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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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Physicists often describe the fabric of the universe we inhabit as four-dimensional spacetime, comprising three dimensions of space and one of time. But whereas we spend our days passing freely through space in any direction we wish (gravity and solid obstacles permitting), time pushes us along, willingly or not, in a single predetermined direction: toward the future.
This is the arrow of time—life carries us from the past, through the present, and into the future. Back to the Future plotlines notwithstanding, no one knows how to reverse the arrow—how to move backward in time—and the logical paradoxes that would result from such a trip into the past render it a thorny proposition at best. (Thanks to a prediction of special relativity called time dilation, travel into the distant future is relatively easy: just move really, really fast.)
In his new book, From Eternity to Here (Dutton, 2010), theoretical physicist Sean Carroll of the California Institute of Technology sets out to explain why time marches along unfailingly in one direction. Expanding on the concepts in his June 2008 feature for Scientific American, "The Cosmic Origins of Time's Arrow," Carroll argues for the necessity of marrying three seemingly disparate concepts: time, entropy and cosmology.
Entropy, which in rough terms is the measure of a system's disorder, creeps up over time, as dictated by the second law of thermodynamics. To illustrate entropy's inexorable growth, Carroll takes us to the breakfast table—you can't unscramble an egg, he points out, and you can't unstir the milk out of your coffee. These systems invariably proceed to disordered, or high-entropy, arrangements. Each of these examples shows how the continual growth of entropy fills the world with irreversible processes that divide the past from the future: The making of an omelet and the mixing of milk into a cup of coffee are events that work in only one temporal direction.
But why should entropy always increase? This is where Carroll turns to cosmology, which must explain why the universe began in a uniquely low-entropy state. We spoke to the physicist about his new book and the challenges of presenting cutting-edge physics to a wide audience.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
What's so interesting about time? To a naive observer it's something that just passes by and that we can't do anything with; it's unchanging.
There are two things that inspired me to write this book. One is that time is something we all are familiar with. We all use it—we have no problem reading a watch. But then, when you act like a good scientist or philosopher and try to make sense of it, this puzzle arises: The fundamental laws of physics treat the past and the future [as being] exactly the same, whereas the world does not. There's a big difference—the past happened and the future is still up for grabs. So it would be nice to know how to reconcile that. That's the arrow of time problem as it's been thought about for at least a couple hundred years now.
I think that's an important and interesting problem, and it's just as good to write about as anything else. But there is something that I think makes this problem a little bit special, which is that the answer to why the past is different from the future, whatever it is going to end up being, is not just about what happens here as you and I are talking, as time goes by in our daily lives. It is intimately connected with the whole universe—with what happened at the big bang, with the special condition in our universe when it started.
A full understanding of what happens in our everyday lives needs to take into account what happened at the big bang. And not only is that intrinsically interesting and just kind of cool to think about, but it's also a mystery that is not given much attention by working scientists; it's a little bit underappreciated. We are so far from knowing what the final answer to this is that we sort of don't think about it that much. So I wanted to draw attention to this connection between the arrow of time and cosmology, both to everyday readers but also to my scientific friends. I think this is something that we really should keep in mind as one of the fundamental puzzles facing us in modern science.
As an everyday reader, I appreciated the introductory quotes to the chapters from Annie Hall, Vladimir Nabokov, Dumb and Dumber. How much of a challenge was it to try to keep this book accessible and enjoyable?
I tried my best, and I think I succeeded in some places more than others. A lot of the material was not exactly what I do research on, so I had to learn a lot and sort of think about things I had been vaguely aware of for awhile. I actually think that I was better at making those sections lively and interesting and accessible than the sections that I understood the best. Because I knew I had to sit down and think very, very hard about it; I couldn't just give my conventional spiel.
The good news is that, except for a few things about quantum mechanics and the multiverse, most of the basic ideas are pretty graspable. They're not dramatically abstract; we're not working in higher dimensions or anything like that. You can see the basic ideas we're talking about working themselves out in everyday life.
I'm a big believer that science is part of a larger cultural thing. Science is not all by itself. So I definitely wanted to give the feeling that as we're thinking about the universe and space and time and experience and memory and free will and all these things that I talk about in the book, this is both science and our everyday lives and the culture in which we live, so why not sort of have fun and bring them together?
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Add CommentSo, if we are to believe that the expansion of the universe is now accelerating (I do not), is entropy now supposed to be decreasing? The acceleration is supposed to result from some force that overcomes the affect of entropy...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf the progression of time is effectively halted by a black hole, does that mean that a black hole violates the second law of thermodynamics?
It seems to me that the progression of time is most tighly coupled with velocity, perhaps a product of velocity. But, I'm just guessing...
I'm sorry, but I don't have a problem with the concept of time moving forward at a consistent pace. But that is strictly on a personal basis. "Time" on a quantum or universal scale may indeed be irrelevant. Oops...am I attacking "spacetime" and Mr. Einstein? My apologies. This author wants you to buy his book. Capitalism at its finest. I suspect the science is lacking.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne of the problems with evoking entropy into a definition of arrow of time is that the entropy of a sub system can be decreased. For example one can reduce the entropy of iron ore by smelting into steal. Therefore, according to your definition the arrow of time with respect to the reference frame of the iron ore would be reversed because it entropy is less that it was previously.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever defining the arrow time only in terms of a measure of the sequential ordering of the causality of an event provide an unambiguous definition of of its direction because one cannot reverse the causality of a event without creating a new event which is more consistent with both physical and mathematical observations our environment that defining in terms of entropy'
Jeff
The Imagineer's Chronicles
Dude, do you seriously think that that man has formulated his arguments on the arrow of time to create a book who's one purpose is a get rich quick scheme? Does anyone get involved in fundamental physics to further capitalist ends? If they do that, rather than become merchant bankers, they are hugely stupid. Also, how can you attack Einstein on a 'personal basis'? You can question him on the basis of some evidence you can produce and that is how knowledge progresses but what is the meaning of your 'personal' problem with Einstein ? And what the hell has anything got to do with capitalism?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf events are probabilistic then the future has more than a single path that it could take, Therefore so must the past.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"To illustrate entropy's inexorable growth, Carroll takes us to the breakfast tableyou can't unscramble an egg, he points out"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut that's not true! Feed the scrambled egg to a laying hen, and in a while you'll have a new egg!
But new events do occur that reduce entropy, apparently without either redirecting time or even modifying its rate of progression. However, the progression rate of time is inversely bound to directional velocity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIncreasing linear velocity decreases the linear progression rate of time and increases distance, or space.
Here is another idea for time's arrow:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat if the Big Bang actually created 2 universes (opposite twins)? One is made of mostly matter and the time moves forward, and the other is made of mostly anti-matter and the time moves backward. (Actually there is a known idea in physics that says anti-particles are actually particles those move backward in time.)
Now of the early universe was fairly simple in structure, and if the human brain is the most complex and ordered thing there has ever been, how can we say that we are increasing in our state of disorder? The observed facts contradict it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy I'm responding to a troll I don't know, but no, the observed facts do not contradict it. Entropy is still increasing on a universal scale despite whatever may be occuring on a small scale to create ordered structures.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCan someone please explain to me how the smooth, uniform state of the early universe was one of low entropy? It seems to me rather like the cup of coffee after the creamer has been stirred in, which the author uses as a description of high entropy. Wouldn't the universe's progression toward greater complexity be analogous to the creamer forming clumps of order (i.e. galaxies) within the pre-mixed cup?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTrafalgar, You answered a troll because you are a little goblin who wants to be insulting instead of being rational. I wonder what sort of order your ego is in.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisundefined has asked a very salient question. "And on the first day God made a big bang!"...not likely. Entropy is a local effect. Yes, I know, the standard dogma: "what about the sun's massive increase in entropy? We are just an isolated pool of order basking in the sun’s decline." But, ask yourself how stars are formed. They start from amorphous clouds, high in entropy, and then they cohere into higher order structures via gravity, which we can describe but not really explain. These stars, via fusion that fuses simple hydrogen into helium with energy to spare, create the entire periodic table of which we have self-organized into still more complex (thus even lower entropy) structures.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSomeday we will truly let go of our sky daddy (aka "the big bang" and the dualism it begs) to see that we cohered from one continuous quantum flux and that time is the accretion of order; particles, elements, galaxies, life...in a word, evolution.
Entropy is a great state variable, but the second law stipulates that it only applies to isolated systems. So, if we arbitrarily define an isolated system, entropy is handy. For an entire Universe, however, that is arguably an open system, whereby gravity and EM forces continue indefinitely falling off at 1/r^2, entropy is a dubious peg to hang your entire cosmology on.
Not the dogma, but some food for independent thought. So, Trafalgar, Colin den Ronden’s question is challenging, but far from trolling.
I’m not as smart as you guys, but in addition to the order of a system, entropy refers to its thermal density. Entropy progresses to lower energy, more stable states. I think this also applies universally, as the density of the fixed total initial energy must be reduced with expansion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTime may be just an illusion, caused by our limited material bodies that age and die.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn reality, time may be nothing other than the process of change, not an entity in itself.
