"Now" and Uncertainty

[asprung]

The universe only exists “now”. Its past is but history reflected in present “now” Its future is yet to be.

It would seem that the flow of “now” would have to be at least that of the speed of light to prevent light from running into the yet to exist future.

With such speed it would seem near impossible for the “now” of an event to match exactly with the “now” of its measurement or observation. This could account for Uncertainty.

[J.C.MacSwell]

The universe only exists “now”. Its past is but history reflected in present “now” Its future is yet to be.

It would seem that the flow of “now” would have to be at least that of the speed of light to prevent light from running into the yet to exist future.

With such speed it would seem near impossible for the “now” of an event to match exactly with the “now” of its measurement or observation. This could account for Uncertainty.

 

This could account for some uncertainty in a classical sense.

[magpies]

From my own understanding of time I don't think its rate or flow or what ever your going to call it from one moment into the next is like that of movement in a directional sense. So I don't think the speed of an object would ever play a roll on its ability to slip into the future or stuff like that.

[asprung]

Would not the leading edge of the light beam have to be "now' to exist ?

[iNow]

By your own logic, asprung... If you are to be consistent... absolutely everything in the entire universe must be "now" to exist, not just the "leading edge of a light beam." It's a rather useless assertion, and interesting solely in a metaphysical sense.

 

It also has the unfortunate side effect of ignoring what came before and what will come next... taking prediction, postdiction, and measurement out of the equation... obsolete in your worldview.

 

So what?

[asprung]

If light moves between point A and point B, 186000 miles apart, in one second,and "now" has not advanced at least one second during the journey,light would have finished its journey in its future.

[iNow]

If light moves between point A and point B, 186000 miles apart, in one second,and "now" has not advanced at least one second during the journey,light would have finished its journey in its future.

 

But, in your worldview... there is no such thing as "future." Likewise, there is no such thing as "one second" in your view, since it's always right now, everywhere and always. You do not appear to be applying your logic consistently.

[asprung]

I am not saying that the light would arrive in the future. I am saying that "now" would have to advance at at least the speed of light to avoid this impossible.

[iNow]

Okay. Then what does it mean to "advance" since this "now" is absolute and eternal?

 

In order to "advance," one must have increments of length and time by which to describe it. When you suggest that "now" is all there is, you lose those incremental units.

[asprung]

"Now" does advance as we can see from history.

[iNow]

What does it mean to "advance" if you have no time increments? If it's always right now, if the "now" is absolute and eternal, then there is no progression. The past and the future are all already contained in the "now" in their entirety.

 

So, help explain... what does it mean to "advance" if it's always right "now" and you have no time increments?

[asprung]

As I view it, "now" flows on leaving its past behind as history and converting what we call the future into each passing "now". I believe that this flow is the ageing of the universe. It is what some may call universal time.

[iNow]

What is it that is flowing, and how can we measure / study / understand it?

[asprung]

First we have to understand what time is. In my mind this is the first step in understanding the universe. I think a lot about it but have no clew.

[iNow]

Okay, that's a fair response. However, based on the nature of your posts in all of these threads, it really appears to the rest of us that you HAVE decided what time is. You seem practically certain that all there is... is now.

 

Nothing else.

It's just now.

Nothing more.

 

Universal time...

 

 

So, with that in mind, you do know what it is, you just can't really do anything with that knowledge. It's just an interesting thing... not really very useful. It's not "physical," but it's "metaphysical."

 

Is that a fair description?

 

 

My next question to you would be... Why would you consider "time" to anything more special than "up," or any more special than "east," or any more special than "forward?" I think you'll notice that these are all rather similarly natured words. Do you agree?

[asprung]

I have never decided what time is. I have described what I view as some of its effects, such as maintaining "now" spacing events. What it is ? I would think its much more than a direction.

[iNow]

I would think its much more than a direction.

Okay, but can you try to explain why would you think that? It's okay to think that, but can you explain your reasoning for doing so?

What differences are there between "time" and a "direction?" What similarities are there?

[asprung]

Its my gut feeling that time somehow molds all that is. Matter and energy in my view only exsist during a brief slice of "time" and somehow it must be basic to their exsistence. It might have the nature of some yet unknow force or field. Time as the term is generally used is certainly not much different than direction. It may be that if we discover more about it we will give it a diffrent name.

Edited July 11, 2009 by asprung

[iNow]

Time as the term is generally used is certainly not much different than direction. It may be that if we discover more about it we will give it a diffrent name.

 

I suspect if any sort of "different name" is warranted, that the choice off word will closely parallel what we currently refer to as "conscious awareness." My guess is that your version of time (the "now" to which you keep referring) is more related to your consciousness...living in the moment... basically, a perceptual phenomenon, more than some fundamental property of nature or the universe.

