Assertion of an "absolute now" from "What is 'spacetime' really"

[modest]

Yeah, actually I'd rather put it something like this "if this system proves logically equivalent (to standard relativity) then it would be valid to understand reality in terms of absolute now".

 

I mean, usefulness for us is really not a measure of ontological correctness. But, at the same breath it must be stated that it is indeed quite interesting that a valid paradigm with "absolute now" can be so simple (and hence useful).

 

Yes, I agree. Usefulness does not establish ontology between logically equivalent interpretations. Simplicity... well, I think Occam's razor can sometimes be appropriately drawn on, but I honestly don't know enough in this case to even guess if that would be appropriate.

 

 

I understand that but I have faced so many years of derision for my ideas that I was kind of put off by the fact people were publishing the same kind of thing totally refused to me. I guess the whole thing is over and my work will never be recognized. I suppose it is really unimportant anyway, particularly at my age.

I won't even pretend to put myself in your shoes and say I understand... I honestly cannot imagine. You might look at it as a kind of vindication, but, regardless, you should not give up advocating your view. That's really all you can do—it being out of your hands if others recognize it or not.

I was surprised that I turned out to be reference #11 in that list of links you gave. I note that the site referenced in that link no longer exists; however, there happens to be an archive copy (which appears to be complete) at

 

Relativity/Quantum Mechanics

I had no idea :(

 

You should email the guy that made the site to give him the updated link. His email is on his bio page:

 

Dimensions in special relativity - About the author

 

He seems like a very likable and approachable fella from his writing.

 

In case anyone is interested, I still have a copy of all the files originally on “home.jam.com/dicksfiles” and would appreciate them being available on site somewhere if possible.

On Hypography?... I'm not sure what would be possible, but can ask.

Could I interest you in going through my presentation line by line?

Absolutely. I'll put a post together in the othe rthread. It might take a couple days as I'm pretty busy the rest of this week, but I do expect it will be a fruitful discussion (at least for me).

 

~modest

[Pyrotex]

...#1: Check.

#2: An "aspect" in the sense that motion happens and "time" describes "what elapses" during a given designated event's motion... not "time itself" as such an event. Big difference as I see it!

Okay [he said very carefully], "time" describes "what elapses". Good enough so far. Rather than motion (I'm picky) I would say state transitions. One state transition could be a change of location, which would imply motion. We can coin a new word, "elapsation" to refer to the non-simultaneity of two events. A synonym for elapsation might be "time", but that carries too much "baggage"--causes people to jump to conclusions. :( Time (elapsation) describes what elapses between two events.

#3: I do not see time as an entity with a location, but posit that "event duration" (in the common vernacular) is what "time" means... how long it takes a given designated movement of an object to "happen."...

I'm not attempting to define time as an entity. I'm using time (in this specific sense) as a "coordinate" on an imaginary scale; again, let's give it a very specific name to avoid ambiguity. What in the vernacular we might call a "point in time", I shall call a "chronocount"; it is merely the count of how many standard units of elapsation ("ticks") have occurred since some arbitrarily chosen event, say, tau-zero, the "first tick". If 100 ticks have occurred since tau-zero, one might say, 100 ticks have passed. If I sneeze at this moment, then later, I can still refer to my sneeze as having happened "at tick 100". I have therefore "located" that event as being "at" a particular chronocount. I have done this NOT by reifing anything, but by establishing a system of counting standard events, inventing a device that does the counting, and arbitrarily defining the first tick as being chronocount zero (tau-zero).

There is nothing up my sleeve, and nothing has been reified.

 

I shall openly reveal that my strategy is to attempt to build on this system, creating a methodology for [vernacular] "measuring time" and "locating events in time" without having to "call into existence" (reify) any "thing".

 

#4: Yes, units of time are arbitrary. The distance between two objects obviously at different "locations" is simply the space between them. The "travel" between two locations/objects "takes "time." The distance itself is not "time."

Okay. The elapsation between two events is measured in ticks from our standard tick maker. The elapsation is merely a count of ticks, nothing more.

