Does time move?

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enegue
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Re: Does time move?

Post by enegue »

Jklint wrote:One can think of time in any number of ways. One would be as a digital process which gets translated into analog consequences.
That would be moving in the wrong direction. Natural processes are digitised when we identify steps/stages in their progress from beginning to end. However, natural processes are dense, i.e. between any to steps/stages there will be another step/stage.

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enegue
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Re: Does time move?

Post by Philosophy Explorer »

enegue wrote:

"However, natural processes are dense, i.e. between any to steps/stages there will be another step/stage."

This sounds as if you're suggesting time is infinite.

PhilX
enegue
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Re: Does time move?

Post by enegue »

Philosophy Explorer wrote:enegue said:
However, natural processes are dense, i.e. between any to steps/stages there will be another step/stage.


This sounds as if you're suggesting time is infinite.
Time is just a scale used to reference the progress of processes from beginning to end, and since natural processes are dense, then the set of numbers used to represent the scale must also be dense, e.g. the rational numbers.

The scale wouldn't need to be infinite, though. As I mentioned in a previous post, the Universe as the preeminent process began at position 0 on the scale and at least one scientist I know of, Hawking, has been so bold as to place its end some units to the right of position 10100. Of course, units on the scale are orbits of the Earth about the Sun.

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enegue
Obvious Leo
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Re: Does time move?

Post by Obvious Leo »

enegue wrote:Time is just a scale used to reference the progress of processes
Agreed. This equates time with change and defines physical reality as a PROCESS. The only question which then remains to be answered is how fast does physical reality change? This is a surprisingly easy question to answer because Einstein gave us the mass/energy equivalence equation of E=mc2. We already know therefore that at the fundamental level matter is just little bits of energy configured according to a precise suite of physical laws. All energy travels at the speed of light, thus we can say that a physical entity such as an atom is changing into a different atom at the speed of light. To visualise this in real terms we need only imagine two successive snapshots of a single atom. If a photon in the second snapshot is in a different position from that in the first we can meaningfully say that our atom has become a different atom. Max Planck did all the hard work on this before the rest of physics came along and muddied the waters for him and Planck told us exactly how long it takes before we can meaningfully say that a photon is occupying a different location within the atom. According to Max the atom becomes a different atom 5.4 x 1044 times per second.

This is therefore the speed at which the universe is continuously coming into existence at the quantum level and it is therefore also the speed at which enegue is becoming a new enegue. As we can see the speed of light is pretty quick but it is indeed the speed at which change takes place within physical matter, thus when we equate time and change we also equate it with the speed of light. The speed of light and the speed of emerging time are one and the same thing which means that light travels through time alone and our spatial representation of this process is entirely illusory.

Regards Leo
enegue
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Re: Does time move?

Post by enegue »

Obvious Leo wrote:
enegue wrote:Time is just a scale used to reference the progress of processes
Agreed. This equates time with change and defines physical reality as a PROCESS. The only question which then remains to be answered is how fast does physical reality change? This is a surprisingly easy question to answer because Einstein gave us the mass/energy equivalence equation of E=mc2. We already know therefore that at the fundamental level matter is just little bits of energy configured according to a precise suite of physical laws. All energy travels at the speed of light, thus we can say that a physical entity such as an atom is changing into a different atom at the speed of light.
It's nice to be in general agreement about time, but I don't share your view of entities. According to Carl Zorn from Jefferson Labs, a stable atom has a life-span in the order of 1025 years. During that time its internals may have moved about in every conceivable way, but it's still the same atom. To put it simply, a bag of jellybeans is not a new bag of jellybeans every time you give it a shake.

Cheers,
enegue
Steve3007
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Re: Does time move?

Post by Steve3007 »

As with all such things, I think the question of whether an atom is "the same atom" that it was at a previous time is only interesting to the extent that it allows us to say something useful about observations of atoms.

