Questions about time

[Tubbythin]

I think it's better to say the cause is unclear. There's been talk of decay rates showing seasonal variations suggesting that the solar neutrino flux contributes to "unbalancing" the atom so that it shakes itself apart like an unbalanced flywheel.

Please elaborate.

We were talking about something similar re muon decay on another thread, wherein the magnetic dipole moment and the Einstein-de Haas effect suggests that spin is a genuine rotation.

The muon electric dipole moment suggests otherwise.

 

[Tubbythin]

There's plenty of reason. A radiating body loses kinetic energy, electrons and positrons annihilate to photons departing at c, muon decay features nuetrinos departing at c,

This is just basic kinematics.

you can diffract electrons and muons, there's a c in the Dirac equation, the list goes on.

Its a fairly meaningless list.

Au contraire, there's no reason to think it doesn't. The "must be going faster than light" justification for intrinsic spin is a straw man that disregards the wave-nature of matter.

Please elaborate, explaining how your theory is consistent with measured electric dipole moments.

There aren't any muon and tau clocks, and if they were the different rates are academic. We don't worry about the different half-lives of different radio-isotopes and say Oh dear, time must be passing at different rates. Besides, time has passed is a figure of speech. You can't see time passing. Whoosh! There it goes. No. Try to get out of the habit of saying things like this. Focus on what yuou can see.

Clocks from radioactive decays utterly dismantle your conjecture that time is an emergent property of motion.

 

[Farsight]

By the same logic, I can say that heat or mass are in fact motion...

If you start with a cold container of slow-moving gas molecules, then do something that makes all those molecules go fast, the container is now hot and its mass has increased. I'm not kidding you about this, others here will confirm it.

"Motion" is not a fundamental quantity.

I'm afraid it's much more fundamental than you might realise. When you cool your container of gas it radiates electromagnetic waves. You can talk in terms of action or kinetic energy or energy-momentum. But look at what's left the box. The gas molecules are all still there. The only thing that's left the box is motion. This is what Einstein's E=mc² paper was all about.

 

[edd]

Farsight - my point is that we have two hypothetical clocks with no moving parts tha progress through effectively identical progressions of macrostates (only the particle rest masses differ) and yet run at different rates. I don't see how your ideas allow this and your last reply did nothing to change that.

Your idea makes at best no new predictions while requiring additional complexity (badly specified complexity at that) and at worst makes wrong predictions from what I can see.

 

[edd]

Tubbythin - do you mean magnetic rather than electric dipole moments?

 

[Tubbythin]

I'm afraid it's much more fundamental than you might realise. When you cool your container of gas it radiates electromagnetic waves. You can talk in terms of action or kinetic energy or energy-momentum. But look at what's left the box. The gas molecules are all still there. The only thing that's left the box is motion.

This is just silly. Energy has left the box and gone elsewhere. It hasn't disappeared. Conservation of energy is a result of the the invariance of the laws of physics under temporal translations. Conservation of momentum is a result of the the invariance of the laws of physics under spatial translations. Thus space and time are inherently linked to conservation laws and to the invariance of the laws of physics. Motion isn't.

 

[Tubbythin]

Tubbythin - do you mean magnetic rather than electric dipole moments?

I think I'm getting myself slightly confused about the electric dipole moment (which is theoretical in the electron), the magnetic dipole moment which for the electron agrees to an astonishing precision with QED and the electric quadrupole moment of a collection of charges. Perhaps I should wake up more before posting.

 

[Farsight]

Farsight - my point is that we have two hypothetical clocks with no moving parts that progress through effectively identical progressions of macrostates (only the particle rest masses differ) and yet run at different rates.

There's no evidence at all for some lack of internal motion within an electron or muon. A radiating body loses kinetic energy, electrons and positrons annihilate to photons departing at c, muon decay features neutrinos departing at c, you can diffract electrons and muons so you know they're waves, they have a magnetic moment, there's a c in the Dirac equation, etc etc. Ever looked at the Schrödinger equation? Now you try giving some evidence for the lack of internal motion in something that features no motion but somehow manages to progress. Or would you prefer to assert that it is spontaneous, like the formation of creatures from mud? Or would that be hypothetically spontaneous? Or how about magic?

I don't see how your ideas allow this and your last reply did nothing to change that

Again, these aren't my ideas. And if my last reply did nothing to change that, and if this one doesn't either, all I can say is that you're believing in things for which there is no evidence and disregarding things for which there is clear evidence, and you're being dishonest about it too.

Your idea makes at best no new predictions while requiring additional complexity (badly specified complexity at that) and at worst makes wrong predictions from what I can see.

Don't make up fictitious justification Edd, I'm too sharp for that, and I will embarrass you. Be sincere, look at the evidence, do your own research, and think for yourself.

 

[DazzaD]

The only way to measure time is to compare motion. E.g. - every time A moves 3 times, B moves once. If B suddenly moves twice every time A moves 3 times we assume either B has speed up or A has slowed down. The only way we can tell which is to have further comparative motion checkers.

This is my point about "measuring" motion without any reference to time or such like.. the experiment needs to be considered very carefully...

