, because change is fundamentally woven into our everyday existence, empirical observations, and all branches of physics! Indeed--it would not be possible to make a measurement without change! A great thing about MDT is that it allows us to keep all of relativity while unfreezing time and liberating us from the block universe, which is yet a meaningful artefact that arises from certain interpretations of relativity. And who knows, perhaps MDT will tell us something about quantum time, which will tell us something about quantum gravity. For MDT also provides a framework for quantum entanglemnt and nonlocality, and thus it provides a *physical* model underlying qm's inherent nonlocal, probabilistic nature.

Think about MDT as a simple *physical* unification of relativity and QM--both entanglement and nonlocality can be accounted for via the same principle that ensures a photon does not age, no matter how far it travels. A photon's timelessness, implied by relativity, represents a nonlocality in time. Both quantum entanglement and the agelessness of a photon descend from a common principle: dx4/dt = ic. A photon is matter that "surfs" the fourth expanding dimension, and thus it remains in one place in it, while traveling through the three spatial dimensions at c. Perhaps this is MDT's simplest proof: The only way to remain stationary in the fourth dimension is to move at c through the three spatial dimensions: egro, the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.

And a great thing about MDT is that it also presents a *physical* model for entropy, as briefly elaborated on in my paper:

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/238

MDT represents the kind of tehory we have not seen for awhile--a simple postulate and a simple equation that present a novel aspect of the universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimension: dx4/dt=ic. This fundamental invariance underlies the invariance of the speed of light--both the constant velocity of c meausred by all inertial observers and, the constancy of c that is independent of the source. MDT also underlies relativity's two postulates, and all of relativity may be derived from its simple principle of a fourth expanding dimension.

In your conclusion your write, "It is possible to formulate classical mechanics in a way in which the time variable is treated on equal footings with the other physical variables, and not singled out as the special independent variable. I have argued that this is the natural formalism for describing general relativistic systems."

But when we look at Einstein's 1912 Manuscript, we see that time plays a different role from position. x1, x2, x3 represent the three spatial dimensions, which we generally use to demarcate position. And then along comes x4, which Einstein equates with ict. So as t progresses on our watches, x4 must progress. Time is very, very different from the three spatial dimensions! Perhaps it is not a dimension after all, but a parameter emerges because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, as suggested by x4=ict.

In your conclusion you also write, "The peculiar properties of the time variable are of thermodynamical origin, and can be captured by the thermal

time hypothesis."

But what underlies the "thermodynamical origin?"

MDT and dx4/dt=ic underlies time's thermodynamic arrow, and in my paper I account for and unify all of time's arrows and assymetries with MDT's simple postulate and equation. And in addition to this, all of relativity may be derived from MDT, while qm's entanglement and nonlocality are explained with a *physical* model, along with entropy.

Thanks for the paper Carlo!

As I write this, the DOW is down by 777! I have to run, so I apologize for any typos, as I only had time for one quick proofread. And once posted, these posts remain forever frozen in the past. :) There is no way to go back and change them--another proof that time travel into the past is impossible, which MDT agrees with.

Best,

Dr. E :)

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I try to reply to the various posts.

A certain number of posts raise a question that in my opinion is a very good and a very important question. The question, that some of the post present as a strong objection, is that the hypothesis of thermal time is not good, because it only deals with thermal equilibrium, while we need non-equilibrium states to have non-trivial time phenomena. I...

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I try to reply to the various posts.

A certain number of posts raise a question that in my opinion is a very good and a very important question. The question, that some of the post present as a strong objection, is that the hypothesis of thermal time is not good, because it only deals with thermal equilibrium, while we need non-equilibrium states to have non-trivial time phenomena. I think that this point is well taken, but also that I have an answer, which is the following. The thermal time hypothesis does NOT state that the only relevant quantities in the description of a system are thermodynamical. If it was so, I would agree that in an equilibrium state there would be no way of seeing time flow. Nothing happens to thermodynamical quantities, in equilibrium. However, all the usual dynamical variables exist and have their dynamics, even if immersed in a thermal state. To make this precise, consider for instance quantum field theory at a given temperature. This is a theory about a situation where there is a temperature, namely a state of equilibrium. But quantum field theory at a given temperature allows us to compute scattering amplitudes, propagation, et cetera, namely the same quantities as quantum field theory at zero temperature. Why? because it describe dynamical phenomena (say scattering) when there is an overall thermal bath "around" these phenomena. This is the context in which the thermal time hypothesis make sense. I am not saying that we only measure equilibrium thermal quantities. This would be manifestly in contradiction with everything we measure. I am saying that we measure dynamical phenomena (that, correlations between observables quantities) in a context in which there exists a thermal bath. (Concretely, this bath exists for real, given by the cosmic background radiation at 3K.) More technically, the thermal time hypothesis regards KMS states. Once a KMS state is given we can nevertheless measure quantities such as the correlations that are in fact in the very definition of the KMS states. These are explicitly time dependent. It is like observing "departures" from equilibrium, and study the way the behave.

A different version of the same question is formulated by the posts that ask whether bodies at different temperature define different times. I am not sure I have an answer to this point. But it important to recall that the thermal time hypothesis does not REPLACE dynamics. My entire point is that dynamics can be expressed as correlations between variables, and does not NEED a time to be specified. The thermal time is only the one needed to make sense of our sense of flowing time, it is not a time needed to compute how a simple physical system behaves. The last can be expressed in terms of correlations between a variable and a clock hand, without having to say which one is the time variable. Therefore the question about the flow of time defined by bodies at different temperature is a question about thermodynamics out of equilibrium. Unfortunately, like much of today's physics, I have not much to say on this. In any case, I am aware that the thermal time hypothesis is highly speculative. I would like the readers to keep it separate from the main idea defended in the essay, which is that mechanics can be formulated without having to say which variable is the time variable.

Another series of posts questions the validity of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. I agree that at present we cannot rely firmly on a well defined version of this quantum gravity equation. But this is not what I mean when I talk about the hamiltonian constraint that define the dynamics. I refer much more simply, to the fact that ALL dynamical systems (classical) can be simply reformulated in a way that puts time on the same ground as the other variables, an din this case the dynamics is expressed by a "Wheeler-DeWitt-like" constraint. This idea is much older than me. I have only developed it and I have tried to use it as a general way to reformulate dynamics, without the need of singling out time.

One posts quote the phrase "At the same time, the entry should differ substantially from any previously published piece by the author." I suppose that this is a criticisms to the point that what I have written reflects things I have already published. I fully accept this criticism. In my understanding, the FQXi context is not the place for totally novel ideas. I suppose an scientist with a totally new idea would publish it on PRL, rather. The beautiful aspect of the FWXi context is that it opens a forum for focusing and expressing clearly the ideas that are around, articulating them and discussing them. I had never previously written a compact exposition of my ideas on time, which are either scattered in papers, or that require reading all my book, which technically heavy and the ideas on time are submerged by technicalities that have to do with quantum gravity and not just with time. In this sense, the essay for FQXi is, among my writing, strongly original. Of course parts of it do nothing but repeating points I have published elsewhere.

Dr.E. ha posted a friendly note, arguing that perhaps gravity needs not to be quantized, quoting Dyson on this, and pointing out his "Moving dimansion theory". I thank him for the indication. I'll look at it (I suppose this is one of the purposes of the Forum). I have also immense admiration for Freeman Dyson, but I think Freeman is wrong here. The need for quantum gravity does not come from the fact that we are disturbed by two different theories, and has little to do with seeing or not the graviton. It comes for our concrete interest in certain real phenomena, which we would like to study, and we have no theory for them. The main one is the early universe. If we take our gravitational theory seriously, as Freeman demands, we must conclude that the universe was in a state of over Planckian curvature sometimes in the past. On the one hand, we know for sure that generally relativity goes wrong in this regime. On the other, we have a simple explanation for this going wrong: quantum effects on the gravitational field are disregarded. Therefore the happy coexistence of general relativity and quantum mechanics, which was perhaps possible when Freeman was a younger man, and we knew less about the universe, is very, very hard to defend today. Either we find something else, or we are in the dark.

Then there is a post on the waste of public money on research about time in quantum gravity. I take this seriously. Often at conferences I listen to talk after talk, and I wonder "is public money wasted here"? Maybe yes. But was it wasted public money the money that the Ptolemy's Kings put in Ptolemy's astronomy? Or that the Church put in supporting Copernicus completely useless searches? Or that supported Maxwell and Faraday, Shcroedinger or Einstein? No, it clearly was not. Is there a way to chose a priori who will be next Dirac? No, there is not. Research needs courage, wasted time and money, false directions. The history of our civilization is the proof that all this money is not wasted, in my opinion.

Carlo Rovelli

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Thanks Eleni, Ray and John for the last nice posts.

Peter Morgan raises an extremely good issue, with both a technical and a conceptual side. I refer here to his post above, without trying to repeat here his points, since these are several, interconnected, and nicely expressed by Peter.

First, a technical point. It is true that Tomita theory wants a von Neumann algebra, and...

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Thanks Eleni, Ray and John for the last nice posts.

Peter Morgan raises an extremely good issue, with both a technical and a conceptual side. I refer here to his post above, without trying to repeat here his points, since these are several, interconnected, and nicely expressed by Peter.

First, a technical point. It is true that Tomita theory wants a von Neumann algebra, and therefore the corresponding norm; but this is given for free by the state over the C* algebra. The reason is that such a state is enough for the GNS construction, which provides the representation, the Hilbert space, and therefore the von Neumann algebra structure. Thus, C* algebra and (appropriate) state are enough.

This does not answer Peter's questions, however; it only moves them one step back, because all the physical questions he poses about the norm, and in particular the meaning of its its probabilistic interpretation in a timeless context, can just be reformulated for the state itself.

The question, I think, raises deep issues. I'll try to answer is steps. First, regarding the operational meaning of probability. I do not want to enter the debate about probability here. I only state my preferences, without arguments. The definition of probability that makes sense to me is the one of de Finetti, subjective. Probability is something about my expectations, and the corresponding mathematical theory expresses the proper way of adjusting expectations on the basis of observations, where "proper" refers to the use of Bayes theorem, which follows from the logic structure of probabilities (expectations) themselves. We make (finite) sequences of observations, and readjust our previous hypotheses on the basis of outcomes.

This answers the question about operationalism, but not the question about the possibility of doing so in a timeless context. This is the difficult part of the question. The question is about the rationalization of experiencial temporality in a physical world. I am not sure physics in the strict sense is capable of answering it. The question pertains to that part of science that studies ourselves and our capacity to gather and elaborate informationa and conceive thoughts and representations of the world. What I am saying is that I think that timeless quantum gravity is equally blind to the temporal aspect of consciousnes as Newtonian mechanics is. What basic physics must provide, however, is a context within which it is possible to have the basic ingredients in terms of which a science of complex systems might make sense of processes of organizing information. So, here is the story: In a timeless world, a small subsystem (us) whose interaction with the rest of the universe is limited to a very small number of variables, and therefore who has no access to the exact state of the rest of the universe (that is, it has the same state for many different states of the universe), can be correlated with the rest of the world in such a way to have an imprecise information about the rest of the system (a way to express these notions precisely using Shannon information theory is in my work on relational quantum theory); then with respect to this subsystem a Tomita flow is defined; and this flow itself is the physical underpinning of the perception of the flow of time, whatever this perception is.

Maybe I should not have entered this domain, which is slipery. I think that it is better to keep as separated as possible physics and the science about cognitive capacities. Otherwise we make confusion. As an analogy: we understand the water molecules, from there the hydrodynamica behavior of liquid water, from there the floating of boats, including the boat on which we stand when we collect water from the sea on order to study its molecular strucure. But trying to write a theory of molecular structure of water thinking that within the theory we may directly see out floating boat is the bad procedure. Here the analogy is: water molecules/timeless mechanics, floating/tomita flow, collecting water from the boat/operational definition of probability.

Hope this was not too confused.

Carlo Rovelli

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Dear Peter,

thanks for rising this key point. You say: "Are you not assuming the existence of time by asserting that time (and space) are quantized, and come as minimum, indivisible atoms in Loop Quantum Gravity"? Very good point. Here is what I think:

Einstein great discovery, of course, is that the two things are in fact the same. The two things are: on the one hand, the...

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Dear Peter,

thanks for rising this key point. You say: "Are you not assuming the existence of time by asserting that time (and space) are quantized, and come as minimum, indivisible atoms in Loop Quantum Gravity"? Very good point. Here is what I think:

Einstein great discovery, of course, is that the two things are in fact the same. The two things are: on the one hand, the gravitational field, and on the other the two "entities" that Newton put at the basis of his picture of the world, and called "space" and "time". Now, when you discover that mister A and mister B are the same person, you can equally say that mister A is in reality mister B, or that mister B is in reality mister A. Books like to say that the gravitational field, in reality, is nothing but the spacetime, which happens to curve and so on. I prefer the opposite language: namely that the entities that Newton called "space" and "time" are nothing else than the gravitational field, seen in the particular configuration where we can disregard its dynamical properties, and assume it to be flat. The choice is not just a choice of wording. My understanding is that the deep discovery of Einstein with general relativity is not that the gravitational field is very special, but, the other way around, that it is just a field on the same ground as the other fields. The key novelty with respect to pre-general-relativistic physics is that all these fields do not live "in" spacetime: they live, so to say, "on top of one another". (In fact, I think that this was also Einstein view. He writes for instance "Spacetime does not claim existence on its own but only as a structural quality of the [gravitational] field", in "Relativity: The Special and General Theory", page 155.) So, I think that the clearest way of thinking about general relativity, or, more precisely, the general relativistic theory that , at best as we know, describes our world, and which includes the gravitational field and all the other physical fields, is to view it as a theory of interacting fields, without any need of making reference to space and time. What we have is observable quantities that are functions of these fields.

Now, from this point of view (which is mine), the "atoms of space" of loop quantum gravity are truly just quanta of the gravitational field. The reason we call them "quanta of space" is only because we use to call "space" the quantity measured my a meter. But a meter only measures the gravitational field. And the same with time and a clock. The reason we keep talking about "space" and "time" in loop quantum gravity is only because these are traditional names for indicating aspects of the gravitational field. But these names are ill-used, if we assume them to carry all the heavy ontological significance of Newtonian space and Newtonian time. They represent observable variables (measured by clocks and meters), on the same ground as many other quantities observed in nature.

This is why I think that in order to have a clear picture the easiest thing is to "forget space" and "forget time", and only to talk about relations between observable quantities. The "atoms of space" and the "atoms of time" of LQG are only figures of language, to indicate that certain physical observables aspects of the gravitational field have a discrete spectrum.

I am very glad you have raised this point.

Carlo Rovelli

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I appreciate your careful distinction in previous works between partial observables (results of events in measure theory) and complete observables (number predicted by a mathematically complete theory).

Insofar as mathematically complete classical theories, such as special and general relativity, are time-dependent (even if time is only a theoretically useful fiction), it seems that indeed...

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I appreciate your careful distinction in previous works between partial observables (results of events in measure theory) and complete observables (number predicted by a mathematically complete theory).

Insofar as mathematically complete classical theories, such as special and general relativity, are time-dependent (even if time is only a theoretically useful fiction), it seems that indeed we can, and must, “forget time,” if the aim is a mathematically complete theory of quantum gravity; i.e., if QG predictions are manifestly not time dependent. After all, if a theory absent of time remains relativistic, space must be an illusion as well—as in Mach’s mechanics, the most relativistic of all theories, where space is also a useful fiction. A relativistic background-independent unification of classical statistical mechanics with quantum mechanics, then, demands complete background independence as the price for mathematical completeness.

So without time and space, it seems that only information states remain, as your thermal hypothesis holds. I acknowledge that a theory of thermodynamical/statistical interacting fields might be made mathematically complete, but can it be made plausibly physical? I mean by that, such a theory must predict nonlocal information states as the price of preserving the locality of partial observables, while complete observables remain out of reach.

You cite Smolin, “Challenges to the elimination of time…” and personally, my preference is toward Smolin’s emphasis on finite geometrical constraint on information flow (Bekenstein). He acknowledges in the end, “…if the universe is discrete and time is real, and is itself composed of discrete steps, then time may be none other than the process which constructs not only the universe, but the space of possible universes relevant for observations made by local observers.” If this is true, then partial observables cannot predict an event probability to a certain 1.0, and therefore cannot form the basis for a mathematically complete theory; time dependence, as in a classical theory, will stand in the way of complete observables. (Though I do not know enough to be sure of his motivation, I imagine that this may be one reason that Witten turned to TQFT—topological quantum field theory—where correlation of observables, rather than linear causality, obviates time dependence.)

