[numanist]

Quote:

The old adage that 'time is like a river', suggesting that we move through it like a ship sailing on water, may be wrong.

A new theory claims that time does not move forward, but rather, everything in time is ever-present.

According to the theory, if we were to ‘look down’ upon the universe, we would see time spread out in all directions, just as we see space at the moment.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/a...z3QSpqpUyV
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/a...verse.html

Here is a good video that explains this concept in practice.

[Quintus Curtius]

Great thread. I've actually been intrigued by this idea for a long time. One of my favorite historians, Will Durant, said something like, "The present is simply the past, rolled up to the present moment." He meant by this that all of the past events of history are still with us now.

I like this idea.

[Pacesetter20]

[TigerMandingo]

Brian Greene's books on string theory and physics are excellent by the way. Good read for the layman and the mathematically challenged like myself.

[Old Fritz]

So does this mean something like WW2 is going on right now somewhere else in the universe?

[Quintus Curtius]

Time travel possible?
Quantum teleportation possible?

Maybe....

[Candlejack]

World Wars 3, 4 and 5 too.

[ElBorrachoInfamoso]

This is a way to think about spacetime, given what we think we know about its properties. It's not exactly a new theory. Most physicists will conceive of something very similar to the block universe when they first encounter relativity.

[El Chinito loco]

This has made its way to popular culture as well. This is good stuff though. Remember in True Detective when the detective (Matthew?) talked about moments in a timeline happening at the same time in the universe.

[Glaucon]

It is logical to think the big bang gave direction to time. Past, present and future do exist, but every time is local time. The local time is very different near a black hole than here in Earth, in a low gravity environment.

If the universe expansion speed is getting faster and faster it could mean, something is pumping energy into the universe (maybe the big bang is just an opening of an energy channel and it is still open?)

[CJ_W]

(02-01-2015 01:06 AM)Quintus Curtius Wrote:  

Time travel possible?
Quantum teleportation possible?

Maybe....

That's already been done, scientists have successfully teleported stuff across lakes or something a number of years ago.

[RexImperator]

(02-01-2015 12:41 AM)Old Fritz Wrote:  

So does this mean something like WW2 is going on right now somewhere else in the universe?

Some 70 light years away.

Nice avatar BTW, haha...

[Slim Shady]

Quintus: Quantum Teleportation has been established already. The goal is to now do it for macroscopic objects, which is a lot harder but certainly possible using entanglement principles. They have certainly observed multiple quantum states in a macroscopic object already, so that's encouraging.

In terms of does the past and present exist somewhere in the universe:

Not the way you said it Rex. Imagine it this way. if you imagine a 2d paper , or say a 3d box. No matter how far you go along one vector you do not get into another dimension. If you go up the height only, you will never go across the width. It is impossible. Space-Time is similar. It is represented in GR using "Four Vectors", using the 4 dimensions of space-time. The fact that people moving along different speeds can have different "slices" of ST does not mean that for each person different times exist along the same space. It just means that the space and time that exists for a person does not have to be what you would conventionally think of as your space and time. WW2, and 2014 could technically exist in one person's space-time but it would be a far away event that occurred during 1939, not the WW2 events on earth.

A practical example of this is the Stars you see in the sky. For the light travelling from those stars, what we think of as "millions of years ago" and today exist in the same space-time present reality. For that photon it is all happening pretty fast.

Photons are an interesting example though because funny things happen around light speed. Pretty much you have to start thinking in terms of "Light cones". We all have a "past cone" and a "future cone" with the present existing as a single dot with specific coordinates (t,x,y,z) in ST. The light cones represent spaces you technically could experience and thus interact with. Essentially it is any event from where light could potentially reach you. Any place that is c[speed of light]/ t away from you in any direction from the big bang to the end of time is fair game.

Now, would you actually interact with or experience most of these events? No. For starters, you are not capable of going anywhere near light speed, and most of the light from places you could have got might have been blocked off or diverted somewhere.

These guys are misguiding you if you think of these things as cool ways to exist in multiple human historical times. This stuff is more relevant in large scale cosmic matters where human history is nothing more than a speck.

[RandomGuy1]

If the future is predicted does that mean that my decision I make during a day are not really "my" decisions? If yes, who than determines about "my" life?

[Slim Shady]

^ I was reminded of this while watching the video too.

I have thought on this extensively before and there are 2 ways to look at this I believe.

1) You look at the Big Bang as the only "event" to ever occur. Like when you look at the isolated event of launching a ball, and it's initial conditions, and then the after effects going from the velocity of the ball to how the air around it now moves,etc. The big bang is in fact the only event [in our Universe/that has any effect on us/that we can observe indirectly] to ever happen and everything that happens is because of it. This means that evolution of organisms on Earth is directly because of the Big Bang, and every action you make is because of it. Your decisions are thus predetermined and that's a shit way to look at it.

2) This is more an extension on theory 1. The Big Bang is the sole event for all practical purposes, but you have another interesting thing that is relevant. Quantum Mechanics. The inherent nature of Quantum Mechanics, and the universe at large, is randomness/probability/statistics. I have written previously about the potential quantum computer like nature of our brain/consciousness. This means that we have a certain number of possible responses with varying probabilities. Therefore one DOES have the possibility to react randomly to different reactions and therefore the future is not completely predetermined on the small/individual scale. However, when everything is taken in large numbers, like the universe as a whole, Quantum Mechanics gives you the most probable outcome without fail. Thus while the larger future of the Universe might already be decided, our individual futures are not.

A few side notes:

If there is a law that exists that can better link the large and small scale matters of the big bang, and help link cosmic and quantum matters we might find out that quantum actions in the mind could also be determined. I jokingly say that Astrology and horoscopes are this law. But if there were such a link, perhaps individual actions could be predicted. I think that while such a link does exist, it would still not be deterministic because QM is still fundamentally statistical.

