What's the big mystery about time?

Raymond

From Plato to Einstein, time has been thought of by many. Everyone knows what time is. That's why I wonder what the big mystery is.

Time can be quantified by a clock. That's a periodic process, like a pendulum, with a device attached on which you can see how many periods have past. Like an odometer for spatial distance.

Einstein made the clock an objectively existing feature of reality. He associated a time axis with the clock. On different points on the axis the clock of an observer in the associated frame shows different values at different points on the axis. Dependendent on his state of motion, the clock of an observer tic-tacs at different rates. Not for the observer but according to someone who sees him moving. For the moving observer, the clock around his hip-hop neck tic-tacs always at the maximum rate. He hip-hops through time only and for an observer moving with the speed of light relative to him, he hip-hops through space only, without hipping through time. Put differently, an observer always moves through spacetime at the speed of light. Which is kind of misleading as he doesn't move through time at all. Einstein though objectified it as something through which you can move, which is obvious nonsense. It's the clock around your neck ticking and not you moving through it. The famous gamma factor is introduced in the Lorenz transformations which allow you to calculate the rate of the clock and distances in a moving frame, seen from a rest frame. The Galilean transformations are retrieved if the speed of light would be infinite (which, by the way, would result in all things happening at once and the non-existence of mass).

The different tic-tac rates are a consequence of the speed of light being the same for all observers. In gravity fields, if you stay at rest at a "point", the clocks tic-tac at different points at different rates. A clock on the surface of the Earth tic-tacs slower than in free space, and on the event horizon of a black hole (quantum entangled with the infalling stuff) the clock has stopped, as seen by a faraway observer (not at the clock itself). If you fall into a hole, you are almost at the same time radiated into space by Hawking radiation.

Time can't go backwards. If all motion were reversed quantum wave functions will decollapse and there would be no begin conditions of matter, only end conditions to which was aimed for with unreal precision. Entropic time, next to which the clock is placed to quantify it, is unidirectional, the clock can tick in both directions.

That being said, the perfect clock is an illusion. It's a fact of nature that there is no perfectly periodic process. Even the atomic clock has no constant period. Only the clock present at the pre-inflationary Planck era was perfectly periodic, comparable with Aristotle's perfect circular motion, and this clock had no direction in time yet, as entropic time didn't take off yet. Because particles are not pointlike, space and time can't reduce to a point.

So, the pre-inflationary Planck cell can be compared with Aristotle's objective unmoved mover and the perfect circular motion. Our friend was ahead of his "time"!

Leaves the question: Is there any mystery left, when we analyze time? Isn't it perfectly clear? Critique welcome!

Cuthbert

They say you can't ask what happened before the big bang and such a question makes no sense. To me that sounds like just dismissing an awkward question. "Don't ask. It's grown up business and you wouldn't understand."

Gnomon

From Plato to Einstein, time has been thought of by many. Everyone knows what time is. That's why I wonder what the big mystery is. — Raymond

Actually, "Time" is like Energy. Intuitively,everybody knows what it does, but the mystery arises when you ask what it is. For scientific purposes, a thing is its substance (material). But for philosophical inquiries a process is what it causes. Like Energy, Time causes Change. But then you'll have to define that term. In the 20th century, Time was defined as the fourth dimension : a way to measure Change. But that still didn't answer what it is. So, to avoid further debate, they agreed on a metaphorical definition : Block Time. Which is equivalent to the ancient philosophical notion of unchanging Eternity. But that is not an answer to what Time consists of. So the mystery remains. Since there are so many partial definitions of Time, perhaps the best policy is : "don't worry about it, it is what it is". :joke:

BTW, what do you think it is?

PS___In my thesis, there's one tantalizing hint to what Time is : Difference. "The difference that makes a difference" is what we know as Meaning.

Raymond

↪Cuthbert

I answered that question.

Raymond

↪Gnomon

How can time cause change?

Raymond

perhaps the best policy is : "don't worry about it, it is what it is". :joke:

BTW, what do you think it is? — Gnomon

I think there are two kinds of times, mutually exclusive. Entropic time and perfect clock time. The PCT constitutes the Planck sized pre-inflationary 3D space. This time has no direction. Only fluctuating. There were not yet irreversible processes to measure, quantify, with this clock. When the volume banged into real particles (the 3D structure inflated into 4D, which got enough negative curvature by a preceding bang that had accelerated far away enough) the perfect clock turned into entropic time.

