Relativity Explained Via Movement, Not Time

[atyy]

With respect to "preferred time" do you mean direction? I do not want to answer that presumptuously as I can relate it to too many concepts. However, I do not know in what way I said you do not need "theory to define time". I said that the legitimacy of theory is predicated on and justified by the empirical data, not the other way around. Without which it is nothing more that philosophy. And that this empirical data, as it relates to time, was in fact the result of counting discrete events. The fact that we need a theory for operational consistency does not raise theory above the empirical constraints it is predicated on.

I just meant that each frame has its own coordinate time, and each worldline has its own proper time. So in relativity, we have many different things called "time". It seems to me that the theory is needed for that, not the "data" alone, whatever that may be. I guess time is a concept, or many different concepts, so it must be determined by the theory.

My initial statement, which has been taken issue with, is that time can consistently be viewed in terms of event counts. A bit simple, but fully defensible empirically. When Einstein said "time is what we measure" it was simplistic also. My statement merely boils down to defining "what we measure", and that is discrete series of events. Theoretically it works whether it comes in discrete steps or not, but the fact remain: We measure discrete series of events.

If all you have are events, how do you order them? Isn't it conceivable that events may not be ordered at all? Do you allow that time could be like space, whose points can't be ordered on a line (http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0008164" )? Or is every possible order a possible time (which is what proper time is, with the restriction to timelike orderings)? Also, if spacetime is continuous, and all we have are continuous fields on the manifold, how do you "count" events?

I came across an interesting "[url[/URL]: "The question of the validity of the presuppositions of geometry in the infinitely small hangs together with the question of the inner ground of the metric relationships of space. In connection with the latter question... the above remark applies, that for a discrete manifold, the principle of its metric relationships is already contained in the concept of the manifold itself, whereas for a continuous manifold, it must come from somewhere else. Therefore, either the reality which underlies physical space must form a discrete manifold or else the basis of its metric relationships should be sought for outside it[...].

 

[harrylin]

There is no clock that will measure time independently of movement. And conversely, nothing ever happens that does not move.

Why then do physicists persist in using the notion of "time" in explaining relativity? It would be so much easier, more intuitive and correct to talk of (relative) movement and not time. Things like "time" stopping when we perceive a massive projectile traveling at the speed of light: "time" is a purely anthropic notion that neither begins nor stops since it has no physical existence in itself. What will stop is *movement* this is intuitively easy to understand since mass tends to infinity at the speed of light and you require infinite energy to make it *move*.

Why are physicists so hooked on "time" when only movement exits. I believe that explanations of physical phenomenon -including relativity- would be so much easier using *movement* instead...

IH

For centuries people have the habit to describe mechanics with "length" and "time"; therefore relativity is also expressed in those terms. That has nothing to do with "explanations".

What you write reminds me a bit the understanding of Poincare and Einstein at the start of relativity theory: "time" is after all a count of the repetitive motions of clocks.

Harald

 

[Dale]

Are you saying that because I am on a Relativity forum I cannot use "metric" in the general sense, which includes any choice of coordinate system? It is GR that prides itself the most on treating all coordinate systems equally.

The metric doesn't place any constraints on the coordinate system. It is a feature of the spacetime manifold, not the coordinate system. There is no coordinate system where the metric is Euclidean.

Funny, I can turn this around again and say "causality constraints" is not "provided by the metric", the "metric" is provided by the "causality constraints".

I am fine with that, but either way the metric is equivalent to a set of events with scaling and causality constraints. Without those constraints your count of events is not time and with those constraints they are equivalent to the metric.

 

[energydady]

REFERENCE FRAME is made of time and space in this theory. Space don't move, all movement you get coz of time. Even you measurement stick (speed of light) include time but beyond time (as theory say, hey my limitation is light speed, means i can't show you near light speed or on light speed, or i m not valid at light speed, under this you can trust me). Using this theory, Estein put time under pocket of speed of light and declare it a constant or limitation.
it convert: E= MGH+1/2MV2 IN TO E=MC2, no gravity, no interaction (H), no speed/time stuff. Only mass based thing.

 

[time_nerd]

At the fundamental level the universe is changing and in that sense there is a tension between the demands of the unfolding complexity and the altered entropic state of the universe. We can understand the change of the universe as 'temporal sequences' or phases but again all this refers to are different levels and layers of organisation we can see in the physical world. This however, is not time, although there is tempo and rhythm.

Even when the physical world settles down and the natural world emerges from this process there is still not 'time' but there is without question temporal sequence and different tempos depending on what system(s) grab your attention. This changes profoundly, dimensionally when humans emerge from the natural world and we have the beginning of the social sciences, arts and humanities.

The informational range that human engage in/through is meaning and all informational changes (informing motion) are interwoven with time, because they are time. They are the way we socially and meaningfully understand the changes all around us, as content and in connection with other changes. This is tricky to get across in a few lines but the present is a tension between/as time and meaning, and we call it 'meantime'. The effects of meantime are stored in placetime which acts as a memory providing a regulating rhythm to meantime(s).

Going geekier, time in this understanding is 'spin up' at the quantum level and meaning is 'spin down'. So it's no coincidence that social change is referred to as 'changing times', indeed the term zeitgeist is 'spirit of the age'. Term is the single word that pulls these two ideas together best:
1. the naming of something, and
2. a period of time

This shakes up our present way of understanding causality as cause and effect because time is meaning, and meaning is time, causes are effects and effects are causes. So if you live in an indigenous tribal community and the terms and conditions of human life are relatively unchanging then there is no time, and this is born out through anthropological evidence of tribes often having no word for time.

Summarising these points, meaning is the metric of human experience, and time is the metric between experiences. If you do something that is meaningful (a blend of cognitive and emotional experience) then time has to fly, it can't be different. However, 'informing motion' remains non-corporeal although the effect is very real, although relative.

We can see the trouble 'time' as a metric between experiences has when it comes to measuring the length of the universe. 'Time' as a social organised, human metric always has to have some kind of oscillation providing a regularity of measurement. Over the history of clocks and calendars we can see this with current move away from cesium atomic clocks to even more sophisticated ways of measuring time. However, there remains a profound misnomer when we use 'light years' as a metric for age of the universe and this does physics no favours at all.

Light years are a unit and measurement of distance and to say that the Universe is 13.7 billion light years away is to make a statement of distance, not duration. However, often high-profile communicators of science make this error. That is not to say that the Universe isn't really, really old, of course it is. As I have said every 'time' has to have an oscillating base from which to measure. I've worked this out in the past and traveling in a car at 60mph and heading off towards the big bang it would take me 1.123 billion billion billion years. Big difference between that and saying 13.7 billion years.

I'll leave 'time' as the tension between complexity and entropic capacity for another moment, but 'time' (as capacity) is certainly something we can run out of, so it's real although non-coporeal, like so much 'informing motion' around all of us.