Astronomy.com: The struggle to find the origins of time

Kairosfocus, How did you come to the conclusion that the fabric of extended reality (by which I assume you mean space-time) is implicit in Newtonian mechanics? -Q Querius

Q, that was already implicit in Newton's law of gravitation. That mass, inertia, gravity and the fabric of physically extended reality should interact is reasonable. Surprising but reasonable. KF kairosfocus

What astonishes me is how gravity interacts with and distorts space-time. It seems like we're at a point where experimental evidence is needed to reduce the multitude of possibilities or to force a completely new paradigm. "Time is nature's way of ensuring that everything doesn't happen all at once!" -Q Querius

Of related note to Henri Bergson (who, as mentioned previously in this thread, was an late 19th, early 20th, century philosopher of such prominence that he negatively effected Einstein receiving a Nobel prize for relativity.)

Bergson, Henri (1859–1941), Excerpt: Although born Jewish, Bergson was increasingly attracted to Roman Catholicism. While declaring his "moral adherence" to Catholicism and requesting that a priest pray at his funeral, Bergson refused to abandon his fellow Jews in the face of Nazi anti-Semitism. Bergson began his career as a disciple of Herbert Spencer, whose evolutionism exalted science and the individual. In the 1880s, however, Bergson decided that science provided an incomplete worldview, for its concept of time could not account for the experience of duration, (i.e. the experience of the now, and/or the persistence of self identity).,,, ,,, Whatever his earlier views, by 1932 Bergson was affirming a transcendent God of love who is creatively involved in human existence. https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/philosophy-and-religion/philosophy-biographies/henri-bergson

bornagain77

When you take all the quantum evidence previously described above in detail, there is only one rational conclusion: what we call "the physical world" only exists in mind/consciousness in what we call "the now." IOW, consciousness in the now has been demonstrated to not be an effect of either external or prior events, but the primary cause of everything we experience, including what we think of as "the past" or experience as "external." Creation is not something that happened "in the past;" it is always occurring in mind/consciousness in the now. I don't see that there's any other way to model it, given the current state of the evidence provided by @100 years of quantum physics experimentation. William J Murray

Dr Hedin, I think we need to ponder local clock time with relativistic effects and cosmological time as seen on say timelines of cosmological expansion. I think definition of a clock to track is relevant and note that in each case we see that time is inextricably bound up in our world being a causal-temporal, thermodynamic domain. Regularity of oscillations and predictability of trends such as RA decay then allow us to compose time scales and technological clocks; the pendulum clock being a paradigm for an effective, relatively low tech clock accessible to something like classical world technology as seen from the Antikythera mechanism. An obvious natural clock is the H-R diagram and branch to the giants, used for instance with star clusters. This then tells us, we start with a cumulative, rate process and/or an oscillation that can similarly drive a rate process. Such are inherently thermodynamically constrained, tied to entropy increase as we know from having to replace watch batteries. And of course I am pointing to entropy and the second law as time's arrow. Heat death then would occur when no significant clock process could go on, even say cooling down of white dwarfs. Clock processes obviously connect to metabolic processes and this puts an upper limit on strictly biological, cell based life. Logic of being does not preclude non biological life or sustaining of a domain externally from in effect an inexhaustible source. KF kairosfocus

Thanks Awstar, as to:

,,, De Caro explained that the WAXS method was used on a variety of samples of historical textiles that have been documented to be aged from 3000 BC to 2000 AD. He placed the Shroud of Turin against these samples and found that it best matched a piece of fabric known to have come from the siege of Masada, Israel, in 55-74 AD. https://aleteia.org/2022/04/22/new-technology-suggests-shroud-of-turin-is-2000-years-old/

Of addition note to the Masada clothe

The Shroud of Turin - Evidence it is authentic Excerpt: In June 2002, the Shroud was sent to a team of experts for restoration. One of them was Swiss textile historian Mechthild Flury-Lemberg. She was surprised to find a peculiar stitching pattern in the seam of one long side of the Shroud, where a three-inch wide strip of the same original fabric was sewn onto a larger segment. The stitching pattern, which she says was the work of a professional, is quite similar to the hem of a cloth found in the tombs of the Jewish fortress of Masada. The Masada cloth dates to between 40 BC and 73 AD. This kind of stitch has never been found in Medieval Europe. http://www.newgeology.us/presentation24.html

bornagain77

to BornAgain77 (off topic) have you seen this? https://aleteia.org/2022/04/22/new-technology-suggests-shroud-of-turin-is-2000-years-old/ awstar