How do you know A has moved 3 times? Do you watch it and count it for each movement?

How can you be sure that if A does not move and B does, what the relative motion is?

If you need to invoke further comparisions to check the initial motion does this not result in a "Mach like" principle?

The key issue of how you eliminate time here and look at the motion only still has not been answered (apart from a trivial rearrangment of a known equation say to make velocity the subject rather than time...which in itself is not what the original post intended)....

 

[Tubbythin]

Don't make up fictitious justification Edd, I'm too sharp for that, and I will embarrass you. Be sincere...

Perhaps you should learn to be more sincere yourself? And possibly less arrogant.

 

[edd]

There's no evidence at all for some lack of internal motion within an electron or muon. A radiating body loses kinetic energy, electrons and positrons annihilate to photons departing at c, muon decay features neutrinos departing at c, you can diffract electrons and muons so you know they're waves, they have a magnetic moment, there's a c in the Dirac equation, etc etc.

I haven't denied any of the things above except that neutrinos don't depart at c, but I don't see that they are evidence for any internal structure. QED treats the electron and muon as point particles with no substructure and predicts all those things exceptionally well, except muon decay and neutrino physics (but the physics handling that doesn't require particles with substructure either).

Or would you prefer to assert that it is spontaneous, like the formation of creatures from mud? Or would that be hypothetically spontaneous? Or how about magic?

Certain quantum events do seem to be spontaneous, yes - but naturally they're much simpler events than abiogenesis. I don't think that was a particularly helpful analogy you drew, and it must be clear to you it is nothing like the physics under discussion.

And yes it's a reasonable assumption that I've seen the Schrodinger equation before.

 

[Michael C]

I'm afraid it's much more fundamental than you might realise.

If motion is a fundamental quantity, then it should be possible to define a unit for it. Nobody has as yet been able to do so. Seconds and minutes are units of time, not of motion.

 

[Farsight]

I'm afraid it's much more fundamental than you might realise. When you cool your container of gas it radiates electromagnetic waves. You can talk in terms of action or kinetic energy or energy-momentum. But look at what's left the box. The gas molecules are all still there. The only thing that's left the box is motion.

This is just silly. Energy has left the box and gone elsewhere. It hasn't disappeared.

Huh? Read what I said. I said you can talk in terms of energy. I didn't say energy disappeared.

Conservation of energy is a result of the the invariance of the laws of physics under temporal translations.

Sorry Tubby, but conservation of energy is the result of the way the world is, wherein energy is fundamental. The laws of physics merely codify that.

Conservation of momentum is a result of the the invariance of the laws of physics under spatial translations. Thus space and time are inherently linked to conservation laws and to the invariance of the laws of physics. Motion isn't.

So, let's look at that box and watch the passage of time within it, and meanwhile we can watch the laws of physics shepherding the molecules around like sheepdogs. Oh, wait a minute, we can't actually see the passage of time and the laws of physics can we? But that's OK, we'll use one to justify the other, everything's hunky dory, and now we can go play with our time machine.

Er, no.

You have to learn to see what's there Tubby. Do not elevate axiom and abstraction on to a pedestal above hard scientific evidence. And do note that without motion, kinetic energy and momentum do not exist.

 

[DazzaD]

Sorry Tubby, but conservation of energy is the result of the way the world is, wherein energy is fundamental. The laws of physics merely codify that.


You have to learn to see what's there Tubby. Do not elevate axiom and abstraction on to a pedestal above hard scientific evidence. And do note that without motion, kinetic energy and momentum do not exist.

But on the other hand the mathematical framework that gives rise to the particle physics/quantum physics that has been so incredibly succesfully demonstrated experimentally, DOES say that the conserved quantities are BECAUSE of certain symmetries (symmetry in time leads to conservation of energy and vice versa... i.e. if the laws of physics are the same today as they are tomorrow then energy has to be conserved).

And yes, in this case it is actually (historically) the mathematical framework that gives rise to the physical theory and not the other way round (symmetries and properties of sets and groups).

While it is important we do not allow arbitrary decisions in maths to dictate how we interpret the world around us without doing experiments, we cannot allow arbitrary statements and generalisations about the world around us to dictate how we frame our statements and models and theories without some careful checking.

 

[Tubbythin]

Huh? Read what I said. I said you can talk in terms of energy. I didn't say energy disappeared.

I didn't say you did.

Sorry Tubby, but conservation of energy is the result of the way the world is, wherein energy is fundamental. The laws of physics merely codify that.

Familiar with Emmy Noether?

So, let's look at that box and watch the passage of time within it, and meanwhile we can watch the laws of physics shepherding the molecules around like sheepdogs. Oh, wait a minute, we can't actually see the passage of time and the laws of physics can we? But that's OK, we'll use one to justify the other, everything's hunky dory, and now we can go play with our time machine.

Er, no.

That would be a strawman. Try to avoid them.

You have to learn to see what's there Tubby. Do not elevate axiom and abstraction on to a pedestal above hard scientific evidence. And do note that without motion, kinetic energy and momentum do not exist.

