steveupson

Back at post #40 http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/101390-time-is-the-cause-of-motion-hijack-split-from-time/page-2#entry960981

I thought we had all agreed that energy is the ability to do work. How can work be done without time? I don't understand this assertion. From wiki: "SI definition of second is "the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of theground state of the cesium 133 atom"" Are you making the argument that we can observe radiation without motion? We need c in order to define spacetime's relationship with Relativity. We need motion to have c.

This, once again, sounds inconsistent to me. One doesn't need to do work to measure energy, either. I joule is the ability to apply one newton for one meter. I second is the ability for light to move 3e+8 meters. This seems very basic to me. I honestly cannot see the distinction between these two that you are trying to make here. Nah, I'm not buying it. There has to motion of some sort has to be the ability to have motion in order to define time. This is the result of c being a constant.

Except for the fact that one hour doesn't exist without light moving 6.706e+8 miles, then sure, what you are claiming is true. You are ignoring the idea that we cannot quantify time without motion while at the same time touting the idea that we cannot measure energy without work. This seems a little inconsistent or arbitrary to me.

I thought that we have some fundamental entities that we refer to as time, space, energy, and matter. Aren't these the fundamental axiomata for physics?

This seems to be where the uncertainty lies. We can probably agree that work is a measurement of energy. Why can't we agree that motion is a measurement of time? Time doesn't measure anything, does it? It exists in the same way that energy exists, and we know that they both exist due to the ability to measure them.

Does energy cause work?

I didn't understand the question then. I don't think anyone is asking that particular question, are they? I see the question as being in the same vein as the question about how an object knows how to move (stay in motion) when no forces are acting upon it. I think the question is more like: Does motion (stuff moving) happens because of time, independent of other stuff. I think the answer is the same as when we ask whether work happens because of energy. To me these are similar questions with similar answers. In both cases the question is how we view the quantification of something.

I can definitely agree with that. Let me try again while keeping it a little simpler this time. It sounds arbitrary to me to argue that the way we measure time isn't causative while at the same time arguing that the way we measure energy is causative. I don't see any difference, so I consider these two things in the same light. To me, they are both causative, or they're not.

Can you please explain exactly what you think that I said that makes you think I believe something other than that energy is the ability to perform work? Are you arguing that in order to have motion you must have a method for measurement of energy? Because that's what it seems like to me. If I have misunderstood your argument then please clarify it for me, if you can.

Here's the relevant Op quoted. "Time is the cause of motion. Work out the cause of motion, you have time." It's so brief that I don't understand the confusion.

I can't agree with this. While it's true that the Op says rate of change (time) causes motion it doesn't really follow that this has anything to do with work, which is actually energy transfer. In the case of motion of matter, this transfer of energy is how we would go about measuring kinetic energy, which I believe can exist without work. Work is only necessary as a method of making a measurement of this energy. +1 perfect Unless the combination results in a flat spacetime, which it doesn't, then there has to be motion as a result of combining space and time. It's the curvature that makes it necessary that there's motion with any passing of time. This "synchronous" motion is what separates the "past" and the "future" from "now." We know these are different somehow, and this is the how.