However, Smolin turns over the other side of the coin in his very next statement, “Beyond this, there is the possibility of a quantum cosmology in which the actual history of the universe up till some moment and the space of possible universes present at that ‘instant’ are not two different things, but are just different ways of seeing the same structure, whose construction is the real story of the world.”

As we know, the technical word for Smolin’s observation is “duality”—there may exist theories of complete observables and theories of partial observables that are dual to each other. That is, where a mathematically complete prediction corresponds to the partial observable event probability 1.0. I think that, consistent with Smolin’s theme of “the present moment in quantum cosmology,” it is the principle of least action that preserves the present moment, as the least of all possible moments (discussed in “Time, change and self-organization;” Ray, ICCS 2007, NECSI).

Does not the least of all possible moments correspond to partial observables? Then, our experience of time is a subset of nature’s experience of time as described in a mathematically complete theory.

Thank you, Prof. Rovelli, for your always clear, straightforward and intellectually honest analysis.

Tom

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Dear all,

I wanted to make some comments about this "essay" along with the comments I have seen above.

I wanted to point out the comment made by Narendra (which has seeminly gone unnoticed):

"An interesting combination of two set of terms and traits may be provide us with some humor! Let us take a set of service, love, knowledge and life. Then, let us take another set of...

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Dear all,

I wanted to make some comments about this "essay" along with the comments I have seen above.

I wanted to point out the comment made by Narendra (which has seeminly gone unnoticed):

"An interesting combination of two set of terms and traits may be provide us with some humor! Let us take a set of service, love, knowledge and life. Then, let us take another set of attitude. reason, intellect and time. If we combine the corresponding terms and traits with words 'with' and then 'without' in turn, the net result comes out to be selfish,false,ego and finite in the first option. The other option provides us with selfless, true, ego-free and eternal. The latter is a desired ( theoretical) set of objectives while the former results in a factual( practical) situation."

This makes a very important distinction between the products of science (Narendra's practical situation) and the aspirations of humanity (Narendra's theoretical set).

I wanted to comment that while this is indeed an "essay contest" that, in reality, there is no conclusion. There is no ultimate truth which science can obtain, there will always remain the largest questions: why something rather than nothing?

However, I want to make it clear that science is my greatest passion. Yet I see science today as an faint glimmer of what it could be. We lack the heroic attitude as Dr. E has made quite evident in his postings and essay. We also have 'sold' nature short--instead of letting children witness the awe and wonder of the cosmos, we placate them with ideas such as the "big bang" which remain hypothetical. Rather than telling children our biggest problems we tell them our greatest accomplishments, we hail the paradigm of evolution; yet, the origin of life will remain an eternal mystery. I do not want to go on forever like this but I think the reader might begin to see what I am saying, as I have experienced it my whole life (for the interested reader please see John Horgan's "The End of Science").

I think we scientists need to be careful when talking about "the truth". We must realize that science is the attempt to answer the question—Who are we?—through the conceptualization of this question via the emergent phenomenon of “working-memory.” This emergent property of the human brain is coupled to our conscious awareness, that is, the here-and-now. Thus, science is a form of consciousness: since consciousness is the conceptualization of the here-and-now through “working-memory.” Therefore, science is a metaphor, a lie—just as all forms of art are a lie—but, it is a lie that reveals the truth: reality is what we experience in the here-and-now, and life is what one makes of it.

And so, science and the humanities stand as complementary entities—exploring and expressing our objective physicality and subjective mentality, respectively. This is why neither can lay claim to "the truth" rather they both show us that the answer is not *out there* or *in here* but is really found in realizing our shared mortality.

The belief in a ‘material universe’ is no more realistic than an almighty ‘God.’ Both of these forms of faith can foster a form of fundamentalism: be it ‘scientism’ or ‘religious radicalism.’

“The characteristic of all fundamentalism is that it has found absolute certainty—the certainty of class warfare, the certainty of science, or the literal certainty of the Bible—a certainty of the person who has finally found a solid rock to stand upon which, unlike other rocks, is “solid all the way down.” Fundamentalism, however, is a terminal form of human consciousness in which development is stopped, eliminating the uncertainty and risk that real growth entails.” - Heinz R. Pagels

In the realm of ideas, there stands two polar opposites: solipsism and materialism. Both of these ideologies represent subjective doctrines of consciousness; they are unfalsifiable. However, death stands as the single solace of reality in our world. Beyond our relationships with the mind and body, we have our relationship with others. And we all know we are going to die someday.

Even so, I still cannot be sure that this world is not some type of solipsistic nightmare; or I might be "plugged into the matrix"; and it also might be the case that my conscious awareness is nothing but the random collisions of atoms. But I do find comfort in my certainty of ordinary death. Without this certainty my life would no doubt fade into meaninglessness.

Humanity has struggled since the dawn of history to expound itself, and ironically it now seems that the highest form of consciousness is derived not from some platonic postulate, abstract mystical enlightenment, or any other haughty ideology. But from a solid relationship with mortality—the one actuality that binds us all to the same fate—the fundamental essence to realizing the miraculousness of existence.

CKM

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Thanks for the rockin' words Kyle!

You write, "However, I want to make it clear that science is my greatest passion. Yet I see science today as an faint glimmer of what it could be. We lack the heroic attitude as Dr. E has made quite evident in his postings and essay. We also have 'sold' nature short--instead of letting children witness the awe and wonder of the cosmos, we placate them with...

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Thanks for the rockin' words Kyle!

You write, "However, I want to make it clear that science is my greatest passion. Yet I see science today as an faint glimmer of what it could be. We lack the heroic attitude as Dr. E has made quite evident in his postings and essay. We also have 'sold' nature short--instead of letting children witness the awe and wonder of the cosmos, we placate them with ideas such as the "big bang" which remain hypothetical. Rather than telling children our biggest problems we tell them our greatest accomplishments, we hail the paradigm of evolution; yet, the origin of life will remain an eternal mystery."

A great thing about this discussion are the young voices who don't have a dog in the fight in the string/lqg/quantum gravity wars, and who see that physics is ultimately not about winning prizes in "The Matrix"--some socially-contructed arena built with PR and hype, but physics is about that long, rugged journey that we find ourselves on while seeking to aprehend *physical* reality.

Thanks to fqxi.org for this wonderful forum and the ocncept of the essay contest! Surely this is a format superior to arxiv.org, which hasn't exactly lead to any advancements in physics. . .

Max Born wrote, "All great discoveries in experimental physics have been made due to the intuition of men who made free use of models which for them were not products of the imagination but representations of real things."

And yet, today, the quantum gravity regimes have rejected simple physical models along with the belief that the math ought represent *real* things. And thus, despite hundreds of million in funding, there is no quantum gravity. There is no graviton, nor any consistent theory of quantum gravity. Instead, there are literally an infinite number of string theories, and fair about of loop-quantum theories, none of which quantize gravity in any finite, consistent way; let alone in any way that makes predictions that can be tested. There is no proof whatsover for tiny, vibrating strings, nor atoms of space and time, nor twistors, nor tiny little loops, nor multiverses, nor hyperspace, nor parallel universes. And the Greats themselves--Nobel Laureates--both living and dead, have spoke out against such pseudo-science, which has become a religion.

Instaid we get communal efforts which end up opposing progress in physics, as they oppose the individual heroic spirit by which all higher physical truths are ultimately apprehended.

Science is more of an art than a science, and it always seems to advance in manners never before anticipated by the establishment, as Planck stated. One cannot legislate, nor vote on, nor dictate the advancement of science by fiat. Do not take my word for it.

"One cannot pray a lie," as Mark Twain once said.

"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck

And again we see the primacy of the honest individual in the classic, epic hero's journey!

"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man." --Joseph Campbell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth

And the Nobel Laureate eocnomist F.A. Hayek agrees!

"The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for “conscious” control or “conscious” planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme—while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the superindividual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." –F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom

Along comes a scientist who agrees with Einstein and Max Born and Planck. Along comes a physicist who agrees with Wheeler, and Feynman, and Glasgow, and Godel, and Bohr, and Gamow--wishing that he could watch old Westerns with Bohr and Gamow. Along comes a scientist who agrees with Nobel Laureate Robert Laughlin and Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek, with Newton and Dirac, with Heisenberg and Minkowski, with the great mythologist Joseph Campbell. Along comes a scientist with simple theory that has a simple postulate and equation from which all of relativity may be derived; from which entropy naturally arises, and which accounts for time and all its arrows and assymetries across all realms, while also providing a *physical* model for entanglement and nonlocality, as well as a *physical* model for Huygens' principle and the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle. Not only does the multi-billion-dollar physics establishment ignore it, but they have so much funding, that they can hire grad students and profesors to snark the theory, so as to defend their perptual-motion NSF money mahcines and religions of wormholes, time warps, quantum gravity, multiverses, tiny, vibrating strings, and geometric mysticism/PR/hype, which Moving Dimensions Theory has no need for, as it concerns itself with physics and physical reality--with logic, reason, and simple postulates and equations that represent a hitherto unsung universal invariant--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c.

What we have here is a modern-day Inquistion.

Check out:

http://www.jklarsen.com/myblog/index.php?blog=6&title=co
nfession_of_galileo_galilei&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

Where it is reported: "In 1633, physicist Galileo Galilei was brought before the Roman Inquisition. Tried on "vehement suspicion of heresy," Galileo was forced to swear that he "abjured, cursed and detested" the errors of his work, which extended the findings of the Polish astronomer Nicholaus Copernicus that the Earth Moves."

Now I have postulated that the fourth dimension expands relative to the three spatial dimensions, and not one person in the entire quantum gravity regime has ever, ever, taken the time to comment on my theory. It's not like MDT is a secret, so their silence puzzles the will. Carlo promised to look at my paper above, but he has not yet commented on it.

I realized that perhaps before commenting on MDT, they are all waiting for a confession.

Well, here is my confession, based on Galileo's, which can be enjoyed here:

http://www.jklarsen.com/myblog/index.php?blog=6&title=c
onfession_of_galileo_galilei&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

I, Dr. E, son of the late Vincenzio Galilei of Florence, aged 70 years, tried personally by this court, and kneeling before You, the most Eminent Antitheorists and Reverend Lord Cardinals of M-Theory Multiverses, Inquisitors-General throughout the Quantum Gravity Republic against heretical depravity, having before my eyes the Most Holy Gospels of an Elegant Universe, Not Even Wrong, and The Trouble With Physics, and laying on them my own hands; I swear that I have always believed, I believe now, and with Ed Witten's help I will in future believe all which the Holy Quantum Gravity and M-Theory Church doth hold, preach, teach, and hype to the press, including E-8 and next year's E-9 anti-theory.

But since I, after having been admonished by this Holy Office entirely to abandon the false opinion that the fourth dimension expands relative to the three spatial dimensions, and that quantum mechanics' entanglement, nonlocality, entropy, relativity itself, time and all its arrows and assymetries across all realms, the gravitational slowing of clocks and time, Huygens' Principle, probability, and all the dualities (space-time, wave-particle, mass-energy) derive from this simple principle of MDT and its equation dx4/dt=ic, and that I was neither to hold, defend, nor teach in any manner whatever, either orally or in writing, the said false doctrine; and after having received a notification that the said doctrine is contrary to the Holy Writ of Hyperspace, I did write and cause to be printed a blog and forum in which I treat of the said already condemned MDT doctrine, and bring forward arguments of much efficacy in its favour, without arriving at any solution: I have been judged vehemently suspected of heresy, that is, of having held and believed that the fourth dimension's expansion is the universe's fundamental invaraint, and that the block universe does not exist and time is not the fourth dimension, but that time is a parameter that emerges because the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c, that change is and ought be woven into the fundamental fabric of spacetime with dx4/dt=ic, and that the fourth dimension, like the earth, does move.

Nevertheless, wishing to remove from the minds of your Tenured Eminences and all faithful LQGers and String Theorist this vehement suspicion reasonably conceived against me, I abjure with sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I curse and detest the said errors and heresies, and generally all and every error and sect contrary to the Holy Quantum Gravity Regimes, and I am ready to foregt time, forget space, and forget physical reality, while embracing multiverses and tiny, vibrating stirngs. And I swear that for the future I will neither say nor assert in speaking or writing such things as may bring upon me similar suspicion; and if I know any heretic who speaks out against tiny, vibrating branes, anti-theories, or atoms of space and time, or one suspected of heresy, I will denounce him to this Holy Office of Time Travel, or to the Inquisitor of Wormholes and Ordinary of the place in which I may be, which will of course be in the block universe, which MDT falsely liberated us from, while falsely grangting us free will and free thought, as it falsely froze time. I hereby remit all future free will, as I return to the block universe with the hopes of receiving the funding that is a part of my pre-Ordained future, as a member of the Quantum Grvaity Church.

I also swear and promise to adopt and observe entirely all the penances which have been or may be by this Holy Office of Loops imposed on me. And if I contravene any of these said promises, protests, or oaths, (which Ed Witten forbid!) I submit myself to all the pains and penalties which by the Sacred Canons of String Theory and other Decrees of D-branes general and particular are against such offenders imposed and promulgated. So help me God and the Holy Warped Passages/The Trouble With Physics/10^99 indecipherable arxiv.org papers--which I touch with my own hands.

I, Dr. E, aforesaid have abjured, sworn, and promised, and hold myself bound as above; and in token of the truth, with my own hand have subscribed the present schedule of my abjuration, and have recited it word by word. In America, at the Convent della Minerva, this 28th day of October, 2008, right before I go shopping for my Halloween costume.

I, Dr. E, have abjured as above, with my own hand."

And as I'm walking away to serve out my house arrest after this confession, I turn to the crowd that had gathered to hear me read it and smile.

And I say, "And yet it--the fourth dimension--moves! Eppur si muove!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_pur_si_muove

Happy Halloween everyone!

I think I'm going to celebrate our newfound free will and liberation from the block universe, frozen time, and frozen progress in physics by being a cowboy this year, in honor of Galileo, Bohr, Homer, Gamow and all those classical heroes--so many of them unsung.

Thanks to fqxi.org for this wonderful forum and to all the participants!

Best,

Dr. E :)

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Carlo and all previous responders;

I find it amazing how one can dance completely around a point without seeing it, but we are all somewhat subject to that problem so I can’t say too much. First many picked up that time seems to be connected to motion, which is true. It is also interesting that you desire to replace time with thermodynamics, which can generally be considered to be a...

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Carlo and all previous responders;

I find it amazing how one can dance completely around a point without seeing it, but we are all somewhat subject to that problem so I can’t say too much. First many picked up that time seems to be connected to motion, which is true. It is also interesting that you desire to replace time with thermodynamics, which can generally be considered to be a study of the generalized quantitive motion of a large number of particles traveling through distances as a contained or isolated group (of course, the relative equilibrium of the motions etc. is also a part of it). This is because you are substituting time in one form with time in another form.

Time is a derived function of two variables. They are distance and motion amplitude, where time equals distance divided by motion amplitude (usually called rate or speed) or T=D/R. Distance is the more fundamental variable since it is a property of and emerges in any dimensional system that contains at least two identifiable points as the separation between the two points. Motion is a property of an entity that exists within such a dimensional system. Distance exists as a part (property) of the dimensional system, but an entity must exist in the system to carry motion through the distance. The simplest concept of an entity is one that is composed of motion. The motion contains within itself such information as its position, direction, and amplitude as it travels through the distance between the two points. From this it is possible to generate the complete physical world as a large motion machine in which each particle of sub-energy, energy, and matter is composed of a motion in each of the dimensions in which it participates.