 

#5: This is a blatant reification of "time." "Things manifest", and how long that "takes"... whatever the 'snapshot setting' on the time-elapse camera set by the observer... is "time."

Whoa! Easy there. #5 relates to my statement that "time is a manifestation of deeper phenomena". Here is where I refer to post 113 above. The first half dozen statements (ST.) simply state that this perception we have of non-simultaneity comes about because what we are really observing is state transitions in the world around us. We do not observe time. We observe changes of state. In particualar, ST.4 says that any arbitrary collection of objects, particles, whatever, is in exactly ONE state at the boundary between past & future. This boundary ("now") has elapsation = 0 -- no duration.

 

ST.6 refers to the fact that any transfer of energy or information in the universe cannot occur at infinite speed. It is the transfer of energy/mass/information that triggers state changes. This forbids all state changes from being simultaneous. therefore, some finite subset of all state changes must be "located" at different chronocounts from tau=zero.

 

So far, I think I have demonstrated clearly that Time-sense #5 does NOT necessitate the reification of time.

 

#6: I agree but it can be simply stated that it "takes time for things to happen." That does not mean that some "thing.. time" is created as things happen.

I would like to gently point out that this is exactly the difficulty we all have been having by our attempts to use the word "time" in multiple senses to define "time". Simply stating it "takes time for things to happen" begs the question, "which sense of time are you using?" And additionally, your statement loses much of the meaning I intended.

Less simply, but also far less ambiguously, we could say, "Since all events cannot be simultaneous, there must be finite elapsation between them; we can only be aware of the elapsation between any two external events because there is a chain of cause-and-effect "signalling events" (for example, the production of photons which eventually hit our retinas), which terminate in a parallel set of "internal events" (which would be our observations). by use of a tick-maker, we can count the ticks between our observations, and thereby measure the elapsation between the original events, or establish their "location" on our imaginary scale of elapsation.

 

YES! Obvious, but its implications for "what is time" is amazingly elusive for most folks especially as concerns such reification as "dilated time" and all the "spacetime" fabrication!

Okay. I agree if one is to avoid reification, then one must go to extremes of semantic precision and ambiguity-avoidance. And this is what I'm trying to do.

 

How are we doing so far, Michael?

[Michael Mooney]

Last question first:

How are we doing so far, Michael?

 

Not too bad. A lot of haggling over words yet to do for further clarification tho. This must be a short session so I'll just address my first major objection... to the following:

Oopse... must first clarify my meaning for an event... Anything that "takes time" to happen. But everything everywhere continues to happen without interruption. So "elapsed time" is what an observer's stopwatch or a cameraman's "time-lapse photography" "captures. It's an artifact of the observer's designation of "an event.:

 

So you say:

We can coin a new word, "elapsation" to refer to the non-simultaneity of two events.

"Elapsation" will do for time expired for the duration of an event as above. But your "non-simultenaity" above already has a problem, relative to how I just defined an "event." Say Earth makes one revolution (the event) during the same "elapsation" as Pluto travels so many micro-seconds of a degree in its orbital path. Earths day is happening simultaneously with Pluto's progress in its orbit... far apart as they are.

Are we still on the same page?

No problem with making up "chronocounts" as ticks of a clock. Seconds, as precise fractions of an Earth revolution are fine too, and then we would all know what one was in the world we share!

 

But to my objection... to your:

ST.6 refers to the fact that any transfer of energy or information in the universe cannot occur at infinite speed. It is the transfer of energy/mass/information that triggers state changes. This forbids all state changes from being simultaneous. therefore, some finite subset of all state changes must be "located" at different chronocounts from tau=zero.

 

Of course no information can travel at infinite speed. But gravity, for instance, traveling at lightspeed is still a steady pull among all masses everywhere. There is no lag time in sun's pull on the planets. It is steady as sunlight itself, tho it takes however long to reach each planet.

