Trying to Understand Relativity (part 10)

If the flow of time can be affected or altered by a physical phenomenon, then it seems necessary to establish some point of contact between time and physical matter.  For instance, if we say that the weight of an object here on Earth would be 1/16th of that weight if we were to move that object to the Moon, we are able to state this with the utmost confidence because we understand precisely how weight is a physical property of the object, and because we understand precisely how this property expresses itself through the object.  We understand that weight is a measurement of the force of gravity's interaction between the mass of the object and the mass of the Earth or the Moon.  Likewise, if we are to stake the claim that an object's duration can be affected by its velocity, then in the same manner, we need to either understand time as a property of the object, or understand how time can be affected by the object.  In either case, some connection between time and the object needs to be established.

Relativity addresses this problem by tying time to space, forming the unified concept of space-time.  According to Relativity, the mass of an object warps the space around it, and other objects caught in this curvature fall towards the object, creating the appearance of attraction which we call gravity.  Since time is interwoven with space, this warping of space causes a warping in time as well.  In the special circumstances of Relativity this seems to make a certain amount of intuitive sense.  We picture space as a flat plane, and time as a perpendicular dimension to that plane, represented perhaps by an arrow.  Normally, they pass at right angles to one another without disturbing each other, but when there is a warp in the plane of space, it causes a warp in the passage of time as well.

Evidence backs up the facts of this as well.  The warping of space was proven by taking photographs of the stars surrounding the sun during a solar eclipse.  The stars appeared to be slightly shifted in their positions because their light was passing through the warped region of space around the sun.  From the warping of space follows the warping of time.  The Earth is certainly a massive object, and as such, it warps space to a considerable degree, fortunately holding us and the atmosphere snugly to its surface.  In addition to warping space, it also warps time to an almost imperceptible degree.  The GPS satellites in orbit have to be recalibrated on a daily basis to account for the discrepancy.  These aren't just formulas on a chalkboard; these are genuine realities.  Due to the mass of the Earth, time really does run slightly slower here than it does out in space.

So where does this leave us?  In the previous post I brought the wave model to bear on all of this.  With this wave model I proposed that time existed entirely in change and motion.  I went on to speculate that the time dilation effect predicted by Relativity was really a uniform slowing of all motion.  Relativity, however, seems to have returned us to the notion that time exists independently of matter, as something aloof, as a dimension or medium through which change and motion occurs, rather than arising out of the change and motion itself.  Relativity couples time with space, rather than with the matter occupying that space, and there is plenty of evidence to support this union.

Once again, I'm thrown for a loop.  The wave model seemed to neatly provide the point of contact mentioned above.  If time was in the motion, then it seemed to make sense that accelerating one frame of reference to near the speed of light relative to another would cause a uniform regress of motion within the frames to account for the constancy of light.  The next step was to try and figure out exactly how this uniform regress could be caused by acceleration.  It seemed to a matter of calculating how the external and internal velocities balanced to compensate for the speed of light, and then time dilation would arise up out of this balance.  It would all be an adjustment of motion.

It all has an appealing simplicity, but that doesn't necessarily make it right.  I can't deny the connection between space and time.  It has been demonstrated clearly in theory, and in practice, and I'm not here to rewrite Relativity, but rather to understand it.  At the most, I would only propose a reinterpretation of the conclusions drawn from the theory.  So I pose the questions to you, the reader.  Does the space-time concept invalidate the wave model?  Is the hypothesis still worth pursuing anyway?  Is it possible that instead of space stealing time away from matter, perhaps space exists through matter in a similar way as I've proposed that time exists through matter?  The wave model suggests that change doesn't pass through time, but rather that time passes through change.  Likewise, is it possible that objects don't exist in space, but rather that space exists in objects?  Can space and time be unified on the ground of physical matter, as properties of that matter?  In other words, where do we go from here?

Some Radical Theories on the Cause of Deja Vu

I think it's safe to say that most of us are familiar with the phenomenon of Deja Vu, and have most likely experienced it at one time or another.  I've experienced it quite frequently; that unsettling sense that what is happening has already happened before.  Now, it seems that no one has a really solid answer on what causes this.  Explanations range from an association with another memory that you can't quite recall, to a crossing of the wires between long-term and short memories giving you the false impression that you're remembering your current experience.  Some of the explanations are slightly more exotic, involving delays in the processing times between your two eyes, or perhaps a mild epileptic episode.  But we want something more, don't we?  Uncanny experiences beg for uncanny explanations.  So with that in mind, I figured I'd throw around a few more radical possibilities (for entertainment purposes only, of course.)

