Time Explained V3.0

TIME EXPLAINED

Time is very simple, once you get it. But “getting it” is so very difficult. That’s because your current concept of time is so deeply ingrained. You form a mental map of the world using your senses and your brain. You use this mental map to think, and you are so immersed in it that you can’t see things the way they really are. You are locked into an irrational conviction that clocks run, that days pass, that time flows, and that a journey takes a length of time.

It takes steely logic to break out of this conditioning. First of all we need to look at your senses and the things you experience. Let’s start with sight. Look at the picture below:



(image copyright Edmund Adelson).

Now, squares A and B are the same colour. They’re the same shade of grey. Oh no they’re not, I hear you say. Oh yes they are I insist. Oh no they’re not you answer back. We could do this all day, but I’m right and you’re wrong. They really are the same colour. Squares A and B are the same shade of grey. The apparent difference in colour is an illusion. I’ll prove it. It’s very simple. Just tilt the page so you’re looking at it from a narrow angle. Alternatively fold the paper to get the two squares next to one another. Another method is look through a small hole to remove the context that fooled you into fooling yourself. You can look at it online if you wish, google on “checkerboard illusion” or go to echalk optical illusons directly. Check it out for yourself. Satisfy yourself. Be empirical, test yourself, find a way to stop fooling yourself. Then you realise that A and B really are the same colour.



What this tells you is that colour is subjective. It isn’t a real property of things in the world. It’s perception, it’s in your head. A photon doesn’t actually have a colour. It has a wavelength, an oscillation, a frequency. What’s it’s got is a motion.

Let’s move on to sound. Imagine a super-evolved alien bat with a large number of ears, like a fly’s eye. This bat would “see” using sound, and if it was sufficiently advanced it might even see in colour. But we know that sound is pressure waves, and when we look beyond this at the air molecules, we know that sound relies on motion.



Pressure is related to sound, and to touch. You feel it in your ears on a plane, or on your chest if you dive. This pressure of air or water is not some property of the sub-atomic world. It’s a derived effect, and the Kinetic Theory of Gases tells us that pressure is derived from motion.

You can also feel kinetic energy. If a cannonball in space travelling at 1000m/s impacted your chest you would feel it for sure. But apologies, my mistake. It isn't the cannonball doing 1000m/s. It's you. So where's the kinetic energy now? Can you feel it coursing through your veins? No. Because what’s really there is mass, and relative motion.

You can also feel heat. Touch that stove and you feel that heat. We talk about heat exchangers and heat flow as if there’s some magical mysterious fluid in there. And yet we know there isn’t. We know that heat is another derived effect of motion.



Taste is chemical in nature, and somewhat primitive. Most of your sense of taste is in fact your sense of smell. Do you know how smell works? Look up olfaction and you’ll learn about molecular shape. But the latest theory from a man called Luca Turin says it’s all down to molecular vibration, because isomers smell the same. That’s motion again.

The point of all this is there’s a lot of motion out there, and most of your senses are motion detectors. But it probably never occurred to you because you’re accustomed to thinking about the world in terms of how you experience it, rather than the scientific, empirical, fundamental, ontological things that are there. And nowhere is this more so than with time.

So, what is time? Let’s start by looking up the definition of a second:

Under the International System of Units, the second is currently defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom...

So, a second is nine billion periods of radiation. But what is a period? We know that radiation is electromagnetic in nature, the thing we commonly call light. We also know that light has a frequency. So let’s look at frequency:

Frequency = 1 / T and Frequency = v / λ

This says frequency is the reciprocal of the period T, and is also velocity v divided by wavelength λ . Combining the two, we can say T = λ / v, which means a period T is a wavelength λ divided by a velocity v. To try to find out more, we can drill down into wavelength and velocity. We know that a wavelength is a distance, a thing like a metre:

The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299792458 of a second...

And we know already that a velocity is a distance divided by a time. So if a period is a wavelength divided by a velocity, that means a period is a distance divided by a distance divided by a time. So let’s do some simple mathematics. Let’s work it through. We can combine T = λ / v and v = λ / t and write it down as:

T = λ / ( λ / t)

Then we can cancel out the λs to get:

T = 1/(1/t)

Then we cancel the double reciprocal to leave:

T = t

The answer we get is T = t. A period of time is a period of time. This mathematical definition of time is circular. What is its true nature? How do we dig down and get to the bottom of it? Let’s look at frequency some more. What’s the definition in English?

