Explanation Of Time Passage, time does not exist

That doesn't even make any sense to me.

Just because we notice something, need something, or have some particular quality doesn't make that man-made. We need air, but man didn't make that magical mixture of nitrogen, oxygen, argon and water vapor.
Our thoughts and experiences are ordered by time, but that doesn't provide evidence that time is imaginary. Effect still never precedes cause, no matter how delusional a person may become.

It seems to this newbie that Phyti is caught up with the 'spatialization of metric time'.

Clock time!

Time as used to measure the space of human activity.

Think of all that Mass! All that E!

Work time, Private time, Nap time? Whats that you say? Don't waste your time?

I'm out of time? But wait theres more!

Phyti attempts to tie human made temporal controls to the representation of time and motion purely in terms of geometry.

Newtonian physics; the motion of a body or the change of some quantity in time.

Forgive me my probablistic brothers, but I'm ignoring you!

Hey didn't Newtonian physics allow us to construct clocks accurate enough to capture the motion of terrestrial, and celestial bodies?

newcleAR clocks anyone?

Which were then used to prove a certain famous crazy hair guy's theory(s)?

So what is time? Which time? How long must I go on?

'Planck Time'?

'Rosemary and Tyme'

'Time flies' or it flys? Alas, I've no time for grammar!

'Time bandits'

'Time cop'

'Time'

'Time ends?'

'Oh no! I'm out of Time, its 'Bed time'!

1. Time is the dimension or dimensions that separate events. We measure time, sure, but it exists independent of us.

2. Space is the dimension or dimensions that separate objects. It turns out that time and space are related by the speed of light, which is a constant. DISTANCE = C X TIME. This gives insight to the effects of relativity and shows how time and space are interdependent. You might even say time=distance since you can convert between them with a constant. Chew on that one.

3. At the planck time/size level, all is fuzzy, so lets skip that for now.


The assertion that because we model it with mathematics, or assign a value, we invent it, is absurd.

The assertion that we cannot prove there is time is absurd.

The assertion that we cannot prove that we live in three spacial dimension is absurd.

It's as absurd as the assumtion that we can prove nothing, and nothing is real. You can philosophically take that position, but it is of no value. It is just an arbitrary belief with no predictive or analytical value. pure Dogma!! Useless. Pure silliness being said for effect.

Trying to effect an effect by affecting effects affects nothing. (just felt like saying that).

This post has been edited by meBigGuy on Dec 27 2007, 07:51 AM

Hi BigDumbWeirdo, sparkiii, phyti, meBigGuy, heretic and probably a lot of others..

I have not been following this thread but I have some ideas on time if you have time... he he he! I apologize if these ideas simply muddy the waters...

Time exists independent of consciousness. Time is the dimension that separates events just as space separates objects. If there were no living entities in the universe, the energy we measure as the spectral lines of hydrogen and helium would have the same relationship.

meBigGuy is right, we have time keeping clocks that need no human intervention to ensure that they are able to count time as we know it. Time has no need of consciousness... it is consciousness that has need of time... the dependency is reversed. I very much agree with the idea that time separates objects in space and time also provides a history. These entities are linked strongly with time. Our physical space is closed under time to connect things due to Special Relativity since Special Relativity is the appropriate physics to deal with all light related phenomena. If everything was light our universe would be without time and without an expression of space. I have said on a number of occasions that it is time itself that is preventing everything from happening all at once.

Lets look at events that relate to the force carriers in our Universe (photons)... the photons (both real and propagating and also virtual). In the case of the emission and absorption process of a single photon what we have in the frame of the photon is something that is instantaneous... photon is emitted and it is absorbed in a single event in it's own time frame... the reason for this is light (in it's own frame of reference, executes/propagates at the signal velocity of all interconnecting processes... nothing is faster (so far... other than tunneling processes). The photon undergoes the most extreme case of time dilation and length contraction (in it's own frame)... this we understand is the null geodesic and it connects source to sink without any extension in it's own frame. I am not alone in this interpretation since I heard Roger Penrose use this exact description in a radio interview recently... I am in good company here. In such a frame the "clicks" of the "clock" of any photon is completely stopped and in it's own frame the instant it is created is the instant it is destroyed (or absorbed or whatever... maybe more "whatever"). This is a good description of a single event IMHO ... the one in which source and sink are "coincident" because in that zero quantum photon time it's influence can travel across the Universe at "infinite speed" as reckoned in the "moving frame" of the photon... this carries the force of all action from place to place as a synchronous resonant event. Externally in the observer world where consciousness has time to exist, where time is progressing, we "believe" that we can measure light "moving" at the propagation velocity through space.... In a way this is the exact opposite of this event which has no time and no displacement that is measurable... this is because time is required to measure everything. We need a theory to account for this "resonance" and presently there is no truly consistent theory bar one...