THE MOBIUS THEORY

Scientists have speculated that The Big Bang may be a re-occurring event.  At some point it is believed that the universe will collapse in on itself in something called "The Big Crunch."  Possibly this could lead to another Big Bang and the whole cosmic carnival could set up its shops and tents all over again.  If this is so, we tend to imagine these cycles as consecutive, one following after the other in time, but what if they are actually concurrent?  What if The Big Crunch simply leads right back to the same Big Bang that started it all?  Rather than a series of universes, you end up with time just endlessly looping back on itself.  If this is the case, the fabric of space-time might be getting warn out and warped in some spots like a cassette tape that's been played over and over.  Deja Vu would be our momentary experience of these warps as we pass through them.

THE REPLACEMENT THEORY

Some have speculated that when you die your soul might go to a sort of Purgatory, a limbo-like place which is neither Heaven or Hell, but some kind of vague waiting area in between.  It's believed that your soul has to do penance in this place in order to move on.  Now, no one has ever been exactly clear on what this "penance" is.  Perhaps we have to briefly re-experience certain crucial moments of our lives, moments that might have seemed inconsequential at the time.  We have to briefly re-enter our bodies at some point in our lives and subtly nudge ourselves in a slightly different direction that will make all the difference down the line.  Our living consciousness, and our afterlife consciousness are momentarily unified and in sync.  One slightly spills over into the other.  This gives our afterlife consciousness the tenuous ability to affect our actions, while simultaneously giving our living consciousness the disorienting sense that it's remembering what's happening which we call Deja Vu.

THE CONTROL THEORY

How can you truly know that the things that you remember are real?  What evidence do you have?  Well, you have the fact of the memory itself, and you have the external evidence around you that bears witness to the past.  You continually use the one to verify the other.  You remember taking the garbage out.  You go look out in the can, and its there.  So what if there was an agency that could control your life by reprogramming your memories, with say, like a sort of wireless modem in your brain?  And what if they had people on the ground that could clean up the details so that it fit these new memories?  Everything would fit perfectly, and you'd be none the wiser.  Perhaps, though, there is a slight sensation you experience when new memories are being downloaded, or your existing memories are being altered.  Your brain has no way of noticing that your memories have been changed because it can't use the old memory as a point of reference, so it misinterprets this sensation as a confused double vision of the current experience called Deja Vu.

 ...and no, I'm not completely insane.       

Trying to Understand Relativity (part 9)

You might recall a while back that I proposed a wave model of time as opposed to the more traditional linear model.  The idea was that time wasn't a line that we traveled on, but rather a wave that swept us along with a crest composed of all the dynamic changes through-out the universe.  Another way of putting it would be to say that time isn't a line or a medium in which these changes occur, but rather that time is the changes themselves and nothing more.  Things are happening in the universe and we are witnessing them, and we call these happenings and the fact of our witness, "time."  In this view, if everything was cleared out of the universe or if all changes in the universe could suddenly be stopped, then time itself would stop.  In this view, there is no time without change and motion.

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.

Click to Enlarge

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.        

This Kant Be Right

At the end of my last Relativity post, I briefly mentioned the philosopher Immanuel Kant.  Some of you were mystified by his odd ideas about space and time, while some others were simply awestruck by his stunning good looks and distinguished hairline.  Whatever the case may be, I figured that I would take some time to elaborate on how he arrived at his bizarre conclusion that space and time are products of the function of the mind, rather than something existing beyond ourselves.  Believe it or not, his ideas are considered extremely influential in the world of modern philosophy.   So, I suppose they're deserving of some attention, although I can't really say I agree with them.

If you look up information on Kant you quickly find yourself bombarded by terms like "analytic judgments", "synthetic judgments", "a priori", "a posteriori", and so on.  Soon your mind begins to wander and you start to wonder what's on TV.  Well, maybe I can try to make it a little more accessible.  Basically, Kant argues that our minds come equipped with a certain amount of pre-existing knowledge that allows us to make sense of the world we perceive.  Among this pre-existing knowledge is our concept of space and time.  We draw certain conclusions and learn certain things from experience, but we're able to learn these things because already have an understanding of space and time to begin with.  In other words, he argues that we don't learn about space and time, rather we learn everything else because we already know about space and time.  From this, he draws the conclusion that our concept of space and time are not something that we arrive at from observation or experience.  Instead, he says that they are concepts generated by our minds.

Think of it like this:  When you buy a new computer, it comes pre-installed with an operating system.  If you're poor like me, it's probably Windows.  Anyway, this operating system also probably comes with a basic internet browser pre-packaged.  With this browser you can surf the internet, download software, or even download a better browser.  However, none of this is possible without the initial pre-installed browser which allows you to get that first foot-hold in the world wide door.  So, if we follow this analogy, then the computer is your mind, the operating system is the pre-existing "a priori" knowledge that Kant says we bring to the table of experience, the internet browser is our concept of space and time, and finally, the internet itself is the real world out there beyond ourselves.  So the argument goes that all of this stuff, the operating system, the browser, ect. can't be part of the "internet" because we need that stuff to log onto the internet in the first place.

This is your brain on Kant.

