QM/GR Wrong about Nature of Time?

[Agent Lumino]

Hallo Rexrino,
Thank you very much for your answer. I immediately started to calculate. It is clear that the Hubble-constant would decrease in the future. After another 13 billion years it would be the half of the value we measure today. And after four times – 52 billion years it would be a quarter of 75 km/s per Megaparsec. This includes that the Hubble-constant had to be more in the past. Half of the age of the universe it had to be 150 km/s per Megaparsec. The solution is a hyperboloid, which started with an infinite value and ends up with endless decrease. And it won’t stop anyway.
But the most important consequence of my idea is that the expansion of the universe does not depend upon the gravity of the summarised matter in the universe. The expansion must have the same character as a flashlight in space. Photons are departing in all directions. And they cannot reduce their radial speed even when they are interacting with each other.
Maybe my idea could be a solution for the problem with time. There are so many physical equations that help us to calculate our world. But yet we don’t know what time really is. Therefore I assume that the answer must be radical. Only a complete new point of view can solve this problem. It is definitely a radical idea, to assume that time is a relativistic journey. But I hope it is worth to discuss.
Thanks for your interest.

 

[rexrino]

good luck. you can contact me at: rexrino@moonstroller.com for personal comments about this subject if you like.

I understand your idea. But, light would not be able to leave a black hole. I believe that a neutron star emits large quantities of energy but it is perceived dimly, because of the gravity effect.

If light is effected by gravity, then we would expect some examples of this effect, which have been shown in the cosmos. Light bends around a large mass (because space is bent?)

A good question might be, is it possible for light to be put into orbit around a large gravitational mass. A better question would be, would we be able to see the effects of this event?

I sometimes wonder if light is a radial event or is it dispersive over a distance? That is, does the energy in a light beam grow smaller with distance?

If you pulse a flashlight, the pules can be measured with equipment and the energy of the entire pulse calculated. This is how we use light to transmit information.

The speed of light is measured in meters per second. The idea that a second is anything other than a measure of the distance integral conveys to me that time is nothing but information to describe the distance traveled by any object. But I lack proof.

It may be that a complete, new point of view will lead to an answer.

Maxwell had to travel quite a distance (In those days) to find the information that showed his formulations were correct. The information he found was evident in the equations of others but they couldn't or failed to make the connection.

 

[Trenton]

I read an article somewhere that satellites orbiting Earth behave as though the sun is in the position it is actually in rather than the position we see it in which is always 500 seconds out of date. I don't know if that is true or not but for arguments sake let's assume it is true.

The inference the article draw was that gravity was traveling much faster than light if not instantaneously. However this inference would only be valid if one were to assert that a gravitational field was the result of an exchange of bosons called gravitons. If gravity was just a field that did not require boson exchange, it would not be nessesary for gravity to travel faster than light.

I can't be sure what the maths mean but this seems to me to be the nub of what old Bell was banging on about. The difference between a pure field and one that is the statistical result of an astronomical number of boson exchanges.

It seems to me that some of the apparent instantaneous effects could be explained in these terms. However that is not all. Have you ever considered what shape (in 3 or 4 dimensions) a photon would have? Does it there for example, have anything that might be called a length? or is it just a point?

I tried to do this, without I have to say, much success. But one thought that kept returning was that it is very possible that apparent instantaneous effects could be the result of something undetected happening between the two locations? Is there any definite rational that excludes this possibility?

But to answer the question is QM/GR wrong about the nature of time? I don't know if QM is but GR might be. It has time stopping (infinite time dilation) at the event horizon (hence the name). But this is a region of space where the gravitiational potential (the cause of time dilation) is still finite (correct me if I am wrong and please provide proof).

 

[rexrino]

Interesting. I think we have a good topic to work on here. I'll start gathering information.

I know everyone is familar with magnetic induction. It is caused by the collapse of a magnetic field in a coil, resisting the flow of current in the coil. The magnetic field doesn't want to collapse.

Has anyone studied the condition of a magnetic field and the time it takes for it to change if, say, a metal rod were move towards it? The faster the better to measure the change in the field. In some way, I think magnetism and gravity exhibit similar field functions. With the magnet, the field is stationary or rather exists without change unless a stronger magnet or object (metal) comes in the same facility. With gravity, a mass coming into the system should change the gravity field as well.

Good post...

