Ontology of time

[michel123456]

The difference between reference frames is merely a change of coordinates, not a change in reality. The weird effects come from the coordinates being four-dimensional.

 

So you agree there is only one reality, correct?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

So you agree there is only one reality, correct?

To the best of my knowledge. If there's another one, I'm not in it.

[swansont]

So you agree there is only one reality, correct?

I sense an issue of equivocation coming up.

 

The earth exists. That's reality. The dimensions of the earth depend on the frame of reference you are in. There is no frame of reference that represents reality; if you disagree, you need to come up with an objective way of telling when you are in that frame.

[tar]

SwansonT,

 

No reference frame that represents reality?

 

Not quite sure what that means. We have the Earth, we have human size scales of space and time. That is what we know. Why would any reference frame, that could not be mapped back to this one, have any meaning at all to us.

 

For instance, if something happens "now" on Alpha Centuri, it will not be "real" for us for another 4.5 years.

 

And any reference frame that is not "like" ours, were we "know" a particular place and time as here and now, is not a very useful frame, or very useful thing to consider "real".

 

If it doesn't map back to our reference frame, why should we even know or care about it, much less consider it "real"?

 

Regards, TAR2

[owl]

(A little catch-up)

me:

If you are so certain that the length-contracted version of earth’s shape is equally correct, why don’t you present experimental, objective, empirical evidence to support it?

 

swansont:

But if you want to dishonestly restrict what you will accept as evidence for relativity, then I probably can't.

 

“Dishonestly restrict?” There is no experimental evidence for large scale length contraction, yet you and Cap ‘n R are insisting that an almost flat earth is just as valid ("real") as its extremely well verified nearly spherical shape. Something is very wrong with that, if not "dishonest."

 

Then you compare lack of length contracted evidence to some imagined lack of evidence for gravity.(??) I really don’t get your drift on that one. Everywhere on earth gravity is verified, as well as throughout the cosmos. Mass attracts mass. What kind of verification are you asking for. What goes up comes back down. The whole space exploration program is based on very specific knowledge of how gravity works This is a nonsense challenge and comparison of verification of gravity to verification of length contraction.

 

View Postmichel123456, on 14 August 2011 - 07:47 AM, said:

So you agree there is only one reality, correct?

Cap 'n R:

To the best of my knowledge. If there's another one, I'm not in it.

How about the one in which earth is severely oblate? Or are you in the reality where it is nearly spherical. You still can't have it both ways if there is "one reality" and earth does not morph with each different frame of reference.

[md65536]

How about the one in which earth is severely oblate? Or are you in the reality where it is nearly spherical. You still can't have it both ways if there is "one reality" and earth does not morph with each different frame of reference.

I'm in the reality where North America is up, and Australia is down. I've heard there's another reality where Australia is "up" to some people in the southern hemisphere. If that were so, then North America would have to be down, to them. Since my "up" can't be "up" and "down" at the same time, and I haven't seen any evidence of up and down morphing (for example, if I woke up to find I'd magically floated to the ceiling during the night), this is obviously false. You can't have it both ways. Up is either up or down, not both. Some observer being somewhere else doesn't change which direction I fall.

 

So I must conclude that Australia doesn't exist. I think this is compatible with your baseless objections to the modern concept of time. As long as we're rolling back science a few hundred years, why can't we roll back maps of the Earth too?

Edited August 16, 2011 by md65536

[michel123456]

I'm in the reality where North America is up, and Australia is down. I've heard there's another reality where Australia is "up" to some people in the southern hemisphere. If that were so, then North America would have to be down, to them. Since my "up" can't be "up" and "down" at the same time, and I haven't seen any evidence of up and down morphing (for example, if I woke up to find I'd magically floated to the ceiling during the night), this is obviously false. You can't have it both ways. Up is either up or down, not both. Some observer being somewhere else doesn't change which direction I fall.

 

So I must conclude that Australia doesn't exist. I think this is compatible with your baseless objections to the modern concept of time. As long as we're rolling back science a few hundred years, why can't we roll back maps of the Earth too?

 

Straw man.

[swansont]

SwansonT,

 

No reference frame that represents reality?

 

Not quite sure what that means. We have the Earth, we have human size scales of space and time. That is what we know. Why would any reference frame, that could not be mapped back to this one, have any meaning at all to us.

 

For instance, if something happens "now" on Alpha Centuri, it will not be "real" for us for another 4.5 years.

 

And any reference frame that is not "like" ours, were we "know" a particular place and time as here and now, is not a very useful frame, or very useful thing to consider "real".

