Is it the Universe created alone? Yes or not? Only Yes or Not.

[Memammal]

If you are to claim the lightning happened when it hit your eye, then you are on my side of this argument.

 

The event occurs when you see it.

No Tar, the event occurs with the electrical discharge; not when you see (or hear) it. Read my question again. I wanted to know when the lightning struck at the moment you heard it inside the house...without seeing it. I attempted to illustrate to you that an impaired sense of observation does not influence the actual event. Never mind.

Edited June 17, 2016 by Memammal

[tar]

Memammal,

 

Why nevermind. The reality of the situation is that a star both shines in our sky, and will shine in our sky in three years. How you define the event has everything to do with when and where the event is occurring,

 

If for instance the rules of quantum physics say that a particle could be over here or there and there is a very small chance that it could be in Kansas and a smaller still chance that it could be on mars, I would wonder how the scientist figures it can get to Mars during the microsecond under study.

Regards, TAR

[disarray]

I don't see that there are two events (as if there are two nows and two existences), e.g., be it 1)the sight that I have right now of a star that 2)burnt out a million years ago from a theoretical God's pov)

 

I agree that the "main event" so to speak, is the actual discharge in the case of lightning. Each split second after the flash (e.g., planck unit of time), another reality occurs that is directly connected with the event a spit second before...so that there are zillions of realities involving the propagation of light in all directions from the original discharge. Indeed, a person (or more practically) a lightning-proof camera could take a shapshot of the event at each split second of the way between original discharge and my eye on the porch 10 miles away, not just two realities (i.e., the discharge of lightning and the event in my eye/brain or perhaps camera on the back porch while I am at the movies).

 

But even the lightning discharge itself is not a single reality...rather electromagnetic potential energy accumulates in the clouds via the growing build up of positive and negative ions, a "spark" of some sort occurs, and the bolt of light-ning travels between clouds and earth at a particular rate that again, could be broken down and captured by a theoretical camera with extremely fast shutter speeds capable of capturing light traveling through space frame by frame.

 

So it is simplistic to think of the flash of lightning to be a single event with its own "now" point in time, and my image of it from the back porch to be a the second event with its own point in time. In "truth" there is no distinct, isolated flash of lightning and no single distinct similar image of it in my brain....everything flows (planck second by planck length) so that there are trillions of realities and theoretical "now" moments from every possible view, (e.g., a virtual "infinity" of realities involving this flash of light, with protons zipping in all directions from the original lightning bolt off into space, perhaps to be seen, if one had a really good camera or telescope on the moon and beyond..

 

Again, I am an amateur, and just throw this out to see if it makes any sense to anyone..

Edited June 18, 2016 by disarray

[Memammal]

OK, poor example. I have since explained what I wanted to illustrate and I don't think it was that complicated (I was referring to a lightning strike which is normally a rather quick, almost instantaneous event). Apparently Hawking once used this example: If the Sun were to disappear, we'd still receive light for 8 minutes, but the earth would be immediately thrown off course. This would make it appear as though gravity travels faster than light, but, Hawking's explains, gravity is not a force as much as it is an effect. It doesn't travel, it's a consequence of mass. Again it should be clear that the occurrence of the event is not reliant on when it is seen...in fact in the before-mentioned scenario we may be dead by the time the sun stops shining here on earth which (again) would also imply that the event is not reliant on any observation.

Edited June 18, 2016 by Memammal

[disarray]

Tar: We seem to be on the same page here. Sartre once told Beauvoir that when he thinks about something, he pretends that he is looking at a diamond or a piece of sugar, turning it around in his hand up to the light....each side being similar, yet somehow being just enough different as to be interesting. Yes, like a sonata, things are just variation on a theme, whatever the subject might be. Of course, humans are lazy, and they tend not to bother too much with fine distinctions or nuances in thought, expecially these days where everyone wants a thought encapsulated in a 25 word or less meme on instagram, facebook, or even the 6 o'clock news.

 

And yes, everything is natural, and we just have to not rush, as all things unfold in due time in the fullness of nature (or whatever the quote is that I am thinking about here).

