Posted on 04/25/2022 7:54:20 AM PDT by Red Badger
Does time exist? The answer to this question may seem obvious: Of course it does! Just look at a calendar or a clock.
But developments in physics suggest the non-existence of time is an open possibility, and one that we should take seriously.
How can that be, and what would it mean? It'll take a little while to explain, but don't worry: Even if time doesn't exist, our lives will go on as usual.
A crisis in physics Physics is in crisis. For the past century or so, we have explained the Universe with two wildly successful physical theories: general relativity and quantum mechanics.
Quantum mechanics describes how things work in the incredibly tiny world of particles and particle interactions. General relativity describes the big picture of gravity and how objects move.
Both theories work extremely well in their own right, but the two are thought to conflict with one another. Though the exact nature of the conflict is controversial, scientists generally agree both theories need to be replaced with a new, more general theory.
Physicists want to produce a theory of "quantum gravity" that replaces general relativity and quantum mechanics, while capturing the extraordinary success of both. Such a theory would explain how gravity's big picture works at the miniature scale of particles.
Time in quantum gravity It turns out that producing a theory of quantum gravity is extraordinarily difficult.
One attempt to overcome the conflict between the two theories is string theory. String theory replaces particles with strings vibrating in as many as 11 dimensions.
However, string theory faces a further difficulty. String theories provide a range of models that describe a Universe broadly like our own, and they don't really make any clear predictions that can be tested by experiments to figure out which model is the right one.
In the 1980s and 1990s, many physicists became dissatisfied with string theory and came up with a range of new mathematical approaches to quantum gravity.
One of the most prominent of these is loop quantum gravity, which proposes that the fabric of space and time is made of a network of extremely small discrete chunks, or "loops".
One of the remarkable aspects of loop quantum gravity is that it appears to eliminate time entirely.
Loop quantum gravity is not alone in abolishing time: A number of other approaches also seem to remove time as a fundamental aspect of reality.
Emergent time So we know we need a new physical theory to explain the Universe, and that this theory might not feature time.
Suppose such a theory turns out to be correct. Would it follow that time does not exist?
It's complicated, and it depends what we mean by exist.
Theories of physics don't include any tables, chairs, or people, and yet we still accept that tables, chairs, and people exist.
Why? Because we assume that such things exist at a higher level than the level described by physics.
We say that tables, for example, "emerge" from an underlying physics of particles whizzing around the Universe.
But while we have a pretty good sense of how a table might be made out of fundamental particles, we have no idea how time might be "made out of" something more fundamental.
So unless we can come up with a good account of how time emerges, it is not clear we can simply assume time exists.
Time might not exist at any level.
Time and agency Saying that time does not exist at any level is like saying that there are no tables at all.
Trying to get by in a world without tables might be tough, but managing in a world without time seems positively disastrous.
Our entire lives are built around time. We plan for the future, in light of what we know about the past. We hold people morally accountable for their past actions, with an eye to reprimanding them later on.
We believe ourselves to be agents (entities that can do things) in part because we can plan to act in a way that will bring about changes in the future.
But what's the point of acting to bring about a change in the future when, in a very real sense, there is no future to act for?
What's the point of punishing someone for a past action, when there is no past and so, apparently, no such action?
The discovery that time does not exist would seem to bring the entire world to a grinding halt. We would have no reason to get out of bed.
Business as usual There is a way out of the mess.
While physics might eliminate time, it seems to leave causation intact: the sense in which one thing can bring about another.
Perhaps what physics is telling us, then, is that causation and not time is the basic feature of our Universe.
If that's right, then agency can still survive. For it is possible to reconstruct a sense of agency entirely in causal terms.
At least, that's what Kristie Miller, Jonathan Tallant, and I argue in our new book.
We suggest the discovery that time does not exist may have no direct impact on our lives, even while it propels physics into a new era. Sam Baron, Associate professor, Australian Catholic University.
These physicists are confusing themselves with their own equations.
I am not great at math, but even I know that time exists.
My advice to these physicists is the following: When your mathematical equations cause you to give consideration to absurdities, it’s time to step away from the chalk board and take a nice long walk along the creek on a spring day.
That will clear things up for you.
I’ll read it later.
Well there is something that effects how clocks speed up or slow down relative to velocity of an object around a gravity well. They have to make adjustments and program the software of space craft timing instruments because they would fall behind timing instruments on Earth becuase time passage is slower for a high velocity object relative to time on Earth. GPS would never work without adjustments to their clocks relative to clocks on the ground...time has to be set a little faster to stay meshed with receivers on Earth.
I’m not talking latency or how fast a radio signal gets to a sattelite and back again.
You a flat earther too?🤔
Time lapses.
“Time is an Illusion.....Lunchtime doubly so”
It took more than 100 posts for that?
Time is an effect of entropy. The movement from order to disorder. Until we come up with a way to unbreak an egg, it’s gonna continue only one direction.
Time flies like an arrow.
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.Fruit flies like a banana............................
That’s the point.
It’s easy to get grants when you don’t have to actually preform or provide evidence.
Another casualty of Liberalism.
I’ve always thought of “time “ as an invention of humans. We perceive changes in our world and use devices to gauge these changes and regulate our lives.
And remember, no matter where you are in the universe, the time is always now.
Ancients were obsessed with time.
Stonehenge and all the other astronomical devices were to measure time.....................
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
― George Orwell, 1984
I sucked at any higher math than algebra. And hated it.
But I really enjoyed Physics. And understood it. Unlike Calculus. Physics is kinda like a math/science hybrid. To me anyway. I always aced any science class. Math, I was lucky to pass.
> It’s easy to get grants when you don’t have to actually preform or provide evidence. <
Ha! Good point, and one that I had not considered. I suppose the old “publish or perish” rule also applies. You wanna keep your position, you gotta keep on publishing research papers.
So why not “investigate” parallel universes, 20-dimension strings, and other such stuff?
One of my brilliant (and he was)....filled up two boards working an equation...as he got near the end...he stepped back and erased everything except the first three lines....Interesting because it meant that it wasn’t from mere memory...he was working the formula.
Reading through all the posts. FReepers are funny!
Just wanted to say - I love, love, love your tagline!!!
Mr. GG2 also subscribes to your theory. Especially regarding frequencies. I have to go now as this whole thing is starting to sound like science. 😏
“Suppose such a theory turns out to be correct. Would it follow that time does not exist?
It’s complicated, and it depends what we mean by exist.”
This author obviously has too much time on his hands to be coming up with such garbage.
😉
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