 

If it doesn't map back to our reference frame, why should we even know or care about it, much less consider it "real"?

 

Regards, TAR2

I didn't say they couldn't be mapped back to this one. That might be true if they were illusions, but that's part of others' positions.

 

“Dishonestly restrict?” There is no experimental evidence for large scale length contraction, yet you and Cap ‘n R are insisting that an almost flat earth is just as valid ("real") as its extremely well verified nearly spherical shape. Something is very wrong with that, if not "dishonest."

 

Then you compare lack of length contracted evidence to some imagined lack of evidence for gravity.(??) I really don’t get your drift on that one. Everywhere on earth gravity is verified, as well as throughout the cosmos. Mass attracts mass. What kind of verification are you asking for. What goes up comes back down. The whole space exploration program is based on very specific knowledge of how gravity works This is a nonsense challenge and comparison of verification of gravity to verification of length contraction.

 

"large scale length contraction" is a dishonest restriction. It's also wrong, since muon experiments are arguably large-scale. I think you meant "large-scale length contraction of macroscopic objects". I see that and think "nobody has tested gravity in your kitchen" so when you drop an egg, you can't be sure if it's gravity some other mysterious force that causes it. That is, if you apply the same standard to Newtonian gravity and other aspects of science as you do to relativity.

[md65536]

Straw man.

It was parody, not a logical argument. If my post is treated seriously, the implication that my argument is equivalent to owl's is certainly a straw man. To brush it off as just a straw man is a good way to avoid thinking critically about one's own arguments.

 

Perhaps it could be considered an extreme example of similar reasoning that owl is using, but that in itself does not prove that owl's flawed reasoning is flawed. It adds no weight to the argument but provides an opportunity for thinking about it in a different way.

 

 

[Iggy]

Straw man.

Counterexample.

[time]

time as we know it seems to go faster as we age

 

 

our perception of time is. einstein once seid

"if you put your hand on a hot stove for 3 minutes it feels like 3 hours, talk to a beautiful girl for 3 hours it fells like 3 minutes.

 

 

do you realize that there is an infinite amount of numbers between 1 and 2

 

the same numbers that we measure time with. this being seid one second has been an infinite amount of time.

xeno's parodox

Edited August 17, 2011 by time

[md65536]

the same numbers that we measure time with. this being seid one second has been an infinite amount of time.

However, information has a speed limit: c, which couples time and distance. If you want to have an arbitrarily long causally related sequence of events occur in an arbitrarily short period of time, it will have to occur in a correspondingly small enough space. There's only "an infinite amount of time" (or more precisely "an infinite rate of events" -- the reciprocal of time) in an infinitesimal space. c makes a rate of time finite for any non-zero distance.

Edited August 17, 2011 by md65536

[owl]

This post is transcribed from the “Are string theorists already trying to hijack the OPERA neutrino experiment?” thread in Speculations.

 

Seems everyone else on that thread is discussing the question, “what is time?” but I am not allowed. See moderator’s note, post 73 today in that thread.

 

Since this has become another 'what is time?' thread, I would again like to raise the ontological question which the physics standard definition, "Time is that which clocks measure..." does not answer.

 

By the same principle we could validate the existence of "the human aura" as "that which 'aura-meters' measure," but that is just another tautology which does not in fact validate the "human aura."

 

I think that JustinW nailed it in on 28 October 2011 - 09:47 AM, (post 29):

It's not like a clock is a time detector. So would it be fair to say that motion is the reality and time is man made?

 

My bold!

I think so. Time is the concept that motion (everything moves) 'takes time', not that it creates something called time or, as above "detects" time.

The faster one thing moves relative to another thing, the more its rate of internal system dynamics slows down relative to the slower moving system.

 

This echos, I think, what michel123456 said:

 

BUT if "time is slowing" in some circumstances, one could tell what is the regular speed of time ?

...

 

except that there is no standard time speed, just faster and slower physical processes relative to each other, depending (for the relativity effect) on relative velocity of each system, gravitational field of each physical system, etc.

 

To revisit 'another time, another thread, another thought experiment'...

It takes Earth 'a year' to orbit the Sun. But if a rocket blasted off from Earth and went near lightspeed out for an Earth year and back for another Earth year, the rocket's clock/calendar might show that only one 'speeding rocket year' had elapsed, because its clock had slowed down with high velocity relative to Earth. The voyagers would have, I presume, only aged a year as well, while folks on Earth would have aged two Earth years.

This is, I think, consistent with relativity without making "time itself" into "something" besides different relative rates of physical motion for Earth and its inhabitants vs a speeding rocket and its passengers.