But again, humans are lazy, and tend to want the quick fix that the super-natural can bring, e.g.,

 

• Quick explanation for natural phenomena (in early religions) such as lightning, thunder, volcano eruptions, twinkling stars, floods, etc.
• Quick relief from guilt, as opposed to undoing, compensating, counseling, communication, etc.
• Quick control of nature (e.g., in early religions, sacrifices to the Gods)
• Quick moral decisions by claiming that one can look in a book or consult a seer or pope or oracle, etc. to find out what is right and wrong rather than analyze all the pros and cons, do a cost benefit analysis, see things from the perspectives of the people that are involved, make a utilitarian analysis, etc.

Love is nice, but I think that the Beatles would have been just as wise to suggest that nature is all you need.

Edited June 18, 2016 by disarray

[tar]

Memammal,

 

I thought somebody recently decided that gravity "travels" or is exchanged at the speed of light. Hawking's analysis seems to require that the Sun just magically evaporates in which case any "effect that it has on reality would magically evaporate with it. If however one would be interested in seeing if gravity is instantaneous one, I would think could construct two devices, one with an arrow that would point toward light, and one that would point toward masses other than the Earth and Moon, and see if the arrows are pointing in the same direction...hum, I just outthought myself, and am now all bogged down in the turning of the Earth and wondering if our eye is "running into"' and angle of incidence that was already established in the position in space that the Earth in it's revolution, and the surface in it's rotation is moving into...so forget the experiment, I don't have a good grasp of which way the arrow should point in either the case that gravity is instantaneous, or in the case that it is gravitons exchanging at the speed of light.

 

Disarray,

 

I think your first mention of a camera watching the progression of the strike from discharge to eye is the mental assumption that complicates the lightning strike analogy used by Einstein in the observer on the train, and observer on the platform example. The assumption is, that there is a Godlike POV that can "see" the situation from close up and far away at the same time. But of course the camera does not work, because it has to wait for the light to get to it. It would only work if the camera started at the discharge and moved along toward the observer at the speed of light, riding along with the photon or the wave in the magnetic and electric field. So, the mere thought of stating something is instantaneous, assumes that a universal now, exists and there is a moment in time that is the same moment over here, as over there.

 

it takes 23 milliseconds for light to get from me to you, I can subtract this time, or add this time and imagine you over there, existing at the same moment as me, all the time, continually. Same with the Mars rover. We can see it, and know it did the thing we see it doing 14 minutes ago, still we know it never left our now, and is existing, for real in that universal now it started in, when we launched it. Time is progressing in lockstep with the universe for both the rover and TAR. It returns to Earth, and it is still in lock step with the universe, as it never left the universe.

 

It is, in my estimation a true statement to say that we experience the same now. If you are in a room with others you are experiencing the same now as they are. Nobody can claim they are in the room by themselves in their personal now, that does not carry the rest of the universe with it.

 

But, if this is the case, which I think we are perfectly validated in assuming, there is the lag time between our common now, and the rover to account for and to recognize as two different nows. That is, there is the actual now that the rover is existing in, which is the same universal now that the entire universe is existing in, and there is the arrival of the radio message holding the picture of what the rover was doing 14 minutes ago.

 

We are milliseconds from each other, 8 minutes from the Sun, 14 minutes from the rover, 3 years from the Star, a million years from the galaxy, 5 billion from the quasar, but when we look, we see everything here now, moving along in lockstep with us.

 

But although there are places for a zillion observers and a zillion planck moments to choose from to consider their view, there are really only two views. The view from here and now, and the God's eye view of everything, everywhere, being 13.8 billion years old, right now. The rest, the other views, are imaginary views, where we put ourselves in the shoes of an imaginary viewer, at a particular place at a particular time in the past, present or future.

 

But we have to follow the laws of physics when changing modes, we can never use a camera to take the god's eye view, because the camera is constrained by the same constraints our eye and brain are constrained by...the speed of light, the camera has to wait for the photons to get to it, same as our eye does.

 

Regards, TAR

Edited June 18, 2016 by tar

[Strange]

Apparently Hawking once used this example: If the Sun were to disappear, we'd still receive light for 8 minutes, but the earth would be immediately thrown off course.

 

 

If he did use that example, then he was wrong. I assume you have just misremembered it.