 

I could very well be wrong, but I postulate that the thing you're trying to describe relates more to your conscious awareness than to the universe itself.

[asprung]

Given that energy cannot be created or distroyed, if energy lingered in the past its amount in the present would be reduced. My "now" is where the energy is. It somehow proceeds as part of "now". The role of time I do not know. "now" of course can refer to conscous awareness.

[Edtharan]

Given that energy cannot be created or distroyed, if energy lingered in the past its amount in the present would be reduced. My "now" is where the energy is. It somehow proceeds as part of "now". The role of time I do not know. "now" of course can refer to conscous awareness.

The study of conscious awareness has improved greatly. We can now (sorry) study it. We have Functional Magnetic Resonance Machines that can actually see the brain in operation. What they have discovered is that Consciousness is not a local phenomena. It is distributed both around the brain and in time (not as in time travel mind you, but more like a long exposure of a camera: the phenomena is smudged out over a period of time).

 

So, "now" as you ahve described it can not refer to conscious awareness as it exist in humans.

 

As such, we should avoid thinking of "Now" in terms of our awareness of it. We need a much more empirical method of defining "now".

 

Relativity shows us that Space and Time are the same thing, we just experience them differently. You don't think of North as flowing do you. But you might use it as an analogy.

 

remember, when people talk about the flow of Time, they are using an analogy. They have no empirical knowledge that time flows, they just feel that such a metaphor describes what they think sounds right.

 

Science does not work on what sounds right.

 

Most people who have heard of relativity has heard the analogy of a planet bending space like a rubber sheet. Well it is not just space that gets bent, Time does as well.

 

In fact, it is this specific, mathematical relationship between the bending of space and the bending of time caused by mass that Einstein worked out.

 

If space bent into space, then we would have ended up with only a slight modification to basic Newtonian gravity, however, due to empirical observations, this was not shown to be correct.

 

Something else was happening. There was some bending going on that was not in a spatial direction (neither up/down, left/right or forwards/backwards).

 

Einstein postulated that it must be a bending in a 4th dimension. When he worked out what this 4th dimension had to be, it turned out it had to be time.

 

Measurements made since then have confirmed that this bending is indeed in time, as when time is accurately measured with the bending of gravity, time is indeed distorted exactly as predicted by Einstein.

 

What does this mean? Space is made up of 3 dimensions, but we now know that there is another dimension and this dimension is what we call Time. It is linked to the spatial dimension the same as the spatial dimensions are linked to each other. SO, anything we say occurs with the time dimension we also have to say occurs with the spatial dimensions.

 

If you twist one the others twist. This also means that if one flows, they all flow, and we can see directly that space does not flow. This also means that Time can not flow.

 

But, what is "Now".

 

Any point in the Spatial dimensions can be described by co-ordinates. That is if you give an X/Y/Z co-ordinate you can describe a point in space.

 

As was shown above, what you can do in space you can also do in time. So this means you can also describe a point in Time by a co-ordinate, which nomenclature uses T.

 

So a point in Space-Time can therefore be described with a co-ordinate X/Y/Z/T.

 

But, as you might ahve already thought of, just a pure co-ordinate won't really give you a position, what you need is a co-ordinate relative to something. In maps, this is relative to the North Pole.

 

Relativity states that any point in Space-Time is relative to any other, not only that, it has to be. There is no absolute point in space time. It also means that there is no absolute "Now", as a Now would be an absolute.

 

Take for example your beam of light taking 1 second to travel 300,000km (approx).

 

If you take the beam of light as the reference point, then when travelling at the speed of light, the dimension of space in the direction of travel and the dimension of time are rotated 90 degrees into each other. Space becomes time and time becomes space.

 

From this perspective, the light beam does not travel that 300,00km, as there is not space for it in the direction of travel. So it can not be said to travel 300,000km in 1 second. It also, from the lights perspective take no time to travel.

 

So, from the perspective of a beam of light, it exists along its entire length simultaneously. Time and space have no meaning to it and what you perceive of as a "Now" also has no relevance from its perspective.

 

These kinds of thought experiment are often used to try and prove that there is a universal "Now", but when examined closely, they actually disprove a universal "Now".

 

The trap they all seem to fall into is that they forget one of the observers. When they describe these, they usually have some abstract observer watching the whole thing. They then go on to show that from this point of view, then is a universal "Now".

 

the big problem is that "observer" is an observer and so has their own "personal" now, and that is what they get confused over. This "observer" is not a universal observer outside the experiment, but has to actually be an observer within the experiment.

 

If this was not the case, then talking about distances would be meaningless as I showed above, a co-ordinate without a point of reference is meaningless.

