RE: A Brief Space of Time - Small Journey Through the Timeless!

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Interesting reading. Thanks a lot for sharing it with us. I have a few comments about it, if I may.

First, about the following sentence:

Its Anti-Electron, the Positron, has all its same characteristics, except it moves in the opposite direction.[4]

Whilst it is good to refer to this analogy, I would also insist that in reality, an antiparticle is of course moving forward in time as anything else. This is not clear from the text.

Time, even seizes to exist the smaller we go, until it completely vanishes when we start talking about the particles of light, the photons, the smallest thing that can ever be. Zero mass!

This is my main comment/question. I actually don’t understand this sentence. One can emit a photon in one place and absorb it elsewhere in the universe after a certain time. As a matter of fact, photons travelling at the speed of light obey to
c2 t2 - ||x||2 = 0
This is different from t = 0. Do you mind elaborating a bit? Thanks in advance.



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My pleasure! @ Thank you for reading it, hope others have enjoyed the read as I enjoyed writing it.

My apologies if some points weren't clear, I was jumping back and forth in perspectives. Which was mostly the point I wanted to make. I tried to explain how the fundamental things in the universe are from their point of view. And how the time WE experience, may not even be there on the fundamental level to begin with.

Whilst it is good to refer to this analogy, I would also insist that in reality, an antiparticle is of course moving forward in OUR time as anything else. This is not clear from the text.
Fixed. 🙂 Again, sorry that it wasn't clear throughout my post which perspective I was talking about. It would have been bad to read if I re-mentioned it every sentence, though it was necessary to re-emphasise the perspective, which I probably failed to do.
I did mention this, however, in the opening paragraph leading to the talk about antiparticles:
as we dive deeper into the super tiny world of particles. Those building blocks of everything, do not experience "time" per say.

As for your second question:

One can emit a photon in one place and absorb it elsewhere in the universe after a certain time.
Again, I'm really sorry for the confusion. I should've made it clear when I jump from a perspective to another.

What I meant is, time for the photon is 0.
If one would be a photon, or if one to move at the speed of light, his time would be 0. The whole notion of the "speed of light" being the number we agreed on disappears. To a photon, it never left home, so to speak.

After all, the speed of light is the meters per second or whatever DISTANCE per TIME unit we measure in our reference frame.

Is there a specific universal value for c really, all we know is that light travels at "c" and can solve equations useful to us with it being "299,792,458 metres per second" A distance we agreed on, and a time frame we specified.

I'm sorry for all the confusion but it is hard to avoid sometimes when talking about such tricky subject as Time.


Thank you again, for reading, for your questions, and for this community! And sorry about the long answer.
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Thanks for coming back to me. I still do not get it.

And how the time WE experience, may not even be there on the fundamental level to begin with.

This does not sound correct to me. The particle's proper frame is related to our frame through Lorentz transformations. If the proper frame is not what you are talking about, then I must admit I am lost and some definitions of the context are in order. Please provide these. The time is always defined in a given reference frame and probably providing the exact definitions of the frames you consider will help.

as we dive deeper into the super tiny world of particles. Those building blocks of everything, do not experience "time" per say.

Ok, now I got it and this is actually what I disagree with. In special relativity, there definitely exists an arrow of time: we go from the past to the future, regardless of the reference frame. In other words, the cause always precedes the effects. Therefore, I do not understand what it means when you write that particles do not experience time?

And to come back to the photon question, everything I have written above applies to it. It is correct that time in the particle's proper rest frame is not the same as time in the laboratory (or our reference frame). But both times are not constant to 0. Hence I still do not understand why you say that time for photons is stuck to 0. Do you mind defining exactly the reference frame in which this happens? I think the bulk of the confusion is coming from the fact that I don't follow in which frame we lie.

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Oh, this is spiralling into more confusion. haha

The first quote you referenced in your latest post, wasn't in relation to what I was saying about the particles. I was just explaining in general what was my intention in the article. 😅 and to clarify, my whole point was that "Time is an emergent property"

The whole antimatter and behaving as if moving backwards in time, was in reference to Richard Feynman's theory of antimatter. Of course it's not a mainstream idea! And I only brought it up cautiously, hence the "behaves exactly as if it's moving backward".

the cause always precedes the effects
💯 Causality is there for sure. And it's what I'm arguing that there's ONLY causality down there. How we look at it across "time" though, may differ.
A -> B -> C in that direction or A <- B <- C Causality isn't broken in either direction.

As for the photon. If we are to accelerate to the speed of light, time approaches 0 and even the distance shrinks as WE approach the speed of light. We never reach it of course, but light itself does. Photons would experience "if they can experience >.<" 0 distance in 0 time in their reference frame. I'm not even sure how to define a reference frame for 0 mass particle/wave that's never at rest (from our reference frame)?

