Question Time Dimension(s)

[Curious guy]

Hi Space Forum,

I'm curious. As far as I know, we separate our space dimensions (3D), and time dimension (1D) hence we got the words "we live in 4D with time being the fourth dimensions". Is it possible that time is actually not 1D? For example if time is 2D, maybe we are not just moving forward and backward, but up and down that created parallel universe? Have someone tried to make calculations assuming time is more than 1D?

I also once heard Neil Tyson said that in speed velocity, we dont feels time, hence when a photon was "born", it already in the end of its journey. Does that mean time is 0D for photon? Does that mean time dimensions is relative?

 

[billslugg]

Yes, the single dimension of time is relative to your velocity through space. For a photon at the speed of light time is standing still. Their visual field is but a tiny dot of bright light in the direction they are going. There are no additional dimensions of time nor of space. All such talk is mathematical speculation with no real world equivalent, just ignore it.

 

[RobbyQbit]

Yes, the single dimension of time is relative to your velocity through space. For a photon at the speed of light time is standing still. Their visual field is but a tiny dot of bright light in the direction they are going. There are no additional dimensions of time nor of space. All such talk is mathematical speculation with no real world equivalent, just ignore it.

Bill, so a photon from the Sun takes approx 8 minutes by my clock to reach my eye, but to the photon itself it's instantaneous since it does not experience time. I assume because of length contraction it has no experience of distance either?

 

[billslugg]

Yes, a photon is born when an electron drops to a lower level and emits a quantum of energy. The photon, being at the speed of light, sees time stopped, and the entire universe right in front of it as a tiny point of light. And don't believe it when told "light slows down" in a medium. Light never slows down, it stops, converts to another form of energy and is then re-emitted for a short journey then it stops again.

 

[RobbyQbit]

Yes, a photon is born when an electron drops to a lower level and emits a quantum of energy. The photon, being at the speed of light, sees time stopped, and the entire universe right in front of it as a tiny point of light. And don't believe it when told "light slows down" in a medium. Light never slows down, it stops, converts to another form of energy and is then re-emitted for a short journey then it stops again.

My understanding is the APPARENT slow down of light in a medium is the absorption and re-emission as you mentioned, but that the light still travels at c

 

[Atlan0001]

The principle of uncertainty doesn't deal in spacetime travel, it deals in spaces/times (or the simulation of many worlds / many universes (more simply put, more than one all at once at the same time more spaces, more times than one)) travel.

c = (+)300,000kps <-->|0| <--> (-)300,000kps ('0' being an indefinitely 'infinite zero').

 

[billslugg]

c = (+)300,000kps <-->|0| <--> (-)300,000kps ('0' being an indefinitely 'infinite zero').

It is possible for light to "appear" motionless - that would occur with any light photon that is coming straight towards us. Which happens to be every photon our eyes ever see. Thus: light does not move. Class, discuss quietly while I go to the teacher's lounge.

 

[Curiosity killed the cat]

[The laws of physics and the speed of light must be the same for all uniformly moving observers, regardless of their state of relative motion. For this to be true, space and time can no longer be independent. Rather, they are "converted" into each other in such a way as to keep the speed of light constant for all observers.]

[Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and onlya kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.]

Unless the above quotes by Einstein and Minkowski can be proven false, and I seriously doubt that will happen, this discussion is pointless.

Space and time are not stand alone phenomena, there is no space without time, or time without space, there is only space-time.

 

[Atlan0001]

[The laws of physics and the speed of light must be the same for all uniformly moving observers, regardless of their state of relative motion. For this to be true, space and time can no longer be independent. Rather, they are "converted" into each other in such a way as to keep the speed of light constant for all observers.]

[Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and onlya kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.]

Unless the above quotes by Einstein and Minkowski can be proven false, and I seriously doubt that will happen, this discussion is pointless.

Space and time are not stand alone phenomena, there is no space without time, or time without space, there is only space-time.

There is SPACE without TIME, TIME without SPACE, and SPACE and TIME, without SPACETIME.

Infinity (including infinities, infinite, and infinitesimal) closes up to and zeroes ('0' (null unity)) out in Horizon leaving local-relative finite ('1' (unity)). Finite adds and subtracts, multiplies and divides, to infinity as the 'potential' of 'infinity' (infinities, infinite and infinitesimal). The infinity that will zero ('0' (null unity)) out in Horizon leaving the finite ('1' (unity)) that will add, ... to infinity as the 'potential' of 'infinity' . . . and on and on, and on. The parallels of TIME, meaning times plural, are when TIME gets involved with infinity, an infinity of SPACE to an instant of TIME (t=0). TIME is "cause and effect," every cause being an effect as well, and every effect being a cause as well, and there can be a lot of TIME, a lot of cause and effect, in exactly the same SPACE (s=0).