Yet now is now for all things happening everywhere. No "forbidding of all state changes from being simultaneous." What is happening now everywhere **is** simultaneous!

 

And your

therefore, some finite subset of all state changes must be "located" at different chronocounts from tau=zero

seems to fall right back into assuming different "nows" happen in different locations. Information travel between different locations is the lightspeed thing. No argument. A "chronocount" does not have a "location." This second... oopse, it's gone... was the same second on Mars.

Gotta go. It has been fun.

Michael

[modest]

ST.6 refers to the fact that any transfer of energy or information in the universe cannot occur at infinite speed. It is the transfer of energy/mass/information that triggers state changes. This forbids all state changes from being simultaneous. therefore, some finite subset of all state changes must be "located" at different chronocounts from tau=zero.

 

Of course no information can travel at infinite speed.

 

Apparently you can add the isotropy of space to the above (agreed upon) principle and derive the Lorentz transformations.

 

The usual treatment (e.g., Einstein's original work) is based on the invariance of the speed of light. However, this is not necessarily the starting point: indeed (as is exposed, for example, in the second volume of the Course in Theoretical Physics by Landau and Lifshitz), what is really at stake is the locality of interactions: one supposes that the influence that one particle, say, exerts on another can not be transmitted instantaneously. Hence, there exists a theoretical maximal speed of information transmission which must be invariant, and it turns out that this speed coincides with the speed of light in vacuum...

 

In a 1964 paper,[15] Erik Christopher Zeeman showed that the causality preserving property, a condition that is weaker in a mathematical sense than the invariance of the speed of light, is enough to assure that the coordinate transformations are the Lorentz transformations.

 

Lorentz transformation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

I wonder if that is where the conversation is heading.... I wonder how a person could ensure that two chronocounters were keeping the same cronocounts... I can't wait to see. I'll shut up and follow along eagerly :(

 

~modest

[watcher]

The universe exists in a universal Now. Now is everywhere. There is only one Now.

 

So I have just made the argument that "for the universe as a whole, there is one, perpetual, ongoing NOW."

 

When I say "that only leaves now" I mean that NOW is perpetually "the present" and that neither "the present" or "time" are entities. That is, there is no "instant" of time between what is not yet happening (anywhere)..."the future" and what has already happened (everywhere)..."the past." It is not just semantics. It is time/now ontology at the most fundamental level

 

okay Micheal i have surmised your thoughts on the absolute now

 

1. there is only one now

2. this now is perpetual and ongoing now

3. now is perpetually present

4. this present is timeless, no instant of time between changes of states. ( from what is about to happen to what has happened )

 

i think the problem with the use of word now is semantics. now implies something static but with your definitions, with words like perpetual, on-going implies a dynamic now. even the dictionary defines now as " momentary present."

 

words like perpetual, momentary and ongoing are best describe by the word flux imho than the word now.

 

so to paraphrase your quote : The universe exists in a universal Now. Now is everywhere. There is only one Now.

 

ill say the universe exists in a flux. flux is everywhere and there is only flux.

iow, if there is anything absolute in this universe it is change. change is absolute.

 

an absolute frame of reference means to remove all frame of reference.

without a frame of reference, i don't think we can expressed it is equations. physics need a frame of reference to work with.

 

Earths day is happening simultaneously with Pluto's progress in its orbit... far apart as they are.

 

yes that's the way to go. to investigate what happens in a happening.:(:)

[Boerseun]

Okay...

 

Bear with me for a minute...

 

Consider a line. A line consist of points on a 1 dimensional surface. There can be nothing outside the single dimension x in which this line exist. In other words, if you were part of that line's universe, you won't see a line. You'd only see the one point intersecting the spot where you are. You can't look down the "length" of the line to ascertain it actually being a line. You will only see the point where you intersect the line. So a line is a line only when viewed from outside its universe, one dimension up. When the observer exist in a two dimensional universe, he can identify lines existing one dimension down for what they are.