Frequency is the measurement of the number of times that a repeated event occurs per unit of time.

Our unit of time is the second. Frequency is the number of events per second. A second is nine billion periods of electromagnetic radiation. A period of radiation is an electromagnetic event, caused by an electromagnetic event happening inside an atom. For an event to happen, something has to move. Some component of the caesium atom has to travel some distance. A hyperfine transition is to do with magnetic dipole movement, a flip-flop interaction between the nucleus and an electron. It’s magnetic, so it’s electromagnetic in nature. Like the electron is electromagnetic in nature. Like the photon is electromagnetic in nature, because the photon is the “mediator“ of the electromagnetic field. So in some simple respect, we can consider some vital component of the atom to be electromagnetic just like light.



The answer comes with a rush. It’s basically light moving inside the atom, and it’s travelling a distance. It does it nine billion times, and we call that a second. Then we use this second to measure the speed of light. We measure the speed of light in terms of the speed of light. In caesium atoms, in hydrogen atoms, in our own atoms, in the atoms of everything. No wonder it never changes.

And so the penny drops: the mathematics is circular because time is circular. The interval between events is measured in terms of other events. And the interval between those events is measured in terms of other events. Until there are no events left, only intervals. And intervals are frozen timeless moments. But you need events, not frozen timeless intervals to mark out the time. The events aren’t in the time, the time is in the events. Because time is merely the measure of events, of change, measured against some other change. And for things to change, there has to be motion. You don’t need time to have motion. You need motion to have time.

You don’t need regular atomic motion to mark out time. Any regular motion will do. Yes, we counted nine billion oscillations and called it second. One, two, three… nine billion. But you don’t have to count hyperfine transitions in a caesium atom. You could count beans in a bucket. Ping, ping, ping, chuck them in, regular as clockwork.



(continued)



This post has been edited by Farsight on Jul 18 2007, 12:35 PM

You’re sitting there counting beans into the bucket, ping, ping, ping, regular as clockwork. Now, what is the direction of time? The only direction that is actually there, is the direction of the beans you’re throwing. A fuller bucket is not the direction of time. More beans is not the direction of time. The direction of time is the direction of your counting, and I could have asked you to count the beans out of the bucket. There is no real direction. It’s as imaginary as the direction you take when you count along the set of integers.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 →

It’s imaginary, so you cannot actually point in this direction. Nor can an arrow. There is no Arrow of Beans, so there is no Arrow of Time. And since there’s no direction, there’s no direction you can possibly travel in. And since you can’t travel, you can’t travel a length, and a length can’t pass you by. It’s all abstraction, a false concept rooted in the language we use to think. Yet we never ever think about what the words actually mean. Instead we say the clock is running slow as if a clock is an athlete. We say the day went quickly but it didn’t go anywhere. We say years pass, but they don’t go by like buses.



The only directions that are there, are the directions of the spatial motions that make the events that we use to measure the intervals between the other events. What’s there is the motion of light, the motion of atoms, and the motion of clocks, buses, and rivers. What’s there is the motion of the earth, and the sun, moon, and stars. And these motions are being counted, incremented, added up. We count regular atomic motion to use as a ratio against some other motion, be it of light, clocks, or buses. All of these things have motion, both internal motion and travelling motion. And all those motions are real, with real directions in space. But the time direction isn't real. It's as imaginary as a trip to nine billion.

That's why the past is only in your head, in your memory, in your records. It isn’t a place you can travel to. It’s just the places where things were. All those places that are still here in the universe. And while the past is the sum of all nows, now lasts for no time at all. Because there’s no time like the present, and time needs events, and when you take away the events, you take away the time. A second isn’t some slice of spacetime. It’s just nine billion motions of a caesium atom. Accelerate to half the speed of light and a second is still nine billion motions of a caesium atom. But there's only half the local motion there used to be, because the other half is already doing the travelling motion through space. That’s why time dilates.

It’s easy to understand time dilation. Imagine yourself as a metronome. Each tick is a thought in your head, a beat in your heart, a second of your time. If you’re motionless with respect to me I see you ticking like this: |||. If you flash by in a spaceship, I see you ticking like this: /\/\/\. If you could reach c and we know you can’t, you wouldn’t tick at all. Your time would flatline like this ______ because any transverse motion would cause c to be exceeded. You wouldn’t tick for me, you wouldn’t tick for you, and you wouldn’t tick for anybody else in the universe.