Gregory

I don't think change can cause time. Some say entropy causes time, which translates in more general terms to change causes time. That is why it's called a block universe. It's contains itself in a circle with no beyond north and south poles. Time happens in the middle for us, A time bracketed by B Time

Wayfarer

Einstein made the clock an objectively existing feature of reality. He associated a time axis with the clock. On different points on the axis the clock of an observer in the associated frame shows different values at different points on the axis. Dependendent on his state of motion, the clock of an observer tic-tacs at different rates. Not for the observer but according to someone who sees him moving. For the moving observer, the clock around his hip-hop neck tic-tacs always at the maximum rate. — Raymond

Question - An observer is mentioned in all of the hypothetical examples. Outside the mind of an observer who interprets the movement of the dials on the clock, what is it that relates one period with another period, or orders the sequence of periods into a longer period? Put another way, can time be said to exist in the absence of its measurement?

Raymond

↪Wayfarer

A yes. The observer. That ugly remnant of bygone physics. Simply meaning people who look, but giving an air of objectivity. The clock is invented. A truly periodic process does not exist. As I wrote, such a thing is only present before the inflationary phase of the big bang. Nevertheless we try to construct. The caesium clock being most close. A truly periodic pendulum does not exist, nor any other physical process. We compare irreversible processes with this imaginary clock clock and say that the process moves through time, which is nonsense. We actually put such clock beside the processes, look where the clock points to ("43.75 periods, seconds) and say the process has moved. This procedure is mentally objectified by creating an "objective" time axis. We can project this (ideal) clock beside all processes. All processes are irreversible (you can't reverse all motions in the process). You can even project this clock way back to the beginning. You can't say by looking at that clock which direction in time it goes. It can run forward or backward. That's why it's a perfect, imaginary clock with a constant period. Why shouldn't it exist if we project it back mentally. Well, the process you put it next to was really there. Before inflation the state of the universe constituted a perfect clock. If you would put mentally a clock beside that state it has no direction in time, as it is just like that clock, a perfectly periodic process (corresponding to the vacuum bubbles of the two basic massless fields and photon and gluon fields, all represented by closed propagator loops). It are people who compare different stages of an irreversible process with a clock, by means of our memory.

Tom Storm

↪Wayfarer

Do you think time and space exist outside of our use of these terms - they are ideas which help us makes sense of the world according to our lived experience, but I am unsure that they can transcend us?

Agent Smith

a way to measure Change — Gnomon

To add to what you already said, time (also) helps us to keep track of and compare change.

The Greeks, 2k years back, had a very sophisticated view of time:

1. Chronos: Time in the usual sense - that which the clock measures (operationally defined).

2. Kairos: The right moment (to act). Missed opportunities and all the pain that comes with it fall under this notion of time. Time is painful, huh?

Time in Hinduism (The Trimurti)

1. Creator (Brahma): Past (beginning)
2. Preserver (Vishnu): Present (middle, existence)
3. Destroyer (Shiva): Future (end, apocalypse, end times)

Wayfarer

↪Tom Storm

I’m not sure, but I’m exploring Kant’s philosophy of time https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4280/4280-h/4280-h.htm#chap19

Deep questions. I can’t say I understand @Raymond’s response, I don’t have the physics background.

Raymond

It's frustrating if you see so clearly what time is and no one understands what you mean. I wish Aristotle was alive. He comes very close!

Cuthbert

It's frustrating if you see so clearly what time is and no one understands what you mean. — Raymond

Everyone knows what time is. — Raymond

So everyone knows what time is but nobody understands your account of it.

Is there any mystery left, when we analyze time? Isn't it perfectly clear? — Raymond

It was clear, if (as you say) everyone knows what time is. But it is no longer clear, because nobody understands it, when it is explained.

So one mystery is: why does explaining something seem to make it less rather than more clear? This is an ancient problem in philosophy. "What is justice?" asked Socrates. Of course we know what justice is and we recognise injustice from our earliest years. But when we try to explain it we can get in a dreadful muddle. Time is similar. Stephen Hawking wrote a whole book about the nature of time. He was not writing it for people who cannot tell the time or who do not know whether they had a shower before or after breakfast.

Raymond

So everyone knows what time is but nobody understands your account of it — Cuthbert

Exactly! How can something so obvious give that much fuzz? Is it inherent to science? To give the preachers an air of profoundness? While the "laymen", the "ignorant", just stumbles in the dark? To further establish the grip it already has?

pfirefry

↪Raymond

Problem of time: In quantum mechanics, time is a classical background parameter and the flow of time is universal and absolute. In general relativity time is one component of four-dimensional spacetime, and the flow of time changes depending on the curvature of spacetime and the spacetime trajectory of the observer. How can these two concepts of time be reconciled?
Arrow of time (e.g. entropy's arrow of time): Why does time have a direction? Why did the universe have such low entropy in the past, and time correlates with the universal (but not local) increase in entropy, from the past and to the future, according to the second law of thermodynamics? Why are CP violations observed in certain weak force decays, but not elsewhere? Are CP violations somehow a product of the second law of thermodynamics, or are they a separate arrow of time? Are there exceptions to the principle of causality? Is there a single possible past? Is the present moment physically distinct from the past and future, or is it merely an emergent property of consciousness? What links the quantum arrow of time to the thermodynamic arrow?