Exodus 3:13-14 13 Then Moses asked God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is His name?’ What should I tell them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” OldArmy94

The reason why I am very impressed with the preceding experiments demonstrating that the mental attribute of ‘the experience of the now’ is very much a part of entropy, is that the second law of thermodynamics, entropy, is very foundational to any definition of time that we may have. As the following article states, “Entropy explains time; it explains every possible action in the universe;,,”,, “Even gravity,,,, can be expressed as a consequence of the law of entropy.,,,”

Shining Light on Dark Energy – October 21, 2012 Excerpt: It (Entropy) explains time; it explains every possible action in the universe;,, Even gravity, Vedral argued, can be expressed as a consequence of the law of entropy.,,, The principles of thermodynamics are at their roots all to do with information theory. Information theory is simply an embodiment of how we interact with the universe —,,, http://crev.info/2012/10/shining-light-on-dark-energy/

And yet, to repeat the last sentence from the quantum information paper, “we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”

The Quantum Thermodynamics Revolution – May 2017 Excerpt: “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,, https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-thermodynamics-revolution/

That statement is just fascinating! Why in blue blazes should the 1 in 10^10^123 finely tuned entropy of the universe even care if I am 'describing' it unless ‘the experience of ‘the now’ really is more foundational to reality than the finely tuned 1 in 10^10^123 entropy of the universe is? To state the blatantly obvious, this finding of entropy being “a property of an observer who describes a system.” is very friendly to a Mind First, and/or to a Theistic view of reality. Even to a Christian view of reality. For instance Romans chapter 8: verses 20 and 21 itself states, “For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”

Romans 8:20-21 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. “We have the sober scientific certainty that the heavens and earth shall ‘wax old as doth a garment’…. Dark indeed would be the prospects of the human race if unilluminated by that light which reveals ‘new heavens and a new earth.’” Sir William Thomson, Lord Kelvin (1824 – 1907) – pioneer in many different fields, particularly electromagnetism and thermodynamics. https://darwinthenandnow.com/scientific-revolution/william-thompson-kevin/ Psalm 102:25-27 Of old You laid the foundation of the earth, And the heavens are the work of Your hands. They will perish, but You will endure; Yes, they will all grow old like a garment; Like a cloak You will change them, And they will be changed. But You are the same, And Your years will have no end.

Supplemental note to special relativity:

December 2021 - Thus in conclusion Einstein himself may not have personally believed in life after death, (nor in a personal God), but Special Relativity itself contradicts Einstein and offers stunning confirmation that Near Death Testimonies are accurate ‘physical’ descriptions of what happens after death, i.e. going to a ‘higher timeless/eternal dimension’, i.e. heavenly dimension, that exists above this temporal realm. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/50-christmases-later/#comment-743334

bornagain77

The specific statement that Einstein made to Carnap on the train, “The experience of ‘the now’ cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement, it can never be a part of physics.” was a very interesting statement for Einstein to make to the philosopher since “The experience of ‘the now’ has, from many recent experiments in quantum mechanics, established itself as very much being a defining part of our physical measurements in quantum mechanics. For instance, the following delayed choice experiment with atoms demonstrated that, “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,”

Reality doesn’t exist until we measure it, (Delayed Choice with atoms) quantum experiment confirms – Mind = blown. – FIONA MACDONALD – 1 JUN 2015 Excerpt: “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” lead researcher and physicist Andrew Truscott said in a press release. "Quantum physics predictions about interference seem odd enough when applied to light, which seems more like a wave, but to have done the experiment with atoms, which are complicated things that have mass and interact with electric fields and so on, adds to the weirdness," said Roman Khakimov, a PhD student who worked on the experiment.,,, http://www.sciencealert.com/reality-doesn-t-exist-until-we-measure-it-quantum-experiment-confirms

Likewise, the following violation of Leggett's inequality stressed the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we're not observing it.

Quantum physics says goodbye to reality - Apr 20, 2007 Excerpt: They found that, just as in the realizations of Bell's thought experiment, Leggett's inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we're not observing it. "Our study shows that 'just' giving up the concept of locality would not be enough to obtain a more complete description of quantum mechanics," Aspelmeyer told Physics Web. "You would also have to give up certain intuitive features of realism." http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/27640

The Mind First and/or Theistic implications of quantum experiments such as the preceding are fairly, and pleasantly, obvious. As Professor Scott Aaronson of MIT once quipped, “Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists,,, But if we accept the usual picture of quantum mechanics, then in a certain sense the situation is far worse: the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!”

“Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists who think the world sprang into existence on October 23, 4004 BC at 9AM (presumably Babylonian time), with the fossils already in the ground, light from distant stars heading toward us, etc. But if we accept the usual picture of quantum mechanics, then in a certain sense the situation is far worse: the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!” – Scott Aaronson – MIT associate Professor quantum computation – Lecture 11: Decoherence and Hidden Variables

‘The experience of the now’ is also shown to be very much a part of present day quantum physics, by what is known as the ‘Quantum Zeno Effect’. An old entry in wikipedia described the Quantum Zeno effect as such “an unstable particle, if observed continuously, will never decay.”

Perspectives on the quantum Zeno paradox - 2018 The quantum Zeno effect is,, an unstable particle, if observed continuously, will never decay. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/196/1/012018/pdf

Likewise, the present day entry on wikipedia about the Quantum Zeno effect also provocatively states that "a system can't change while you are watching it"

Quantum Zeno effect Excerpt: Sometimes this effect is interpreted as "a system can't change while you are watching it" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Zeno_effect

Atheistic naturalists have tried to avoid the Mind First implications of the Quantum Zeno effect by invoking decoherence, yet the following interaction-free measurement of the Quantum Zeno effect demonstrated that the presence of the Quantum Zeno effect can be detected without interacting with a single atom.

Interaction-free measurements by quantum Zeno stabilization of ultracold atoms – 14 April 2015 Excerpt: In our experiments, we employ an ultracold gas in an unstable spin configuration, which can undergo a rapid decay. The object—realized by a laser beam—prevents this decay because of the indirect quantum Zeno effect and thus, its presence can be detected without interacting with a single atom. http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150414/ncomms7811/full/ncomms7811.html?WT.ec_id=NCOMMS-20150415

In short, the quantum zeno effect, regardless of how atheistic materialists may feel about it, is experimentally shown to be a real effect that is not reducible to any materialistic explanation. And thus the original wikipedia statement of, “an unstable particle, if observed continuously, will never decay”, stands as being a true statement.

Perspectives on the quantum Zeno paradox - 2018 The quantum Zeno effect is,, an unstable particle, if observed continuously, will never decay. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/196/1/012018/pdf

Moreover, on top of all that, the mental attribute of ‘the experience of the now’ is also now verified by recent advances in quantum information theory that have now shown that entropy "is a property of an observer who describes a system.” As the following 2017 article states, "Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,

The Quantum Thermodynamics Revolution – May 2017 Excerpt: the 19th-century physicist James Clerk Maxwell put it, “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.” In recent years, a revolutionary understanding of thermodynamics has emerged that explains this subjectivity using quantum information theory — “a toddler among physical theories,” as del Rio and co-authors put it, that describes the spread of information through quantum systems. Just as thermodynamics initially grew out of trying to improve steam engines, today’s thermodynamicists are mulling over the workings of quantum machines. Shrinking technology — a single-ion engine and three-atom fridge were both experimentally realized for the first time within the past year — is forcing them to extend thermodynamics to the quantum realm, where notions like temperature and work lose their usual meanings, and the classical laws don’t necessarily apply. They’ve found new, quantum versions of the laws that scale up to the originals. Rewriting the theory from the bottom up has led experts to recast its basic concepts in terms of its subjective nature, and to unravel the deep and often surprising relationship between energy and information — the abstract 1s and 0s by which physical states are distinguished and knowledge is measured.,,, Renato Renner, a professor at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, described this as a radical shift in perspective. Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,, https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-thermodynamics-revolution/

bornagain77

As to the 'experience of the now', and quantum mechanics. Dr. Michael Egnor, who is a neurosurgeon as well as professor of neurosurgery at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, lists six properties of immaterial mind that are irreconcilable with the view that the mind is just the material brain. Those six properties of the immaterial mind are, “Intentionality,,, Qualia,,, Persistence of Self-Identity,,, Restricted Access,,, Incorrigibility,,, Free Will,,,”

The Mind and Materialist Superstition – Michael Egnor – 2008 Six “conditions of mind” that are irreconcilable with materialism: – Excerpt: Intentionality,,, Qualia,,, Persistence of Self-Identity,,, Restricted Access,,, Incorrigibility,,, Free Will,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/11/the_mind_and_materialist_super013961.html