The Cramer Interpretation of Wheeler Feynman Theory sort of accounts for this phenomenon by connecting the source with the sink in a time symmetric event where we have retarded wave phenomena propagating away from the source at the speed of light while the reverse is also happening... that is the advanced wave is coming from the sink traveling backwards in time from the event's future forming a space time resonance where we can only measure the part of that resonance which is retarded (this is because we are causal creatures). It is easy to dismiss this phenomenon but this view of reality is just as secure in science as other interpretations to this current day. This "resonance" is incorporated in Richard Feynman's Quantum Electrodynamics. There is no inconsistency and it is every bit as correct as any other theory. The problem seems to be that we do not believe it at this point in time. Not that there are any compelling reason to believe that retarded waves are the only waves that exist... I personally believe that the retarded waves are physically present in the evanescent field of both the source and the sink. In the event that a single event is executing this event is a transaction with the future and so it "knows" it's destination and the advanced wave has already been sent the moment the retarded wave has been initiated. This resonance is spatial wave phenomena and it results in the emission and absorption of packets of energy we know as photons. Because of interferences with the standing matter waves in space these packets will always find the shortest path to the sink but are critically dependent on the physical placement of all the objects of matter in the Universe... These are solutions of the wave equation inside of a cavity where this cavity might be a tiny sub-atomic cavity or even the "vault of the Universe itself".

If these exchanges of photons represent true instantaneous events... both parts the emission and the absorption of the one photon are counted here... then our Universe is "motivated" by these energetic processes and is the drumbeat of all temporal phenomena. For instance the ticking of a watch must be attended by many individual photon exchange force events and if the rate of these were slowed or accelerated the watch itself is slowed and accelerated by this process. It is just as well that most things around us have the same timekeepers so that everything in our observer frame of reference moves along mitigated by these individual exchanges of "action" interspersed by "inaction". The same must apply to "virtual photons"... these are "photons" that remain attached to sources such as those that cause magnetism or electrostatic fields or indeed any process in a relatively static frame of reference.

I agree that mass is only associated with temporal particles and the massless photon is not bothered by temporal events being quanta and therefore immune from any process that involves exchanges of energy "in transit" since all energy processes require time the quantum is outside of time and that is the reason why they must be absorbed whole and not in part.

Why don't you click on the link and actually learn what Planck Time is?
It's fundamental. It's the amount of time it takes a particle traveling at c to move one Planck Length, which is itself derived from the speed of light, Planck's constant, and the gravitational constant. It's a fundamental unit because it's based on fundamental units which are, in turn, based on the behavior of the universe itself. I guarantee you this much: If we ever make contact with an extraterrestrial intelligent species whose level of development is at least the same as ours, then they will have the Planck Time, (though calling it by a different name) and it will be the exact same measure of time as our own.

I am familiar with Planck Time but IMHO it is no more fundamental than any other combination of things so heretic has my vote on that one. Planck's Constant is indeed very special and every civilization in the Universe will have an equivalent (provided the laws of physics are everywhere the same). The combination of entities that derive a Planck Length is relatively very artificial I think, as to the "process" of light traveling a certain short distance it is not the right question... Light does not move it resonates between two position so it may not pass over/ between two points that distance apart. I can illustrate this idea with Richard Feynman's example of why light does not actually "move" as such (... well not like the way a fermion moves).

Setting earthly standards of length and time has been the recreation of mankind for quite some time and I am not unaware of the political implications of such activities. It will never be possible to measure the Planck Length without an expenditure of energy a 100 magnitudes greater than that harnessed by our entire civilization so it is something that never be proven nor disproven... it is in my ming a "philosophy" like a belief in G*d. The fundamental unit of length does not exist because of Einstein... it must remain relative. willing to debate that... I can tell you what is zero length and what is zero time and how this relates to distances in our Universe through the forcing of time into the realm of measurement by relativistic means.... Effectively slowing light down so that it becomes a stationary particle such as an electron or other fermion.

Cheers

So you are saying that light like gravity is transmitted instantaneously.