I could go into detail about how Kant partly formulated this to lend support to the argument for the existence of God, you know, sort of as a way to explain why our minds starts running in circles when we try to contemplate things like, "What happened before the beginning of time?".  But I don't feel like clouding the issue at the moment.  I think I've laid out his case in a fairly succinct manner.  As I said, I don't really agree with it.  I just can't accept the idea that space and time are all in our heads.  I can't see how reality would make any fundamental sense that way.  Of course, the Kantian comeback to that would be that that's just because I can't comprehend reality beyond the way my mind perceives it, anymore than I can log onto the internet without a computer.  Still, I'm not buying it.  I guess my most basic objection would be, why can't space and time be pre-installed and be something objectively real?  Either I'm missing something or this is this one of the best con jobs in the history of thought.

I think some people are using an outdated operating system, if you know what I'm saying.

Anyway, I turn the floor over to you all.  What do you think of this?  Is there someone among you that understands Kant better than I do, and can help make sense of this?  Does anyone agree with his idea, or does anyone have any good knock-down arguments against it?  I eagerly await your responses.          

Grant Me the Serenity

We all have memories that are special to us.  Sometimes we wish that we could crawl back into these memories and somehow live inside them all over again, not to change things, but just to be there again, to feel the way the air felt different then, to look into the eyes of someone who has long since slipped away, to really savor and appreciate those moments in a way that was impossible the first time around when we had no idea how fragile and transient they were.  But the wave of time pushes us farther and father away from these memories.  We struggle against the sweep of the wave, straining to reach back and grab a hold of these things.  But the wave says, "No.  We have to keep going."

We've all had our share of regrets.  We turned right when we should have turned left.  We gave in to temptations that we knew we should have resisted, and we eventually had to face the consequences.  We acted on what we knew then, instead of what we know now.  We let opportunities slip through our hands, thinking that another one would be right around the corner.  We've all had moments when we finally realized it was too late to fix a mistake, and we clinched our fists and cursed our inability to undo our own stupidity.  We've all held something priceless in our hands, and we've stumbled and faltered, and before we even knew what had happened, we watched the thing shatter on the ground.  These shattered pieces are the wave of time.  One moment the thing is whole, and in the next it's laying there, broken forever.

But it's not only our own regrets.  We watch as the whole world moves and changes, evolving and transforming beyond our control.  We watch our old elementary school being torn to the ground.  We watch them build a shopping center in it's place.  We watch as stars fade out and things rust and rot away.  We carve our names into a tree, as though preserving it in stone, only to see that same tree chopped down and cut into firewood and then burned away.  We see the people around us passing one by one.  The wave keeps advancing, carry some forward, and leaving some behind.

But the wave sweeps on, and eventually we all succumb to the great equalizer.  Our bodies age and whither, until they're finally broken by the wave, scattered in pieces or laid in the ground.  New life is born in our place, and it grows and changes and undergoes the same processes along the crest of the wave.  Even the sun itself will die out and the galaxies will collide, and all the intricate traces that we've made in the sand will be smoothed out and erased by the relentlessess, unstoppable sweep of the wave.  But another star will be born in it's place, and again the process will go on, on a larger scale, until even all the stars and galaxies themselves are no more.  Eventually the wave will wash the entire slate clean and there will be nothing but darkness and emptiness and vast silence.  Then the universe will collapse in on itself, and maybe the result will be another Big Bang, and rebirth will happen once again on the largest scale of all.  And the wave will press on.

I know that time travel isn't a subject for everyone.  I knew that going into this.  Some people are fascinated by it's puzzles and possibilities, while others see nothing but confusing nonsense.  Nevertheless, I think time itself is something that we all care about.  It is one of the fundamental aspects of our existence.  In some form or another, it is a dimension of nearly every thought we have.  We think of it thousands of times a day, even now as you think of how many times you think of time.  It can seem cruel and relentless.  It can seem like a road of opportunities, waiting ahead.  Perhaps the true power over time comes not in looking for ways to manipulate it or alter its course, but to accept it as it moves us along to the next thing that's just about to happen...now.

(This posts is also available in extra cheesy version and chaos flavor and full-blown neurosis.)

Correspondence with My Future Self

Some of you may be wondering if I have the slightest idea what I'm talking about with all this time business.  You may be wondering, who died and made him the king of time travel?  Where is his proof?  Where is his time traveling sports car?  Where are all his degrees and important science awards and...stuff?  Why is he so impossibly good looking?  Okay, maybe not that last one.  I figured I'd try to slip that one in there.  But let me ask you this: How many of you have tried to actually test the possibility of time travel?  Well, I have.

