“About time: Adventures in the fourth dimension” is an interesting series of New Scientist articles on that famous fourth. It’s essentially a bid for subscriptions, but while you decide, you might learn, for example, that “The essential nature of time remains the universe’s greatest mystery.” Hmmm. We’d thought the essential mystery was the exact relations between the four fundamental forces, but now that writer Sturt Clark mentions it, ….
Or this from Amanda Gefter:
As we know only too well, time, unlike space, has only one direction – it flows from past to future, and never the other way round.
. A thorough search of the laws of physics turns up no such arrow of time. For example, you can use Newton’s laws of motion to work out where a ball was thrown from in the past just as well as where it will land in the future.
http://www.amazon.com/Cycles-T.....0224080369
Roger Penrose has a very thought-provoking discussion of he 2LOT in the Prologue and Chapter 1 of his new book.
In science, before Einstein, time was held to be a independent entity that was constant in flow and infinite in duration i.e. it was held that time had no beginning or end and that its ‘flow’ has always been the same in all places in the universe at all times. In fact I believe that that particular view of infinite, and constant, time was/is axiomatic to Newton’s equations of gravity and motion. The same can be said for space. Space, before Einstein, was held to be infinite, in regards to width, length, and height, and it also was held to be without beginning or end. And as well, I believe that that view of infinite, without beginning or end, space also was/is axiomatic to Newton’s equations on gravity and motion. And thus Einstein came along and with his insight,,,
,,,showed that space and time were two sides of the same coin; i.e. space-time were united into one entity. And space-time is now seen to be a ‘physical’ entity (a fabric) that has real effects on material objects:
Even light is bent by this ‘fabric’ of space-time;
The common view now, held by the general public, is that gravity is created as mass warps the fabric of space-time, but there is now reason to believe that gravity is more properly thought of as being created as a emergent property of space-time prior to the presence of any mass:
And there is now reason to believe that gravity does indeed arise as a entropic force once space-time itself has emerged. This is since Black Holes, the largest contributors of gravity, are also now found to be the largest contributors of entropy (randomness) in the universe:,,,
And this ‘entropic force of gravity’ is so even though space-time is warped to the point of ‘infinite curvature’ where mass has effectively disappeared from the ‘normal’ space-time of this universe and also since the space-time equation of General Relativity breaks down at black holes:
Moreover, the view of space-time as a static ‘fabric’, that is merely curved when mass is present, is a bit to simplistic in its view of space-time, for now for it to be even possible for time ‘travel into the future’, being inextricably wed to space in General Relativity as it currently is, we find that space must also ‘expand’ with the passing of time into the future. And indeed this common sense conclusion, for the expansion of space with the passing of time, is what we find. In fact we find the expansion of space, with the passing of time, (referred to as Dark Energy), to be the most finely tuned of all the universal constants in the universe, save for the initial entropic setting of the universe (1 in 10^120 and 1 in 10^10^123 respectfully):
continued later –
But perhaps the most important insight to gained, from Einstein’s special theory of relativity, was the finding that the current space-time we live in, in this ‘material’ universe, is a ‘lower dimensional’ value of space-time. Time, as we understand it, would come to a complete stop at the speed of light. To grasp the whole ‘time coming to a complete stop at the speed of light’ concept a little more easily, imagine moving away from the face of a clock at the speed of light. Would not the hands on the clock stay stationary as we moved away from the face of the clock at the speed of light? Moving away from the face of a clock, at the speed of light, happens to be the same ‘thought experiment’ that gave Einstein his breakthrough insight into e=mc2.
i.e. Traveling at the speed of light get us to the place where time, as we understand it, comes to complete stop for light. Yet, and this is a big yet, light is not frozen within time! Thus for us to make sense of this seeming paradox, of time as we understand it not passing for light and yet light not being ‘frozen within time, we must necessarily assume a ‘higher dimensionality’ for time at the speed of light. i.e. We must assume a eternal, ‘past and future folding into now’, framework of time. This higher dimensionality, ‘eternal’, inference for the time framework of light is strictly warranted because, as said before, light is not ‘frozen within time’ and yet it is shown that time, as we understand it, does not pass for light.
Experimental confirmation for time dilation is fairly abundant;
Moreover, we have ‘eye witness’ testimonies for the higher dimensional, eternal, framework of time, which was strictly warranted earlier, from Near Death Experience testimonies. Here are a few testimonies, of many that could be presented:
It is also very interesting to note that we have two very, very, different qualities of ‘eternality of time’ revealed by our time dilation experiments;
i.e. As with any observer accelerating to the speed of light, it is found that for any observer falling into the event horizon of a black hole, that time, as we understand it, will come to a complete stop for them. — But of particularly disturbing interest to the ‘eternal framework of time’ found at black holes;… It is interesting to note that entropic decay, which is the primary reason why things grow old and eventually die in this universe, is found to be greatest at black holes. Thus the ‘eternality of time’ at black holes can rightly be called ‘eternalities of decay and/or eternalities of destruction’.
Needless to say the implications of this are fairly disturbing!
But to continue on, we find that along with time ‘folding in on itself’, to become a higher dimensional ‘eternal now’ framework of time, we also find that space itself, dramatically, folds in on itself as a observer approaches the speed of light. The 3:22 minute mark of the following video shows the 3-Dimensional world ‘folding and collapsing’ into a tunnel shape, like a folding, and rolling up, sheet of paper almost, around the direction of travel, as an observer moves towards the higher dimensional speed of light, (Of note: This following video which was made by two Australian University Physics Professors with a supercomputer.)
Here is the interactive website, with link to the relativistic math at the bottom of the page, related to the preceding video;
And again this folding a collapsing of 3-Dimensional space, as the higher dimension of the speed of light is approached, is corroborated by Judeo-Christian Near Death Experience testimonies:
Moreover, quantum biology has now implicated a ‘quantum soul’, which makes such a transition to a higher dimension for each of our ‘souls’, in accordance with how physical reality is structured:
Music and verse:
What has really cooked my noodle is this: “Can meaningful choices be made without time?” I mean, if we live in eternity, nothing changes, right? Or does it, somehow?
Collin, you ask:
, eternity does not equal frozen in temporal time,
,, I believe this following video is good for explaining how choices (a extremely bad choice in this case), even if the choice was made while in a eternal time dimension, had dramatic consequences.
On the nature of time,,, Cleaned up my previous posts, hopefully it will be much more clear to understand as well;