 

Same with a two-dimensional system. A square, for instance, can exist in two dimensions. But an observer in that same universe, won't see the square for what it is. A 2D observer in that universe will only see the one end of the square. For all he knows, the square might as well be a line. In order to see 2-dimensional objects, the observer must exist in a third dimension.

 

And, once again, the same goes for a three dimensional universe. Any object existing in a three-dimensional universe must be viewed from a four-dimensional vantage point in order to see it for what it is.

 

And that is where time comes in.

 

And time-space is merely the marriage of the physical three-dimensional universe with the measuring of the passage of events which gives observers an elevated position from which to observe the three lower dimensions for what they are.

 

And because each and every observer lives in an exclusive frame of reference, each and every observer literally being at the center of his or her unique and exclusive 4D universe, there is not and cannot be a universal experience of time, or "now".

[watcher]

not unless you are a 4d observer in a 4d space + 1d time

you can see the front and the back of your pc at once without taking the time to go around,

a 3d observer normally would, to do the same.

[AnssiH]

I understand that but I have faced so many years of derision for my ideas that I was kind of put off by the fact people were publishing the same kind of thing totally refused to me. I guess the whole thing is over and my work will never be recognized. I suppose it is really unimportant anyway, particularly at my age. I was surprised that I turned out to be reference #11 in that list of links you gave. I note that the site referenced in that link no longer exists; however, there happens to be an archive copy (which appears to be complete) at

 

Relativity/Quantum Mechanics

 

I understand that can be quite frustrating... :(

 

But on the other hand, there are people reading these forums, trying to follow what you are saying, and seems like it is little by little starting to dawn on people that your presentation could indeed be valid, since they are starting to understand the perspective where this is coming from. And since you've developed it all the way to GR, perhaps you could consider re-writing a comprehensive version from the fundamental equation to schrödinger to SR and to GR.

 

I think it's important thought that the exact perspective is understood properly from the get go, otherwise no one will have any chance of understanding the essential point that this is a derivation from epistemological necessities, and not just an arbitrary re-write of modern physics. I really think it is significant as an explanation for why the universe seems so elegant (and on the other hand, so eluding)

 

If I can be of any help with any of that, I'd be glad to assist.

 

In case anyone is interested, I still have a copy of all the files originally on “home.jam.com/dicksfiles” and would appreciate them being available on site somewhere if possible.

 

At the very least we can place them to my web space at my ISP, and perhaps think of a better place soon.

 

And Anssi, have you ever read my original web site? It seems to me it was still available when we first started talking. Let me know if you want a copy.

 

Not entirely (not everything you had online), but I did skim it little bit. I think I would understand a lot more of it now, after learning some math concepts. Certainly could use a copy.

 

-Anssi

[lawcat]

I understand that can be quite frustrating... :(

 

But on the other hand, there are people reading these forums, trying to follow what you are saying, and seems like it is little by little starting to dawn on people that your presentation could indeed be valid, since they are starting to understand the perspective where this is coming from. And since you've developed it all the way to GR, perhaps you could consider re-writing a comprehensive version from the fundamental equation to schrödinger to SR and to GR.

 

I agree. I would love to see it developed from the original ds, through conservation of energy, to Schrodinger-like equation--and then, as such, be able to compare its effect on SR and GR and Newtonian mechanics, in accoradance with underlying parameters. The logic behind DDs equation is enticing, if not completely valid, but the math seems incomplete.

[maddog]

A consideration from a philosophical perspective as pertaining to science:

That the universe *as a whole* transcends local "frames of reference" and as such *for the universe* now is simply the ongoing present. (Future not yet present... past not still present.... That only leaves NOW... see?... *for the universe as a whole* if anyone can "wrap his/her mind around it."

 

In this sense, time is not a thing but the *concept* of "event duration" as in "elapsed time" for whatever specified event to happen as "designated" by the observer's arbitrary "beginning and ending of the observed event".) What relativity is really good at is comparing this relative perspective with that one and taking into account "signal delay" and different velocities creating different relative frames of reference in information propagation from one location to another, given the speed limit of light.