Maybe some sort of definition of motion is in order. Isn't motion simply a change in position? And, along the same track, isn't position simply a length and direction from a reference? Certainly this is true, but something must change position (move) or else we would never have any way of knowing whether or not the decay is actually taking place. I'm pretty sure that every particle has a future and that its future lies in a specific direction. The state in which all these directions of all these futures form a coherent entity is what we refer to as "now" in what we refer to as "time." Basically, direction commutes in spacetime whereas length does not. Length only commutes in flat spacetime, which doesn't really exist. To clarify this a little bit, the direction of one future of one particle is relative to the direction of a second future of a second particle, and this relative difference in direction has a value or magnitude. This magnitude is identical whether we look at the direction of the second particle's future relative to the first, or if we look at the direction of first particle's future relative to the second. If we move any instant into the "past" or into the "future" then the discrete directions of all of those discrete futures becomes incoherent. They no longer commute due to the fact that spacetime is not flat but instead has some curvature to it. They must all, in synchronous fashion, get new futures that lie in new directions in order to maintain the coherent entity. That's what makes "now" special with regards to "time." Note that this condition, since it relies on direction only, and not length, should be invariant under relativistic transformation. That's very likely another key ingredient of what we refer to as "now." I suspect (due to the symmetry) that if we turned the math around in the transformation and specified position using direction as the scalar value, rather than length, then length would become the dependent quantity that would be invariant under relativistic transformation. Don't confuse this synchronicity with simultaneity. They are two different things and each one is dependent on the other for its existence. I think it's been stated elsewhere on this site that length cannot exist without time it follows that any change in position (movement) cannot happen without time. I don't think it's pointless to look closely at the causation for this relationship. It seems to be due to the way that direction (the thing that we specify using vectors) behaves in 3D. It's different (both conceptually and mathematically) than the way it behaves in 2D. We rely on this 2D behavior of direction for all of our standard computations. Once we move to include some special 3D behavior then some things that are not so clear using standard methods become more obvious. I've made an effort to be as careful as I can to be somewhat specific in distinguishing the things I believe have been resolved mathematically from the things that are speculation. Of course the reader is free to consider the entire post as speculation since it hasn't been published. The small amount of math that's been done so far seems to support much of this already.

The OP asks about time going “forwards.” The way I interpret it, this question asks about time having a particular direction or orientation. I don’t understand how I seem to have wandered off the reservation here, in this discussion, simply because I don’t “know” the answer to your question. I doubt that anyone “knows” (can prove) the answer to your question. I do have a sound theory of how this all works, but I don’t have the algebra skills to show how the math works. Therefore I can’t “know” one way or the other. That doesn’t make the issue tangential at all, afaict. The likely scenario is that every particle (or position in spacetime, for that matter) has a future and all of these futures are connected by a coherent entity. This coherent entity is direction (or we can use “orientation” if that nomenclature is less offensive.) There is a scalar value for direction. I don't think that this fact in any way invalidates the traditional way of representing direction as a vector.

I hope that's a rhetorical question because I really have no idea. The ability to identify positions in spacetime without length must have implications about time. I just don't know what they are. I would guess the impact on time to be something geometric in substance. But that's only a guess.

There exists a relationship that allows orientation to be specified without a ratio of lengths. This can be expanded to position being specified without a ratio of lengths.

The unit vector uses the exact same method to specify direction as any other vector. It's been scaled to have a magnitude of 1 but it still quantifies the direction information as a ratio between perpendicular lengths. The direction specified by an xy coordinate is simply the ratio between the x length and the y length. The same thing for xyz coordinates. In other words, the orientation of any object isn't ever specified as something independent of length. It may be independent of any coordinate system, sure, but it isn't independent of length. In 3D there exists a relationship between directions where their orientation to one another can be specified without length.

