TBD on Ning
Do you believe time exists?
I don't believe time exists the way science lead us to believe it exists. For me, time is a social construct needed for civilization's survival. Yet, I also believe that time is a valid and real scientific measurement, but not the entity being measured.
No one keeps track of time better than Ferenc Krausz. In his lab at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, he has clocked the shortest time intervals ever observed. Krausz uses ultraviolet laser pulses to track the absurdly brief quantum leaps of electrons within atoms. The events he probes last for about 100 attoseconds, or 100 quintillionths of a second. For a little perspective, 100 attoseconds is to one second as a second is to 300 million years.
But even Krausz works far from the frontier of time. There is a temporal realm called the Planck scale, where even attoseconds drag by like eons. It marks the edge of known physics, a region where distances and intervals are so short that the very concepts of time and space start to break down. Planck time—the smallest unit of time that has any physical meaning—is 10-43 second, less than a trillionth of a trillionth of an attosecond. Beyond that? Tempus incognito. At least for now.
Efforts to understand time below the Planck scale have led to an exceedingly strange juncture in physics. The problem, in brief, is that time may not exist at the most fundamental level of physical reality. If so, then what is time? And why is it so obviously and tyrannically omnipresent in our own experience? “The meaning of time has become terribly problematic in contemporary physics,” says Simon Saunders, a philosopher of physics at the University of Oxford. “The situation is so uncomfortable that by far the best thing to do is declare oneself an agnostic.”
The trouble with time started a century ago, when Einstein’s special and general theories of relativity demolished the idea of time as a universal constant. One consequence is that the past, present, and future are not absolutes. Einstein’s theories also opened a rift in physics because the rules of general relativity (which describe gravity and the large-scale structure of the cosmos) seem incompatible with those of quantum physics (which govern the realm of the tiny). Some four decades ago, the renowned physicist John Wheeler, then at Princeton, and the late Bryce DeWitt, then at the University of North Carolina, developed an extraordinary equation that provides a possible framework for unifying relativity and quantum mechanics. But the Wheeler-DeWitt equation has always been controversial, in part because it adds yet another, even more baffling twist to our understanding of time.
“One finds that time just disappears from the Wheeler-DeWitt equation,” says Carlo Rovelli, a physicist at the University of the Mediterranean in Marseille, France. “It is an issue that many theorists have puzzled about. It may be that the best way to think about quantum reality is to give up the notion of time—that the fundamental description of the universe must be timeless.”
No one has yet succeeded in using the Wheeler-DeWitt equation to integrate quantum theory with general relativity. Nevertheless, a sizable minority of physicists, Rovelli included, believe that any successful merger of the two great masterpieces of 20th-century physics will inevitably describe a universe in which, ultimately, there is no time.
The possibility that time may not exist is known among physicists as the “problem of time.” It may be the biggest, but it is far from the only temporal conundrum. Vying for second place is this strange fact: The laws of physics don’t explain why time always points to the future. All the laws—whether Newton’s, Einstein’s, or the quirky quantum rules—would work equally well if time ran backward. As far as we can tell, though, time is a one-way process; it never reverses, even though no laws restrict it.
“It’s quite mysterious why we have such an obvious arrow of time,” says Seth Lloyd, a quantum mechanical engineer at MIT. (When I ask him what time it is, he answers, “Beats me. Are we done?”) “The usual explanation of this is that in order to specify what happens to a system, you not only have to specify the physical laws, but you have to specify some initial or final condition.”
The mother of all initial conditions, Lloyd says, was the Big Bang. Physicists believe that the universe started as a very simple, extremely compact ball of energy. Although the laws of physics themselves don’t provide for an arrow of time, the ongoing expansion of the universe does. As the universe expands, it becomes ever more complex and disorderly. The growing disorder—physicists call it an increase in entropy—is driven by the expansion of the universe, which may be the origin of what we think of as the ceaseless forward march of time.
Newsflash: Time May Not Exist
No one keeps track of time better than Ferenc Krausz. In his lab at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, he has clocked the shortest time intervals ever observed. Krausz uses ultraviolet laser pulses to track the absurdly brief quantum leaps of electrons within atoms. The events he probes last for about 100 attoseconds, or 100 quintillionths of a second. For a little perspective, 100 attoseconds is to one second as a second is to 300 million years.
But even Krausz works far from the frontier of time. There is a temporal realm called the Planck scale, where even attoseconds drag by like eons. It marks the edge of known physics, a region where distances and intervals are so short that the very concepts of time and space start to break down. Planck time—the smallest unit of time that has any physical meaning—is 10-43 second, less than a trillionth of a trillionth of an attosecond. Beyond that? Tempus incognito. At least for now.