---------------------------

A traveler leaves the Centauri System four light years away while being observed from Earth, if he could be observed from Earth, to be four years away from leaving the Centauri System for Earth (in other words, he is observed to be four years younger than he will be when he leaves Centauri). The trip takes four years to the day, and the Earth observer observes his arrival to Earth the day he observes his leaving Centauri to the minute . . . but the traveler is observed to have aged four years in no time flat in a trip observed to have taken no time flat. All the four years of time the traveler was traveling from Centauri to Earth, the Earth observer, if he could have, was observing the traveler to prep at Centauri for his apparently instantaneous trip through a wormhole to Earth.

The observer left behind in the Centauri System vehemently disagrees with the Earth observer's observations. After all he was there to observe the traveler's departure from the Centauri System. His observation is that it took the traveler eight years to the day to make the four light years crossing to Earth, and while doing it in eight years the traveler only aged four years and the traveler's clock displayed only four years of time passage during those eight observed years of the voyage.

There is a hypothetical space station sitting at half the distance between the Centauri System and the Solar System. The observer on the space station observes the traveler to make an instantaneous trip through a wormhole from Centauri to the station, while aging two whole years in the doing (per the traveler's clock), then bogging down in taking four years to finish the trip to Earth, two light years away from the station. That observer observes the traveler now to age only two years in the long four years he observes for the rest of the trip to take, for a grand total of four years of the traveler aging (four years time passage by the traveler's clock) during the entire trip of four years -- all the time taken being in the second half of the trip -- attested to by the station agent observer.

Then there is quantum physics.

 

[MattBlalock]

In the article by Robert Kuhn, here on Space.com entitled: 'The Illusion of Time: What's Real?' A number of different hypothesis are discussed, some that trash the old idea of Time as a mathematical byproduct of Relativity (velocity - v- distance) and that therefore; time is not real; "because no observer has knowledge of a distant event, or the simultaneity of different events...". I believe this contention to be false.

I can see the future because I can see the past, and it is all due to 'Relativity'. I am standing in the break room with three co-workers drinking coffee. My department Head is standing only a foot away from me. I can see several possible futures (because their must be some degree of chaos that affects the outcomes I see due to unknown factors). If I bump into my Boss as he lifts his cup I see three immediate probable futures.
1.) He will spill the coffee - certainty of 99.99999% if I bump him hard enough, which I will.
2.) He will become annoyed - high probability - 80%+
3.) He will become angry - lower probability - 60 to70%
4.) He will demote me - lower still probability - 30 to 40%
5.) He will fire me - much lower probability - 20% (I plead an accident and apologize)
6.) He will laugh and enjoy having his coffee spilled on himself - 0%

Each of these eventualities is predicated on general and historically provable REAL human behavior, because I can see the Past that 'IS'. It is not subjective in the sense that it is based on 'feelings' or 'opinions' . It also does not exclude additional probable eventualities: i.e. he may laugh then get angry, get angry then laugh it off, have a heart attack and die, or exit the room before he reacts in an unconventional manner reflecting poorly on himself.

The point here is, that if I can predict possible future outcomes within large degrees of probable certainty and that events, resultant from the incident, will flow forward from it. Therefore; Time does indeed exist and is not an illusion.
How far off am I?

 

[Atlan0001]

In the article by Robert Kuhn, here on Space.com entitled: 'The Illusion of Time: What's Real?' A number of different hypothesis are discussed, some that trash the old idea of Time as a mathematical byproduct of Relativity (velocity - v- distance) and that therefore; time is not real; "because no observer has knowledge of a distant event, or the simultaneity of different events...". I believe this contention to be false.

I can see the future because I can see the past, and it is all due to 'Relativity'. I am standing in the break room with three co-workers drinking coffee. My department Head is standing only a foot away from me. I can see several possible futures (because their must be some degree of chaos that affects the outcomes I see due to unknown factors). If I bump into my Boss as he lifts his cup I see three immediate probable futures.
1.) He will spill the coffee - certainty of 99.99999% if I bump him hard enough, which I will.
2.) He will become annoyed - high probability - 80%+
3.) He will become angry - lower probability - 60 to70%
4.) He will demote me - lower still probability - 30 to 40%
5.) He will fire me - much lower probability - 20% (I plead an accident and apologize)
6.) He will laugh and enjoy having his coffee spilled on himself - 0%

Each of these eventualities is predicated on general and historically provable REAL human behavior, because I can see the Past that 'IS'. It is not subjective in the sense that it is based on 'feelings' or 'opinions' . It also does not exclude additional probable eventualities: i.e. he may laugh then get angry, get angry then laugh it off, have a heart attack and die, or exit the room before he reacts in an unconventional manner reflecting poorly on himself.