As I've said on more than one occasion, I was very interested in time travel when I was a kid.  When I was twelve, I began to wonder if this obsession of mine would ever yield any results.  I wondered if I would ever find myself traveling in time some day.  What can I say?  I was a weird kid.  Anyway, it occurred to me that there might be a way of finding this out without learning the virtue of patience.  I decided that I would try to write myself a letter, my future self.  I would give my future self instructions to meet at an exact time and place.  I'm not sure why I thought my future self would be at the beck and call of a twelve year old kid, but I figured that he was probably a pretty cool guy.  So I wrote myself a short note and included the time and date: September 6, 1988 at 6:35pm (see kid, I remember) and the location where I'd be.  Then I put a note on the envelope specifying that it wasn't to be opened until 2010.  2010 sounded like it was way, way in the future.  Certainly there would be time travel by then.  So I took this letter down to the mailbox, dropped it in and waited...and waited.  Nothing.  Well, I wasn't giving up.  I wrote another letter.  This time I said to meet at 7:05pm and left a note on the envelope saying not to open it until 2015.  I dropped it in and...again, nothing.

I learned something about my future that day.  I didn't learn who I was going to marry.  I didn't learn if I was ever going to be rich.  I didn't learn if I where I was going to live.  Technically, I didn't even learn whether I was actually ever going to be able to travel in time.  I learned one, simple thing.  I learned that I was never, ever, under any circumstances, going to travel back in time to meet that twelve year old boy standing by that mailbox.  If it was going to happen, it would have happened.  In this case, I was the silver jumpsuit guy, and I never showed up.  I know; pretty rude.  But suppose it was possible now, and I decided to go back there.  Well, then why don't I remember it?  If I did go back there, and the whole "multiverse" thing was true, I guess I would be meeting a me from a parallel universe then.  I don't want to meet some me that isn't me, some Asimovian construct that goes through the robotic motions of being me.  Why should he get to have all the fun?  What a weirdo.  But this isn't what you really want to know, right?  You want to know where the hell I sent those letters.

Well, I was living in Ohio then.  My parents had divorced years ago, and my father had ended up moving out to Arizona a few years later.  So I sent the letters to his address, but with my name on them.  I figured that he would stick them in a drawer and save them for me for the next twenty years or so.  Well, I was never much of a letter writer, so he was quite surprised to get something in the mail from me.  He completely ignored the notes on the envelopes and opened them.  I probably could have brought him up on federal charges for opening my mail, even if it was in his mailbox.  He got a big kick out of the whole thing.  He probably either thought it was very clever or that his son was slightly autistic.  Either way, he told this story to everyone in my family way, way more times than I cared to hear it.  It's only because I have twenty three years on that kid now, that I can even rationalize my own embarrassment  enough to talk about it here.

The future is a funny thing.  You never know how it's going to turn out.  My dad died in 2008.  How could either of us have known that I was giving him letters to deliver beyond the grave?  You never think of these things when you're twelve.  You think people are always going to be around in the years to come.  They'll be there to deliver your letters.  You think you'll have it all figured out.  You never see anything bad coming your way.  So yeah, I'm glad he opened the letters.  I'm glad they didn't just sit in a drawer as a mystery that he'd never know the answer to.  I'm glad he got a kick out of the whole thing.  I'm glad I can look back on it all with a smile.  When it's all said and done, that's more important to me than shaking hands with myself beside a mailbox.  Now, if I could only tell that kid that. 

(This post is also available in extra cheesy version.)        

Superman & The Wave Model

If you've ever seen the 1978 film Superman, then you may recall a very memorable scene that happens near the end of the movie.  It's been awhile since I've seen it, so you'll forgive me if I'm a little hazy on the details.  Okay, so, Lex Luther had just activated some sort of earthquake-causing machine along the San Andreas fault line as part of the world's most bizzare real estate scam.  A big crack opens up in the earth, spreading across the land.  Lois Lane is driving down the road when it splits open in front of her, and then her car falls into the spreading crevise and she dies.  By the time Superman reaches her, it's too late to save her.  Or is it?  He flies out into space and begins to circle the Earth counter to its rotation.  He flies faster and faster, and as he does, we see the Earth slow to a stop and then start to spin the other away.  As he continues to circle the Earth, we are treated to cutaway shots of everything on Earth happening in reverse.  We see Lois' car fly back up out of the crack, the crack seals back up and recedes from the direction it came, ect.  These cutaway shots establish an important distiction.  Superman is not traveling back in time to save Lois.  He's turning back time itself to before she died.  Naturally, this is a ridiculously implausible concept, and it may seem as though I'm splitting hairs with the distinction I'm making.  But would you believe me if I told that our entire concept of time might hang on this difference? 

In my previous post, I formulated my position on the grandfather paradox by saying, "It would be impossible for a time traveler to change the past."  I knew that I had to choose my words carefully, because I knew where I was going with this.  I needed to keep the statement simple and absolute, without a lot of provisions and qualifications, but it also had to be precise.  I couldn't quite say, "It's impossible to change the past.", because, oddly enough, if you take the time traveler out of the equation, then it MIGHT be possible to do just that...at least in principle and on paper.