There is no flowing of time as a separate thing from the motions that exist in the entities that exist in the dimensional system. The perception of time flowing is caused by the fact that we exist in a continuum of motion composed of a vary large number of individual motions that are moving in relation to us and are also actually even going on in our own bodies. As an example, if you call a taxi and then wait by the street for it to come so you can get into it, when you see it coming down the street a few blocks away, the action of getting into the taxi is still in the future. When the taxi reaches you and stops and you begin to reach out your hand to open the door, the action of getting into the taxi is now in your present. After you have opened the door entered the taxi, told the driver your destination, and closed the door, the action of getting into the taxi is complete and becomes a part of your past. What has happened, however, is a continuum of motions. You’re feeling of the flow of time from the future to the present and then to the past is just a matter of the relationships between motions in terms of your planned (in this case) action of getting into the taxi. It has to do with the relative positioning of the motions in relation to each other. This type of serial sequence of motions is one thing that gives us a sense of the flow of time. Another is the fact that the world is alive with motions all around us. This continual bombardment of motions on our senses that changes in many ways as we and they move, gives us a sense of placement in and movement in time by the markers of the motion content that are continually changing. Repetitive motions also add to the sense of the flow of time as measured by the number of repetitions. Time then is not a separate entity that somehow flows in one direction, but the measurement of motions through distances. It is the motions themselves that give us the sense of flow as they flow all around us. When you understand that it is the continuum of motions that are flowing, it is easy to see why they only go in one direction because a motion goes in one direction until it is acted upon by another motion and then it may go in a different direction or at a different motion amplitude as a result of the interaction. This pattern of motions and interactions between motions is continually happening all around us. The only way to go back in time (or at least appear to do so) would be to simultaneously reverse all motions in the universe and then reverse them again when they were back to the positions that they were in at the previous condition of all motions that you wanted to get back to. You could then relive the same pattern of motions over again, but you would not know it because you would have also reversed your own motions and all of the motions that stored your remembrances of the previous motion passage would be reversed also and would thus remove your memory of that first pass though of the motions. There is no past to travel to because all of the interactions that have brought motion conditions to the place that they are now at have effectively erased those past motion conditions and the motion conditions that will be in place in the future are not there yet because all the interactions that will take place from now to the place you want to go to in the future have not yet occurred and so the future motion conditions don’t yet exist either.

Now the easy way to get around using time in your equations is to replace time (T) with the variables that make it up (D/R). The only problem is to replace (R) with a motion amplitude function that does not contain time, but instead is generated as a position on a continuous motion amplitude scale of the range of possible comparative motion amplitudes. This would have a certain chosen motion amplitude as the unit of motion amplitude and all compared motions would then be expressed in terms of that unit. If the proper unit is chosen you might be surprised at how it might make some other things easier to understand hint, hint. Of course you must remember that distance also becomes a multi-amplitude function in matter at high velocities and you must properly account for it.

Time standards are actually just specific sets of distances and their associated motion amplitudes that generate the same result when you divide the distance by the motion amplitude. As an example, one standard is the day, which is the time that it takes the earth to make one rotation on its axis. If you look at a line of points that go from the equator to one of the poles, you see that as you travel from the equator toward the pole each point has a slightly shorter distance to travel than the point before it to get all the way around the earth. In order to get around the earth when all the other points on the line do, it must, therefore, travel with a slightly lower motion amplitude than the point before it and a slightly faster motion amplitude than the point after it. This continues for all the points on the line so you get a continuous spectrum of distances and their associated motion amplitudes that equal one standard day. Of course, any other motion that went through a specific distance with a specific motion amplitude that would be completed in one revolution of all those points on the earth around the center of the earth would also be part of the standard set of one day.

Once you can get centered on the concept that motion is the key to the generation of all entities (energy photons, matter particles, etc.) the next step is to consider how many motions are required to make them all up, what dimensions the motions travel in and what type of dimensional interfaces are necessary to make it all work. Just to cover some very basic concepts, we know from E= MC^2 that energy and matter are basically the same thing, but it takes a large amount of energy to make a small amount of matter. If all entities are composed of motion, it follows that matter contains more motion than energy. We know that motion on a large scale generates mass effect in that a truck that is traveling at 40 mph will usually display about twice the mass effect as it would if it was going 20mph on an object that it hits. This can be extrapolated to all entities with the concept that motion equals mass. So in general matter particles possess a greater motion content and, therefore, also display a greater mass effect than energy photons. If you try to slow an energy photon down to stop its motion, its mass effect decreases and it eventually ceases to exist, but you can bring a matter particle to a complete stop in the first three dimensions and it still retains its mass effect. This implies that the motion is stored differently in the two types of entities and that the motion in the matter particle is somehow bound up in the particle itself and is separate from its three dimensional motion. The motion stored in the energy photon that is depleted as you try to slow it down is also not its three dimensional motion as it continues to move at the speed of light. It, therefore, also contains an additional motion that is stored in some other way than in the lower three dimensions. The energy photon also displays a frequency and wavelength effect with a variable mass effect such that if you try to slow it down its frequency and variable mass effect decrease and its wavelength increases. This can give us a good hint at what type of dimensional interface would be necessary between the dimension that stores its extra motion and the first three dimensions in order to generate these effects. The matter particle also demonstrates a frequency and wavelength effect so it also likely stores some of its motion in the same way as the photon, but in addition it stores some of its motion in a different way. This implies that this additional motion is stored in another dimension with a different type of interface that can cause this motion to be bound up in the particle separate from its three dimensional motion. When you put it all together, you get a hierarchical structure with the energy photon at the lower level with velocities in the first four dimensions and the matter particle with velocities in the first five dimensions. Motion can be transferred to or from the photon’s fourth dimension velocity directly by attempting to change its three dimensional velocity. Motion can be transferred to the matter particle’s fifth dimensional velocity by applying motion to its three dimensional composite velocity to increase its fourth dimensional velocity which can then pass it to its fifth dimensional velocity. The rate of transfer from the fourth dimension to the fifth dimension increases with an increase in the velocity in the first three dimensions. Because an energy photon can exist with about .511MEV and an electron can also exist with about the same .511MEV, it is apparent that velocity does not automatically transfer from the fourth dimension to the fifth dimension to generate a matter particle. This can be traced to certain angular components that must also be present due to the nature of the fifth dimensional interface to enable motion transmission. As a matter of fact the mass/inertia effect is greatly due to the fourth and fifth dimensional angular components. I hope this will be of help.

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John;

You are exactly right. Temperature is the measurement of the average free motion in an isolated system containing a large number of energy photons and, or matter particles and since these motions all have motion amplitudes and travel through distances they exhibit the property of time. It is just a more average statistical time structure than if you could look at each individual...

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John;

You are exactly right. Temperature is the measurement of the average free motion in an isolated system containing a large number of energy photons and, or matter particles and since these motions all have motion amplitudes and travel through distances they exhibit the property of time. It is just a more average statistical time structure than if you could look at each individual entity’s distance traveled and motion amplitude and then combine them all together to get the average distance and motion amplitude, which you would then use in the formula to get the average time. The result would generally be the same either way though if both approaches were completely accurate.

In analyzing the current state of man’s technology, I have found that several scientists have come to the conclusion that the current understanding of time is lacking, but they generally lack enough background information about the structure of the dimensional system and the entities that exist within it to get the full picture. For example, a common belief is that energy photons do not experience time because they are traveling at the speed of light. This is generally true as long as you restrict your study to those things that are only affected by the photon’s velocity in the first three dimensions because all photons have the same composite motion amplitude in the first three dimensions. If you make the speed of light equal to 1 in your motion amplitude scale then all photons would possess a motion amplitude value of 1, so you end up with a formula of T=D/1 or T=d. Since (in this limited context) time equals distance, there is no need for the separate derivative of time. The problem is that all photons don’t possess the same fourth dimensional motion amplitude. In practice most interactions between photons and other photons or matter particles are sensitive to the effects generated by the fourth dimensional velocity. All photons with the same fourth dimensional motion amplitude are truly identical and generate the same interaction effects. This is what has given rise to the idea of the quantum nature of energy in that all photons with the same frequency and wavelength seem to possess the same quantum (quantity) of energy as measured by their mass effects in interactions. This in reality is just saying, however, that they all have the same motion amplitudes generally in the same places that can be applied to the interaction. Because the electromagnetic spectrum appears to be a very wide range continuous analog progression from a very low fourth dimensional velocity (very low frequency and mass effect and a very long wavelength) to a very high fourth dimensional velocity (very high frequency and mass effect and a very short wavelength), there does not appear to be any true quantum effect. What is actually seen is that the continuously variable fourth dimensional velocity generates a continuously variable set of effects (frequency, mass effect, and wavelength) that are in lockstep with each other and the single variable that causes them (the fourth dimensional velocity). I know this is a little departure from your comment, but it came to mind and it does have to do with time and I have compassion for those who are struggling with the concept of the timelessness of photons so I thought I would try to give a little information about it that might (and I hope will) help. Now back to your regularly scheduled program.

You are right that from our perspective which allows us to only interact with a small portion of the motions in the world, the first step of interaction with one of us is for a motion to get into a position that will ultimately interact with that one. Through large numbers of high speed motion interactions our future is continually forming around us to ultimately generate our present. As an example, if someone could look at a given photon in your office, he might see it traveling away from you and assume that it would never interact with you and be a part of your present, but through many millions of bounces off of matter particles in the office walls and other things in the office it might bounce off of your desk just as you are looking at it and be a part of the image that you perceive as the appearance of your desk, thus becoming a part of your present when the interaction occurs. In practice we are bathed in a continuous bombardment of such high speed motion interactions and we are too slow to be able to observe and keep track of them all in real time so they appear to us to be a continuous overall flow of motion. Our senses tend to give us overall averages of the motions such as the way our eyes take the interactions with large numbers of individual photons and combine them to generate an average composite image. This is much like the difference between looking at and keeping track of each motion and motion interaction in a container of gas on the one hand and just inserting a thermometer into the container to read the average of the motions on the other hand, though maybe not quite as extreme.

Another thing that gives us our sense (especially of past and future) is the way that our minds work. Let’s look at the taxi example a little closer. In order to have called the taxi in the first place, you would have started by forming an intent to do so in your spirit. This intent could have been the result of a previous intent. As an example, while you are sitting in your chair, your body might send a pattern of motions to your soul that would cause your soul to generate the thought that you are hungry. These motions might be detailed enough to let your mind know that you need potassium. Your soul would then generate the thought that you need food with potassium and send it to your spirit. Your spirit would then generate the intent for you to get up out of your chair and walk to your kitchen and get and eat a banana from the place where you store them. This intent would be sent to your soul which would generate the needed thoughts that would then be sent to the necessary body parts to cause you to actually get up and go to the kitchen. At this point the light hitting your eyes from the place where you store your bananas tells your body that the bananas are gone. Your body sends motion patterns to your soul to inform it and your soul generates the thoughts and passes them to your spirit to let your spirit know that its intent can’t be performed as given and why. Your spirit then creates a new intent that is a sub intent to the first one, which is to call a taxi to take you to the store to get bananas and then passes the intent to your soul which generates the thoughts that are necessary and sends them to your body in the proper way so that your body will perform all needed motions. Of course things are not quite that simple. Part of the reason that we have this feeling of a continuum or flow of time is that our interaction with any given thing (the taxi in this case) can at any given instant have some interactions that are in the future, some that are in the present and some that are in the past. To show this point let’s suppose that your body gets tired of standing while you are waiting for the taxi so it sends signals to your soul that causes your soul to generate thoughts that it passes to your spirit to let it know that you cannot stand much longer. Your spirit generates an intent to solve the problem by sitting on a nearby bench. Your soul then generates the thoughts that cause your body to perform this action. At first when you are sitting there the taxi itself and the action of taking it to the store are completely in your future. To you, they are only in your future because you have stored the intent to take the taxi to the store in your mind and you have performed the planned steps leading up to your ability to take it when it comes, but it is still beyond the range of your senses. When the taxi gets close enough that you can see it your interactions with it begin to enter your present because you presently see it. At this point you may generate the intent to stand up and walk to the curb so you will be ready to get into the taxi when it gets to you and stops. After you have completed that action, it is stored in your mind as a completed part of your interaction with the taxi caused by the interaction of your seeing it coming down the street. You now have the taxi in your present because you can see it and it is still in your future because your planned action of getting into it can not yet be performed until it reaches you and stops. You also have your interaction with it in your past because you have completed the act of getting up from the bench and walking to the curb as a response to your visual sight of it. This joining together of past, present and future in our interactions with things can give a sense of continuity. Of course only the present motion conditions actually exist. We only have the concept of the past because our minds can store the present state of motion conditions and then can refer back to those stored records to give us an idea of how they have changed. If our minds did not have this ability we would be greatly disabled in our ability to make any sense out of the world because we would not be able to take advantage of knowledge gained by observing repetitive patterns in actions around us, which would mean no science. Every time we saw the sun come up it would be a new experience to us. This type of effect can actually be observed in people with certain types of dementia. If you were to suffer from the early stages of such a condition you might retain some very short term memory and usually you would still retain your long term memory. In our taxi example, you might get to the kitchen and see that you are out of bananas and call the taxi. You also might go outside to wait for it and if you got tired, you would likely sit down, but if it took the taxi a half an hour to get to your house, you would likely have forgotten the reason that you are out there on the bench by the time it gets there. You could have done the first things because in the early stages of the disease your long term stored memories would still be intact and your mind could still base actions on those records. As the disease progressed even these memories would be lost and you would become less able to intelligently act in reaction to the interactions that you encountered with the world around you. After awhile each time you tried to do anything you would have to try to figure it out again from scratch, and since there are usually more ways that you can do something wrong than there are to do it right, you would have many more failures than successes. Even if you happened to put your cup of tea in the microwave, closed the door and by chance hit the number 2 and it came out just right, you would not be able to retain that new knowledge until the next time, so you would be back to hitting a chance number again the next time. After awhile you would not even retain in your memory the microwaves purpose. You would live more and more in the present and you would even understand it less and less. It would more and more seem to be filled with random meaningless motions. Even if your mind could still think, you would not be likely to come up with much useful information without all the results of your past experiments with your surroundings and those that you would have also picked up from others. If you did come up with some good insight, it would not do you much good because you would have forgotten it by the next day. You would likely not bother with all the work after a while and give up.

If the stored records of previous motion conditions are more closely associated with our sense of a past, the ability to generate intents to fulfill purposes is more joined to our sense of the future. It is these plans that we imagine and then work to complete, but have not yet been completed that give us the concept that a predictable future is out there waiting to happen. The more successful we are at satisfactorily fulfilling our intents, the more real the future seems to be for us. If someone were to lose the ability to form intents to fulfill purposes, he would become a disconnected observer of the world with no ability to take actions to interact with the world around him.

There is much more, that can be said about the subject, but I have probably already offended Narendra Nath and for all I know possibly others by not only not keeping quiet, but also by making what has turned out to be my second lengthy narration in this contest space. It just happens that they are both in Carlo’s portion of that space. Since your comment to me was here before Narendra’s request though, I thought that you deserved an answer from me and thought it best to answer it here, so you would be sure to find it. In order to please Narendra, however, further comments can be put in the comment area for my paper “The Physical Nature of Time” if anyone is interested. Sorry Narendra and Carlo and anyone else also if I in any way have offended any. I will now wait until Carlo has had a chance to respond per your request Narendra before making any further comments here in Carlo’s space.

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Hello Carlo,

We miss you!

You write above, "Then there is a post on the waste of public money on research about time in quantum gravity. I take this seriously. Often at conferences I listen to talk after talk, and I wonder "is public money wasted here"? Maybe yes. But was it wasted public money the money that the Ptolemy's Kings put in Ptolemy's astronomy? Or that the Church put in...

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Hello Carlo,

We miss you!

You write above, "Then there is a post on the waste of public money on research about time in quantum gravity. I take this seriously. Often at conferences I listen to talk after talk, and I wonder "is public money wasted here"? Maybe yes. But was it wasted public money the money that the Ptolemy's Kings put in Ptolemy's astronomy? Or that the Church put in supporting Copernicus completely useless searches? Or that supported Maxwell and Faraday, Shcroedinger or Einstein? No, it clearly was not. Is there a way to chose a priori who will be next Dirac? No, there is not. Research needs courage, wasted time and money, false directions. The history of our civilization is the proof that all this money is not wasted, in my opinion.

Carlo"

How much government funding did Einstein receive as a patent clerk, when he wrote his five miraculous papers which revolutionized physics?

For that matter, how much money did "Ptolemy's Kings put in Ptolemy's astronomy?" And was this public money? Sometimes I feel like we've reintroduced Kings in the realm (empires) of science, so maybe that is actually a good analogy!