Efforts to understand time below the Planck scale have led to an exceedingly strange juncture in physics. The problem, in brief, is that time may not exist at the most fundamental level of physical reality. If so, then what is time? And why is it so obviously and tyrannically omnipresent in our own experience? “The meaning of time has become terribly problematic in contemporary physics,” says Simon Saunders, a philosopher of physics at the University of Oxford. “The situation is so uncomfortable that by far the best thing to do is declare oneself an agnostic.”
The trouble with time started a century ago, when Einstein’s special and general theories of relativity demolished the idea of time as a universal constant. One consequence is that the past, present, and future are not absolutes. Einstein’s theories also opened a rift in physics because the rules of general relativity (which describe gravity and the large-scale structure of the cosmos) seem incompatible with those of quantum physics (which govern the realm of the tiny). Some four decades ago, the renowned physicist John Wheeler, then at Princeton, and the late Bryce DeWitt, then at the University of North Carolina, developed an extraordinary equation that provides a possible framework for unifying relativity and quantum mechanics. But the Wheeler-DeWitt equation has always been controversial, in part because it adds yet another, even more baffling twist to our understanding of time.
“One finds that time just disappears from the Wheeler-DeWitt equation,” says Carlo Rovelli, a physicist at the University of the Mediterranean in Marseille, France. “It is an issue that many theorists have puzzled about. It may be that the best way to think about quantum reality is to give up the notion of time—that the fundamental description of the universe must be timeless.”
No one has yet succeeded in using the Wheeler-DeWitt equation to integrate quantum theory with general relativity. Nevertheless, a sizable minority of physicists, Rovelli included, believe that any successful merger of the two great masterpieces of 20th-century physics will inevitably describe a universe in which, ultimately, there is no time.
The possibility that time may not exist is known among physicists as the “problem of time.” It may be the biggest, but it is far from the only temporal conundrum. Vying for second place is this strange fact: The laws of physics don’t explain why time always points to the future. All the laws—whether Newton’s, Einstein’s, or the quirky quantum rules—would work equally well if time ran backward. As far as we can tell, though, time is a one-way process; it never reverses, even though no laws restrict it.
“It’s quite mysterious why we have such an obvious arrow of time,” says Seth Lloyd, a quantum mechanical engineer at MIT. (When I ask him what time it is, he answers, “Beats me. Are we done?”) “The usual explanation of this is that in order to specify what happens to a system, you not only have to specify the physical laws, but you have to specify some initial or final condition.”
The mother of all initial conditions, Lloyd says, was the Big Bang. Physicists believe that the universe started as a very simple, extremely compact ball of energy. Although the laws of physics themselves don’t provide for an arrow of time, the ongoing expansion of the universe does. As the universe expands, it becomes ever more complex and disorderly. The growing disorder—physicists call it an increase in entropy—is driven by the expansion of the universe, which may be the origin of what we think of as the ceaseless forward march of time.
More at http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/in-no-time
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Permalink Reply by Maricel Evasco on
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"Across The Universe Of Time"
When the sea falls from the shore
As the light sinks low, will I see you any more?
As the rain falls from the sky
Can I bring you back, from a distant lullaby?
Show me your vision, the story begun
Two lights are rising and burning as one
In the deep blue of the night
Shine the millions of stars and my spirit burning bright
Spinning on, into the sun, flying higher
Now my journey's begun... And the...
Cold, cold wind, it blows me away
The feeling all over is a black, black day
But I know that I'll see you again
And I know that you're near me
There's a star, calling my name
It's echo is true and the song is not the same
Take my hand and lead me away
Bring me back to you in your arms I'm going to stay...
Tell me your vision, the story begun
Two lights are rising and burning as one
All those years drifting in space
I have known you well, yet I've never seen your face
You turn around, looking at me, laughter in your eyes
And now I can see
And the cold, cold wind, it blows me away
The feeling all over is a black, black day
But I know that I'll see you again
And I know that you're near me -
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A different slant on time:
Information Theory
Einstein’s formula, E=Mc2, equates all matter to energy. Today, many are equating energy to information, witnessed as it were by conscious awareness, wisdom or design, i.e., information (that which forms activity) enables interactive decisions. Information encourages or instructs our decisions to think and act in relationship to the information received. When we look at the coordination of activity in the field of biology, it becomes almost as astounding as quantum mechanic’s “spooky action at a distance”.