But because photons have wave properties the returning wave resonates against the arriving wave and slows the incoming speed of the wave portion of the photon to nominal propagation.

So a photon 'appears' to have no mass because the mass already arrived?

Otherwise why does a massless particle follow the bends mass creates in space?

The way I think of it (and I am not a physicist)

A photon travels at the speed of light

So, A photon "experiences" no time and travels no distance. Rather, those concepts are not defined for the energy we perseive as a photon.

An instantaneous energy transfer occurs from Source to Receptor. We experience that as a photon traveling 5 light years from a star to our eye. Cramer, and Wheeler-Feynman try to explain.

To simplify, when you look at the star you send a message back in time so the photon can start its journey 5 years ago and arrive at your eye today. The energy transfer, from the point of view of the energy, was instant and involved no travel. Wheeler-Feynman says no photon can be emitted without an established receptor because otherwise we cannot resolve the transfer from the energy's perspective.

gravity accelerates things independent of mass. 0 grams, 10 grams, 100grams. That is basic. In a uniform gravitational field, the beam of light falls at the same rate as a dropped weight. Space geometry affects all.

This post has been edited by meBigGuy on Dec 28 2007, 01:54 AM

"An instantaneous energy transfer occurs from Source to Receptor."


Interesting, I will look that up right now.

Question: Would that not also apply to the wave/particle screen experiments? Adds and interesting twist to the concept of an observer.



"Gravity accelerates things independent of mass. 0 grams, 10 grams, 100grams. That is basic. In a uniform gravitational field, the beam of light falls at the same rate as a dropped weight. Space geometry affects all."

Understood, very basic, saw the video of the moon experiment the other day.

I guess my actual question was, could that indicate that gravity isn't a force or particle, but an effect caused by the presence of mass in space? Hence no Graviton? But I did recently read in another Elfie post that there is data about Gravity having a nominal proagation? Could that not be aside effect of having 'c' as a speed limit.

Thanks for the positive response(s).

*sorry tags not working

Hi sparkiii, meBigGuy et al,

I have only just seen the additional things placed there by meBigGuy but they are "on target"... I will add some further points to clarify (since it is difficult and there is still a lot of confusion on this subject on the web... I use Feynman himself for this information... nothing less will do since almost all other sources are "dead wrong")...

Sorry about that I have given the wrong impression there... We have different frames of reference, light is a very special frame of reference. The idea that I am trying to convey is "in the frame of light itself" ... a frame carried along with whatever it is that is propagated... the way that it calculates speed "internally" would indicate distance divided by time as "infinite"... this is reckoned in the frame of the light as an infinite velocity.

This is just an extension to light speed of the normal Relativity Concept that applies to material particles at high relativistic speed. The statement that the speed of light is the "maximum speed" is not true when concerning internal frames of reference (there are two separate ways to calculate speed seen from within the frame of the moving "target" and seen from within the frame of the "stationary" observer). The faster a particle or space traveler moves ... close to the speed of light... it's/his clock loses ticks by undergoing time dilation (actually time "stretching"). As far as the traveler is concerned this "loss of time" which is not of any mechanical origin and is not perceptible from an internal traveler frame, cannot be observed from within that frame itself of the particle/space ship and translates into reckoning a higher speed (relative to an external observer frame). Remember you should always compare measurements made in the same frame of reference if any meaningful results are to be noted. To compare the measurement of time in an external moving frame with distance traveled in the moving frame or to compare distance in an external moving frame to the time in the laboratory frame. What relativity does is allows comparisons of length and comparisons of time between two separate frames of reference and the differences are simply a way to convert from one system to the other. Quite clearly we are often viewing events in moving frames of reference and what we want to know is the measurements in the moving system translate to in the frame of the moving system... allowing for propagation time and for stellar aberration.