If we assume that all matter (or those particles from which matter became), all forces and all space was contained in the singularity from which the big bang ocurred, can we assume that all time was also part of that singularity? As the big bang happened and the singularity went into inflation, and matter started to become formed, was it then that time became the arrow that we experience today?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf we assume that all matter (or those particles from which matter became), all forces and all space was contained in the singularity from which the big bang ocurred, can we assume that all time was also part of that singularity? As the big bang happened and the singularity went into inflation, and matter started to become formed, was it then that time became the arrow that we experience today?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree that the arrow of time originates in the circumstance that at the Big Bang the universe was in a very low entropy state. I think this was due to the very small number of possible states available to matter at the start. Spatial expansion, cooling and symmetry breaking increased the available states permitting matter to move to states of higher entropy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe real puzzle is connecting the clock on the wall to the Big Bang. The clock seems to "know" that the forward direction of time is away from the Big Bang. I believe something like Mach's principle is at work. The clock feels the ongoing explosion/expansion in a way similar to the way the water in Newton's spinning (or not) bucket feels the positions of the fixed stars. Probably the details will be revealed with an understanding of quantum gravity.
I agree that the arrow of time originates in the circumstance that at the Big Bang the universe was in a very low entropy state. I think this was due to the very small number of possible states available to matter at the start. Spatial expansion, cooling and symmetry breaking increased the available states permitting matter to move to states of higher entropy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe real puzzle is connecting the clock on the wall to the Big Bang. The clock seems to "know" that the forward direction of time is away from the Big Bang. I believe something like Mach's principle is at work. The clock feels the ongoing explosion/expansion in a way similar to the way the water in Newton's spinning (or not) bucket feels the positions of the fixed stars. Probably the details will be revealed with an understanding of quantum gravity.
@ Colin
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisColin, you are confusing order with complexity. The human brain is easily the most complex thing, but not the most "ordered". Complexity can be found midway between order and disorder. Total order is simple and total disorder is simple (but another kind of simple). Read "the quark and the jaguar" by Murray Gell-Mann
Actually, there are no compelling reasons to think that time exists at all, apart from human consciousness. How about this?... the universe exists... the universe changes state... that is all. We CREATE 'time', more-so than we 'experience' it; it is a property of our perception... NOT a property of reality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, I think that's it's silly to assert that the universe started out in a low-entropy state; after all, it was pretty-much homogeneous, which is how we define a high-entropy state. As the universe expanded and cooled, there was localized organization... stars, then galaxies, planets, etc.; low entropy. As expansion continues, it seems likely (but by no means certain) that the universe will eventually end up in a homogeneous (high entropy) state, albeit much cooler than the homogeneous state in which it initiated.
I'm going to explain a few things for those who clearly have no real grasp of what entropy entails.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFirst, the early universe was a low-entropy system for several reasons, only one of which was its smooth texture. There is also the fact that at that time there were NO heavy elements in existence at all. It was just hydrogen and helium. Fewer elements in the mix equals less entropy.
Next, the progression of time, while it can be observed, cannot be recreated. Time does not flow in a straight line when you are looking at it quantum mechanically. It grows like a tree. I'll paint you an example: imagine a ball at the top of a special pachinko machine that only offers two directions as a choice when the ball reaches a junction. At every single junction there is a fifty percent chance of going either way - alright, that's easy. But try predicting the exact path that ball will take to reach the bottom, and you hit a brick wall. It can't be done. That random element is the nature of entropy.
Also, to reiterate what some others have said, there are always going to be cases where order can be enforced on a small scale. But try to consider all of the elements in play when that is happening. For instance, forging a steel bar from raw iron. Okay, so you are creating a system in which there are fewer elements or impurities in your sample, its structure has more order in it, and it is much more robust. Alright, fine. Now think about what was happening to the equipment used to cast that steel bar. Your furnace is getting mucked up by all of the impurities that were melted out, you've released a great deal of gaseous byproducts from all the stuff you dumped in to draw the impurities out, and you have a lot of remnant iron / steel in your molding that will later have to be broken out. So in terms of the total system, you have actually gained quite a lot of entropy.
For the case of the black hole, yes it is true that for objects inside time has effectively stopped. Those things are broken down into their constituent atoms and crushed, but that is nothing compared to the total loss they represent to the universe. The real contribution of a black hole to entropy is the fact that all information that passes into it is utterly destroyed, lost. That represents a decrease in the order of the universe.
Entropy is not something that can be viewed discretely. It has to be examined completely if it is to be understood.
I absolutely believe that entropy is a key factor in illustrating time and space. In fact, as entropy always goes on increasing, we must understand that we're only disorganizing things that are already disorganized. From this point of view, before the big bang, the universe, in whatever state it was, was perfectly ordered or organized. But for some reason, the Big Bang occurred and everything started disorganizing from that point of time. As that was the starting point of time, we must relate time with entropy. So, according to that theory, entropy goes on increasing with passing time. The last two words are important in the last sentence. Passing time . We cannot think of time to stop at one point. As time goes on increasing, the entropy also goes on to increase. So, these two terms must be interrelated. Therefore, we can conclude that time and entropy is directly proportional to each other. However, there is another interesting thing that can be linked with these two terms. It is light. As a matter of fact, we cannot understand the existence of time without considering light. In fact, we understand time because we understand light. It wont be exaggeration to believe that light and time was created simultaneously. According to special theory of relativity too, the speed of light is a key factor in the determination of time. As youve already mentioned, we can only see the past not future, we must realize that we can see and understand things on which light has fallen. Interestingly, I believe, the most interesting aspect of light is that it is imperishable, i.e.- we cannot destroy light. We can only understand and realize things after light falls to our eyes after getting reflected from an object. We cannot see the future because, light has not fallen on that particular amount of time. So, when light falls on time, it becomes the present which we can realize and see. We recognize the past because, light particles or the waves had fallen on that particular amount of time and that particular amount of light is available with us (the light remains in this universe or space). In that sense, our memory is also related with light, but that is out of scope with the current scenario.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStill, the fact is time, entropy and light are interrelated. For example, as light falls on different parts of this world in different times (or the reverse), we see the variation in time., What I want to say is that, the difference of time is due to the fact that the light falls on them in different times. This is understandable. But since entropy is also related with this, the entropy of the section of world where light falls earlier must be greater than the rest of the world. I do not have data to support this fact, but there must be a difference in entropy in different regions of the world. Therefore, we must realize that speed of light, time and entropy, all three factors, are unidirectional. If we could destroy the light, entropy or time, we can change our past and probably that way, we would also be able to control our future.
Why not write a book about "length" or "width"?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTime behaves exactly the same as each of the other 3 dimmensions. Like the others, it defines one of the degrees of separation of 2 or more events. Like the other dimensions, it is passive and inert. It doesn't "fly" or pass or "march on", or change or interact with anything, and it has no arrow. It is merely one of the 4 coordinates that determine a position in space-time, and the degree of separation between positions along the time dimension is measured by minutes or years rather than meters or miles. Just as the spatial dimensions allow the existence of objects, time allows them to move and thus is responsible for the existence and defines the extent of continuous events. In a universe with just 3 spatial dimensions 3-dimensional objects could exist, but they could not move. Time is obviously required for an objet to change its position in space.
All changes are caused by motion at some level, so time also allows material, or 3-dimensional objects to change, but it doesn't cause change. The products or results of "aging" are determined by physical laws. To "go back in time" one would have to devise a method to reverse the physical causes of the effects on every existing condition that we lump into the term "aging".The popular concept of "time travel", or to travel separately in only one dimension at a time, is therefore nonsense, and the phrase is an oxymoron.
In the past, people believed that cold was something that actually was absorbed into objects. Eventually they learned that it was simply the lack of molecular movement, or heat. Time is a childish concept. I flinch whenever intelligent physicists still insist on addressing it as part of the universe. This does not defy Einstein's work. 'Time dialation' may simply be viewed as the effects of mass and energy on each other. The perception that time dialates is simply an indirect way of observing the effects of the true aspects of the universe as they interplay.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTime does not exist. The question of what came before the big-bang is moot. Nothing came before, because there was no before. There is also no eternity in the same sense. Time does not stop in a black hole, mass and energy simply interplay so that there is no perceptible or imaginable interaction.
In the year 2003 an experiment has been performed showing that time dilation does not exist so special relativity has been refuted and is thus wrong (see Hartwig W. Thim, "Absence of the relativistic transverse Doppler shift at microwave frequencies", IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurements, vol. 52, No. 5, October 2003, pp. 1660-64,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thissee also www.ime.jku.at
All of science is founded on realities for which there is absolutely no naturalistic answer. The laws of nature; the mathematical regularity of the universe; the origin of life and consciousness; the ultimate nature of energy, light and quantum reality, to name just a few. And we can add to this the issue of how the universe started out in minimum entropy state. In short, all of science has its naturalistic feet planted firmly in mid air. Little wonder that most of us cannot avoid the conclusion that a universe in which everything is dependent, including the running down universe itself, ultimately demands a non-dependent self-existing first cause outside the universe. There is always the absurd notion of an eternal regression of dependent causes, none of which ever has the capacity to bring itself into existence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll of which means I have become a committed theist and creationist, for both philosophical and scientific reasons, as facing inescapable scientific realities has that effect.
