Ah, but now you've found a flaw in my logic, right? If the universe was stopped and completely static, wouldn't it be so for a certain amount of time? The problem is that this question presupposes an observer, who can witness the static universe and perhaps even measure its frozen state with the one working stopwatch in all of existence. In such an event, it would be the observer and their stopwatch that would be in a state of flux, changing and happening. The passage of time that the universe remains static could only be measured relative to the observer and the watch. If we remove them from the scenario, then the universe could stop ...now...and then start again without any of us knowing about it, and the question of "how long" it was stopped becomes meaningless. There would be no sense in which you could say that it was a fraction of a second or a million years without something else in a state of flux to reference it against. At any moment, at any prior state of the flux considered in isolation and pulled from existence like a still photograph, we could claim that the universe "stopped" for an indefinite interval and it would alter nothing. The claim itself would be nonsense. We would simply being saying, "The universe was like this, and then it moved again." In the wave model, there would be no point in trying to look for time between the gaps in these changes. In the wave model, time is defined by the changes. Now, in that same post where I introduced this wave model, I also wondered, if it was true that I was on to something with this idea, then how did Relativity relate to it? If time was nothing more than a changing, moving universe, then how could speed affect this? How did the constancy of the speed of light factor into this scenario? How could extreme velocity actually bend time itself? Well, I think I might possibly have an answer for that. At the very least, I think I may be on the right track.
Let's say that you have a box on your desk. This box is completely empty. It's an absolute void inside, and let's say that the box is made from some hypothetical material that experiences no atomic processes whatsoever. The box is completely static. There is no change, no decay, no entropy. Like our example of the static universe, time can only be measured for this box relative to the changes in the flux you experience. You go to bed; you wake up; you go to work; you come home, and you say that the box has aged a day simply because it has arrived at this same moment in time with you. It has endured changes in the flux that you have experienced as a day. Time is not happening to the box itself. Nothing is happening to the box. Time is happening outside the box, and the box is merely persisting through these changes. We can measure the duration of this persistence only in relation to what has occurred outside the box. The sun goes up; the sun goes down. Seasons change. People grow old and grey. And all the while the box...just...sits there.
Suppose we were to look at this box from a different perspective, say from the perspective of an observer standing on the sun. To them, the box is not sitting still, but rather it is being transported around the sun by a different frame of reference. This observer would have the additional benefit of marking the box's passage through time by tracking its course around the sun. If you recall my addendum to part 7, then you'll remember the scheme of interlocking frames of motion I established, the Earth round the sun, the sun round the galaxy, the the galaxies speeding away from one another, and so on. Just as an observer in any one of these frames of reference would calculate the speed and the position of the box's transport relative to themselves, so too would they calculate the box's duration by measuring it against the changes in the universe's dynamic flux as they observe them from their vantage point.
This is where we bring Relativity into the picture. Suppose we took this box and placed it aboard a rocket racing away from you and the Earth at near the speed of light, and let's say that given the speed it's going and the time dilation effect predicted by relativity, that as a year passes here on Earth, you see only a day pass aboard the rocket. Stop to closely consider how you would interpret this experience. You wouldn't look at the rocket and say a day has passed. You would look at the universe from your perspective and say that a year has passed, and you have observed a day aboard the rocket span the length of that year. This is how you would draw the conclusion that time was running slower aboard the rocket. You would literally see things happening slower there.
Something curious happens though, if you focus exclusively on the box. Considered in isolation, there is no meaningful way that you can say time is happening slower for the box. There is no meaningful way that you can say that only a day has passed for the box. As we established above, time is not happening to the box at all. The only meaningful way that you can measure the box's duration is by comparing it to the passage of time that you've witnessed its persistence. So, whether the box is sitting here at your desk, or rocketing away from you at the speed of light, you're forced to reach the same conclusion. You've witnessed the persistence of this box for a year. The only difference is that the box on the rocket has the misfortune of being imbedded in an extremely slowed environment. The box itself has avoided the time dilation effect by virtue of its own immobility. Possibly this is because technically you haven't witnessed time slowing down aboard the rocket, but rather you've witnessed the uniform slowing of all motion within that frame of reference to compensate for the relative velocity. However, since, in the wave model, time and motion are interdependent, and the slowing is completely uniform and consistently even throughout the frame of reference from the tiniest particle to the most fleeting thought, you would still be completely accurate in saying that time aboard the rocket has slowed relative to you. You might see a clock slowing down aboard the rocket, but that is literally and exactly what you're seeing, just a slowed clock. And yet, you're also seeing it as evidence of slowed time. A clock tracks the passage of time, but yet the motion of the clock itself is also a manifestation of time.