 

We *All* know that earth doesn't "see" light from the sun for 8.3 minutes, but now *is* now both there and here.... and everywhere.

 

Anyone "get it" yet?

I "get what you are positing". I also realized you do Not "get it". A *Now* has inherently

a locality to it. As in Now, Where ? Here, or there. Or Now out there....

Your version is of *Now* is of Global Nature and therefore can NOT be, that is unless

you profess to be God.

 

Your call. :shrug:

 

maddog

[Michael Mooney]

I "get what you are positing". I also realized you do Not "get it". A *Now* has inherently

a locality to it. As in Now, Where ? Here, or there. Or Now out there....

Your version is of *Now* is of Global Nature and therefore can NOT be, that is unless

you profess to be God.

 

Your call. :shrug:

 

maddog

 

When you say "A 'Now'," you have already unconsciously reified "it" as "something", and, of course all "things" have locations.

The present is not a thing. Like "the present tense"... is... what is happening now and that is regardless of location, i.e., "for the universe as a whole."

Now means present tense as distinct from past and future tense. Not a thing with a location.

 

I'll repeat:

My comments in reply to Pyrotex above have clearly addressed this issue, along with my assertion that for the universe as a whole the present is now everywhere, perpetually.

 

This phrase, "for the universe as a whole" was a perspective proposed as beyond the usual relativity frames of reference, often stated as "for observer A... yada yada... as compared with "for observer B... yada yada."

 

I am not happy with the apparent necessity to keep repeating conversations I've had with others which you either missed or didn't "get."

 

Michael

[Michael Mooney]

Boerseun:

Consider a line. A line consist of points on a 1 dimensional surface. There can be nothing outside the single dimension x in which this line exist. In other words, if you were part of that line's universe, you won't see a line. You'd only see the one point intersecting the spot where you are. You can't look down the "length" of the line to ascertain it actually being a line. You will only see the point where you intersect the line. So a line is a line only when viewed from outside its universe, one dimension up. When the observer exist in a two dimensional universe, he can identify lines existing one dimension down for what they are.

 

We know our basic geometry: A point... no dimension. A line... one dimension. A plane... two dimensions. A volume... three dimension. By convention we say that movement takes place through time...

So we have three familiar spacial dimensions and one time factor ("dimension" or not is semantics.)

And I get what you are saying about what can be seen of the above from different limited perspectives.

 

And, once again, the same goes for a three dimensional universe. Any object existing in a three-dimensional universe must be viewed from a four-dimensional vantage point in order to see it for what it is.

 

This is where I disagree. Volume has three axes, and beyond the specified volumes of geometric shapes of whatever size, beyond the "walls" of the specified geometry, there is more space... ultimately infinite (unbounded) space. (If you posit a boundary, what is it and what is beyond it? The argument reduces to absurdity.)

 

So there is no fourth spacial dimension required to observe any geometric form or object-with-volume. Any position outside that form/object can observe it, like any position inside can observe its interior (to whatever practical degree.)

 

And time-space is merely the marriage of the physical three-dimensional universe with the measuring of the passage of events which gives observers an elevated position from which to observe the three lower dimensions for what they are.

 

See above conversation with Pyrotex on "time." I'm tired of repeating. The "elevated position" from which to observe any 3-D object/event is simply beyond that object... still in 3-D space. This fourth spacial dimension is all in your (and many others') mind(s)... as I see it.

 

And because each and every observer lives in an exclusive frame of reference, each and every observer literally being at the center of his or her unique and exclusive 4D universe, there is not and cannot be a universal experience of time, or "now".

 

This is nothing more that the obvious: that each observer has a perspective unique to the position of the observer. Yup!

Yet.... here it goes again... for the universe as a whole, the present is the present, always, everywhere. (Now is now, here, there, and everywhere.) "Travel time" is a different subject... information propagation.

And, yes, I know you disagree. Fine... we disagree.

 

Michael

[lemit]

When you say "A 'Now'," you have already unconsciously reified "it" as "something", and, of course all "things" have locations.