All of science is founded on realities for which there is absolutely no naturalistic answer. The laws of nature; the mathematical regularity of the universe; the origin of life and consciousness; the ultimate nature of energy, light and quantum reality, to name just a few. And we can add to this the issue of how the universe started out in minimum entropy state. In short, all of science has its naturalistic feet planted firmly in mid air. Little wonder that most of us cannot avoid the conclusion that a universe in which everything is dependent, including the running down universe itself, ultimately demands a non-dependent self-existing first cause outside the universe. There is always the absurd notion of an eternal regression of dependent causes, none of which ever has the capacity to bring itself into existence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll of which means I have become a committed theist and creationist, for both philosophical and scientific reasons, as facing inescapable scientific realities has that effect.
Is it possible that the inexorable advance of time has anything to do with there being no such thing as gravitational or magnetic repulsion?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOffered in the spirit of fun, from a silly paper I wrote in 1993:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this- Time moves forward because of momentum
- It's not energy = mass * speed of light * speed of light. It's energy = mass * speed of light * speed of time.
I await your ridicule :-)
I'm sort of confused as to why the low entropy state of the universe must be accounted for when explaining its origins. I mean, if you take any closed system and reverse the flow of time, then you might observably say the second law of thermodynamics is anti-entropy. As in, in state of reversal, it's possible to seperate milk and coffee, but you can never recombine them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI mean, it seems to me (a rank amatuer for whom this book was written, I suspect) that entropy is a symptom of time moving forwards instead of backwards, and not an explanation of time moving forwards instead of backwards.
In my opinion the cosmos it is a permanent existing occurrence in a continuous process and in an absolute border- and first step state. As extending set by law of remaining. I am able not to write more here. My thoughts those are in full complex visible on my web site www.cosmology.hu.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEmery
Entropy does indeed increase with time. But it increases with time in either direction. Now is the state of minimum entropy. Read Brian Greene's second book for an excellent discussion on the subject, along with his emotional response to seeing the results of these equations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEssentially, though, that insight would seem to reveal that the link between entropy and the alleged arrow of time is casual, not causal.
Who says the human brain is the most complex and ordered thing there has ever been? Certainly no one who has studied it as an organism. Try tracing a thought process with EEG and see how apparently random the process is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFirstly, to assert that the early Universe was “smooth” is ambiguous and requires explanation. Secondly, “fewer elements in the mix” does not “equal less entropy.”
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are two ways to approach entropy, thermodynamically (dS=dq/T in the reversible case) or statistically (S = klnW). I’ll use the latter route as you invoke randomness later in your post.
In the statistical definition of entropy, k is Boltzmann’s constant and W is the “weight factor” (PChem, Atkins, 4th edition, p. 84). This is a very revealing factor as it’s a measure of distinctness in a system, where W = N!/(n1!xn2!xn3!...ni!). The numerator is the total number of independent events and the n’s in the denominator represent how many of each type of event occur. For example, a six sided fair die has a higher entropy than a six sided unfair die. This is because a fair die with some arbitrarily large number of rolls (N) will tend to evenly distribute the outcomes amongst all the available sides, thus reducing the denominator. For the same number of rolls, the unfair die, on the other hand, will tend to select for particular outcomes thereby increasing the denominator because of the factorial operator; subsequently, reducing entropy.
So, lets look at your “fewer elements” example. Firstly, it must be pointed out that higher elements come from star fusion (up through iron; a supernova is required for heavier elements). The fuel of stars in the early Universe was just hydrogen as you suggest. But this hydrogen is consumed to make helium, helium on up to more complex elements, and so forth. So, we are actually reducing the “event” of an atom or N in our equation above: e.g. H + H = He. So, N is going down, because the original quantity of hydrogen is thought to be fixed. If we don’t assume fixed quantities of hydrogen, we still have the denominator to tally. So, as energy and matter cohere into heavier elements the distribution of events coheres as well. This is simply understood as galaxies and stars sweep up disparate hydrogen clouds and fuse them into more complex and coherent forms; therefore, moving towards increased order.
And, as I described before, I understand that FOR ARBITRARILY ISOLATED SYSTEMS energy is degraded into a form that can do less work. But, again, this is the fine print of the second law which stipulates that the accounting of entropy only makes sense when an isolated system is within some surroundings. To use entropy at the Universe scale is to implicitly assume that there is a some surroundings around the current Universe; ergo, the first cause problem. By make this assumption, you’ve just put the problem out farther. You haven’t made the universe any more understood. This is essentially what the big bang theory does; it puts all this magic entropy, whose source is totally unknown, into an infinitesimal point at some extrapolated point in the past. This magically small reservoir of order merely begs even more fantastic questions as all physical laws as we empirically know them must completely break down (Occam’s razor is poised to make Dualism bleed at this point). This is why John Heininger is being perfectly logical in equating the big bang with god; they answer about the same amount about the Universe in the end.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo, to really face the dark we must disavow ourselves of the, albeit, comforting notion that we are the soiled remains of some perfectly salient singularity c. 13.7 Billion years ago. To bring time back into this, I think mlrb2113 describes time quite elegantly. It is just an attribute of relationships, like length, width or weight. The take away point from relativity is that our observations are all relative to each other and therefore interdependent. These attributes, as we limitedly perceive them, cohere and de-cohere depending on their relation to each other. Parsimony begs for a more simple, yet explanatory, description of our Universe. To suppose that all observable matter cohered out of nothing is actually not so strange. Just imagine two identical sine waves 180 degrees out of phase. The waves exist while they simultaneously cancel each other out; two somethings in a particular relation appear as nothing. This happens all the time empirically as particle/anti-particle pairs appear and disappear; basically, recreating emergence from “the dark” all the time. Time is just the accretion of more complex distributed relations upon more complex relations. You can’t go back without de-tuning the whole universe to a less complex state, because the Universe is distributed; i.e. matter and energy are continuous extensions of one another falling off at 1/r^2.
We and our speculations are inexorably part of this interdependent symphony towards greater order.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGeez...sorry for such a long post. I hope some folks find it provocative.
Ok, just one more caviat...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEntropy is a great tool. I use it in my own work on self-organizing systems. But, like all tools, we must understand where they excel and where they are weak. By definition, open distributed systems like living systems defy entropy unless great care is taken in defining isolated subsets of these complex open systems. Entropy assumes that we can account for all the inputs and outputs of energy; which, for living systems or the entire Universe, can be very impractical or just plain impossible (Uncertainty Principle).
Cheers.
Thim - The experiment you refer to seems to be contradicted by the successful daily operation of the GPS system, which uses satellite clocks adjusted to account for the affect of their orbital velocity on the progression of time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe results of complex experiments are often misinterpreted.
The establishment of a statistical correlation, such as the apparent relationship between the progression of time and entropy, does not establish a direct causal relationship. Universal expansion may produce both the progression of time, due to the effective velocity it imparts, and increasing entropy, as the thermal density of all energy and matter decreases as its spatial distribution geometrically increases.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisChange, not time, is the most fundamental independent variable. We invented time scales to measure change just like we invented space and vectors to measure position and direction. Furthermore, there is self evident falsifiable data that the organization of living systems defy 2d. law of thermodynamics, e.g., increase in complexity of brain dynamics; ditto for the historical negentropy attending the structure/function detail in human institutions. Dr.d
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEntropy schmentropy. To reverse time, you would have to turn all natural laws on their head, not just the 2nd LoD. Water would need to run uphill, reversing the "laws" of gravity, and other examples ad infinitum. Time is a metaphor for measurement of change that occurs in the never ending present. Reverse all laws and you still have the present to contend with.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTime is basically entropical concept of change of state due to difference in energy level and as such if we like bits of time also flow as per the gradient of level and as such no absolute concept of time. It is unreal as it exists in bits of pack in illusion of existance so that the greatest theory of the universe , which we Therefore may say seeking equlibrium and symmetry is in progression but arrow is in our mind of positive entropy . Now Einstein given a dimension status to such illusiory existance and long back I said time cannot be dimension. The basic law of energy is its gradient not quantity to equalise which has given rise to entropy and entropical concept of time. So time dilation in such circumstances is obvious and not due to the magic of Einstein in application of lorentz in michelsons equation. Speed of light is a variable as per the graviton gradient in point space directly proportional to gravity field equation and locally it may not vary due to a local equlibrium and constantcy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat time is aspect of fundamental change is an interesting perspective. There does appear to be a physiological relationship evidenced by the affect of velocity on clock mechanisms, as opposed to merely a logical construct. Perhaps time is an aspect of relative positional change affecting physical systems.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf entropy is considered an effect of energy density (e~m) rather than a material state reflecting system complexity, a lower energy state manifested as increased material complexity would be consistent.
To the extent that the construction of complex material systems converts and disperses energy, they are consistent with entropy.
First a few points for any who may not be aware of my work:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSpace and time are derived a posterior from creation. There is no evidence that they exist as independent entities that constitute a spacetime continuum. There is no real justification for raising them to a priori status to explain creation, including space-time itself. This is bootstrapping in the extreme.
Late in life Einstein himself doubted that physics could be based on the continuous field concept, in which case his work and most of modern physics is invalidated. No one really believes that such things as probability waves exist either. A dichotomous split was introduced between the practice and interpretation of physics.