You can read more in-depth definitions of each of the six properties of immaterial mind in Dr. Egnor’s article. The mental attribute of 'Persistence of of Self-Identity', and/or the 'experience of the now', is particularly interesting to look at. As to defining the specific mental attribute of the ‘Persistence of Self-Identity through time’ (and/or ‘the experience of ‘the Now”) in particular, it is first important to note that we each have a unique perspective of being outside of time. In fact we each seemingly watch from some mysterious outside perspective of time as time seemingly passes us by. Simply put, we seem to be standing on an island of ‘now’ as the river of time continually flows past us. In the following video, Dr. Suarez states the irresolvable dilemma for reductive materialists as such, (paraphrase) “it is impossible for us to be 'persons' experiencing 'now' if we are nothing but particles flowing in space time. Moreover, for us to refer to ourselves as 'persons', we cannot refer to space-time as the ultimate substratum upon which everything exists, but must refer to a Person who is not bound by space time. (In other words) We must refer to God!”

Nothing: God's new Name - Antoine Suarez – video Paraphrased quote: (“it is impossible for us to be 'persons' experiencing 'now' if we are nothing but particles flowing in space time. Moreover, for us to refer to ourselves as 'persons', we cannot refer to space-time as the ultimate substratum upon which everything exists, but must refer to a Person who is not bound by space time. i.e. We must refer to God!”) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOr9QqyaLlA

In further defining the mental attribute of ‘the experience of the now’, in the following article Stanley Jaki states that “There can be no active mind without its sensing its existence in the moment called now.,,, ,,,There is no physical parallel to the mind’s ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future. The mind remains identical with itself while it lives through its momentary nows.”

The Mind and Its Now – Stanley L. Jaki, May 2008 Excerpts: There can be no active mind without its sensing its existence in the moment called now.,,, Three quarters of a century ago Charles Sherrington, the greatest modern student of the brain, spoke memorably on the mind’s baffling independence of the brain. The mind lives in a self-continued now or rather in the now continued in the self. This life involves the entire brain, some parts of which overlap, others do not. ,,,There is no physical parallel to the mind’s ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future. The mind remains identical with itself while it lives through its momentary nows. ,,, the now is immensely richer an experience than any marvelous set of numbers, even if science could give an account of the set of numbers, in terms of energy levels. The now is not a number. It is rather a word, the most decisive of all words. It is through experiencing that word that the mind comes alive and registers all existence around and well beyond. ,,, All our moments, all our nows, flow into a personal continuum, of which the supreme form is the NOW which is uncreated, because it simply IS. http://metanexus.net/essay/mind-and-its-now

And ‘the experience of ‘the now” also happens to be exactly where Albert Einstein got into trouble with leading philosophers of his day and also happens to be exactly where Einstein eventually got into trouble with quantum mechanics itself. Specifically, Einstein had a disagreement with the famous philosopher Henri Bergson over what the proper definition of time should be (Bergson was very well versed in the specific mental attribute of the ‘experience of the now’). In fact, that disagreement with Henri Bergson over what the proper definition of time should actually be was one of the primary reasons that Einstein failed to ever receive a Nobel prize for his work on relativity:

Einstein, Bergson, and the Experiment that Failed: Intellectual Cooperation at the League of Nations! – Jimena Canales page 1177 Excerpt: Bergson temporarily had the last word during their meeting at Société française de philosophie. His intervention negatively affected Einstein’s Nobel Prize, which was given “for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect” and not for relativity. The reasons behind this decision, as stated in the prize’s presentation speech, were related to Bergson’s intervention: “Most discussion [of Einstein’s work] centers on his Theory of Relativity. This pertains to epistemology and has therefore been the subject of lively debate in philosophical circles. It will be no secret that the famous philosopher Bergson in Paris has challenged this theory, while other philosophers have acclaimed it wholeheartedly.”51 For a moment, their debate dragged matters of time out of the solid terrain of “matters of fact” and into the shaky ground of “matters of concern.”52 https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3210598/canales-Einstein,%20Bergson%20and%20the%20Experiment%20that%20Failed%282%29.pdf?sequence=2

What enraged Bergson so much, and caused him to negatively effect Einstein ever receiving a Nobel prize for his work in relativity, was Einstein's statement to a audience of distinguished philosophers that “The time of the philosophers did not exist.”