That’s the thing we’re interested in. The universe. That’s the thing that’s out there, the thing we’re a part of, the thing we’re trying to understand. It’s full of motion, and this is what it’s like:



What can you see? What can you measure? You can measure the height. You can measure the width. And if it wasn't just a picture you could measure the depth. That's three Dimensions, with a capital D because we have freedom of movement in those dimensions. What else can you see? What else can you measure? You might imagine a fourth dimension, a time dimension. But the picture comes from the wikipedia temperature page. It’s a gif, a moving image, and in that image, those red and blue dots are moving. The thing you can measure is temperature.

Temperature is an aspect of heat, an emergent property, a derived effect of atomic and molecular motion. When you measure the temperature, you are measuring an aggregate motion. If you were one of those dots, you would not talk of climbing to a “higher temperature”. There is no real height. You can’t literally climb to a higher temperature. Hence we don’t call temperature a dimension. But people did. Temperature used to be called a dimension, but the word has gradually changed from its original meaning of “measure”, and is now assumed to be something that offers a degree of freedom, something you can move through.

We are immersed in time like the dots are immersed in temperature. It’s a different measure, but just as we cannot travel in temperature because there is no real height, we cannot travel in time because there is no real length. Because time is a dimension with a small d. There is no degree of freedom. I can hop backwards a metre but not backwards a second. Because time is a measure of change rather than a measure of place, and it has no absolute units, because you can only measure one change of place against another. It’s a relative measure of motion. The units are relative, and that’s what Special Relativity was telling us all along.

Special Relativity tells us that your relative velocity alters your measurement of space and time compared to everybody else. You increase your relative velocity and space appears to contract while time dilates by a factor of √(1-v2/c2). If you travel at .99c, space appears to contract to one seventh of its former size. So your trip to a star seven light years away only takes you a year. But physics is about the universe, and in that universe it took you seven years. The star didn’t become a disc because you flashed by. The space in the universe didn’t really contract because you travelled through it. But your time did.



Einstein didn’t seem to understand the full meaning of Special Relativity until later in life. It’s daunting. Perhaps he kept it under his hat while he struggled to explain it all in terms that people would find acceptable and conclusive. In the early days he was certainly influenced by Hermann Minkowski, a father-figure whose forename was the same as Einstein’s actual father. It was Minkowski who turned time into the fourth dimension:

The mathematics of his revolutionary paper on Special Relativity was relatively elementary, and at first he resisted its reformulation in terms of four-dimensional space-time by his former teacher Hermann Minkowski, complaining that “since the mathematicians pounced on relativity theory I no longer understand it myself”.

Einstein went along with it. But later he seemed a little hesitant with the Twins Paradox in 1918. He used acceleration from General Relativity as the explanation, but this explanation didn’t account for passing clocks. It’s hard to be sure what he was thinking. But a couple of years later in 1920 he gave an address at the University of Leyden:

..according to the general theory of relativity, space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an ether. According to the general theory of relativity space without ether is unthinkable; for in such space there not only would be no propagation of light, but also no possibility of existence for standards of space and time (measuring-rods and clocks), nor therefore any space-time intervals in the physical sense. But this ether may not be thought of as endowed with the quality characteristic of ponderable inedia, as consisting of parts which may be tracked through time. The idea of motion may not be applied to it.

There’s a clue in there. He doesn’t talk about spacetime, he talks about space. When you read the history I think you can see his thinking. He started off by saying there is no absolute time, using a postulate that says the the speed of light is always measured to be the same. In more general terms this is known as Lorentz Invariance, wherein the “laws” of physics are the same in all inertial frames of reference. But Einstein knew there were no literal laws in physics. Just postulates, models, theories. And he knew about inertial reference frames. He knew they weren’t real, and that the caution is that the observer’s own velocity is always deemed to be zero. He knew they don’t explain why the speed of light is always the same. I think he knew why for a while. He kept saying “time is suspect”, but I don’t think anybody wanted to hear it. It it wasn’t until Godel had broken the ice in Princeton that Einstein felt he could even talk about what Special Relativity really meant:

In his response to Godel's paper in the Schilpp volume, Einstein acknowledged that "the problem here disturbed me at the time of the building up of the general theory of relativity." This problem he described as follows: "Is what remains of temporal connection between world-points in the theory of relativity an asymmetrical relation (like time, intuitively understood, and unlike space), or would one be just as much justified to assert A is before B as to assert that A is after B? The issue could also be put this way: is relativistic space-time in essence a space or a time."

