17 replies to this topic

[Andrew Shevchuk]

Link to article

Not the newest idea, but profound in its implications...

[Live Forever]

Hmm, interesting article. Thanks for the link.

[maestro949]

It's true.

Other things that don't exist:

Points
Lines
Circles
Parallelograms
Cones
Meters
Inches
Waves
Numbers
Algorithms
Color
Sound

[Live Forever]

It's true. 

Other things that don't exist:

Points
Lines
Circles
Parallelograms
Cones
Meters
Inches
Waves
Numbers
Algorithms
Color
Sound

Basically anything that is measurable I guess? I would say out of that list, numbers are the most "concrete" though. If I have 5 of something, it doesn't matter how they are measured or anything else, there are still 5 of them.

[Luna]

That surely solves the question:
"Why did it the universe wait an infinite amount of time to self create it self?"

Cause.. there is no time, there is just energy, mass and movements.

[Athanasios]

God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.
-Einstein

[spins]

Excellent article and will certainly bring out the Eureka moment in a lot of people.

As the article alludes to we are only experiencing time because the Universe is expanding and all the objects within it are moving relative to one another.

The best part of the article for me is the first three paragraphs of the second page, specifically the third one. It sounds exactly like he is describing Special Relativity, its effect on time, and the fact that there is no such thing as now it's all relative. My favourite example being that of a clock on a fast moving spacecraft slows down relative to a "stationary" clock on the Earth, in fact the clock onboard the spacecraft slows down proportionately relative to its speed all the way up to the speed of light where the clock would completely stop relative to the one on the Earth.

My brother-in-law, who has a PHD in physics, works for a company that, amongst other things, writes software for satellites in orbit and I know he's mentioned in the past when I've talked to him about time dilation that they have to account for this phenomenon in the software they write.

In fact whenever I think about Special Relativity I always arrive at the conclusion there is no time and that means, like maestro949 and Live Forever mentioned, anything that is measurable doesn't exist, its all an illusion, for example I always think about distance (or lack of). For some bizarre reason the only explanation for this I can think of that sounds plausible is that we are all living in some sort of mathematical simulation (ala Nick Bostrom although not computers that's a human concept), although I feel very uncomfortable about the idea on many levels. [glasses] [lol]

[Luna]

I guess it kinda rules out time travel
And other universes..

Not to mention premonotions (so we have heavy problem which is related to psychology.. yey)

But quantum mechanics.. still can cause troubles.

Also if you go to before the universe created, when it was just pure vacuum.

The fact you count, 1.. 2.. 3.. does it indicate time or.. it's still problomatic.

[Liquidus]

Time is the greatest misconception I think people have ever had. I agree that time does not exist, it only exists because a society way back when created a process or relating the movements of objects in relation with each other (for example, our measure of time is when the earth revolves around the sun). When you realize that time does not exist, it's easy to make the theoretical conclusion that the universe always is, and always will be. You can either die because you've accepted the process of dying as correct, or you can live as one with the universe without the boundaries of time.

Hard to grasp, but easy to appreciate.

[Andrew Shevchuk]

We might need to rethink the idea of the "unlimited lifespan."

[Luna]

umm..
time is difficult.
It's easy to believe it dosen't exist, but it's hard to grasp.
I mean, sure you can say there is no time, only energy, mass, motion..
But then, what is it that our cloak measures, why doesn't it happen all at once? sure, you can say because it needs X energy to move X, but it does happen "over time"..
see the problem?

[Mind]

Here is the most salient point in the article for me:

As Rovelli explains it, in quantum mechanics all particles of matter and energy can also be described as waves. And waves have an unusual property: An infinite number of them can exist in the same location. If time and space are one day shown to consist of quanta, the quanta could all exist piled together in a single dimensionless point. “Space and time in some sense melt in this picture,” says Rovelli. “There is no space anymore. There are just quanta kind of living on top of one another without being immersed in a space.”

I have thought about this in the past when thinking about photons (I don't sit around all day thinking about photons...just once in a while). We all know about time dilation and length contraction. When an object speeds up, it appears to slow down and become shorter from the frame a reference of a "stationary" observer. Alternatively, from the frame of reference of the speeding object, the "stationary" observer appears to speed up and become longer.

So what would happen if you were a photon? Photons move at the speed of light. Here is a little website that lets you plug in some numbers to see what type of time dilation and length contraction can be expected at different speeds. In the equations v is velocity and v=1 is the speed of light. You will note that at v=1, length=0. At v=1, time=infinity, (also at v=1, mass=infinity).

It would appear, from the point of view of a photon (traveling at the speed of light), that it is everywhere in the universe at the same time. From the point of view of the photon, it IS the universe (after all its mass=infinity). From basic physics class we are taught that photons are "massless" and that is why they can travel at the speed of light, but you could also think of it as that they are not even "travelling", they are everywhere at the same time, so it matters not that their mass=infinity. I think this "photon point of view" squares well with the quote above where Rovelli speculates that if time and space are quanta then the universe is just an infinite supposition of waves existing in a single dimensionless point.

[maestro949]

Mind - regarding photons/waves. They aren't really moving. They are just the disturbances in a medium that we still can't detect. A sort of shaking of this medium which ripples at the speed of c. When the disturbance reaches a particle with mass, the result is energy (what we think of as a photon) being dumped into the massive object that it bumps up against. This explains the particle/wave duality that so many struggle with.

[Luna]

http://forum.physorg...opic=10104&st=0

I like to see discussions about it on physic forums.. shame that people are so biased about time.

[Luna]

http://www.theregist..._mad_scientist/

[Luna]

http://seattlepi.nws..._timeguy12.html

[JohnDoe1234]

We see only clocks. If you say this object moves, what you really mean is that this object is here when the hand of your clock is here, and so on. We say we measure time with clocks, but we see only the hands of the clocks, not time itself. And the hands of a clock are a physical variable like any other. So in a sense we cheat because what we really observe are physical variables as a function of other physical variables, but we represent that as if everything is evolving in time.

I think this dude has it spot on, really nothing more to say in my opinion. I've thought for a few years now that time doesn't exist, and that it is just a convention we all adhere to, and I'm glad more people are beginning to pick up on that.

Mind - regarding photons/waves. They aren't really moving. They are just the disturbances in a medium that we still can't detect. A sort of shaking of this medium which ripples at the speed of c. When the disturbance reaches a particle with mass, the result is energy (what we think of as a photon) being dumped into the massive object that it bumps up against. This explains the particle/wave duality that so many struggle with.

Yay! I found myself a nice shiny little nugget of knowledge...

[Andrew Shevchuk]

Mind - regarding photons/waves. They aren't really moving. They are just the disturbances in a medium that we still can't detect. A sort of shaking of this medium which ripples at the speed of c. When the disturbance reaches a particle with mass, the result is energy (what we think of as a photon) being dumped into the massive object that it bumps up against. This explains the particle/wave duality that so many struggle with.

Yay! I found myself a nice shiny little nugget of knowledge...

Interesting that you should bring this up since it's widely regarded in physics that there is no ether, at least in the sense that it was meant in the late 19th century. But yeah, in my experience, most physicists don't really think about particles as being disturbances in the vacuum. Bernard Haisch has some interesting ideas about that, but whether the mainstream community really accepts him I don't know.