And how much money did "the Church put in supporting Copernicus completely useless searches?" And were Copernicus's searches really useless? I thought Copernicus liberated us from the geocentric universe! And how much government funding went to support "Maxwell and Faraday, Shcroedinger or Einstein?" Unless I miss my guess, they all made their monumental contributions *before* they received massive amounts of funding, if they ever did receive massive amounts of funding. I'll bet you $100 on this. :)

Then you write, "Is there a way to chose a priori who will be next Dirac? No, there is not." This is true, so why does so much funding go to so few who never really advance physics? And then after a few years of not advancing physics themselves, they are given 10x as much funding to pick out the next Dirac, or the next Einstein, or Bohr. It seems that these days, unlike the past, the less one advances physics on one's own, and the more one sticks with "communal" ideas that go nowhere, the more and more funding they receive, until we have entire empires--the richest scientific empires in the history of science, which have frozen progress in physics, while outlawing new ideas.

Science is more of an art than a science, and it always seems to advance in manners never before anticipated by the establishment, as Planck stated. One cannot legislate, nor vote on, nor dictate the advancement of science by fiat. "One cannot pray a lie," as Mark Twain once said.

"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck

And again we see the primacy of the honest individual in the classic, epic hero's journey!

"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man." --Joseph Campbell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth

And the Nobel Laureate eocnomist F.A. Hayek agrees!

"The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for “conscious” control or “conscious” planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme—while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the superindividual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose." –F.A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom

Not only do the contemporary antitheory empires concentrate epic amounts of funding into a small group of physicists' hands, but by and by that group does not only not fund the advancement of physics, but it funds Ph.D.'s and postdocs to go forth and actively ban, censor, castigate, and attack new ideas, often anonymously, so as to please their elder kings and shore up their funding. Is this a prudent use of funding? Would we not be better off without such funding? Getting rid of this funding would remove the incentive for joining groupthink and regimes, along with the incentive to ignore and/or attack simple theories rooted in logic and reason, so as to keep progress in physics frozen.

Carlo--since, as you say, one cannot predict the next Dirac, why not distribute smaller amounts of funding to a greater number of physicists? Would this not make sense from both a statistical and moral standpoint, and lessen the probability of kingships and empires and their hired mercenaries who oppose the advancement of physics, thusly freezing its progress?

Even though the Greats have been banned from the Academy, every physicist ought read George Orwell and Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayke, who expound on how groupthink, in the absence of the moral appreciation of the Truth, leads to tyranny:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm (about when the LQGers overthrow the String Theory Regime and institute their own government, where all anti-theories are equal, but some are more equal than others)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four (about a young man working at the Ministry of Physics and a young woman working at the Ministry of Corporate-State Curiosity)

Well, no man is an island, and physics has ever been advanced by cordial conversation in the context of rigorous honesty and a humble acknowledgement of empirical facts. Einstein and Bohr disagreed often, but yet they had a deep respect for one-another, and I highly recommend the perusal of their converstations! Where would be be without the disagreements between Einstein and Minkowski, between Bohr and Einstein, and between Pauli and just about everybody? Contrast their exalted dialogues to the snarky dialogues in the modern string-LQG wars (and the 10x snarkier attacks lauched against MDT), and the perhaps even more troubling complete *lack* of dialogue for topics and approaches transcending those two "theories" which might not even be *physical* theories after all.

Again, the Nobel Laureate Max Planck writes,

"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment." --Max Planck

And yet today's science is dominated by "communal" theories bolstered by multi-million-dollar media teams. And again, these theories aren't really *physical* theories. They are often merely "not even wrong"--and they defend their not-even-wrongishness unto the death, as it provides the center and circumference of a groupthink regime, which in turn guarantees infinite funding, accolades, press, televised mini-series, and awards for a small set of "leaders" heading anti-theory regimes.

Planck also wrote, "Eine neue wissenschaftliche Wahrheit pflegt sich nicht in der Weise durchzusetzen, daß ihre Gegner überzeugt werden und sich als belehrt erklären, sondern vielmehr dadurch, daß ihre Gegner allmählich aussterben und daß die heranwachsende Generation von vornherein mit der Wahrheit vertraut geworden ist."

Translation: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

Once upon a time new theories were opposed by established scientists and established science. But today, new theories are opposed by established anti-theory bureaucracies and established bureaucrats, which have done little, if anything, to advance or contibute to actual science. So walking into town with a new theory is more akin to Galileo standing before the Inquisition.

Bohr and Gamow loved Westerns--I woudl do anything to watch some Westerns with those guys. Westerns always open the same way. The lone cowboy--the high plains drifter--drifts on into town, and immediately the boss's lowly gangsters and postdocs mock, belittle, and intimidate him, just like how it goes down in today's "communal" realms of non-physics and anti-theory regimes, which are always run out of the saloons with the crooked dealers.

This is what it sometimes feels like talking about Moving Dimensions Theory, when I ride into town on a mule, as I don't have the funding to buy the BMW--the preferred ride of the anti-theorists I have heard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADzFve-tKnU

Director Sergio Leone was a genius! Perhaps you saw some of his films in the original Italian! You can see how Sergio has that Homeric poetry in his soul.

It seems too many physicists have forgotten the Hippocratic Oath--"first, do no harm."

Perhaps we ought contemplate a oath for scientists!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath_for
_Scientists

So, in light of all this, Carlo, I'm thankful for this conversation and to fqxi for providing this forum which brought us togetehr!

MDT provides opportunities for novel research programs and curriculums--for new directions and exalted pursuits in physics, philosophy, and knowledge--based upon the foundational works of physics. And on a deeper level, the "heroic spirit" the program exalts could find use across all realms in academia and throughout our economy, in which far, far too many people profit by saying one thing and doing another--activities which have lead to our current financial crises and familial, cultural, and scientific delcine.

MDT predicts all of relativity from a simple postulate and equation that also provides *physical* models for entropy, time, and all its arrows, quantum entanglement and nonlocality, and all the dualities--space/time, energy/mass, and wave/particle. Not bad for one small equation: dx4/dt = ic, which offers a *physical* unification across all realms of physics, tying together entities as diverse as quantum entanglement and the timelessness of the photon, while presenting insight into a novel physical facet of our universe--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.

Finally, Carlo, you write, "Research needs courage, wasted time and money, false directions."

Well, I agree Research needs courage. Classic, cowboy courage!

Courage is a kind of salvation. --Plato

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts. --Aristotle

O friends, be men, and let your hearts be strong,

And let no warrior in the heat of fight

Do what may bring him shame in others' eyes;

For more of those who shrink from shame are safe

Than fall in battle, while with those who flee

Is neither glory nor reprieve from death.

- Homer's Iliad (bk. V, l. 663),

All serious daring starts from within. --Harriet Beecher Stowe

Moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character. -- Margaret Chase Smith

If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream. --Martin Luther King, jr.

Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

But none of the physicists you listed would agree that research necessarily needs "wasted time and money, false directions." It is not in a true physicist's nature to wish for wasted time amd wrong roads, as we know how fleeting life is.

All the wasted money, which is wasted so flippantly these days--so pridefully--is a vast and resounding insult to all the honest postdocs, grad-students, and hard-working professors, who are never. never paid enough.

And so it is that I propose a more equitable distribution of grants, for as long as "money is wasted," and "nobody can predict the next Dirac nor Einstein," why not approach the world, and one's fellow physicists, with more humility, kindness, and common courtesy?

For "humility, kindness, and common courtesy," cost nothing extra, and will go far further in returning the classic, heroic spirit to the realm of physics--the spirit by which physics has ever advanced, than will hundreds of millions of dollars, which cannot buy one iota of truth, any more than it can buy the soul.

An education obtained with money is worse than no education at all” --Socrates

"Humility, kindness, and common courtesy" will do far more to advance knowledge, wisdom, and culture than vast amounts of funding for regimes that have made a God-King of failure, and now bolster the black holes of anti-theories with hired mercaneries who play little games of censorship, snark, and PR hype, while penning 10^99 meaningless, indecipherabel papers. I am not convinced that such entities are necessary to the advancement of science, and I would, in fact, postulate that they are antithetical to the adavancement of science and culture, which find merrier companionship in truth, logic, reason, simplicity, honesty, and a keen appreciation for and dedication to *physical* reality.

For know this:

And yet it--the fourth dimension--moves! And its movement hath liberated us from frozen time, liberated us from the block universe, and liberated us from frozen progress in theoretical physics!

Change, my friend, has been woven into the fundamental fabric of spacetime, where it needs to be! For change encompasses every physical realm! There can be no measurement without change, and thus there can be no physics without change!

O happy day! A new, hitherto unsung universal invariant has been bestowed upon us--the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c! dx4/dt = ic!

And this motion hath taken us to a brave, new heroic age!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_pur_si_muove

E pur si muove!

Now and Forver!

And unless I miss my guess, we are in for one wild night. . .

Best,

Dr. E (The Real McCoy)

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Hello Carlo,

Above you write, "Then there is a post on the waste of public money on research about time in quantum gravity. I take this seriously. Often at conferences I listen to talk after talk, and I wonder "is public money wasted here"? Maybe yes. But was it wasted public money the money that the Ptolemy's Kings put in Ptolemy's astronomy? Or that the Church put in supporting Copernicus...

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Hello Carlo,

Above you write, "Then there is a post on the waste of public money on research about time in quantum gravity. I take this seriously. Often at conferences I listen to talk after talk, and I wonder "is public money wasted here"? Maybe yes. But was it wasted public money the money that the Ptolemy's Kings put in Ptolemy's astronomy? Or that the Church put in supporting Copernicus completely useless searches? Or that supported Maxwell and Faraday, Shcroedinger or Einstein? No, it clearly was not. Is there a way to chose a priori who will be next Dirac? No, there is not. Research needs courage, wasted time and money, false directions. The history of our civilization is the proof that all this money is not wasted, in my opinion. "

You say that research needs "wasted time and money."

Above you also kindly write, "Dr.E. ha posted a friendly note, arguing that perhaps gravity needs not to be quantized, quoting Dyson on this, and pointing out his "Moving dimansion theory". I thank him for the indication. I'll look at it (I suppose this is one of the purposes of the Forum)."

I never heard back from you regarding Moving Dimensions Theory and its mechanism for the emergence of time and change; as well as the theory's weaving of change into the fundamental frabric of spacetime. --http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/238

To date, quantum gravity research, including string theory and numerous other ventures, has recieved hundreds of millions of dollars over the past thirty years, with nothing to show for it. So it is, Carlo, that you justify this spending of hundreds of millions with the conjecture that that research needs "wasted time and money."

Well, I was wondeirng if you might have a few minutes to read the Moving Dimensions Essay, and if you could perhaps opine on how much money it ought to receive.

I think that you will find it to be worth a few million, if not more.

While quantum gravity regimes generally ban the asking and answering of foundational questions (string theory even ignores the foundational fact that spacetime bends an dmoves), and while the pursuit of quantum gravity has not yet resulted in any *physical* postulates nor *physical* equations, MDT asks foundational questions and answers them with a *physical* model--with a *physical* equation--dx4/dt=ic, and a postulate: the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions.

All motion and tiem rests upon this fundamental universal invariant--the fourth dimenion is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt = ic. Every object moves at but one speed through space-time--c. This is because space-time moves at but one speed through every object--c. Catch up with the fourth expanding dimension, and you'll be going close to c relative to the three spatial dimensions. Remain stationary in the three spatial dimensions, and you'll be traveling at close to c relative to the fourth dimension. And isn't it cool that the faster an object moves, the shorter it is in the three spatial dimensions? This is because it is physically being rotated into the fourth dimension--the fundamental source of all motion by its never-ending motion, which sets the universe's maximum velcoity at c.

Relativity implies a frozen, timeless, block universe. But as Galileo said, "Yet it moves!" *Why* is this? Because dx4/dt = ic! And the spherically-symmetric expansion that the expanding fourth dimension manifests itself as--this smearing of locality--jives perfectly with the motion of a photon as well as its nonlocal properties, setting its velocity to c independent of the source and rendering it timeless and ageless--stationary in the fourth expanding dimension, which would also explain entanglement with other photons with which it once shared a common origin! And we also get a *physical* model for entropy and time and all its arrows, whowing that they emerge from a deeper *physical* principle.

Well Carlo, I hope that you do not find the answering of foundational questions regarding the emergence of time off-topic in a forum at the "foundational questions institute" that is devoted to the nature of time.

Thanks for your time! I hope that in reading the MDT essay it is not wasted, as so much time (and money) has been tragically wasted in the pursuit of quantum gravity, which has displaced *physical* physicists from the academy, leading to our current crises, the dominance of antitheory regimes, and the absence of progress in theoretical physics over the past thirty years. I just read somewhere someone referring to your generation as "the lost generation" of physics. I will try to find the source. It is curious that "the lost generation" is the same thing as the "best-funded generation."

Perhaps, in the realms of art and science and culture, even more important than money is matching word and deed, and following through on reading an essay one promised to read. Or perhaps it is too late for the "lost generation" to change the path they are on, and prizes and titles and wasted money are worth more than honor, integrity, and immortality on the scientific, *physical* battlefield.

"Politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity." --Albert Einstein

And so I'll have to bet on dx4/dt=ic .

Thanks for your time & best,

Dr. E (The Real McCoy)

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Narenda;

I see that you have mastered some of this world’s propaganda techniques that are often used by those in low level civilizations to marginalize and attempt to discredit the works of others that one feels threatened by, or does not agree with, or does not understand. These techniques are usually used by those who do not have a good counter argument because those who do have the...

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Narenda;

I see that you have mastered some of this world’s propaganda techniques that are often used by those in low level civilizations to marginalize and attempt to discredit the works of others that one feels threatened by, or does not agree with, or does not understand. These techniques are usually used by those who do not have a good counter argument because those who do have the true argument find it much more effective to just present the true argument which will show the invalid argument to be false. I believe that your argument is based on the following concepts. 1. John Merryman’s and my posts are too long. 2. Our posts are mere elaborations of our respective view points in our essays. 3. You believe that individual egoism is involved (name calling propaganda device). Let me answer your points in order.

First my comments are long because my intent is to present information in such a way as to make the points as clear as possible and this can require information space. I like to use visualization techniques to allow those that are on the reception end to actually see the concepts in their minds if they have the ability. This also takes information space. I have made a total of four comments in the total contest area including this one. One is on my own paper’s comments space and three (including this one) are on this paper’s space. Although these individual comments may be long, my total use of the contest’s comment space has been less than some others. On the other hand, John Merryman’s comments on this paper’s space have generally been very short (often shorter than yours). At the same time you did not mention a problem with Dr. E’s comments (in this comment space) which are longer than mine and also more in number. So your point number one does not agree with the evidence to any significant degree.

Your second point is basically true, however, it is also generally true of all of the comments in the contest space. Each contestant is trying to get his view points across to others for one reason or another and comments by contestants tend to be in line with their current levels of knowledge and points of view. If another contestant’s view is close to yours, you can just congratulate him on his point of view, but doing so is just another way of bolstering your own point of view because of its similarity to yours. So although this point is true it is a non-issue because it is a common trait of all commentators.

The third point is a harder one to address because it goes to intent and a person’s intent or purpose in generating the thoughts that are expressed externally such as in these papers and comments is often not clearly seen by analyzing the thoughts that are presented. This leaves a lack of visual evidence that can be readily pointed to when trying to refute such attacks on one’s integrity. All I can do here is to reiterate what I said in my Author Bio, which is that my intent is to attempt to pass on to others some of the information that I have amassed over the years because it would seem to be a waste for it to be lost to man when I leave this world. Not that I am anyone special in this context. I believe from what I have read of your material that you may have a similar intent, as may be the case with others also. Although they may be important to some, to me the prize money and the glory of winning are not important. It is getting across the information that will allow the advancements in science that are necessary to avoid a great loss of life and also will provide a better life for people in this world in the future that is important. It saddens me greatly that so many put their immediate gain in fame and money ahead of the needs that are so apparent in the world around them. At the same time, I do realize that the current funding system (which rewards those who are most closely aligned with the current predominate theories and tends to marginalize those who have new insights that diverge to any degree from the concepts in those predominate theories) can make it difficult if not impossible for a scientist that must make his living from his work to make a reasonable living for himself and also get new concepts into the mainstream information channels where they can be taken seriously, analyzed, and utilized (if found to be true) to advance the level of scientific knowledge. The easy way to success in the current system is to just look for some overlooked niche in the current theories and exploit it. That is why I found it interesting to test this contest to see if it truly will reward those who offer new, different, and useful concepts or whether it will just be another promotion of those with the different concepts that are the most closely aligned to the mainstream.

