I'm under the impression that this is not a controversial theory. I mean, it's not proven yet, of course. But the mainstream cosmologists admit that the idea makes sense, even if it's not their favourite theory.
Hints of 'time before Big Bang'
- Thread starter Knight-Dragon
- Start date
I'm under the impression that this is not a controversial theory. I mean, it's not proven yet, of course. But the mainstream cosmologists admit that the idea makes sense, even if it's not their favourite theory.
I was under the impression that Hawking, the person who originally suggested the idea has since rejected it. I remember reading it online, but unfortunately I did not save the link.
frekk
Scourge of St. Lawrence
Journalists suck.
Here it is from the horses mouth:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2008/06/08/the-lopsided-universe/
Nice link, thanks. If one adds "purpose" to the universe, then the arrow of time makes perfect sense.
Another option might be that "consciousness" is somehow programmed to "see" or "experience" an arrow of time that does not exist out side of it.
Is there a reason that such an arrow must operate at the cosmic level rather than something lesser?
frekk
Scourge of St. Lawrence
Yeah, well, teleology is a quick fix for anything we don't understand. That's why they used to have thunder gods etc.
Loppan Torkel
Deity
- Joined
- Feb 21, 2004
- Messages
- 4,756
Are you rejecting the possibility that thunder gods created this universe from the parent universe?
I don't think he is. He is just making an unsubstatiated claim that the unverse has no purpose. It is nice to see the scientific method at work.
Frekk, why did you ignore my other two points?
Purpose requires consciousness. But consciousness as we know it assumes the existence of time. So you're back to square 1.
Purpose does not have to be some grand scheme. It could begin small and even evolve. I think that only the most minimal "awareness" would be required to "facilitate" purpose and it might not even require "life". Now consciousness (I prefer "awareness" better) could create time rather than require it or assume it as a precondition.
Obviously definition of terms can get very important here.
Purpose: "something set up as an object or end to be attained" M-W.com. I don't like the "set up as" part of the definition because of its implicit inference of some other force at work. I prefer something like: A desire, need or tendency for change.
Consciousness/Awareness: a sense of separateness from one's surroundings. That expands consciousness to all life at a minimum.
Now consciousness (I prefer "awareness" better) could create time rather than require it or assume it as a precondition.
I can't imagine consciousness without time, but I can imagine time without consciousness. That does not make time a prerequisite of consciousness in every sense of the word, but it does in the following sense: if consciousness exists, then so does time.
How does consciousness/awareness create time?
I can think of one reason why it can't create time in our universe:
Consciousness/Awareness requires a minimal level of thought. Thought is reorganization of information; it is a form of computation. This is achieved by taking a chaotic, but unbalanced state, and organising it into a more ordered and uniform state, with a bunch of disordered side effects in the form of heat. This is how computers work, and how the brain is presumed to work. And in our universe this process can only consistently occur in one direction: forward in time.
I can't imagine consciousness without time, but I can imagine time without consciousness. That does not make time a prerequisite of consciousness in every sense of the word, but it does in the following sense: if consciousness exists, then so does time.
How does consciousness/awareness create time?
I can think of one reason why it can't create time in our universe:
Consciousness/Awareness requires a minimal level of thought. Thought is reorganization of information; it is a form of computation. This is achieved by taking a chaotic, but unbalanced state, and organising it into a more ordered and uniform state, with a bunch of disordered side effects in the form of heat. This is how computers work, and how the brain is presumed to work. And in our universe this process can only consistently occur in one direction: forward in time.
So it looks like we can agree that the act of two atoms forming a bond is an act of "awareness" or "consciousness" at some very basic level.
The tendancy (purpose/desire/need) of say hydrogen atoms to bond in pairs might illustrate my point. A single H atom, if given the chance, will bond with another H atom. How do H atoms know when there is another single near by? I would say that is "awareness" of some sort. When they get close, the various charges & forces at work come into play and a bond is formed.
