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Time for a different view (hypothesis)


MPMin

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I’m positing this post about time as a hypothesis for consideration only. If it needs to be moved to a more appropriate place please do so. 
 

The current accepted model of time is that it’s linked to space called the space time continuum.
 

But instead of it being seen a fabric of space time, what if time is just attracted to gravity just like matter is? 

My hypothetical view of time being attracted to gravity suggests that time becomes denser the closer time is to large masses in a similar way the atmosphere is denser closer to earth. 
 

Im proposing that time takes longer to pass through closer to earth because it’s denser than time in space. 

Does looking at time from the point of view that it’s attracted to gravity rather than being seen as a part of the fabric of space actually change anything? 

 

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19 minutes ago, MPMin said:

I’m positing this post about time as a hypothesis for consideration only. If it needs to be moved to a more appropriate place please do so. 
 

The current accepted model of time is that it’s linked to space called the space time continuum.
 

But instead of it being seen a fabric of space time, what if time is just attracted to gravity just like matter is? 

My hypothetical view of time being attracted to gravity suggests that time becomes denser the closer time is to large masses in a similar way the atmosphere is denser closer to earth. 
 

Im proposing that time takes longer to pass through closer to earth because it’s denser than time in space. 

Does looking at time from the point of view that it’s attracted to gravity rather than being seen as a part of the fabric of space actually change anything? 

 

Some facts: Space and time are both variable quantities and two opposite sides of the same coin, so to speak...without space, there is no time, without time, there is no space. 

Gravity is simply spacetime geometry. Time dilation is caused by relative velocity or a difference in gravitational potential, in which a body is deeper within a gravity well then another higher up. 

Your hypothetical is invalidated by the twin paradox I think. [one twin remaining on Earth, the other moving away at a relative velocity] Both observe each others clocks to be going slow. 

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I don’t think the twins observing the clocks paradox invalidates my hypothesis as light would travel at the same speed in both directions in any event I think. 
 

In the Space Time Model, Gravity can bend light as it passes near a large object, the light travels around this geometric path which can be visualised as moving past the upper edge of a funnel causing a deviation from a straight path.

My hypothesis suggests there is no space time continuum. Space is just space ( I would suspect that nothing would exist without space let alone time) and time is just time. 
 

If you consider the space time geometry of gravity and how it can bend light, does light travel slower as it’s leaving a large mass and then accelerate once it’s out of the gravitational field? 

 

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8 minutes ago, MPMin said:

does light travel slower as it’s leaving a large mass and then accelerate once it’s out of the gravitational field? 

No. Light doesn’t accelerate. It travels at constant speed. 

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18 minutes ago, iNow said:

No. Light doesn’t accelerate. It travels at constant speed. 

That’s interesting in itself. If I’m not mistaken, the gravity of a black hole is so great that it can prevent light from leaving it. I find it odd that gravity can stop light but can’t slow it down.

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35 minutes ago, MPMin said:

That’s interesting in itself. If I’m not mistaken, the gravity of a black hole is so great that it can prevent light from leaving it. I find it odd that gravity can stop light but can’t slow it down.

The gravity/spacetime does not stop or slow light; The spacetime curvature in a BH is such, that all paths lead towards the singularity, and of course the escape velocity at the EH, exceeds "c". An analogy would be a fish representing light] trying to swim upstream at say 10kms/hr in a river flowing at 10 or more kms/hr.

Light always follows geodesics in spacetime, hence gravitational lensing effects which are rather common. Analogies all have there limitations remember but this suffices to show why light cannot escape a BH.

A more comprehesive explanation can be found here....https://jila.colorado.edu/~ajsh/insidebh/index.html https://jila.colorado.edu/~ajsh/insidebh/waterfall.html

 

1 hour ago, MPMin said:

My hypothesis suggests there is no space time continuum. Space is just space ( I would suspect that nothing would exist without space let alone time) and time is just time. 

The spacetime continuim is a model or framework, against which we locate events and describe them in the familiar co-ordinates plus time. What you see as time, I may see as space, and vice versa, hence their connection. One cannot exist without the other.  While the following is not a realistic example,but it explain what I probably am not explaining very well....In the Frame of reference of a photon, it would traverse the whole universe in an instant. Better still here.....

https://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_relativity_spacetime.html#:~:text=Thus%2C space and time are,approaching the speed of light.

Edited by beecee
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45 minutes ago, beecee said:

The gravity/spacetime does not stop or slow light; The spacetime curvature in a BH is such, that all paths lead towards the singularity, and of course the escape velocity at the EH, exceeds "c". An analogy would be a fish representing light] trying to swim upstream at say 10kms/hr in a river flowing at 10 or more kms/hr.