Time travel, as we typically understand it, would only work in a certain model of time.  I'll refer to this as the "linear model", because in this model time is...well, like a line.  In order from someone to travel freely on this line, the line itself would have to exist in a completed, static state.  Consider this: Picture time in this model as a long, straight country road.  As you drive along this road, this represents the way you experience time.  You experience the section of the road you cover as a succession of moments that you call "the present".  There is no special point on the road itself designated as the present, rather the present is just your perspective of the road as you drive over it.  Now, if it were possible to pick up your car and move it back to a section of the road behind you, then that section of the road would have to still exist back there in some sense.  If it were possible to skip ahead to a section of the road far ahead of you,  then that section of the road would have to already exist up there in some sense.  If, in all this skipping around, you encountered other cars on the road, they would consider the section of the road they're covering as the present, and you would be forced to conclude that the section of the road that you consider the present isn't a unique perspective.  You would be forced to conclude that there are just different cars driving on different sections of the road.  

In other words, for it to be possible to be able to pick your car up and move it around freely to any point on the road, then the road itself has to be finished product, fixed and complete.  That would mean that past, present, and future have all already happened and we are just experiencing our position on the road from our own subjective point of view.  That would mean that any time traveling that anyone is going to do, they've already done, and if they're going to go to what we consider the past, then they're already been there, and they've already done whatever they did.  This is why a time traveler can not change the past.

If there's a part of you that rebels at this idea, if there's a part of you that's uncomfortable with the notion that the future ahead of you has already happened and that it's as inevitable and unchangable as the past, if there's a part of you doesn't like feeling the stranglehold of fate slipping its icy fingers around you restricting your freedom to make your own choices, then don't worry.  I feel the same way.  There's a way out of all this.  We just have to ditch the time traveler.

We've been looking at time on the linear model.  But what if time isn't like a "line" at all?  What if time isn't a fixed thing that we move on?  What if it's time itself that's moving, sweeping us along like a wave?  In this model, the present is no longer just a matter of perspective; it's no longer a subjective point on a quiet eternal road.  In this model, the present is right now, right here along the cutting edge of the wave.  The crest of this wave is composed of the dynamic flux of everything in the universe, galaxies colliding, mountains crumbling, a ball as it flies through the air.  It's composed of the motion, the evolution, the degeneration, the growth, and the changing of all matter and energy and even consciousness.   In this model, the present is...everything.  It's the advance of the wave.  The past doesn't "exist" somewhere behind it, but rather the past is just a way of describing a prior state of the flux.  The future doesn't "exist" out there ahead of the wave.  The wave is just moving in that direction and things are just happening, moving, changing along the crest.  Now, honestly, doesn't this sound a little bit more like time as we know it?

In this "wave model" you can't travel back and see Ben Franklin fly his kite, because he isn't back there anymore.  The wave has long since swept over him and his kite, and along the crest he grew old and died and men dug a hole and buried him, and still the wave swept on until what was left of his body crumbled away into dust, and then the wave moved on without him.  In the "wave model" you'll never get a knock at your door from a guy in silver jumpsuit from the year 2598.  There's nothing but emptiness out in front of the wave, nothing but the potential of what the flux might become.  There is no man in a silver jumpsuit.  There is no 2598...at least, not yet.

Take a look at our old friend Relativity, which remains our best and only hope for manipulating time in the real world.  If you look carefully, you'll notice that Relativity suggests nothing about people occupying seperate points in time.  Relativity only suggests that someone could observe time running at a different rate in a different frame of reference.  The twin on Earth sees time run slower aboard his brother's ship, but yet they're both still contemporaries.  They can maintain eye contact, even as one grows old and the other stays young.  They still agree on what "now" is, even though their clocks disagree about the speed of its passing.  If anything, this only gives further evidence that time is not a fixed and rigid line, but rather something fluid and dynamic.  This may not be useful information to Dr. Stumblebum puttering around in his basement, but it can be useful to us.  It tells us that the sweep of this wave is not constant and relentless.  It tells us that the wave is flexible.  All you need is a lot of speed and a lot of gravity.  As to why that is....well, what do think I've been trying to figure out?

So that leads me back to my original point.  I said that it might be possible in principle to change the past, if you took the time traveler out of the equation.  What exactly did I mean by that?  Well, suppose it were possible to push the wave itself back, so that the motion in the universe's dynamic flux moved in reverse, so that everything that has happened up to a certain point can be made to unhappen.  What if, instead of traveling back to yesterday, it were possible to push time itself back so that today never happened, or rather could be made to have unhappened, and every change in the flux reversed?  This is why I say "in principle".  Clearly, the magnitude of such a thing is unthinkable at this point.  But hypothetically, suppose it were possible.  First of all, the mere act of pushing the wave back, as momumental an undertaking as it would be, wouldn't be enough to cause a change.  Without introducing some new element, some new factor or piece of information, the dynamic flux would simply repeat the same motions once you released the wave and allowed it to run forward again.  Yesterday would play out the same way it did before and we'd be right back here all over again.  There would have to be some way of carrying back on the wave some kind of premonition of what the flux was going to do once it ran forward again.  Only then could someone act on this information and change the outcome.  In effect, they would be changing the past, even though they might not realize it.  Would the grandfather paradox still be an issue?  Would any paradox be an issue?  I don't know.  I've taken this line of thought as far as I'm going to today.