Raymond

He was not writing it for people who cannot tell the time or who do not know whether they had a shower before or after breakfast. — Cuthbert

Then who did he write it for? He didn't succeed though. He had to introduce "imaginary time". I introduce "the imaginary clock". The only real clock was the state of the universe before inflation.

Raymond

↪pfirefry

I think the evolution of quantum mechanical systems pose no problem for the nature of time. They contribute to its irreversibility, as collapse is irreversible in time. The CP asymmetry is a direct consequence of two universes being produced at the singularity, that blissful central fountain of the spatially 4D eternal Erect from which two pristine and Holy 3D Ejaculates are spawn: an matter Ejaculate and an antimatter Ejaculate. Both contain the same amounts of massless matter and antimatter particles (quantum fields of them). They combine to what we see as quarks and leptons on our side, while on the other side they combine to anti quarks and anti leptons. Because they are massless and they interact as mad by a more basic force than the weak force (which becomes a residual force, like the old strong force mediated by massive pions, which have a counterpart in the massive W and Z bosons in the weak force/ interaction).

Metaphysician Undercover

Time can't go backwards. — Raymond

Why can't time go backward? Isn't this a mystery?

I think there are two kinds of times, mutually exclusive. Entropic time and perfect clock time. — Raymond

How can there be two "mutually exclusive" types of time? Doesn't this really mean that there are two incompatible conceptions of time? And, doesn't that mean that the real nature of time is a mystery?

It's frustrating if you see so clearly what time is and no one understands what you mean — Raymond

Obviously, you see two mutually exclusive types of time, so you really do not see what time is.

In your everyday life, do you recognize a difference between past and future? Can you explain the reason for such a difference?

Raymond

Why can't time go backward? Isn't this a mystery? — Metaphysician Undercover

Time needs initial conditions.

Obviously, you see two mutually exclusive types of time, so you really do not see what time is. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes. There is the clock time and entropic time. I understand both. The clock time truly existed before inflation. The state of the universe back then constituted a perfect clock. A perfect periodic state, which has no temporal direction yet. You can't tell if a perfect pendulum (or Aristotle's eternal circular motion) goes forward or backwards in time. It just fluctuates. Then, when the conditions on the 4D substrate were right, the closed 3D Planck volume, containing virtual particles only (represented by Feynman diagrams of closed propagators, circles with an arrow, so the virtualcparticle rotates in space and time), "bangs" into real existence and the perfect clock is gone, replaced by the irreversible process of entropic time. These processes can be quantified by introducing a clock, which can never be realized, as there are no perfectly periodic reversible processes. Only in the mind, and before inflation (caused by the negative curvature of the 4D substrate from which two 3D universes came into being) they exist. Non-inversible processes don't evolve in time, but constitute time. The notion of a time axis on which one can move is a chimaera. What is done (by Einstein) is to put an ideal, imaginary reversible clock (a constant periodic motion not found anywhere, except in the mind) besides of these irreversible processes (constituting entropic time), objectify it by constructing a time axis, and then retroactively state that processes move in it.

Raymond

In your everyday life, do you recognize a difference between past and future? Can you explain the reason for such a difference — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes. Yes.

Metaphysician Undercover

Time needs initial conditions. — Raymond

Can you put quantitative parameters on the initial conditions of time? If you can do this in an acceptable way, you might be successful at demystifying time.

Yes. There is the clock time and entropic time. I understand both. The clock time truly existed before inflation. The state of the universe back then constituted a perfect clock. A perfect periodic state, which has no temporal direction yet. — Raymond

This "state" prior to your claimed "inflation" would be the state which you need to put such parameters to. Obviously it cannot be a "periodic state", because "period" is a word which refers to directional time. Can you explain what it would mean to have time passing, with no direction to that passing of time? It really doesn't make sense to me, Is time supposed to be passing in all directions at once, prior to inflation?

It just fluctuates. — Raymond

A fluctuation, just like a period, is a directional thing. You cannot have a fluctuation without a direction.