The present is not a thing. Like "the present tense"... is... what is happening now and that is regardless of location, i.e., "for the universe as a whole."

Now means present tense as distinct from past and future tense. Not a thing with a location.

 

Are you suggesting there is no such thing as an ephemeral object or an ephemeral event? If you are, you could very quickly discover that your survival in that deep water you are getting yourself into would itself prove to be an ephemeral event.

 

I am not happy with the apparent necessity to keep repeating conversations I've had with others which you either missed or didn't "get."

 

Do you really think the rest of us are happy that we get to repeat all those same old explanations that we know you have read but which you just plain don't seem to "get?"

 

Is it an overwhelming obstinacy on your part, or is it--as I am beginning to suspect--that a basic theory of human behavior is at work here: Those who say they are intelligent generally aren't?

 

--lemit

[Pyrotex]

...A lot of haggling over words yet to do for further clarification tho.

"Haggling" is a good word, like haggling over the price of some Lebanese linen in a Cairo bazaar. That is what we are doing. Only we are haggling over terms, concepts and definitions.

 

A brilliant man, Alfred Korzybski, demonstrated that one of the major reasons for disagreement and misunderstanding in the world is that we are all attempting to use words that have multiple definitions. For example, I set out six different definitions of "time" above. It's natural to think that since "you" obviously know which definition you are using, that it must also be obvious to your listeners ("me"). This is not so. I would warrant that more than half of all the text in this entire thread (including all insults) has been generated over misunderstandings over definitions and meanings.

 

I have no intention of wasting my time on doing more of the same, and you shouldn't either. Therefore, my invention of new terms, such as elapsation and chronocount, are not in jest or frivolous. I sincerely request that you participate with me in this "haggling", so that when we get down to the tricky arguments over terms such as "simultaneous" and "now", we will have a foundation of agreed-upon, non-ambiguous, laser-clear terms and concepts that we can use.

...must first clarify my meaning for an event... Anything that "takes time" to happen. But everything everywhere continues to happen without interruption. So "elapsed time" is what an observer's stopwatch or a cameraman's "time-lapse photography" "captures. It's an artifact of the observer's designation of "an event.

This was difficult to follow. If I follow you correctly, you are offering an "event" to be anything that happens with non-zero elapsation. Hmmm. May I make a counter offer? Let's use your definition, but call it an "extended event".

 

Extended Event = an un-broken sequence of state transitions, that happen at one spatial location, over a non-zero elapsation.

 

I would add this a similar definition:

 

Simple Event = a state transition, that happens at one spatial location, at a specific chronocount.

 

...your "non-simultenaity" above already has a problem, relative to how I just defined an "event." Say Earth makes one revolution ... No problem with making up "chronocounts" as ticks of a clock. Seconds, as precise fractions of an Earth revolution are fine too, and then we would all know what one was in the world we share!

Thanks for accepting the term "chronocounts". And you're absolutely right about the term "simultaneous". It has several very close but distinct definitions that need to be dis-ambiguated (haggled).

 

Of course no information can travel at infinite speed. But gravity, for instance, traveling at lightspeed is still a steady pull among all masses everywhere. There is no lag time in sun's pull on the planets....Yet now is now for all things happening everywhere. No "forbidding of all state changes from being simultaneous." What is happening now everywhere **is** simultaneous!

Actually, there IS a lag time in the sun's pull on the planets. It's just that the experiments it would take to prove it are impossible.

If you could make the sun disappear in an instant, the Earth would continue traveling in an ellipse for over 8 minutes before it would start traveling in a straight line. Nontheless, I think I get what you are saying. I would suggest we leave gravity aside for the time being.

 

Now, as to "What is happening now everywhere **is** simultaneous!" -- isn't that what we are trying to prove? I'm sure you don't want me to take that as a given, do you? We still have important terms to haggle over. The rest of your post makes it very clear that we need to tackle the words "now" and "simultaneous". As Korzybski said, if we are assuming different definitions for the same words, then all the logic in the world cannot avoid misunderstandings.