Does this mean that the linear model is dead?  Not necessarily.  Personally, I prefer the wave model.  I think it makes more sense, but I'm in no position to make any solid claims.  As far as  time goes, we are all like the citizens of Flatland.  Without any freedom of movement or control over the 4th dimension, it becomes difficult to be certain of its true nature.  I present this "wave model" hypothesis simply for your consideration, just as means of showing you the different possible ways of looking at time.  The silver jumpsuit guy could still concievably show up at my door any day now, and we still have the rest of the month to consider the possibilities.  

(This post is also available in extra cheesy version.)

Trying to Understand Relativity (part 6)

This relativity business is pretty confusing.  I've been thinking that my thought experiment might be a little easier to follow if I made it a little less abstract.  With that in mind, I think that I should give the people in house A and house B actual names and identities.  We'll call the guy in house B "Bob", and we'll call the person in house A "Ann".  Yep, the person in house A was a woman the whole time!  Bam! That's what they call a plot twist.  Bet you didn't see that coming.  You see, Ann had just called Bob to tell him that she was lonely and wanted him badly.  That's why he was pushing the light barrier to get over to her house.  It all makes sense now.

Please.  No comments about the Freudian symbolism in this picture.

So anyhow, when we last left these two, I had just made a nice break in the case.  I had said that if Bob made the trip between the two houses at a speed which allowed him to cross the light-year between them in a year and one day, then it would appear to Ann that he was making the trip in one day, unless you accounted for the constant velocity of light.  By taking that into account, time itself would have to expand.  I speculated that the trip would have to take 365 years from Ann's perspective to keep her view of the image of Bob's ship from exceeding the speed of light.  (If this sentence sounds like gibberish to anyone new here, please refer to the Relativity tab above.  It'll probably still sound like gibberish after that, but you'll have the satisfaction of reading 5 other pages of gibberish.)       

I want to try something to test the math here.  It's not that I absolutely need to know the math.  I'm not going for a PhD in relativistic physics.  I'm just trying to grasp the basic concept.  But if I can check my idea against the percentage of distortion that relativity actually predicts, then I'll know if I'm on the right track.  

Okay, let's say we slowed Bob down to a speed where he was crossing a light year in a year and 6 months.  That would put him at about 75% of the speed of light.  Without taking the constancy of light into account, the trip would appear to Ann to take 6 months.  This means that she would have to see the ship coming towards her at twice the speed of light.  Now then, going by what I said last time, in order for her vision of the ship not to exceed the speed of light then the trip would have to take 2 years from her perspective.   That makes the trip 1 year and six months for Bob, and two years for Ann, and the ratio of distortion would be  approximately 1:1.3 at 75% the speed of light.

So this is basically what I'm doing here: I'm considering how many times faster than the speed of light Ann would have to see Bob's ship going for her to witness the trip without any time distortion.  Then I'm multiplying that number by a year, because there's one light year of distance, so light at it's constant speed should take a year to cross that distance.  Then I'm comparing that result to the time it actually takes Bob to make the trip.  In that manner, I'm coming up with a ratio between time for Bob and time for Ann that expresses the distortion mathematically.  Again, in this case 1:1.3 at 75% the speed of light.

At this point, I feel like I've thrown this whole thing together with duct tape.  It can't be right, can it?  Well, check out this handy little chart showing the distortion courtesy of Zayini at wikimedia commons:

I was forced to attribute this picture at gunpoint.  Sorry.

The numbers running up the left of the graph show the ratio of distortion, while the numbers running along the bottom show the percentage of the speed of light.  You can see that between 70 and 80% the curve hits at around the 1.5 mark.   So I'm a little off.  My formula is predicting that Bob's 18 month journey will take 24 months from Ann's point of view, but the chart is suggesting that the journey would take 27 months from Ann's perspective.   I'm off by three months.  That might not seem like much, but it definitely shows that my formula is wrong.  

Last time I think I got a clear glimpse of the time distortion.  I can at least see not how it's possible.  Progress is being made.  But I've still got some work to do, figuring the finer details of how it works.  The thing to focus on now is how Bob's 18 month journey at 75% of the speed of light can come out to be 27 months for Ann.  This handy chart is telling me the result I'm supposed to get.  I just have to come up with an understanding which produces this result.  Should be pretty simple, right?   

Thoughts?  Anyone?             

