, poorly read, am unfamiliar with other models of dark matter.
Please don’t worry. There are so many models available that is is hard to be up-to-date. I am definitely not myself fully up-to-date, although I know the big classes of models available (which is different from knowing all models taken individually).
However, any of them seem unnecessary given my understanding that spacetime, which includes all times including those we perceive as past and future times, is affected by mass such that it warps.
The issue I have with the above statement is that it has problems with various known laws of physics. For instance, causality would be deeply broken and thermodynamics too. It is all connected to the arrow of time (see below). There is a one-way observed direction of time, at least at the macroscopic level. How would your understanding deal with this? This is unclear to me.
Regarding the arrow of time, I reckon that applies to our perception of it, rather than the actual nature of it, because time does not exist.
This is another thing that is unclear to me. Time exists, and the same manner as space exists. They are both components of spacetime. The fact that we can unify them in a more general concept does not mean the individual concepts are incorrect or cannot be taken individually to solve certain problems.
It is not possible for us to perceive the future. However, we can conceive of it, at least estimate it. IMHO the future is an artifact of our means of perceiving, not the nature of reality. I conceive of reality as a gestalt, a crystalline clockwork that incorporates such beginning and end in it's whole.
Finally, predicting the future is different from having the future impacting the present. This is where causality hits us. As said above, this is where I don't understand your reasoning and where I would need more clarifications.
I cannot understand how spacetime could exist otherwise. Would spacetime somehow erupt from probability in planckian quanta from the vacuum? How could the totality of the universe be inextant and only become extant per time, when time does not exist? It is our perception that is limited, not the universe, IMHO.
Actually, you are not the only one who cannot understand this. This is a good question and hopefully we will see an answer, at least some day.
Have a nice week-end!
Because of how we perceive reality, we perceive events as proceeding through time. However, as the time aspect of spacetime is a field just as much as space is a field, our perception of time as a procession of instants that each replace the other is utterly inaccurate. Conceiving of time as a whole removes the complication of chaos from consideration. While I cannot calculate - or even reasonably estimate - the sum of the involved values, I can only conceive of this gestalt being utterly equitable, and not conceive of any way in which it could fail to resolve perfectly.
The universe cannot be anything but this, IMHO. It is a whole, a unitary thing. Because time is an aspect of spacetime and therefore part of a field extending from beginning to end, just as space is part of that field extending from end to end, chaos is an illusion we perceive due to our perception of time as a directional sequence of instants. In fact the universe is a crystalline gestalt, and all factors are perfectly resolved equitably because that is the only possible way the universe can be, since spacetime is a field that is whole and entire.
We don't unify them in a more general concept, IMHO. We perceive them very differently, and have been fortunate enough to grasp that our perceptions do not convey what actually exists, because spacetime is what exists. Neither space nor time can exist independently, except as we conceive them due to our perception of them separately. In space frozen in time, nothing happens, and in time constrained to a point in space equity does not exist (as our present understanding of quantum foam is chaotic) and only chaos exists. Only spacetime does enable reality to exist and equitably resolve, and only as a totality.
While we can conceive of space and time as separate things (in fact it is difficult for us to not conceive of them as separate things because we perceive them as separate things) GR shows that their singular existence as spacetime creates specific metrics that aren't possible to conceive unless we correctly consider spacetime as the reality, rather than space and time as separate things. The vector of anything in spacetime has the exact same value (relative to it's mass) when it is reckoned that the faster it moves through space the slower it moves through time, and vice versa. Only conceiving of spacetime enables reckoning this balance, and considering space or time as separate entities fails to reckon this equitable resolution, creating the illusion of chaos.
In just this way that vectors of mass through spacetime always balance, the whole universe equitably resolves. Chaos and the arrow of time are illusions caused by our inability to perceive spacetime as a field, whole and entire.
I reckon the appearance of chaotic eruption of virtual particles from quantum foam simply reveals our inability to perceive spacetime in which causality works directionlessly to produce the eruption of virtual pairs necessary to resolve the sum total of forces equitably. The arrow of time is an illusion produced by our perception of time as a sequence of instants rather than as part of the unitary field of spacetime, and the subsequent illusion of chaos arises from our inability to perceive reality as it exists.
