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FYI: In quantum mechanics, time may flow differently

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Artistic illustration of a gondolier trapped in a quantum superposition of time flows.
Artistic illustration of a gondolier trapped in a quantum superposition of time flows./© Aloop Visual & Science, University of Vienna, Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences

Because the entropy is minimal, researchers say:

n physics, this propensity of certain phenomena to occur in only one time’s direction is linked to their production of ‘entropy’, which is the physical quantity defining the amount of disorder in a system. In nature, processes tend to evolve spontaneously from states with less disorder to states with more disorder, and this propensity can be used to identify an arrow of time. Thus, if a phenomenon produces a large amount of entropy, observing its time-reversal is so improbable as to become essentially impossible. However, when the entropy produced is small enough, there is a non-negligible probability of seeing the time-reversal of a phenomenon occur naturally. Thinking back to the toothpaste example, if we were to squeeze the tube only gently and only a very small part of the toothpaste came out, it would not be so unlikely to observe it re-entering the tube, sucked in by the tube’s decompression. On the other hand, as the tube is squeezed with more strength, the toothpaste will spread out in an irreversible way, requiring a much greater effort if one were to put all it back in…

“In our work, we quantified the entropy produced by a system evolving in quantum superposition of processes with opposite time arrows. We found that this most often results in projecting the system onto a well-defined time’s direction, corresponding to the most likely process of the two” explains Gonzalo Manzano, a co-author of the study. And yet, when small amounts of entropy are involved (for instance, when there is so little toothpaste spilled that one could see it being reabsorbed into the tube), then one can physically observe the consequences of the system having evolved along the forward and backward temporal directions at the same time. As pointed out by Giulia Rubino, lead-author of the publication, “although time is often treated as a continuously increasing parameter, our study shows that the laws governing its flow in quantum mechanical contexts are much more complex. This may suggest that we need to rethink the way we represent this quantity in all those contexts where quantum laws play a crucial role.”

University of Vienna, “In quantum mechanics, not even time flows as you might expect it to” at Eurekalert (November 29, 2021)

Cue time travel — but only if you are very, very small.

The paper is open access.

Comments
For those interested, The Great Courses has on sale till 3 PM the course
The Evidence for Modern Physics: How We Know What We Know
You can get 24 lectures for $20. https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/the-evidence-for-modern-physics-how-we-know-what-we-know?ai=198645
1 Do You Believe In Atoms? 2 Peering inside Protons and Neutrons 3 Seeing Light as Wave and Particle 4 The Paradox of Quantum Entanglement 5 How We Know Special Relativity Is Real 6 Why the Speed of Light Is the Speed Limit 7 Discovering Subatomic Particles 8 How Do You Weigh a Quark? 9 Capturing the Ghostly Neutrino 10 The Search for the Higgs Boson 11 Are Man-Made Black Holes Dangerous? 12 How We Know What Stars Are Made Of 13 Forming the Milky Way and Other Galaxies 14 Finding Planets around Distant Stars 15 The Awesome Evidence for General Relativity 16 The Hunt for Gravitational Waves 17 How We Know the Universe Began with a Bang 18 The Case for Cosmic Inflation 19 How We Know Dark Matter Exists 20 How We Search for Dark Matter 21 How We Know the Universe Is Accelerating 22 Measuring the Size and Age of the Universe 23 What We Know about Quantum Foam 24 Are Space and Time Quantized?
