There Is No Single Instant In Time 672
tekkieRich writes "Some interesting news from the world of physics. Supposedly, in this paper, the author answers some of the major paradoxes (achilles vs. the turtle and Zeno) concerning our understanding of time. 'Impressed with the work is Princeton physics great, and collaborator of both Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman, John Wheeler, who said he admired Lynds' "boldness," while noting that it had often been individuals Lynds' age that "had pushed the frontiers of physics forward in the past."'"
Zeno's "paradox" (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought the solution to Zeno's paradox is that although you occupy an infinite series of points when you move, they can still sum to a finite distance. The Greeks may not have understood this, but this was all worked out centuries ago. By Cantor or someone.
So the author of this paper is claiming to solve a non-problem - doesn't sound very promising to me. Also, in these days of online preprint archives, why didn't the submitter link to the actual paper?
That's just the state of a counter... (Score:5, Insightful)
The posting act begins when the submit button is pressed, and ends when the database updates it's article index.
All "events" have a beginning and an end. Some of them have a known duration so the delta is not noted, but it still exists.
I don't know what's so revolutionary about that stance, especially from a practical standpoint, other than maybe the "directionless" nature of time. I think that, however, is an oversimplification that fits into the author's little mental framework he wants to construct. I prefer to think of complex intervals as very small closed sets around the approximate instant. There's nothing wrong or counterintuitive about that.
Time is mostly subjective anyway... (Score:1, Insightful)
Ever noticed how time seems to fly past when you're having fun? Or how something boring can drag out for ever? Or even better, how a workday can seemingly be endless, but a week full of them is gone boefore you knew what happened?
While it is a good while since I studied physics, it tells me that while we can make clocks that appers to measure how fast times goes, we move 'along' in time in a more haphazard fashion, slowing and accelerating as we blunder on. Time might be the diminsion thats 90 on the other three (width, depth and lenght), but we have a lot more problems determining both an objects movement in that dimension and the position in it.
In short, while some of the article went over my head (I've just gotten out of bed y'know), I think he might be on to something.
ps: It's sorta scary to see that people whos very job it is to broaden our understanding can be horrible quick to judge ("I have only read the first two sections as it is clear that the author's arguments are based on profound ignorance or misunderstanding of basic analysis and calculus. I'm afraid I am unwilling to waste any time reading further, and recommend terminal rejection."), as that will only slow down the speed we as a society learns about the world around us. Someone might be off the mark, but it's hard to decide from the first two paragrahps they write.
pps: In Terry Pratches well know discworld-series, the classical paradox is about a tortoise outrunning an arrow instead. And off course, the real question is what to do with all the tortoises on a stick the testing of that axiom gives you... ;P
Paradox? What paradox? (Score:4, Insightful)
The tortoise vs. Achilles paradox has not really plagued modern physics in that it is not a paradox (anymore - it might have been to the Greeks). The supposed paradox lies in the misconception that an sum with infinite terms will always yield an infinite number. This is obviously not true - As Achilles needs to traverse ever smaller distances he also does that in ever smaller amounts of time.
And the times add nicely up to a finite time - the time when he overtakes the tortoise.
The article claims that this is still a paradox. I think based on the idea in this quote:
> With some thought it should become clear that no matter how small the time
> interval, or how slowly an object moves during that interval, it is still
> in motion and it's position is constantly changing, so it can't have
> a determined relative position at any time, whether during a interval,
> however small, or at an instant. Indeed, if it did, it couldn't be in motion."
Say WHAT?!?
Please tell me why you can't have a well determined position as a function of time and be in motion as well?
He goes on to claim that uncertainties in the values of times is somehow a profound proof that no instant in time exists. Hey, you could say the same thing about the distance the poor fella has to transverse - thus spoiling the whole 'ever smaller distances' thing.
Please enlighten me.
Paper was mostly philosophy (Score:3, Insightful)
I do think that time is a bit of a mystery, and its possible that that his ideas may be roughly right. It might imply that moments or "moment intervals" were some sort of fractal sets, such that a moment can never be finitely splittable (only infinitely splittable). A mathematical model that accomplished this (within the framework of currently accepted/known physics) would be remarkable.
Academia is a pain in the ass. (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry for the long quote but it highlights something I've been gnashing my teeth over for a while - academia is rarely about real research these days, only chasing research funding - my entire CS Masters was about a program design paradigm with highly esoteric underpinnings and very little mathematical substance - on the other hand it was well funded!
Hence it doesn't surprise me that the research for this important and highly academic topic was done by a non-academic, and he got little or no help from the academic community.