The Ghost Theory

Someone once said that a belief in ghosts was really a sign of optimism, because it demonstrated a certain faith in the after-life.  Well, I have a theory about ghosts that isn't very optimistic, nor do I find that it comforts me much with the promise of an existence beyond the grave.  It's not that it denies such an existence, it just doesn't make a statement about it either way.  You see, I don't think ghosts have anything to do with the afterlife, although I do think it's possible that they're real...in a certain sense.  There is a borderline between mind & matter, between perception & reality, between what the eye sees and how the brain interprets that information, and ghosts exist somewhere along that borderline.  

The easiest thing to do would be to dismiss the whole thing as hallucinations or symptoms of mental illness, but the sightings of ghosts go as far back as recorded human history and they have occurred in every culture through-out the world.  There have been millions of incidents, and it's a little hard to sweep them all under the rug.  Yes, primitive cultures often misinterpreted the workings of nature for the activities of conscious spirits, and there are obviously people who suffer from hallucinations symptomatic of a mental illness, but there are many other cases which have involved otherwise perfectly sane people, and which have persisted well into the modern age.  Besides, the ignorance of primitive people concerning natural forces does not quite explain the actual seeing of ghosts.  It's the "seeing" that I'm concerned with.  I don't care that Grog thought that a spirit was making it rain.  I'm more interested in the ghost he saw while he was hunting in the storm.  

So let's assume for the moment that maybe there is something to all this ghost business.  The generally accepted idea is that these ghosts are manifestations of the souls of the dead.  People tend to believe these are conscious entities, disembodied and doomed to walk the Earth or haunt a house or whatever.  They are the same person, with the same mind they had in life.  There are variations on the idea.  Some people think the ghosts don't realize they're dead, or they wander about in a kind of sleep-walking state.  Some people think that the souls are trapped in a certain place, a building or a house, that they inhabited in life.  Some people even think that these ghosts latch on to one specific person and haunt them exclusively. 

The common theme to all this is still the idea that the ghost is a conscious entity with a will directing it's actions just like a living person.  The problem is that the observable actions of ghosts that have been reported really don't make any sense when interpreted this way.  This is the reason for all the rules and restrictions people try to place on ghosts, as demonstrated in the variations above.  Why doesn't the ghost just leave the house?  Ah, it must be trapped there.  Why does the ghost keep cleaning the floor; why should a dead person care about a clean floor that it can't even touch?  Ah, it must not realize it's dead.  It's still behaving as though it were alive.  And on it goes.  They keep treating the actions of the ghosts as if they were the actions of a living person, and then they throw up the kind of obstructions that would prevent a living person from doing something.

I have an alternative explanation.  Now, I've had several people tell me ghost stories; I'm sure we all have.  I've had a few strange experiences myself, but nothing worth mentioning.  So I'll illustrate my point with an example I heard about a year ago.  Someone told me that they had seen a woman several times coming down the stairs of their house carrying a large metal pot.  Every time it was this same thing, the same woman, the same pot, and always coming down the stairs.  Most ghost stories that I have heard have followed a similar pattern.  The ghost is seen performing the same routine action over and over again.  In fact, this mindless repetition is often the most creepy aspect of the encounter.  It's as though the person were seeing an inexplicable fragment of a film being replayed over and over on a loop.

I think that is precisely what they are seeing.  I don't think these ghosts are the conscious spirits of the dead.  I think they are manifestations of a moment taken out of time.  I think people are seeing moments of the past being replayed, moments whose true significance and context remain a mystery.  Who knows why the woman was carrying the pot down the stairs, and why this was a significant event in her life?  One day, long ago, that woman had a carried a pot down the stairs and that mundane action had played a part in some larger event.  It might have been wonderful, or it might have been tragic, but I believe that something happened that was powerful enough to leave it's mark on that place and at that time.  The ghost that the person saw was not the ghost of that woman, but the ghost of that moment.   

My only evidence for this theory is the behavior of the ghosts themselves.  You could go on forever making up countless rules to explain their constricted actions, but I believe I'm offering a far simpler explanation.  The ghosts are trapped, but not by the convoluted restrictions of the after-life.  They are prisoners of time.  They are not free to act in the way a living, conscious person would, because they are not living and they are no longer conscious.  They are long gone to...wherever, and what remains is just an imprint and image of their lives.  Their ghost is no more free to act than a photograph of them left behind is free to change it's expression.   

No doubt some people might tell me about very active and aggressive encounters that they had with ghosts, thinking that this refutes my idea.  They might tell me about times when the ghost knew they were there.  But I would recommend that they reconsider their interpretations.  Let's say they saw the ghost of a woman turn, look at them, and then rush across the room at them in a rage.  Isn't it possible that the woman had once had an argument with her husband where she had walked into the room, looked at him, and then flown into a rage?  Isn't it possible that you could be standing in the husband's past shoes?  I believe that there are times when the wires get crossed and the observer finds themselves incorporated in the scene they're observing in place of one of the former participants.  In such a case, it would be easy to mistake the ghost's behavior in the past as an active response in the present.