 

[Agent Lumino]

Hallo Trenton,
Hallo Rexrino,
Thanks for your arguments and motivations.
I think that the gravitational field is at first a reduction of time. If you live on a neutron star, you will measure time is going on more slowly than in other areas of the universe.
I once tried to construct an anti-gravitation bed - because I’m not really a friend of gravitation and neither is my wife. But very soon I realized that – irrespective of other problems - both of us would leave our universe, if we sleep in such a bed, because the timeflow is definitely connected with the gravitational field. And if we want to reduce this field, we had to leave the timeflow. Then we would lag behind the universe of our friends but never ever will catch it again. So I stopped this project!
For me our universe is a 4-dimensional balloon, which is expanding with the absolute possible speed – the speed of light. Although we must postulate a higher dimensional time, which is measured not in Seconds but in a new unit: “Crossonds” for instance. I think that photons have also a time experience, which cannot be measured by Seconds. Time as we know is standing still for photons, but photons might have a time-like experience based on their travel through space.
One of the most important questions in string-theories is: Where is the rest of the 11 dimensions? Why can’t we see them?
One answer could be that we are traveling with a relativistic speed through an at least 5-dimesional space and like photons we cannot see the fifth dimension, because it is standing still for us.
But time should also be influenced by quantum effects. That means that an electron doesn’t start from a Braun tube at an exact point of time, but it has a special period of time to be born. If this is true we only know the exact time of its birth after measuring it. And this includes the collapse of the probability function. Before this collapse it has no fixed birthday. So it exists between a special period and therefore it is understandable for me, why it can interfere with itself on a double-slit.
I assume that for photons there will be the same local unconsciousness with the difference that the period is a special distance in their moving direction.
Maybe that time-dimension is not understood yet. But for me I’m interested in how we can change our physics without wasting our well known and approved physics. The string theory seems very interesting for me, because our visible world is only a projection of the string oscillation.
Thank you all for your interest.
Andreas Habelt

 

[Trenton]

Magnetic field propagation is very easy to measure (not that I have done it). All it would require is a strong electromaget and a coil placed at a distance and a decent electronic timer. Switch the maget on and see how long it takes for a current in the coil to be detected. As I understand it magnetic fields travel at c as do electric fields.

No such simplicity exists for measuring the speed of gravity because large masses cannot be switched on and off quite as easily as large electric currents. All we can do is study orbits - and apply Ocam's Razor to how we interpret what we measure.

Ocam's Razor - That entities should not be multiplied beyond nessesity (I think that should be added but never mind) What all this means is that unless an entity (such as a graviton) is absolutely essential to explain an observed phenomenon, then it should be excluded.

My current view of gravitons is that they are worse than simply unessesary as they would need to travel faster than c in order to cause the effect I mentioned earlier regarding satelites orbiting Earth. As I mentioned then, I have no confirmation that satelites actually do act as described but I think they do because this would mean gravity was just a field rather than a series of interactions.

Although I have just used the term field I do accept the GR version that gravity is due to the 'curvature of spacetime' - although with the caveat that the word curvature is ambiguous. After all, things follow curved paths when falling because they usually have some momentum perpendicular to the line connecting their instantaneous position and the center of gravity. If you were on a body orbiting a black hole at a safe distance and fired a bullet at exactly the same speed but in the oposite direction of your orbit, the bullet would then fall straight at the black hole (no curves).

Now for QM: Is time influenced by quantum effects? Can anything in QM have a yes or no answer? Perhaps not. The only certainty is uncertainty of the Hiesenburg veriety. However this is not just true of the quantum world of atomic scales - it can be applied to anything.

You cannot simutaneously measure a property (eg position) and the rate of change of that property (velocity) of any entity of any size - without a degree of uncertainty. This stands to reason because to measure the rate of change you have to take two snapshots between which must be a non zreo interval - during which the rate of change may be non-uniform. Of course time dilation only serves to make life harder!

But while this applies to everything, at the atomic scale it is more dramatic. It is easier I think to consider everything as an oscillating string or wavefunction - which I why I keep wondering what topology a photon might have. However there is a clear divide between a wave that propogates in free space (light) and a wave that self-circles so that it forms matter.

All matter exists in a state of extreamis. One might think that there is a huge difference between being a particle in the Earth's atmosphere and being one in the center of the Sun - there isn't. One of the reasons we don't get more elements on the periodic table is because in the heavier elements some of the inner electons are traveling at highly relativistic velocities and have paths that lie partly within the nucleus leading to electron capture. However, even in lighter atoms the ultra high velocities and the atomic scale radius produce centrifugal forces on electrons that are inherently extreme - and this produces time dilation that is also extreme. No one knows what sort of speeds quarks might be moving at but these will doubtless be extreme also.