jerry
December 4, 2021
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It seems to me that most all of the research in QM, clearly show that in a very real way, consciousness has to be a part of the system we call reality, or that reality has no meaning to begin with. We are too enamored with thoughts of Trillions of years and the Big Bang, but what did this time even mean before a conscious entity could mark or measure it? SURE we can picture massive amounts of time passing without our consciousness being around, but only by thinking about time and thinking about long periods and distances in space... We can think in terms of nuclear decay and use halflife to measure time... but even this has no meaning without a mind that can measure it and compare it...without thinking about, or converting input into conscious thoughts, there is no way to feel, see, or measure a material world... I think it goes a step farther... we can't talk about a material world without thought and mind... I believe mind is obviously primary, but ironically it is our minds and inputs to it (like pain when we smash our toe) that make matter seem that it could be primary... if we move consciousness under Physics in the pyramid of science, it makes tremendously more sense. Also, interestingly enough, their are disorders of the MIND where people actually live out there life with everything whizzing by extremely fast... so in that person's mind, reality is much different, no matter what billions of other people perceive. It is called tachysensia and for some it is persistent Also Alice in Wonderland syndrome... not due to a person's input senses, but due to how the brain interprets the inputs.Tom Robbins
December 3, 2021
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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. Around 1935, Einstein was directly asked by Rudolf Carnap (who was a fairly well respected philosopher):
“Can physics demonstrate the existence of ‘the now’ in order to make the notion of ‘now’ into a scientifically valid term?” Rudolf Carnap - Philosopher - (quoted via Stanley Jaki)
Einstein’s answer was ‘categorical’, he said:
The Mind and Its Now – May 22, 2008 – By Stanley L. Jaki Excerpt: ,,, 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
Prior to that encounter with Carnap, Einstein also had another disagreement with another famous philosopher, Henri Bergson, over what the proper definition of time should be (Bergson was also 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 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.,,, 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.,,, 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
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 (false) claim 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) 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. http://www.sciencealert.com/reality-doesn-t-exist-until-we-measure-it-quantum-experiment-confirms
Likewise, the following violation of Leggett's inequality, (which falsified 'realism'), 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 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
In short, ‘the now of the mind’, contrary to what Einstein thought possible for experimental physics, and according to advances in quantum mechanics, takes precedence over past events in time. Moreover, due to advances in quantum mechanics, it would now be much more appropriate to phrase Einstein’s answer to the philosopher in this way:
“It is impossible for the experience of ‘the now of the mind’ to ever be divorced from physical measurement, it will always be a part of physics.”
Thus in conclusion, from every angle of modern science, i.e. quantum mechanics, special relativity, and mathematics, we have several lines of empirical evidence that all converge to the same conclusion. Namely, that the infinite, and eternal, Mind of God must be behind the creation of the 'temporal' time of this universe.
2 Timothy 1:9 He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time,
bornagain77
December 3, 2021
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Besides time, as we understand it, not passing at the speed of light, (nor for Near Death Experiencers), there is also nothing within the abstract, (i.e. immaterial, mental), world of mathematics,,,
Naturalism and Self-Refutation – Michael Egnor – January 31, 2018 Excerpt: Mathematics is certainly something we do. Is mathematics “included in the space-time continuum [with] basic elements … described by physics”?,,, What is the physics behind the Pythagorean theorem? After all, no actual triangle is perfect, and thus no actual triangle in nature has sides such that the Pythagorean theorem holds. There is no real triangle in which the sum of the squares of the sides exactly equals the square of the hypotenuse. That holds true for all of geometry. Geometry is about concepts, not about anything in the natural world or about anything that can be described by physics. What is the “physics” of the fact that the area of a circle is pi multiplied by the square of the radius? And of course what is natural and physical about imaginary numbers, infinite series, irrational numbers, and the mathematics of more than three spatial dimensions? Mathematics is entirely about concepts, which have no precise instantiation in nature,,, https://evolutionnews.org/2018/01/naturalism-and-self-refutation/ KEEP IT SIMPLE by Edward Feser – April 2020 Excerpt: Mathematics appears to describe a realm of entities with quasi-­divine attributes. The series of natural numbers is infinite. That one and one equal two and two and two equal four could not have been otherwise. Such mathematical truths never begin being true or cease being true; they hold eternally and immutably. The lines, planes, and figures studied by the geometer have a kind of perfection that the objects of our ­experience lack. Mathematical objects seem immaterial and known by pure reason rather than through the senses. Given the centrality of mathematics to scientific explanation, it seems in some way to be a cause of the natural world and its order. How can the mathematical realm be so apparently godlike? The traditional answer, originating in Neoplatonic philosophy and Augustinian theology, is that our knowledge of the mathematical realm is precisely knowledge, albeit inchoate, of the divine mind. Mathematical truths exhibit infinity, necessity, eternity, immutability, perfection, and immateriality because they are God’s thoughts, and they have such explanatory power in scientific theorizing because they are part of the blueprint implemented by God in creating the world. For some thinkers in this tradition, mathematics thus provides the starting point for an argument for the existence of God qua supreme intellect.,,, https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/04/keep-it-simple
,,, there is also nothing within the abstract, (i.e. immaterial, mental), world of mathematics, that dictates that time should only go in a forward direction. As the following article states, "For years physicists have known that Newton’s laws, Einstein’s equations, and even those of the quantum theory, are all time-symmetrical. Time plays absolutely no role. There is no forward movement of time."