I started off this post by saying that ghosts exist in a borderline between mind and matter.  You see, I don't think the ghost is really there when the person sees it.  However, I do think that the energy that causes the mind to manifest the ghost might be real.  I think things happen sometimes, powerful things, and they leave a mark on a place.  This mark takes the form of energy which certain sensitive minds are able to tune into the way a radio picks up a signal.  Without the radio, the signal is just a signal.  It takes the radio to turn this signal into sounds and music.  Likewise, it takes the mind to manifest the ghost as a visual presence, but the event they're seeing projected really did happen in the past.  The signal is real, even if what they're seeing isn't.  This is the unexplored borderline.  This is where the real & the imaginary, memory & experience, past & present become indistinguishable.  Is there a promise of immortality there?  Smile, you're on the Universe's Camera, and who knows where and when someone might stumble across this footage in the dark.             

Saving Daylight

It happens every year.  Actually it happens twice a year.  I wake up on a Sunday morning, and since I usually doze off on the couch on Saturday night, the first clock I see is the one on the cable box beneath the TV.  If it's on a certain day in spring, I might think, "Wow, I slept for a long time."  If it's on a certain day in the fall, I might think, "Wow, I'm up early."  Usually somewhere along the line, when I'm stumbling around the kitchen for my second or third cup of coffee, it finally dawns on me that the clock in the kitchen shows a different time than the cable box.  Oh yeah, that's right, it's Daylight Savings Time again.

I complain about this ridiculous practice every time it comes around and to anyone that will listen, and I'm not alone.  A quick Google search of "Getting Rid of Daylight Savings Time", which I freely admit is a fairly biased collection of keywords, nevertheless returns several pages of outrage on the subject.  The complaints range from claims that it's bad for your health to claims that it's bad for the environment.  I think it's mostly just a nuisance; a small nuisance, sure, but a relatively pointless one too.  Is it really worth all this running around resetting clocks just to squeeze another hour out of those long summer evenings?  Does anyone really, truly care?  And yet we all go on doing it, slaves to our own collective routine.  Even though there is a significant and growing group of voices yelling, "Why do we keep doing this?", we keep doing it anyway.  Is it laziness?  Are we just too lethargic to get together on this and put it to rest?  It's like a man who puts a bucket under a leaking pipe that he has to dump every day instead of getting the pipe fixed.  Sure, he's doing more work in the long run, but he's being lazy just the same by continually putting off the simple solution to his problem.   Have we all, as a society, really fallen into such a slump?  We'd rather re-set fifteen different clocks twice a year until the end of time than take five minutes for some bureaucrat to stand up and say, "The Hell with this"?  Or is someone out there really crazy about Daylight Savings and they don't know how they'd live without it?

Well, I could certainly live without it.  On a personal level, I have my own specific reasons for being annoyed with this practice.  I work 3rd shift, from midnight to eight in the morning.  From mid-October to mid-March, I'm lucky if I see the sun at all.  But gradually, as the year goes on and rolls into spring, the sun comes up a little earlier each day, and I finally get a little bit of light to shine in on my last few hours of work.  But then we all crank forward the hands of time, and I'm thrown back into the darkness again.  Yeah...thanks.  You call it "Daylight Savings Time"; I call it "Daylight Stealing Time."  It's not enough for you people that you get to work and laugh and live in the sun all day, every day, you have to take that tiny little bit of sunlight that I get too?  Yes, I represent a small segment of the population, but shouldn't there at least be an even ratio when it comes to the distribution of something as universal as the sun?  Some people are so oblivious to my caste of society that they think the Daylight Savings system actually affords them an extra hour of daylight, as though this extra light just fell from the sky.  Well...it does, but you know what I mean.

I get the short end of the stick on the other side as well.  You know that precious, extra hour of the day, the one that's got us all running around changing our clocks?  You know what  I'm trying to do during that hour?  I'm TRYING TO SLEEP.  I'm just trying to get a couple of hours before I have to go to work, but there I am tossing and turning.  The heat is already unbearable enough, but then I have to deal with your extra hour of sunlight hitting me right square in the face.

So here I am, adding my voice to the general dissent on the subject, for all the good it'll do.  I'm sure, long after all our cites have crumbled and our civilization has fallen, we'll probably still be ritualistically re-setting the few rusty time pieces that remain.  Knowing my luck, this pointless practice will probably be the one thing to endure, long after we've forgotten why we even keep doing it.  We don't even seem too clear about it now.  We claim it's for the farmers, but then the farmer perks up at the mention of his name and says, "What?  Don't look at me.  This was your idea."  But what are you gonna do?  Anyway, I gotta go.  I have a bucket to dump.