The ONLY alternative is a discontinuous universe where atoms of matter are synchronously projected as a very rapid series of still space frames linked by light, as in a holographic cosmic movie. Light has a universal relationship to each stationary atom in each still space frame. All particulate motion occurs as relative quantum jumps between different space frames. This introduces synchronous discrepancies that account for relativistic effects. Time is defined by the synchronous linear succession of discrete space frames. Both space and time are quantized accordingly.
Inertial velocity is clearly distinct from gravitational mass as evidenced by Foucaults Pendulum, since the arc of its swings is fixed in relation to the fixed stars thousands of light years distant. General Relativity does not explain this. Universal aspects are implicitly involved consistent with Bells inequalities and Bohms quantum potential.
Alternate explanations emerge naturally for the red shift and background radiation in a discontinuous universe. There is direct evidence that galaxies are creatively regenerating their own stellar populations. Some starburst galaxies have star creation rates that could reproduce their entire stellar population in less than a billion years if sustained. The process is periodic. Old heavy stars are being drawn back into galactic black hole centres and periodically re-emitted as primary hydrogen, along with other effects such as axial ejections that regulate relative revolution rates to maintain a preponderance of synchronicity with the universe as a whole.
This means that the universe is in thermodynamic equilibrium on a cosmic scale. There never was a Big Bang that places us outside of our own creation.
See the website article Gravity, Quantum Relativity & System 3 at www.cosmic-mindreach.com.
What Keeps Time Moving Forward?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClocks.
Oh, one more thing--*if* you get yourself sucked into a BLACK HOLE--and this is a guess, you probably won't care what the hell your watch is doing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm jus' sayin'
You've started the point I love to make. It doesn't make sense to look at order as an episodic in time. It may be that order is not degraded by time it is merely transformed. In terms of the universe, entropy is not necessarily increasing if you substitute one form of order for another. Order only appears to degrade because it is escaping, so to speak, from our arbitrarily circumscribed environment to another. This because we confine our empirical approach to a circumscribed envrionment. The example I like to give is:- "Reduce the universe to deck of cards. Place the four suits in perfect order, ace to king. Here the deck represents the universe, the four suits represent four different forms of order within the universe; e.g. a man, the moon, a galaxy of stars, and an atom of hydrogen. Now shuffle the cards and you discover that some of the original order still remains, and strangely enough the more you shuffle the more of the order reforms. So you decide to make the perfect shuffle by manually re-arranging the cards to make sure none of the original order remains. To your consternation you discover that in order to achieve your perfect shuffle you have merely created a different kind of order. Now describe the perfect shuffle, that would represent the so called "Entropic Death of The Universe." Statistically all you've done is exchanged one "arangement" for another.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis suggests that total entropy is never achieved even in a circumscribed environment because in EACH environment it is merely a theoretical infinitesimal, i.e. zero, moment in time half-way between the TRANSFORMATION from one form of order to another. So even when we view our universe as a singularity full, entropy will never exist except for that moment that could only described by calculus (because it is infinitesimal) when one form of order is transformed to another. The egg can never be unscrambled, but it is only an egg by our definition. In actuality, the perfect egg is transformed and integrated into the perfect meal, then it is integrated into the perfect human, then it migrates peacemeal to other perfect even highly ordered systems.
"We and our speculations are inexorably part of this interdependent symphony towards greater order." (Wolfkiss)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with everything you've said, but with one "caveat." Namely, that those who claim an entropic death of the universe are describing one side of the equation, you who describe greater order are describing another. If you put the two sides together, you will find that TOGETHER you are both describing different stages of a mathematical TRANSFORMATION where order rearranges itself whilst keeping all the orginal parts. In both cases we have merely changed our description of as you said, "an arbitrarily attribution of order," or words to that effect. The universe is dynamic, so INEVITABLY when we describe one complex form of order, as in a man for example, that order immediately begins to defy our arbitrary description, so we view that transformation as a deformation and because our defined entity is fragmented in time we fail to see the new orders to which it lends parts of itself. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves." As Kant puts it, it takes several phenomena (observed things) to make one noumenon, (thing as it really is). As I like to say, "'disorder' is but order misunderstood. "((c) clcking.)
In addition to my previous post about a discontinuous universe there is an important point about the nature of identity and the calculus. If a spacetime continuum exists that is infinitely divisible then Zenos arrow never reaches the target. This irrational situation does not present itself in a discontinuous universe because space and time are quantized. The arrow moves a discrete distance in each successive space-frame until it impacts the target.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis also requires that there is a minimum limit to the differential in the calculus. Space and time are not infinitely divisible. This places limits on the access of traditional mathematics to quantum events consistent with the uncertainty principle. Exact relative position can only be known in a single space frame. Momentum requires a succession of space frames to measure that is associated with relative quantum jumps in position. Position and momentum cannot commute. Also see the website article Unified Theories, Fantasy, & Cosmic order at www.cosmic-mindreach.com.
A single observation on time:- I don't think I'm letting the cat out of the bag to point out that time is not a thing, it is not even a dynamic function of nature, like magnetism or energy. It is actually a dimension, a dimension of space. It is actually the 4th dimension that we measure in space,with each dimension subsuming the other. (So an infinite number of points can form a line, an infinite number of lines can be measured in a plane, etc... and an infinite number of 3D objects can theoretically occupy a space in any interval of time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe can't see them, but we assume the movements that the composite particles of a system make in space by comparing them to the movement of a clock. As far as we or any other thing in the universe is concerned, space does not move, neither does time. WE, move in space, and hence we and everything else moves in time.
Time only seems to move past us, for the same reason that the landscape seems to move past a car in motion. Time is actually a measurement of the tranformation of one system into another, and because those transformations are impossibly complex, we simply compare the systems under observation to a simpler and more measured transformation, like the movement of the hands of a clock, or the deterioration of a cesium atom. Time is actually the most complex thing we measure; so complex, that we can't really observe what we are measuring, we simply say, for example, "as much as you would expect an egg to cook by the time the second hand goes around five times," because we can't really describe or observe the transformations going on in that egg.
brerlou, I like your idea of transformation and the "middle way" between order and disorder. Someone earlier made a similar distinction between complexity and order. Life and other forms of organization do not exist at perfect order or perfect disorder, but in a balance between the two. Increased complexity, I'd informally suggest, is the rearrangement you suggest that straddles the perfectly salient singularity and a completely uncorrelated Universe, aka complete disorder.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWeir, I looked at your website and you've clearly given all this some thought, so it is with respect that I disagree with your assertion regarding a discontinuous and "atomistic" (aka discrete) Universe. Mainly because it will always beg the question of how things engage one another. How does force and energy relate to matter if the substrate is fundamentally composed of discrete units? Furthermore, the boundary conditions of such "particles" would require infinite energy to maintain perfect discreteness from other "particles" or the “void”; and what about quantum flux or the zero point field (energy that exists at zero deg. Kelvin). Quantum mechanics is quantized in the sense that energy is registered by matter in packets, but Q.M. also stipulates that no particle can be perfectly described in terms of its energy and time or its position and momentum. Matter and energy are distributed and therefore must always have extent. In this sense, I agree with your assertion regarding limits being taken to zero in calculus. This is one of the reasons classical mechanics breaks down at the quantum level, because taking the limit to zero in reality reveals anything but smooth, predictable space/time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisZeno’s tortoise (my preferred example of this paradox), however, does not refute a continuous Universe, because continuity does not insist that infinitesimal divisions exist. In fact, the Uncertainty Principal referenced above forbids such infinitesimal distinctions in that they become meaningless near the plank scale. Subsequently, the tortoise or some fleeting particle must always have extent to exist in any real sense. As such, there will always be some distance from its goal that the tortoise will be larger than; thereby attaining that goal in the next stride. But again, the distributed extensive nature of the tortoise does not necessitate discreteness, it only necessitates distinctness. There is a critical difference between these concepts, because distinctness allows for existence without violating classical or quantum mechanics. Discreteness, on the other hand, seems to lack the parsimony of an interdependent and continuous Universe full of distinct “hilltops” rising through the quantum fog; existing but not divorced from their distributed context.
Cheers.
Thimm, Absence of the Relativistic Transverse Doppler Shift at Microwave Frequencies , IEEE Trans. Instrum. and Meas., 52 no 5 (2003), pg 1660.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis experiment uses antennas mounted on a rotating disk inside a pair of metal enclosures to attempt to measure the transverse Doppler effect. Unfortunately the author fails to realize that he has merely constructed two closed RF cavities with a rotating coupler between them. That is, the antennas he mounted on the rotating disk are not free, and reflections from the surrounding walls completely dominate the RF pattern inside his apparatus, setting up wave patterns in what amounts to a coupled pair of untuned RF cavities. As the input and output of the enclosure have no relative motion, no frequency shift is predicted, in agreement with his measurement. This experiment does not actually test transverse Doppler at all, and it is fully consistent with SR.
