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Time May Not Exist at All, According to Physics
https://www.sciencealert.com ^ | April 25, 2022 | SAM BARON

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.


TOPICS: Astronomy; History; Science; Travel; Weird Stuff
KEYWORDS: astronomy; faithandphilosophy; loopquantumgravity; physics; relativity; science; stringtheory
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To: Larry Lucido

One of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes ever.


61 posted on 04/25/2022 8:27:16 AM PDT by ought-six (Multiculturalism is national suicide, and political correctness is the cyanide capsule. )
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To: gr8eman

He should told you “well then son, you owe me for back rent” lol


62 posted on 04/25/2022 8:27:21 AM PDT by Bob434 (.)
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To: DannyTN

Time won’t let me
Time won’t let me
Time won’t let me wait too long

I’ve got a suitcase of memories that I almost left behind
Time after time
Time, time, time
But you say to go slow but I fall behind
Time after time after time

Last one:

It was late in December, the sky turned to snow
All round the day was going down slow
Night like a river beginning to flow
I felt the beat of my mind go
Drifting into time passages
Years go falling in the fading light
Time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight


63 posted on 04/25/2022 8:27:51 AM PDT by Larry Lucido (Donate! Don't just post clickbait!)
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To: Nifster

That is entropy


64 posted on 04/25/2022 8:28:12 AM PDT by Bob434 (.)
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To: ought-six

Yep.

Except he could have likely have found any number of places that sold high resolution reading glasses and borrowed a pair or two.


65 posted on 04/25/2022 8:29:28 AM PDT by Larry Lucido (Donate! Don't just post clickbait!)
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To: Red Badger

follow for head scratching


66 posted on 04/25/2022 8:29:58 AM PDT by KSCITYBOY (The media is corrupt)
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To: Red Badger

There is only now. Not hard to figure out.


67 posted on 04/25/2022 8:30:35 AM PDT by freedomjusticeruleoflaw (Strange that a man with his wealth would have to resort to prostitution.)
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To: Pollard

Time as proscribed by clocks and calendars is a human construct as seen in the different cultural calendars in use around the world, Chinese, Jewish, Julian, Gregorian and my favorite the ever-changing Day Light Savings time. I can attest to the fact that the fish in east Tennessee don’t understand DLS. They understand sundown and insect hatches regardless of what your watch says. What that has to do with quantum physics I don’t know. But life was better when we all lived much as the fish in those mountain streams, ordering out lives by nature time, not mans.


68 posted on 04/25/2022 8:30:57 AM PDT by redangus
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To: Red Badger

Time is the measurabie interval between two events


69 posted on 04/25/2022 8:30:57 AM PDT by bert ( (KW?E. NP. N.C. +12) Promoting Afro Heritage diversity will destroy the democrats)
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To: Red Badger

In and of itself, I’ve long held, time is not a “thing”. Instead, time is a by-product of matter in motion.

I don’t have time to explain it, though.


70 posted on 04/25/2022 8:31:06 AM PDT by Migraine ( )
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To: 2harddrive

Moving something with infinite mass...How? If something can’t move then does it have need to perceive time? When people speak of being no time I think people are looking to be able to replay events and so on. Beyond that is it relevant? What are they trying to accomplish with the no time theory? If you know or have a link that would be interesting to know.


71 posted on 04/25/2022 8:31:13 AM PDT by wiseprince (Me,)
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To: Cboldt

Yep - this will eliminate the need for a dynamics course in the engineering curriculum.


72 posted on 04/25/2022 8:31:24 AM PDT by caprock (from the flats of SE New Mexico)
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To: Red Badger

Never though it did...


73 posted on 04/25/2022 8:32:02 AM PDT by Sacajaweau ( )
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To: Leaning Right

“Now it seems like they’re all obsessed with science fiction stuff, like parallel universes and string theory.”

Well, that’s progress. Remember, before Newton and Galileo and Copernicus and the intrepid mariner explorers the world was...different.


74 posted on 04/25/2022 8:33:18 AM PDT by ought-six (Multiculturalism is national suicide, and political correctness is the cyanide capsule. )
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To: EEGator

Don’t get off on that.


75 posted on 04/25/2022 8:33:34 AM PDT by Migraine ( )
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To: Red Badger

https://interestingengineering.com/what-einstein-meant-by-time-is-an-illusion


76 posted on 04/25/2022 8:34:05 AM PDT by Sacajaweau ( )
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To: trad_anglican

As I mentioned earlier, I taught physics at the high school level. I also taught an intro college course on the subject. Some of my colleagues had a nickname for me, “the experimenter”. That was because I was always asking about the experimental evidence.

That nickname was not meant as a compliment! The implication was that I was not “theoretical” enough. I found that odd, and also a bit amusing. All of science is built on experimental evidence.

If there’s no hard evidence, it’s not science. A good example of that is with climate change. The hard evidence is just not there. So it ain’t science.


77 posted on 04/25/2022 8:34:12 AM PDT by Leaning Right (The steal is real.)
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To: Red Badger

Actually don’t you mean acceleration rather than gravity? Whether the acceleration you experience is due to being in a gravity well or a big honkin’ rocket strapped to you back, the result of time dilation is the same.


78 posted on 04/25/2022 8:34:31 AM PDT by curious7
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To: DEPcom

Revelation 1:8: “I am the Alpha and the Omega” God is in the past, the present and the future.
____________________________

Yes, God’s time is outside of our ability to understand. Like Darwin, could physics realize the closer they get to answers, the closer they are to God?


79 posted on 04/25/2022 8:35:30 AM PDT by BarbM (Men who look at porn are impotent to God.)
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To: DannyTN

80 posted on 04/25/2022 8:35:49 AM PDT by DannyTN
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