[JustinW]

To revisit 'another time, another thread, another thought experiment'...

It takes Earth 'a year' to orbit the Sun. But if a rocket blasted off from Earth and went near lightspeed out for an Earth year and back for another Earth year, the rocket's clock/calendar might show that only one 'speeding rocket year' had elapsed, because its clock had slowed down with high velocity relative to Earth. The voyagers would have, I presume, only aged a year as well, while folks on Earth would have aged two Earth years.

This is, I think, consistent with relativity without making "time itself" into "something" besides different relative rates of physical motion for Earth and its inhabitants vs a speeding rocket and its passengers.

 

 

 

Owl,

 

 

I didn't see that you moved your post untill after I had posted but I have a question. Although I agree with the "making time itself into something" statement, 1 Earth year out and 1 Earth year back still equal 2 earth years. Are you suggesting that age is comparible with the speed in which they travel?

[md65536]

I think so. Time is the concept that motion (everything moves) 'takes time', not that it creates something called time or, as above "detects" time.

Nor does a ruler create distance. Nor does a ruler "detect" distance. It still measures distance and can define a distance. A clock measures time and can define it.

 

 

except that there is no standard time speed

The invariance of c can define a standard, and ensures that different observers don't see random or arbitrarily different rates of time passing on different clocks. This standard ensures that various different observations made from different points in spacetime are all consistent with each other.

 

Please review all your previous posts in various threads and note the various errors you've made that have been pointed out many times already.

 

 

[owl]

Owl,

 

 

I didn't see that you moved your post untill after I had posted but I have a question. Although I agree with the "making time itself into something" statement, 1 Earth year out and 1 Earth year back still equal 2 earth years. Are you suggesting that age is comparible with the speed in which they travel?

I am suggesting that since higher speed clocks in orbit slow down in rate of "ticking" (internal dynamic of their physical process) compared to surface clocks, the internal physical dynamic of human aging also probably slows down, so they would "age' more slowly than the rest of us on Earth.

 

Nor does a ruler create distance. Nor does a ruler "detect" distance. It still measures distance and can define a distance. A clock measures time and can define it.

 

The point is that elapsed time is simply the concept of event duration of any physical process being measured, not an entity of any kind.

 

On the other hand, in the natural world/cosmos objects are separated by distances, which do not vary with how they are measured.

So we devise measuring rods like the meter and can then say how many of them, end to end, are contained in, say Earth's polar diameter or the average* distance between Sun and Earth *(taking into account the variation due to its elliptical orbit.)

Frame of reference as determining "reality" (see "realism") is over-rated by relativity in all of the above.

 

 

The invariance of c can define a standard, and ensures that different observers don't see random or arbitrarily different rates of time passing on different clocks. This standard ensures that various different observations made from different points in spacetime are all consistent with each other.

 

I am not disputing the invariance of c. I said:

...except that there is no standard time speed*, just faster and slower physical processes relative to each other, depending (for the relativity effect) on relative velocity of each system, gravitational field of each physical system, etc.

 

Light has velocity. "Time" does not. Get the difference? And you can use the word "spacetime" all you want, but that does not make "it" an entity either, even though it is standard vocabulary for relativity.

 

Please review all your previous posts in various threads and note the various errors you've made that have been pointed out many times already.

 

I'll leave that up to you. Please be specific about how I have made errors. For instance, calling "strawman" does not defeat an argument. The debate would require an explanation as to how the argument is specious, i.e., how exactly it is a fallacious, 'strawman' argument.

(Perhaps a new thread on "Owl's Errors" as a new topic.)

[md65536]

I am suggesting that since higher speed clocks in orbit slow down in rate of "ticking" (internal dynamic of their physical process) compared to surface clocks, the internal physical dynamic of human aging also probably slows down, so they would "age' more slowly than the rest of us on Earth.

If you can show that your theory predicts that clocks in orbit will slow down relative to earthbound clocks even close to how precisely and accurately special relativity predicts it, I will try to take your theory seriously.

 

Please be specific about how I have made errors. For instance, calling "strawman" does not defeat an argument. The debate would require an explanation as to how the argument is specious, i.e., how exactly it is a fallacious, 'strawman' argument.

(Perhaps a new thread on "Owl's Errors" as a new topic.)

Please reread the many replies to your many repeated erroneous posts. The specifics about how you have made errors are all there.

I don't think a new thread is needed. There are already several threads repeating the same things.

 

 

[JustinW]

I am suggesting that since higher speed clocks in orbit slow down in rate of "ticking" (internal dynamic of their physical process) compared to surface clocks, the internal physical dynamic of human aging also probably slows down, so they would "age' more slowly than the rest of us on Earth.