 

Defining a word that is to be used in a technical sense (like "now") often starts with distinguishing the presence of the word from the absence of the word. For example "now". Let's say that some arbitrary Simple Event occurs. How do we distinguish whether the event occurred "now" as opposed to it occurring in the past (not-now)? How do we tell the difference between now and not-now?

 

I certainly don't want to dominate this conversation, so why don't you take a shot at defining "now"? And if you want, take a shot at "simultaneous", too, without using the phrase "at the same time". :)

[modest]

Same with a two-dimensional system. A square, for instance, can exist in two dimensions. But an observer in that same universe, won't see the square for what it is. A 2D observer in that universe will only see the one end of the square. For all he knows, the square might as well be a line. In order to see 2-dimensional objects, the observer must exist in a third dimension.

 

And, once again, the same goes for a three dimensional universe. Any object existing in a three-dimensional universe must be viewed from a four-dimensional vantage point in order to see it for what it is.

 

And that is where time comes in.

 

And time-space is merely the marriage of the physical three-dimensional universe with the measuring of the passage of events which gives observers an elevated position from which to observe the three lower dimensions for what they are.

 

I think I might disagree just a bit (or I'm perhaps misunderstanding a bit). An observer in 2D looking at a square sees only the length of it—not the length and width. But, I think you have to add time to allow the observation to actually happen. A 2D world with time would mean an observer looking at a square would still only see the length of the square (he wouldn't, for example, be able to see anything hiding behind the square) but now the observer (having time) could interact with the square. Photons would be able to travel between the square and the observer in 2D.

 

Likewise, a 3D universe with time would allow an observer to see the length and width of a box (the photons having time to interact between them). But, I would not say that adding time to 3D allows us to observe length, width, and depth of an object (and my apologizes to Boerseun if this is not what he's saying). I cannot observe depth. I essentially see things 2 dimensionally. Well, having 2 eyes, my brain constructs a kind of 3D interpretation, but imagining I lost my left eye in a knife fight in the alley behind shakey's pizza when I was 15—I'd then see (my eye would catch) a 2D projection of the box just like the observer in 2D+time seeing the square. In our 3D+time universe things can hide behind a box and we can't see them.

 

For me and my rather uninformed understanding this means there is a rather big difference between adding a spatial dimension and a time dimension. An observer in a 2D world cannot see inside a square by rotating it. If you add a spatial dimension and make it a 3D world then an observer can see in a square by rotating it. An observer in a 3D world can't see inside a box by rotating it. If you add time the observer still can't see in the box, but if you added another spatial dimension then the observer would be able to see in the 3D-box by rotating it.

 

~modest

[Michael Mooney]

Pyrotex:

"Actually, there IS a lag time in the sun's pull on the planets. It's just that the experiments it would take to prove it are impossible."

 

Is this intuitive on your part?

 

Sunlight is steady even tho it's travel time is over eight minutes. So is gravity, as I see it.

 

Please review my post on the speed of gravity early in this thread. Or go to the Homann research center... focused on the gravitational effects of Sirius A and B on Earth's rotation speed. (visual alignment *simultaneous* with gravitational effect slowing Earth's rate of rotation. (This is 'real science'... far removed from the "mainstream popularity contest" which drives "science" today. (No proper emoticon available... no mean insults intended.)

 

I'll be back to continue asap... lots of community stuff around here that requires my attention.

M

[Pyrotex]

Pyrotex:

...Sunlight is steady even tho it's travel time is over eight minutes. So is gravity, as I see it.

Please review my post on the speed of gravity early in this thread. ...

Thanks, Michael, but right now, I would like to focus on our current conversation. Your post on gravity may be very interesting, but it would be a distraction, IMHO.

So, if you don't mind, I'll read that post later. I would prefer to carry on just one conversation at a time.

 

Any thoughts on how you want to define "now"? Perhaps you have several different definitions. I'm all ears.