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Time May Actually Be One Big Illusion, Says a New Study
https://news.yahoo.com ^ | June 23 2024 | Caroline Delbert

Posted on 06/24/2024 5:59:36 PM PDT by Beowulf9

Time has puzzled scientists for many decades. Does it meaningfully exist apart from our experience of it as everything moves toward the disintegration of entropy along its irrefutable arrow? You can’t put the “spilled milk” of the weirdness of time back in the jug. In new research published in the American Physical Society's peer-reviewed journal Physical Review A, scientists from Italy (led by Alessandro Coppo) try to translate one theory of time into real life—or, at least, closer to it. The theory is called Page and Wootters mechanism, and Coppo has studied it for years. It’s a quantum mechanics idea that dates back to 1983.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...


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While general relativity (in the classical physics model) lets time be a variable—like the perception-dependent difference between time on Earth and time in space in stories like Interstellar—quantum physics requires it to be nailed down. That means instead of a dependent variable (something defined by an external property, like local gravity or an object’s distance from Earth), time must be independent, and there must be some way to measure it as such.

This may seem counterintuitive. After all, quantum mechanics is considered the newer version of things—the one that destabilizes the foundation of physics in order to be reconciled with the classical model. But time has a unique role in quantum systems. After all, everything in a particular time, defined in some objective way, is knitted together through quantum interactions until it forms a capture of the entire universe (if you zoom out enough).

In their paper, Coppo and his coauthors turn the Page and Wootters approach into a real concept for a clock. Within quantum physics, a clock isn’t much like the one you wear on your wrist or hang in your office—it’s anything that has a predictable and uniform behavior that can be used as a measurement. (For example, this 2021 Quanta article lists increasingly stinky garbage as a kind of clock!)

New Scientist explains that Page and Wootters wondered if our world is so quantumly entangled within itself that any visible passing of time is a symptom of entanglement. They also suggested that we ourselves are implicated in that entanglement just by seeing the passage of time—because someone outside of the entangled system would see it standing still. The “clock,” therefore, is the item within the entangled system that shows time passing.

It’s easy to see why this theory has stayed mostly abstract for over 40 years. To turn it into something with measurements based in real life observation, scientists took iconic physics equations and restricted them to conditions that match the Page and Wootters scenario. They considered two systems that are entangled but do not interact, where one system is a harmonic oscillator—like a quartz timing in a watch, or a pendulum.

Their solution may prove to be consistent within classical and quantum mechanics, because when enough particles are placed into each quantum system—when it reaches the threshold called “macroscopic,” based on mass—the systems align with classical physics as well.

That‘s a big deal—if our entire, very macroscopic world fits into this definition of time based on entanglement, it means everything around us is entangled. Things would need to be entangled almost by definition in order to be part of our observable world. And it would mean that anything we see where time passes (no matter how far away it is) is linked with us in a vital way.

1 posted on 06/24/2024 5:59:36 PM PDT by Beowulf9
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To: Beowulf9

“Time May Actually Be One Big Illusion”

More of a Globalist rag than an ‘illusion’.


2 posted on 06/24/2024 6:01:27 PM PDT by BobL
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To: Beowulf9

“Time is an illusion; lunchtime doubly so.”


3 posted on 06/24/2024 6:03:24 PM PDT by kosciusko51
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To: Beowulf9

As the kids say…..

These scientists need to go outside and touch grass.


4 posted on 06/24/2024 6:06:31 PM PDT by Hoboto (I blame Hippies.)
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To: Beowulf9

Time waits for no one. And it won’t wait for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC0Qt1lvLq8


5 posted on 06/24/2024 6:08:58 PM PDT by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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To: Beowulf9

We are all inside the Matrix.


6 posted on 06/24/2024 6:13:40 PM PDT by ClearCase_guy (It's not "Quiet Quitting" -- it's "Going Galt".)
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To: All

You mean I’m really still young and handsome?


7 posted on 06/24/2024 6:14:22 PM PDT by LegendHasIt
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To: Beowulf9

Sold for a dollar once.


8 posted on 06/24/2024 6:15:43 PM PDT by Track9 (If you want to know about human nature, read a power tool user manual. )
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To: BobL

Alan Watts, the Beatnik Taoist had a great television lecture about time...its up on youtube I think...about as a good an explanation as any—time is something like wake from a boat...


9 posted on 06/24/2024 6:19:27 PM PDT by abigkahuna
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To: Beowulf9
Put that ‘theory’ right back in the bottle they got it out of, seal it up and throw it to the bottom of the sea...

If there's no time, then there's no life, no growth, no history and no future, just to mention a few impossibles.

Scientists have been tinkering around with theories for millenniums but there's not much real science in them. That's why they almost always remain 'theories'.

10 posted on 06/24/2024 6:20:46 PM PDT by Bullish (...And just like that, I was dropped from the ping-list)
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To: abigkahuna

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbu6AFDWF4w Here is Alan’s Lecture on Time... Enjoy... I always liked it...


11 posted on 06/24/2024 6:21:12 PM PDT by abigkahuna
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To: Beowulf9

Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.


12 posted on 06/24/2024 6:22:15 PM PDT by 75thOVI (Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.)
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To: Beowulf9

13 posted on 06/24/2024 6:23:16 PM PDT by gundog (It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. )
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To: Hoboto

Maybe that’s the problem . Touching too much grass…


14 posted on 06/24/2024 6:27:32 PM PDT by Beowulf9
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To: Beowulf9

15 posted on 06/24/2024 6:28:48 PM PDT by Ezekiel (🆘️ "Come fly with US". 🔴 Ingenuity -- because the Son of David begins with MARS ♂️, aka every man)
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To: Beowulf9

seems very deterministic in the end


16 posted on 06/24/2024 6:31:08 PM PDT by sopo
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To: Beowulf9

Time is relative to the observer.

It is not an independent constant.


17 posted on 06/24/2024 6:31:33 PM PDT by Mariner (War Criminal #18)
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To: Beowulf9

In their paper, Coppo and his coauthors turn the Page and Wootters approach into a real concept for a clock. Within quantum physics, a clock isn’t much like the one you wear on your wrist or hang in your office—it’s anything that has a predictable and uniform behavior that can be used as a measurement. (For example, this 2021 Quanta article lists increasingly stinky garbage as a kind of clock!)


Einstein described time as the result of matter moving through space.


18 posted on 06/24/2024 6:32:18 PM PDT by Cold_Red_Steel
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To: Beowulf9

seems very deterministic in the end


19 posted on 06/24/2024 6:34:48 PM PDT by sopo
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To: Beowulf9

Hmmmm Maybe God created time so everything wouldn’t happen at once.


20 posted on 06/24/2024 6:37:25 PM PDT by laplata (They want each crisis to take the greatest toll possible.)
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