Time will be infuenced by quantum effects but how this all actually works is something of which I am quite uncertain.

 

[PAllen]

Everybody knows what time it is, but nobody knows what time is.

 

[marcus]

Everybody knows what time it is, but nobody knows what time is.

Peter Lorre had this to say about it in 1953:


First prize in a 2008 essay contest on "The Nature of Time":
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.3832

 

[unusualname]

Peter Lorre had this to say about it in 1953:


First prize in a 2008 essay contest on "The Nature of Time":
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0903.3832

http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.3832 ('Forget time' - - Rovelli)

hmm, a big deduction inspired by a 1915 theory, maybe time might just be time and GR isn't quite right.

Just Sayin' ;-)

 

[marcus]

GR is almost certainly not right. What can we learn from it that will carry over to the next generation model of geometry?

GR is not right e.g. because it causes its own breakdown at the start of expansion. I think the focus of the theory is shifting to cosmology. What emerges to replace GR will be a quantum cosmology, and it will have a concept of time.

GR has no global or universal idea of time. The time coordinate does not correspond to anything one can measure and so is physically meaningless (purely conventional). Each observer threading through the spacetime can have his own idea of how to slice the spacetime caterpillar.

GR spacetime is like a path through the superspace of possible geometries of the universe---an evolving spatial geometry. But there is no one official universe time. Notice that in quantum mechanics continuous smooth trajectories do not exist. they are replaced by a path integral--sum over histories. When we finally get a quantum version of the GR story, spacetime as such may no longer exist, it may just be a sum over histories.

But in standard cosmology there is a preferred time. Because some uniformly distributed ancient matter is introduced, emitting ancient light, and there is a moment when the uniformly distributed light (CMB) was released. Standard observers can refer back to that and synchronize clocks. The Friedmann model runs on that time (sometimes called Friedmann time or universe time.)

I suspect that GR will probably be outgrown and replaced by a QC (quantum cosmology) which will resolve the singularity and introduce a new time reference moment. I think we are in a situation analogous to the 1950s before the observation of the CMB, when the "big bang" was just a conjecture---one of various competing models. Today we see various competing models which eliminate the singularity---the GR breakdown at start of expansion. Maybe one will survive observational testing, or maybe none, and something new will emerge.

 

[unusualname]

GR is almost certainly not right. What can we learn from it that will carry over to the next generation model of geometry?

GR is not right e.g. because it causes its own breakdown at the start of expansion. I think the focus of the theory is shifting to cosmology. What emerges to replace GR will be a quantum cosmology, and it will have a concept of time.

GR has no global or universal idea of time. The time coordinate does not correspond to anything one can measure and so is physically meaningless (purely conventional). Each observer threading through the spacetime can have his own idea of how to slice the spacetime caterpillar.

GR spacetime is like a path through the superspace of possible geometries of the universe---an evolving spatial geometry. But there is no one official universe time. Notice that in quantum mechanics continuous smooth trajectories do not exist. they are replaced by a path integral--sum over histories. When we finally get a quantum version of the GR story, spacetime as such may no longer exist, it may just be a sum over histories.

But in standard cosmology there is a preferred time. Because some uniformly distributed ancient matter is introduced, emitting ancient light, and there is a moment when the uniformly distributed light (CMB) was released. Standard observers can refer back to that and synchronize clocks. The Friedmann model runs on that time (sometimes called Friedmann time or universe time.)

I suspect that GR will probably be outgrown and replaced by a QC (quantum cosmology) which will resolve the singularity and introduce a new time reference moment. I think we are in a situation analogous to the 1950s before the observation of the CMB, when the "big bang" was just a conjecture---one of various competing models. Today we see various competing models which eliminate the singularity---the GR breakdown at start of expansion. Maybe one will survive observational testing, or maybe none, and something new will emerge.

What you write is eminently sensible, but I'd like to make one small comment on:

"When we finally get a quantum version of the GR story, spacetime as such may no longer exist, it may just be a sum over histories."

I think space itself is a probabilistic sum over possibilities, but I think that space must evolve in some definite ontological fashion in time, even if that evolution is fundamentally probabilistic (and so not exactly calculable by us).

Now I should probably stop pushing this viewpoint over and over on the forum, until a more definite statement is possible.