Indeed, the fact of spacetime warping across time as well as space due to the presence of mass everywhen and everywhere is the essential crux of conceiving the unitary nature of reality, since that warping does not propagate through space over time, but simply exists as mass exists in the unitary field of spacetime. This is exactly like the volume of a stone does not take time to wrap around the stone, but simple exists as the stone exists. Whatever impacts the stone impacts the volume of the stone without delay because the volume of the stone does not propagate across spacetime, but is a property of the stone, exactly as the shape of spacetime is a property of spacetime. Gravity is just the shape of spacetime.
The invisibility of mass at other times effecting spacetime warping is because light moves at the speed of light, which takes time to propagate through space and thus does not affect our observations of spacetime warping due to mass present at other times because that warping does not propagate across spacetime like forces do. That warping is an aspect of spacetime itself.
Edit: I have sought to better grasp these issues and what metrics by which they can be reckoned, and have only just discovered that Hermann Minkowski has treated my hypothesis more than a century ago, in his 1908 paper "The Fundamental Equations for Electromagnetic Processes in Moving Bodies", or so I gather from the statement "From his reformulation he concluded that time and space should be treated equally, and so arose his concept of events taking place in a unified four-dimensional spacetime continuum." However, somehow in the gullywash of gibberish, it seems that despite this statement, it appears that "At a time when Minkowski was giving the geometrical interpretation of special relativity by extending the Euclidean three-space to a quasi-Euclidean four-space that included time, Einstein was already aware that this is not valid, because it excludes the phenomenon of gravitation."
I do not agree with this. It does not follow that treating spacetime as a four dimensional whole excludes gravity, and instead I see that the affect of mass reaches across time as it does space, since what the affect of mass is actually reaching across is spacetime. The whole of my speculation is that the affect of mass is acting on spacetime within spacetime, and while we see that gravity reaches across space natively, because we perceive space as a field, gravity is actually acting on spacetime and not only space, because spacetime is the actual medium. Because spacetime is a field, it's spatial aspect is a field as we perceive it to be. For the same reason, time is a field, despite we do not perceive time as a field, but perceive time as a successive sequence of instants. Time is not a successive sequence of instants. There is no arrow of time.
The arrow of time is an artifact of our imperfect perception of spacetime (and perhaps of mathematical description, which I am incompetent to address, since I have no comprehension of how spacetime is described mathematically), and specifically of time as a sequence of instants succeeding one another. In fact time and space aren't actual separate things but are both aspects of spacetime, which is a unitary whole that extends entirely from such beginning to such end as exist in the universe, a continuum warped by the presence of mass.
Given that mass warps spacetime, it follows that mass we observe as well as mass we do not observe in our imperfect perception of spacetime is effecting that warping, because while we perceive mass in a present instant, mass actually exists in a continuum, not a sequence of instants succeeding one another. Exactly as we see that mass a meter from a point of observation effects spacetime warping, and mass 10 meters away effects spacetime warping, moderated by the inverse square law, mass 1 second from the moment of observation effects spacetime warping, and mass 1 week from the moment of observation effects spacetime warping, moderated by the inverse square law.
I cannot grasp that mass cannot effect spacetime warping across the spacetime continuum when the difference from the point of observation is delay rather than distance, which gravity does reach across. If gravity does reach across distance it is also reaching across delay, because what it is reaching across is spacetime and every distance necessarily includes delay. Delay cannot exist without distance, nor distance without delay. Both are actually aspects of what mass exists in and affects, and do not exist otherwise.
Mass cannot cross space instantly. It always takes time to cross space. This is why what mass is crossing is not space, but spacetime. However gravity does not cross spacetime. Gravity is a feature of spacetime. Gravity does not take time to exist. Time is an aspect of spacetime just as is gravity. The shape of spacetime is gravity.
Mass warps spacetime. It is this warping that is called gravity. This warping does not cross space over time, because what is warping is spacetime. This is why I say gravity is not a force and does not propagate across spacetime like light or other forces do. Gravity is the shape of spacetime itself, and thus does not propagate across spacetime. Gravity is the form of spacetime, it's nature, like the volume of a stone does not take time to form around the stone, but simply is an aspect of the stone, gravity is an aspect of spacetime.