Godel didn’t “find a way to time travel” with his rotating universe. He merely used this conjecture to demonstrate that time could not have passed if you could visit the past. Einstein was with Godel on this, and understood full well the implications:

It is a widely known but insufficiently appreciated fact that Albert Einstein and Kurt Godel were best friends for the last decade and a half of Einstein's life. They walked home together from Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study every day; they shared ideas about physics, philosophy, politics, and the lost world of German-Austrian science in which they had grown up. What is not widely known is that in 1949 Godel made a remarkable discovery: there exist possible worlds described by the theory of relativity in which time, as we ordinarily understand it, does not exist. He added a philosophical argument that demonstrates, by Godel's lights, that as a consequence, time does not exist in our world either. If Godel is right, Einstein has not just explained time; he has explained it away... (Palle Yourgrau, A World Without Time)



That’s the true meaning of Special Relativity. Time exists like heat exists. It’s real because it does things to us. But just like heat it’s an emergent property, a derived effect of motion. It means time is not fundamental. It isn’t a dimension like the dimensions of space. We don’t see four dimensions. We see three dimensions, and motion through them. So it’s 3+1 dimensions at best.

The speed of light was always the problem, and time was always the answer. Because at the speed of light there’s no time left for anything else to happen. It’s why c isn’t really a speed, because you run out of time trying to get there. And if there’s no time, there’s no speed, because speed is distance divided by time. The thing called c is a conversion factor, between the measure of distance and the measure we call time. It’s the motion that’s king, the velocity of light that defines your very metres and your seconds. Your velocity shouldn’t be measured by the things it defines. It should be measured as a fraction of c, in “natural units”. Because it’s motion we see, and c is the ultimate motion, how fast things happen, the inescapable property of photons and those electromagnetic things from which we’re made. From which the universe is made.

The universe is not a block universe, it is a world in motion. The worldlines are only in mathematical space, and in your head. There’s no place that’s the future, and no place that’s the past. There’s only this place, and the time is always now. We don’t travel in time at one second per second. We don't travel in time at all. Relativistic clocks don’t travel in time at different rates, they travel through the universe at fractions of c. When they collide, they collide at the same location and at the same time, whatever their faces say is local time. To travel backwards in time we'd need to unevent events, we’d need negative motion. But motion is motion whichever way it goes. You can’t have negative motion, just as you can’t have negative distance. Just as you can’t have negative carpets. So you can’t travel in time. There are no time travel paradoxes, because there is no time travel, and there is no time travel because time is just a relative measure of motion. And motion is travel. You can’t travel through travel.

So those celebrity physicists who talk earnestly of time machines are wrong. Dead wrong. Not even wrong. You wonder how they can get it so wrong. And all those folk who puzzle about the beginning of time are chasing a dream. There never was any beginning of time. Time didn’t start thirteen point seven billion years ago. Because time didn’t start in the first place. It was motion that started in the first place. It was a place, not a time. And it’s this place, the place we call the universe, marked out by every light path you can track through timeless space. That’s how far we’ve come. A long long way, in no time at all.

But now we can move on. Because now we’ve got the key, Einstein’s key, the key that unlocks all the doors in physics: spacetime is a space.




This post has been edited by Farsight on Jul 18 2007, 12:38 PM

There's been a fair amount of talk about time of late, so here's the latest version of TIME EXPLAINED. If anybody can give me any feedback or point out any errors I'd be grateful. Otherwise, enjoy!

This post has been edited by Farsight on Jul 18 2007, 12:39 PM

At the first look your "explanation" of time isn't able to explain many concepts of contemporary physics, like the existence of multiple time dimensions, the birefringence of vacuum, the existence of multiple event horizons of black holes and so on. So it's useless with respect of the further understanding. You're just saying, the time traveling is impossible, but I cannot understand, why it should be.

Furthermore, your "explanation" of time is (as usually) very vague, and it's using many concepts, which are requiring the time concept on the background. It's like the string theory, which is using many postulates collected from different theories without worrying, whether and how these postulates are mutually related, if they're not colliding mutually and so on.

At the very end of your explanation I can simply ask:

In which sentence your explanation of time really is?

This post has been edited by Zephir on Jul 18 2007, 01:04 PM

Not this time, it is much more comical to read with all the mistakes left in. We are enjoying it thoroughly but not as a scientific piece. As a comic piece, yes.