Since closing on the speed of light results in almost a complete loss of "ticks" of any internal time keeping method (relative to an external "at rest" observer), the speed relative to external "matter wave phenomena" such as the position of the Earth or other bodies that could be considered as being relatively at rest relative to each other, can be made as large as we like in the frame of the accelerated system so long as that penalty of acceleration is accepted by the moving frame of reference. A dramatic example of this would be provided that we could accelerate a spaceship to marginally under the speed of light "almost instantly", a traveler would traverse the entire Milky Way length and back again in a matter of seconds "ships time". However earth time over 200,000 years will have passed as an absolute minimum for this journey (the time it takes wave phenomena to traverse the same distance). On the one hand any traveler would age only seconds of time while his immediate siblings would have died and been dead on Earth for almost 200 millenia. In that time it would be debatable if humankind would still exist on the Earth at that later time. During such a journey the clocks inside the ship would be subject to an internally unobserved "dilation".... one ship's clock second being stretched to the equivalent of possibly billions of Earth clock seconds. The velocity shown by an "optical velocimeter" (equivalent of a speedometer in a car) using ships time for reckoning would not be limited by the "speed" of light but would be unbounded at the top end of that scale which would be calibrated from "zero" to "infinity". In the same way for light's internal clock it would actually be entirely stopped (relative to external observers) so that any passage of time in the frame of the photons just would not happen (however the phase and spreading are properties of the space which contain "matter"). All journeys for light take no perceptible time at all and if no time passes then no "dynamics" can proceed. This means that energy exchanges cannot occur since they all require time and space . Velocity would be at the extremum of this internal scale above so it's (particle or spaceship) velocity is "infinite" if it could travel at the speed of light. Note also I have used the words "speed of light" to indicate not 3X10e8 m/s but the "local" speed of light which depends on the "propagation velocity" in the refractive medium.

The trick is external observers of light are in a particularly difficult position since light is a quantum process. To observe the light (photon by photon) is to destroy its wave property (qubit) and to convert it to a particle property. There are many "imaginative" applets and diagrams showing light "moving in waves" through space and reflecting off surfaces etc. In actual fact, contrary to common wisdom, this just does not happen. Light is a spreading corpuscular phenomenon of energy transfer and does not actually "move in waves" any more than the photons are bouncing around like "billiard balls" inside of cavities. It is just an easy "no questions asked" way of explaining the phenomenon to undergraduates.

Richard Feynman knew that it was a difficult concept to explain to ordinary people and he actually thought that it may be impossible for his ideas to be effectively communicated to people with little background in Physics... nonetheless he decided that he should try and explain it to undergraduates in a way that could be understood. He illustrated this point in this way...

In fact Feynman goes on to explain that every reasonable feature of our Universe except some aspects of resonance inside of nuclei (radioactivity) and gravity can be explained by this one theory. It is so accurate that it is difficult to explain just how accurate... If an atom was 100 Kms on a side then we understand the way that atom works with this theory to an accuracy of 1 cm. The only limitation to this theory is that it is a theory of statistics and only describes bulk properties not properties that are accompanying individual events. The reason for this are photons are either reflected or absorbed as a whole (photons do not involve themselves in dynamics ... this is because dynamics involve time ans space ... two properties that light speed photons do not possess) and there is never any partial absorption or reflection. Something cant happen to the photon along the way without an absorption and reemission which upsets the internal qubit.

Another "obvious" reason is the detectors cannot register partial clicks... it is either a whole click or there is no click at all. Those who understand photomultipliers and the way they work know that this is an instrumentation problem and not a physics problem. Take for instance the way in which coherent photons are absorbed into photosensitive emulsions... they absorb entirely and that represents the equivalent of a "click" but a close examination of the emulsion shows that they do not get absorbed with equal probability throughout the emulsion but this rate of absorption is following a wavelike function in which the photons being absorbed reaches a "high" along certain planes and in the intervening planes there is a "low" in the rate of absorption. These are "stationary fringes". This means that when the plate is developed it shows stationary waves of phase of maxima and minima or absorption. If these "stationary waves" are illuminated with the same frequency laser light then a recreation of the entire space of matter can be produced. In the case of photomultipliers this information is entirely lost because only a "plane" of data is recovered and the in-depth recording of the spatial arrangement of matter is entirely lost by conversion to a series of clicks.

I will now elaborate on Richard Feynman's explanation for the "movement" of a photon from the source to the sink. Consider this illustration.
.. Click to enlarge...

.. Click to enlarge...
Observe a "source" at A and a sink at X. In this case a photomultiplier but in general an other atomic resonant state similar to the one at the source. The photons in the LHS diagram have two possible ways to travel to X. A -> B -> X and A -> C -> X. One could be the front surface of glass and the other could be the back surface of glass. The "contributions" at X are a phasor whose amplitude is some value and whose phase is another value as if some kind of rotating hand on a clock determines the direction of each of these phases. The rate of rotation "spatially" depends on the speed of light so it 's rate is slower inside the glass and there is a 180 degree phase change off the rear surface. These two contributions in direction and amplitude are added and provided that the distance between the two surfaces is chosen in an exact way can be made to exactly cancel the reflections at the sink X by way of vector addition.