However, when mass is moving in spacetime, the warping of spacetime moves across the continuum as a result of the movement of the mass and at the rate of movement of the mass, because the mass effect is moderated by the inverse square law, and is not effected without moderation, so the shape of spacetime changes at the speed of the movement of mass. This is why when the ripples of spacetime warping proceeded across the spacetime continuum when two massive black holes collided, which we detected in 2017, they moved across the continuum at the speed of light.
That speed of the movement of the ripples was not the speed of gravity, but of the pressure wave produced by the collision of masses that cannot move or interact faster than the speed of light, which collision speed is not gravity anymore than mass is gravity. The collision of the black holes changed the warping of spacetime turbulently as the collision was not smooth, but turbulent. This turbulence produced the pressure wave, and the speed of the turbulence is the detected speed of the ripple across spacetime, not the speed of gravity.
Gravity has no speed, just as volume has no speed. Gravity is an aspect of spacetime, just like space and time. Speaking of a speed of gravity is the same as speaking of the speed of space, or the speed of time.
Cosmoquest that the affect of "a mass 1 second away in time would have a gravitational effect 30,000,000,000,000,000x greater than a mass 1m away. So you need to introduce some scaling factor for masses displaced in time to counter that - and if you make it 1 / c^2 then the effects rapidly become unmeasurable. If we use that scaling then an object would need to be almost stationary for about 300x the age of the universe to experience the same effect as having a similar object a metre away."While I have utterly no ability to understand any of the relevant math, I am told by @Shaula on
It makes no sense to me that the stated calculable affect is 3x10^16 larger for a mass 1 second removed from the instant of observation than a mass 1 meter distant, and should be reduced by some factor, and particularly a factor that so reduces it as to require it to exert it's affect for 300x the age of the universe before it compares to a similar mass a meter distant. It seems to me that somewhere something is being reckoned wrongly, since both scales mentioned are outside of reasonable consideration. As I do not have, and never expect to, the ability to so reckon I guess I am just grateful that I have glimpsed something my betters have considered.
Further, I am unable to find any recent incorporation of this seemingly necessary recognition that spacetime is affected by mass in Hermann Minkowski's four dimensional continuum, and find instead that dark matter is introduced and no affect of mass elsewhen is reckoned at all. Since mass cannot affect across distance without also affecting across delay, I am baffled. I am further baffled at the contention that the shape of spacetime is claimed to take time to propagate, that there is a speed of gravity.
I am left humbler, if more mystified, and with a deeper appreciation for your kindness in spending time in discussion with me.
Thank you.
Thanks for this very long answer. That would be a perfect discussion for a science cafe or something similar (which would be much more suitable than writing and writhing and writing). Anyway I guess we have to deal with written comments at the moment.
That’s somewhat a problem because calculations are required to be able to compare predictions with data. And data will tell us whether your idea is possible or not.
All data known so far show that causality is satisfied (especially in the context of relativity that matters here), and agree with relativity. Therefore, if someone wants to replace the currently admitted paradigm by something else, or even generalise it (which is not impossible; this already happened in the past), this person has to show that the new framework does at least as good as the previous one (or in other words that there is a gain), and that the theory is equipped with unique predictions so that there are ways to test it in the future and unambiguously show that it is working (or not; both a positive and a negative conclusion are useful).
What I don’t get here is that physics has nothing to do with perceptions. For instance, we can perceive Earth as being flat at our scale. Of course it is not.
At the end we have a mathematical framework that can be used not only to describe past results, but also to make predictions. This is more or less the mere definition of a theory. It is not because we, as humans, perceive something, that it happens like that in nature. Nature has nothing to do with our human perception.
The fact that we have space, time and spacetime does not lead to any specific issue to me. In some domains we can consider space and time as separate entities (for instance when I walk or drive a car), and sometimes we cannot do this (cosmology, particle physics). I do not see any contradiction here.
Here I don’t understand because it seems to be unrelated to the rest of the discussion. That’s a particle physics thing and not a cosmology one, except if you want to discuss particle models of inflation (that have a connection with cosmology). In particle physics, there is a well-defined way to handle virtual particles, higher order corrections, etc. and it works. Theory and data agree to a very high level of precision.
I don’t see any reason why this would not be accounted for in existing calculations. Gravitational lensing is a good examples where this is actually done.