 

An observer that had no co-ordinate would therefore not have any notion of 300,000km or 1 second as it relates to the situation being considered.

 

In the end, any universal "Now" that can be shown, or demonstrated in these experiment inevitably ends up being the Now of the abstract observer, which if it is an observer has to be subject to relativity, and therefore negates them form being the point of the universal "Now".

[asprung]

I believe that an event can only happen "now' though different observers may differ as to the time of the event. Without a universal "now" I have trouble of a crossover between the past and future. This is my present view - I may be way out.

[Edtharan]

They will differ, not in just the Time an event occurs, but the Space as well. moreover, the relationship between the differences in Time and Space they observe something in relative to another observer is mathematically related to the relative movement and gravitational fields of these two observers.

 

For instance:

 

You have Person A sitting down by the ocean. Person 2 is up at the top of a high mountain.

 

Person A is in a slightly higher gravitational field than Person B. We can actually measure the difference in the change in Time from one place to the other.

 

But

 

If you go to the location of Person A and measure the rate of time locally, then go to person B and measure the time locally, you won't find any difference.

 

So, there is a difference of rate of change in time between Person A and B, but there is no difference in Time as perceived locally.

 

The only conclusions form this are: If you measure something locally, regardless of that locality, then it will match any results measured in another locality (if the measurements are taken for that location at that location). But that the relative locations can have variability in them.

 

So, if at Person A's location, you measure the decay rate of certain atomic ions, and then take these same atomic ions up to Person B's location, you will measure the same decay rate.

 

But if you measure the decay rate of certain atomic ions at Person A's location, then remaining at Person A's location and transport the atomic ions to Person B's location and then measure their decay rate from person A's location, then you will see a difference.

 

This effect has been observed. Atomic clocks measure time by measuring the decay of certain types of atomic ions that they know occur in a very precise time (they actually measure the frequency of light emitted by the decay). They stuck one up on a high mountain and the other at it's base. They measured a difference between their rates.

 

They have also repeated this same experiment by sticking one of the atomic clocks on a plane and flying it around (so we know that this works for moving object too).

 

Belief doesn't come into it. You can believe what you want, but empirical evidence states that reality works in a way contrary to what you are needing for your concept to work.

 

If a theory contradicts reality, then no matter how good the theory, or how much sense it makes, or how much one wants to believe in it: Reality Wins (reality FTW ).

[asprung]

Clocks may run at diffrent rates but that does not mean a change in what is being measured. If one event were repeated in diffrent time frames where would the energy come from? Could an event be altered by activiy in a time frame in which the event is yet to happen? If you are saying that the occurance of one event can repeat in diffrent time frames I have trouble with that.

[Edtharan]

Clocks may run at diffrent rates but that does not mean a change in what is being measured.

Not just clocks, but space as well.

 

This is where you seem to be having the problem. If you only consider the change in clocks, then you will end up with a nonsense result. It is only what you realise that a change in clocks means that there is a commensurate change is space as well, then the answers become more sensible.

 

Take for instance the experiments where they shine a laser up a tower.

 

Lasers have an extremely precise frequency, and unless something absorbs and then re-emits the light the frequency should not change.

 

So one would expect that if you shone a laser up a tower inside a vacuum tube, then one would not get any change in frequency.

 

However, a change in frequency is exactly what they measure. The laser beam is shifted towards the longer wavelength.

 

Now, we could assume that the energy of the light beam just disappears, but that would be a violation of the laws of conservation of energy, or we can look at it in terms of relativity.

 

Under relativity, gravity bends time and space (by rotating one into the other). The stronger the gravitational field you are in the slower time will occur for you (but anybody in the same strength gravitational field - eg at the bottom of the tower with you - will experience the same rate of time relative to you).

 

This means that the person at the top of the tower is experiencing a faster rate of time than you. As the frequency of the laser beam is dependent of the speed of light (a constant no matter what frame of reference or strength of gravity you fell), the energy involve and time. So if a change in frequency is seen, then as Both the Speed of light and the amount of Energy are constants, then the only then that can change is Time.

 

So if you see a laser beam shift in frequency towards the longer wave lengths, then you can know that Time for you is running faster than it was then where it came from.

 

This has been directly measured. It is something that really happens, and as Energy must be conserved and the speed of light is a constant (there is other reasons beyond relativity that state why light must be constant, relativity uses these and doesn't actually state that light must be a constant itself - look up Maxwell's Equations on the propagation of light), then the only thing that can make sense of it is if time is variable.

 

You might not want to accept it, but it has been directly measured, and is therefore true. It doesn't care if someone believes it or not, it is true regardless of individual understanding or belief.