 

If the Sun could somehow disappear, our orbit would not change for 8 minutes (obviously, this is impossible, so physics does't really apply).

If however one would be interested in seeing if gravity is instantaneous one

 

 

Now we have detected gravitational waves, we know it isn't.

[tar]

Strange,

 

I thought so, I just did not want to contradict Hawking.

 

Regards, TAR

[Memammal]

I may end up with lots of egg on my face. I was reading up on something else when I came across this reference to what Hawking allegedly said and without thinking it through, or without verifying it, I decided to use it as yet another example for Tar. As luck would have it, I can't seem to find that source right now. I will revert at a more opportune time.

[disarray]

Tar....

It is quite possible that I can assume that a fog horn in the far distance out at sea is still blowing a few seconds after it has 'actually' stopped blowing (owing to vibrations within the fog horn). At the point where I assume it is still blowing but it has stopped, I could claim that there are two realities: the reality or "now" in my mind that it is still blowing, and the reality (now) that it is not of the foghorn itself. Saying that there are two "nows" in this scenario suggests, perhaps, that they are equally true, even though they are contradictory. So I would suggest that the only truth of anything is what is happening on the spot: For the foghorn....it is true that it is not vibrating or making a sound at that moment, and for me, it is true that it is vibrating.

 

I was just pointing out that one could illustrate this perhaps better by noting that if there was a line of people wading in the water between the foghorn and myself on the beach, each one would have a different reality, of course. But, from a hypothetical God's eye view, the foghorn's reality is more true than my reality, because at the instant I am talking about, the foghorn has stopped blowing. Similarly, we can see from our back porch a star still twinkling in the sky, but from a God's eye view it is burn out.

 

I think that we agree on this. Perhaps Einstein would say, "ah, but there is no such God to have such an omniscient view of everything at once" (just as you say that no camera can be taking snapshots from every point in the universe at once) so that there is no instant that we can call "now" that applies for all things.

 

I then would say, well yes, I agree with Tar, but also Einstein. I suggest that perhaps that all we can say is that the universe exists without saying anything else. Indeed, I understand that a photon does not experience, from its pov, time at all, so how can it participate in some universal now. As you say, we can always calculate how faraway something is....But what about when we are moving towards a star at the speed of light....won't are calculations be thrown off unless we start take into account time dilation. And indeed, unlike sound, don't we always have to take in time dilation for everything that is moving, particularly if it is accelerating perhaps from a previous stationary (i.e., inertial) frame of reference.

 

I read somewhere that if I sit still eating my breakfast at the table, I am, in effect, moving away from all the galaxies surrounding me (and perhaps everything else around me to one extent or another) because of the fact that the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light. But when I get up from the table to get some more milk from the fridge, time slows down (obviously by some extremely small amount), so that when I get back to the table, my Wheaties are soggier (older) than they would be had I just stayed at the table.

 

Ok, excuse my amateurish attempts to understand this...but it seems that since all sorts of things, just in terms of things on the surface of the planet, are moving from their inertial framework (like me at the table) with reference to their surroundings depending upon their speed, e.g., that jet plane leaving a white trail behind it, that car driving by, that helium filled balloon that that kid let fly up into the sky, etc. So even a theoretical Laplacean God with his God's eye view of everything (including protons with mass and photons without) from every possible point in all possible directions at once would have to take into account the effects of time dilation as well as the usual calculations that I might do for a simple thing such as determining how different my now is from the foghorn's now. This seems like an impossible task...even for Hercules, so to speak.

Given the monumental complexity of the task of ever being able to keep track of what time anything is happening with respect to other things in the universe from all points in the universe with respect to all other points in the universe, how can we say that there is such a thing as "all things are happening right now," given the impossibility of even an omniscient, omnipresent God being able to "experience" such a universal theoretical "now."

 

If it can't be experienced, I am guessing Einstein might say, then we can't really say that the term "a universal now" has a meaning, and thus we can't say that such a universal now even exists. All that remains, perhaps is that we can say that the universe exists. Even by the time I consciously say to myself this is "now," everything that I see and hear is in the past and no longer happening (at least in the way that I experience it, as for example, the burnt out star example illustrates). Not only that, but it takes some fraction of a second for my brain to process the light waves coming in to my eyes so that I can be conscious of what I think is happening right "now."

