travel in time is just a myth?

[Wick]

All real things are in the present.

No observer or instrument has ever come from the past or the future to us here in the present.

I don't recall every having been in the past, because when I was there it was the present.

And when I reach that place some call the future, it will be the present as well.

The present is really all there is.

All of us have regrets. We would like to go back in time and change what we did, or change how events unfolded. But the past can't be changed because it has no physical existence. The only way to change what happened is by altering ourselves in the present.

I was once very unkind to one of my sons. After my outburst, I very much wanted to go back and take back the words I said and the anger I expressed. But the past had vaporized. It was gone. There was no going back. If I was going to repair what I had broken, I would have to do it in the present. So I went to find my son in the present. I knew I wouldn't find him in the past or in the future. And in the present, I found him lying on his bed. He was crying. I knelt down beside him. He rolled his head to look at me. He said, "I'm sorry, Papa." I started to cry as well, "And I'm sorry, too" I said, "I shouldn't have said the things I did. You are a wonderful and sweet boy, and I was wrong to treat you in the way I did. Will you forgive me?"

And suddenly, in the present, I was forgiven...and I am forgiven still. My son forgave me in the present. I forgave myself in the present. I am forgiven still.

We are who we are in the present. The goal is to make those attributes we strive for constant in the present. I think that is the path to discipline.

[Wick]

Those who believe the past and the future are real, have given in to the assumption that space and time are fixed and that all spacetime configurations are set in their proper place. This is a scientific version of the Calvanist doctrine of predestination.
　

In such a universe, all things are already complete. All of your birthday presents (till the end of your years) are both wrapped and unwrapped. And the moment of their unwrapping is set in space and time. The moment of your death is also set. Your decisions are all made. The universe has made all of your decisions for you. You are not responsible for anything. The universe predestined you to do all that you do, all that you have done, all that you will do. And the universe alone is responsible...indeed all that is done, all that happens, is the genius of the universe alone. You are just a spacetime fiber that unfurls itself over its fixed span of spacetime and ends.

I am not inclined to believe in this modern form of predestination. It is build upon the assumption that time and space form a matrix of space time. This is by no means assured. To quote, Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute, "I believe there is something basic we are all missing, some wrong assumption we are all making. If this is so, then we need to isolate the wrong assumption and replace it with a new idea...My guess is that [our wrong assumption]involves two things: the foundation of quantum mechanics and the nature of time....But I strongly suspect that the key is time. More and more, I have the feeling that quantum theory and general relativity are both deeply wrong about the nature of time. (The Trouble with Physics, pg 256)."

I agree with Dr Smolin's assessment. Just as in the times of Ptolemy, when we misunderstood the apparent motion of celestial bodies and thought the earth at rest, so today we misunderstand the apparent motion of light and think the universe is a resting block of spacetime. But just as Ptolemy was wrong 2000 years ago when he said the earth was at rest, so we are wrong today in thinking that spacetime is at rest. There is no spacetime. The past and the future are not real.

[Wick]

Einstein's famous insight was that if a man were to fall through space, he wouldn't know that he were falling. He might even think he were at rest. So if the whole universe were falling through some greater space, the universe and all its contents would not know that they were falling. The universe and all its contents might even think they were at rest. And if the universe and all its contents began to bend or oscillate in the direction of that greater space...they might come to think that the axis along which the universe was bending was time, that the past and the future were therefore part of a greater fabric that extends along the temporal axis back into the past and forward into the future.

But if a universal motion is responsibile for these temporal effects then the concept of an ontologically real past and future is false. And if the past and the future are false, they must fall like the Ptolemy's crystal spheres.

[Wick]

If I lived on a line and the line suddenly began to bend or warp along an unknown axis, I would not understand the nature of this bending. All I would know is that the nature of this bending was associated with time because it would take me longer to move from one point (a) to another (b). I might then call this axis of bending the temporal axis and I might call this new structure "linetime". It wouldn't matter that time has nothing to do with the bending. It wouldn't matter that the line was simply bending along an axis on a plane. As a resident of the line, I wouldn't know that. I could only assume that the new axis along which the line was bending was time.

It would make sense. I would be able to describe my world in this new way. But I would be in error.

[Wick]

Likewise, if I lived on a plane which suddenly began to warp along an unknown axis, I would also misunderstand the nature of this warping. Just as the resident of the line, I would suspect that the warping of the plane had something to do with time, because on the day before the warping occured, and on every day previous, it always took precisely 10 minutes to walk from one side of "town" to another. But after the warp, it suddenly took 13 minutes to make the journey. I might suspect that somethink like "planetime" was involved and that this new 2 + 1 structure was the reason for the warp, namely two planar dimensions and one dimension of time.

Notice that if I give the dimension of time structure like this, I am implying that all of the plane's past moments (moments prior to the warp) actually have a real existence. I begin to think that if my "universe" is 2 dimensions of space and 1 dimension of time, then past configurations of the plane (and therefore of myself) must exist "above" and that future configurations of space must exist "below".

But in reality, this is not the case. Everything happening on the plane is only happening in the present. The assumption that time is a dimension leads me into error. This assumption leads me to the conclusion that time is a structure, when in fact all that happened was a motion of my two known dimensions along a third axis of SPACE.

[Wick]

Why then should it be any different in our own universe of three dimensions? If we see a bending in space, why assume that a dimension of space is the culprit? Isn't it easier to assume that what is true for two theoretical mathematical constructs (one-space and two-space) is also true of the real universe we occupy?