H atoms have a built in "purpose" (bond if given the chance) to find themselves in the most stable state they can. They are "aware" of when those opportunities arise and as a result they creat a change. Time is just the measure of going from stage 1 to stage 2. Time moves forward because the after is different from the before. If you remove change, time goes away. Awareness and purpose create change which is time.
How does that constitute "a sense of separateness from one's surroundings." Atoms have not consept of themselves. They are fuzzy interaction of particles bound by other particles to stay close together. It is only humans who associate a separateness to them.
It seems what you are arguing has nothing to do with consciousness or awareness, however, des[pite your choice of terms.
Change can be measured with respect to any variable, not just time. If you have still picture, it can be said to change as you look from bottom to top.
Furthermore, time does not always imply change. Imagine an unstable isotope. At any given moment it can decay into something stable. But at first it doesn't -- it stays the same -- not even moving with respect to anything relevant. Then suddenly at some point it decays. The time at which it decays is a countable quality greater than an instant, even though nothing has changed since the start of the scenario. Nothing except the progression of time. The time at which it decays may be particularly important to an outside observer measuring its half life. It is a meaningful quantity that is not a measure of change.
I am not saying that atoms are conscious of themselves as people are, but that because they interact with other atoms there is a point at which the interaction takes place and a point beyond which it does not. The forces that create the interaction do so when proximity or conditions allow it. I see that as a very basic sense of "awareness". If you put two hydrogen atoms together and they bond because of the various quantum forces at work, that bond happens because the positive or negative forces at work are "aware" of a situation where interaction is possible.
Quantum forces have a tendency (purpose?) to interact in a specific way when circumstances permit or are encouraged. We see those interactions taking place between two or more different entities and as a result, something is different after the interaction. The change might well be a more stable situation for the entities involved.
Now you might say that the electro chemical interaction between sub atomic elements in matter is a "hardwired" automatic process without any consciousness issues associated with it. I would say that the interactivity threshold that force A has for force B is a very rudimentary form of awareness. But it is not "thought", or "life-like".
I think that is a different use of the word change. The picture hasn't changed, just our view of it. Now a polaroid photo does change as it developes in front of you.
I would say that in your example: if the unstable isotope is completely isolated from all else, there is no time until it does decay (ignoring changes at the quantum level for now). The only reason we still see the passage of time is that we have other changing references around us that say time has passed. The lamp post on the corner doesn't appear change from day to day, but one day it falls over because it as been there 100 years. (Yes I know that over those years the metal has deteriorated creating the inevitable future failure.) The idea as just to illustrate that there are myriad rates of change that surround us that maintain our sense of time.
If all change in the universe, at every level from the largest astronomical dimension to the smallest quantum event, stopped, what would happen to time?
All we do is stop all change leaving everythng else intact. Would time pass?
I get what you are saying, but it seems to me that you are taking this metaphor of consciousness so far that it ceases to be a useful comparison.
But it's exactly the same thing. In one case you are observing something change with respect to time, in another with respect to the up-down axis. All the things you said about time can just as easily be said about space.
Now you could define time as being only change with respect to time, but that's a circular definition that doesn't tell us anything new about time.
How can there be different rates of change, if time is defined as the amount of change that happens to an object?
The universe is not like a computer where everything that happens can be reduced to singe atomic clock tick operation. Rather, time is fluid such that there is an infinite number of instances between any two points in time.
Sure why not. It wouldn't be useful, and impossible to measure, but it would still be there.
But quantum mechanics prohibits this from happening. The only exceptional possibility is the Big Crunch, when not only time but space would disappear.
In the last 50 years or so we have changed the perception of what separates humans from other living things. Most of the things thought to be human only traits have been found in other species. The lines are blurring. I think that we will go further still and blur the lines between more and more species of life. And while "life" has a very specific definition, I think we are on the road to recognizing that what separates life from non life is more definitional than actual. I see awareness/consciousness as a continuum that begins at some remote quantum/chemical level and stretches to the higher life forms we know about gaining complexity as it moves along. Where it goes from here we don't know.