Re:Groundbreaking? (Score:2, Insightful)
That being said, I'd say that perhaps the young man, not being a "classical" physicist, has a fresh perspective on the matter? You know, perhaps he's seeing the forest through some different trees....
Dunno, just a point for discussion.
Soko
Re:Yeah, no kidding (Score:2, Insightful)
It may take 4+ years of College training to learn most of the existing definitions / derivations / equations. But it only takes a genious to come up with a eureka in physics and philosophy.
For those of you who don't understand the article (myself included), it maybe because the article is just a rather crappy summary of the work. The actuall paper is to be published on the AUGUST issue of "Foundations of Physics Letters". Wait to read it then criticize.
Re:Paper was mostly philosophy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's just the state of a counter... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a scientist, but something tells me what is time can't be measured by us because we are inside whatever makes everything tick. Only those outside our system could measure the time inside our system. I would liken it to a computer program: it can't tell when it's being timesliced by the operating system, and it seems like it is running seamlessly, but it is not.
Re:Paradox? What paradox? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you assume that there is no atomic unit of time, then any representation of an "instant" in time actually represents a delta of time. In any delta of time, an object in motion is changing position -- which means that while you may get a pretty acurate measure of an items position, it is impossible to measure it's exact position.
What he's also stipulating is that if it was possible to have an atomic unit of time, and it was possible to take an exact measure of the position of an item, then it wouldn't be possible for that item to be in motion. An item is in motion if it is changing position -- but if you can measure it's exact position, then it isn't changing position. At least I think that's what he's trying to get across.
Re:Science imitates art . . . again. (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, as someone else mentioned, from what I can tell this paper is basically just philosophy anyway, which falls under the humanities.
Re:Yeah, no kidding (Score:3, Insightful)
"The usual rejoinder to someone who says 'They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Galileo' is to say 'But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.'" (Carl Sagan)
That it is, anyway. But the comments it quotes from other scientists, especially those favorable to the crackp^H^H^H^H^H^Hyoung groundbreaker, point to him restating the obvious, at best. OK, who knows...
Re:Kind of Like (Score:3, Insightful)
The only reason you can't determine pi to high level of accuracy by measurement is that in practice there will be inaccuracies in your measurements and in the shape of the circle. measurement issue. In principle, given perfect circle-making and measurement techniques, your accuracy is only limited by the Planck length (1.6 x 10-35m).
Re:That's just the state of a counter... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Groundbreaking? (Score:5, Insightful)
Questionable (Score:5, Insightful)
Some significant red flags here. First and most obvious is the wunderkind's lack of training and (presumed) familiarity with established concepts of physics and contemporary research. This isn't a deal-breaker, of course, but it's worth remembering. I'd love to see untrained theorists challenging - successfully - old-guard physicists with some astounding new insights, but I don't think that's happening here.
Wheeler's one-word endorsement - "boldness" - isn't ringing, and the bit about his age (he's 27) is irrelevant.
From a referee: "I have only read the first two sections as it is clear that the author's arguments are based on profound ignorance or misunderstanding of basic analysis and calculus. I'm afraid I am unwilling to waste any time reading further, and recommend terminal rejection." Ouch with a capital 'O'. There's no maths even referred to in this article, either, which I'd like to see.
"Lynds says that the paradoxes arose because people assumed wrongly that objects in motion had determined positions at any instant in time, thus freezing the bodies motion static at that instant and enabling the impossible situation of the paradoxes to be derived." This hasn't really been a problem since quantum indeterminacy.
From a "prominent Oxford mathematician": "A prominent Oxford mathematician commented, "It's as astonishing, as it is unexpected, but he's right." Unnamed source. HUGE red flag.
Within a quote: "Naturally the parameter and boundary of their respective position and magnitude are naturally determinable up to the limits of possible measurement as stated by the general quantum hypothesis and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, but this indeterminacy in precise value is not a consequence of quantum uncertainty." He gives no alternative explanation for the origins of this 'indeterminacy.' Up to this point the article's summary has proceeded along basic Planck/Heisenberg lines. There's really nothing new here, except the (in this article) unsupported assertion of a new form of indeterminacy that's not related to quantum effects on measurement.