 

[Trenton]

I don't think it is meaningful to cast GR and QM as though they were competing theories of which one would triumph. Certainly GR has it's faults because of the singularity - which according to GR is the future for everything inside a black hole except for it being a future that never arrives. Also there is no explanation as to how a singularity might be disrupted, and without this there is no explanation for the big bang. Furthermore, the event horizon has properties that render it a singularity. This could be a show stopper for GR but equally, it could be the springboard for a more complete theory.

QM though is really about fundamental constants. We all know about c and things like the dialectric constant in a vacuum etc. There are others as yet unknown, that will explain why the particles (known and unknown) have the masses they have and the half-lives they have. QM will ultimately lead to grand unification and will explain gravity - But it will almost ceratinly need GR to do it.

As I was saying in my last submission, the role of time dilation at the atomic scale must be very significant because of centrifugal forces, that interestingly enough, produce G forces that make black holes look like microgravity. This time dilation I believe, will have a lot to do with why certain string oscillations work while others don't.

I have been looking for some good papers on time dilation under centrifugal force - but so far without success. If anyone could point me to one that simply contained the formula for calculating time dilation in a centrifuge I would be delighted.

The problem I am having is that in GR, time dilation (really spacetime curvature) is related to gravitational potential rather than gravity. I am keen to know more about this because I have also heard that light actually falls at the same rate as matter. These two statements seem at odds, particularly when one contemplates statements such as "light follows a curved path in the vacinity of a heavy object because it follows a geodisic in curved spacetime"

If I construct a device which can spin a long thin glass rod (say 1mm diameter), at just below the speed it would fly apart (easily 100 m/s), the G forces in the rod would be colossal (millions of G). Then using a laser to illuminate one end and a photcell at the other, there should be a deflection along the rod when spining that differs from that when not spinning. This would test the assertion concerning how light fell under gravity. If it does fall at the same rate as matter would (bear in mind the very short time the photons would have to fall), then this would suggest that light was not following the geodisic of curved spacetime or at least not following geodisic of curved spacetime due to gravitational potential.

Correct me if I am wrong but the grav pot in a centrifuge would be quite small even though the gravity produced would be crushing (this is why I need the formula). I think the grav pot would be related to how far objects would fly if the centrifuge failed - miniscule at 100 m/s.

Is anyone aware of any such experiment having been conducted?

 

[rexrino]

You should be able to find the material in any high school textbook.

 

[Trenton]

No such material imeadiately to hand - the only info I found on it was that grav pot in a centrifuge was related to the tangental velocity, which would be miniscule, whereas the G force would be about a million times that of Earth and enough to get a measurable deflection.

Are you saying such an experiment has been conducted and if so, what were the results?

 

[cosmik debris]

The problem I am having is that in GR, time dilation (really spacetime curvature) is related to gravitational potential rather than gravity. I am keen to know more about this because I have also heard that light actually falls at the same rate as matter. These two statements seem at odds, particularly when one contemplates statements such as "light follows a curved path in the vacinity of a heavy object because it follows a geodisic in curved spacetime"

There is no concept of gravitational potential in GR. The metric is the closest thing to the Newtonian potential but even so I'm not sure what your objection is here?

 

[Trenton]

The 'objection' (though really too strong a term) is to the language. The opportunities for ambiguity abound. It is not to the credit of any discipline (in my view) to have terms that serve to lock out the un-initiated. The word 'curved' is a case in point. It is seductive in that people think they know what it means. As they learn more they realize their ability to go forward depends on their ability to set well established meanings aside; In other words to un-learn.

Anyway I did not know that there was no concept of gravitiational potential. I thought there was and that time dilation was (at least broadly) proportional to it. I suppose I should not be surprised as there is no concept of force, only of acceleration.

One hears various statements. I heard that 'light falls at the same rate as matter' on Patrick Moore's 700th episode of the sky at night. I took this to mean that a dot formed on a target by a laser perpendicular to the gravitational field would drop normal to said field by the same distance that an object would in the time the light would take to go from the source to the target. I wondered if this was the case as I have also heard that Newton also predicted light would be deflected but that his prediction was exactly half that predicted by GR, which has as we know has been proven by experiment. Somewhere in these two statements, there must be either an untruth or an ambiguity?

I have also heard that GR is a refinement to the laws of physics. Indeed only an extension to SR allowing it to be applied to all frames of reference rather than just inertial frames. Of the two, SR was more radical as it introduced time dilation thereby turning Newtonian mechanics on its head. As far as I know, apart from time dilaion, SR/GR just explains things differently rather than invalidate. Force as the product of mass and acceleration is still perfectly valid, even at relativistic velocities, as long as the Lorentz term is included in the equation.