How is it that thousands of shore birds raise suddenly into the air, unite gracefully and bank as if directed by a single mind? In similar fashion, we wonder how hundreds of starlings pivot instantly and synchronously together over a cornfield? Scientist have observed such motion with high-speed film and documented the movement that propagates like a wave from bird to bird at about one seventieth of a second. This is far quicker than the bird’s required reaction time to another bird’s movement. Some type of information is being transmitted through an unknown channel. Many have suggested a non-local channel.
Information theory is concerned with the capacity to contain or carry information. For example, when we take our glasses off, has our field capacity to hold information changed or was the resolution changed? It is simply that we are receiving less information. Because the resolution has changed, we see a blurry image. The size of the monitor and the ability to hold either resolution has not changed. Might there be such a thing as a conscious field and a conscious channel capacity?
Information theory is concerned with the measurement of information in terms of logarithmic probability – how many bits of information does it take to represent a certain type of information such as, let’s say, the letter “T” in print. Since we don’t know all the possible permutations or “combinations” of such a question we use statistical probability in order to be very accurate in our measurements. We add up all the logarithmic contributions of each possible symbol being measured in terms of its chance of occurrence. It is expressed as log2P. This gives us an informational field potential.
A brilliant physicist, Evan Harris Walker developed a sound scientific theory about how the brain might, at quantum levels, process information. In his book, The Physics of Consciousness, he adds log2P to Schrödinger’s equation. What he demonstrates mathematically is that when information is measured by consciousness and will in terms of a closed loop, it forces one real solution only when one probable state happens and all other possible states disappear.
This is what scientific observation confirms by experiments, as argued against in the famous EPR paradox. It is the measurement comparison of two sides of reality that causes state vector collapse or “spooky action at a distance” and the emergence of consciousness as part of the physical world. As such it would appear that a non-local channel of information is tied to a willful decision to interact and that is what collapses the wave function.
I sometimes wonder what scientists like Francis Crick are smoking. It boggles my mind how they can arrogantly rush off with a hypothesis and lead millions down the road of probable error and psychological destruction, without clearly examining their foundational precept.
A reflective and inquiring person knows that beyond the horizon or periphery of view lays a vast unknown and unexplored world. Scientists know well that the process of observation is limited to the instruments and conscious mind of the observer. With instruments of finer tuning comes more information that forms knowledge once it is transferred into a language the observer can understand and thereby view within the contextual field of acquired truth. Through this process is the meaning of new information gained. Consider time.
Time doesn’t necessarily run in a discreet, successive, phase. Events or rather moments can be linked in both local and non-local ways. As an example, let’s say, a person, sitting with their spouse, was thinking about what a friend had said three weeks earlier. During his silent reflection, the spouse asked if he had heard from that friend. There was no connection between the two events – one was internal and the other explicate. Neither had they been discussing this person earlier. The two events resonated within the person – at least enough for him take note or think it odd of their simultaneous occurrence in external and internal form. We will call that synchronistic or acausal event number one.
Later in the evening, the same person is about to retire when the phone rings and it is that actual friend from three weeks back who is on the phone. Now there is a connection between this event and the one where the question was “have you heard from your friend”. That is acausal event number two.
The next morning, our person is checking e-mail when a neighbor stops in for an online chat and asks for advice. It turns out that a possible answer is the one he heard from his friend three weeks earlier. This becomes our non-local, acausal event number 3.
The individual then considers the question and, with little rationality for other possible answers, provides the one given to him by his friend. The reasoning is that the events were a-casual or unusual and held great meaning for the individual to whom they occurred. It seemed to this individual that the right answer for the person was the one supported by the acausal events.
In such a situation, the will to inform and interact three weeks earlier was in some way connected, in a super-positional, non-local and an entangled way, interacting with the three latter non-local events and information was communicated across a network to the consciousness of a third party, twice removed. For which receiver was the information intended? This third party might be interacting with other non-local and entangled events or information on the subject at hand, either from the present, the past, or maybe even the future that informs their will to interact with reality, collapsing the wave function at a certain explicit moment.
The system described here, while acausal is not anti-causal. It suggests a superposition of states that exist in a nonlocal fashion and manifest a particular outcome through a state of collective willful interaction. If Crick’s hypothesis is correct then such collective willful interaction would not exist and there would not be a state vector collapse of acausal and non-local events. There is no room for a collective consciousness in Crick’s view. Also, quantum mechanics and reality itself would not work and cease to exist, as we know it. At best it would create a chicken and egg scenario, which came first, the quantum that caused the willful interaction and thereby created its own existence?
http://jeweledway.com/?tag=synchronicity -
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