 

 

I see your point, but time as presented as (past,present,and future), wouldn't mean the rocket showed up in the future. It would mean the inner dynamics or matabolism of the human body slowed to reduce deterioration. (aging)

 

 

 

The invariance of c can define a standard, and ensures that different observers don't see random or arbitrarily different rates of time passing on different clocks. This standard ensures that various different observations made from different points in spacetime are all consistent with each other.

 

Would you happen to have a link to a study that was performed on this at different intervals and their outcomes?

 

 

However, information has a speed limit: c, which couples time and distance. If you want to have an arbitrarily long causally related sequence of events occur in an arbitrarily short period of time, it will have to occur in a correspondingly small enough space. There's only "an infinite amount of time" (or more precisely "an infinite rate of events" -- the reciprocal of time) in an infinitesimal space. c makes a rate of time finite for any non-zero distance.

 

If I understand what you're saying correctly,(not sure), is that time and space have to be proportionate. And the speed limit of information is the speed of light, as far as we know so far. If this is true wouldn't information traveling slower than c ,the limit, proportionately slow down in time. And theoretically anything traveling faster than c, speed up in time. If so anything in between would speed up or slow down in time depending on the speed at which the information was traveling.

 

I think I have started to ramble, missed something, and utterly confused myself. Please ellaborate on this uneducated guesswork I call questions.

Edited November 2, 2011 by JustinW

[pantheory]

owl,

 

.... besides event duration between designated instants?

I do not think the word "besides" includes very much beyond the definition above.My definition of time is: a measurement of event durations in a particular time frame by using a clock as a standard for comparison. A time frame can be defined as any reference frame that can be described by its relative position its center(s) of gravity.

 

I think this definition is all there is to the meaning of time, and nothing more -- at least according to my theory of it.

 

In Quantum Mechanics time is thought to be a very complicated concept. Some theorist in this field believe that time is so complicated that it may take decades or even a century before we will ever be able to come up with a valid theory concerning the essence of time. I think these theorists are totally wrong and I could explain to them why I believe there ideas are wrong and where I believe their arguments are faulty.

 

But either time is quite simple as I propose, or it is something very complicated like some concepts in Quantum Theory propose. It boils down to differences between theories that presently cannot be resolved. Some future observations may show greater insight, but for me all of reality is not complicated and most of it can be understood by those of average intelligence and education. The essence of time like space, in my opinion, is very easy to understand, but I will not argue with others who wish to believe complicated ideas concerning their ontology since nothing could be gained by either party since both understand the others perspective.

//

Edited November 2, 2011 by pantheory

[md65536]

Would you happen to have a link to a study that was performed on this at different intervals and their outcomes?

I don't know of any study that specifically tested the consistency of reality. All observations and experiments have agreed on reality.

 

If I understand what you're saying correctly,(not sure), is that time and space have to be proportionate. And the speed limit of information is the speed of light, as far as we know so far. If this is true wouldn't information traveling slower than c ,the limit, proportionately slow down in time. And theoretically anything traveling faster than c, speed up in time. If so anything in between would speed up or slow down in time depending on the speed at which the information was traveling.

I don't know how to describe this correctly. To maintain invariance of c with relative motion, it's not simple proportionality, but instead is described by the Lorentz transformation.

 

 

I don't think the invariance must apply to everything. But if you say that all information or energy or even fundamental particles travels at c, then nothing can be slow or at rest, but this is okay because the energy can oscillate at a speed of c. A rock at rest is still made up of particles that are constantly moving.

 

Good questions. It reminds me of how little I truly understand. Others could give you better answers.

 

 

Edit: Come to think of it, a better way of describing this than the way I think about it, is that everything is moving at a speed of c through 4 dimensions. If it is relatively at rest in the spatial dimensions, it must be moving through time at a rate of c. The faster it moves through spatial dimensions, the slower it moves through time, so that the length of the 4-vector velocity is always c.

Edited November 3, 2011 by md65536

[Daedalus]

Come to think of it, a better way of describing this than the way I think about it, is that everything is moving at a speed of c through 4 dimensions. If it is relatively at rest in the spatial dimensions, it must be moving through time at a rate of c. The faster it moves through spatial dimensions, the slower it moves through time, so that the length of the 4-vector velocity is always c.

 

That is exactly the conclusion that I have derived using mathematics in my theory of temporal uniformity. We move through four dimensional space at the speed of light.