I still find it unintuitive that gravity doesn’t slow light down. Considering some light at the event horizon of a black hole. I’d intuitively think that light just escaping the event horizon would be slower than light out in space. 
 

When I imagine a fast moving object in space passing by a planet, the planets’s gravity would alter its trajectory and gravity does a similar thing to light in similar circumstances.
I don’t understand why gravity can slow an object with mass down or speed it up (accelerate/decelerate depending on the direction) but can’t do the same to light when apparently all these affects are caused by the geometry of space time. 

It seems to me that the geometry of space time can change the direction of light and moving objects in a similar way when they are passing by a large mass but the geometry of space time only applies to objects with mass and not light when they move toward or away from a large mass 

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5 minutes ago, MPMin said:

I still find it unintuitive that gravity doesn’t slow light down.

Nature is under no obligation to behave in ways intuitive to our feeble ape minds. Your personal incredulity isn’t relevant. 

7 minutes ago, MPMin said:

I don’t understand why gravity can slow an object with mass down or speed it up (accelerate/decelerate depending on the direction) but can’t do the same to light

In that case, you should spend more time asking questions and educating yourself from others who do understand those things than you spend on making stuff up. 

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7 minutes ago, iNow said:

In that case, you should spend more time asking questions and educating yourself from others who do understand those things than you spend on making stuff up. 

Thanks for the explanation 

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2 hours ago, MPMin said:

I still find it unintuitive that gravity doesn’t slow light down. Considering some light at the event horizon of a black hole. I’d intuitively think that light just escaping the event horizon would be slower than light out in space. 

The speed of light is a constant and always travels at "c". It has no rest mass and is never seen to be stopped, only redshifted/blueshifted. Light simply follows geodesics in spacetime curvature, which at the EH of a BH, is such, that all paths lead towards the singularity as mentioned before. Even at a distance of 1.5 Schwarzchild radius from a BH, [that is 1.5 times its radius] light will be forced to travel in a circle, such that if you were orbiting at that co-ordinate, you would see the back of your head. This is called the photon sphere. We are of course speaking of the garden variety Schwarzchild BH.

There are some examples, questions and answers in the previous link I gave that would be worth reading. 

Edited by beecee
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6 hours ago, MPMin said:

I find it odd that gravity can stop light but can’t slow it down.

See it this way: getting out of a gravitational field costs energy. Objects with mass lose kinetic energy, which means they slow down. Light also has energy, but it is not dependent on its speed, because it always has the same speed. But the energy of light is related to its frequency. So light 'loses frequency', which means its frequency goes down, i.e. it becomes redder. Now imagine a light beam with less energy than needed to get out of the gravity field. It would have no energy anymore, which for a wave simply means it does not exist anymore. At the event horizon EM radiation just has not enough energy to escape.

Physically maybe not completely correct, but it might help to develop your 'physical intuition'... It is true, using daily intuitions it is impossible to understand modern physics. Throwing away physical theories because it does not fit your intuitions is the worst you can do. (In fact, it is one of the strongest motivations of so many 'crackpot theories' that are also posted on this forum).

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10 hours ago, MPMin said:

I’m positing this post about time as a hypothesis for consideration only. If it needs to be moved to a more appropriate place please do so. 
 

The current accepted model of time is that it’s linked to space called the space time continuum.
 

But instead of it being seen a fabric of space time, what if time is just attracted to gravity just like matter is? 

My hypothetical view of time being attracted to gravity suggests that time becomes denser the closer time is to large masses in a similar way the atmosphere is denser closer to earth. 
 

Im proposing that time takes longer to pass through closer to earth because it’s denser than time in space. 

Does looking at time from the point of view that it’s attracted to gravity rather than being seen as a part of the fabric of space actually change anything? 

 

"But instead of it being seen a fabric of space time, what if time is just attracted to gravity just like matter is?
Does looking at time from the point of view that it’s attracted to gravity rather than being seen as a part of the fabric of space actually change anything? "

You might like to rephrase your OP question.

Time is not a substance you can get a cupful and transfer from one place to another.

In our world, time and space are not the same (or there would be no point distinguishing) but are intimately connected.
Motion is the most common connection, but not the only one.
Because motion uses time in its definition you arrive at a circular argument if you try to define time in terms of motion.
So arguments about "the velocity of light" are moot since you need both space and time already given to discuss that concept.

It is conceivable to imagine a world without time, (ie space only) but it would be quite unlike ours, which comes equipped with both.

You would have situations like

The cat sat on the mat...

The cat sat on the mat......

The cat sat on the mat.........

The cat sat on the mat............

Pretty boring really.

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14 hours ago, MPMin said:

But instead of it being seen a fabric of space time, what if time is just attracted to gravity just like matter is? 