Then, when the conditions on the 4D substrate were right, the closed 3D Planck volume, containing virtual particles only (represented by Feynman diagrams of closed propagators, circles with an arrow, so the virtualcparticle rotates in space and time), "bangs" into real existence and the perfect clock is gone, replaced by the irreversible process of entropic time. These processes can be quantified by introducing a clock, which can never be realized, as there are no perfectly periodic reversible processes. — Raymond

What does "'bangs' into real existence" mean here? Is it your image, that virtual particles are floating around in all directions at once, and suddenly one crashes into "real existence", and "bang", time changes from going in all directions at once, to going in one direction only?

Yes. Yes — Raymond

Is that yes to both questions? If so then start providing your explanation as to why the past is different from the future. Perhaps we can demystify time through this procedure.

Raymond

Can you put quantitative parameters on the initial conditions of time? If you can do this in an acceptable way, you might be successful at demystifying time — Metaphysician Undercover

Dunno. What should be parametrized? A closed loop, a quantum bubble in a Feynman diagram, is a superposition of truly periodic functions, positive and negative energy solution of the matter and gauge fields in question. There existed only virtual particles before inflation. The "single circle Feynman diagrams," with closed propagator loops only (no external legs, as there were no "real" external particles yet) are mathematical superpositions of various e-functions, e(exp)iEt, with constant E, positive (matter) or negative (antimatter). So perfectly periodic.There are rotations in the plane of complex numbers. In t (in the e function). But rotations go in both directions, and these rotations constitute the fluctuation. There is no direction in (entropic) time yet. There is a symmetry between forward time and backward time.

A fluctuation, just like a period, is a directional thing. You cannot have a fluctuation without a direction. — Metaphysician Undercover

It has a limited spatial extension and a limited temporal extension. A perfect periodic motion has no direction in time. You can put a clock next to it, to see its progress in time, but how do you know which direction in time the clock goes? The direction has only meaning wrt entropic time, irreversible processes which weren't present yet before inflation.

Raymond

Yes. Yes
— Raymond

Is that yes to both questions? If so then start providing your explanation as to why the past is different from the future. Perhaps we can demystify time through this procedure — Metaphysician Undercover

I try to articulate. I withdraw for reflection and contemplation.

pfirefry

↪Raymond

This is an interesting explanation. Where could I learn more about it? I’m curious to know what a periodic state without a temporal direction is, and how it allows clock time to exist.

Raymond

Where could I learn more about it? — pfirefry

Keep following the thread. The mystery of time will be revealed. The question is, if we know, then what? I think I know the nature of time. Does it make me happy? Well, I'm writing down my musings in a book. Would be nice if it sells. Then I can finally say goodbye to that damned neighbor of us! Just for the sake of annoying him (and his wife) I'd buy a Lamborghini and take of with roaring engine and blowing claxon!

Gnomon

How can time cause change? — Raymond

Metaphorically. :joke:

Joshs

↪Raymond

Leaves the question: Is there any mystery left, when we analyze time? Isn't it perfectly clear? Critique welcome — Raymond

What you’re talking about isn’t time in its fundament essence , it’s a mathematical abstraction based on the model of reality as objects in motion. Other models have been put forth that take apart the idea of objectivity that ‘clock-time’ is based on.

Gnomon

I think there are two kinds of times, mutually exclusive. Entropic time and perfect clock time. — Raymond

Yes. There are various ways of measuring the passage or static-state of Time. Entropy measures the dissipation of Potential Time from the beginning of the downhill stream. Clock time measures Time as a metaphorical flow, like a river. Block Time measures Time's dimensions as-if the fluid is frozen into a block of ice. And Space-Time imagines emptiness as-if it's a solid object. But all of those "measurements" are attempts to reify an abstraction via metaphorical pointers to physical things. We don't know Time via our physical senses, but only with our sixth sense of Reason, which relates one thing or state to another. Time is not Real, but Ideal, a metaphor in the mind, not a flowing river or immobile ice-cube out there. There's probably no "perfect" way to measure a shape-shifting ghost. :nerd:

Joshs

↪Gnomon

We don't know Time via our physical senses, but only with our sixth sense of Reason, which relates one thing or state to another. Time is not Real, but Ideal, a metaphor in the mind, not a flowing river or immobile ice-cube out there. — Gnomon

How does this relate to Kant’s model of time?

180 Proof

IME, "time" is much more of an existential (G. Marcel) "mystery"

↪180 Proof

than a (meta)physical one ...

'Time' is a metric of asymmetric change (i.e. physical transformations). In the absence of any asymmetry (i.e. no orientation whatsoever) such as at / below the planck scale, which is also prior to the BB, 'time' is not measurable. — 180 Proof

What's the big mystery about time?

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