Ah yes, there is that. Thank you swansont. Perhaps the terminology should be orientation rather than direction. I'm going to try that out and see if it makes more sense to you. Hopefully there will some facet that will distinguish the two and we will be able to ascertain precisely what that feature is. In order to keep anyone from having to weed through many pages of incomprehensible arguments (mostly by myself), I'd like to include a short colloquy from another site: Me (paraphrased): There's a fairly recent paper in which they expose the need for a special treatment of direction: The Physical Origin of Torque and of the Rotational Second Law (Daniel J. Cross) Their observations seem to be correct, but the conclusion that non-rigid bodies are a requirement for manifesting torque is speculative. The math also works out if we modify our definition of direction. Benit13: "Thanks for the link. It was interesting! However, I fail to see special treatments of direction in the paper. They just use angles to denote direction. In any case, the paper is about testing the validity of the perfect rigid-body assumption under rotation. Basically, the claim made by the author is that it is impossible to rotate a perfect rigid-body that has mass because such a body would be unable to transmit force along the rigid body's length to allow a mass further down the length to accelerate (which is only possible under the so-called weak version of Newton's third law). That is, in order to get the correct equation of motion, the reactionary force from Newton's third law needs to be weighted according to its distance from the pivot, which is something that drops out naturally when you discard the perfect rigid-body assertion. Therefore, at a fundamental level, rotating objects can never be perfect rigid-bodies, they can only be assumed to be perfect rigid-bodies. I don't find that the conclusions of the paper are particularly crazy. Although most solids behave like rigid-bodies, the idea of perfect rigid-bodies only really exists in the theoretical realm. In reality, solid objects are lattices of atoms, sometimes in a regular crystalline structure, sometimes a messy mixture. All of the atoms in a rotating body will interact with each other, vibrate, wobble, translate, exchange energy, etc. Such messy systems are far removed from perfect rigid-bodies. Thankfully, the assumption is applicable (in most cases) because at the macroscopic scales we are dealing with (in most cases), we don't have to worry about deformations caused by rotational acceleration (again, in most cases!). They are negligible to the point where we could confidently say "it doesn't deform". Note that if you work under the rotational equivalent of Newton's third law, which is "if a torque is applied to an object and its rotational acceleration doesn't change, there exists an equal and opposite torque" we can assert that the force [latex]T[/latex] at [latex]m_1[/latex] gives a different torque than the force [latex]T[/latex] at [latex]m_2[/latex]. To resolve the issue we can either rescale the forces so that the torques match (which is effectively achieved in the paper with the relation [latex]T_1r_1 = T_2r_2[/latex]) or we can redefine the net torque as: [latex]\tau = \tau_1 + \tau_2[/latex] then [latex]\tau = r_1 T + r_2 (F-T)[/latex] [latex] = r_1 T + r_2 F - r_2 T[/latex] [latex] = (r_1 - r_2) T + r_2 F[/latex] [latex] = (r_1 - r_2) m_1 a_1 + r_2 (m_1a_1 + m_2 a_2)[/latex] [latex] = (r_1 - r_2) m_1 r_1 \alpha + r_2 (m_1r_1 \alpha+ m_2 r_2 \alpha) [/latex] [latex] = \alpha(m_1r_1^2 - m_1r_1r_2 + m_1r_1r_2 +m_2r_2^2)[/latex] [latex] = \alpha(m_1r_1^2 + m_2r_2^2)[/latex], which is the correct equation of motion. However, the rotational equivalent of Newton's third law is derived from the linear form. By stating the above I am actually dodging the perfect-rigid body assumption. To be consistent, we must recognise that in doing the above, we have implicitly assumed that the object is a rigid-body that is capable of transmitting force along its length." Me: "It's interesting to look at how you managed to dodge the issue. You introduced a change of direction. Could the way in which you introduced it be considered a derivative of direction? [latex] = (r_1 - r_2) m_1 r_1 \alpha + r_2 (m_1r_1 \alpha+ m_2 r_2 \alpha) [/latex] Is this even a legitimate question to be asking?" Benit13: "I didn't introduce a change in direction. In fact, I didn't even treat direction at all because I know [latex]\tau_1[/latex] and [latex]\tau_2[/latex] are pointing in the same direction, so I know I can get the right answer by using scalar operations. If I had decided to treat them as vectors, I would have to add them through vector addition which yields a [latex]\tau[/latex] that, in this case, also points in the same direction. If [latex]\tau_1[/latex] and [latex]\tau_2[/latex] had different directions, you can calculate the direction [latex\tau[/latex] would point using vector addition and then by normalising the resulting vector to give a unit vector." Me: "I hear what you're saying, but... Angular velocity is what really establishes the direction of the vector, and you've changed that." A lot more clarity can be had by restating this argument to say that direction (using a vector) is an expression of orientation, and that particular method of expressing orientation requires that a length or metric be applied first. It may be argued that the unit vector expresses direction as a value that is decoupled from length, but that isn't the case at all. The length is one, and the decoupling is simply an illusion. The argument here is that the orientation of the time scalar (and by extension, the distance or angular displacement) is already baked into the pie. Where these values appear on a number line relies on their orientation. They can be to the left or right or the inside or outside of other values. It's this orientation and how it works that is causing most of the miscommunication on my part. The fundamentals of orientation in 3D have some additional rules that don't exist in our standard methods. Incorporating these additional rules requires rethinking some things.