This is true. But this also mean light can go back in time. Therefore, as I wrote before, it is only the proposal of events in the future having an influence on events in the past that worries me. I do not see how this would be acceptable in light of current data.
I also don't understand why gravity should be excluded. In general relativity, it is not. Minkowski spacetime is used for calculations involving special relativity from many years. And it has a causal structure.
This is actually one of the things that we do to ‘detect’ invisible mass. We use their effect on the warping of spacetime to get a grasp on it.
That’s an interesting forum discussion (it seems that many people there are telling. What the people there told you is basically what I told you above in terms of having a theoretical framework. Without doing the math themselves, I am afraid there is no way to get further. At the end of the day, physics is always numerical.
Cheers!
I know you're very busy, and greatly appreciate such consideration and so far very gentle criticism as you provide. It is very kind of you.
I agree, but we can only do science insofar as we can conceive of experiments whose results we can perceive. How we experience time seems the reason that the Arrow of Time exists theoretically, since it seems irrelevant to a unitary spacetime continuum. How we conceive of reality stems from what we perceive of reality, and there is more to what we look at than we see.
This is why I have quit using the word hypothesis and now use speculation regarding my understanding, because without that framework it cannot be tested. I really should never have quit learning math. I am sure it is only nearly Godlike patience that enables you to suffer this discussion with a math illiterate.
The point I make about the universe being unitary and equitable is why I find this pertinent. Math, or statements in any language, can be open ended, wrong, or incomplete. Physical reality cannot. A stone is just exactly what it is, completely and wholly that stone and nothing else, and short nothing that is a part of that stone. How I'd describe that stone would leave a whole lot of things unstated, such as 'it weighs a kilogram' or it's 11 by 8 centimeters'. The stone itself is utterly complete, not short any detail as my descriptions are, or burdened with anything it is not, as we conceptually add to the Kaaba. As the universe seems to have sprang from the big bang (leaving branes aside, E8 tesseracts, strings, and etc.) all it's parts have necessarily derived from that unitary state, and absent other creation events, remain linked through that initial union presently, via whatever processes and transformations have followed thereafter involving only itself. Just as it's beginning is complete, it must be now, and will be at whatever end there is. I see reality as a clockwork in which every aspect of it physically is part of a whole that cannot be missing or added any bits or pieces, from both it's beginning and from it's end, whatever end may come to it. It has to be entire.
Given spacetime is a whole and not a sequence of instants, the future and past are complete, and causality not necessarily limited to our perception of time as directional. A future need for particles today to balance the mechanism of spacetime indwelt with forces and matter is just as potentially causal as a past precursor event in unitary spacetime as I envision it. Who is to say if the butterfly flapping it's wings caused the hurricane or if the hurricane required the butterfly to fly? If time is directionless, causality should also be. What matters is the resolution of the forces in the whole, which cannot fail to equate, and which direction you view the clockwork gears turning immaterial to that equity.
While I am ignorant of much that is relevant, I am not aware that Einstein considered data Newton did not have in his insight that gravity and acceleration were identical in affect. He interpreted information differently than Newton, and that changed everything.
The statement '...light can go back in time.' confuses me. Do you mean that light from distant, ancient events only reaches us long after such events, or is there a Nobel in your future?
I hope everything goes great tomorrow when ya'll crank it up to 11, and went well yesterday (I recall you spoke), and happy Independence Day from America, today, the Fourth of July. We owe everything to France, or it's all your fault, depending on your viewpoint ;).
Thanks!
I am pleased to answer. As I said, a good conversation has never hurt anyone (even if we disagree).
Yes, but there is a missing step. Between the perception and the comparison with data, we need a mathematical description of perception, that could be used for predictions and the actual comparison with data. Without this, ideas only stay ideas, and cannot be promoted to being theories.
What about thermodynamics, or the expansion of the universe. To me, these are more than just ideas. And this is the starting point that shakes all the rest of the reasoning in your reply. Why would the arrow of time be reversible as we have data showing us that it is not.
That’s a pity as this missing step is really needed to go further. Otherwise, I can only provide observations that could put the speculation into troubles, but there is no way to have a final conclusive (quantitative) statement on this.
Don’t worry. If I would have been bored, I would have stopped answering ^^
I don’t understand this. Physics uses math to express itself. Am I missing anything?