If we think of the Big Bang as the sole event, is there any way to change it's course in the large term? Can we humans use something to create something powerful enough to change the course of large scale time? That would be cool, potentially devastating, and probably impossible. This is because all energy we know of exists within our universe and all of this energy comes from our Big Bang. Therefore we can not have anything that produces more energy than the Universal energy itself, unless we find a way to siphon off energy from another Universe. However, maybe we don't need something with more energy. Maybe we just need to cause enough of a change...

Anyways, things to think about. Cosmology is awesome.

[Paracelsus]

(02-01-2015 02:23 PM)Slim Shady Wrote:  

Therefore we can not have anything that produces more energy than the Universal energy itself, unless we find a way to siphon off energy from another Universe. However, maybe we don't need something with more energy. Maybe we just need to cause enough of a change...

I happened to watch the movie Hawking after seeing this video last night, and the concept of singularities -- black holes -- made for interesting stuff, if you go by the theory that as you're looking at a black hole in space, you are seeing what the Big Bang looked like but with time's arrow pointing backwards: the Big Bang is literally everything out of nothing and locks time's arrow forward, but a black hole -- which nothing, including light, can escape -- is everything into nothingness. Perhaps if we figure out how to reverse time's arrow around a singularity, you can regenerate our universe by pulling that energy and mass lost into black holes back into our universe -- in some small way, rewinding the spring of time's mechanism to some extent?

[CactusCat589]

This gives me an ideal for a novel.

[Slim Shady]

(02-02-2015 01:13 AM)Paracelsus Wrote:  

(02-01-2015 02:23 PM)Slim Shady Wrote:  

Therefore we can not have anything that produces more energy than the Universal energy itself, unless we find a way to siphon off energy from another Universe. However, maybe we don't need something with more energy. Maybe we just need to cause enough of a change...

I happened to watch the movie Hawking after seeing this video last night, and the concept of singularities -- black holes -- made for interesting stuff, if you go by the theory that as you're looking at a black hole in space, you are seeing what the Big Bang looked like but with time's arrow pointing backwards: the Big Bang is literally everything out of nothing and locks time's arrow forward, but a black hole -- which nothing, including light, can escape -- is everything into nothingness. Perhaps if we figure out how to reverse time's arrow around a singularity, you can regenerate our universe by pulling that energy and mass lost into black holes back into our universe -- in some small way, rewinding the spring of time's mechanism to some extent?

That's not entirely correct. Black holes do follow the laws of our Universe, as Hawking famously realized. He showed that they also follow he conservation of Energy principle, and data that enters a Black hole is in fact spit back out.

This is called Hawking radiation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation

[RexImperator]

I probably should have said, 70 light years away is the closest possible place those events can be simultaneous, but you have to be moving at the speed of light relative to earth. If you move slower you have to be even further away.

[Samseau]

I don't know why Einstein gets all the credit, when the idea of time and space as a subjective experience goes all the way back to the British empiricists. Kant also postulated that time itself is nothing but an illusion created by our minds in order to interpret the world outside of our minds (the thing in itself) into logical parts.

Einstein of course read these guys and came up with the idea that time was related to space, because he took Kant's interpretation of space and time as functions of the mind as true. It's guys like Kant who deserve the most credit.

[RexImperator]

I would say that it's because Einstein explained it in a mathematical way that was later verified by experimental measurements.

[berserk]

(02-02-2015 10:16 AM)Samseau Wrote:  

I don't know why Einstein gets all the credit, when the idea of time and space as a subjective experience goes all the way back to the British empiricists. Kant also postulated that time itself is nothing but an illusion created by our minds in order to interpret the world outside of our minds (the thing in itself) into logical parts.

Einstein of course read these guys and came up with the idea that time was related to space, because he took Kant's interpretation of space and time as functions of the mind as true. It's guys like Kant who deserve the most credit.

Yes. It seems to me that as physicists move into space and quantum mechanics and begin talking about time and infinity, then the line between philosophy and physics gets blurred further and further.

What I mean is that physics as a science and particularly in application through mathematic notation is still only a language. Saying 'two plus two equals four' is equally as correct as 2+2=4.

What often seems to happen in these kind of strange quantum theories and experiments is that the math and equations begin to lose their effectiveness as their ability to describe the underlying source becomes too abstract. How are you supposed to describe something like a superstring? Does the mathematical symbol for infinite lend greater understanding to the actual concept of infinite than does Tibetan meditation or meta-physic debate?

Lets stay with that superstring theory, that everything is vibration. Does tis describe the universe in any different way than most mystic knowledge claiming all being is one and the same? Does reincarnation suddenly become a viable scientific concept? After all, death is then merely an altered state of energy, not a destruction of it.

Lets also not forget that all these theories are vastly different and very loosely based on empirical science. At this extremely abstract form of physics, it is not enough to be able to rationally describe what a theory is about, because the cognitive tools of rationality is barely able to process it.

[RexImperator]

Logic and mathematics gets put on a pedestal, but when I first heard of Gödel's incompleteness theorem I must admit that I was



and it caused me to wonder if it disproved the supremacy of logic itself. (I must admit It goes beyond my level of understanding.). Maybe one of the mathematicians here can comment on that.

[magicone]

With all these, still why noone yet (none of these scientists trying to get attention with something that is simply media-friendly)
in the whole world was able to reverse/change events that hapenned in the past (for example 1997 or 1945) ?

Such proof would be the only proof that will convince everyone for good

[RexImperator]

You can't move or communicate faster than the speed of light.

Also, time machines can only work in one direction. It would theoretically be possible to travel to the future but you could never come back.