This post has been edited by Dallas on Jul 18 2007, 02:08 PM

I agree with farsight on some points however. No further explaining needed in understanding that we ourselves are complex and we should however first understand what is it that we are sensing with in the first place. I beleive time that we talk about all the time should be searched in the brains not the -time delays of senses because we dont know what actually happens with these signals in the brains. And since we dont know we have a second hand explanation. We are explaining from maybe even a third derivation of this multi-effects inside us. I think this at least is a valid point. If we dont know what brains see and how exactly they are doing it we dont know a single thing yet. I would put my bet on this. ---
To give a a some kind of example of what i am talking about. If you are a decahedron inside a ball which has little holes in it which is inside a cube which is inside a prism. WHat you see is that you a are a decahedron. WHat you dont see, is that that is not even close to what you are. And because you see through two or three filtering surfaces you assume that this filtering is the actual reality. SO you are explaining reality with decahedron inward reflection which comes at certain angles from a holes in the ball and you are this tiny decahedron being absolutely sure that what you see is first hand experience. To make it a little bit more complex you interprete reflection with prism and draw conclusions on cube. Call ma a crank or looney i just dont beleive reality is directly percepted which means we are talking about some kind of half imaginary construct in the brains.
So i am saying that if you dont know what the observer directly measures with and how it does it you dont know exactly what you are even talking about. I know how this sounds but thats how it seems to be.

This post has been edited by Majkl on Jul 18 2007, 04:28 PM

I can't explain time in a sentence, Zephir. But maybe this paragraph is the one you should re-read.

And so the penny drops: the mathematics is circular because time is circular. The interval between events is measured in terms of other events. And the interval between those events is measured in terms of other events. Until there are no events left, only intervals. And intervals are frozen timeless moments. But you need events, not frozen timeless intervals to mark out the time. The events aren’t in the time, the time is in the events. Because time is merely the measure of events, of change, measured against some other change. And for things to change, there has to be motion. You don’t need time to have motion. You need motion to have time.

I don't seek to explain the concept of multiple time dimensions. I'm taking the opposite stance. And I don't seek to explain those other matters in this essay. Just time.


Majkl: I think you are basically right, though your example is not one I'd use myself. I would say there are no solid objects in the subatomic world, and no surfaces.

My Expertise Don't See Nothing Majorly Wrong With Your Essay.

However, If the interval between events is measured with other events, then the conclusion that time is space is lacking what makes events tick: info. Time can only be space as long as it is matter.

Time, however, being the combo "space+matter" would very obviously be redundant. So if the "event" doesn't fit into any imaginable present because it depends on time, then time includes at least a portion of its past, its present, and its future --that is a timeline, of course.

A hierarchical problem here:

because of

Multiple timelines are one thing, multiple time dimensions are another. If time is "in the events", then time is at minimum "events", then time is "space" --which I am saying "space and matter"-- you can only have a time that is not in conflict with itself if there are two dimensions to time, one to hold a complete event from start to finish, and the other to hold the rest of the world together . When at least one dimension of time is **in** the event, the other is **external** to it. That allows you to have as many timelines as you want within the event itself, but the external time dimension makes sure that multiple timelines (such as that of an amoeba and satellite or cloud) don't get mixed. This is necessary because if they mixed we would have a serious problem: time would have to find out how far my car keys are from my ear in order to explode a star across the galaxy because everything (that is, all timelines) would influence everything else!

(this is starting to head straight into paradox territory)


For the record, is is a very good essay.

By AWT the time dimension is the normal gradient for each local space-time, i.e. the direction, in which such gradient is most sharp. For example, with respect the mechanical waves at the water surface, the water surface is the 3D local space-time for surface waves spreading, the direction perpendicular to the water surface plane is the time dimension of this space-time, the other two perpendicular directions are the space dimensions.



In Aether foam the local time has always at least two dimensions, although usually very close ones, because every foam membrane consists just from pair of surface normal gradients. The time dimensions are illustrated by the black dots on the above animation. We can see, the Universe foam condenses from the state with many time dimensions, which corresponds the state of amorphous graviton foam (see the picture on the right). It will return into this state again after collapse of Universe: we can see the nuclei of the further time dimensions inside the quantum chaos, the residual time arrows in the multiple event horizons of black holes.