This is another item I don’t get fully. We observe events and we can order them, can’t we? Therefore, we definitely 'make use' of the arrow of time.
No, nothing can go back in time. This is in fact how I understood your next-to-last reply. If events from the future can influence us, this means that light could go back in time. One step further, this means that we are in big troubles relative to existing data, at least at macroscopic scales.
As I am not French, this is definitely not my fault. I hope you enjoyed your fourth of July! :)
Cheers!
I am glad to benefit from your expertise, as well as your good nature, even if you're not French.
It can be impossible to see the forest for the trees, and this is what I think is happening. Details like thermodynamics and inflation need to be interpreted against the backdrop of the forest as a whole, because aspects of the ecosystem unknown to us yet connect each of the trees of the forest unseen by us from our viewpoint. We know this has to be so because all the universe was in one point at one instant. All the forest has grown from one seed. It clearly is one thing.
I'm unaware of any cosmology currently advocated that asserts space and time are separate, or that mass expends force when effecting gravity, or that there are some places and times mass doesn't effect gravity, or that spacetime is separated into bits and pieces and instants and moments. None of these assertions, that spacetime is one thing from end to end, that gravity is an aspect of spacetime affected by mass, or that gravity isn't a force, originate with me, or are even controversial, to my knowledge. Better men than I showed these things were so and they have been affirmed by repeated observations.
Gravity is not a force and does not run low after warping spacetime for a while. The effect doesn't expire, wear out, or need refueling. It's just the shape of spacetime, spacetime's 4D topology, which takes no ergs or joules of energy to maintain or cause, any more than the volume of a rock does.
It does wane per the inverse square law with increasing displacement of mass from a given placera (place plus era. Catchy right?) of spacetime, but doesn't require fuel to cause it's effect, so the effect it had yesterday doesn't count against the effect it has today, or will tomorrow.
If mass that cannot be perceived today is effecting gravity today from yesterday and tomorrow, that mass is invisible, but it's affect can be calculated from gravitational lensing seen today, or the position of the Bullet Cluster being displaced from it's apparent center of gravity, or galactic arms moving faster than the matter we observe can pull them.
Those are observations that are said to require dark matter. But from the description of the universe we have already, there is lots of invisible matter causing the observed gravity. Almost all the matter in spacetime is invisible. Ordinary matter warps spacetime and transforms it to gravitospacetime, which is a whole and not chopped into past, present, and future, not east and west, and left and right, nor gravity, space, and time. So not only mass in the past is affecting gravitospacetime, but mass in the future, even as the universe expands and that mass moves away from galactic centers to pull on galactic arms, or the Bullet Cluster keeps colliding and mass long after today pulls it towards it's center of gravity after that mass has moved past that center.
But when we observe warped spacetime and the matter and forces in it, we see across space, perceiving time only as an instant, and can only reckon from a theoretical time of origin to the present, or estimate what future may come. We perceive an arrow of time that does not exist because spacetime is a whole. It's not broken into the past, present, and future like we experience. We are trapped in warped spacetime, like light.
All I am attempting is to synthesize the stated attributes of the trees into a forest. Mass warps spacetime moderated by the inverse square law, and there's no part of spacetime that effect does not reach. The 4D topology of spacetime does not take time to effect. It just is the shape of spacetime. Spacetime has not been claimed to be partial, erupting from the vacuum instant by instant, by any credible mechanism I am aware of. We perceive an arrow of time, because we are matter and forces like light, trapped in spacetime, but that is not a limitation suffered by spacetime, so spacetime should be what it appears to be, which is whole and entire, from beginning to end .
The existence of spacetime as a unitary thing is pretty solidly supported by a lot of different evidence. Data showing an arrow of time starts off weak, because time is only an aspect of spacetime, and space doesn't have a direction. Given our perception of time as a series of instants, it would be awfully hard to produce data that showed anything else. I note that every experimental result must be interpreted, and I can't think of a way to interpret any experimental result to show the future.
Conceptually, the only way to interpret spacetime being whole is to understand that the future is complete. If spacetime isn't entire, it needs to be shown that spacetime is somehow being created, or transformed from the past, everywhere across it's entire breadth, at every instant. That's a tall order.