The point here is, that if I can predict possible future outcomes within large degrees of probable certainty and that events, resultant from the incident, will flow forward from it. Therefore; Time does indeed exist and is not an illusion.
How far off am I?

1-6 is Stephen Hawking's six different paths in quantum physics, six sides of a single particle, at once six different particles, six branching universes, six paralleling universes. Six pieces of an 'Infinite MULTIVERSE Universe'.

 

[Questioner]

If a photon experiences no time then why does its apparent trajectory have sequential consistency?

If its position at one instant is the same as any other why doesn't it jump around randomly?
Or occupy its entire 'trajectory' simultaneously?

What is the mechanism whereby we see it making continuous 'progress' through space & time?

 

[billslugg]

It depends on your frame of reference. If you are riding with the photon, your clock is stuck at time=0. Looking forward through your windscreen all you see is a bright dot straight ahead which is the entire universe. Nothing ever changes.

As viewed from outside the photon, it is traveling at c in a particular direction.

 

[Classical Motion]

Can there be change without time? From the moment an emission occurs, and until it fades beyond detection, the density(amplitude) of the disturbance decreases. The flux of the field is constantly diverging, spreading and separating as it proceeds. It gets thinner.....as it moves. It dissolves. At a constant rate. The only constant other than V....is the disturbance duration. Flyby time. A fading flyby time. Fading at a constant rate.

Evidently an electron photon has the perfect weight control solution. Skinny up in no time.

 

[MattBlalock]

(I apologize for this classical reference, but it is timely : )
So Bruce Banner and the Ancient One were both right? I initially thought Bruce Banner's promise to return the Time Stone to its original point in Time was a plot hole refuting his statement of: “If you travel to the past, that past becomes your future, and your former present becomes the past, which can't now be changed by your new future” except not. The Past of your New Future can be revisited as the precursor to your New Future, just not the old Past predating your new Past. (Just kidding or ... not!) If Time did not exist, how would one perceive it? Ergo, if we perceive Time it must exist. If we perceive and remember Time then, Time must flow and be continuous (possibly making Julian Barbour wrong).
If we have a Past, we must have a Future or we would not exist.
If we have a Past and a Future then we must have a Present along the way of getting from A to B, and...
If Time is merely the perception of a continuous series of contiguous events leading from the Past through the Present into the Future do we not measure the passage of events by marking Time? And if we can measure Time then it must be real.

How can you measure something that is not real?

P.S. My usage of 6 scenarios was completely arbitrary.

 

[Questioner]

The photon has a non-arbitrary relationship with space in relation to time.
If there is no time how can the spatial position sequence be sorted-out/ordered/distinguished?
It would all be the same instant to the photon.
It would be everywhere on its trajectory in the same timeless instant.

Its position must be mapped to space in relation to something's time.
Are we unscrambling the intractable permutations of sequence for it?

My thought is it's a bit like the neutrino's mass,
it is so close to zero it may not be measurable,
but i think the/a photon must have an immeasurably small span of time associated with its duration/existence.

Newtonian correlation demands it.
Without some temporal parallax it becomes irrational.
(loses all frame of reference)

On another note
can time, possibly unidentifiable time, pass without (some kind of) identifiable change?
Is time a purely node to node graph function ('changes') or can the spans between nodes be (measurably?) different? (have edge 'lengths')

 

[Atlan0001]

It depends on your frame of reference. If you are riding with the photon, your clock is stuck at time=0. Looking forward through your windscreen all you see is a bright dot straight ahead which is the entire universe. Nothing ever changes.

As viewed from outside the photon, it is traveling at c in a particular direction.

You would be right, Bill, if it weren't for all those other photons, frames of reference, crossing into the crossroads from everywhere outside and making light and time physics measure 'c' to your '0'. Your windscreen deals in future histories and curvature oncoming to you in fast forward. Your rearview mirror deals in past histories in movie rewind receding from you at a pace of light seconds, light minutes, light hours.... light years . . . and curving. There is no end of histories -- futures in fast forward and pasts in fast rewind -- and no end of having to navigate, or better yet learn to lead and cut, curvature, else stern chases to eternity and constantly being thrown sideways or into other bad angles because of accelerations into ever tightening curvatures, vortices, of SPACETIME.

The speed of light, and spontaneous REALTIME, will come at you at +300,000kps constant relative to you and always recede from you at -300,000kps constant relative to you, always placing you at '0'-point centrality (+/-). You always measure its physical facing to you.

