World without Time

 

The Persistence of Memory - S. Dali

"Do we exist in time, or does time exist in us? (...) We conventionally think of time as something simple and fundamental that flows uniformly, independently from everything else, from the past to the future, measured by clocks and watches. In the course of time, the events of the unverse succeed each other in an orderly way: pasts, presents, futures. The past is fixed, the future open ... And yet all of this has turned out to be false.
One after another, the characteristic features of time have proved to be approximations, mistakes determined by our perspective, just like the flatness of the Earth or the revolving of the sun. (...) What we call 'time' is a complex collection of structures, of layers."

- Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time

Where to begin?

This sentence itself implies a sense of time: a beginning, a progression.

The notion of time is so deeply ingrained in us, temporal beings, that we cannot imagine a world without time. What kind of world would that be? In relation to what measure could events be ordered?

Space and time are the entities we consider most fundamental. The space in which we move and the time that measures the succession of events in which we take part.

But let's pause for a moment. What does this space and time consist of?

Is space that Cartesian reference, with an origin and three orthogonal vectors pointing to each of the three spatial dimensions, allowing us to unequivocally locate our position? And where is this cage hanging? Is it a set of cages that move uniformly relative to each other?

 

Is there really such a thing as space, the stage for the events of the world? Or does space only emerge as an approximation of the relationships between events?

And time?

What do we think of when we think of time? What characteristics do we attribute to this entity?

Simple Fundamental Independent of everything else Flows uniformly from the past to the future Measured by clocks.

Is it really so?

Have we always viewed time in this way?

Is physical time the same as subjective (psychological, individual) time?

Before the scientific revolution and before Galileo and Newton, what notion of time did we have?

Was there a universal time, or did each village, each city follow its own time?

If we consult history books, we find that not so long ago, each village had its own solar noon. Each location was governed by the natural rhythms of the sun and the fields. Noon was when the sundial indicated that the sun was at its highest point in the sky. The rhythm of life was based on the time that elapsed between sunrise and sunset.

In fact, the invention of time with the characteristics we have mentioned is due to the scientific revolution and the great standardization carried out by Newton. By unifying the laws governing celestial motion with those responsible for the fall of apples, it was necessary to introduce an independent variable, time.

Later, with the technological revolution, the invention of the steam engine, the appearance of locomotives, and the need for universal synchronization of train schedules, the standardization of time moved from physics laboratories to the organization of society

There began to be a clear separation between subjective time and physical time.

But let's go back to the independent variable. This variable was available. Galileo had already operationalized its use by measuring the fall of objects on inclined planes and using water clocks that dripped water at regular intervals.

Kepler told us that the line connecting a planet to the Sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times.

Newton introduced three laws. The second law tells us that the force acting on an object imparts an acceleration directly proportional to it. And acceleration is the change in velocity over time. Velocity itself is a measure of displacement over time.

This time is simple, independent, fundamental, flows uniformly, and can be measured by clocks. It has only one small problem: it has no direction. It flows both forward and backward in time.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Let's start with the uniform and independent flow.

Until the beginning of the 20th century, no one in scientific circles questioned this uniformity, which seemed to be engraved in the fabric of the universe.

But then catastrophe struck: a young, brilliant, rebellious, and restless man, employed in a patent office, a physicist in his spare time (which was all the time he could spare), appeared on the scene.

In 1905, Albert Einstein, then only 25 years old, published a series of miraculous articles that forever changed our perception of the universe. Not immediately, suddenly, because people are what they are, and they resist changing their conceptions and beliefs. Some say they take time to accept change. Others will say that change is only truly accepted when the old guardians of the temple retire or die and are replaced by a new generation that has been educated in the new paradigms.

In just four articles, dealing with Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect, the theory of relativity, and the equivalence between matter and energy, Einstein provided strong evidence for the reality of molecules, confirming the atomic hypothesis of matter, explained the quantization of radiation (energy), inadvertently laying the foundations of Quantum Mechanics, and showed that space and time are not absolute concepts. In other words, he completely revolutionized our understanding of matter, energy, space, and time.

Time no longer flows independently of the observer. It becomes an arena in which each subject has their own time that flows differently from the time of another subject, depending on the motion state of both. There is no longer an absolute, cosmic time.

We do not perceive this discrepancy because, at our scale, the difference is too small for our biological processes to detect.

We live in a bubble, roughly the size of our planet, where the illusion is complete. Farther away, the illusion breaks. The difference becomes large enough to be observed by our instruments. If one of two twin brothers, the more adventurous one, takes a journey to the nearest stars, assuming he can take advantage of advanced technology that allows him to reach speeds close to that of light, when he returns and meets his sedentary brother again, he will be shocked to find a much older version of himself.

Through calculations, both brothers can assess the proper time that has elapsed for each of them, but they have no universal, independent measure to cling to, to say that at a certain moment one was looking at Alpha Centauri through the spaceship's window while the other was watching a reality show on TV.

There is no clock hanging in a cosmic center with universal time. There is no cosmic center at all.

As the nature of genius is perpetual dissatisfaction, throughout the decade following 1905, Einstein worked to demonstrate that space-time itself is a dynamic entity that bends and curves according to the whims of matter-energy.