Math is a language, not the physical reality it is used to describe. People can make incomplete, false, and inconclusive statements in math. String Theory is notorious for it, I am told. I do not think the universe can be any of those things. When I drop my hammer it hits something conclusively, for real. If I estimate what would happen if I drop my hammer, I am just writing a story.
Physical reality is not it's description. Math cannot fully describe a thing, no matter how it is attempted. If I say a stone is a certain width, I have left out it's mass, it's color(s), and on and on.
The arrow of time and causality are artifacts of our perception, of our existence as matter and forces in spacetime. In a complete universe comprised of past, present, and future, we still see our existence arising instant by instant, because we are not spacetime. We are trapped in it, blinded to the future, and severed from the past.
Math does not have an inherent arrow of time. E=IR is completely reversible. If so much of the universe can be described so elegantly without an arrow of time by such a simple thing as Ohm's Law, it seems likely to me the arrow of time is only a product of our perceptions, rather than physical reality. More to the point, there seems to be no credible mechanism for warped spacetime to be partial. Short the future, it would be erupting at all times everywhere, and this is not even hinted at. It seems to be complete and entire.
We just can't see it.
If you are fine with the fact that I am not French, then it is alright ^^ To be honest, I should apply one day for citizenship (I live here for almost 15 years). I am just too lazy to go through all the paperwork…
This is precisely the point of my previous message. It is not a matter of “seeing” or “perceiving”. We have a theory, which means a mathematical framework dedicated to explain physical phenomena, that can make predictions and be compared with data. That’s a very different thing from “ideas” or “thoughts”. In order for something else to take over, we need this something else to be promoted to a full theoretical framework with all mathematical aspects built in, predictions and comparisons with data. This is how to proceed to see one theory being eventually replaced by another (or generalised as often domains of application play a role).
Not everything you mentioned has already been studied and assessed. However, some of the points raised are. For instance, the fact that gravity arises from spacetime deformations is fully embedded in general relativity, isn’t it? Of course, there are new ideas in your proposal. As I wrote before, some of them seem to be in contradictions with current data and lead to problems.
In general relativity, gravity arises from deformations of spacetime. We call it a force, even if it has a different origin from that of the other forces. I have the impression that here, it is just semantics, isn’t it?
Newton’s law of gravitation, with its typical 1/r2 behaviour, is generalised in general relativity. I am not sure to follow the reason why the two should be incompatible. They just have different domains/regimes of application.
As already mentioned, my problem is not the today/yesterday part, which we can include in calculations without any problem, but the tomorrow part. There is no way for the future to impact us without being in contradictions with common physics (that is backed up by centuries of data). As I said earlier, causality is important. If you want to convince me that the future can have a role, I am afraid that there is no other way except going into the mathematical foundations of your idea.
What does ‘the future is complete’ mean? I don’t get this. Does it mean spacetime is finite and that there is an upper limit on time?
Yes it is, And it is used as a language in physics, so that we could make predictions, and especially so that we could make any theory falsifiable (or tested if you prefer). Qualitative statements are rapidly not sufficient anymore when developing new ideas. I know that you already mentioned that this is an issue for the current discussion, but I am afraid that this is the only way to move further.
What about the formulation of physics laws with maths? In the same way, math does not have any inherent notion of physics too. For a physicist, math is a tool, and is used as such. The mathematical framework describing any theory allow us to use the theory to go beyond a qualitative description.
Cheers!
I agree. It is a strong reason I am so grateful for your criticism.
Other than temporal issues with causality, I have not grasped the contradictions (which I don't think a contradiction, but simply unaccounted for practical reasons). I am loathe to burden you, but humbly request specifics that I might better wrap my head around what I am conceiving that is novel and outrageous, because I consider what I (try to) say as simply a comprehensive conception of the sum of established conventions. I am really not an inventor of original thoughts, but more of a slow, if thorough, considerer of those of my betters, I think.
Mathematically there is no difference between discussing a force or a dimension. However, the difference between Newton and Einstein is that the universe is completely different in form, despite the math describing orbital mechanics producing quite similar orbits in either, so similar that the simpler math reckoning force of gravity rather than the topology of spacetime is used in rocket science.
I can note the similarity between a legal person and a natural person for legal purposes, while the difference between a living breathing soul and an agreement between such persons (a corporation) is quite substantial, and results in love, suffering, and birth and death only applying to natural persons, which yet fails, largely, to affect some law (with sometimes horrific consequences).