 

[MattBlalock]

There is SPACE without TIME, TIME without SPACE, and SPACE and TIME, without SPACETIME.

Infinity (including infinities, infinite, and infinitesimal) closes up to and zeroes ('0' (null unity)) out in Horizon leaving local-relative finite ('1' (unity)). Finite adds and subtracts, multiplies and divides, to infinity as the 'potential' of 'infinity' (infinities, infinite and infinitesimal). The infinity that will zero ('0' (null unity)) out in Horizon leaving the finite ('1' (unity)) that will add, ... to infinity as the 'potential' of 'infinity' . . . and on and on, and on. The parallels of TIME, meaning times plural, are when TIME gets involved with infinity, an infinity of SPACE to an instant of TIME (t=0). TIME is "cause and effect," every cause being an effect as well, and every effect being a cause as well, and there can be a lot of TIME, a lot of cause and effect, in exactly the same SPACE (s=0).

---------------------------

A traveler leaves the Centauri System four light years away while being observed from Earth, if he could be observed from Earth, to be four years away from leaving the Centauri System for Earth (in other words, he is observed to be four years younger than he will be when he leaves Centauri). The trip takes four years to the day, and the Earth observer observes his arrival to Earth the day he observes his leaving Centauri to the minute . . . but the traveler is observed to have aged four years in no time flat in a trip observed to have taken no time flat. All the four years of time the traveler was traveling from Centauri to Earth, the Earth observer, if he could have, was observing the traveler to prep at Centauri for his apparently instantaneous trip through a wormhole to Earth.

The observer left behind in the Centauri System vehemently disagrees with the Earth observer's observations. After all he was there to observe the traveler's departure from the Centauri System. His observation is that it took the traveler eight years to the day to make the four light years crossing to Earth, and while doing it in eight years the traveler only aged four years and the traveler's clock displayed only four years of time passage during those eight observed years of the voyage.

There is a hypothetical space station sitting at half the distance between the Centauri System and the Solar System. The observer on the space station observes the traveler to make an instantaneous trip through a wormhole from Centauri to the station, while aging two whole years in the doing (per the traveler's clock), then bogging down in taking four years to finish the trip to Earth, two light years away from the station. That observer observes the traveler now to age only two years in the long four years he observes for the rest of the trip to take, for a grand total of four years of the traveler aging (four years time passage by the traveler's clock) during the entire trip of four years -- all the time taken being in the second half of the trip -- attested to by the station agent observer.

Then there is quantum physics.

Which is 'No-time' simultaneity regardless of the distance between two entangled particles. Is the 'No-time' connection used to support the hypothesis that time does not exist?

 

[Atlan0001]

One thing I want to make clear. In Stephen Hawking's book 'A Brief History of Time', he describes a "Grand Central Station" of Universe at the dead center of which is a universal clock overhanging the crossing paths of all the Cosmos with a single hand frozen always pointing straight up to a single digit only on the clock (midnight/noon).

Einstein described the same thing differently in his vision of taking a mind's eye trip to the speed of light, and Bill, essentially (I do believe), plugged into Einstein's visionary trip using a photon as his transport. As Hawking pointed out, it doesn't stop the universe, it simply 0-points it as to its universal, and spontaneous, REALTIME.

Timing, though, is speed of advancing the frontier of REALTIME in the overall circling of time, the overall circles of time countless in number and offsetting time offsets. That speed of advancing front, advancing concurrent frontier universe, constant just happens to be exactly the same constant 'c' as the constant of the speed of light, the two in fact a singularity, two faces of the same thing, and never should have been divided out from it.

Bill, of course, got it exactly right in one respect, 'c' = '0' = (+/-)300,000kps.
'0' (0-point) is infinitely variably relative.
(+/-)300,000kps is 0-point Horizon (H) (all 0-point horizons (h) all in one all at once) collapsed cosmological constant (/\) and isn't variably relative!

Can you understand the Schrodinger, it "is!" and it "isn't!"? Bill, Einstein, and Hawking, among a few others (such as me), take it to both '0' and '300.000kps ('0' or '300,000kps). It is a difficult speed of light/REALTIME frame front advancement constant physic(s) to realize, particularly since it (spontaneous. concurrent, "REALTIME") will never be observed or observable, but there it is (that four-fold-square duality makes, forces, the single constant ('c') between).

Before I let go, I have to repeat that I am not talking the pliably observable simulacrum (simulacrums (hologram past-future histories frames)) of SPACETIME. Spontaneous REALTIME's emitted leavings behind . . . the observed events and the yet-to-be-observed events by observers . . . left behind and being left behind.