One of the most basic observed properties of nature is conservation of matter, conservation of energy and, more recently, conservation of mass/energy. For that reason, I agree with enegue that it's more useful to think of an atom as being the same entity from one moment to the next. Just as its useful to think of the gravitational potential energy of a ball on top of a hill as being "the same energy" as the kinetic energy that it possess when it has rolled down to the bottom of the hill and is now moving. Because this helps us to use the law of conservation of energy to describe and predict its behaviour.

Is it "really" the same energy? An open question. I personally don't regard it as a useful one.
Obvious Leo
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Re: Does time move?

Post by Obvious Leo »

You both missed the central point I was making. The atom is an emergent entity whose physical properties are conferred on it by an underlying process. Indeed this process might maintain the atom in a stable state for a very long time but the component parts of the atom are not simply sitting there doing nothing. These subatomic bits go about their business at a staggering speed. For instance the electron is modelled as "orbiting" its nucleus at 0.99999992c and it's by no means the fastest of the subatomic particles. Neutrinos move trillions of times faster than electrons and of course photons and gluons move flat out at the cosmic speed limit c. Therefore it makes perfect sense to think of the atom as changing itself at speed c whilst retaining almost the same external properties.

Tomorrow morning I will wake up as the same bloke even though trillions of atoms which are currently in my body will no longer be there and trillions of other atoms will have arrived in their stead. The emergent Leo and the fundamental Leo are clearly not the same physical entity because the fundamental Leo is changing at the speed of light.

Regards Leo
enegue
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Re: Does time move?

Post by enegue »

Leo,

Here's a story entitled, "The Life of an Atom", from John Cargill Brough's book, "The fairy tales of science: a book for youth", written in 1859. It won't take long to read, and I'm sure you'll be entertained momentarily, at least.

Brough even addresses why you are still the SAME Leo, regardless of the changing nature of your form.

Cheers,
enegue
Steve3007
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Re: Does time move?

Post by Steve3007 »

Leo: As I say, I go with whatever view appears to be the most useful. So I have no objection to you thinking of an atom as "changing itself at speed c whilst retaining almost the same external properties" if there is some way in which that point of view is useful for describing and predicting observed reality. But I think, on other threads, we've established that we still disagree as to the question of the universe, as you've put it, "being made to conform to observation".

---

But I think we probably both agree that it is the identification of invariants which is at the heart of discovering the patterns of nature, because invariance is the defining feature of patterns. On an intuitive level, it seems easiest to do this with material objects, or things that we regard as being the constituents of material objects (like atoms). The principle of "conservation of matter" is one that we have experienced every day for our entire lives. I can still remember watching my young children learning it.

But I brought up conservation of energy because I think it's useful to consider situations in which the entity being conserved is not so obviously visible. In fact, I thought it interesting enough to start a thread on the subject a while ago called "What Is Energy?":

onlinephilosophyclub.com/forums/viewtop ... mp;t=10252

Kinetic and gravitational potential energy are accessible because we all learn about them in high school physics. But energy is still an interestingly nebulous concept. If I see a rock sitting on a hill, and then I see that same rock rolling down into the valley, then it's natural, and seems obvious, to think of the two events as featuring the same rock. But it's not so obvious that there is something which in the former situation is associated with the rock's spatial location and in the latter situation is associated with its velocity which is also the same thing in the two situations. In this case, the only indication that we have of some "thing" being conserved is that two different equations yield the same result.

It was by using this example, in the "What Is Energy?" topic, that I had hoped to explore, from a simple high-school physics point of view, the topic of these kinds of conserved quantities and to examine whether it is useful to think of any of them as more than the results of mathematical book-keeping.
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Re: Does time move?

Post by Philosophy Explorer »

OL, I need a better explanation. When I studied this years ago, I was given that only the nuclear processes of fission and fusion would change atoms. So to ask, what exactly do you mean that one atom changes into another?

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Re: Does time move?

Post by Obvious Leo »

This conversation is taking an interesting turn.

