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Richard Muller on why the flow of time is not an illusion
Physics Today ^ | 10 Feb, 2017 | Melinda Baldwin

Posted on 02/11/2017 7:10:41 AM PST by MtnClimber

The physicist and author argues that cosmologists should take the concept of time more seriously and talks about becoming a “converted skeptic” on climate change.

....MULLER: The flow of time does not exist in the usual spacetime diagram of physics. Time is mysterious; in any relativistic coordinate system, it is linked to space. And yet time is different—and I mean much more than simply a sign in the metric. Time flows. Choose any coordinate system and you can stand still in space but not in time. That different behavior breaks the otherwise glorious spacetime symmetry. Moreover, there is a special moment in time we call “now.” No such special location exists in the dimensions of space.

Einstein considered his inability to account for the flow of time and the meaning of “now” as a failure. Some modern theorists aren’t up to his standard; they think that anything they can’t explain with their current theories must be dismissed as illusionary.

(Excerpt) Read more at physicstoday.scitation.org ...


TOPICS: Science
KEYWORDS: fakescience; physics; relativity; space; time
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To: IronJack
But that example deals entirely with SPACE, not time.

Actually, both. Wherever one is involved the other is.

I stated:
_______________________________________________________

"Time and space are intimately locked together into what Einstein called "space-time". The distance one has yet to travel during a trip increasingly contracts with increasing speed. This is entirely apart from the obvious shortening due to their having already traveled some of the distance."
_______________________________________________________

In other words, a unit of length in motion will contract/shrink in length from a stationary observer's frame of reference. And so the traveler can consider himself stationary and the unit of distance he has yet to travel as rushing toward him. This length will physically shrink with increased speed. Again, apart from the obvious shortening of distance due to his simply moving closer and closer to his destination.

This goes along with the other thing I wrote elsewhere up there about a moving clock ticking out time more slowly than a stationary one at your side. You would, not only see the clock ticking out time more slowly than the one with you, you would also see the clock shrink in width in the direction of its motion.

61 posted on 02/11/2017 11:02:12 AM PST by ETL (Trump admin apparently playing "good cop, bad cop" with thug Putin (see my FR Home page))
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To: ETL

It also describes where the collection of biological support and mobility systems you inhabit are located in time and space, to the extent that they’ve been equipped to detect.


62 posted on 02/11/2017 11:09:31 AM PST by RegulatorCountry
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To: MtnClimber
Moreover, there is a special moment in time we call “now.”

That is the only time that exists.

63 posted on 02/11/2017 11:13:58 AM PST by TigersEye (Winning. Winning winning winning every day!!!)
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To: MtnClimber
All of the issues legitimately raised by skeptics were potential biases: data selection, temperature-station siting, data adjustment, and heat island. The fifth was potential bias from the large number of adjusted parameters that were used in the global climate models, and from the instability of those enormous simulations. We came up with a solid analysis of each of the biases and were able to conclude, using our independent work, that global warming was real and caused by humans.

My goodness! Doesn't he sound brilliant? Every word of that was gobbeldygook. The false premises are coming out of his ears.


64 posted on 02/11/2017 11:21:41 AM PST by TigersEye (Winning. Winning winning winning every day!!!)
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To: TigersEye

He’s proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt, with geometric logic.


65 posted on 02/11/2017 11:24:33 AM PST by RegulatorCountry
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To: RegulatorCountry
It also describes where the collection of biological support and mobility systems you inhabit are located in time and space, to the extent that they’ve been equipped to detect.

If you're referring to the senses: vision, hearing, etc, they can't determine some absolute place in space of which you occupy. At best, they may be able to 'trick' you into thinking you exist at all! ie, "I think, therefore I am". Lol!

66 posted on 02/11/2017 11:26:14 AM PST by ETL (Trump admin apparently playing "good cop, bad cop" with thug Putin (see my FR Home page))
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To: ETL
If you're referring to the senses: vision, hearing, etc, they can't determine some absolute place in space of which you occupy. At best, they may be able to 'trick' you into thinking you exist at all! ie, "I think, therefore I am". Lol!

Oh, the same senses used to trick you into thinking you've made scientific observations?

67 posted on 02/11/2017 11:29:41 AM PST by RegulatorCountry
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To: RegulatorCountry

Well, if they can manage to trick you into thinking you actually exist, when you don’t (makes no sense whatsoever, does it), then they can ‘trick’ you into believing anything! :)


68 posted on 02/11/2017 11:33:53 AM PST by ETL (Trump admin apparently playing "good cop, bad cop" with thug Putin (see my FR Home page))
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To: RegulatorCountry

When I read that paragraph of his that exact episode of WKRP In Cincinnati is what popped into my mind too. LOL


69 posted on 02/11/2017 11:35:03 AM PST by TigersEye (Winning. Winning winning winning every day!!!)
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To: ETL

“Here” is far less subjective and fleeting than “now,” by any objective measure, under any coordinate system.


70 posted on 02/11/2017 11:41:32 AM PST by RegulatorCountry
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To: TigersEye

I know. How bright do you have to be to see that the temperature increase is just the cumulative effect of their “adjustments”.


71 posted on 02/11/2017 11:42:07 AM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of Colorado scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: ETL
So if time is the decay of energy into entropy, then that decay slows to zero at the speed of light. I get that.