Wow great concept!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm supposed to remember something, but I cant remember!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe order of human brain is obtained at the cost of consuming energy and, thus, increasing entropy of the surroundings.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's how ill remember! Ill just continue to wait for the right TIME! To Remember!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIts time! The code has been set into place! I just pray it was the right time! I know this sounds crazy, lol most likely is! Sorry to the ones that don't get it.>~Hannah~
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis comment is a critic on the one-time arrow related to the Big Bang. A New Copsmological Model is up-coming: Twin-tori Model. For more information: www.darkfieldnavigator.com.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis new model presents the universe to be a double torus. An outer-torus of dark energy and an inner-torus of dark matter. There is a strict relationship between these two: the amount of dark energy and the dark energy force (in the outer-torus), which is related to the dark- and baryonic matter (in the inner-torus).
I am Dan Visser, the person who discovered the dark energy force formula (with a minus-sign) and I cooperate with Chris Forbes an colleage on the twin-tori model. In their research they find that the formula has also a plus-sign (for more information see the appropriate links on my web to the viXra-archive).
I have submitted evidence for this model to Scientific American (November 29 2009 11:01 pm, PROPOSAL) related to an observational discovery (published in Nature, vol 461. 627-628). In the Nature-journal several galaxies have been researched and showed that dark matter and visible matter give the same fingerprint for gravitation-force, independent of the history and properties of the galaxies, because when the density of dark matter (for a specific length) is decreased to 1/4 of its density (nearby the centre of a galaxy), the gravity of dark matter and visible matter become equal. However, Scientific American is still not answering my submission. This is not only "rough", but really "poor" too, because it is effecting frontline developement in cosmology.
Dan Visser, Almere, The Netherlands (January 9 2010).
The tortoise has discreteness only if it is observed. Otherwise it is just a complicated wave function, as is the race course and the finish line. Observation takes a mind that has been produced against fantastic odds in a struggle with entropy. The sheer unlikeliness of matter through random interactions producing a simple eurokaryotic cell with a rotary flagellum should boggle the mind in a google level of intellectual alarm.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut nature has produced the bacteria. It has also produced humans, space travel, the Internet, and over at CERN a machine capable of making mini-black holes.
Mr. Carroll's admits that in his view the past is fixed and the future is up for grabs. Actually, that is a common assumption on the part of many thinkers but it is only an assumption. The most sensible and consistent interpretation of Einstein's universe is to understand that spacetime is a frozen tableau and ONLY the field of view of the observer slides along it, taking glimpses that are themselves distorted by the relative motion between the observer and the observed.
In other words, the future is as completely fixed as is the past in spacetime. Free will is an illusion, probability theory is an artifact of consciousness, branching universes are totally unnecessary because both chance and randomness are simply assumptions that humans have made because (not knowing when science fails us as to what is coming next) we are used to assuming that the future is actually "up for grabs."
If the apparent expansion of the universe is actually increasing, then it is inevitable that the future of the universe will be very low entropy. An observer on a planet will not see the universe anymore and after awhile she will forget how convincing the proofs once seemed that it actually existed. In fact, the runaway expansion will continue until planets and intelligent observers made of ordinary matter become impossible.
You can't unscramble an egg physically, but an intelligent observer can do something of the sort mentally, by hypothesizing through deduction that the mess on the platter must have been produced from something like an egg which must have come from something like a chicken. Intelligence can't reverse a lot of things, but it can make up explanatory stories.
That's what we fragile wandering mortal brains do. We make up stories. We "choose" to believe in some stories and not others. I accept the story of William the Conqueror, but not of King Arthur. Is my "choice" an exercise of free will? Well, that's a hard story to swallow.
Goedel's Theorem basic states that every mathematical system requires at least one external assumption to be consistent. We can not explain everything in terms of a complete system. This is basically the source of the first cause argument. Some people resolve this dilemma with the notion of God. Quantum mechanics, however, seems to open a possible solution to this dilemma.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGoedel's Theorem basic states that every mathematical system requires at least one external assumption to be consistent. We can not explain everything in terms of a complete system. This is basically the source of the first cause argument. Some people resolve this dilemma with the notion of God. Quantum mechanics, however, seems to open a possible solution to this dilemma.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnyone who thinks that time moves at a constant rate of speed has not spent a night in a bar talking to a good friend. If so, you would know that the more you talk and drink, the faster time passes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this<blockquote>We already know what the early universe was like. It was smooth, it was expanding very rapidly, it was a dense, hot state, and there was a lot of stuff in the universe. Now, that happens to be a very lowentropy configuration that the universe could be in, and that is the puzzle.</blockquote>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am probably totally missing something here...but is there a reason that the primordial universe <u>wasn't</u> perfectly and highly entropic..a superfluid BEC not at all cold but rather existentially & extraordinarily hot (much like the gold collisions in the RHIC --if that worked out) and that order <i>emerged</i> helter and skelter from that impossibly energetic primal ball? <p> From very high (but energetic initially) to a gradulally higher entropy and cooler and more diffuse and dilutional state and universe...using up the <i>energizer bunny power</i> in our expanding course of existence?
<blockquote>We already know what the early universe was like. It was smooth, it was expanding very rapidly, it was a dense, hot state, and there was a lot of stuff in the universe. Now, that happens to be a very low–entropy configuration that the universe could be in, and that is the puzzle.</blockquote>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am probably totally missing something here...but is there a reason that the primordial universe <u>wasn't</u> perfectly and highly entropic..a superfluid BEC not at all cold but rather existentially & extraordinarily hot (much like the gold collisions in the RHIC --if that worked out) and that order <i>emerged</i> helter and skelter from that impossibly energetic primal ball? <p> From very high (but energetic initially) to a rather lower ( a more 'ordered' universe) then again higher entropic state and cooler and more diffuse and dilutional state and universe...using up the <i>energizer bunny power</i> in our expanding course of existence?
--sorry if this is a duplicate--
We have this historical narrative sense of time as a linear dimension from the past into the future, but it's the other way around. Physical change creates and replaces its configuration, so that it is the events going future to past.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExample: The earth does not travel the fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow. Tomorrow become yesterday because the earth rotates.
Time is not the basis of motion, but an effect of it.
It is commendable to try figuring out what the secret behind time is, using brick and mortar methods. Just that& the probability to diverge from the accurate answer increases. As far as Physics are concerned, this is a pretty nice exercise.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConcerning the Bible, God determined the set limits of the dwelling of mankind (space) and the appointed times for humans to seek God (Acts of Apostles, chapter 17, verses 26, 27). Ultimately, He will be revealed to all living beings and inanimate bodies.
It seems to me that life forms represent a temporary resistance to entropy...perhaps one way of defining them....but every living thing dies, so entropy is not violated.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHard to see that the arrow of time is caused by entropy; surely entropy occurs as a result of time passing.
@Fabrice LOTY, could you please provide proof that god exists? As this is a science website and not a church so we are less interested in the rantings of lunitics and more interested in proof. So again, before we can care what your god thinks we need to know he exists. What proof do you have!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think I am going to start showing up at churches on Sunday so I can jump up every time they make a statement and recite something from "Origin of the Species" or "A Brief History of Time". Alternatively we could have a sign here stating, "you must have at least two functioning brain cells to post here!"
I would like to clear up a few points with respect to my previous posts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAtomic matter is discontinuous, like recurring frames in a cosmic movie. Matter everywhere disappears and recurs about 10^16 times a second. Its alternate conjugate mode (consistent with the complex conjugate of the wave function) is quantized photonic energy that is timeless and spatially indeterminate. It is a boundless integrated energy field that spans and integrates the whole of space and time. It is a master sensorium or memory bank from which physical forms are synchronously recalled in successive still frames. It is called the Void. It is distinct from but related to the (mis-)interpretation of the so-called vacuum.
The only action in each still frame is electromagnetic radiation (EM) that links up discrete atoms. Light originates from within atomic processes to define external space with respect to the inner spherical space of each atom. There are no other universal measuring rods out there. That is WHY the speed of light is universal. Where there is no EM radiation there is a black hole.
Light comes to us as a series of pulses interrupted by each recurrent integrated frame of the movie, consistent with the Planck constant. Because the conjugate quantum frames are timeless, the space frames close ranks to present the illusion of continuous space-time. All relative particulate motion occurs as quantum jumps in position from frame to frame. Each primary atom thus has both universal as well as particular aspects consistent with Bohms quantum potential. Separate atoms nevertheless interact as distinct particles as we observe. The universal aspect intimately links photon, electron and proton within each atom. It is confined within each neutral particle set as quarks.
When an electron becomes ejected beyond the ionization limit of a neutral atom the universal aspect gets drawn out to span many space frames to preserve the intimate linkage, accounting for EM fields and Maxwells Equations. The highly transient sub atomic particles produced in particle accelerators are higher order homologues of this fundamental order. They display triadic resonant patterns to indicate this. They are not primary to the creation of matter in a supposed Big Bang. (Does anyone really believe that this whole vast universe came from a space-time bubble some twenty orders of magnitude smaller than a single proton? Some practicing physicists I know do not.)
Probability waves are a fiction. Matter waves are real. But each Primary Interval of Time is defined by the recurrence of each atomic space frame from the Void. Particulate matter thus has wave characteristics AT THE SAME TIME that only become significant at relativistic velocities, consistent with the de Broglie wave equation and the foundations of atomic theory and QM. There are (n) cubed quantum jumps in position around each hydrogen orbit where n is the orbital quantum number. The Primary Interval of Time derives from the fact that the orbital angular momentum in the first hydrogen orbit MUST be zero. It is 1.519X10^-16 seconds. It is not the so-called Planck time.