According to the theory of the path of least action the energy "appears" to travel according to external observers not directly from A -> X because there is an obstruction purposely placed there but will go from A -> B -> X by the shortest path. The other path A -> C -> X partakes in this sum used to calculate probability but this is not the path that the light takes at all... In truth the photons never go there since they never have time to. The "energy" passes only from A -> B -> X in a time related to the speed of light in that medium. Now if as I have stated the distance is chosen just right the probability of detection at X can be made to be be actually zero. No photons will ever be reflected to X so the photons "never arrive".

On the other hand a third plane can be placed as shown in green providing a path A -> D -> X in the presence of the other two paths A -> B -> X and A -> C -> X where these two former paths originally totally cancel. Now we can arrange this third path to provide the same level of reflection detected at X as it would be for a maximum of reflection from the front surface at B. This third plane could be up to thousands of kilometers away and have been practically demonstrated up to around 50 meters, yet the photon once again goes by the path of least action A -> B -> X the shortest available path. The other paths contribute but the photons "never go actually go there". This is referred to as "seeking all paths"... well they "seek nothing... the photons energy travels resonantly from A -> X by only one path.

So this has nothing to do with photons "moving" and "bouncing" off surfaces at all. Feynman said in his original lecture that this was due to matter waves resulting from the positioning of the reflecting planes in space... the interferences then condition the space. These "arrivals of photons guided by the matter wave interferences"are what are recorded in holographic plates not "light waves". It just so happens the pattern is very different for different positions of sources and for different distant planes of matter. A small imprecision in position will disturb this spatial matter wave pattern such that it will be totally lost. This is no theory it is a fact and is thoroughly confirmed by experiment. The "waves" in space are not light waves moving but are stationary matter waves "caused" by the arrangement of particles in space and are quasi-stationary. They are the empty space equivalent of Bragg Planes in X-Ray Diffraction continued into the longer optical frequencies.

So the photons of light "moving in its own frame" (and measured in its own frame) instantly transported by the shortest path in space to the sink at an "infinite speed" as reckoned in its own frame (see above). Seen from the lab observer frame of reference the photons appear to be "moving through space in waves". Well in actual fact Feynman said that it was a spatial resonance... I believe him... These "waves" are due to the presence of distant matter. The photon is "bi-located" at the moment of emission in the frame of the photon (due to infinite time dilation and infinite length contraction bringing source and sink into perfect resonant coincidence in the frame of the photon). The reconciliation of this in lab frames is that we "see waves in space" and this is outside of that primary "stuff"... the light... we have a Universe of space and time that no photon is aware of. At the instant of the "Big Bang" light would have been the primary "stuff"... without the initial formation of "matter"... there would have been no space and no time until "mass" and hence "matter waves" formed. A singularity as far as we can understand it. Yet time somehow began and this was due to the "precipitation" of mass in some form.... A "quantum demolition" event resulting in that mass. From that point in time this mass phenomena would spread as "multidimensional carpets" (Talbot Carpets) through the expanding space and time that was simultaneously produced in that event. It is clear that almost all matter will form through particle and anti-particle creation events. If we assume the Cramer's Event Driven Universe in which Wheeler-Feynman Absorber Theory is operating then anti-particles are simply particles traveling back in time. At the instant of the Big Bang half of all the matter will travel backwards in time to the point before the Big Bang in a Universe that was "uncreated" relative to our Universe.... That was the only place it could go since all of time had not started till that point so any backward time travel would result in a separation/sorting of the primary matter into the two forms separated by the barrier of causality and time's zero point. This solves the problem where all the anti-matter went soon after the Big Bang... You just need to accept Cramer's Event Driven Universe in which Wheeler-Feynman Absorber Theory Operates. If you do not accept this theory then you are left with a "big problem"... just where did all that antimatter go? You choose which is acceptable and which is not and which theory fits the experimental data that we have on hand.

The photons still have no mass but the energy of the photon is the reality of the photon as a moving and spreading non-dynamic packet.

This is because it follows the interferences created in space just like in the diagram above. It moves along the shortest path between two points the same that matter does in spacetime ... along a null geodesic. There is far mode "character" in that de Broglie wave Background than initially believed... it is not only the matter wave it is the source of matter...