It means, our Universe has an (potentially) infinite number of histories and futures, and the local time dimensions are behaving like the surfaces of local time (mem)brane of foam, which branches both towards the past, both towards the future. Therefore it has no sense to ask about Universe origin from such perspective, as the Universe has many, if not infinite number of histories, some of them are forming our future time or even space dimensions. Without Aether concept such conclusion is virtually incomprehensible.

This post has been edited by Zephir on Jul 18 2007, 05:55 PM

Yes farsight, this is nice " It’s why c isn’t really a speed, because you run out of time trying to get there. And if there’s no time, there’s no speed, because speed is distance divided by time. " that is a correct interpretation of the variable. But its logic are also slightly misleading as what took it to this stage of 'notime' and 'nospeed' was just the very thing that you thereafter ignore. That is Motion in Time, but i agree with it being very hard to define what 'C' really is. The mathematical definition is quite precise, your definition is in itself also true, for myself i don't have one yet :) Well, i accept the mathematical, as i'm sure you do too :) But it's not enough, not as long as we have the photon which is the only entity that can travel 'there' while still being contained in our spacetime. (That is, if we define spacetime as consisting of something that sooner or later will die/transform)

This post has been edited by yor_on on Jul 18 2007, 06:11 PM

In a later essay I do basically say that matter is space. Or let's say space with a twist.

Sorry, I don't quite follow this. Can you rephrase please? Do note that I've said that time does exist, but it isn't a dimension you can move through. What we think of as the past is only defined by the distance travelled by light through space. That's the only real "line", the timeline is reduced to something abstract, like the line you'd take if you counted along the set of integers.

Sorry again, I'm not clear on the above, but I'll try to reply as best I can: what's actually happening is the events. If you observe local events A and B you will think using events in your head, and then order A and B into a sequence that you consider to be an AB timeline. However an observer passing by at a high velocity might order them into timeline BA. You can't both be right. This demonstrates that both these timelines are conceptual and abstract rather than something actual. They're in your head. Ditto for a time "Dimension" that allows any kind of motion "through time" up and down this conceptual in-your-head line. Ditto I think, for multiple time dimensions, but I have enough trouble with just one time dimension so don't take my word for it.

Thanks IAMoraes. Much appreciated.

Thanks yor on. I didn't mean to ignore "Motion in Time", I meant to say motion is only through space, and some things exhibit more of it than others. But I'll look again at the text there, and see if I can make it clearer. I do accept the mathematics, but I am trying to dig down under the axiomatic terms, and maybe I have issues with the interpretation. It's not clear-cut. In general I'd say there's some problem of language. We talk about things like "mathematical space" and "operators" and "transformations" within mathematics, and then perhaps think of actual space and actual actions and actual transformation events. I need to think about this some more, so don't quote me.

I've got an essay SPACE EXPLAINED that I haven't released yet. It's radical and maybe a hot property, so I need to mull on it for a while. And to tell the truth I've been getting cheesed off with all the nonsense from "debunkers" who can't even be bother to read my stuff.

OK, gotta go. I'll talk tomorrow.

This post has been edited by Farsight on Jul 18 2007, 07:57 PM

Reading through the first part, I don't find anything "wrong" because you're not saying anything quantitative. It's about a way of looking at things to come to grips with them, not a theory of physics.

Thinking about time as "motion", or more generally as "change" makes sense to a certain extent.

But it doesn't work to define it that way. Think about two objects in the same place. They don't collide or otherwise interact, because they are not there at the same time. Time needs to be listed with the space coordinates of the object. Velocity is dx/dt.

In the second half of the second part, things go sour. Simultaneousness is relative. Different reference frames have different sets of "present" events in the universe. An atomic clock will read less elapsed time not as an artifact of processes slowing down, but because it really and truly experienced less time, which you can define as looking at successive sets of "present" events for the moving observer and comparing how those same events appear in the other observer's sets of "present" events.

Hej Farsight

Half a year ago I posted first time in this Forum - it was about time -and You were the first and only person to comment positively - actually you said: yes Bukh - I am with you on this -

Without your positive feed back my posting carrier had definitely ended.

Just parallel to your post to day I commented in another thread on the time issue - with the following:

QUOTE Myself: (sorry - pasting but I am lazy)

"time is change - yes

what is change ?

one second is defined by material change - number of oscillations in a crystal -

and now we come to what is crucial - namely, what is smallest change ? - smallest time unit ? is there such a thing as an universal smallest change that can be used as our time-measuring unit ?
Yes - I think so - and this smallest change is intimately related to how the smallest physical expression in Universe can be expressed.