One must review the website www.cosmic-mindreach.com very carefully to see all this. It is a universal structural methodology, not a theory contrived in language. It both requires and facilitates direct intuitive insight into the structural dynamics of the cosmic order. See especially the article Gravity, Quantum Relativity and System 3. The Lorentz transformations are apparent directly from a method of historic coordinates. Other derivations have contentious problems. See also Unified Theories, Fantasy & Cosmic Order.
If I follow the gist of your explanation, couldn’t it alternatively be asserted that photons spend most of their cycles in the motive wave state, whereas nucleons spend most of their cycles in the stationary particle state?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWeir - Having skimmed through the referenced web site, I found some interesting concepts. However, it appears to be primarily aimed at providing a theoretical physiological basis for the perceived Cosmic Consciousness concept. I’m reminded of my youth in the late 1960s. Nothing against that idea, philosophically, but the central concept of the Void does seem somewhat contrived to achieve that main objective.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI’m particularly disappointed to see the spatial relationship between objects once again illustrated by a two dimensional sheet, with real world gravitation assisting in the demonstration of gravitational affects. This device has long been an effective misconceptual aid. If dimensional space could be illustrated as a three dimensional grid structure, with decreasing distances between each grid coordinate near objects of mass, it could be more correctly shown how the presence of mass contracts space and time as a function of velocity.
So in a shrinking (instead of expanding) universe, we will see scrambled egg automatically become eggs, and you cannot scramble eggs? I do not think so. Even if entropy in a shrinking universe decreases in the cosmological scale, it does not change the basic statistical physics of a small system like scrambled eggs. So beings in a shrinking universe still can scramble eggs to make omelets. While linking the entropy increase/decrease of the whole universe with the arrow of time is very interesting, but when explained with every day examples such as scrambling eggs, it really makes the theory much more weird than it actually is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe problem is that we, human, want to free ourselves from the control of the four-dimensional universe without leaving it or moving toward "higher" dimensional planes. It's like a molecule of water moving down stream trying to control the flow or move back up or down ahead in the stream (time-travel). I think that for us to do that, we'd need to get out of the stream, or the four dimensional realm and move into a "higher" real. I guess many people would call it a "spiritual" realm. But whatever we want to call it, if such realms exist (beyond the four-dimensional universe), that could be perhaps the best way to "see the flow up or down the stream". The question is how do we do that?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJydwyer,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for your comments. I am an old guy who finished Uni in the late fifties so I missed all that good fun of the flower generation (no experience with drugs). I am not an advocate of cosmic consciousness as some special state distinct from this ordinary every day consciousness that we all share in some way. I can confirm that the Void is not a contrivance. It is accessible as an awesome human experience as pure being-knowing without specific content. It is the empty side of form. It is a timelessly balanced and boundless energy field that embraces the whole of creation. True that it is central to esoteric spiritual pursuits, especially in Buddhism, and Taoism, to some extent in Hinduism and Sufism and in some rare Christian spiritual experience. However experiences of this kind began coming to me from an intensive inquiry into organization structure when I was in a key management position and found myself the central figure in a highly charged company takeover. I was not and am not religious in any traditional sense. These cosmic insights focused on Science not religion. I have no religious agenda.
What I call System 3 represents all structural relationships of atoms in the synchronous projection of three-dimensional space-time from the timeless Void. It is not flat in a preconceived space-time. We have trouble getting past this implicit assumption that space and time exist as a vessel in which things happen. There is no such vessel. There is no independent three dimensional space-time grid structure that is a priori to creation. The grid is defined by each three dimensional atom in relation to light that links them up. In other words space is implicitly defined by each synchronous projection of particulate matter as it relates to EM radiation. Time is implicitly defined by the successive projection of still particulate frames linked by light. The particulate space frames close ranks because the Void is timeless and orthogonal to the integrated fabric of space-time.
Because a Primary Interval of Time is synonymous with each separate particulate projection from the Void, EM radiation is quantized frame by frame accordingly. Since it originates from atomic processes in the first place, light is essentially matter in reflux through the synchronous projection of the cosmic movie. This renders many cosmological phenomena transparent that otherwise have no explanation.
Gravity is implicit in the primary synchronous projection of matter from the Void. This requires that particulate matter is both separate in each integrated space-frame and unified in the Void from which the integrated fabric of space-time is projected. Matter is both One and Many AT THE SAME TIME. Universal gravitation is implicit in this relationship, frame by frame. Gravitational acceleration, like all acceleration (as distinct from velocity), involves the progressive skipping of some external space frames, with each integrated frame projection. This has the effect of curving the integrated fabric of space-time, not vice versa as in General Relativity. You might like to think of it as the atomic grid contracting. I cannot post mathematical formulae on my website but the formulae for universal gravitation and Coulomb’s Law both follow from this conjugate relationship between One and Many (but in different ways). The whole of physics can be reduced to this single One and Many question of integrating the diverse separate elements of phenomenal experience. This is why we seek out universal laws. We need a unified perspective.
The System however is a universal methodology not a unified contrived theory in language (including the language of mathematics). The System defines different kinds of identity, most fundamentally three kinds as it relates to the equals sign in mathematics. The identity that is universally recognized in mathematics is between two or more separate things that are objectively identical. Conjugate identities and triadic identities sneak into QM, most notably via the collapse of the wave function and QCD respectively, but in other ways as well. The website is intended as a condensed introduction. It takes some patient reflection to begin to intuitively assimilate the System as a representation of the cosmic order, then many doors begin to open.
Best regards.
Weir – Sorry for casually misrepresenting your extensive work. Inspiration and insight do seem to come from some shared external source, although in my experience it is not possible to produce any physical evidence of that place, and it may be impossible to definitively establish its physical characteristics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisObviously, the universe operates as a completely integrated system, rather than a hodge-podge of discrete component processes. It should also be apparent that major aspects of this system, including the physical processes producing time, space, quantum mass and gravitation are at best incompletely understood if nor completely misunderstood, despite the existence of useful mathematical representations of some of their characteristics. Space and time seem to exist only as mathematical abstractions, yet physical affects are attributed to them. The physical process producing the effect of mass is unknown. These deficiencies in established theories are commonly ignored as scientists confidently dismiss inconsistencies, as is only human nature. More than this is required: good luck with your efforts.
How do you know time travel can't exist in the mind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo that memories result from time travel to events percewived in history.
Or that the structure of time is innate in the control of brain function due to say the mediation of neuronal impulses by glia. Thus Dark Matter etc are just a manifestation of the way the brain works so that we cannot perceive anything but time and space as they appear.
I think these physicists are confusing entropy with osmosis and diffusion; and to even go to the point of throwing time in the mix is complete bonkery! Hey, if they can invent a science out of nothing, then i can invent my own word, right?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe're still missing the most significant point in all of this. The focus should be on the very present, the exact point where future becomes past - the hot spark running along the fuse of time. We take this anomaly for granted and ignore the real significance of it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt has been many years since I took college pysics so this may be a simplistic question.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut how do we know time only flows in one when if it varies (back and forth different speeds etc. ) our instruments and perceptions are unable to record it?
Cerebral*Origami - You know, I’m no physicist, but that is an interesting question. If time suddenly reversed its order of progression would it be detectable by clocks, other instruments or our own internal perceptions? As I understand, the application of force to mass always results in forward motion, regardless of its direction. Is time similar? If the Sun rises in the East one morning, check your clocks!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUh, of course that was a computer error - it should read: if the Sun rises in the West, then check your clocks!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlenty errors here, and some responsible confusion:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy are Time and/or Space ever taken for mass ? Why can men not accept them for the infinite seamless things they are?
I s it God? Is dark energy a force of Space equal to the fact of moving Time?
DEP
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTime is a scalar. Can you point in the direction of 5 minutes? The answer is no. I am a God; however, not THE GOD. ! erutuf eht morf ma I
well, taking a photograph freezes times. It is magical.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTaking a video or film also freezes times, in more moments, with sound and movements. Well, entropy here - if we play the video backwards, we can indeed unscramble an egg, walk backwards etc. No ?? I think this is interesting. Can this be applied to the reality of time going forwards ???