I hope that clarifies a bit what I was trying to say.

Here's an interesting talk by Jim Al-khalili from Arvin Ash's youtube channel if you're interested. They talk casually about the same topic of time emergence if you're interested.
(Starts at 5:37)

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(Edited)

I disagree with several points in this previous reply:

A -> B -> C in that direction or A <- B <- C Causality isn't broken in either direction.

If A, B and C are different events in space time, then causality is broken, by definition. In any given frame, the time of A, B and C are different so that they are ordered.

As for the photon. If we are to accelerate to the speed of light, time approaches 0 and even the distance shrinks as WE approach the speed of light. We never reach it of course, but light itself does. Photons would experience "if they can experience >.<" 0 distance in 0 time in their reference frame. I'm not even sure how to define a reference frame for 0 mass particle/wave that's never at rest (from our reference frame)?

The above statement is incorrect. We can accelerate as much as we can (let's assume we have infinite energy), time will continue passing and will never approach zero. Time in our proper rest frame will of course be different from time in the laboratory frame, but this dos not mean any of those time will be constantly zero. Time is actually zero only at the origins of time (which we fix conventionally). For any other moment, time is non zero.

PS: I don't look at anything on YouTube in general, regardless of the author. I would be happy to read anything, but not to watch. I am a bit unfamiliar with the emergence of time as I don't work on this topic. I know there is however a small community of people doing this (and haye seem to have not reached any definite consensus). I would however be surprised that their conclusions would violate special relativity in any means (this would be largely known).

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If A, B and C are different events in space time, then causality is broken, by definition. In any given frame, the time of A, B and C are different so that they are ordered.
I'm honestly unaware how would time reversal break causality in the microscopic world.
The above statement is incorrect. We can accelerate as much as we can (let's assume we have infinite energy), time will continue passing and will never approach zero.
I understand that the whole argument is probably counterfactual to begin with, and more philosophical than it being actual practical physics. But if time is not 0 from light's point of view (or when something moving at c), then faster than light would've been a possibility. No? For Lorentz Transformations to make any sense too, the value of v has to be smaller than c.

Last but not least, I should probably clarify that I don't have any degree in physics. Though I never claimed to have, but I feel this is an important point to clarify. I love physics, I suck at math, I read/watch what is accessible for me and try to navigate to the best of my ability and critical thinking through the 95% of BS that is floating around on the internet. As for youtube, I stopped watching long ago too. I get what you mean.
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Ok I now got one thing. You were not talking about protons but photons. In my last message, I thought about protons (whereas you were mentioning photons; this is my fault), and wrote the word photons. Anyways, I have erased the statement that was making no sense. Sorry about bringing more confusion.

Of course, for a photon, its proper time is always zero and there is no rest frame. It cannot be at rest as it travels at the speed of light. So when you wrote that the time was zero, you were in fact wanted to write that the photon proper time is always zero (which is a correct statement). I guess this sorts that part out. At the end, it is probably a matter of vocabulary.

For the "A>B>C" thing, I also didn't understand that you were talking about time reversal. Time reversal is known not to be a symmetry of the microscopic world. For this point, I guess you will need to elaborate a bit more as I don't see where you are heading to.

PS: I am happy to chat about this; don't worry. I am also happy t see that at the end things get clearer.

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All good, man! It happens. It's nice having this discussion with you, I honestly didn't expect much technical questions about it (New to Hive and first time posting in @stemsocial ), otherwise I would've put more effort in making the original post more precise and clear.
I wanted it to be interesting for the casual readers, and thought provocative.

At the end, it is probably a matter of vocabulary.

Largely, yes. I believe so!

Time reversal is known not to be a symmetry of the microscopic world.

I believe this is one of the issues the group of physicists you mentioned might be working on.

I'll refer you to the T-Symmetry Wikipedia page, "Microscopic phenomena" section.


But I'll quote here the last bit:

Strong measurements (both classical and quantum) are certainly disturbing, causing asymmetry due to the second law of thermodynamics. However, noninvasive measurements should not disturb the evolution, so they are expected to be time-symmetric. Surprisingly, it is true only in classical physics but not in quantum physics, even in a thermodynamically invariant equilibrium state.[1] This type of asymmetry is independent of CPT symmetry but has not yet been confirmed experimentally due to extreme conditions of the checking proposal.

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I was indeed meaning the T symmetry and the fact t hat only the CPT symmetry is expected to be a good symmetry of nature. As CP is violated, T must be violated.

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