 

So, yes...still not sure whether a "universal now" is a phrase that has any meaning, or is it just an abstraction that has no basis in reality, and therefore is an illusion. There is no universal or absolute time frame....isn't that what Einstein claims? Certainly Heidegger claims this in his book, Being and Time....if no one can possibly experience something....it just doesn't exist. And certainly A.J. Ayer would say that if there is no possible way to verify if something is true or not (or as Popper would say, to falsify its truth), then it is a meaningless statement.

 

So, do pure abstractions in our head even count?....Again, perhaps all that we can say is that the universe exists, not not that there is a "universal" now.

Edited June 18, 2016 by disarray

[tar]

disarray,

 

Well yes I think you can assume a universal now, because it is required to explain future events.

 

It is absolutely true and verifiable that the Sun is shining right now. We can verify it when we see the Sun shining in 8 minutes.

 

Gets to be a bit longer wait as you go out, and that is where I claim you cannot in truth make the statement that the universe is currently expanding, because the only current now that can be applied to the whole universe is the universal now, that is currently 13.8 billion years old, and you don't have much current information to go on, except very locally.

 

With in a couple light seconds though, I think it is OK to fudge those few seconds together and call the moment now. For you and me and every one else on Earth we get the verification right away. Within the see it, process it, respond to it, time frame. Like perhaps the time it takes to feel the bug on your foot and knock it away and see it scurry off.

 

So the universal now is imaginary, but it is something you know has to be the case inorder to get the message later.

Something within your two second window of "the moment" is understandable, because like you say there is a time lag between seeing and reacting and such. A tenth of a second is about the shortest time it takes to get your foot off the gas and onto the brake. You can't do it faster. It's reaction time.

 

But your observers in the water could all raise their hand when they hear the horn and lower their hand when they hear it stop and you would see the lead edge of the sound coming (with maybe a tenth of a second reaction time built in) and see that it has stopped before you stop hearing it. And it would all be understandable because the two nows are within your moment, and we are used to adding and subtracting, predicting and remembering and timing our motions. Like throwing and catching a ball and putting your glove where the ball is going to be when it gets to you.

 

Outside the moment the task to comprehend the two nows grows in complexity and doability. Like driving the Mars rover remotely, takes some thinking and strategy and preprogramming.

 

So an absolute clock might not be doable, but if one could figure exactly how long it has been since the Big Bang, like 13.7495996888299488599994488883838992929299993994857563900129999485885888188299399939399299292938388384888882887765543 billion years, down to the precision of a plank unit (the time it takes a photon to travel a plank length), then it is that time everywhere, because the universe didn't ever move from where the universe is. and any motion one thing has in relation to another is the same motion the other thing has in relation to it. So on the whole the entire universe is exactly as old as any part of it. And any time dilation or length contraction due to mass or motion is just a local discrepancy that would average out at a larger scale.

 

Like if you watched a pulsar and counted the pulses and your traveling twin did the same, when she returned from the near light speed trip, your counts would have to be the same, because neither one of you ever took your eye off the pulsar. She might have counted more as she got closer to it and fewer as she traveled away from it on the way back, but once you are back together the count has to be the same.

 

Regards, TAR

 

So I am not convinced that one cannot assume that another part of the universe is not exactly as old as this part...did I say that right...too many negatives...

Edited June 18, 2016 by tar

[disarray]

Tar:

I think that my point about the foghorn was that there are two events; one when the foghorn vibrates and first sound wave goes off, and 2nd event when I hear it. But my point was that it is all one event with each sound wave going from horn to ones brain, So I guess i am objecting to the word event as if it happened twice: once for horn and once for me.

 

I think the idea that time dilation actually happens to everything, and that it is related to space expansion is fairly well established among scientists, experiments with atomic clocks and particle accelerators

 

Therefore, there is no absolute time or space frame of reference, but only ones relative to others....so that there is neither a center of the universe nor a "now" that applies to the entire universe. One might see all things happening at their maximum speed (and perhaps time would stop) if one was a stationary observer at an infinite distance from the universe, though such a now, I think you would agree, is so impossible that it has no meaning.