The Arrow of Time? It’s All in Our Heads – Robert Lanza – September 26, 2016 Excerpt: For years physicists have known that Newton’s laws, Einstein’s equations, and even those of the quantum theory, are all time-symmetrical. Time plays absolutely no role. There is no forward movement of time. Thus, many scientists question whether time even exists. Indeed, Einstein’s theories of relativity suggest not only that there is no single special present but that all moments are equally real.,,, Thus, a “brainless” observer — that is, an observer without the ability to store observed events — does not experience time or a world in which we age. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2016/09/26/the-arrow-of-time-its-all-in-our-heads/
And as the following article states, "if you simply write down and solve the equations governed by Newton’s laws of motion, you won’t get a single, correct answer. Instead, you’ll get two answers: one that corresponds to the ball hitting the ground in the future, and one that corresponds to where the ball would have hit the ground in the past.,,, In fact, there’s no universal rule at all that you can apply to tell you which answer is the one you’re looking for!"
Ask Ethan: Where Is The Line Between Mathematics And Physics? - Ethan Siegel - Mar. 17, 2018 Excerpt: Imagine that you do something as simple as throwing a ball. At any instant in time, if you tell me where it is (its position) and how it’s moving (its velocity), I can predict for you exactly where and when it will hit the ground. Except, if you simply write down and solve the equations governed by Newton’s laws of motion, you won’t get a single, correct answer. Instead, you’ll get two answers: one that corresponds to the ball hitting the ground in the future, and one that corresponds to where the ball would have hit the ground in the past. The mathematics of the equations doesn’t tell you which answer, the positive or the negative one, is physically correct. It’s like asking what the square root of four is: your instinct is to say “two,” but it could just as easily be negative two. Math, on its own, isn’t always deterministic. In fact, there’s no universal rule at all that you can apply to tell you which answer is the one you’re looking for! https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/ask-ethan-where-is-the-line-between-mathematics-and-physics-7f9c6310a656
Thus, "temporal' time, as far as quantum mechanics, special relativity, and mathematics are concerned, might as well not even exist. But anyways, to more firmly establish that 'temporal' time, as we understand it, must be a creation of the Mind of God it is important to note some of the defining characteristics of the immaterial mind that can't possibly be reduced to materialistic explanations. Dr. Michael Egnor, who is a neurosurgeon as well as professor of neurosurgery at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, states six properties of immaterial mind that are irreconcilable with the view that the mind is just the material brain. Those six properties 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
Likewise, J. Warner Wallace has a very similar list, (but not an exact match to Dr. Egnor’s list), of six properties of immaterial mind that are irreconcilable with reductive materialism.
Six reasons why you should believe in non-physical minds – 01/30/2014 1) First-person access to mental properties 2) Our experience of consciousness implies that we are not our bodies 3) Persistent self-identity through time 4) Mental properties cannot be measured like physical objects 5) Intentionality or About-ness 6) Free will and personal responsibility http://winteryknight.com/2014/01/30/six-reasons-why-you-should-believe-in-non-physical-minds/
Of note: The ‘Persistence of Self-Identity through time’ may also be termed ‘the experience of ‘the Now”. 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 a (tiny) island of ‘now’ as the river of time continually flows past us. In the following video, Dr. Suarez states that 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
bornagain77
December 3, 2021
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As to this finding,
In quantum mechanics, not even time flows as you might expect it to - Nov. 29, 2021 Excerpt: The boundary between forward and backward blurs in quantum mechanics,,, One of the peculiarities of the quantum world is the principle of quantum superposition, according to which if two states of a quantum system are both possible, then that system can also be in both states at the same time.,,, ,,, when small amounts of entropy are involved,,,, then one can physically observe the consequences of the system having evolved along the forward and backward temporal directions at the same time.,,, ,,, “although time is often treated as a continuously increasing parameter, our study shows that the laws governing its flow in quantum mechanical contexts are much more complex. This may suggest that we need to rethink the way we represent this quantity in all those contexts where quantum laws play a crucial role.” https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/936273
Of related interest to that finding, and to clearly demonstrate just how much, shall we say, 'disrespect' that quantum mechanics has for the 'flow of time', in quantum mechanics it has now also been demonstrated that "a measurement in the future is able to reach back into the past and cause the photons to behave differently."