This is just a first step, and it's all just speculation at this point, and to be clear I'm not trying to claim that there is some error or misconception in the theory of relativity. I'm not trying to second guess Einstein. I think even he would agree that slowed time would manifest itself to the observer as slowed motion. Imagine being on Earth and watching a single day aboard that rocket transpire over a year. Imagine how slowly you'd see someone perform their morning shave. But the questions remain. Is the time dilation caused by the slowed motion, or is the slowed motion encapsulated by the time dilation? Is there more to it than than this, other factors? How does near light travel relate to this? If time is interconnected with motion, then doesn't it made a certain sense that extreme motion might affect time? Anyway, we'll see what happens down the road.
Let's say that you have a box on your desk. This box is completely empty. It's an absolute void inside, and let's say that the box is made from some hypothetical material that experiences no atomic processes whatsoever. The box is completely static. There is no change, no decay, no entropy. Like our example of the static universe, time can only be measured for this box relative to the changes in the flux you experience. You go to bed; you wake up; you go to work; you come home, and you say that the box has aged a day simply because it has arrived at this same moment in time with you. It has endured changes in the flux that you have experienced as a day. Time is not happening to the box itself. Nothing is happening to the box. Time is happening outside the box, and the box is merely persisting through these changes. We can measure the duration of this persistence only in relation to what has occurred outside the box. The sun goes up; the sun goes down. Seasons change. People grow old and grey. And all the while the box...just...sits there.
This is where we bring Relativity into the picture. Suppose we took this box and placed it aboard a rocket racing away from you and the Earth at near the speed of light, and let's say that given the speed it's going and the time dilation effect predicted by relativity, that as a year passes here on Earth, you see only a day pass aboard the rocket. Stop to closely consider how you would interpret this experience. You wouldn't look at the rocket and say a day has passed. You would look at the universe from your perspective and say that a year has passed, and you have observed a day aboard the rocket span the length of that year. This is how you would draw the conclusion that time was running slower aboard the rocket. You would literally see things happening slower there.
Something curious happens though, if you focus exclusively on the box. Considered in isolation, there is no meaningful way that you can say time is happening slower for the box. There is no meaningful way that you can say that only a day has passed for the box. As we established above, time is not happening to the box at all. The only meaningful way that you can measure the box's duration is by comparing it to the passage of time that you've witnessed its persistence. So, whether the box is sitting here at your desk, or rocketing away from you at the speed of light, you're forced to reach the same conclusion. You've witnessed the persistence of this box for a year. The only difference is that the box on the rocket has the misfortune of being imbedded in an extremely slowed environment. The box itself has avoided the time dilation effect by virtue of its own immobility. Possibly this is because technically you haven't witnessed time slowing down aboard the rocket, but rather you've witnessed the uniform slowing of all motion within that frame of reference to compensate for the relative velocity. However, since, in the wave model, time and motion are interdependent, and the slowing is completely uniform and consistently even throughout the frame of reference from the tiniest particle to the most fleeting thought, you would still be completely accurate in saying that time aboard the rocket has slowed relative to you. You might see a clock slowing down aboard the rocket, but that is literally and exactly what you're seeing, just a slowed clock. And yet, you're also seeing it as evidence of slowed time. A clock tracks the passage of time, but yet the motion of the clock itself is also a manifestation of time.
 |
| Click to Enlarge |
I suspect that the difficulty we have in understanding relativity is our referents. It's ridiculous (in my limited understanding) to say that you saw or observed something happening inside an object speeding away from you at or near the speed of light. Even if time or duration in and around the object were indeed slowed down to the 365:1 ratio suggested the object would still be speeding out of your view at almost two million miles per hour!
ReplyDeleteI'm not trying to be an ass. I am just trying to wrap my brain around this thing and failing miserably at it. I really do think we need a referent other than "see" or "observe" to fully grasp this concept. Or am I just being overly dense?
No, I get what you're saying. We're talking purely hypothetical here, though. It's True that it's extremely doubtful that you could ever look through a telescope and see a box sitting on a shelf on a rocket speeding away at near the speed of light. It's certainly impossible with any technology we have today. The assumption here is if you could. The twins in the twin paradox couldn't really see each other either. Einstein wouldn't have really been able to see the clock on the clock tower slowing down if his bus had really been go near light speed. However, if there's any hope of making any headway with these concepts, sometimes you have to look past the physical limitations and consider these things in the abstract. If Einstein had said, "Well, that's silly. I wouldn't even be able to see the clock at that speed. I should just forget about it, and eat these mustard sandwiches that the wife packed for me.", then we wouldn't have theory of relativity in the first place.
ReplyDeleteAll I know is that pilot inside your rocket is awfully patient with you, while you work all this out. I am concerned for his health and overall demeanor as he waits for lift-off or some kind of clearance to land.