Steve. I'm not sure exactly what you mean when you speak of conservation of matter or energy in the case of the individual atom. Atoms continuously emit or absorb photons and even exchange entire electrons with other atoms and because E=mc2 we know they do this at speed c, or close to it in the case of the emergent particles. There are also such issues as beta decay, in which the nucleus itself is reconfigured, to consider in the case of some atoms. We may like to think that the atom itself is unchanged by such processes but this is clearly nonsense. Although the word "quantum state" is one I hate to use we might think of the atom as being in a particular quantum state at any given quantum moment. Whilst in this state the entire suite of the atom's properties are defined by it, so when the atom switches to a different quantum state in the next quantum moment its physical properties will have slightly altered. These are the changes I refer to which occur at the speed of light. This means that the behaviour of the atom with respect to its neighbouring atoms will be affected accordingly but it's not hard to see how stable matter structures can emerge from such a process. We simply need to imagine a collection of atoms which have been configured into a specific object, for instance a pen. The pen can retain its penlike form for a long time, so we can say that its atoms are being maintained in a stable state. Note that we can't say that its atoms are unchanging because we know that the individual atoms are changing at the speed of light. However its not hard to imagine each individual atom going through almost the same changes of state in successive quantum moments and thus maintaining an equilibrium state which could be defined as the average of its successively different states. All the neighbouring atoms it interacts with are doing the same thing and thus the pen is held together. However when something happens to the pen, for instance you pick it up to write with it, a cascade of events will occur between the atoms of your hand and the atoms of the pen. Some of the atoms of the pen will slough off never to return and some of the atoms from your hand will be temporarily transferred to the pen. None of these superficial events will stop it from remaining a pen but if you chuck it in the fire all bets are off. The atoms will become so excited that they can no longer maintain their average equilibrium state.

I use this form of description to stress the point that the atom is definable only in terms of a process and not in terms of a specific quantum state, a point which is lost in quantum mechanics where time does not exist. For sure we can say that the atom maintains a stable state for millions of years but this is only from the grandad's axe perspective. ( For those that don't know it I still have my grandad's axe which is 150 years old. During that time it's had 5 new heads and 20 new handles but it's still grandad's axe.) Essentially this is what is happening to the atom. In each successive quantum moment it undergoes the minimum possible change of state and to retain a sense of scale we remind ourselves that the Planck interval has a duration of 5.4 x 10-44 seconds. This means that every atom in the universe changes its quantum state 1.8 x 1044 times per (local) second but it's perfectly reasonable to suppose that most of the time in reality it merely oscillates through a range of identical quantum states and maintains the status quo. When we consider this process in terms of the atom's constituent sub-atomic particles we can easily see how the properties of the stable atom are thus conferred on it. It's not so much to do with what these particles are but more to do with what these particles are doing and in this way we define the atom as a process. Exactly the same reasoning can be applied at the next level down because the sub-atomic particles are themselves emergent entities whose properties have been conferred on them by an underlying fundamental PROCESS. It is this process which the string theorists have wasted thirty years unravelling for no result because they can't get spacetime out of their strait-jacketed minds.

What I'm describing is the longed-for unification which physics is seeking between gravity and matter because time and gravity are quantised equivalently if the evidence of GR is interpreted correctly. As I've shown the rate of change at the quantum level is equivalent to the speed of light. However we also know that the rate of change at the quantum level is completely determined by the strength of the gravitational field, because it is this which determines the duration of the Planck interval. In its own inertial frame the Planck interval is measured as a constant with a specific value but if the gravitational field is continuous all the way down to the quantum level (and how could it be otherwise?), then relative to each other the Planck intervals must be of a varying duration. This must be the case all the way down to this sub-sub-atomic level which gives us a very clear picture of exactly how localised this rate of change must be. If the electron is defined in terms of the rate of change of its constituent parts we can see that this rate must be faster than the rate of change of the nucleus, simply because the nucleus is more massive.