But what's more, the idea that our universe of three dimensions bending along a fourth dimension of greater space AND NOT OF TIME is more economical and more elegant in nature. Instead of believing in a universe in which all the old trash is never thrown out, a universe that bends along a fourth axis of space AND NOT TIME is always just the present. There is no need to store past configurations "above" or future configurations "below". Such configurations don't exist.

The universe (the present) moves through four-space. That's all there is.

[Wick]

This way of thinking of the universe means that the universe (while infinite) is smaller than we previously thought. It is not all past, present and future configurations of the universe across time, but it is only the current or present configuration of space matter.

But the greater universe becomes significantly larger, because it is a greater space through which our universe (and perhaps other universes) presumeably moves.

This kind of concept was disquieting to Spacedout in a previous post. He wonders where such a greater universe would end. I would note that Einstein was astonished to find out that there are galaxies beyond ours and that space is expanding. It wouldn't surprise me at all if there are universes beyond our own moving through this greater space in orderly ways as do star systems, galaxy's and galaxy clusters. As we learn how expansive nature actually is, I think we will be surprised.

[Drifter]

Q&A CONTENTS


Question1: Can you offer the layman an extremely simplified summary of what scalars are, how they relate to Maxwell's equations, unified field theory, and the limitations of currently accepted quantum physics, relativity theory, and electromagnetics?

A: Whew! You've asked for a complete explanation of how to unify the three major disciplines of physics, specify what's wrong with the three present versions of those disciplines that has prevented their unification, and how this was in Maxwell's original quaternion equations (some 200 of which are actually his theory, not the pale four vector equations written by Heaviside and Gibbs). You also asked for an explanation of scalars versus vectors, and how the present vector analysis (of Heaviside and Gibbs) misses the boat with respect to structured scalars. And you've asked me to do it simply, in layman's terms. To say that that's a tall order is the understatement of the decade!

Okay, we'll have a go at it anyway. We'll start with scalars and vectors.

Basically we visualize things in the universe as two sorts those that move (have motion) and those that don't. In physics we know already that this is in error; there isn't anything in the universe, anywhere, that is motionless. At least it is moving through time, which is still a special kind of motion. Also, we know that everything seems to be made up of much finer things, and these finer things are always in motion - often very violent motion. So what we observe as a passive thing - sitting still spatially, so to speak - is made up of subthings in violent motion spatially. And the whole system that is not moving spatially is still moving in time. However, we don't see "time" but just space; therefore we see the thing as "motionless." However, the "motionless" thing we look at is rather like a fixed whirlpool in a swiftly flowing river the whirlpool seems to us to stay "fixed" and motionless, but internally its parts (the flowing water) are in constant motion.

Another example is a container of gas under pressure - such as the air tank at the service station. The tank and "the air as a whole spatial volume" isn't going anywhere, and we see them as "motionless." But inside the gas its molecules are in violent motion, undergoing collisions, etc. Indeed, inside the walls of the tank, the molecules and atoms are in vibrational back-and-forth motion in a spatial lattice.

The point is, physically "motion" and "motionless" only apply to the external characteristics of the object to which we pin the label. So it represents only an overall characteristic of the object, and does not completely describe it. In a sense "motionless" is filled with motion, and all is motion.

In vector analysis, a scalar quantity is considered to be a quantity that has magnitude or size, but no motion. An example is pressure; the pressure of a gas has a certain value of so many pounds per square inch, and we can measure it, but the notion of pressure does not involve the notion of movement of the gas through space. Therefore pressure is a scalar quantity, and it's a gross, external quantity since it's a scalar. Note, however, the dramatic difference here between the physics of the situation and mathematics of the situation. In mathematics, when you say something is a scalar, you're just speaking of a number, without having a direction attached to it. And mathematically, that's all there is to it; the number doesn't have an internal structure, it doesn't have internal motion, etc. It just has magnitude - and, of course, location, which may be attachment to an object.

http://www.patrickcrusade.org/PROBABLE_FUTURE.html

[Wick]

And the whole system that is not moving spatially is still moving in time. However, we don't see "time" but just space; therefore we see the thing as "motionless."

What does it mean to "move through time"? Moving through space is clear. I do that every day. "Moving through time" is another story all together. And though physicists are accustomed to casting off the phrase "moving through time" with a bit of Einsteinian flair, do we really know what it means?

Einstein's work seems to indicate that all things move at the velocity "c". Light directs all of its velocity through space and so is at rest in time. All matter moves at some combination of velocity through space and velocity through time. The sum of these velocities always equals "c". At least that's what Einstein says.

BUT WHAT DOES HE MEAN???!

If it were possible to find a system at absolute zero (no composite motion) which was also at absolute rest (not likely), what would it mean to say that that system was moving at the velocity "c" through time?

I would argue that it means very little. If it is moving along an axis, why jump to the conclusion that the system at rest is moving through time? Why not simply say that it's moving along another axis of space? It would mean no less to say so. To say that the system is moving through time simply complicates what is happening.

As stated in earlier posts. Inhabitants of a line or a plane would perceive any warping of their habitation as a warping along a time axis. But that axis would not really be a time axis. The axis would be a axis of space. If the universe is warping, we ought not assume that the warp occurs in the direction of time...but rather, we should assume that the increased time in a warped area of space is caused by a bending along an unseen physical dimension or axis of nature.

[Wick]

Why then should it be any different in our own universe of three dimensions? If we see a bending in space, why assume that a dimension of space is the culprit?

Should have written, "why assum a dimension of TIME is the culprit. Apologies.

Wick