.. Click to enlarge...
It is the sinc function. Notice that the sync function is a one sided function and has anett contribution at the center region. Photons are impulses of energy and this is their form.... as a "pulse" in the time domain (particles) and as a wave in the frequency domain. These two descriptions actually describe the one and the same thing from different domains ... or in this case "frames of reference". The rest frame of light sees an impulse. The relatively moving laboratory frame sees the wave. Two conjugate aspects of the one phenomenon.

I hope that clears up your points but ask questions if something still remains. I have used Richard Feynman's QED Book and his actual videotaped lectures as a reference for this exposition so I believe that this is what he would have said in hindsight. There is some "refinements" required to treat this subject with the full explanation since matter and space are relatively continuous entities but the answers are still the same regardless if this "simple" treatment is used or a more thorough and more complex process of integration is used for all possible routes a photon may take between A and X.

Cheers

This post has been edited by Good Elf on Dec 28 2007, 03:28 AM

Thanks Elfie, you understood my last question. I apologize for not having the language to express it 'better'.

I will study your response, thank you for taking the time.

Very nice post. Thanks for that. I'd be interested in any other Feynman lectures that are online.

One thing didn't quite get through though. Your frequency/time domain analogy. I understand the pulse/sync relationship but I can't quite tie it to particle/wave except in a very loose way. Is that what was intended?

Of course I have a lot more that I don't get, but I'll read the QED lecture I found first.

Thanks again, very informative.

Hi meBigGuy, sparkiii, BigDumbWeirdo, phyti, heretic and probably et al.

I am engaged in two conversations on two separate sections here. I think the others may wish to read the run up to all of this elsewhere...

Photon And Mass, energy transfer

I pick up at this point...

Good Elf's initial reply to the question
Good Elf's follow up to the initial statements
Please ignore the "misunderstandings"... skip to this point...
meBigGuy's follow up questions...
Good Elf's partial reply with a follow up typo correction following...
In this way everyone will be on the same level of awareness here...

Continuing on with some more points related to the "passage of time"...

I have been spending a bit of time answering your critique on the other thread in this category, it should support some of these idea. I can see that you are interested in this approach but perhaps a bit irritated. I can easily understand why. I may be trying too hard here in producing this material. As far as I know this extract presented here has been taken directly from my personal copy of QED by Feynman so it is not "online" as such. The other references are from the video and the experiment illustration is mine because Feynman omitted this description from his book including some of his off-the-cuff comments taken from there.

I have a considerable body of information that has been building over some time on this thread...
Problem with the two slit experiment, Observing later
This is summarized on the other thread...
Photon And Mass, energy transfer... Good Elf's last comments...
The overall idea that a number of good people have helped with this idea over a long time in which "electromagnetic resonance" in space are the result of spatial standing waves which exist because of the presence of matter as a series of "cavities". As you already know the additional idea that Wheeler-Feynman Absorber Theory is the key to a number of difficult problems that is quite a bother to Physics. I see you like the idea of the Feynman-Stueckelberg Interpretation of antimatter...
meBigGuy on the Feynman-Stueckleback Interpretation in the thread " Antimatter"

The idea being proposed is that all space (including the Universe) is a series of interconnected cavities and for want of a better analogy these cavities "ring" like "bells". Solutions of these systems is provided by the plane wave equation in these "cavities" at one level Examples are Schrodinger's Equation and /or Dirac's Equation and so on. The natural elementary excitation of any system would be the simple impulse (in more than the one dimension shown above) which has spatial or temporal duration. If I lose anyone please refer to the thread above and especially the last post there by me. The response of this system is a "ringing" of the interconnected system in which the energy (electromagnetic energy) is directly transferred from one point in space to the other point in space as described above effectively "instantaneously" in the frame of the impulse itself but appears as waves in space when considered as conventional propagation of light in other "observation frames".

In the event that a perfect resonant sink occurs somewhere among all those interconnected cavities the "transaction" can be made "instantly" in the frequency domain as "retarded waves" that converge on that sink after the minimum time of propagation but the transaction also initiates the advanced waves in the reverse direction that travels back in time from the future. The entire resonant system is what "connects" the source to the sink in the case of mechanical resonance in "bells" by the interconnectedness of the whole matter wave system. We should not be afraid of this kind of time travel... It is allowed despite the problems associated with "radioactivity" and other atomic resonant phenomena which appear to "spoil" this symmetry that is implicit in Quantum Physics of Particles.