I have no wish to indulge in a semantic argument on this point but in my philosophy I simply equate the rate of change at the fundamental level with the speed of emerging uni-directional time, which is driven by the entropy of the overall system. This unifies a number of physical notions which have hitherto been regarded as physically different constructs. The speed of light is equated with the speed of emerging time which is equated with the rate of change of the quantum state of matter and these equivalences all bear an inverse logarithmic relationship with gravity, which determines its entropic state. Believe it or not, this is quantum gravity, the holy grail of physics which unites all the epistemic models under a single explanatory paradigm. Since energy and information are also synonymous in this paradigm it becomes possible to express all the properties of the physical universe in terms of the information state and the relative duration of the Planck interval at the quantum level. This is the Boolean logic gate which defines the universe as the reality-maker and it clearly shows us that the smallest possible unit of physical reality is not a particle or a "thing" of any sort. It is a time interval.

Regards Leo
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Re: Does time move?

Post by Philosophy Explorer »

You can correct me if I'm wrong Leo. Where you said:

"Note that we can't say that its atoms are unchanging because we know that the individual atoms are changing at the speed of light."

I think you meant to say this:

"Note that we can't say that its atoms are unchanging because we know that the individual atoms are changing at close to the speed of light."

PhilX
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Re: Does time move?

Post by Obvious Leo »

Philosophy Explorer wrote:You can correct me if I'm wrong Leo. Where you said:

"Note that we can't say that its atoms are unchanging because we know that the individual atoms are changing at the speed of light."

I think you meant to say this:

"Note that we can't say that its atoms are unchanging because we know that the individual atoms are changing at close to the speed of light."

PhilX
No. I meant it the way I said it but I'll clarify. We need to make a distinction between the massless bosons, which move at speed c and the emergent sub-atomic particles which have a mass and therefore can't. Because of Einstein's mass/energy equivalence equation E=mc2, we know that the massive sub-atomic particles are made up of yet more fundamental entities which must be massless and therefore move at c. It doesn't matter much what we choose to call these hypothetical entities but I prefer to just call them "bits" rather than preons or strings as other models do. These other terms have a meaning specific to the models they are applied to and it wouldn't help to understand the "bits" by conflating them with something conceptually different, because my "bits" are defined as time intervals. Either the Planck interval or the quantum moment Now would do just to get the general idea. Likewise I don't really like to say that the sub-atomic particles are "made up of" their bits but would rather say that the sub-atomic particles "are encoded for" by their bits. This latter form of language more correctly defines the emergent particle as the outcome of a process.

So when I say that the atom is physically changing at the speed of light I'm actually referring to what the massless "bits" within the sub-atomic particles are doing at this fundamental level and at speed c, as well as what the emergent particles are also doing at a speed somewhat less than c. Effectively we're talking about two different levels of a hierarchical reality and this also explains the existence of the photons and gluons as information carriers which connect reality at its fundamental and emergent levels. Obviously these must travel at c or else the atom would fall apart.

Regards Leo
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Atreyu
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Re: Does time move?

Post by Atreyu »

Philosophy Explorer wrote:Think about it. What would we use to measure the movement of time? Time itself? I think that time is preoccupied.

If you don't use time, what then? What would qualify to measure the movement of time?

The rest of this is filler words.

PhilX
I'm not convinced time can be measured because it's the peculiar way we perceive the dimensions of space beyond the first three (which we can perceive spatially). The higher dimensions of space beyond the first three are what enable us to have a cognition of time in the first place. And I know of no way to 'measure' a dimension of space, other than to say that it consists of an infinite number of the dimensions of space one lower than itself. For example, an infinite number of lines gives us a plane. And an infinite number of planes gives us a three dimensional body. An infinite number of three dimensional bodies gives us a four dimensional body, and so on. There seems to be no other way to quantify or describe, let alone 'measure', a dimension of space.
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Re: Does time move?

Post by Simply Wee »

Everything constantly moves, as everything is made from what constantly jumps in and out of time. Moments are not measured by us in this way, nor dreams nor death. Time is our way of keeping an eye on the ball, and even that changes as we get older. One year as a four year old is a very long time, but as a 40 year old it is relatively a short time in comparison. Why is that? Maybe the more we are involved with keeping our eye on the ball, the quicker everything else catches us out and our own time is all but gone. In the end, Einstein was right to pick up the clock, its time and ours is very different, in reality it will tell you the time, but who really lives there. I guess.
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