Einstein vs Bergson, science vs philosophy and the meaning of time – Wednesday 24 June 2015 Excerpt: The meeting of April 6 was supposed to be a cordial affair, though it ended up being anything but. ‘I have to say that day exploded and it was referenced over and over again in the 20th century,’ says Canales. ‘The key sentence was something that Einstein said: “The time of the philosophers did not exist.”’ It’s hard to know whether Bergson was expecting such a sharp jab. In just one sentence, Bergson’s notion of duration—a major part of his thesis on time—was dealt a mortal blow. As Canales reads it, the line was carefully crafted for maximum impact. ‘What he meant was that philosophers frequently based their stories on a psychological approach and [new] physical knowledge showed that these philosophical approaches were nothing more than errors of the mind.’ The night would only get worse. ‘This was extremely scandalous,’ says Canales. ‘Einstein had been invited by philosophers to speak at their society, and you had this physicist say very clearly that their time did not exist.’ Bergson was outraged, but the philosopher did not take it lying down. A few months later Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the law of photoelectric effect, an area of science that Canales noted, ‘hardly jolted the public’s imagination’. In truth, Einstein coveted recognition for his work on relativity. Bergson inflicted some return humiliation of his own. By casting doubt on Einstein’s theoretical trajectory, Bergson dissuaded the committee from awarding the prize for relativity. In 1922, the jury was still out on the correct interpretation of time. So began a dispute that festered for years and played into the larger rift between physics and philosophy, science and the humanities. Bergson was fond of saying that time was the experience of waiting for a lump of sugar to dissolve in a glass of water. It was a declaration that one could not talk about time without reference to human consciousness and human perception. Einstein would say that time is what clocks measure. Bergson would no doubt ask why we build clocks in the first place. ‘He argued that if we didn’t have a prior sense of time we wouldn’t have been led to build clocks and we wouldn’t even use them … unless we wanted to go places and to events that mattered,’ says Canales. ‘You can see that their points of view were very different.’ In a theoretical nutshell this expressed perfectly the division between lived time and spacetime: subjective experience versus objective reality.,,, Just when Einstein thought he had it worked out, along came the discovery of quantum theory and with it the possibility of a Bergsonian universe of indeterminacy and change. God did, it seems, play dice with the universe, contra to Einstein’s famous aphorism. Some supporters went as far as to say that Bergson’s earlier work anticipated the quantum revolution of Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg by four decades or more. Canales quotes the literary critic Andre Rousseaux, writing at the time of Bergson’s death. ‘The Bergson revolution will be doubled by a scientific revolution that, on its own, would have demanded the philosophical revolution that Bergson led, even if he had not done it.’ Was Bergson right after all? Time will tell. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszone/science-vs-philosophy-and-the-meaning-of-time/6539568

And then around 1935 Einstein was directly asked by Rudolf Carnap (who was also a fairly well respected philosopher himself), “Can physics demonstrate the existence of ‘the now’ in order to make the notion of ‘now’ into a scientifically valid term?”

“Can physics demonstrate the existence of ‘the now’ in order to make the notion of ‘now’ into a scientifically valid term?” Rudolf Carnap - Philosopher

Einstein’s answer to Carnap was ‘categorical’, he said, “The experience of ‘the now’ cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement, it can never be a part of physics.”

The Mind and Its Now – May 22, 2008 – By Stanley L. Jaki Excerpt: ,,, Rudolf Carnap, and the only one among them who was bothered with the mind’s experience of its now. His concern for this is noteworthy because he went about it in the wrong way. He thought that physics was the only sound way to know and to know anything. It was therefore only logical on his part that he should approach, we are around 1935, Albert Einstein, the greatest physicist of the day, with the question whether it was possible to turn the experience of the now into a scientific knowledge. Such knowledge must of course be verified with measurement. We do not have the exact record of Carnap’s conversation with Einstein whom he went to visit in Princeton, at eighteen hours by train at that time from Chicago. But from Einstein’s reply which Carnap jotted down later, it is safe to assume that Carnap reasoned with him as outlined above. Einstein’s answer was categorical: The experience of the now cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement. It can never be part of physics. http://metanexus.net/essay/mind-and-its-now Stanley L. Jaki: “The Mind and Its Now” https://vimeo.com/10588094

bornagain77

It occurs to me that time has a relationship to cause and effect. Obviously cause and effect only has meaning when time flows forward, the future cannot cause the past. But I struggle to define it any more clearly than that. drc466

"Every year is getting shorter; never seem to find the time." -PF Andrew asauber

Here's a definitive definition: Time is too short to waste it on trying to define time. polistra