I say that ALL physical expressions they are wave-interference phenomena - they are standing wave-structures - and ANY wave structure is expressed by smallest points / particles that can exist in physical world. Such smallest points - I call them pixels - are filling fundamental space completely out - without void. Pixels are ideally organized in a 3D grid structure - shoulder by shoulder - I call it the 3D Pixel Universe.

Matter - yes all matter IS expressed via wave-patterns and all waves are expressed by these pixels - ON OFF - just like a wave in a stadion is expressed by the people - no peole is moving - just expressing (wave their hand). So in its very essence all physical matter is simply this On OFF by the pixels.

In order to express a wave there must be inertia - delaying, so the signal from pixel to neigboring pixel is with delay. Shortest delay of pixel is shortest "Time period" that can exist in Universe. This is the "Beat of Universe".

And now the question. How long does a physical expression take. It depends solely upon the complexity of said expression. A very simple interference structure can be expressed by a small number of pixels playing. Remember that ANY physical expression is via a wave-interference structure - there exists no such thing as a "flash" expression - it takes the number of pixels to play the expression, which is the same as it takes the time equivalent to the number of minimum time units needed to play the full wave-interference.

Time is change - and in order to define said time you must define said change.
That is why we still have the misconception that c is the fastest propagation in UNIVERSE.

WRONG.

Speed of light is the speed of a photon. A photon is a complex structure, made by many many wave-interferences, and it takes many pixels to play such a complicated structure. When this wave-interference pattern is moved in space - it is the same as this wave-interference pattern must be propagated over the 3D Pixel Screen. So if we are looking at less complex structures - sub-atomic particles - such smaller and less complex structures can be propagated faster over the pixel screen - can move faster than light.

But YES - it is correct that photon (light) is the fastest "particle" with a complexity of this magnitude. Photon is build to speed. And photon is (was) the smallest amount of complexity that humans could "see" - measure. Any other structure with a simailar complexity - i.e. electron - cannot move nearly as fast as a photon, because the wave-interference patterns of an electron is not build to fast propagation.

Speed of any particle is limited by its complexity (size) - and to the ease by which its complexity can be propagated as wave-interferences. Smaller time-dilations can be measured when objects are moved in space - (a kind of doppler effect) - but a time measuring device like an atomic clock and the spacecraft needed to propagate it through space is a big and complex structure that cannot be propagated with a speed that is just near to the speed of light."



My post is a little long and not well written - but I think that we are in agreement ?

So in conclusion:

- Yes, time is measured in time - the trick is simply to define smallest time unit - because a unit is a unit. A unit has no defined duration!

Everything is measured or expressed in smallest UNITS, a unit has no size - no scale - a unit has the size - the scale that is appropiate. Likewise distance - any distance must be defined in smallest units - so speed is a derived function based on smallest units - the pixels.

In my world - the PIXEL is king, it is the pixel that define the BEAT of universe = time, and it is the pixel that define smallest unit - meter.

Having defined the pixel, then I think that EVERYTHING in Universe can be defined - as derived functions. Just as an example: I imagine that MASS is the area of the pixel screen which is effectively occupied by pixels playing said particle. Photon for instance has very little mass, because the wave-interference patterns of a photon does not shadow on a big pixel area (Bose Einstein condensation)- but once translated into an electron wave-pattern the whole pixel screen is shadowed and occupied (Pauli exclusion principle). Energy is the number of pixels totally involved in the said energetic expression, and so on --- well - I better stop here.

LearmSceince

QUOTE: "An atomic clock will read less elapsed time not as an artifact of processes slowing down"

I would say that it IS an artifact: - I imagine that measuring time by using an atomic clock, that is involving material change - oscillations -

I Imagine that all physical matter (caesium crystal included) is made by wave-interference phenomena, and I Imagine that all physical matter is being expressed by smallest particles - pixels - uniformly arranged in a 3D grid - 3D Pixel Screen - filling out completely fundamental space.

So when an atomic clock is propagated in space - it is propagated over the 3D pixel screen - and that is the same as saying that wave-interference patterns are being propagated over the screen, and that will create doppler-like effects - with changed wave-patterns. I imagine that it is easier to propagate the front than to get the tail with - and so the oscillation will be slightly slower - and we see time dilation.