"Lynds continues that the cosmological proposal of imaginary time also isn't compatible with a consistent physical description, both as a consequence of this, and secondly, "because it's the relative order of events that's relevant, not the direction of time itself, as time doesn't go in any direction." Consequently it's meaningless for the order of a sequence of events to be imaginary, or at right angles, relative to another sequence of events. When approached about Lynds' arguments against his theory, Hawking failed to respond." Ignores Feynman's 'arrow of time' characterization of antimatter as equivalent to matter moving in time-opposite fashion. Also ignores simple observation that time does, in fact, appear to move in one direction. In a layman's article it would be good to mention Lynds' explanation for this, if he has one. If he doesn't, well... And Hawking 'refused to respond' to whom? To Lynds? To the author? On what questions? In what timeframe? A phone call during dinner from Australia? Red flag.
"Although Lynds remembers being frustrated with Grigson, and once standing at a blackboard explaining how simple it was and telling him to "hurry up and get it", Lynds says that, unlike some others, Prof. Grigson was still encouraging and would always make time to talk to him, even taking him into the staff cafeteria so they could continue talking physics." Seriously big red flag. 'Hurry up and get it'? Sounds like high school bong-water theorizing.
"Although still controversial, judging by the response it has already received from some of science's leading lights, Lynds' work seems likely to establish him as a groundbreaking figure in respect to increasing our understanding of time in physics. It a
God help the Mods (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason I'm making this post is that I want to point out one thing. Alot of times, when mods, myself included (I metamod about three times a day), come across an article that ranges beyond or above our understanding of a topic, its hard to make a decision as to whether or not something is "informative", like in this article, where I see one post supporting the theory modded informative, and one post criticsing the theory also modded informative. This is physics, people, not YRO. You're either right or wrong in this case. Please do some basic research, please, before modding a post up, just because it sounds intelligent and is well written.
Btw, for all the detractors, this paper was originally published in a European Physics Journal, and most papers submitted to said journals undergo stringent review before being published as fact. This kid is getting supporters in all the right places, and you'll notice that many of his detractors tend to be the type of people who were still arguing the Earth was flat back in the 1800's. Some people just don't want to change, and many of these people are also detractors of Superstring Theory, and are apparently comfortable in dealing with the conflict between quantum mechanics and the theories of general and special relativity.
Another thing I'd like to point out are some of the problems this guy has had getting this paper to light, and receiving the help he deserved from memebers of academia, because of his lack of academic credentials. This is, to a degree, still going on right now. People need to realize that this guy is taking a lot of flak from various experts simply because he doesn't meet their academic pedigree.
Some "experts" need to be reminded that once upon a time someone wrote a very special paper, also widely denounced, also widely refuted for a while. And that person wasn't a department head at a prestigous university, nor was he being funded by wealthy patrons to run his own lab. He worked at a patent office.
Re:God help the Mods (Score:1, Insightful)
Anyways... just bear in mind that having a PhD goes a long ways towards offsetting mediocrity. This guy's a threat if he's right because that demeans the value of that hard-earned degree.
I tried and am still trying to understand what he's saying. Most of the yahoos here like to mod things for the sake of modding things and don't give a shit about the actual content.
Think of it this way (Score:3, Insightful)
Of the paradox had any validity at all, then no motion whatsoever could ever happen. Obviously that's not the case.
At some point, Achilles is on the other side of the tortoise, whether or not he ever has the same position is irrelevant.
Re:here is the actual paper (Score:2, Insightful)
I still think Lynds is full of crap, though.
Time, subjectivity and the nature of reality (Score:5, Insightful)
There can be no useful distinction between what is "really real" and what models seem to match our sensory data. For example, in string theory you use multi-dimensional membranes where different vibrational harmonics represent different elementary particles. Is this just a practical mathematical model or do these membranes really exist? The question is meaningless. "Das Ding an sich", as postulated by Kant is meaningless.
In quantum mechanics particles and energy can interact over small distances of time (see the Heisenberg uncertainty principle), just as they interact over small distances of space. Also in the theory of relativity time and space are handled almost identically by the equations with the speed of light, c, being just a convertional factor between distances in time and distances in space (almost like converting between meters and feet).
Thus both our best physics models of the world and our subjective understanding of time wants to treat it like a separate real dimension (not a SciFi dimension that you walk through, but a mathematical dimension - a separate orthogonal axis). What further criterions for something "existing" can you have?
The flow of time seems to be purely an illusion though.
Re:Academia is a pain in the ass. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, the "academia is really about suppressing the new" conspiracy theory -- the X-Files of the academic world. While there is sometimes an excess of conservatism in "academia", people usually forget how justified caution usually is. For every Einstein-like breakthrough, there are hundreds of crackpot theories. A system is needed to sort through and separate the wheat from the chaff. Oh, wait, we have such a system: peer review and open publication.