What is the evidence that time is a substance, like matter is, or even non-matter but with physical properties, like photons? What properties does it have?

i.e. how do you detect time, or time particles (I guess we would call them chronons)

8 hours ago, beecee said:

The speed of light is a constant and always travels at "c".

When measured locally.

 

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On 4/16/2021 at 6:47 PM, Eise said:

See it this way: getting out of a gravitational field costs energy. Objects with mass lose kinetic energy, which means they slow down. Light also has energy, but it is not dependent on its speed, because it always has the same speed. But the energy of light is related to its frequency. So light 'loses frequency', which means its frequency goes down, i.e. it becomes redder. Now imagine a light beam with less energy than needed to get out of the gravity field. It would have no energy anymore, which for a wave simply means it does not exist anymore. At the event horizon EM radiation just has not enough energy to escape.

To help me better understand this concept, hypothetically speaking, gamma rays could potentially escape as visible light? Would we then expect to see a narrow circular rainbow at the event horizon? 

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10 minutes ago, MPMin said:

gamma rays could potentially escape as visible light

Gamma rays exist by definition at a wavelength of ~100 picometers.

Light visible to the eye exists between the bands of 400 and 700 nanometers. Orders of magnitude different  

You may as well be asking what sounds we can’t hear sound like, because you’re basically asking what light we can’t see looks like. 

I assume you mean how we see it after it’s been translated with appropriate detection equipment. Even so, you need to ask a clearer question than, “would we see a circular rainbow,” aka a glory or halo. 

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1 hour ago, MPMin said:

gamma rays could potentially escape as visible light?

Trying to understand/rephrase your question by using @iNow answers

 

@MPMinIs your question something like "can gamma rays (wavelength of ~100 picometers) emitted from close to a black hole be redshifted into the visible spectrum (400-700 nanometers)?

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If I understood a previous explanation properly, it suggest that gravity reduces the frequency of electromagnetic radiation as it moves away from the source of gravity. If I’ve understood this correctly then hypothetically speaking, if gamma rays were being emitted inside a black hole, assuming the gravity of the black hole was not great enough to reduce the frequency of the gamma rays to nil, the gamma ray’s frequency could be reduced to a visible light frequency hypothetically speaking. 

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On 4/21/2021 at 8:31 PM, swansont said:

Gammas emitted inside a black hole would not escape. They would have to be emitted from outside. 

But hypothetically speaking, for the sake of my understanding, assuming Gammas were being emitted from within a black hole and assuming the gravity of the black hole was not strong enough to reduce the frequency of the gammas to nil but only strong enough to reduce the gammas to a lesser frequency then could it be hypothetically possible the gammas to be emitted as visible light? 

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If there is an event horizon present, then the wavelength of any radiation emitted within( that travels at c ), is stretched to infinity ( and its frequency reduced to zero ). IOW, nothing leaves the event horizon ( simplistic explanation ).

If the gamma ray was emitted well outside the event horizon, then yes, as Eise explained, it would lose enough energy climbing out of the gravitational well to be red-shifted to much longer wavelengths, such as those of visible light.

There is something to be said for a well-posed question.

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20 minutes ago, MigL said:

If there is an event horizon present, then the wavelength of any radiation emitted within( that travels at c ), is stretched to infinity ( and its frequency reduced to zero ). IOW, nothing leaves the event horizon ( simplistic explanation ).

Perhaps where I’m going wrong is referring to the very large mass as a black hole because what I’m getting is it wouldn’t be a black hole by definition if anything could escape it. So to revise my questioning, instead of referring to black holes in my questions I meant to refer to very large masses that are capable of significantly reducing radiation because I’m trying to understand if radiation is red shifted when emitted from very large masses? 

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Because electromagnetic radiation can be seen as a repetitive signal of a specific frequency and wavelength, you might want to look at the effects of gravitational time dilation, such that  light experiences a relative ( between different potentials ) stretching of the time-base ( red -shift ) as it climbs out of a gravitational well.

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Does the  electromagnetic radiation climbing out of a gravity well only stretch while climbing out of the gravity well or does it stay stretched even after it’s left the gravity well? 
 

To help me understand this better, if you were able to shine two beams of light with exactly the same frequency, if you were to shine one of the beams of light from Jupiter to an observer in feee space and the other identically produced beam of light from a place with no gravity to the observer, would the beam of light from Jupiter be red shifted from the observer’s point of view? 
 

also assuming all distances remained constantly the same 

Edited by MPMin
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6 hours ago, MPMin said:

Does the  electromagnetic radiation climbing out of a gravity well only stretch while climbing out of the gravity well or does it stay stretched even after it’s left the gravity well? 

It stays stretched. To change would violate conservation of energy.

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