A Classic Time Travel Paradox – Double-Slit Experiment Demonstrates Reverse Causality! - November 15, 2013 Excerpt: Let us pause here and be perfectly clear. Measuring the future state of the photon after it has gone through the slits causes the interference pattern to vanish. Somehow, a measurement in the future is able to reach back into the past and cause the photons to behave differently. In this case, the measurement of the photon causes its wave nature to vanish (i.e., collapse) even after it has gone through the slit. The photon now acts like a particle, not a wave. This paradox is clear evidence that a future action can reach back and change the past. http://www.louisdelmonte.com/a-classic-time-travel-paradox-double-slit-experiment-demonstrates-reverse-causality/
As the following 2017 article states, “a decision made in the present can influence something in the past.”
Physicists provide support for retrocausal quantum theory, in which the future influences the past July 5, 2017 by Lisa Zyga Excerpt: retrocausality means that, when an experimenter chooses the measurement setting with which to measure a particle, that decision can influence the properties of that particle (or another particle) in the past, even before the experimenter made their choice. In other words, a decision made in the present can influence something in the past. https://phys.org/news/2017-07-physicists-retrocausal-quantum-theory-future.html
And to clearly illustrate just how 'counterintuitive' this finding from quantum mechanics actually is, in the following 2018 article entitled "You thought quantum mechanics was weird: check out entangled time" Professor Elise Crullis provocatively states “entanglement can occur across two quantum systems that never coexisted,,, it implies that the measurements carried out by your eye upon starlight falling through your telescope this winter somehow dictated the polarity of photons more than 9 billion years old.”
You thought quantum mechanics was weird: check out entangled time – Elise Crullis - Feb. 2018 Excerpt: Just when you thought quantum mechanics couldn’t get any weirder, a team of physicists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem reported in 2013 that they had successfully entangled photons that never coexisted. Previous experiments involving a technique called ‘entanglement swapping’ had already showed quantum correlations across time, by delaying the measurement of one of the coexisting entangled particles; but Eli Megidish and his collaborators were the first to show entanglement between photons whose lifespans did not overlap at all.,,, Up to today, most experiments have tested entanglement over spatial gaps. The assumption is that the ‘nonlocal’ part of quantum nonlocality refers to the entanglement of properties across space. But what if entanglement also occurs across time? Is there such a thing as temporal nonlocality?,,, The data revealed the existence of quantum correlations between ‘temporally nonlocal’ photons 1 and 4. That is, entanglement can occur across two quantum systems that never coexisted. What on Earth can this mean? Prima facie, it seems as troubling as saying that the polarity of starlight in the far-distant past – say, greater than twice Earth’s lifetime – nevertheless influenced the polarity of starlight falling through your amateur telescope this winter. Even more bizarrely: maybe it implies that the measurements carried out by your eye upon starlight falling through your telescope this winter somehow dictated the polarity of photons more than 9 billion years old. - Elise Crullis assistant professor in history and philosophy of science at the City College of New York.,,, https://aeon.co/ideas/you-thought-quantum-mechanics-was-weird-check-out-entangled-time
And as if that was not bad enough for overturning our notion that the 'flow of time' is some universal metric that can't be bent, or even broken, in Einstein's special relativity we find that time passes differently for different 'observers' depending on how fast the observers are moving through space, "with time slowing to a stop as one, (an observer), approaches the speed of light ."
Time dilation caused by a relative velocity Excerpt: Special relativity indicates that, for an observer in an inertial frame of reference, a clock that is moving relative to them will be measured to tick slower than a clock that is at rest in their frame of reference. This case is sometimes called special relativistic time dilation. The faster the relative velocity, the greater the time dilation between one another, with time slowing to a stop as one approaches the speed of light (299,792,458 m/s). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation#Time_dilation_caused_by_a_relative_velocity
To grasp the whole ‘time slowing to a stop as one, (an observer), approaches 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 you 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.