This breathless article in EurekAlert has all the hallmarks of a duped science reporter: deep-sounding (but, it seems, semantically null) phrases tossed about with abandon; derision and scorn at the stuffy old guys who just don't get it; and of course the simultaneous disdain for and desparate quoting of authorities. (That is, "most physicists don't agree because they just quote the same old authorities, but look, this Big Name likes my work, which validates it".)
I suppose we'll see how this plays out when the paper is actually published and people get a chance to take a hatchet to it. I'm guessing this will sink like a stone... if it isn't already a hoax.
Re:Time is mostly subjective anyway... (Score:3, Insightful)
Too hard to talk to academics... (Score:2, Insightful)
But my gut feeling is that it's nothing special; I haven't read the paper but the eurekalert.org article didn't inspire much confidence: spelling and grammatical mistakes, unnamed sources, drooling headlines, and reams of physics buzzwords.
As an adolescent geek I came up with dozens of new "theories"... none of which were well-informed, let alone scientifically testable. I admire the guy's perseverance, but I can't blame people for being skeptical.
Incidentally, this was in the local papers several weeks ago, with healthily skeptical comments by a couple of local academics. I am an under-graduate maths student at Victoria University, and I know of two lecturers there who specialise in time, but neither were named in the eurekalert.org article--IIRC, they weren't particularly welcoming of the paper.
mods wandering in dark labyrinth (Score:4, Insightful)
then the runner will have to transverse an infinite number of slices to get to his destination, which is impossible
As the other repliers have pointed out, this statement is wrong in the Zeno case. A sum of inifinite series can either converge or diverge. In the Zeno case, the geometric series 1/2^n as n->infinity converges* (thus it doesn't go to infinity to become a paradox in the first place). No fancy new physics is or EVER was necessary to resolve the Zeno paradox, only simple calculus. As with the aether, there is no paradox in the mathematics. The paradox only appears in the (incorrect) human interpretation based on (incorrect) intuition. Galileo said "Without the help of [Mathematics] it is impossible to conceive a single word of it, and without which one wander in vain through a dark labyrinth." *By the ratio test, the limit of the absolute value of Asub(n+1)/Asub(n) is 1/2. Since 1/2 is less than 1, the series converges. See Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences, Boas, page 12.
Re:Wheeler, collaborator of Feynman, likes the pap (Score:1, Insightful)
To avoid being completely off-topic, Wheeler's comment about the Lynds "theory" didn't address his ideas at all. After reading the Zeno follow-up article I don't see how his ideas revolutionize anything. That "points" in spacetime may only be a mathematical fiction doesn't seem to alter their usefulness in physics anywhere except possibly when physics tries to squish all of spacetime into a single point (singularity). But it seems to be mostly accepted that this consequence of General Relativity is more a demonstration of why it is not a correct theory then an acceptable physical prediction of the behavior of nature.
Re:Questionable (Score:5, Insightful)
From the point of view of science, the bias in the article is quite ludicrous. It is the first paper by a person of unknown capabilities. While the paper is published in a peer review journal, all this means is that it has no blatant errors and has interesting assertions. It's validity, and the reputation of the author, will be determined in the coming years as researchers dissect and ponder the logic. Even if the assertions themselves prove invalid, it may generate a new line of thought in the community, which in itself is worthwhile.
Your criticism tend to fall in the journalistic realm. In most published papers some reviewers agree with the paper and some think it is hogwash. Criticizing a sound-byte is unwise as it puts meaning into a meaningless statement. As you mention, the Hiesenberg uncertainty principle (dx dp > hbar) applies to location and only indirectly to time. However, the fact that he is now asserting that time is smeared, and gives not explanation why, is not a big issue. The famous Planck postcard did not give a justification for quantization, it merely indicated that the black body paradox was solved if one assumed energy was quantized.
In all, the assertion that time may be 'quantized' and inherently fuzzy is compelling, and I can understand why a journal would believe that such research would be interesting to it's readers, even if some would dismiss it as hogwash. After all, Feynman's spent a long time trying to prove that one interpretation of quantum mechanics was correct, only to prove they were equivalent. And although his assertion of 'one electron' is not likely correct, it is interesting to think about.
Re:You're missing the point (Score:1, Insightful)
It's quite simple really, assume space is infinitly divisable (if it isn't Zeno's pardox does not apply), then assume you have 2 distinct points, between the points you can have annother point, adn between the new one and the old ones you have more points, ad infinitum. If you can allways find a new point between 2 points then you have a contiuous space, i.e. you can get from one point to annother by traversing points in the space. If you can grok this zeno's paradox becomes a doddle.