But without energy a particle would not be in motion.
So on one hand we have somebody talking about how motion is fundamental, illustrating their case by telling others to be sincere and telling them how they will embarrass them if they're not, stating that because somebody hasn't read the original work of Einstein they are not well educated in physics, claiming only they are the only person (or one of a select special few) that knows the true meaning of Einstein's words whilst simultaneously dismissing the work of the person that Einstein described as "the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began".
On the other hand we have somebody pointing out that the invariance of the laws of physics in terms of space and time give rise to the fundamental tools that we can use to study kinematics and dynamics.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

You can't invoke anything in language without invoking time because of the way language is constructed. Once it's been named real, the illusion is complete.

OK, so look at detailed physics applications. You will find, in the most precise language possible, that time plays a role in all descriptions of motion. (See James Maxwell's On Matter and Motion for this close, detailed look.)

You give one example of (nuclear decay) as if there are many. Can you give another one? I'd also say this is to do with current state of observables rather than reality. Same state giving different outcomes according to nothing but probability doesn't really make sense.

If you have evidence for something else going on, you are welcome to present it. It seems odd that you demand that the universe meets your a priori aesthetic preferences.

 

[Kwalish Kid]

There aren't any muon and tau clocks, and if they were the different rates are academic. We don't worry about the different half-lives of different radio-isotopes and say Oh dear, time must be passing at different rates. Besides, time has passed is a figure of speech. You can't see time passing. Whoosh! There it goes. No. Try to get out of the habit of saying things like this. Focus on what yuou can see.

Like your fantasy about internal structure to the muon and electron?

 

[Farsight]

If motion is a fundamental quantity, then it should be possible to define a unit for it. Nobody has as yet been able to do so. Seconds and minutes are units of time, not of motion.

I don't know if anybody has tried, but there's a hint of it in the c=1 in natural units. We don't say it's c=1 "motiuns" or "kilomots" or anything similarly alien. But we really do use the motion of light to define both the second and the metre. See what I said in post #151. And like I was saying, you work out the time dilation due to relativity velocity by saying v is some fraction of c without having to refer to seconds or metres. It's the same kind of thing as seeing three ships like this ≡ and the bottom two start moving to the right. You could see if one was moving twice as fast as the other without knowing anything about time or distance.

 

[DazzaD]

I don't know if anybody has tried, but there's a hint of it in the c=1 in natural units. We don't say it's c=1 "motiuns" or "kilomots" or anything similarly alien. But we really do use the motion of light to define both the second and the metre. See what I said in post #151. And like I was saying, you work out the time dilation due to relativity velocity by saying v is some fraction of c without having to refer to seconds or metres. It's the same kind of thing as seeing three ships like this ≡ and the bottom two start moving to the right. You could see if one was moving twice as fast as the other without knowing anything about time or distance.

No you could not.

If we entertain the idea that if the bottom ship "pulls away" from the other two and breaks that pretty pattern... how do you infer from that that it is moving at TWICE the speed of the others? (without knowing anything about time or distance?)


Also the purpose of a natural system of units is to make the physical constants have a numerical value of one... not the chosen SI unit for it, or any other chosen method of measuring it, but the physical constant itself (considered to be natural in the sense it is outside of human intervention in a theoretical and conceptial sense and not dependent on a chosen 'weirdness' particular to some person).....

They then have a numerical value of one which makes the algebra a lot easier... (but then for practical purposes you have to remember that when you calculate a length in these units it doesnt pop out "in metres" but in say the Planck units of length). This in itself just simplifies our maths along with understanding why in physics these things are considered "important".

In that system length, mass, time, velocity etc. do not suddenly become more important than one another.

 

[Farsight]

But on the other hand the mathematical framework that gives rise to the particle physics/quantum physics that has been so incredibly succesfully demonstrated experimentally, DOES say that the conserved quantities are BECAUSE of certain symmetries (symmetry in time leads to conservation of energy and vice versa... i.e. if the laws of physics are the same today as they are tomorrow then energy has to be conserved).

And yes, in this case it is actually (historically) the mathematical framework that gives rise to the physical theory and not the other way round (symmetries and properties of sets and groups).

While it is important we do not allow arbitrary decisions in maths to dictate how we interpret the world around us without doing experiments, we cannot allow arbitrary statements and generalisations about the world around us to dictate how we frame our statements and models and theories without some careful checking.

Well said Dazza. If I might digress a little, one of the most important symmetries IMHO is that between momentum and inertia. Maybe that ought to be energy-momentum with the word kinetic thrown in too, or it might be better to talk about a symmetry between energy and mass as per Einstein's E=mc² paper. But anyway and in simple terms, momentum is resistance to change-in-motion when you're trying to slow something down, whilst inertia is resistance to change-in-motion when you're trying to speed it up. And motion is relative. Couple that with Compton scattering and pair production & annihilation and the wave nature of matter, and surely all you're dealing with is trying to alter a free-running wave in an open path or a standing wave in closed path. It beats me why this isn't common knowledge after a hundred years, and instead people talk about the mystery of mass and the Higgs boson, when the Higgs mechanism is responsible for only 1% of the mass of matter. Why hasn't somebody turfed the "ad-hoc" Higgs sector out of the standard model and replaced it with another symmetry.