 

I am not so sure that it is possible to narrow down the age of the universe to a planck unit of time, thought I take your point. I gather that the answer that physicists give is that the universe isn't exactly the same for all observers: "If you were moving at 99 percent the speed of light since the time when the Universe was 1 billion years old, for example, you would have effectively lived through 1.8 billion years rather 13.8 billion." http://www.sciencealert.com/study-finds-the-age-of-the-universe-depends-on-your-perspective

 

Cosmologists say the universe is about 13.7 million years because that is a useful average. Relativists would agree that the clocks from one galaxy to another might not vary that much percentage wise, but that there are exceptions, e.g., the age of the universe by someone in a Black Hole, for example, could be several times that length of time. (And isn't there a black hole at the center of galaxies?). Scientists just take an average of these times as best they can as well as the cosmic backgroud radiation on average.

 

But there is no one "now" within the universe. Indeed, here is an anecdote by Penrose explaining why there is no universal now: "Bill and Ruth pass each other on a street somewhere on earth. In Bill's simultaneous space a meeting is being held somewhere in the Andromeda Galaxy to decide whether to attack earth. But, in Ruth's simultaneous space, the Andromeda space fleet has already launched the attack."

 

I presume we are getting off of the point of this thread. Perhaps the issue of a universal now should be a different thread. Suffice to say that we will have a 'failure to communicate' if you don't accept the basic tenets of Relativity theory.

I have heard that two good ways to learn is to be in a (polite) argument or to teach someone something. Sometimes these two things overlap I guess.

I am not terribly interested or good at higher math per se, though the implications of time variance are of interest to me. Seems that when one moves more quickly than one did before, entropy decreases, meaning that one (to minuscule degrees) ages less quickly....it's almost as if like telling someone to reduce the effects of aging by telling them to go to a gym has a double meaning.

Edited June 19, 2016 by disarray

[tar]

disarray,

Yes I had a thread on the two nows, and I have argued back on forth on the implications of relativity and whether or not a thing actually contracts in length or whether the effects are due to switching reference frames and carrying a time or position incorrectly from the one frame to the other. But the question is not too far off topic, because if we are talking about another universe, we have to decide upon whether we are talking about a universe we can ever sense and interact with, or whether we are talking about a place or time or dimension that must or should exist, regardless of our ability to ever sense it, interact with it, or verify its existence.

 

The Andromeda attack thing is strange to me, because one jumps imaginarily to the other galaxy and claims a thing happening or not happening depending on a small difference in blue shift or red shift of the information about the event coming to Earth bound observers3.. When the fact is, in both the case of the person walking toward Andromeda or the person walking away, the launch of the /will not be seen here for a million years, or however far away the galaxy is to us, and the difference between seeing the launch in a million years plus one microsecond and a million years minus one microsecond is nothing to write home about. Besides once we see the launch, even if their ships travel at half the speed of light, they can not get here for another million years because when we see their launch they would only have gotten half way here.

 

So earlier you asked if there were other intelligent creatures in the universe. Where and when they are, makes a difference to the answer. For instance if the existence of their civilization lasted 1000 years, and began 1000 years ago, in universal now time, and their planet is 1000 lyrs from here, when we look toward their planet we can see the start of their civilization, and if we look again in a thousand years we will see the end. However if their planet is 2000 lyrs from here, we will not see the start of the civilization for 2000 years, and the end of their civilization for 3000 years....so when do you figure they existed, do exist or will exist "at the same time" as us, to where we can say that there "is" other intelligent life in the universe?

 

Regards, TAR

[disarray]

Tar:

I take your point that effects are negligible, and that the Andromeda example was an exaggeration that some writer used to make a point.

Nevertheless, clocks have consistently been demonstrated to slow down, whether the reason be owing to distance to the earth, or owing to acceleration in the speed at which they are traveling (which gives the same effect....e.g., one feels the doubly heavy when going up in a fast elevator).