As an aside how about this solution to the paradox. It is assumed that you can get half way along the distance, and from this it is prooved that motion is impossible. This is a contradiction, indicating that at least one of the starting assumptions is incorrect. No if we remove the assumption that you can move the proof that you can't move fails, annother contradiction. Hence annother assumption must be incorrect.
Basically the proof rests on the fact that you can move, I think nowadays that would be called bad maths.
Re:That's just the state of a counter... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no time dimension: time is our perception of change. Our most accurate clocks are based on the rate of decay of an atom, or the rate of spin of an electron. A wind-up clock simply runs at a speed that we have determined will keep a reasonable account of time relative to other clocks. Time does not really exist - but it is useful for us to think of "time".
What does exist is change caused by the operation of our universe. Those outside our system could measure the number of cycles our universe has run for. It's a simple quantity.
Re:That's just the state of a counter... (Score:3, Insightful)
BTW if you are still thinking about "very small closed sets around the approximate instant" then you will need to define where the enclosure starts and ends....but how can you when it's a continuity without intervals?
Zeno's Paradox (Score:1, Insightful)
Please, before you get too carried away with the logic puzzle, step back and think about the physics.
Re:Groundbreaking? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:More Giveaways (Score:2, Insightful)
First of all this kid needs to take a class in calculus and analysis. Though he took a limit of a geometric sum, it is very obvious that he doesn't really understand calculus in its rigor. All this paradox stuff is easily solved with analysis and can be a nonproblem when you aren't on a continuous interval. He seems to make no distinction between how you can think about space time and how it behaves. And he adds absolutely no new ideas to anything.
Secondly this kid needs to take a class in topology. HE REALLY NEEDS TO TAKE A CLASS IN TOPOLOGY. He tries to make some really bad descriptions of what intervals in space time are like, but it is quite obvious that he lacks the tools to properly describe his nonsense. He just keeps describing space time with intervals that contain no points. Wow man.
Thirdly he needs to take some fucking QM. He keeps using HU but he seems to have no effing clue as to what phase space is. And this goes back to the previous. How can you possibly try to describe the topology of space time if you don't even know what a fucking spin foam is.
Finally, whatever professor let this shit out needs to be kicked out of the science club. And whatever journal accepts this garbage needs to be burned.
I've had stupid ideas. I still have stupid ideas. But my peers don't let me go around showing off my ignorance to the world when I stumble upon a subject that I am inadequitely equiped to deal with.
Frankly all of this smells of some kind of reverse Sokal hoax, or those French twins that wrote those terrible cosmology papers where ++++ metrics magically transformed into +--- metrics in the beginning of time.
Re:You're missing the point (Score:2, Insightful)
In a more abstract statement of the problem, given an infinite series:
is the denominator of the last term even or odd?
Well, if it's an infinite series, there is no "last term" and thus the question is ill posed. The whole point of an infinite series is that it doesn't end (that's where the "infinite" part comes from).
Re:Groundbreaking? (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, if we can only get economists, psychologists, and political scientists to understand this...
Re:Questionable (Score:3, Insightful)
It's really funny how often people take new age or paranormal phenomena and try to give it scientific justification through quantum physics. It reminds me of how every superhero origin story in old comics would be due to radiation. You can use complicated science that isn't very understood at the time to explain practically anything.
Re:Black Holes in Russia (Score:2, Insightful)
Wheeler coined it in the late 60's
before that they were known as gravitationally collapsed stars
and before that (and before GR) they were known as dark stars
Re:That's just the state of a counter... (Score:3, Insightful)
There is, but only in our minds.
So what is "rate"? What is "speed"? Can you define both of these without referring to time?
Take the definitions of rate and speed and substitute the classical view of time with my view of time, and the definitions of the words still work. Does that make sense? Since my argument is that there is no such thing as time, the meaning gets a little deeper. Say a car is going 60 miles per hour. We can expand this sentence to "a car is going 60 miles per 5 billion resonances of a cesium atom".
Can you tell me how time is measured without referring to change?
How is the accuracy of an atomic clock calculated?
Can we detect time, or are we really detecting change?
Re:Is this a hoax? (Score:2, Insightful)
It is easy to see why a reviewer would refuse to read the paper past the first two pages. For example, "1.9999..." should be written in the more compact form "2". (This is elementary-school mathematics and has nothing to do with physics. Except that in order to be the next Einstein, one needs to get the maths right.)