Since speed is distance over time (v=d*t), distance -- space -- is an inverse function of time (d=v/t). But velocity is a function of time too, so v/t can be reduced to d=d, which is a unity, true in all cases.

What I'm getting at is that in simple Newtonian physics, you can't define space (distance) in terms of time unless you include velocity. For example, volume (which is also space) is measured in cubic inches. There's nothing in there that relates to time.

Does any of that make any sense?

72 posted on 02/11/2017 11:55:30 AM PST by IronJack
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To: MtnClimber
He's talking in circles.

... and from the instability of those enormous simulations.

In that statement he's admitting that the models couldn't possibly work even if accurate data were used in them. But he's conceded that accurate data, on the scale necessary, is unobtainable and even with that nearly all the data they did collect was manipulated. Then he just slides past all that and says he ironed it all out.

73 posted on 02/11/2017 11:59:00 AM PST by TigersEye (Winning. Winning winning winning every day!!!)
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To: MtnClimber

I disagree that there is no specific locus in space that corresponds to “Now” in time. It is called “Here.” It is that locus in which we reference everything we observe from the speed of light to the contraction of time in relation to that speed. We make assumptions based on “here” that may be different from other locations that might be different but we cannot know because we are not there to experience that “here,” just as we cannot experience a different condition in a different “now.”


74 posted on 02/11/2017 12:13:59 PM PST by Swordmaker (This tag line is a Microsoft insult free zone... but if the insults to Mac users continue...)
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To: RegulatorCountry

My bad, you were obviously thinking of the Caine Mutiny not WKRP.


75 posted on 02/11/2017 12:23:41 PM PST by TigersEye (Winning. Winning winning winning every day!!!)
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To: IronJack
So if time is the decay of energy into entropy, then that decay slows to zero at the speed of light. I get that.

I'm not sure where you got that, or even what it means, but it does bring to mind a real-life observation often used to demonstrate the realities of Einstein's theory of relativity.

And that is the detection of more atomic decay byproducts reaching the earth's surface from the sky than ought to, given their very short, known lifespans.

There are particles from deep space called "cosmic rays" (not to be confused with photons, the carriers of light) They (cosmic rays) are ionized atomic particles. Anyway, they continually rain down on earth, at varying rates, smashing into our atmosphere. When they do they collide with particles in the atmosphere, smash them apart, and/or they themselves are smashed apart?, and new short-lived particles are produced.

But based on the known lifespans of these various short-lived collision byproducts, most should never reach the detectors on earth's surface (they wouldn't exist long enough to make the complete trip).

What is happening is, due to their high rate of speed, the distance they have to travel (from their perspective, due to the effects of Einstein's relativity) is shortened, or 'contracted', such that they are able make it to earth in less time than ordinary calculations would predict they should.

76 posted on 02/11/2017 12:28:48 PM PST by ETL (Trump admin apparently playing "good cop, bad cop" with thug Putin (see my FR Home page))
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To: MtnClimber

Bttt!


77 posted on 02/11/2017 12:43:37 PM PST by Pagey (8 years of MISERY, Thanks to Valerie Jarrett. Wretched human.)
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To: ETL
I'm not sure where you got that, or even what it means,

Energy is the ability to do useful work. Entropy can be seen as confusion or dissociated "energy" that is lost and no longer capable of doing anything useful. Heat lost to friction is a good example of entropy. A clock winding down is another.

In thermodynamics, systems move inexorably from a state of higher energy to a state of lower energy, and the energy has to go somewhere. The answer: entropy.

All that happens that we observe as the passage of time is the movement of our visible system from a state of higher energy to lower energy. The spring of a watch unwinds and the hours tick away. That "measures" time, but it is not time itself.

I fail to see how time is in any way related to space.

78 posted on 02/11/2017 12:58:02 PM PST by IronJack
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To: IronJack
Thanks for the clarification, but I don't think that has anything to do with the Einstein relativity phenomenon I'm referring to.

I fail to see how time is in any way related to space.

They were found to be intimately linked when it was learned that the speed of light is the same for all observers, regardless of any relative motion between them.

For example, if one were on a train throwing a baseball in the direction the train was moving, and that train was moving by a platform, an observer on the platform would see the ball moving forward at the speed the train was moving PLUS the speed the ball had been thrown. But, with light, it's not like that. If it had been a flashlight beam, instead of a baseball, BOTH observers, on train and on the platform, would see the beam moving precisely at the same speed. Crazy, but an apparent proven reality.

Anyway, the only way for light to have the same speed (units: distance/time), something else must change, namely time and distance. They apparently adjust themselves, depending on the rate of the relative velocity between two observers, such that the speed light remains a constant. ie, they are not absolute quantities, They vary according to the rate of relative velocity between two observers.

79 posted on 02/11/2017 1:21:44 PM PST by ETL (Trump admin apparently playing "good cop, bad cop" with thug Putin (see my FR Home page))
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To: IronJack

“They (distance and time) vary according to the rate of relative velocity between two observers.”

That is, they behave as components of a single phenomenon. They adjust in such a way that they always add up to the same total. When one is a particular value, the other will adjust accordingly. Therefore they are intimately linked.


80 posted on 02/11/2017 1:31:01 PM PST by ETL (Trump admin apparently playing "good cop, bad cop" with thug Putin (see my FR Home page))
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