Now the paradigm presently is "particles" and when we measure the state of a system it appears to collapse this state into "measurables". I do not think that statistical outcomes fully specify what is possible in a real quantum system in the same way the clicks of a photomultiplier can never describe the state of a set of interconnected cavities such as a room and the description which is better afforded by a holographic representation... I have mentioned this before. So ultimately the current quantum description using particles lacks certain essential ingredients to be able to describe a system correctly... Only a continuum wave theory can adequately express the full theory including the "interferences" in space. The clicks of the photomultiplier tube is a "projection" (an inner product) on to the sensor of certain actual measurables in such a way to show only a statistical outcome yet if we use photographic emulsion with a thickness we will obtain enough data to reconstruct a room/cavity of matter waves... A kind of "dark universe" that needs no light but still exists filling space at all frequencies or wavelengths as de Broglie Matter Waves.

The individual clicks are the "collapse" and these will be distributed not randomly but in precise patterns in three dimensions as sampled from that space as interferences within the emulsion. In terms of Wheeler-Feynman Absorber Theory the absorption of the photons is not the end of the matter but only a beginning. As improbable as it may seem these single events are potentially time symmetric while the quantum still exists in resonance. The interesting fact is if we move the source even a small amount the interference fringes will all move... all of them. If we change the frequency of the coherent light the fringes will be totally different as well. Our Hologram Model is simply only a single frequency representation of a broader relationship between sources of matter and the "reality" that we think exists around us.

In both cases it is logical to assume since all the fringes and all the sources and sinks are now slightly modified the events would be all modified as well. The set of all sinks and sources in our Universe is pretty much unique and represents a self consistent set of information. The slightest change in a single event regarding the sources and the sinks modifies all the "caustics" that make up the Universe of quanta. These may be superpositions of states that are coexisting or they may represent other perspectives on the problem..Wheeler-Feynman Absorber Theory solves this quandary by setting up unseen stationary waves in space, the result of standing waves in an entirely event driven symmetric Universe. The quasi-stationary nature of these waves is the result of only being able to notice the retarded spatial waves and not being able to see the advanced waves the resultant is the current physically stationary resultant we can see in Holograms. This perspective also represents the "mass centers", the associated impulse description in the time domain, as well which are held stationary to produce the "pretty pictures". A reading of the other tread response indicates what these "mass centers" really are.

My five cents worth suggests that in a Geometrodynamic Universe executing with Wheeler-Feynman Absorber Theory is also time symmetric but "coherence" between separate events is not guaranteed the further back in time you travel. The coherence between quantum phenomena is guaranteed only with regard to the temporally suspended events (quanta) which are represented conventionally by photons "propagating through space as waves" and appears not to apply to particles which are quasi-stationary in space which are "executing in time". This means that time travel is not about to completely reverse time as you move back in time as an antiparticle. What happens is the events begin to lose coherence after a certain period (a coherence "length" in time) due to the presence of "mass". Still some kind of travel is potentially possible. One very useful quantum of time travel is "zero time travel" of photons where the coherence length can be ensured. This means that a matter wave pattern can move in space yet not move in time as a quantum. This would be a bilocation from source to sink as previously noted.

The other point to note is if a photon changes from propagating in space at the speed of light (as an event) and then this photon is "trapped" as a particle (or within a particle) whose speed could be quasi-stationary de Broglie Matter Wave, the mechanism can be interpreted again as a photon executing within a much smaller compact dimensional space "within the particle" at the internal speed of light and spreading once again as internal standing waves in that reciprocal space as a frequency. When I say "within" I am not really meaning "within" as in the purely soap bubble analogy but in a more sophisticated AdS/CFT Duality of a modified form of Maldacena Duality or an anti-de Sitter Space connected resonantly with our "flatspace" of spacetime in a nested and compact Hilbert Space. In this way embedding of "bosonic surfaces" in fermions results in superpositions of the states of all internal events in reciprocal scales. These "hypersurfaces" contain all the information to construct full and rich spacetimes like ours and like the ones that Alice visited "Through the Looking Glass". From this point we can develop a the idea of a "Holographic Universe" proposed in some ways by David Bohm in which all the phenomena of our Universe can be embedded in part in phenomena are different levels and the problems associated with "radioactivity" which is related to "nuclear resonance" (QCD) can be addressed from another level of quantum reality by analogy with QED. When taken as some kind of whole ... A "Russian Doll" Universe. The QED level of reality and of Electromagnetism is able to be addressed through the work of Carver Mead who deals with Maxwell's Laws and the action of electrons in cavities. I would also point to other works such as...