To answer more particularly about my intent in my first comment to Carlo, it was to show him that he is on the right track in trying to get away from the T time function that goes back to a comparison with a time standard and the belief that time is some physical dimension, but that he also must keep in mind that the true meaning of time, which is the relationship between distance and motion amplitude is not something to be avoided because it is a real part of our world and to try to get away from it would result in a theory that would not accurately describe the real world. I also showed him that his use of thermal concepts do indeed include to true meaning of time because when one measures temperature, one is actually getting an average value of a large number of entities traveling through various distances with various motion amplitudes. I went on to show him that he could get a more accurate actual value that can be applied to an individual interaction without the averaging effect by just replacing the time based R term in the T=D/R formula with a motion amplitude function that is based only on a comparison with a selected standard motion amplitude level. This could greatly simplify his work and give him new insights that are currently hidden to him because of his current approach. Of course one must also understand the base structure that generates quantum effects to go beyond the current quantum based theories, but he is on the right track as far as his treatment of time is concerned.

My second comment in this space was to answer John Merryman’s comment concerning my first comment to Carlo. I admit that I got sidetracked in that thoughts about the timelessness of photons came to mind so I put them down. Maybe they came from the universal consciousness (or God if you prefer). It could be that someone needed that information at that time and so it was given through me. I thought it best to answer John’s comment on this space because his comment was placed on this space and also because if anyone else who had seen his comment was interested in the same thing, he would be able to see it too. I did, however, redirect any further comments to me to my space so as not to offend anyone more than necessary. I also said that although I felt it appropriate to answer John’s comment because he had made it before your request for silence, I would not make any further comments on this space until Carlo had responded. I kept that promise and would probably not have commented further on this space yet if at all except to respond to your negative remarks about John and me.

You are right that consciousness is more than the pure physical structure that is currently able to be seen and scientifically understood by man in this world. That is because although the body and that portion of the soul that interfaces with the body is composed of matter and energy structures that can be observed and scientifically studied, the spirit and that portion of the soul that interfaces with the spirit is not composed of matter and energy as known to man in this world, but is of another source that is not known by man in this world. This means that you might be able to determine a man’s thoughts from observation of his brain’s matter and energy structures and patterns, but you would need to have a much higher level of knowledge to be able to determine his intents that generated the thoughts. Given man’s present rate of progression, this is not likely to happen very soon. That is all of the information in that area that I am currently releasing (any comments to me can be addressed to my paper’s page) and as this is turning into another dreaded huge post, I should and will end this post now.

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Hello Dr. Rovelli,

while i can fully appreciate an apparent confusion in identification of relationships in time with time itself and an interest in recognizing that what is referred to as time in physics is typically relative associations and wishing to do away with 't' in considering the relationships (essentially, i see no problems inherent in the math with conclusions 1 and 2), but,...

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Hello Dr. Rovelli,

while i can fully appreciate an apparent confusion in identification of relationships in time with time itself and an interest in recognizing that what is referred to as time in physics is typically relative associations and wishing to do away with 't' in considering the relationships (essentially, i see no problems inherent in the math with conclusions 1 and 2), but, relative as they may be, the relationships are not spatial in nature.

an example i used in a post elsewhere here:

we can toss a hula hoop out on a lake, put a little drop of oil in the center of the ring, monitor it's dispersion, note that it eventually fills the ring fairly evenly, watch the rainbows, have great fun 'till someone from the EPA shows up.

our calculations all include the expression "on the water".

we can set a couple of marker buoys on the lake and race a couple of boats around them, calculating their relative position to one another and the marker buoys all the while, and noting that, on the boats, they are always moving forward, regardless of which way they may turn.

our calculations all include the expression "on the water".

somewhere around the middle of the shoreline, wherever the middle of of a shoreline might be, we hop in an inner tube and go dog-paddling across the lake. it's a big lake. we paddle and paddle... count the number of strokes, intending in this way to measure how big the lake is... lose site of the shoreline... never find an end to the water... maybe somewhere in the wee hours of the morning we slip exhausted from the inner tube and disappear.

again, our calculations include the expression, "on the water".

our local situation may be compared to a bunch of people on a raft being towed around the lake by the sun, much as a water-skier might be towed.

some have gotten to looking at the calculations and wonder just what that "on the water" means in them; some ask if the calculations prove that water exists, others whether or no one can dispense with the idea of "on the water" in the equations and some get to questioning if there even is any water.

another example:

it is possible to define points of data on a hard drive in terms of relationships to one another. it is possible to run programs on the hard drive and describe then in more or less the equivalent of thermodynamic processes.

but it is not possible to have the data points without the hard drive.

the concept of time is somewhat a perceptual problem.

we have what is referred to as consciousness.

if we had just that, there would be no perception of time.

we might say that, with rotating consciousness through one dimension, we have memory.

this permits of an impression of 'duration' otherwise unavailable. it is only in that impression of 'duration' that a notion of 'time' arises at all.

yet it is only a vague sense of something there - akin to what a fish might have of water.

there is no way of parameterizing the perception - perceptually, there is no 'contrast' (required for perception) in that we cannot step outside of time. it would require another dimensional rotation of memory to be able to acquire an appropriate perspective and that is rather difficult to visualize.

concerns with such a modeling involving 'forgetting time'...

in part the psychological impact this may have, leading to a further disassociation with the natural world. i can see this happening quite easily with our growing absorption in entirely human activity and a dwindling identification with the world in which we actually live. the cultural stage is ripe for such a break as appears evidenced in the popularity of your paper. is this an inevitable result of the evolution of consciousness? no 'home'?...

and the attitude toward the world further disassociation with it would likely bring...

science's successes in augmented prowess has occasionally also been its disasters in a lack of wisdom involved in application. what is lost is frequently not possible to see until the 'disaster' aspect has evolved.

the unnaturalness of the thermodynamic interpretation - seemingly putting the cart before the horse.

if adopted, a potential for limiting consideration of possibilities by removing a contextual component capable of pointing to potential additional possibilities; something akin to how a loss of memory would result in no temporal perception. that time, gravity and space are actually not terribly well understood raises some concern in eliminating reference to one of them simply because it does not appear to have any specific effect in itself other than being a potential for data to exist.

a sense of time appears fundamental in living creatures. even the most basic of life forms.

http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jan/071 (slime mold have a sense of a length of time)

from cognitive science, that consciousness is clearly capable of accessing distant past, distant elsewhere present and distant future events information with considerable fidelity, there is a strong suggestion of a space-like dimensional character to time seemingly unaccountable for with a simple thermodynamic model.

to say that 'time flows' appears to be a slight misapprehension; that we flow in time would appear more precise.

while i am in full agreement with the majority of your observations and do not see any real reason why your proposed approach could not be employed effectively, i remain unclear about the extent of desirability of advantages this may afford beyond a sort of Swiss 'neat and tidy' and have some concerns about potential unintended disadvantages.

please forgive me if this all has already been addressed somewhere in the posts here. i've still got a lot of reading to do elsewhere here and it's not easy to keep up.

please forgive me also if i have misinterpreted your paper in any way. my own background is a little different from yours.

thank you,

matt kolasinski

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Many questons to reply to!

Let me start from the last one, by Dimi Chakalov. Dimi asks "what may happen to 3-D space in case we choose to forget time". And comments "I do hope he will do this until the contest ending date, January 1, 2009." Here I am.

I think that the fate of space is precisely the same as the one of time. I think we better forget both space and time, in order to...

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Many questons to reply to!

Let me start from the last one, by Dimi Chakalov. Dimi asks "what may happen to 3-D space in case we choose to forget time". And comments "I do hope he will do this until the contest ending date, January 1, 2009." Here I am.

I think that the fate of space is precisely the same as the one of time. I think we better forget both space and time, in order to understand better understand the structure of reality at the Planck scale. So; why all the fuss about time, and little abut space? Because the idea that space is not an entity is a very old and much discussed idea in the past, while the absence of time is much less so. In fact, when Newton based his theory on the existence of space, he did so *against* the prevalent thinkinf, from Aristotle to Descartes, which was to conside space not as an entity but only a relation between existing things. For Aristotle and for Descartes, the world is *not* a big space inside which matter moves (like for Newton and for the ancient atomists). Rather, it is just an ensemble of things that can happen to be in a relation of being "touching" one another. So, getting rid of space at the fundamental level is not very new. I think that what general relativity does is precisely so. It is the realization that the Newtonian "space" is nothing else that one of the physical fields that make up reality. Relality is not a space inside which things moves, but rather an ensemble of fields in interaction. So, my answer is that we must forget space and forget time. Forgettin space is easy; we have centuries of traditions that give us exemples about how to think the world without a fundamental space. Forgetting time is more difficult, and it is what we are discussing here.

Dimi writes "Carlo Rovelli has been manifestly silent on this fundamental issue." No, I am not, I have written often about that, including earlier in this discussion.

I do not understand the other points raised by Dimi. He says my statement about unitarity is confused, but dos not say what he finds confusing. The statement is simple and technical. The theory must give predictions, namely associate probabilities to alternative measuremenet outcomes. These probabilities should sum up to one. This, in my understanding is unitarity.

Dimi also writes: "For if Nature chooses to "forget time", the "observable quantities" would need human consciousness to get their job done." No! certainly not. I do not want to bring consciousness into these problems. The quantities that I call relational are not relationas because they are perceived by consciousness. They are relational because they pertain to two systems and not one. For instance, velocity is relational. An object has a velocity only "with respect" to another object. I walk on a train and I have a velocity of 1meter per second "with respect to the train". This does not mean that the train has a cosciousness to be aware of my velocity!

Adam Hefler asks: "Am I right in thinking that you adopt the Schroedinger rather than the Heisenberg picture in order to try to pass to a theory of quantum gravity? " No, it is the other way around. I adopt the Heisenberg picture, which remains well defined in the absence of a preferred time. I am told by friends who were there thatin his last publc lecture (in Sicily) Dirac had a single slide, with the Heisenberg equations dA/dt = i hbar[A,H] and the text "Heisenberg picture is the right one". These equations generalize to timeless quantum dynamics, as I have discussed in the essay.

Second question by Adam: "My main question is, What is the significance of thermal time? " Thanks for this question. I think that the origin of the problem with time is that many of the characteristic feautures of time (flowing, irreversibilty, and so on) seem totally absent from the picture of the world given by dynamics, especially when this includes relativistic gravity. The thermal time is an attempt to find the physical baisis for *these* additional features of time.

I loved the post by Tevian Dry, above (Dec 8). Nice, Tevian!

Thanks also to the kind post by Luigi Acerbi.

Petr Frish writes "I would like to make it stronger = a conjecture: Flowing of time a a property of the observer. Any decent observer of course has a memory. An object (complex particle with no memory) does not experience a flow of time. etc" I do not disagree. In fact, if thermodynamical time depends on the statistical description, hance on the coarse graining, to some extent it *it* observer dependent. By I would not know how to implemenet this concretely in physics.

Dimi Chakalov (already mentioned above), in an earlier post writes "It seems to me that Rovelli's recipe for quantum gravity is this: take Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity in their current formulation, with all their well-known problems, blend them into some new theory with "patrial observables", and hope that the problems of QM may be solved from GR, and the problems of GR may be solved from QM." Very good point. How could there be a change that this recipe works? The reason, I think, is because it has worked wonderfully in the past. When there was a problem between relativity of velocity and the Maxwell equations, many wanted to change one or the other. Einstein didn't do either. He kept both, and found that the two would work together, if we drom some other implicit common sense assumption (simultaneity). Dirac found antimatter by simply taking special relativity and quantum theory, and seeing where did they take if taken together. Newton took seriously Galilo's acelleration and Kepler ellipses... and so on. Very often physics advances by *taking seriously* theories that have proven empirically effective, and making an effort to merge then. Sometimes the merge requires new idea. One of the new ideas I advocate (with many others) is that to merge QM and GR we need to forget time. The result is that some say I am too radical; others, like Dimi in this post, say I am too conservative... I don't know what I am; I am just trying to find tentative solutions to the problems on the table ....

Thanks for the interesting comment, Cristi.

I apologize for the posts I am not answering to. I am tryng to catch up...

Carlo Rovelli

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Hi Carlo,

Your essay is of course beautifully written and argued. Thank you.

Now in this essay competition, there is an important split between a number of papers putting the view that time is an illusion/does not exist, yours being a prime example, and a number saying time is not an illusion/does indeed exist, mine being in the latter category. Recently I have been under some...

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Hi Carlo,

Your essay is of course beautifully written and argued. Thank you.

Now in this essay competition, there is an important split between a number of papers putting the view that time is an illusion/does not exist, yours being a prime example, and a number saying time is not an illusion/does indeed exist, mine being in the latter category. Recently I have been under some pressure from colleagues to explain how I could maintain my position in the face of your expert arguments. So I decided, a bit reluctantly, that I'd better point out where I disagree with your paper, else I will lose the argument by default.

I think there are four areas where we have different views.

First, on pages 2/3 of your paper, you state that there is no preferred time variable in GR. This is correct as regards spacelike surfaces that can represent constant time. But proper time along world lines is indeed a preferred time variable in GR. The fundamental difference from Newtonian theory is that the preferred time is defined along world lines, instead of by spacelike surfaces. Proper times along timelike worldlines is what is measured by clocks ticking (p.3). So you focus on problems with surfaces of constant time, I focus on the meaningful nature of proper time along world lines. To some degree this accounts for our differing positions on the nature of time.

Second, you focus on timeless evolution described by a Hamiltonian. I suggest firstly that physical evolution is described by a Hamiltonian in the way you propose only for some forms of matter content: there must for example be no dissipative processes happening, including no friction. Your `general structure of dynamical systems' does not, I think, describe simple realistic systems with friction, e.g. a pendulum with air resistance. Once the pendulum has stopped, you cannot follow it backwards and determine its previous motion. So I do not concur with the statement at the top of page 5: "It appears that all elementary physical systems can be described by Hamiltonian mechanics" (at least not by the time reversible dynamics you describe). Secondly, I suggest that in the quantum case, the Hamiltonian only describes part of the dynamics, the other part being handled by {the measurement process/collapse of the wave function/ decoherence}, however one conceives of and describes it [see Penrose, The Road to Reality, sections 21.8 and 22.1, 22.2, and Chapter 29, and Isham's book Lectures on Quantum Theory].

Thirdly, and related to the last point, your `timeless quantum mechanics' (Section 5) has no prescription for when projection (i.e. measurement) will take place [lines after equation (9)], and the Probability statement (7) has no prescription for when anything occurs. But that is the place where time and time irreversibility enters. This is Roger Penrose's key point, developed in The Road To Reality and The Emperor's New Mind. So I suggest that your formulation of QM is timeless because it is incomplete: your dynamical description does not include any way of determining when unitary development will be replaced by projection (in Penrose's terms, when unitary evolution U will be replaced by state vector reduction R).

Finally, the discussion of the recovery of time [section VI] parallels Penrose' discussion of coarse graining [The Road to Reality, pp 686-707]. But the Thermal Time Hypothesis [p. 8] only applies to statistical systems with many particles interacting [`these features are not mechanical , they only emerge at the thermodyamical level']. It does not seem to apply to single particles, or pairs of particles that collide, or planetary motion. I disagree with this hypothsis: I don't see that thermodynamics is needed to describe the motion of the Earth around the sun, for example. You say 'time is the expression of our ignorance of the full microstates." I do not agree; in my view [following Boltzmann, Oliver Penrose, and others] it is *entropy* that expresses that ignorance. The following equations [(19)-(26)] describe how the time variable works in some situations. That does not imply what the *origin* of time is; it merely shows how it works.



So that's how I see the differences betwen our views. I am sure I still have much to learn that may change my view.

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Hi Carlo,

I am also going to break in here, because I believe George Ellis made a crucial remark.

George explained his understanding of your claim that there is no preferred time variable in GR (George Ellis, Dec. 12, 2008 @ 20:27 GMT):

"This is correct as regards spacelike surfaces that can represent constant time. But proper time along world lines is indeed a preferred time...

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Hi Carlo,

I am also going to break in here, because I believe George Ellis made a crucial remark.