Edited November 3, 2011 by Daedalus

[Iggy]

By the same principle we could validate the existence of "the human aura" as "that which 'aura-meters' measure," but that is just another tautology which does not in fact validate the "human aura."

ALL definitions are tautologies. It does not diminish "time" (or its definition) to speak of it in that way.

 

I've repeated this 4 or 5 times and you've ignored it every time only to keep repeating the nonsense as if it still made sense. Maybe you don't understand, or maybe your bias forces you to disregard a point so counter to your own. Either way, I've drawn a picture showing this so that you hopefully won't be able to ignore it.

 

The definition of time is a tautology like I show here:

 

 

 

Any other definition is a tautology an example of which I demonstrate here:

 

 

 

Indeed, the scientific definition of time (that which a clock measures) is a tautology. It is also circular. If it were not these two things then it would not be a proper definition. So... your point is meaningless.

 

In case there is anyone reading this thread who is taking you seriously, they should know that your unsupported declarations have been shown to be nonsense around a half-dozen times.

Edited November 3, 2011 by Iggy

[JustinW]

Indeed, the scientific definition of time (that which a clock measures) is a tautology.

 

The thing I am trying to wrap my mind around is the what. What does does a clock measure? Motion from point A to point B? Is time a physical thing that has substance? A human's perception of motion from point A to point B? Can measurement differ at the same point in space or is it a constant? I saw the science channel doing a show on time. A guy was doing a study on perception. He placed a subject in front of a computer and had them click on a spot on the monitor with their mouse. When they clicked the spot he had set a flash to go of at a fraction of a second after the click. After doing this for a set amount of time he reset the time of the flash to go off at the same instant as the click of the mouse. The subject believed the flash was going off before they even hit the mouse button, and percieved this for another alotted amount of time. Do you guys think that this was a convincing study that time could be more perceptive than a physical state?

[owl]

If you can show that your theory predicts that clocks in orbit will slow down relative to earthbound clocks even close to how precisely and accurately special relativity predicts it, I will try to take your theory seriously.

 

After all your venomous personal attacks, I am way beyond caring whether you take me seriously. You didn't even get the very clear sense in which I just agreed that "clocks in orbit will slow down relative to earthbound clocks."

Here it is again:

I am suggesting that since higher speed clocks in orbit slow down in rate of "ticking" (internal dynamic of their physical process) compared to surface clocks,...

... That's clocks with higher velocities in orbit,just to be clear.

You seem to have a serious need to make me wrong, even where I agree with relativity (if not the language of "time dilation" reifying time.)

Again:

The point is that elapsed time is simply the concept of event duration of any physical process being measured, not an entity of any kind.

You:

Please reread the many replies to your many repeated erroneous posts. The specifics about how you have made errors are all there.

I don't think a new thread is needed. There are already several threads repeating the same things.

 

I have often disagreed with mainstream science, particularly about how it uses the concepts of time and space with only disdain for the ontology of what they are in the "real world", off the graph or conceptual coordinate system, so to speak. So If you claim that I am in error, explain how so. Repeating as if it is a given that 'time dilates' does not make me wrong. Neither does repeating that no one knows the real, true shape of Earth, because relativity dictates that there are no preferred frames of reference, and it might look like an extremely oblate spheroid from an extreme FOR. We all beat that one to death, but the above argument didn't make me wrong or the Earth just as likely very flattened as nearly spherical.

So if you really need to make me wrong, be specific.

[pantheory]

The thing I am trying to wrap my mind around is the what. What does a clock measure? Motion from point A to point B? Is time a physical thing that has substance? A human's perception of motion from point A to point B? Can measurement differ at the same point in space or is it a constant? .......a physical state?.....

Clocks are designed to measure a universally accepted standard for comparison concerning the rate of changes in something physical such as matter or light, like rulers are a standard to measure lengths. The basis of our clocks is the rotation of the Earth divided into 24 hours. Each hour is divided into 60 minutes, and each minute is divided into 60 second. The Second is universally accepted as the primary unit of time. Clocks are designed with gears, pendulums, a sun dial, sand grass, etc. so that they can measure any or all of these units. The most precise clocks have been designed to measure milliseconds, microseconds, nanoseconds, or picoseconds (a trillionth of a second).

 

Time: is an interval of change that involves relative motion. An instant of time is like a photographic snapshot within an interval of change that does not involve time itself. Time frames, concerning relativity, involve differences of relative positions and motion to the center(s) of gravity. Different time frames in the same gravitational field can progress at slightly different rates of molecular changes within matter and therefore the rate that time progresses in that time frame.

//

Edited November 3, 2011 by pantheory