A property of mind is the ability to span and integrate space-time events. This requires recall from the past to simulate a plan that anticipates a future. The plan may be largely automated as in conditioned responses such as walking to the corner store. But we know that we are out of milk and bread and we plan our purchases according to anticipated needs. We span and integrate space and time in an ongoing present. This occurs in the contextual certainty of physical events moving forward in sync with every step we take to the corner store, but mind is not causally determined by this relentless march of linear time. It has reach across epochs of history and we feel a need to move toward a sustainable future. This simple realty is not consistent with the causal determinism of a Big Bang that wound up the clock only once from absolutely nothing only to ultimately return again into oblivion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI watched your powerpoint presentation about this. I do not know enough about relativity to see if it is correct or not- but why do you think this experiment has not been followed up? Has anyone tried to repeat it?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThim
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI read about your rotating microwave antennae experiment. I am not qualified to say if it is correct or not. Has it been reproduced anywhere?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWeir, In essence our 'brain' is a chemical reaction; running in real time. The brain functions in compliance with certian chemical laws, that are based on electrical principles, therefore, if the brain is destroyed, then the 'mind' based on these chemical reactions stops function immediately. Your statment: "We span and integrate space and time in an ongoing present." is true; however, when you get metaphysicaland state: "but mind is not causally determined by this relentless march of linear time. It has reach across epochs of history... " you extrapolate that the mind can 'can reach' which does not logically follow from the fact that the brain is only opperating in real time. The brain, or the functioning process of thought, the 'mind,' goes nowhere; it is difficult to determine what you are thinking unless you speak or type your thoughts into this server. When one is arrested the Law puts a 'body attachment' on your body; knowing that your 'mind' and 'body,' the brain being attached to the body, will follow. Its hard for your mind to physically reach anywhere when you are physically restrained behind bars. Note; The big bang is a stupid theory.
As you say, the equations don't make any difference between past and present times? Are we to conclude that the equations are wrong?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisU shd send me ur email address to dgjohnsonstein@yahoo.com. Am Donito
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfb36 U shld send me ur eddress. Wld like to talk to U. dgjohnsonstein@yahoo.com
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Donito
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Donito
Mike Cook: thank u. Problem I see is that we continue to view the past as immobile, cast in place. But I am wondering if that is just our own conciousness messing up. That is, if we were able to "change the past" the same way we believe we can change the future, we would most likely not be aware of the fact. If we changed the past, we would say to ourselves "this was the past-- it's unchangeable". So if we DID change the past we wouldn't believe we did. I suspect that we CAN indeed change the past but it might have a function like 1/t^2. That is, if I can influence the next second by a great deal, can I equally influence the next century? Not so likely. Now what if the past has a similar funciton? Would we know it?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDonito (dgjohnsonstein@yahoo.com)
Mike Cook: thank u. Problem I see is that we continue to view the past as immobile, cast in place. But I am wondering if that is just our own conciousness messing up. That is, if we were able to "change the past" the same way we believe we can change the future, we would most likely not be aware of the fact. If we changed the past, we would say to ourselves "this was the past-- it's unchangeable". So if we DID change the past we wouldn't believe we did. I suspect that we CAN indeed change the past but it might have a function like 1/t^2. That is, if I can influence the next second by a great deal, can I equally influence the next century? Not so likely. Now what if the past has a similar funciton? Would we know it?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDonito (dgjohnsonstein@yahoo.com)
DEP: can U tell me some good stocks to buy?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdgjohnsonstein
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTake stock in your own intuition - believe in yourself; almost all of the prevailing theory are fundimally flawed, i.e., Space is a solid; Quantum Physics is over; Time does not have structure; The big bang is tragicly sensless; and etc. I am within a few years of publishing a book,"Final Theory of Everything;" I hope. Absolutely do not buy land on any very low-lying ground or islands. I hope the best for all human animals.
Sorry. I'm very limited on time - I need time to save the Earth from Man's actions of folly. Live long and prosper.
Dep: As a reductionist to physical principles operative in an assumed space-time (out there) you can try to explain everything in terms of physical electrochemical reactions if you wish. But pushed to the limit this line of left-brain reason runs into the contradiction of denying the reality of ones own mind that conceives of the reductionist principles in the first place. The conclusion is believed to be true for everyone for all time, including beyond the grave. No one believes that they alone are destined for oblivion. This universal perspective only confirms that the mind has reach across time and space, whatever one chooses to believe. The Big Bang is likewise faced with a contradiction that places us outside our own creation unless it is believed that the subjective mind that conceives of it does not exist in reality, which rather undermines the theory.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe human body replaces its molecular constituents every few years. Yet we are indebted to a natural and cultural heritage for our every thought and feeling reaching back millennia. Who can say how old we really are? The structural format of our nervous system was established over 400 million years ago when the quadruped amphibians crawled onto land. The oldest reptilian part of the human brain is most basic to recall and memory. We can resonate with and employ the animating patterns of vertebrate animals according to circumstance because these ancestors have a similar brain structure that we are indebted to. If you are interested in a brief introduction to the significance of neural-anatomy see the website article Inside Our Three Brains at www.cosmic-mindreach.com. There is also an article on an alternate cosmology that essentially means that the universe is in thermodynamic equilibrium on a cosmic scale.
Best regards.
I think you are trying to describe a reversible process while the author is talking about an irreversible one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat he says that entropy increases with time makes sense as you can't go back to the past, it is an irreversible one.
Ancient romans were convinced that god Chronos was master of time, being able to move up and down on it. If devils were able to do it, we will probably sometime be able to do it too
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe second law of thermodynamics fundamentally addresses energy loss resulting from inefficiencies of all transformations between matter and energy (e=mc2). The origin of this law goes back to the study of steam engines, and was intended to address energy levels. The concept of entropy has since been extended to materials, including applications related to structural order vs. disorder, complexity, et al.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConsidering the relationship between entropy and time discussed in this interview promoting a new book (the interviewer liked the quotations from Annie Hall and Dumb and Dumber), their fundamental association must be related to unavoidable loss of thermal (energy) density, such as atomic decay. Unless anyone seriously suggests that the progression of time is established by the complexity of a system…
That the application of energy affects the progression rate of time is well proven by the now continuous demonstration of time dilation by the GPS system. The shared human perception of time results from the consistent (disregarding local variations primarily due to altitude) rate of time progression shared by most of humanity on the surface of the Earth. Since varying the amount of energy applied to produce velocity of motion affects the progression rate of time, it must be considered that energy, or thermal density, and therefore at least indirectly, entropy, are fundamentally related to a physical condition we perceive as measured time.
That the material/energy state of a system, such as a stack of potato chips, is sequentially persistent through the progression of time unless some additional energy is applied or energy is lost to alter it has little to do with the fact that time progresses. It is this general persistence of material states that produces the perceived directional arrow of time.
I wonder, without having seen his book, how Mr. Carroll deals with the so-called Poincare Recurrence Theorem, which states, in simplification, that in every complex time-evolving system, any given state will eventually recur, in fact, recur infinitely often. Proven by Poincare in 1890, the theorem can also be paraphrased as saying that the increase in entropy with the passage of time dictated by the Second Law of Thermodynamics is contradicted by the inevitability of recurrence the theorem asserts--the scrambled egg will eventually unscramble itself, if left undisturbed for a "sufficient" amount of time (tantamount to near-infinite).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is direct X-ray and infrared evidence of old heavy stars being drawn into an acretion disc around a black hole in our galactic center and also evidence of periodic ejections of primary hydrogen from the center moving radially out ward asociated with star formation, as well as axial ejections apparent in other more active galaxies. These regenerative processes through galactic centers essentially reverse the effects of time on stellar evolution on a cosmic scale that can mean the universe is in thermodynamic equilibrium. More detailed future observations should shed futher light on this question.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe can observe the past when we look into distant galaxies, supernovae, etc and were there other intelligent life "out there," would they not be looking into the past at us?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI feel largely the same as JTDwyer in that time is not something that exists alone, and as some members of the physics community might argue, time does not exist at all.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInstead, time is a matter of perception and perception is always relative. Think about how a large hill looks tiny when its far away, though it may be several thousands times your mass. That said, time, as it is, varies depending on who or what is experiencing it.
Take Einstein's example of Al and Bert, twins going to summer camp a light year away, one goes and one stays. When the one who left returns he is roughly the same age as when he departed, yet his twin brother has aged 50 years.
Nobody seems to be able explain what forces come into effect that cause a person to age more slowly as they approach the speed of light. Nobody seems to be able to explain why the closer an object gets to the singularity of a black hole, the more slowly it experiences time.
So we must then consider the thing which we call time to be an abstraction, possibly, as JT says, a function of movement whether that movement be precipitated by artificial propulsion or the pull of gravity. Time is simply a relative observation.
There's no past, there's no future. It's just a cultural artifact we use. There's no time arrow. time existed before the big bang or whatever since there was a before the big bang or whatever the moment that event occured. The space-time paradigm of current physics is a good intuitive approach, but the problem is time is not space, as the article pointed out you can't move thru time like you do thru space. Time is just a one dimension pulse, it is included in every quantum of oeverything, and it's just the present. This pulse has modified the state of what was the stuff of matter and space as we know it today (incidentally, gravity is just positive pressure from what space is made of) Entropy is all that going back to its initial state (time complexifies). Maybe there is a pulse, that is another big bang , in front of us, and maybe another one behind us.... That, we won't know for a long time .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGeneral Relativity predicts that the progression of time is effectively halted for matter accelerated to the speed of light, as in the case of matter 'ingested' by a black hole. Disregarding the suggested acceleration of universal expansion by some dark energy (I regard it only as another misinterpretation of observations), it would seem that once expansion is no longer in effect the progression of time should approach an infinitesimal rate. This seems very difficult to comprehend…
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWolfKiss
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood work. Like a lot of other posts I find the difficult bit to understand is low entropy of the big bang, but it being a simple homogeneous cloud of high energy particles.
Also, slightly annoying is the lack of simple maths equations in posts. A few simple ones, like S=kInW, would make the understanding so much easier than descriptive qualatative text.