George explained his understanding of your claim that there is no preferred time variable in GR (George Ellis, Dec. 12, 2008 @ 20:27 GMT):

"This is correct as regards spacelike surfaces that can represent constant time. But proper time along world lines is indeed a preferred time variable in GR. The fundamental difference from Newtonian theory is that the preferred time is defined along world lines, instead of by spacelike surfaces. Proper times along timelike worldlines is what is measured by clocks ticking (p.3). So you focus on problems with surfaces of constant time, I focus on the meaningful nature of proper time along world lines."

On the other hand, in your arXiv:gr-qc/0604045v2, p. 4, you explained your understanding of 'no preferred time variable in GR' in the following fashion:

"In general relativity, when we describe the dynamics of the gravitational field (not to be confused with the dynamics of matter in a given gravitational field), there is no external time variable that can play the role of observable independent evolution variable. The field equations are written in terms of an evolution parameter, which is the time coordinate x^0, but this coordinate, does not correspond to anything directly observable. The proper time [tau] along spacetime trajectories cannot be used as an

independent variable either, as [tau] is a complicated non-local function of the gravitational field itself.

Therefore, properly speaking, GR does not admit a description as a system evolving in terms of an observable time variable.

...

"This weakening of the notion of time in classical GR is rarely emphasized: After all, in classical GR we may disregard the full dynamical structure of the theory and consider only individual solutions of its equations of motion. A single solution of the GR equations of motion determines “a spacetime”, where a notion of proper time is associated to each timelike worldline (notice the remark by George above - D.C.).

"But in the quantum context a single solution of the dynamical equation is like a single “trajectory” of a quantum particle: in quantum theory there are no physical individual trajectories: there are only transition probabilities between observable eigenvalues. Therefore in quantum gravity it is likely to be impossible to describe the world in terms of a spacetime, in the same sense in which the motion of a quantum electron cannot be described in terms of a single trajectory."

It seems to me that you and George are discussing 'apples and oranges': you are discussing the problem of time in classical GR, while he was (tacitly?) implying some yet-to-be discovered quantum gravity in which the "meaningful nature of proper time along world lines" (George Ellis, Dec. 12, 2008 @ 20:27 GMT) would be akin to "a single trajectory" (arXiv:gr-qc/0604045v2, p. 4).

May I ask you to sort out this issue with 'scrupulous intellectual honesty' (C. Rovelli, arXiv:gr-qc/0109034v2, p. 9).

Please also notice my criticism of your Essay, posted earlier ( Dec. 12, 2008 @ 03:58 GMT and Dec. 12, 2008 @ 16:21 GMT): the Heraclitian Time, which corresponds to the very *generation of 3-D space*, is absent in GR.

Again, if you really believe, with scrupulous intellectual honesty, that we should "forget" time, you have to demonstrate the emergence of 3-D space from some primitive (Borel?) set of abstract mathematical points, and then prove that this *emergence* is indeed timeless.

Please act promptly: the Heraclitean Time you have by the contest ending (January 1, 2009) is running out.

Dimi

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What does "the real-world evidence" support - an objective flow of time or the block universe view?

As what George Ellis wrote above "the real-world evidence that time does indeed flow is overwhelming" is quite relevant to the topic of this contest and especially to Carlo Rovelli's position I will comment here. But my comments on his statement "Objectively privileged hypersurfaces do indeed...

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What does "the real-world evidence" support - an objective flow of time or the block universe view?

As what George Ellis wrote above "the real-world evidence that time does indeed flow is overwhelming" is quite relevant to the topic of this contest and especially to Carlo Rovelli's position I will comment here. But my comments on his statement "Objectively privileged hypersurfaces do indeed exist in standard cosmology, and in all physically realistic solutions" will be posted on his thread. Lawrence Crowell's "I don't think that science can tell us about the existential status of geometric entities" will be addressed on my thread.

Yes, of course, the evidence that time flows is indeed overwhelming, but that evidence is not physical. If the evidence is analyzed rigorously it becomes clear that it boils down to the fact that we realize ourselves and the world at the constantly changing moment 'now'. But it does not necessarily follow from that undeniable fact that the world itself also exists only at (or up to) the present moment. That is why Hermann Weyl, who certainly was aware of "the real-world evidence", conjectured that it was our consciousness crawling along the worldtube of our body that creates that evidence and the feeling (illusion) that time flows. I would suggest that all who disagree with the block universe view analyze only Weyl's conjecture and try to find just one example (or even a hint of an example) when it fails to explain what we perceive as flow of time.

To avoid any misunderstanding, George Ellis' "The time reversible picture of fundamental physics underlying the block universe viewpoint" (p. 3 of his essay) is not quite correct. The block universe view does not follow from the reversibility issue; that issue was known before Minkowski introduced the concept of spacetime. It is the spacetime idea that underlies the block universe view - if spacetime is not just an abstract mathematical space but represents a real four-dimensional world, we call that world a block universe.

Also incorrect, in my view, is another statement: "This irreversibility is a key aspect of the flow of time" (p. 1 of his essay). I think the majority of relativists will agree that the irreversibility of physical processes demonstrates the anisotropy of spacetime and does not imply an objective flow of time. Let me specifically stress - we are not asking how to describe spacetime in terms of the idea of time flow (based on our three-dimensional language); we ask the fundamental question - is the future as real as the past, or more precisely, is the world four-dimensional (a block universe)?

The real situation is, in fact, opposite to what George Ellis wrote -- the macro scale evidence supporting the block universe view is overwhelming. Consider even special relativity and ask whether the experiments (not just the theoretical results), which confirmed its kinematical predictions (relativity of simultaneity, length contraction, time dilation, twin paradox), would be possible if the physical objects involved in these experiments were three-dimensional or growing four-dimensional worldtubes.

Here is a very quick example of such an analysis in the case of length contraction. First, take into account that an extended three-dimensional body is defined in terms of simultaneity - all its parts taken simultaneously at a given moment of time. Then, as length contractions turns out to be a specific manifestation of relativity of simultaneity, while measuring the same rod two observers A and B in relative motion measure two different three-dimensional rods (two different sets of the rod's parts) since A and B have different classes of simultaneous events. Is this would be possible if the rod were a three-dimensional object? Is this would be possible if the rod were a growing worldtube (see the attached diagram)?

In the case of the growing worldtube one might argue that we will always see only the completed part of the worldtube since we always see past events. That is, of course, correct but try to imagine how many tough questions the growing or evolving block universe has to answer (even tougher than the questions the block universe view itself has to answer) - (i) we are interested not only in what we observe (from what we observe we try to understand the world itself), (ii) how to explain, for example, the EPR-Bell-Aspect type of experiments, (iii) how to explain the inescapable conclusion that the evolving block universe is as predetermined as the block universe since the growing block universe will be merely actualizing the forever given events of the block universe (take into account the EPR-Bell-Aspect type of experiments, for example, to see why), etc.

And one last point - the probabilistic behaviour of quantum objects does not necessarily contradict the forever given spacetime picture of the world. To see why this is so, assume that the quantum objects do not exist continuously in time (which means that they would have an internal frequency).

Vesselin Petkov

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Dear Vesselin Petkov,

Thank you for the most interesting and thoughtful challenge to the Evolving Block Universe idea that I have yet received. With apologies to Carlo I will answer it on this thread, as you have posted your challenge here.

First you state, “If the evidence is analyzed rigorously it becomes clear that it boils down to the fact that we realize ourselves and the...

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Dear Vesselin Petkov,

Thank you for the most interesting and thoughtful challenge to the Evolving Block Universe idea that I have yet received. With apologies to Carlo I will answer it on this thread, as you have posted your challenge here.

First you state, “If the evidence is analyzed rigorously it becomes clear that it boils down to the fact that we realize ourselves and the world at the constantly changing moment 'now'. But it does not necessarily follow from that undeniable fact that the world itself also exists only at (or up to) the present moment. That is why Hermann Weyl, who certainly was aware of "the real-world evidence", conjectured that it was our consciousness crawling along the worldtube of our body that creates that evidence and the feeling (illusion) that time flows.” The problem with this view is fundamental: how can our consciousness manage this astonishing feat, if we really inhabit an unchanging block spacetime and the flow of time is an illusion? The point is that our mind functions through the brain, a physical affair governed by the laws of physics that in some as yet understood way underlies our conscious perceptions. If time does not effectively flow *in our brain*, enabling the physical states of our neurons to succeed each other in timelike succession in a suitable causally patterned way, there is no way that consciousness can progress from one state to another. Modern neuroscience insists our brain is a physically based system, subject to the usual laws of physics; if they do not sensibly comprehend the flow of time, neither can our brain.

Second, you state “I think the majority of relativists will agree that the irreversibility of physical processes demonstrates the anisotropy of spacetime and does not imply an objective flow of time. Let me specifically stress - we are not asking how to describe spacetime in terms of the idea of time flow (based on our three-dimensional language); we ask the fundamental question - is the future as real as the past, or more precisely, is the world four-dimensional (a block universe)?”

I have tried to emphasize in my essay not just the irreversibility of time, but the fact that standard quantum theory implies that the future is not determined *even in principle* until it happens, although we do have probability predictions as to what will happen. The fundamental irreversibility of the quantum measurement process (you don’t even have a prediction of probabilities in the backwards direction of time) is a key aspect of what is going on.

Third you state, “the macro scale evidence supporting the block universe view is overwhelming. Consider even special relativity and ask whether the experiments (not just the theoretical results), which confirmed its kinematical predictions (relativity of simultaneity, length contraction, time dilation, twin paradox), would be possible if the physical objects involved in these experiments were three-dimensional or growing four-dimensional worldtubes.”, and you continue with the specific example of length contraction: “would [this] be possible if the rod were a growing worldtube?”

Yes it would. The key aspect of all these special relativity examples is the radar definition of simultaneity, so that is what I will concentrate on; all the rest will follow from this (for detailed discussion and spacetime diagrams, see my book “Flat and Curved Spacetimes” with Ruth Williams). So please consider an observer O moving on a worldline L relative to an arbitrary chosen Minkowskian reference frame in flat spacetime. She emits a photon at event E1 on her world line, it is reflected by a distant object M at an event R on its world line, and received back by O at the event E2 on her world line, after a proper time T has elapsed since E1. She then determines that the event P on her world line is simultaneous with R, where the proper time along her world from E1 to P is T/2, which is also the proper time along her world line from P to E2. Thus she in principle determines all spacetime events simultaneous with the event P in her history.

Now the key point is that she notionally determines what other events are is simultaneous with P, after the event: E2 occurs after P. An evolving block view is completely compatible with this, because there is no requirement that the spacelike surfaces of time on which coming-into being takes place be surfaces of simultaneity for the observer O. Her surfaces of constant time are all determined by her measurements in the past, after the events that are determined to be simultaneous have come into being. The photon traveled along the path it traversed as the block universe unfolded, arrived back at her world line at event E2, and then allowed her to determine that the past event P was simultaneous with R. Similar analysis will apply to length contraction and all other special relativity measurements: there is no problem for the EBU.

I will not attempt to respond here concerning the EPR-Bell-Aspect type of experiments; I am reasonably sure that whatever works to make it compatible with special relativity in the usual Block Universe will also work for the EBU. I do not understand your comment “how to explain the inescapable conclusion that the evolving block universe is as predetermined as the block universe since the growing block universe will be merely actualizing the forever given events of the block universe (take into account the EPR-Bell-Aspect type of experiments, for example, to see why).” If you are claiming that the outcome of quantum measurements is predetermined before they have happened, then you are contradicting the standard views of quantum theory: please refer for example to the writings of Richard Feynmann and Chris Isham. You seem to have forgotten the foundational two slit experiments.

Finally you state “the probabilistic behaviour of quantum objects does not necessarily contradict the forever given spacetime picture of the world. To see why this is so, assume that the quantum objects do not exist continuously in time (which means that they would have an internal frequency).” Please enlighten me as to how this leads to the definite prediction of the outcomes of *all* quantum experiments, not just the EPR type experiments, and hence to a definite spacetime outcome.

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1. My comments on George Ellis' post above will be posted on his thread later today (Montreal time).

2. On Chi Ming Hung's label placing. I believe we all have been enjoying the generally constructive discussions on this forum. Unfortunately, your latest post cannot be regarded as constructive. I would suggest that before criticizing (in your post it is worse - placing labels) a view try to...

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1. My comments on George Ellis' post above will be posted on his thread later today (Montreal time).

2. On Chi Ming Hung's label placing. I believe we all have been enjoying the generally constructive discussions on this forum. Unfortunately, your latest post cannot be regarded as constructive. I would suggest that before criticizing (in your post it is worse - placing labels) a view try to do the obvious - make sure that you understand it first.

2.1. You stated: "Thus, contrary to popular misconception (e.g. claims by Vesselin Petkov above), SR does not demand the existence of 4-dimensional objects". I provided arguments; that you ignored them does not transform them into claims. I am afraid it is your position that reflects popular misconception. Here is the argument (not a claim) why I think so - sometimes people are making claims like yours because they do not bother to analyze in depth the relativistic effects (not even the special relativistic effects); try to do it now by answering the questions about length contraction I asked (and also check my post on George Ellis' thread). The length contraction and relativity of simultaneity arguments are given in more detail in Sec. 2 of my essay; even deeper analyses of them and also of time dilation and the twin paradox are given in Ch. 5 of my book "Relativity and the Nature of Spacetime" (Springer, 2005). It is shown there that these relativistic effects, and more importantly the experiments that confirmed them, would be impossible if the physical objects involved in those experiments were three-dimensional; in my previous post I attached a diagram demonstrating that the length contraction of a rod would be also impossible if the rod were a growing worldtube (and also briefly addressed a possible objection). Analyzing the relativistic effects by explicitly asking what the *dimensionality* of the physical objects involved in them is you will be in a better position to comment on whether or not special relativity demands "the existence of 4-dimensional objects".

2.2. You also stated: "It should be quite obvious that the BU viewpoint is indefensible once quantum phenomena are taken into account. More specifically, the objectivity of indeterministic and probabilistic transitions in quantum mechanics is completely at odds with a BU viewpoint (as pointed out by George Ellis)." Frankly, it is beyond my comprehension how you could write this.

First, you ignored not only the arguments demonstrating that relativity would be impossible if the physical objects were three-dimensional; you also ignored what I specifically wrote (to help those who post not to repeat the common misconception that quantum mechanics is incompatible with the spacetime picture of the world): "the probabilistic behaviour of quantum objects does not necessarily contradict the forever given spacetime picture of the world." I did not elaborate in order not to make the post too long. What I meant is briefly explained in Sec. 5 of my essay; the reference to the developed idea is also given there.

Second, how do you know "that the BU viewpoint is indefensible once quantum phenomena are taken into account"? Like anyone else you have no idea what is really going on in the quantum world. You wrote "the objectivity of indeterministic and probabilistic transitions in quantum mechanics" with which I completely agree, but believe that the block universe view is the correct view that is compatible with both relativity and quantum mechanics. Have you asked yourself "indeterministic and probabilistic transitions" of *what* we are talking about? Ultimately, we mean processes involving *quantum objects*. But we do not know what the quantum object is (just do not tell me we can't ask such a question). Only when we have the answer to that question we will know whether that answer will contradict or support the block universe view. For now, you have an example in my essay that demonstrates both (i) that the probabilistic behaviour of quantum objects does not necessarily contradict the forever given spacetime picture of the world, and (ii) that one can envisage a paradox-free quantum mechanics; these are possible when an implicit assumption - that the quantum object exists continuously in time - is identified and abandoned.

In these difficult times in fundamental physics, instead of being quick at placing labels, it will be much more helpful to try to understand one another to the best of our abilities. This is one of the necessary conditions for achieving the next breakthrough in physics.

Vesselin Petkov

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Hello Carlo,

Hope all is well!

In this BBC video, Lee Smolin states, "Einstein taught us that space is not a background that things move in. Spoace is a network of relationships that are ever dynamical, ever evolving, part of the world. The geometry of space evolves and changes--WIGGLES--just like anything else==just like electromegnetism, just like...

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Hello Carlo,

Hope all is well!

In this BBC video, Lee Smolin states, "Einstein taught us that space is not a background that things move in. Spoace is a network of relationships that are ever dynamical, ever evolving, part of the world. The geometry of space evolves and changes--WIGGLES--just like anything else==just like electromegnetism, just like particles."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bLwqnIfLRA&featur
e=related

So it is that dimensions move.

All that my theory--Moving Dimensions Theory--does is note that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, as attested to the photon which is ageless in relativity and nonlocal in quantum mechanics.

From MDT's simple postulate and equation dx4/dt=ic, all of relativity is derived.