ReplyDeleteYou probably believe that we landed on the moon too, don't you?
ReplyDelete@Scott: That's the great thing about hypothetical people. You can abuse them with impunity.
ReplyDelete@George: Most days ;)
So if nothing is happening, time stops. That explains why time seems to stand still at baseball games.
ReplyDeleteIf I'm understanding this, though, wave model theory, independant of relativity, does not really exist. The universe is just things happening one after another, and we invented this concept of" time" to mark how we percieve everything. Or, actually, time does exist, but not as a force that can be changed or manipulated, like gravity, but simply as a measurement, like distance.
Throwing in relativity, though, we see that time is seeming to be manipulated. Observing from our vantage point, we see the rocket moving quickly, but time moving slowly inside the envelope.
But... from our omnipotent veiwing point, we are seeing the magic box moving through time at two different speeds. We are measuring time by the movement of the objects near the box. So it is moving through time at the same speed as the shaving man, but also that speck of cosmic dust no one saw out the viewport.
The box is moving at two different rates of time. So is the man, but the man can only percieve the single rate (the slow rate according to his ancient twin on Earth).
I have no point to make with this post, in case you were wondering. Just thinking by typing.
Now that I think about it more, I was confusing rate of speed with rate of time. I am lost in my head a bit. Let me think about this.
ReplyDelete@Doug: To understand this wave model of mine, think of it like this: Let's say there's nothing in the universe but a single clock, floating in space and ticking along. Traditionally, we would think of the clock as tracking time, and if we removed the clock from the picture, the seconds would go on ticking in silence. In this wave model, the clock isn't just tracking time. The clock, by itself as the only thing that exists, actually is time. Time isn't an entity independent of clock, but instead just a way of describing the clock's motion. So, in this model, if we remove the clock, then time stops because there's nothing happening at all. In the wave model, there are no silent, invisible "ticks" in the void without the clock.
ReplyDeleteSo then I took this idea, and turned it on Relativity with the Static Box scenario. The box serves as an anchor of immobility. When we say that the box has sat on the desk for a "day" we mean that the Earth has revolved once on its axis, gone so far in its course round the sun, the stars and galaxies has moved a certain amount, and so on. In other words, when we again remove the invisible ticks, we're just left with the fact that the universe has moved and changed, but the box has not.
Now, when we usually think of Relativity, we tend to think that the invisible ticks are happening at a certain rate here, and at a slower rate on the rocket. But we when put the box on the rocket and removed the invisible ticks yet a third time, we're again left with just the fact that the universe is moving and changing but the box is not. It's just that it's moving and changing slower aboard the rocket than it is on Earth. We are not the absolute or "omnipotent" viewpoint that time is being measured from, the box is, by virtue of the fact that time is not moving for the box at all. The box stands in contrast to all these other frames moving at different speeds, because it isn't moving at all. The guy aboard the rocket says the box has sat there for a day because from his point of view, he and his environment aboard the rocket and even the whole universe has moved a certain amount and a certain speed that he considers a "day". Meanwhile, the guy on Earth says the box has sat there for a year, because to him, he and his environment and the universe have moved a certain amount and at a certain speed that he considers a "year." Still a third observer, to whom both the rocket AND the Earth are zipping away from, might say that the box has sat there for 10,000 years. It's not that anyone has a privileged perspective on how long the box has ACTUALLY sat there. There is no "actual" period that the box is sat there. There are only different people observing the universe moving at different speeds relative to their own motion. The box serves as a stable reference to this motion, regardless of where it's at.
I'm not sure if this helped, or made things more confusing. I think I just confused myself, actually.
@Doug again: you slipped in your second comment while I was still responding to the first. You know...so we could be more confused.
ReplyDelete@Doug a third time: An addition here, anticipating some possible confusion, or maybe adding to the confusion. You may be wondering, if it's all a matter of speed and motion, then how can the different observers disagree about the speed that the universe is moving? Doesn't speed have to be measured against time independently?
ReplyDeleteFor instance, if a day is defined by one rotation of the Earth on its axis, then how could the observer aboard the ship arrive back at Earth after it's made 365 rotations and yet still think only a day has passed? Don't the rotations have to be measured against something else called a "day" independent of the rotation itself?
Yes, but the standard isn't something abstract and independent of the matter involved. The standard is the observers themselves. This slowing of motion isn't just external to the observer, but internal as well. The brain processes information at a certain speed, and the body's biological processes run at certain speeds as well. If there was, say, a dial on the back of your head that could adjust the speed of the brain and body, and it were slowed wayyyy down, it would seem to you that time itself were speeding up and the universe was moving quicker. If it were turned up, it would seem that time slowed down. (To add even more confusion, under the wave model, you could just as easily say that the dial does in fact speed up and slow down the universe relative to you. Just as time exists entirely in change and motion, speed exists entirely as a matter of relationships...or relativity.)