 

A good article to look at is Einstein's Relativity Affects Aging on Earth (Slightly) http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/09/100922-science-space-time-einstein-relativity-aging-gravity-earth/

 

Atomic clocks (but not photon-based ones that don’t have mass!!) speed up or slow down with respect to distance from the earth…this is quite established. However, I tend to agree with those who think that the abstract illusion we call time does not actually itself slow down, per se, but rather the actual parts of even an atomic clock slow down:

 

“there is no mystery or need for General Relativity to explain the gravitational changes of clock rates…. The higher escape velocity at the Dead Sea causes an increase in the mass of that clock’s internal mechanism and this slows the clock’s rate through the conservation of angular momentum.”

http://www.circlon.com/living-universe/020-einstein-gravity-time-dilation.html

 

That is, the pull of gravity makes things heavier and they move more slowly, even the parts of a clock since they have mass (aka, weight) that can vary. As an aside, they become heavier, I recently read, because mass increases when one puts energy into something, e.g. via gravity or acceleration.

 

Similarly, with regards to the clock in the rocket:

 

“Time dilatation simply means that, in a faster inertial system [i.e., the rocket], the velocity of change [of the parts of the clock as well as everything happening in the rocket] slows down and this is valid for all observers. GPS confirms that clocks in orbit stations have different rates from the clocks on the surface of the planet, and this difference is valid for observers that are on the orbit station and on the surface of the planet.” http://phys.org/news/2012-04-physicists-abolish-fourth-dimension-space.html

 

That is, the accelerating rocket, much like the pull of gravity, causes the parts of a clock that has mass to be “heavier” and thus to move more slowly so that time seems to slow down. Presumably, if it could ever be demonstrated that a person who traveled some while near the speed of light would be younger than his twin who stayed on earth, we could just say that this was because everything on the rocket, including how fast his cells divided, would be slower.

 

I take your point that one can talk about a universal now with respect to distant civilizations or burnt out stars, but this “now,” I gather, is a practical term, not an exact scientific fact. In reality, some galaxies have very slightly different times from others, so that one cannot really calculate the age of the universe down to an exact planck unit of time even in theory. I am not sure why there is this minute difference, but, again, it has something to do with differences in the rate at which the space between the galaxies inflated (an inflation phenomena that really “took off,” so to speak, when the universe was half the age it is now).

 

I don’t think that there is much of a chance at all that we will communicate with alleged aliens, but yes, a discussion about time is relevant in terms of the theory that we might discuss that possibility…but, I think we both agree that this is idle speculation.

 

We find relativity in nature (e.g., in physics, the idea that how fast things are going is relative to an observer and to ones speed), in conjunction with the idea that earth’s place in the universe is relative (and not the center of it), and the idea that human intelligence is relative to that of other creatures, and not absolutely different, and that human morality is relative to the societies that construct them, and not absolute (as many societies claim that there version of morality are).

 

It is my contention that once people get over the existential crisis about the fading away of “absolutes” that has been happening at least since the days in which Matthew Arnold wrote about it (e.g., his poem “Dover Beach”), or perhaps since the days in which Galileo was forced to retract his claim that the earth was not the center of everything, people will eventually become less dogmatic, more tolerant, more open-minded with regards to other points of view and other cultures.

Edited June 20, 2016 by disarray

[tar]

disarray,

 

Absolute is probably another thread. But, important to this thread in the sense, that if one allows another point of focus to be just as true as yours, it requires that their be this "other" point of view. In that we therefore cannot be the universe's only child, and must then not have been created alone.

 

On a separate nit pick, "it has something to do with differences in the rate at which the space between the galaxies inflated (an inflation phenomena that really “took off,” so to speak, when the universe was half the age it is now)." does not correspond to my understanding of the progression of our universe as current cosmology would have it. I recall that the inflation period was mere seconds where the universe inflated way faster than the speed of light to an unknown size, the edge of which we are yet to be informed of...where by the expansion afterward was called expansion. Thus any change in the expansion rate at the 7 billion year old mark, would be a change in expansion rate not a change in inflation rate.

 

Regards, TAR

[disarray]

Tar....I was disputing the use of the word absolute with regards to your claim that there is an absolute "now" that is the same everywhere in the universe. From what I can tell, modern physics tends not support this claim. The only example I could find where this might have some validity is if there were observers who were not affected by time dilation who could view the universe from outside of it at virtually an infinite distance...but this is so hypothetical as to be meaningless.

 

Again, I am not a physicist, so am just trying to make sense of things, not state some sort of "gospel" truth.