Newton's gravity ceased to be a mysterious force acting at a distance, disappearing completely, leaving only the local interaction between the curvature of space-time and objects.

One surreal consequence of massive bodies governing the fabric of space-time is the slower passage of time near the surface of a planet or celestial body. What's even more fantastic is that current technology allows us to measure this difference with considerable precision. Modern clocks can confirm that the time interval passing at the surface of a laboratory is indeed different from the time interval passing just one meter above it, on the surface of a table.

In fact, both 20th-century theories, quintessentially modern, Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity, offer predictions that have been confirmed by incredibly precise measurements.

However, they are incompatible theories in their structure, in their formalism, and in their worldview.

Quantum Mechanics is the theory of the domain of the small, of granularity, of indeterminism, and the relational aspect of physical quantities. General Relativity is the theory of the large, of continuity, and determinism.

They live in separate worlds and only collide head-on in the extreme conditions, such as the brutal violence at the center of black holes or the immense explosion at the beginning of the universe. As we approach these abysses and our magnifying glass of imagination peels back the laws of the incredibly small, we are horrified to see the continuous theory break as it inevitably heads toward the absolute crushing of the singularity. That infinitesimal point where continuous mathematics ceases to adequately describe reality.

At the Planck scale, 35 orders of magnitude below our human dimension and 25 below the size of the atom itself, the continuum breaks down into a froth of quantum fluctuations, where spacetime itself becomes granular.

Quantum Foam

This is where the relatively recent Quantum Gravity Theory comes in—the effort to apply the rules of matter quantization to spacetime itself.

When you reach volumes on the order of magnitude of the Planck scale, quantum repulsion comes into play, which prevents matter from continuing to collapse under the effect of the immense gravitational force. The singularity problem is resolved, and instead of collapsing to the absolute infinitesimal, the universe does a "big bounce" and begins to expand again.

But the theory goes further.

It goes much further. A certain strand of Quantum Gravity even claims that time itself fades away and ceases to exist. Things cease to have their own existence. At this scale, what exists are events and the relations between them. Everything is dynamic; nothing exists without being in constant change. Nothing is static; everything happens. And it happens without time. The equations governing this dynamic don't have an independent time variable.

Time becomes an emergent concept, which arises "macroscopically" from the interaction of an incredibly high number of event granules. We can think of it like temperature. Temperature doesn't exist on a microscopic level. In that realm, there are violent collisions between atoms and molecules. Temperature is a phenomenon we feel because we're too big to feel the individual impact of each matter particle. What we feel is an average of the agitation of these micro-particles, which we call temperature. For us, it feels very real. We freeze in the snow and roast in the flames of a fire.

So it is with time. For us, it has a real and effective presence. But it's just an illusion. And not in a Buddhist, mystical sense, but in a very real physical accession, which, although unproven, is a significant possibility for a substantial faction of the scientific community dedicated to these matters.

And when we pull away from the magnifying glass, what happens? Time spontaneously emerges in equations at the atomic scale. And it's a mysterious time that has direction but no meaning. If we reverse the equations, we don't notice any difference. There is no arrow of time in the dynamics of particles' equations.

The arrow of time only emerges at our scale, as yet another emergent feature of system complexity. If we drop a vase, it shatters upon hitting the ground. We'll never witness the reverse phenomenon of a vase spontaneously rising whole from its shards, like a phoenix reborn from the ashes.

What underlies this asymmetry? Once again, physicists tell us it's the third law of thermodynamics: entropy always increases in a closed system. And entropy is a measure of disorder.

But, upon closer inspection, this too is revealed as just a macroscopic approximation. As we approach the Planck scale, once again the concept breaks. Time frees itself from its shackles and starts to move wherever it pleases. To the future, but also to the past.

Layer of complexity upon layer of complexity gradually brings out the characteristics of temporality and dimensionality we're familiar with. But it's all just a useful illusion.

And what is disorder to us? If we take a deck of cards with 4 suits and 13 ranks, it seems easy to characterize order as opposed to disorder. Order is having the cards sorted by suits. First clubs, then spades, followed by diamonds, and finally hearts. But why not sorted by ranks? Or by color? Each sorting is a convention, we realize in dismay. Isn't there a unique way to separate the cards? No, any separation is just a product of our mind.

Is entropy a measure of our ignorance of the microscopic states of the universe? Is it a measure of our interaction with the Cosmos?

Does our time arise merely from the particular way we interact with the universe?

Does this question even make sense?

How far will the questions take us?

Post Scriptum

ChatGPT summary:

Based on the provided web search results, it is clear that the blogger dorsal1967 has written about a wide range of topics, including physics, poetry, and blogging itself. However, there is no direct information on dorsal1967's views on time.

The provided link to dorsal1967's blog leads to a post titled "A World Without Time," which appears to be a discussion of the nature of time and its relationship to physical laws and human perception. The post quotes several sources, including physicist Lee Smolin and philosopher Henri Bergson, and suggests that the concept of time may be more complex and mysterious than commonly understood.

While there is no direct information on dorsal1967's personal views on time, it is clear that the blogger is interested in exploring challenging and thought-provoking ideas. They appear to have a broad range of interests and a willingness to engage with complex topics, which suggests that they may have insights on the nature of time and its role in human experience.

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