Give me a universe wherein we have four dimensions x1, x2, x3, x4 and the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, or dx4/dt=ic, and all of relativity arises.

This is a simple, buautiful postulate and principle--indeed, Einstein's principle of relativity descends form MDT's postulate. And MDT is more succinct than relativity, for from MDT's single postulate and equation comes both of relativity's postulate.

Also from MDT's simple postulate and equation comes a natural *physical* model for time and all its arrows and assymetries, as well as entropy, quantum nonlocality and entanglement, all the dualities--space/time, mass/energy, wave/particle--and both Heisenbergs' and Huygens' principles.

dx4/dt=ic (underlying relativity) suggests that the fourth dimension is expandingh at c.

xp-px = ih (underlying quantum mechanics) suggests that the wavelength of this expansion is Planck's length.

So it is that MDT sets both Planck's constant and the veloicty of light, while also maintaining the ocnstancy of the velocity of light by giving rise to all of relativity.

Lee Smolin also states in the video, "We've forgotten how audacious science is and how it rages sometime -- how the ideas that turn out to be true are so often outrageous... we've forgotten the lessons of the people like Einstein, who come from the outside but have exactly the right insight and right idea." --http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bLwqnIfLRA&feature=related
BBC Hard Talk

"Openness, the inclusion of different points of view, like in anything else, is essential to progress." --Lee Smolin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bLwqnIfLRA&feature=related BBC Hard Talk

In light of all this, I was hoping for some more dialogue; as there is nothing to lose by discussing foundational questions in a collegial, professional manner, and everything to lose by silence and solitude.

Too, too many established professors and researchers refuse to partake in dialogue, and this grates against the spirit of greats such as Wheeler, Einstein, and Galileo.

"I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him." --Galileo Galilei

"Curiosity is more important than knowledge." --Einstein



Lee Smolin also says that a theory should "come in a coherent whole--it should start with a beautiful principle, like the principle of indeterminacy of quantum mechanics or the principle of relativity, and there then should be a beautiful equation that flows out form that principle to a myriad of consequnces." --Lee Smolin

MDT's beautiful principle: The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c with a wavelength of the Planck Length.

MDT's beautiful equation: dx4/dt=ic

MDT's myriad of consequences: all of relativity, time and all its arrows and assymetries, entropy, quantum nonlocality and entanglement, wave-particle/space-time/mass-energy duality, the gravitational slowing of light and time, and the single velocity for all entities through spacetime--c.

Well, Carlos, your silence on MDT after having promised to read the paper has lead me to believe that you see nothing wrong with MDT, as unlike LQG and Sring Theory, it passes Dr. Smolin's criterion for a good theory. And too, MDT predicts all of relativity along with quantum nonlocality and entanglement, as well as entropy, by proposing a novel, deeper feature of our *physical* reality.

Best Wishes!

Soon these comments will be frozen for all time, while the fourth dimension yet marches on at the rate of c!

I look forward to sending you a copy of my book, HERO'S JOURNEY PHYSICS & MOVING DIMENSIONS THEORY: FROM HERACLITIS, TO PLATO, TO ARISTOTLE, TO COPERNICUS, TO BRUNO, TO KEPLER, TO GALILEO, TO NEWTON, TO PLANCK/EINSTEIN/BOHR/BORN--AND YET IT MOVES! Unifying relativity, quantum mechanics, entropy, and time's arrows and assymetries with a new universal invariant: dx4/dt=ic."

Eppur si muove!

Dr. E (The Real McCoy)

"Books on physics are full of complicated mathematical formulae. But thought and ideas, not formulae, are the beginning of every physical theory." --Einstein/Infeld, The Evolution of Physics

MDT's *physical* idea: the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c, or dx4/dt=ic.

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Happy New Year All!

I too recently came across Lee's piece:

http://www.edge.org/q2009/q09_9.html#smolin

"THE LIBERATION OF TIME"

Moving Dimensions Theory has been liberating time for quite some time now. Check it out where I used the word "liberate" at:

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/238

"Dr. E wrote on Sep. 11, 2008 @ 15:18 GMT

...

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Happy New Year All!

I too recently came across Lee's piece:

http://www.edge.org/q2009/q09_9.html#smolin

"THE LIBERATION OF TIME"

Moving Dimensions Theory has been liberating time for quite some time now. Check it out where I used the word "liberate" at:

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/238

"Dr. E wrote on Sep. 11, 2008 @ 15:18 GMT



. . . Yes--perhaps you can interpret it that way, but for the moment I'm trying to keep things as simple as possible, by stating that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions: dx4/dt=ic. Einstein's Relativity may be derived from this simple postulate and its equation, and too, it unfreezes time, it liberates us from the block universe, and it accounts for quantum mechanics' nonlocality and entangelment, as well as entropy and time's arrows in all realms.

There may be many ways of interpreting a fourth expanding dimension, as you suggest. What do you mean by "quantum constant?"

I propose that a fundamental invariant of the universe is dx4/dt = ic. It is this deeper reality that leads to the constancy of c--both its independence of the velocity of the soure and the fact that it is measured to be c for all observers. dx4/dt = ic accounts for both of these c's in different ways, with the same physical model. It does not simply state that c is constant, but it also states "why."

Time--the t in dx4/dt--is the time we're all so used to--the time we see ticking away on our watches. Now this time is typically measured by some process that involves the propagation of photons, or changes in energy, be it an unwinding clock spring, an oscillating quartz crystal, or an electronic circuit. t is then ultimately tied to the propagation of photons, which are just matter surfing the fourth expanding dimension. And so it is that relativity's math inherits this notion of the fourth dimension, as relativity was born by comntemplating the propagation of light--photons. We define time by the propagation of light, and then we measure the propagation of light via time. This tautology has lead to c's constancy and too, one can see how it is the fount of realtivity's beauty--for think of the very word "relativity." It means that the way we measure physical reality is "relative" to how we are moving through space-time. Does it not make sense that measurements utilizing meter sticks, clocks, and light should be relative to motion, when both the clocks as well as the light depend on photons, which are surfing the fourth expanding dimension, which meter sticks are rotated into, and thus foreshortened in our three spatial dimensions, whenever they move? But yet, there are invariant entities, such as interval, c, and rest mass, and that's what physics has always truly been about--the rock-hard invariance of a physical reality.

MDT proposes a deeper invariance dx4/dt = ic, from which the invariance of c and the invariance of interval both naturally emerge."

It's good to see Lee has changed his view and is now accepting time's reality, for the moment, at least!

Lee writes at The Edge, "I would like to describe a change in viewpoint, which I believe will alter how we think about everything from the most abstract questions on the nature of truth to the most concrete questions in our daily lives. This change comes from the deepest and most difficult problems facing contemporary science: those having to do with the nature of time. . . . There is also no past. The past only lives as part of the present, to the extent that it gives us evidence of past events. And the future is not yet real, which means that it is open and full of possibilities, only a small set of which will be realized. Nor, on this view, is there any possibility of other universes. All that exists must be part of this universe, which we find ourselves in, at this moment." --http://www.edge.org/q2009/q09_9.html#smolin

Best,

Dr. E (The Real McCoy)

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Hello Carlo!

Hope all is well with you!

Just reread your paper and I got to thinking that quantum gravity is indeed the father of so many wrong directions--from Einstein's later years whence he abandoned *physical* models in favor of pure math to String Theory to LQG. Too often quantum gravity is treated as something *real*--its existence is assumed to be *real*--and this...

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Hello Carlo!

Hope all is well with you!

Just reread your paper and I got to thinking that quantum gravity is indeed the father of so many wrong directions--from Einstein's later years whence he abandoned *physical* models in favor of pure math to String Theory to LQG. Too often quantum gravity is treated as something *real*--its existence is assumed to be *real*--and this "reality" is then used as a foundation for one's theorizing and contemplations. But nobody has ever quantized grvaity nor seen a graviton, and in this paper I show there is no need to quantize gravity:

http://fqxi.org/data/forum-attachments/9_MOVING_DIME
NSIONS_THEORY_EXAMINES_THE_GRAVITATIONAL_REDSHIFT_SLOWING_OF
_CLOCKS.pdf

In your paper you write, "I have here attempted to combine a coherent view about the problem of time in quantum gravity, starting from what others have understood."

Is time really a problem in quantum gravity when nobody has ever quantized gravity and nobody has ever seen a graviton, nor quite knows how we might even see or measure one? Indeed--Freeman Dyson suggested that it might be impossible in principle to measure a graviton. Ergo, contemplating time in the realm of quantum grvaity, when quantum grvaity might not exist, may lead us down wrong paths. Hundreds of millions have been spent on these paths which have so far lead nowhere.

I would suggest there are more optimum paths to follow--paths that begin by contemplating foundational questions--paths that are motivated by providing a simple, unifying *physical* model for both quantum mechanics' "characteristic trait" and relativity's "elementary foundations" which Einstein yet sought. MDT, by providing a *physical* model from where such entities emerge, also provides the mechanism from which time naturally emerges.

MOVING DIMENSIONS THEORY: EXALTING EINSTEIN’S ELEMENTARY FOUNDATIONS & SCHRODENGER’S CHARACTERISTIC TRAIT

by Dr. Elliot McGucken

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/238

"A physical theory can be satisfactory only if its structures are composed of elementary foundations. The theory of relativity is ultimately as little satisfactory as, for example, classical thermodynamics was before Boltzmann had interpreted the entropy as probability. –Einstein in a letter to Arnold Sommerfield on January 14th, 1908. CPAE, Vol. 5, Doc. 73:"

"When two systems, of which we know the states by their respective representatives, enter into temporary physical interaction due to known forces between them, and when after a time of mutual influence the systems separate again, then they can no longer be described in the same way as before, viz. by endowing each of them with a representative of its own. I would not call that one but rather the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics, the one that enforces its entire departure from classical lines of thought. By the interaction the two representatives [the quantum states] have become entangled." --Schrödinger

Moving Dimensions Theory’s simple postulate, physical model, and equation account for both “relativity’s elementary foundations,” which Einstein stated we yet needed, and Schrödinger’s “characteristic trait” of quantum mechanics—entanglement.

MDT: The fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c, or dx4/dt=ic.

"If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values - that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control." –Martin Luther King Jr.

Physics has ever been driven and advanced by physicists contemplating *physical* reality and presenting *physical* models, in the rugged pursuit of fundamental *physical* principles.

"My interest in science was always essentially limited to the study of principles.... That I have published so little is due to this same circumstance, as the great need to grasp principles has caused me to spend most of my time on fruitless pursuits." --Einstein

Einstein's Principle of Relativity (the first postulate), as well as the second postulate of relativity, both derive from MDT's single postulate which is more concise and has the added benefits of providing for free will, liberating us from the block universe, weaving change into the fundamental fabric of spacetime for the first time in the history of relativity, and providing a *physical* model for time and all its arrows and asymmetries, entropy, and quantum nonlocality and entanglement, as well as reality's probabilistic nature. The fourth dimension is inherently nonlocal via its invariant expansion, and thus “quantum mechanics’ characteristic trait” (in Schrödinger’s words) naturally emerges.

1. First postulate (principle of relativity)

The laws by which the states of physical systems undergo change are not affected, whether these changes of state be referred to the one or the other of two systems of coordinates in uniform translatory motion.

2. Second postulate (invariance of c)

Light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c that is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body.

Both of these postulates—as well as the Einstein/Minkowski spacetime metric—naturally derive from MDT’s simple postulate and equation: the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at c, or dx4/dt=ic. The derivation of relativity and motivation for replacing x4 with ict may be seen here:

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/238

Time as an Emergent Phenomenon: Traveling Back to the Heroic Age of Physics by Elliot McGucken

MDT presents a new universal invariant--an elementary law from which Einstein's Principle of Relativity can be built by pure deduction. Begin with a universe with four dimensions x1, x2, x3, x4, where the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions dx4/dt=ic, and the Minkowski/Einstein spacetime metric and all of relativity naturally emerge, as does quantum mechanics' nonlocality and entanglement, wave-particle duality, space-time duality, mass-energy duality, E/B duality, entropy, and time and all its arrows and asymmetries.

"Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, that when we grasp it - in a decade, a century, or a millennium - we will all say to each other, how could it have been otherwise? How could we have been so stupid?" --John A. Wheeler

MDT presents a physical principle more fundamental than Einstein's principle of relativity, as all of relativity naturally emerges from MDT's postulate, as well as entanglement and quantum mechanics’ probabilistic nature.

Please see the attached PDF for the rest.

Hope all is well!

Best,

Dr. E (The Real McCoy)

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Dear Dr. Rovelli,

Here's a post that tries to comment on FQXi's 2008 essay contest (The Nature of Time) as well as its 2010 essay contest (Is Reality Digital or Analog?)

We have to wonder if the Large Hadron Collider was worth all the time and money it took to build. It won't find the Higgs boson. It may well "prove" that strings exist but this will only deceive the world because...

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Dear Dr. Rovelli,

Here's a post that tries to comment on FQXi's 2008 essay contest (The Nature of Time) as well as its 2010 essay contest (Is Reality Digital or Analog?)

We have to wonder if the Large Hadron Collider was worth all the time and money it took to build. It won't find the Higgs boson. It may well "prove" that strings exist but this will only deceive the world because strings are only a tiny fraction of matter's true composition. Perhaps it would have been better to spend the money buying several million desktop computers for scientists to develop and refine theories with.

ALTERNATIVE TO HIGGS BOSON

An important step might be to think of "... the grand design of the universe, a single theory that explains everything" (words used by Stephen Hawking on the American version of Amazon, when promoting his latest book “The Grand Design” – coauthored with Leonard Mlodinow, Bantam Books, 2010) in a different way than physicists who are presently working on science's holy grail of unification. The universe’s underlying electronic foundation* (which makes our cosmos into a partially-complete unification, similar to 2 objects which appear billions of years or billions of light-years apart on a huge computer screen actually being unified by the strings of ones and zeros making up the computer code which is all in one small place) would make our cosmos into physics’ holy grail of a complete unification if it enabled not only elimination of all distances in space and time, but also elimination of distance between (and including) the different sides of objects and particles. This last point requires the universe to not merely be a vast collection of the countless photons, electrons and other quantum particles within it; but to be a unified whole that has “particles” and “waves” built into its union of digital 1’s and 0’s (or its union of qubits – quantum binary digits). If we use the example of CGH (computer generated holography, which is reminiscent of the holographic simulation called the Holodeck in “Star Trek: The Next Generation”), these "particles" and "waves" could be elements produced by the interaction of electromagnetic and presently undiscovered gravitational waves, producing what we know as mass and forming what we know as space-time. Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves, and measurements on the Hulse-Taylor binary-star system resulted in Russell Hulse and Joe Taylor being awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1993 for their work, which was the first indirect evidence for gravitational waves. The feedback of the past and future universes into the unified cosmos's electronic foundation would ensure that both past and future could not be altered. (Our brains and minds are part of this unification too, which must mean extrasensory perception and telekinetic independence from technology are possible.)

* For more information on the universe's proposed electronic foundation, please see my article and postings at

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/814

as well as my replies to Dr. Israel Omar Perez at

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/817

STRINGS ARE ONLY PART OF MATTER'S BASIS

Space and time only exist in our experience. They are emergent properties, like wetness and mind. We experience wetness because it emerges from the building blocks of the hydrogen and oxygen atoms which make up water. We experience mind because it emerges from the building blocks of neurons composing the brain. And we experience space-time since it emerges from the building blocks making up the universe. These units are a combination of electromagnetic pulses (forming a cosmic computer which includes randomness and thus the potential to escape rigid preprogramming, and have a small degree of free will) as well as a cosmic hologram (this is produced by the interaction of electromagnetic plus gravitational waves and combination of the holographic aspect with the electronic aspect unifies general relativity with quantum physics). Every physical and nonphysical part of the universal hologram would be a receptor for the downloading of data from the cosmic computer which not only exists in the hyperspace of the large-scale universe but also in the hyperspace of each subatomic particle. (In other words, the holographic universe or spacetime we know is a screen for displaying data from the 5th-dimensional computer).