 

There is such thing as a preferred or privileged time frame, but that, it seems from my recent reading, is something of a tool that physicists use, rather than an actual place or reality.

 

It is difficult to find information about this topic. Often, I just read bits and pieces from other science forums. The following seems to be a reasonable assessment from one of them:

In our standard model of the universe, there happens to be one frame of reference which is at rest with respect to the CMB [cosmic microwave background]. In principle, no matter where you are in the universe, you can determine if you are at rest with respect to the CMB and thus with this particular frame (if you are, you are called a comoving observer). It is to simplify calculations that we use the comoving time as the measure of the age of the universe. It is also useful because the Earth is approximately comoving.

Being able to agree on what order events happen in the comoving frame does not mean that the comoving frame define an absolute time, it just means that you know how fast you have been moving with respect to the comoving frame, and that you know how to calculate.

 

This suggests to me that even the estimate of 13.7 billion years is made from the pov of earth. 'Age of universe' calculations between galaxies will still be around that mark, with variations, say, of a few 1,000 years between some of them. In any case, the fact that the expansion rate of the universe may have varied as it expanded also throws a monkey wrench into calculations about the age of the universe.

 

I take your point about the greatest inflation happening immediately after the big bang. Yes, of course, the renowned inflation took place within second(s) of the "Big Bang." You are right that I used the word "inflation" when I should have said "expansion." I do not recall where I got the information about an expansion phase occurring half way through the age of the universe that accounted to variances in the calculation of the universe's age by minute amounts. Will keep looking. But I think the gist of it was that galaxies were well-formed at the point when the universe was half as old as it is now, and that the distances between them were expanding in such a way as to explain time variances between the galaxies.

 

Perhaps there is something of a metaphysical "universal now," but nowadays I think that such a metaphysical now would be dismissed as an abstraction that has no objective correlative in nature. Personally, I don't like the concept of time dilation, and think that somehow matter just moves more slowly under certain conditions.

 

The standard model in science seems to be that, as Einstein claims, there is no absolute time frame. However, you certainly have a case, and I think that your concept of a "universal now" is well-set out by H Lewis at http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/Publications/FieldTheory/FieldTheoryUniversalRelativity.htm

Edited June 24, 2016 by disarray

[tar]

disarray,

 

I am only halfway through your link, and skimming at that. Was wondering if this guy is vetted. He has a tired light theory, and thinks the Earth must be a captured brown dwarf, and had micropublished a great number of works, on a wide variety of topics, all authored by him. Seems a very smart guy, but do you know his credentials?

 

Regards, TAR

Edited June 26, 2016 by tar

[tar]

Thread,

 

misplaced post deleted

Edited June 26, 2016 by tar

[disarray]

Tar....No, can't find anything on him. If you click on his name at the top of the original link I posted, you see a number of photos that have nothing to do with science, so I am guessing he is something of a freelance writer without much in terms of credentials.

[imatfaal]

From a brief skim of the article, he writes like an autodidact who has, unfortunately, stuck to pop-science representations of physics rather than getting his hands dirty with the maths. Modern pop-science textual descriptions of physics - especially when written for the lay-reader - are (almost) worse than useless; this is doubly annoying when they are written by great theoretical physicists who should know better than to dumb down so far.

[Ultimate Infinity]

Yes the universe was created by God and hell no it isn't the only universe its part of a multiverse which is part of a megaverse and so on it can go infinitely down and up and each level is infinite and has infiniteevs and so on so kniw not even close to all that exists

[tar]

so if it goes infinitely down why is anything smaller than a Planck length without meaning?

[Ultimate Infinity]

Hey I am not having a scientific argument I just think it does and out of curiosity does anyone know what levels are below subatomic particles or aren't there any discovered

[Strange]

Hey I am not having a scientific argument I just think it does and out of curiosity does anyone know what levels are below subatomic particles or aren't there any discovered

 

 

So far there is not known to be anything below the fundamental particles (here "fundamental").

 

There are a few speculative theories, including one by the spectacularly named Sundance Osland Bilson-Thomson:

https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0503213

Edited June 28, 2016 by Strange

[Ultimate Infinity]

What are quarks then