"In the spring of 1905, Einstein was riding on a bus and he looked back at the famous clock tower that dominates Bern Switzerland. And then he imagined, "What happens if that bus were racing near the speed of light?", (narrator: "In his imagination, Einstein looks back at the clock tower and what he sees is astonishing. As he reaches the speed of light, the hands of the clock appear frozen in time"), "Einstein would later write, "A storm broke in my mind. All of the sudden everything, everything, kept gushing forward.", (narrator: "Einstein knows that, back at the clock tower, time is passing normally, but on Einstein's light speed bus, as he reaches the speed of light, the light from the clock can no longer catch up to him. The faster he races through space, the slower he moves through time. This insight sparks the birth of Einstein's Special Theory of relativity, which says that space and time are deeply connected. In fact, they are one and the same. A flexible fabric called spacetime.") - Michio Kaku Einstein: Einstein’s Miracle Year (‘Insight into Eternity’ – Thought Experiment - 6:29 minute mark) – video https://youtu.be/QQ35opgrhNA?t=389
Moreover, the finding that time, as we understand it, comes to a complete stop at the speed of light is very friendly to Theistic presuppositions about 'eternity' and/or 'eternal life'. As Dr. Richard Swenson noted in his book "More Than Meets The Eye", “The laws of relativity have changed timeless existence from a theological claim to a physical reality. Light, you see, is outside of time, a fact of nature proven in thousands of experiments at hundreds of universities. I don’t pretend to know how tomorrow can exist simultaneously with today and yesterday. But at the speed of light they actually and rigorously do. Time does not pass.”
“The laws of relativity have changed timeless existence from a theological claim to a physical reality. Light, you see, is outside of time, a fact of nature proven in thousands of experiments at hundreds of universities. I don’t pretend to know how tomorrow can exist simultaneously with today and yesterday. But at the speed of light they actually and rigorously do. Time does not pass.” - Richard Swenson – More Than Meets The Eye, Chpt. 11
Einstein himself alluded to the Theological significance of special relativity when he, upon the death of his close friend Michele Besso, stated, "For those of us who believe in physics, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
Einstein and Michele Besso Upon Besso’s death in 1955, Einstein wrote a letter of condolence to the Besso family—less than a month before his own death—which contained the following quote “Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That signifies nothing. For those of us who believe in physics, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” http://quotingeinstein.blogspot.com/2013/06/einstein-and-michele-besso.html
Moreover, besides special relativity saying that time does not pass at the speed of light, we have 'observational evidence' from Near Death Experiencers who, consistently, testify that time has a radically different 'eternal' quality to it in heaven than does the temporal time that we experience here on earth.
‘Earthly time has no meaning in the spirit realm. There is no concept of before or after. Everything – past, present, future – exists simultaneously.’ – Kimberly Clark Sharp – Near Death Experiencer ‘There is no way to tell whether minutes, hours or years go by. Existence is the only reality and it is inseparable from the eternal now.’ – John Star – NDE Experiencer ‘In the ‘spirit world,,, instantly, there was no sense of time. See, everything on earth is related to time. You got up this morning, you are going to go to bed tonight. Something is new, it will get old. Something is born, it’s going to die. Everything on the physical plane is relative to time, but everything in the spiritual plane is relative to eternity. Instantly I was in total consciousness and awareness of eternity, and you and I as we live in this earth cannot even comprehend it, because everything that we have here is filled within the veil of the temporal life. In the spirit life that is more real than anything else and it is awesome. Eternity as a concept is awesome. There is no such thing as time. I knew that whatever happened was going to go on and on.’ In The Presence Of Almighty God – The NDE of Mickey Robinson – video (testimony starts at 27:45 minute mark) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voak1RM-pXo
bornagain77
December 3, 2021
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Non-physicist question here: Are they saying that time flows differently at different scales? Because even while a tiny system is occasionally going against the "arrow of time", everything around it, including devices that we are using to measure/record the tiny system, are still marching in the more common direction. Frames of reference can be relative, but wouldn't it be logical to consider the larger one more authoritative?EDTA
December 2, 2021
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When has an actual gondolier ever been trapped in a time matrix? Pictures or it didn't happen, as they say.polistra
December 1, 2021
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