This question seems to be answered by the definition of direction itself. It's always relative to some other direction. The question you're asking is more along the lines of the philosophical question of whether or not time would exist without space. If the answer to that philosophical question is yes, then sure, I can understand how time could avoid having a direction. But if time is considered to be part of a manifold then it must have a direction, mustn't it? I don't see any alternative, physically or mathematically,.

Interesting. It sounds as if you're arguing that when we say that something is 4 high and 2 wide and we can multiply the two together to get 8 that it's simply some coincidence that the two directions are also perpendicular. I don't understand why anyone would make that argument, but there it is. It sounds incorrect to me. If math and physics have different definitions for direction and multiplication, or different interpretations of a graph, then yes, I am definitely confused.

The way that I understand these words, it's paradoxical to say that something is perpendicular and yet has no direction. What does that mean when we say that it has no direction but it is also perpendicular? Doesn't seem right. What creates this paradox? And the multiplication is performed why, exactly? If time were coincident with one of the suitable dimensions then we would add, wouldn't we? Multiplication implies a specific orientation doesn't it?

Let me try and be precise with a question about the math. If spacetime is a 4D manifold, with time being one of the four, then how is it mathematically possible that time, being one of these dimensions, isn't oriented in any particular fashion in relation to the other dimensions? In other words, if it's hyperbolic, or orthogonal, or whatever mathematical description is used, how can these descriptions not be relative to something? And if they are relative, then how does that relativity mathematically avoid the inclusion of direction? Isn't direction at the very core of relativity? Doesn't simultaneity require a direction? At this point I disagree with the notion that time isn't oriented in any direction. I could be convinced otherwise if I were able to understand the mathematical argument better.

Here's a nifty video that seems to illustrate your argument by using tiny droplets of oil interacting with the surface: It's an interesting way to conceptualize this.

I'm still feeling the Bern so that's why I'm pragmatic about this. There's a 50/50 chance the Senate will split 50/50 and if Kaine is the tie breaker then Sanders will chair the Senate Finance Committee, which has to be a step in the right direction.

Unfortunately I can't do that without a lot more help. The best that I can offer without having some help with the algebra is a few more thought experiments and a few more analogies and abstractions. Using the standard abstraction of an elastic surface stretched over the opening of a cylinder with a weight placed on it, we can construct a set of surface normals that include every point on the surface. We make each surface normal a vector having a magnitude equal to the gravity at that point. Mathematically, we can define the separation between two points (in this model of spacetime) by utilizing the new 3D identity which expresses a cone as a two dimensional graph. It goes something like this: At one of the two points we construct a cone having its axis normal to the elastic surface. The surface of this cone will bend back toward the elastic surface at a rate that is determined by the magnitude of gravity between the surface of the cone and the surface of the elastic sheet. This would be like a water fountain that sprays at a particular angle in a conical pattern in your front yard. The water will land in the yard in a ring pattern. If we construct a similar cone at the second point then it will also create a similar ring pattern in the yard. If we can adjust the aperture of the two cones in such a manner that they both share the same angle and where they also both have a ring that lands on the other point then we have created a condition where the two points are separated by a common direction, synchronously, or absent the distortion due to time. This would be the equivalent of the geodesic of direction as opposed to the geodesic of length. Note that if your yard is not perfectly flat that this ring made by the fountain will not be a circle. This is where the idea of length falls apart with regard to time (I know... maybe it takes a leap of faith to see it, but once you see it you somehow know that it's correct.) My experience has been that the algebra is a lot more complicated to derive than coming up with the basic theory. I don’t really have the necessary skills required to write the algebra myself, but I think that I can help with it if anyone who does possess the skills finds this to be an interesting area of inquiry. These abstractions are merely that, abstractions, and they don’t really reflect the way that 3D space is structured in its entirety. There’s a lot more to it than this. A whole lot more. This is especially true when we get into some of the lesser understood areas of relativistic spacetime such as the question of how to go about modeling the transverse Doppler effect. I’m pretty confident that when this effect is modeled correctly that it will explain the 2[latex]\pi[/latex] relationship regarding dark matter.