Here is a short quote from the current Discover that struck home when I read it. It is talking about dark mater and supersymmetric particles and the expecrted discoveries of the LHC.
Discover Magazine Jan 2009 p.22 said:
I think we will find that not only are we embedded in "it", but that "it" is embedded in us. I am only trying to blur the lines a bit more and slightly alter your view of how things might be.
So we need to define change too. I would say that the picture doesn't change, it is still the same picture, it is just what we see as we scan the paper changes. And while the colors at the top of the picture may be different than those at the bottom or in the middle, the picture doesn't change once it is taken. But I do understand what you are getting at. I would say that you are talking about noticing differences in appearances that are "fixed" and not dynamic.
It is only our units of measure that change. The changes in the position or state of an electron are measured in attoseconds, my work day in hours, evolution in millions of years. Change is constant and independent of our unts of measure which we apply for convenience. Attoseconds are not very useful for most of what we do. Units of time are how we measure change. Our brains allow us to recognize change and tools help us see more changes. Time is/are the labels we apply to those changes we see.
Mathematically you are correct, but what if we discover a single fundamental particle/wave or two that have four states and those four states combine themselves in such ways that all "things" can be made. If there is no bottom to the "most fundamental particle pit", then you are correct.
The rate of those changes would be the smallest unit of real time. A change from state 1 to state 2 creates a difference. With billions upon billions of quantum changes every attosecond, the universe is never the same. Each attosecond creates a whole new universe. Time is how we keep track of those changes.
There are religions that would say time doesn't exist and it is just the perception of a flawed consciousness.
See for me, consciousness is the possibly fuzzy or mythical line that separates humans from mechanical clocks. So telling me that things like mechanical clocks have consciousness doesn't make seance to me. Consciousness and clockwork are opposites to me. Surely clocks don't have "a sense of separateness from [their] surroundings". Surely I do.
Aside: I hope my play on the word clockwork does not confuse this discussion of time.
I don't think you quite get my point.
The picture as a whole is the same, but that is analogous to saying that a movie does not change from watching it. What is changing on both cases are the colors and lines that comprise the picture and movie. These change with respect to time in the case of a movie, and with respect to space in the case of a picture. There is no fundamental difference between the two kinds of changes. Time is after all just another dimension.
No, a lamp post might decay in 100 years, or the equivalent time in Attoseconds, but it is not the units that determine when it decays. I chose the isotope example because it is an example of spontaneous behavior as far as we know. Isotopes, technically nuclides, do not decay slowly over time, but suddenly. Each isotope (type of nuclide) has a different chance of decaying at any given moment, but for all of them there are no intermediate steps; at one point it's a stable atom, at the next it falls apart. Now sure there is a process of reorganization and moving apart, but that happens after the atom starts to decay.
So for each nuclide there are two states that potentially have no other changes between them: that of being oneatom , and that of being two atoms. Yet there is an externally measurable time during which the nuclide maintains the first state. Furthermore this duration varies in a way not proportional to the amount of change between the two states. I therefore argue that time is external to the decay of unstable atoms, and by extension to everything else.
I am out of my league to speculate as to the possibilities and implications of discrete time.Mathematically you are correct, but what if we discover a single fundamental particle/wave or two that have four states and those four states combine themselves in such ways that all "things" can be made. If there is no bottom to the "most fundamental particle pit", then you are correct.
The rate of those changes would be the smallest unit of real time. A change from state 1 to state 2 creates a difference. With billions upon billions of quantum changes every attosecond, the universe is never the same. Each attosecond creates a whole new universe. Time is how we keep track of those changes.
There are religions that would say time doesn't exist and it is just the perception of a flawed consciousness.
From what I do know about quantum theory states that some variables in nature are discrete and some are continuous. In particular angular momentum is discrete and time is continuous. I do not understand the differential equations that lead to these conclusions, so in my ignorance I am inclined to trust the scientists that drew them.
