Experiment Suggests Time is an Emergent Property, Not a Fundamental Physical One

Well that would explain 'spooky action at a distance'......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_at_a_distance

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement

fortunately for me the world I live in doesn't routinely pass through either a thin or thick quartz plate and time still functions under the norms of theory of relativity

"...But the thicker the plate, the longer it takes the photons to pass through... repeating the experiment with plates of different thicknesses confirms that the second photon's polarisation varies with time."

Using present definitions of time to prove that time does not exist? - popycock

This can't be right, too early not strong enough coffee.....

It seems as if they contend that time is more a scale of measure than a physical property?

Time is an assumption of observation?

Observational entropy?

Got to read this one a few more times.

Like I don't have enough to think on already.....

I see this on two scales; one is our earth, the other is the entire universe.

From the earthly view, time is very real. We pay the utility company for kilowatt HOURS used. If time was not real, they would never have built the power plants.

On the cosmic scale, I do believe that E=mC squared. If that is true, then we could calculate how long it would take to convert all of the mass of the universe back into the original big-bang energy. I am not going to work that out, but it would probably come out to be 14.7 Billion years.

This seems a lot like a black hole. To an outside observer, anything falling into a black hole looks frozen in time at the event horizon. Yet to the thing (or person) falling in to the black hole time continues to progress, even as tidal forces tear the person or object apart.

Where is Jorrie when needed?

Time is the measure of events. As man has evolved he has used many things to base these passage of events on. Rotation of the earth, moon, earth orbit, the speed of light... Could it be that the just have not found a scale to measure with? One that does not interfere with the experiment. If we know the event happened then there should be some means to measure it. Even quantum mechanics events happen. That means to measure it would be a better use of their resources and time then trying to prove that it not a fundamental property.

I said that I needed to do some more research before I could get my arms around this concept and I think I now have a basic understanding of what this means. So I will try to relate some of what I have learned so far.

First, I want to try to dispel a century-long belief that time is the 4^th dimension. This thinking has prevailed for over one hundred years, but in retrospect, it is not what Einstein said in his works on Relativity in 1912.

Einstein stated that X₄ = ict. The forth dimension is not time, rather ict. The concept that time is the 4^th dimension has become a Pandora's box for physicists with too many paradoxes to its name.

What is actually being proposed here and subsequently reinforced with the results of the recent experiment by Ekaterina Moreva, et al, is that time is an emergent phenomenon from an expanding 4^th dimension relative to the three spatial dimensions.

This is a lot to chew, so I will try to deconstruct it in a way that makes sense. If I leave any holes in your understanding along the way, I apologize. I am still a student of physics and will be for life, so my own understanding is not without holes.

I will also be skipping a lot of detail here because I lack the time to devolve all the theories implied here and I cannot create a book from a single post. So, the reader is encouraged to do their own research to help fill in those gaps.

The first premise is that the 4^th dimension is always expanding at a rate of c relative to any one spatial coordinate. It is also moving independently of the three spatial dimensions. The expansion of the 4^th dimension can be considered like a 3D sphere or balloon expanding. The expansion of the 4^th dimension also sets the arrow of time.

The second premise is that time is essentially a change of state of a photon, which is a carrier of energy; essentially matter riding the expanding 4^th dimension.

These two premises explain a number of paradoxes in physics. For example, spooky-action-at-a-distance, or entanglement is readily understood.

If two photons are simultaneously emitted at a single 3D spatial coordinate they also must share the same local in the 4^th dimension. However, as the two photons diverge in the spatial dimensions, they always remain collocated in the 4^th dimension. Why? Because photons travel at c they also experience no passage of time. They simply do not age at all; therefore, always occupy the same position in the 4^th dimension.

This means when you measure or observe one of the photons you also change the state of the other entangled photon instantaneously, regardless of the 3D spatial separation. Remember that the act of observing or measuring a photon collapses its probability wave in quantum mechanics.

A probability wave expands at a rate of c until it is observed or measured (forcing its collapse). At that point the "matter" that resided in the 4^th dimension is transformed into its 3D localized spatial dimensions.

In the case of our two diverging photons, both are an expanding probability wave. Over the course of 1 second the wave front expands in the 3D spatial universe in a spherical fashion with a radius of 3 X 10⁸ m/s. There is equal probability of finding both photons at any one point on the skin of that imaginary sphere. While the probabilities that the two photons would be collocated on that 3D sphere are infinitesimally small, they are collocated at a single local in the 4^th dimension.

The probability of two photons emitted from a common local occupying the same position on the spherical wave front is approximately zero. They are infinitely more likely to have some degree of physical separation due to the huge number of Planck points that represent the skin of the wave front sphere..

This is analogous to a new deck of cards. When you first open a deck of cards they are in a specific order. If you pull all of the cards out of the box and drop the deck from a tall building, the chance of finding all cards in the same order that they left your hand is extremely small. This is exactly how entropy works and the co-emitted photons are no different than the deck of cards example except that there are nearly infinitely more possibilities than there would be with the cards.

Why is this important? Because all particles that experience thermal vibrations interact with photons (the transfer messenger of energy) and all photons reside in the 4^th dimension, which is expanding and drives the random disorder we observe as chaos.

How do we know the rate that the 4^th dimension is expanding? The simple answer is that when a theoretical object propagates through 3D space at c it's on-board clock stops (as per Relativity) and that would mean that the object is not moving with respect to the 4^th dimension. However, an object at rest in 3D space must be moving through the 4^th dimension at a rate of c.

Juggling this seems a little difficult, but the important factor to consider is that what Relativity shows us applies in both the 3D spatial dimensions as well as the 4^th dimension. This is what it means when I say that the 4^th dimension is expanding at a rate of c relative to a given 3D spatial set of coordinates.

I am hoping that I am providing an adequate explanation for an ah-ha moment here; that time is not the 4^th dimension as we have been believing for that last 100 years, but an emergent property of the 4^th dimension as it expands at the rate of c. The experiment link I initially posted simply attempts to test this theory.

Also, the supporting physics for this is nothing more than Einstein's derivation dx₄ / dt = ic.

I will add more to this as time permits.

I give you a GA, even though I'm not sure I comprehended it all. I have thought for years that the passage of time was tied to the expansion of the universe. Einstein also said that time was an illusion, so that may have been a lot of the confusion.

Thanks. There is still much that I am confused about, but this latest experiment seems exciting and the underlying theory is starting to make some sense out of the total mystery of time.

It may turn out to be right or wrong. Either way it promises to be exciting.