Please do not take this "internal mapping" to have any relationship to the external closed compact dimensional space (think of it only in the way the internal space is "connected"). The external phenomena is not truly dynamic but expressed as internal resonant solutions such as that used in Carver Mead's approach. This is where it will get quite interesting but it becomes more inscrutable where Condo Phantoms in reciprocal Universes connect with the physics of our "flatspace".

A review of Carver's Book Collective Electrodynamics is here...

Please suspend arguments about individual paradigms for the moment... different questions are being asked by different authors so these all need to be merged seamlessly into a single mechanism... I think you can already see what this is. That is all I am trying to do here. Constructive questions accepted and points that may have some "typos" are apologized for in advance since this has not been reviewed and I see some of the typos already. This is asking Physicists to suspend the Mathematical Treatment and to look carefully at the Mechanisms... this is very hard for Physicists that have been taught from a very early age to simply be human calculators and not to discuss the philosophical implications of quantum theory against the experimental background of current results (only one process can possibly be correct). The mathematics "already exists" but the right paradigm does not and the current paradigm which is a particle is not adequate because it contains no world line (history). The paradigm should clearly be a wave and the mechanism should be "resonance". Elsewhere I have described these problems and once the issues are exposed all will be clear. You can readily appreciate that the language being used is not really up to it 'exactly". I must leave some "space" for your analytical minds to fill in where words sometimes leave off.

Cheers for now.

This post has been edited by Good Elf on Dec 30 2007, 02:17 AM

[I haven't read this thread completely yet, but will as it appears there are many facinating posts here]

The concept of cause and effect which is time dependent, may not be a 'real' aspect of noumenal reality, but instead may be just a mode of understanding (which would be one of Kant's a priori synthetic propositions the positivists don't like). It is important to realize that by virtue of obtaining knowledge of nature, it must have been 'forced' to conform to preconditions of mind, given how we are designed. It is impossible to think We don't add to our conception of reality and it shouldn't be surprising to realize that out minds have evolved to deal only with macroscoptic phenomenon where the distinction was left undiscovered.

In the quantum mechanical context, we 'force' reality into our pre-existing mode of 'cause and effect', ....when we decide to make an observation. This does not mean that reality in and of itself operates with cause then effect or time as its real essential aspect. These concepts are a means of a bio-mechanical mind to process phenomenal reality which we cannot escape. It is clear that a quantum observation forces nature into the minds context. You say, 'well we have instruments which reach well beyond human capacities'; yes and they were designed around the basis of cause, effect, and time. Our phenomenal conception of reality will never be the noumenal reality itself even if such exists. We conform reality to our minds when we 'colapse the wave function'.

This post has been edited by Noumenon on Jan 6 2008, 03:42 PM

... phenomenal reality has no meaning independent of thinking minds, nor does time, cause and effect, or whatever multitude of built in relations we start with a priori.

To look for time outside the mind is like chasing your own tail, …or to look ever so closer at the graininess of nature, as if you will discover it's ultimate tic, is quite humorous as well. Heteric had the right idea imo. My post above and here my sound fliminy-flam to some, but it is based on existing philosophy (Hume, Kant) and makes sense to me especially in the context of the quantum observation problem.

Time is not an empirically derived concept. One cannot represent appearances as existing simultaneously or successively unless the representation of time were already present in us a priori, ....as a necessary subjective condition of sensibility under which external intuition is at all possible for us. It’s a matter of the mind, prior to consciousness, processing external appearances given it’s inherent form and method. The mind’s gears and cogs leave an imprint on our conception of reality by necessity.

This post has been edited by Noumenon on Jan 7 2008, 02:26 AM

@Noumenon

The idealism you espouse went out of fashion back with Kant. That's time for you. Its a convienient argumant, but easily shown to be false.

Read some Bertrand Russell (The Problems of Philosophy is on the net). Start dealing with the fact that there is a reality that would be there even with no consciousness to interpret it. Don't confuse our labeling and interpreting time in our limited unidirectional way with causing it to exist. There is a big difference between what we experience and what is "real".

Time is the dimension that separates events. The only argument is in regards to its symmetrical nature and its quantization.

What is time to a photon? Read about Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory.

So, two reading assignments.