Perhaps I should listen less to the conclusive sounding statements and read more of the underlying math. But on the other hand physicists are human, just like the clergy. Humans have belief systems that cause them to interpret things around them in such a way as to reinforce their beliefs. For me, learning of the belief system was a game changer that explained a great deal about how wars occur for example. Questioning statements made by humans (including yours truly) about anything is only an asymtope to rigor but it is the best we have got. Math in the pure sense might be immune to the potholes of our minds but what of the definitions of the terms in the equations?

 

[rexrino]

Dark Energy could be like glass. If glass is presented in such a way as to fool the observer, they may be physically influenced by the glass when they run into it. Yet, some forms of energy can pass through it. Perhaps not completely but enough to fool me.

 

[Stoonroon]

In the same context as the other quotes from Smolin (on p. 257, in The Trouble With Physicis) he wrote: "Motion is frozen, and a whole history of constant motion and change is presented to us as something static and unchanging." Evidently, he is referring to the common relativistic notion of "block time," aptly characterized by Paul Davies as follows: "Both past and future are fixed. For this reason, physicists prefer to think of time as laid out in its entirety--a timescape, analogous to a landscape-- with all past and future events located there together." (Scientific American, Sept. 2002, p. 42.)

A closely related enigma is that of time's ever-forward direction, which is enigmatic because of the contrast with our favorite mathematical laws, as Roger Penrose writes, "All the successful equations of physics are symmetrical in time. They can be used equally well in one direction in time as in the other. The future and the past seem physically to be on a completely equal footing." (Emperor's New Mind, p. 302.) The latter characteristic is often referred to as time reversal invariance. Pondering such questions back in 1963, Feynman speculated that, "It might turn out that although we did not realize it, there [exists], as a matter of fact, a time-reversal violator...It could well be that we are missing something." (The Nature of Time, ed., Gold, 1967, p. 186.)

In this Forum, with regard to the flow of time, rexrino has inquired, "Flowing where? What is the force that directs this flow?" Feynman's and rexrino's questions may be regarded as the same. I would suggest that the force may be gravity, and that we have overlooked this as a possible answer because we have never probed falling objects that are allowed to fall radially toward each other without ever colliding. (As in the "hole to China" thought experiment.")

Trenton's concern about gravitational time dilation and gravitational potential also tie into the argument, because the frozen, "block time" view predicts that the rate of a clock at the center of the large mass would be a local minimum (corresponding to a minimum potential "well".) But nobody knows for a fact whether the clock at the center actually has the slowest rate, just as nobody knows whether a test object harmonically oscillates in the hole. These are untested assumptions. Possibly, an empirical test of these assumptions would reveal that the rate of a clock at the center is actually a local maximum, corresponding to a test object trajectory that does not pass the center. If this were the case, then we would have found the thawing of time: Time only increases because matter and space also only increase. Many objections may be leveled against this idea. But, I doubt they will have empirical backing in the domain in question: the centers of gravitating bodies. This is a huge blindspot, a huge physical domain where we have not yet looked, as argued in the paper in the following link:

http://astroreview.com/issue/2011/article/the-direction-of-gravity

Accelerometers never cease to tell us that the direction of gravity is upward, not downward. We are way overdue to test the downward-gravity hypothesis by conducting the interior solution gravity experiment described in the above paper. By doing so, we may also unveil the mystery of time’s arrow and find that frozen time, like frozen matter, is a grand illusion.

 

[Trenton]

Another way of viewing the 'following of the geodisic' would be to state that acceleration was always toward regions with slower time - or to use the convention that the direction of gravity is upward, that the direction of gravity is toward regions of faster time. But having said this, I throw it open as a question - Am I having language problems again?

I have yet to have a definitive response regarding the matter of gravitational time dilation and gravitational potential and don't have resources to conduct the experiment myself. Nor it seems do I have an abundance of cognitive resources! I am still stuck trying to understand how to deploy a system of co-ordinates that puts the velocity of an in-falling object at c when it reaches the schwartzchild radius. I am having even more problems finding a system of coords that has the schwartzchild radius moving outward at c.

I keep coming up with a velocity of c but only as measured in the object's local time - not with respect to either the object's origin or to the center of the black hole. Is anyone else having this problem?

 

[ZapperZ]

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