On the other hand the theory of loop quantum gravity, which I understand even less, does feature diagrams that appear to show discrete time and space. As this is a viable theory of quantum gravity, it is presumably consistent with quantum theory.
warpus
In pork I trust
Not quite! You're forgetting Planck time.
Different sources I look at have different things to say about the Plank length and Plank time.
Many say that the plank length is simply the length at which quantum fluctuation become enormous. In particular Dr Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe, which is the only book on the subject I have on hand at the moment, gives this definition.
Other sources seem to say that it is the smallest unit of length. For example this undergrad calls it quantum of length. I have yet to see any Phd bearers make such a claim, but I haven't looked that much. I think this is simply a misunderstanding among students. The plank length is the smallest measurable length, because it is impossible to build a more precise measuring instrument, not because smaller distances don't exist. It is the length at which quantum fluctuations become so great that you can't get conclusions out of trying to measuring it.
Plank time is defined in terms of the Plank length, so properties of Plank time should be the same as the Plank length.
I would not attriubte consciousness to clocks or to things that we assemble from inanimate matter. But I would grant primative, limited, a lesser degree of consciousness to atoms and molecules that make up inanimate matter. As I said earlier I would extend consciousness in lesser and lesser degrees from humans down through the chain of life and into in animate matter at the atomic level.
Where do you draw the fuzzy line that separates a conscious entity from one that is not?
I do think it is a defintion problem. A photograph is different at the top than at the bottom, we say it "changes", but it really doesn't change in the same way an atom changes states or a snail grows. A movie is just a series of still photos athat are different art one end of the reel than the other. the movie doesn't really change as we watch it. Now as we watch it our expereince of what we see changes and those changes create before and after states for us that creates a sense of time.
Wiki said:
What happens to our sense of time in an isolation tank when we lose all our reference points to change?
I would say that if we take the isotope example and isolate the isotope from everything else, then there is no time until we have a moment of change that provides us a reference point. If all creation consisted solely of this single isotope and nothing more, then there would be no time until it spontaneously became two. At that point, time begins because we have change. We have a before and an after. Time always measures, denotes, references a state berfore and a state after. I don't see it as a force or dimension or an influencer of any sort, just a notation that now is different from before.
Mechanical clocks work by making use of a set of machanical laws that apply to things of their scale. Specifically they work by having a steadily unwinding spring who's unwind speed is converted to three different hand speed. As it happens the mechanics involved are very local, such that only contact can trigger a change. But it is not the locality of events that makes these machines unaware. Rather it is the strict adherence to mechanical laws.
Atom and molecules also strictly adhere to mechanical laws, although their laws are very different. These laws happen to be non local and probabilistic in nature. Nevertheless they are well understood (mathematically), and can be used to make predictions about any such systems. Therefore although the rules are different, atoms and molecules still follow a kind of clockwork of their own.
I do not know exactly where to draw the line of what is conscious and what isn't, but saying atoms are conscious is diffidently too broad.
A photograph changes with respect to the the y and x axis on it's plane, where as a snail changes with respect to time. Time and space aren't the same, but they are both just variables we perceive. Before and after is the same as left and right, and is even often represented that way on paper.
The difference that we perceive between time and space is that we can remember things in either direction in space, but only things that came before with time. Yet this isn't a statement about humans not time.
I call time a dimensions because for each three dimensional spacial position, a fourth time variable can be used to define an large, even infinite, amount of other places. We are agreed it is not a force or an influencer of any sort.
Certainly there is little point and no ability to measure time when nothing changes. But that doesn't mean that it isn't there.
You don't need to be in an isolation tank to lose track of time. The human perception of time is fickle. If we focus to hard on a complex task, time seems to go by quickly. If we instead focus on a simple task, time seem to go by slowly.
You are right that time cannot usefully be measured without references that everybody agrees on. But, the fact that such references exist is further evidence that time is external to consciousness.
I'm confused what point you were trying to make with the wiki quote.
Similar threads