So, when the observer in the rocket returns to Earth, he has spent a year of "Earth Time" aboard a rocket where everything was slowed down including his brain and body. He considers this "year" to have passed like a "day" because only a "day's" worth of activity has transpired in his brain. (By a "day's" worth of activity in the brain, of course, we mean the normal amount of activity that transpires in a human brain over the course of one rotation of the Earth when the two are properly and typically in sync.)
Of course, at this point Doug, I realize that you haven't really asked for any of this, and quite possible you don't care. I'm just abusing you as sounding board at this point, if you don't mind, and doing a little of my own "thinking by typing."
Whew! Maybe I should move your blog further down in my list so I can be a little more awake when I try to read it. I've just sat here staring at my screen for over twenty minutes with a blank stare trying to wrap my brain around this stuff.
ReplyDeleteTylenol, anyone? I brought extra.
@Rev: Well, it's hard not to think of time in terms of our tools of systems and measurement. It's also hard not to think of time as something ticking along independently of matter and motion. I think that there's a dependability about that that we cling to, at least I find it hard to shake. The idea that all this...stuff is happening...this whole big moving mess, and time isn't this separate, pure stable thing to measure it all against, is hard to grasp mentally and emotionally I think. It's also hard to imagine. Take the clock example above. It's very, very, difficult not to imagine time ticking on in silence after the clock disappears, but that's just because we naturally imagine ourselves being there to witness the silence after the clock disappears. In that case time wouldn't stop because now WE would be the thing in motion, the sole manifestation of time.
ReplyDeleteSo yeah, it's difficult. I keep waiting for some fatal flaw in this idea to raise its ugly head, but I haven't found it yet.
And we seem to be branching off into existentialism. Does time pass if no one is there to experience it?
ReplyDeleteThere is a "tree falling in the woods" element to it, but it's more than that too. Time goes on with the unobserved clock (or so I'm proposing). It's not just the witness of the silence, but the change, the motion, and the activity of the witness that keeps time moving forward in this scenario. So the question here isn't so much, "If a tree falls in the wood and no one is around to see it..." but rather "Can there be such a thing as falling without woods and trees?"
ReplyDeleteUmm. First of all, let me check. You are not trying to guess what happens to a clock on a rocket, right? You are trying to explicate Einstein's relativity in relation to speed, space and time, I think.
ReplyDeleteThe first thing that occurs to me is that speed being always relative to something else, you cannot say that one thing is going faster than another except in relation to a particular point which is designated as fixed: a kind of referee with a whistle who measures your speed as you whoosh past him.
What happens if the only things in the universe are two clocks on two rockets, one orbiting the other like a donkey tethered to a post? The one which goes round and round will travel further and so register more time, right?
What happens when the orbiting stops, and the donkey comes back to the post, so to speak, in order to scratch its rump on it? Will the clocks now tell the same time (assuming they were synchronised in the first place)?
But more importantly, isn't it just my imagination to call one clock the donkey clock and the other one the post clock? If there is no earth, just one donkey, tethered to one post, isn't it arbitrary which one is revolving and which one is standing still? Or can't they both be revolving in orbit round one another?
Geez, now it's my turn for my head to hurt.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure you're right about the referee, if I understand correctly. As for the "donkey", I assume we're talking relativistic speeds. In that case, we're again confronted with the twin paradox: one twin speeds away from Earth in a rocket. His twin on Earth sees time moving slower on the rocket. From the twin on the rocket's perspective though, it's the Earth flying away from HIM at near the speed of light, so he sees time moving slower there. This is like your scenario, where it's impossible to tell which is the donkey and which is the post. The answer, I'm told, lies in General Relativity, which deals with gravity and inertia. According to GR, we determine the "donkey" by which one exerts the force to accelerate from the other...I think. I haven't quite gotten into all that yet. Slowly but surely.
For now, in this post, I was just sticking the wave model and relativity in a room together to see how they get along, and if there was anything to learn from watching them play together. I may follow this lead a little further. I'm not entirely sure where I'm going to go from here.
I'm not ignoring your last comments. Just processing them. The basics of relativity I understand from comic boooks and Saturday morning TV. It is the wave model that is new to me. I much prefer the linguistic model, by the way.
ReplyDeleteComic books are always sticklers for scientific accuracy.
ReplyDeleteI'm almost afraid to ask what the linguistic model is.
I used it in the cheesy version of Superman and the Wave Model. Has to do with how languages evolve from one another. Much easier to understand.
ReplyDeleteOh yes...now I remember, Super Doug.
ReplyDelete