Because we are confined in spacetime as are all matter and forces, the tree of time conceals the extent of the forest from us in our interpretation of experimental results. I suspect that reconsidering many such in a cosmological context in which spacetime completely extended from the East to the West, and from the Beginning to the End, while it would not alter the mathematical formulae or calculations relevant to the experiment (if such experiment were not differentiating between those conceptions of spacetime), would be quite different in terms of the underlying mechanisms being reckoned, just as Newtonian cosmology required a luminous aether which the Einsteinian cannot abide.
Yes. Spacetime, if there is a beginning to it, is finite. I here note that originally I stated that spacetime was infinite, and you pointed out there was no specific basis for that assumption. Mathematically it is possible in (at least) three ways for infinity to be stated. Something that neither begins nor ends is infinite, and if it ends or begins but not the inverse.
However, if there was a big bang in which all the universe was contained in a point at an instant the physical fact of the universe, as distinct from description of concepts of it, constrain that physical entity to forms that reference that origin. A clock can only be the sum of it's parts, while the description of a clock will both embellish and neglect aspects of that discrete reality and can (must) perpetually approach that reality without actually conforming to it.
No statement in any language, including math, can be complete as a physical thing is necessarily complete and cannot embellish or neglect aspects of it. Even math must necessarily lie by omission, at least, or by embellishment, unavoidably. Heisenberg showed this, IMHO.
While I used Ohm's Law to demonstrate that concision of formulae is a consilient principle of physics, Ohm's Law also fails to fully encompass physical reality. I do not seek to disparage math, but to correctly consider it's proper role, which, while essential, is not all that is necessary to encompass physics. You correctly note that I cannot do physics without the necessary math, but physics also has arisen from insights and conceptions that have not been derived from math, even if they have later been described with math. Apples fall from trees, and the acceleration they undergo is due to the shape of spacetime, calculably identical to if they were rocket powered.
So, I attempt to convey what I conceive quantitatively in English, which limits the quantities to none or all, and estimates those in between. A poor substitute for math, I concur, but competent to that degree. When I say spacetime is complete I mean that all events that can be described are fully actualized (they 'have' happened), including those which are at times to come and which are concealed from us by the constraints of time on forces that cannot reach us from those placeras. We cannot perceive them. That does not mean they don't exist, or that gravity from them, not being a force, doesn't affect the full breadth of spacetime. Mass anywhere or anytime in spacetime affects all spacetime, and the statements 'anywhere' and 'anytime' are false in physics, because there is no where without a when, nor a when without a where, and all subject to gravity.
While the evolution of mathematics has necessarily proceeded from our evolving conception of physics, Euclidean geometry becoming Riemannian geometry complicates the conceptual picture of reality with 'lies' (I say this having only (limited) comprehension of Euclidean geometry). Euclidean geometry only pertains to theoretical concepts, and not to actual reality in which space cannot exist without time. I am not trying to be pedantic, but to here consider actual functional ability of math to pertain to what is real. As a carpenter I use Euclidean geometry daily shaping structures, and, like rocket scientists using Newtonian force calculations to reckon orbits, precisely conforming to actual reality in my calculations would hopelessly complicate my work. Such is the human condition.
In reality at the scales under discussion this humanity is relevant to our consideration of the future insofar as light from there doesn't reach us and we can only speculatively predict events. That is not a constraint on gravity which is not matter and forces as we are. Being unable to perceive the future cause of an event from our viewpoint in the present creates the appearance of chaos, which cannot exist in a clockwork universe that actually physically exists and utterly resolves all forces equitably. The gears in a clock have specific form, and cannot estimate or miscalculate the force they express or impart. Calculations do unavoidably estimate and miscalculate by their nature (lying by omission or embellishment), and we can only consider what we conceive, which is yet only partially accurate, because we largely evolve our conceptions from our perceptions. Physics is not conceptually limited to our perceptions, but is practically limited today by our human nature.
We estimate with probability chaotic events, but the universe resolves equitably by causing events appearing to us to be chaotic through it's nature we cannot perceive because we are human. While physics is theoretically able to be conceptually accurate and complete, it isn't yet, because of the dichotomy between what we perceive and have yet to conceive correctly.
Otherwise you'd do other work.