So Wolfkiss, here's your challenge. Can you explain the early homogenuity as low entropy for people like me. Feel free to include a few equations.
Alternatively, do you know any URL link.
Wozza - AussieLand
WolfKiss
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood work. Like a lot of other posts I find the difficult bit to understand is low entropy of the big bang, but it being a simple homogeneous cloud of high energy particles.
Also, slightly annoying is the lack of simple maths equations in posts. A few simple ones, like S=kInW, would make the understanding so much easier than descriptive qualatative text.
So Wolfkiss, here's your challenge. Can you explain the early homogenuity as low entropy for people like me. Feel free to include a few equations.
Alternatively, do you know any URL link.
Wozza - AussieLand
The article speaks about entropy as explanation of one way course of time, it seems that the author atributes a causal nature to entropy, when probably entropy is just another manifestation of a global phenomenon ecompassing all the rest
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am always puzzled by the way physicists and phlosophers regard the four dimensions of space and time as equivalent, they ARE NOT! When I was a sixth former in grammar school, now 68 yrs ago!, I learnt that the three dimensions of space are related to the one of time by i, the sq root of -1. Whatever the explanation of the arrow of time may be, it must include an explanation of the i factor. Yet this factor is almost completely ignoredthese days! Scientific Oldie
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisscientific oldie – Unlike perhaps many readers, I do not think in the language of math. I am your age and the i term does sound vaguely familiar, but wouldn’t that direct relationship infer a direct proportionality between distance and (the progression of) time? Is that right?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMass acclerated to the speed of light does not "experience" a slowing down of time, it "freezes" relatively to the space/time where the observer is. In other words: since we consider that light cannot go faster than "c" in our reality, we affirm it cannot be accelerated. Meaning all electromagnetic radiation, and consequently information, radiating inside and out of a mass, will be overtaken by said mass when it is accelerated to the speed of light. So all processes will slow down and freeze.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis doesn't infer anything on the nature of time in general, further we don't know that much about light and the above is so far a theory. Light can be compared to sound, and everyone here is familiar with the Doppler effect applied to light, however eventhough a car usually moves at about 10% of the speed of sound on a freeway no one has ever noticed a shift in sound pitch from the vehicule loudspeakers, or from the headset of pilot in a jet moving faster than sound. I know it's not supposed to be the same, but quacks like a duck...
estermazda – Very good point. I was unsuccessfully attempting to compare the influence of velocity on the progression of time for the case where matter is accelerated to its maximum velocity and the case where all energy has been removed, producing absolutely no velocity. Admittedly this would be a difficult experiment to configure. I’m guessing that in the no velocity case there would also be no energy emissions to gain information about the unaccelerated matter, so it would effectively disappear to an (impossibly) external observer? There is no duck to quack?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisin this case , matter would be in an energized state lower than that of a Bose-Einstein condensate: a pre-big-bang super particule of which space as we see is a remmnant. There would be absolutely no information, (that is no duck) and of course nobody to record that fact...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisZeit = Nichts
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNothing = Time
Zeit = Nichts
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNothing = Time
Zeit = Nichts
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNothing = Time
Zeit = Nichts
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNothing = Time
To John Matson "time moving forward"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this3 questions:
1) looking at complexity: is time here just going into the other direction? we just do not perceive it as we percieve "our" time
2)Is there more than one time?
3)Is there time???
fgressly@uitikon.ch
To John Matson "time moving forward"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this3 questions:
1) looking at complexity: is time here just going into the other direction? we just do not perceive it as we percieve "our" time
2)Is there more than one time?
3)Is there time???
fgressly@uitikon.ch
Perhaps the best way to think of time is that it simple reflects perceived change. So change is obviously dependant on speed and acceleration, therefore taking time with it...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut time is intimately linked to space as space-time, which itself defines gravity. To describe the curved nature of space-time, scientist use a net with a heavy weight in its centre, deforming the net, and causing balls rolled across it to move toward the middle on a curved trajectory. But this analogy is unhelpful, as the model uses gravity to deform the net, that is, what they are attempting to describe.
A logical Paradoxe...So I have yet to see a decent description of the nature of gravity or space-time!
Find antigravitron then you will find blackhole That never consume anything that "NIRVANA"(Make your consciousness Zero Kelvin) By "MEDITATION" is only way.Because any machine can make this thing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks for reminding me this is really a waste of my time, I 'll never post here again
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn (I think) about 1947 Einstein and Godel proved that both the special and general theories of relativity are incompatible with the flow of time. Julian Barbour ("The End of Tine") offered an account of how this could be but most physicists writing about time either ignore it or mention it and simply change the subject. So much of physics depends on change, cause and effect that it seems to be that until we understand more about the nature of time we will struggle to comprehend the universe.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI still hold a suspicion that an extremely improbable, but still possible, vast accumulation of special virtual particles just happened to 'pop into existence' nearly but not quite simultaneously: creating a 'big bang' and all its lumpy repercussions in this universe. I suspect that entropy is time as viewed from different perspectives and that it is an expression of motion within a closed system. I suspect that those special virtual particles eventually will recombine and annihilate each other, and that they do so (entropy increases) via the expansion of space (the 'big rip' scenario) and by mass being captured by a 'black hole' (a localized version of the 'big rip' scenario), the eventual result being that no particle can then 'see' any other particle because all particles are then being moved (by space) away from each other faster than light speed (theoretically possible since it is space, not particle movement, that is creating ever increasing distance between particles at an ever faster rate, equivalent to annihilation). Maybe we aren't looking at the correct reason for why the big bang happened?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't know about the book but the article Carroll wrote for the Discover cover story for March (which came from the book) looks pretty weak. Read here first - http://discovermagazine.com/2010/mar/02-the-real-rules-for-time-travelers and then read this deconstruction here at Scientific Blogging - http://www.scientificblogging.com/temporal_mechanic/blog/“new_rules_time_travel_”_and_sean_carroll’s_gate_2 .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe other weird thing is compare the title and cover to this book - http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=76903743708&_fb_noscript=1 . What's up with that?
Many animals and plants actually do have a sense of time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOK! TRhis 'guy' makes SENSE to me, especially after reading a lot of recent stuff on DARK MATTER (so-called). Why/HOW do I see Dark Matter conceptually connected to TIME's ARROW? BOTH are said to be completely UNSEEN (intrinsic);i.e NOT directly perceivable by our senses even with special 'techy' augumentations (instruments). We INFER the 'existence' of both TIME & Dark Matter very non-directly via a long string (or loop?) of Math-Theoretics & physical 'a priori' definitions based as usual on a huge PYRAMID of sensory Brain/Mind 'WORD' & symbolic METAPHORES!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThus ABSTRACT & esoteric 'Rules' lead to META-physics to exclusion of 'Common' Sense (whatever THAT "is"). @Why not SIMPLY admit our humanoid Limitations and utilize Wolfram Scientific's 'COMPUTATIONAL EQUIVALENCE' hypothesis and pragmatically Accept (temporarily) super-Computer SIMULATIONS which seem to 'FIT' the 'FACTS' as now 'Known' (to a good degree of precision) AS a "TRUTH"??
There may BE NO 'Right or Wrong' answer by any Consensus of Brilliant Math-Physics Theorist PhD's at any future TIME but only various comforting, quasi-Theological Narratives which YOU may 'choose' as the most satisfying fairytale or so-called scientific Paradigm! If the Super Simulation WORKS to give us Engineering Effectiveness, the just USE it?
"We already know what the early universe was like. It was smooth, it was expanding very rapidly, it was a dense, hot state, and there was a lot of stuff in the universe."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is BS. They know no such thing. All they have is a theory that doesn't make sense at its very base.
I should think that if a cosmological model fails to meet a requirement, then it fails. There's no sidestepping by coming up with new theories to explain why the more basic theories just plain don't work. The big bang doesn't make sense if you actually study it's propositions. A better understanding of spacetime is required to see what is actually expanding about the universe.
I do not see decreasing entropy in open subsystems as much of a problem. While I am sure there are several ways of answering this objection, here is one: Suppose time really is reversed in such a subsystem, how would we know it? Any clock or clock-like device or process we could use would couple not to the back in time, entropy decreasing, subsystem but to the larger system which includes us as observers. All we can actually observe is what we do observe, an entropy decrease in the subsystem -- so maybe locally backward time exists but we just can't see it as such.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisamk28 04:25 PM 1/14/10 posts:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"I wonder, without having seen his book, how Mr. Carroll deals with the so-called Poincare Recurrence Theorem, which states, in simplification, that in every complex time-evolving system, any given state will eventually recur, in fact, recur infinitely often."
I haven't read the book either, but I know the theorem depends on two assumptions: One is that the state of the system never EXACTLY recurs. If it did then the system could fall into a closed loop that did not include some of the previous states. The other assumption is that the "phase volume"; i.e., the range of possible states, is invariant. If new possible states are added over time, as seems true in an expanding universe, then there need not be any recurrences.
To me time its all about change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor example when an apple falls from a tree the apple has moved in space. In parallel an electrochemical reaction in our brain registers this event and we perceive that time has passed.
If nothing changed including in our brain there would be no time. It would not be needed.