It might be helpful to visualise time as the playing of a CD or video tape. The entire disc or tape obviously exists all the time. But our physical senses can only perceive a tiny part of the sound and the sights at any fraction of a second. I believe space and time are infinite, so it might be more accurate to visualise time as that HUGE number - in this case, of CDs or tapes - which some versions of string theory propose (at a minimum, 10 exponent 500). My essay - http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/814 - tells you how to travel to the future, how to return home, and how to travel into our past. Neither future nor past can be altered (a blow to our belief that we have the free will to shape the future) and my explanation of travel to the past requires re-interpretation of the concepts of "multiverse" and "parallel universes". It also requires the ability to travel billions of light years INSTANTLY. This sounds like pure fantasy, but I outline an approach based on electrical engineering, General Relativity, and Miguel Alcubierre's 1994 proposal of "warp drive" that makes it logically possible.

These unbelievable things are made believable if you read my essay (along with its postings and replies) as well as the little books I've written (listed in the essay's Endnotes). But if you don't have time to read all that (I don't think I do!), here's a little picture that tries to summarise everything in a few lines -

My essay suggests the universe is a Mobius loop and is contained in, or unified with, each of its particles (relying on physical senses or 21st-century scientific instruments would make this statement ridiculous). Then each fermion and boson would also be composed of the 3 spatial dimensions, the 4th dimension of time, and the 5th dimension of hyperspace. Detectors like the Large Hadron Collider would be unable to "see" the time and hyperspace components of particles but could only see the small (maybe 5%) 3 spatial dimensions (the time and hyperspace components would be what we call dark matter), erroneously assuming particles are those tiny fractions of a Mobius loop that physics calls strings. "Dark matter" would exert a gravitational influence because both time and hyperspace, being parts of a curved Mobius loop (whether of quantum or cosmic scale), would push objects together in the same way Einstein's curved space-time pushes objects together. We can speak of the HST now - no, not the Hubble Space Telescope but Hyperspatial SpaceTime. We can visualise the Mobius loop as composed of a hyperspace computer which generates information on how things change from one undetectably tiny fraction of a second to the next (we call this time, and it's comparable to the frames in a movie) and transmits the data (transmits dark energy?) to the insignificant portion of length, width and depth that makes up subatomic particles ... and the universe.

That's the end of my one-paragraph summary. Now for some extra thoughts that popped into my head -

Preceding the Big Bang (which created this local section of the infinite, eternal universe ... or if you prefer, this subuniverse of the megauniverse) there would have been no space, matter or time in this subuniverse and all would have been hyperspace. No transmissions of dark energy (creating time and space/matter) would have occurred - therefore the dark-energy content of the universe would have been zero, increasing to the present 72% as more and more matter was created. How is matter created? Perhaps as cosmologist Alan Guth once suggested -

"You might even be able to start a new universe using energy equivalent to just a few pounds of matter. Provided you could find some way to compress it to a density of about 10^75 (10 exponent 75) grams per cubic centimeter, and provided you could trigger the thing ..."

At the time the Cosmic Microwave Background was emitted (less than a million years after the big bang), results from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe say the dark-energy content of the universe was negligible. Space/matter has been increasing since the big bang so transmissions from hyperspace (dark energy) which create them are increasing while the volume of the Mobius loop occupied by time/hyperspace (dark matter) has been shrinking as a result - according to the WMAP satellite, from 63% when the CMB was emitted to 23% today. Why isn't dark energy increasing at the same rate dark matter is decreasing? It must be because, as stated earlier, both time and hyperspace exert a gravitational influence, thereby mimicking space and matter to a degree. This mimicry causes the dark matter between the start of the CMB and the present to decrease by only about 40% while dark energy increases in the same period by about 70%.

My essay tells you how to travel into the future, how to return home, and how to take a trip into our past. Regarding travel beyond our start and into the past ... it can’t be denied that these paragraphs imply the possibility of humans from the distant future time-travelling to the distant past and using electronics to create this particular subuniverse's computer-generated Big Bang. An accomplishment such as this would be the supreme example of “backward causality” (effects influencing causes) promoted by Yakir Aharonov, John Cramer and others. However, realising that we live in a cosmic-quantum unification with zero-separation and recalling Isaac Newton’s inverse-square law and what it says about the force between two particles being infinite (does infinite mean 10 ^ 500, the HUGE number of universes proposed by some versions of string theory?) if the distance of separation goes to zero means there's still room for God (as Creator) because God would be a pantheistic union of the megauniverse's material and mental parts, forming a union with humans in a cosmic unification.

Best wishes,

Rodney Bartlett

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I know I can't submit another essay. I don't plan to - these are just some comments that came to mind after thinking about my essay. They don't seem very relevant to the topic "Is Reality Digital or Analog?" but writing them has given even more satisfaction than writing the essay, and I'm in the mood to share them with the whole world. So if you've got time to read them...

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I know I can't submit another essay. I don't plan to - these are just some comments that came to mind after thinking about my essay. They don't seem very relevant to the topic "Is Reality Digital or Analog?" but writing them has given even more satisfaction than writing the essay, and I'm in the mood to share them with the whole world. So if you've got time to read them ...

---------------------------------------------------------
----------------

I fully realise that my essay doesn’t sound like science at all. I can appreciate that many readers think it belongs to science fiction and fantasy. It does have saving graces though. I’m amazed at how well it fits in with the discoveries of the Microwave Anisotropy Probe and with string theory, culminating in the LHC’s experimentally verified strings and my prediction of antistrings. Having said that, I must say this – it’s very strange that the scientific world is so obsessed with mathematics (admittedly, my essay did dabble with it when offering a version of E=mc2 to suit the digital world - but I kept it very simple ... so simple it might be regarded as wrong). Math seems to be regarded as infallible, even though it leads to mistakes. The (partial) mistake I have in mind is string theory. I don't deny that there certainly is value in the theory, and in maths, but logic reveals shortcomings. Let me explain, after first writing a short section describing an unconventional approach to unveiling unification and offering an alternative to the Higgs boson that relies on gravitational waves.

ALTERNATIVE TO HIGGS BOSON

An important step might be to think of "... the grand design of the universe, a single theory that explains everything" (words used by Stephen Hawking on the American version of Amazon, when promoting his latest book “The Grand Design” – coauthored with Leonard Mlodinow, Bantam Books, 2010) in a different way than physicists who are presently working on science's holy grail of unification. The universe’s underlying electronic foundation* (which makes our cosmos into a partially-complete unification, similar to 2 objects which appear billions of years or billions of light-years apart on a huge computer screen actually being unified by the strings of ones and zeros making up the computer code which is all in one small place) would make our cosmos into physics’ holy grail of a complete unification if it enabled not only elimination of all distances in space and time, but also elimination of distance between (and including) the different sides of objects and particles. This last point requires the universe to not merely be a vast collection of the countless photons, electrons and other quantum particles within it; but to be a unified whole that has “particles” and “waves” built into its union of digital 1’s and 0’s (or its union of qubits – quantum binary digits). If we use the example of CGH (computer generated holography, these "particles" and "waves" could be elements produced by the interaction of electromagnetic and presently undiscovered gravitational waves, producing what we know as mass and forming what we know as space-time. Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves, and measurements on the Hulse-Taylor binary-star system resulted in Russell Hulse and Joe Taylor being awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1993 for their work, which was the first indirect evidence for gravitational waves. The feedback of the past and future universes into the unified cosmos's electronic foundation would ensure that both past and future could not be altered. Our brains and minds are part of this unification too - which must mean extrasensory perception and telekinetic independence from technology are possible, despite modern science's objections to these phenomena which appear to be based on non-unification.

* For more information on the universe's proposed electronic foundation, please see my article and postings at

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/814

STRINGS ARE ONLY PART OF MATTER'S BASIS

Space and time only exist in our experience. They are emergent properties, like wetness and mind. We experience wetness because it emerges from the building blocks of the hydrogen and oxygen atoms which make up water. We experience mind because it emerges from the building blocks of neurons composing the brain. And we experience space-time since it emerges from the building blocks making up the universe. These units are a combination of electromagnetic pulses (forming a cosmic computer which includes randomness and thus the potential to escape rigid preprogramming, and have a small degree of free will) as well as a cosmic hologram (this is produced by the interaction of electromagnetic plus gravitational waves and combination of the holographic aspect with the electronic aspect unifies general relativity with quantum physics). Every physical and nonphysical part of the universal hologram would be a receptor for the downloading of data from the cosmic computer which not only exists in the hyperspace of the large-scale universe but also in the hyperspace of each subatomic particle. (In other words, the holographic universe or spacetime we know is a screen for displaying data from the 5th-dimensional computer.)

It might be helpful to visualise time as the playing of a CD or video tape. The entire disc or tape obviously exists all the time. But our physical senses can only perceive a tiny part of the sound and the sights at any fraction of a second. I believe space and time are infinite, so it might be more accurate to visualise time as that HUGE number - in this case, of CDs or tapes - which some versions of string theory propose (10 exponent 500). My essay tells you exactly how to travel to the future, how to return home, and how to travel into our past. Neither future nor past can be altered (a blow to our belief that we have the free will to shape the future) and my explanation of travel to the past requires re-interpretation of the concepts of "multiverse" and "parallel universes". It also requires the ability to travel billions of light years INSTANTLY - no doubt many readers will instantly dismiss the essay because their preconceptions "know" this simply isn't possible. It indeed sounds like pure fantasy, but I outline an approach based on electrical engineering, General Relativity, and Miguel Alcubierre's 1994 proposal of "warp drive" that makes it logically possible.

My essay explains why the universe is a Mobius loop and how it is contained in, or unified with, each of its particles (relying on physical senses or 21st-century scientific instruments would make this statement ridiculous). Then each fermion and boson would also be composed of the 3 spatial dimensions, the 4th dimension of time, and the 5th dimension of hyperspace. Detectors like the Large Hadron Collider would be unable to "see" the time and hyperspace components of particles but could only see the small (maybe 5% of the whole) 3 spatial dimensions (the time component would be what we call dark matter), erroneously assuming particles are those small fractions of a Mobius loop that physics calls strings. "Dark matter" would exert a gravitational influence because time, being part of a curved Mobius loop (whether of quantum or cosmic scale), would push objects together in the same way Einstein's curved space-time pushes objects together. We can speak of the HST now - no, not the Hubble Space Telescope but Hyperspatial SpaceTime. We can visualise the Mobius loop as composed of a hyperspace computer which generates information on how things change from one presently undetectably tiny fraction of a second to the next (we call this time, and it's comparable to the frames in a movie) and transmits the data (transmits dark energy) to the insignificant portion of length, width and depth that makes up subatomic particles ... and the universe.

Preceding the Big Bang (which created this local section of the infinite, eternal universe ... or if you prefer, this subuniverse of the megauniverse) there would have been no space, matter or time in this subuniverse. No transmissions of dark energy (creating time and space/matter) would have occurred - therefore the dark-energy content of the universe would have been zero, increasing to the present 72% as more and more matter was created. How is matter created? Perhaps as cosmologist Alan Guth once suggested -

"You might even be able to start a new universe using energy equivalent to just a few pounds of matter. Provided you could find some way to compress it to a density of about 10^75 (10 exponent 75) grams per cubic centimeter, and provided you could trigger the thing ..."

At the time the Cosmic Microwave Background was emitted (less than a million years after the big bang), results from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe say the dark-energy content of the universe was negligible. Space/matter has been increasing since the big bang so transmissions from hyperspace computer (dark energy) which create them are increasing while the volume of the Mobius loop occupied by time/hyperspace (dark matter) has been shrinking as a result - according to the WMAP satellite, from 63% when the CMB was emitted to 23% today. Why isn't dark energy increasing at the same rate dark matter is decreasing? It must be because, as stated earlier, both time and hyperspace exert a gravitational influence, thereby mimicking space and matter to a degree. This mimicry causes the dark matter between the start of the CMB and the present to decrease by only about 40% while dark energy increases in the same period by about 70%. If we were dealing with a simple and ordinary loop, this similarity would cause dark matter and dark energy to be more or less equal and if there was any difference in their amount of decrease/increase, it would be in the same direction. But we’re talking about Mobius loops which are like strips of paper that have been twisted 180 degrees before the ends are joined. This causes their variation to go in different directions (one increases, the other decreases) and the amount of variation is quite significant (+72%, -40%). My guess is that the real-life twist occurs in the temporal segment of the loop, enabling a traveller in time to go in different directions i.e. into the future or into the past. To replenish dark matter in billions of years, we merely have to extend Guth's proposal by using the knowledge of that time to create more matter.

A real-life Mobius is by no means a featureless loop, however. If, contrary to our impressions, the universe is unified with each particle it’s composed of; the WMAP satellite’s findings must apply to the quantum world. The figures 72%, 23% and 5% would not only describe the present universe’s content of dark energy, dark matter and ordinary matter but also any particle’s content of space or ordinary matter (5%), time or dark matter (23% - time is considered to be dark matter here because dark matter is regarded as ordinary matter invisible to us since it’s present in another region of the dimension we call time, just as most of a sphere is in another dimension and consequently appears as a dot when first entering Edwin Abbott’s 1884 exploration of other dimensions called “Flatland”), and hyperspace (72%: the transmissions from the hyperspace computer create space and matter, cause expansion of space on cosmic scales where there are no forces to overcome the expansion as there is in matter, and are known as dark energy – creating more matter causes that matter’s repelling gravity to bring about accelerating expansion).

Look at a picture of a Mobius (thanks to the repeating scales of fractal geometry, the apparently empty interior and exterior of the Mobius universe would actually be the same as the visible loop). Imagine the space/ordinary matter to be situated immediately counterclockwise (perhaps on the bottom of the loop) to the hyperspace segment and the time/dark matter portion to be immediately counterclockwise to the space/ordinary matter (time/dark matter would, moving clockwise, be next to the hyperspace segment).

The hyperspace transmissions flow directly into space/matter (all motion - “flow” and “transmissions” – are actually comparable to individual frames in a movie but are spoken of in everyday terms of motion for convenience, like saying the sun rises and sets) and are responsible for the large and unimpeded 72% increase, since the CMB was emitted, of dark energy. This flow rate of 72% also enters the time/dark matter section adjacent to hyperspace … but the loop’s twist seems to be in the time section. If we were to cut the loop lengthwise with scissors, previously varying the number of half-twists results in things such as two rings linked together or a knotted ring. So we get barriers to motion and blockages. Returning to the normal loop and twist, matters are less drastic and motion is merely slowed, resulting in a 23% flow rate.

If we lived in a non-unified universe of materialism, this is how things would remain (dark matter would have increased so today’s content would be a low 23%). On p. 179 of “The Grand Design” by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow (Bantam Press, 2010) it’s stated “One requirement any law of nature must satisfy is that it dictates that the energy of an isolated body surrounded by empty space is positive …”

The only problem with that sentence, in an “everything is everywhere and everywhen” universe, is the word isolated. There can be no such thing as isolated in our cosmic-quantum unification. Page 179 also says “… if the energy of an isolated body were negative … there would be no reason that bodies could not appear anywhere and everywhere.” Does this mean you and I (plus all things in time and space) are a union of both positive and negative energy, able to display both separateness/solidity (isolation) as well as the potential to appear anywhere and everywhere? Dark matter, not being entirely positive, would be anywhere and everywhere as well as having decreased so today’s content would be a low 23% (which is what WMAP says is the case).

If everything is a union of positive and negative energy, every matter particle and force-carrying particle would be too. And the strings the Large Hadron Collider might detect (being the parts of particles’ Mobius loops it could see since those parts would be space/ordinary matter) might come in both positive and negative varieties. In 1928 English physicist Paul Dirac (1902-84) proposed that all negative energy states are already occupied by (then hypothetical) antiparticles (particles of antimatter). Building on this results in proposal of strings and antistrings.

My essay tells you how to travel into the future, how to return home, and how to take a trip into our past. Regarding travel beyond our start and into the past ... it can’t be denied that these paragraphs imply the possibility of humans from the distant future time-travelling to the distant past and using electronics to create this particular subuniverse's computer-generated Big Bang. An accomplishment such as this would be the supreme example of “backward causality” (effects influencing causes) promoted by Yakir Aharonov, John Cramer and others. However, realising that we live in a cosmic-quantum unification with zero-separation and recalling Isaac Newton’s inverse-square law and what it says about the force between two particles being infinite (does infinite mean 10 ^ 500, the HUGE number of universes proposed by some versions of string theory?) if the distance of separation goes to zero means there's still room for God (another bit of scientifically objectionable science fiction?) because God would be a pantheistic union of the megauniverse's material and mental parts, forming a union with humans in a cosmic unification.



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