From the moment we are born, we start growing older and older, "time" flows in one direction for us. Though we might feel it accelerating if we're having a good time, or decelerating when bored, it never halts, not for a brief moment, and never goes the other way around.
Milk gets spilled, eggs scrambled, things get broken or mixed up. We never see them unspilled, unscrambled, unbroken, or unmixed in our normal daily life. They always go from an orderly state to disorder. And that's a process we call Entropy.
Does it explain time, however? Or is it simply just another tool of our creation for useful calculations and a poor attempt to describe what time does when it moves forward without really explaining any reason.[1]
The apparent permanent increase of entropy is how we deceive ourselves in explaining time direction in the macroscopic world. Order and disorder are mere fabrications of our imagination! The universe doesn't care what we call a certain state, nor does it "think" an unscrambled egg, for example, is in an "ordered" state to start with.
Contrary to what entropy is defined to be, I'd even argue that the -one way- arrow of time, if anything, is going from the disordered, forcefully into an order of physical laws. Despite what pleases us as "ordered".
It appears to be emerging from something entirely different, completely detached from how we intuitively perceive it. No physical laws specifically prohibit an incident from happening in one direction or another, as long as no other laws affect or prevent it from doing so.[2]
In short, it is an emergent property. Meaning, it's a built-up effect of multiple factors acting altogether to form a property for a whole (the macroscopic), that is just not there for its constituents (the microscopic).
Explained in layman's terms:
The pile-up of effects from the various interacting sources and forces as we go up the hierarchy of structures, is what causes the emergence of this "time" effect, and it's what might prevent something from happening the other way around at the macroscopic scale.Take our spilled milk for example, let's ignore for a moment that someone or something did the spilling, for the sake of simplicity, and just focus on its current state and what forces can prevent it from going back. Well, we got gravity of course, air pressure, surface tention, and of course the dissipated kinetic energy, to name a few. The point is, not a single reason you can find that itself isn't emergent. And that "pile-up" of various effects is the root cause of the apparent one way arrow of time.
The smaller the things are, however, the freer and the less inclined to be affected by such pile-up.[3]
Physically speaking, time as we know it, disintegrates entirely as we dive deeper into the super tiny world of particles.
Those building blocks of everything, do not experience "time" per say. They are like jiggly dots, oozing with energy, just trying to be at rest. With our memory and consciousness when we look at them, interacting and doing their thing in a sequence, we think "time" is passing. But it's just passing for us.
Antimatter, which is a form of matter particles, behaves exactly as if it's moving backward in time, as Dr.Feynman puts it.
Say an Electron, for example, has its unique and distinctive properties, behaves in a very specific way, always goes in a specific direction when interacted with the same field, which makes us know this is an electron and nothing else.
Its Anti-Electron, the Positron, has all its same characteristics, except it moves in the opposite direction.[4]
I'm trying to keep things simple for all readers, so I'll use this (not-so-accurate but gives an idea) analogy: By opposite, I don't mean opposite in your normal sense. It's as if a known rock is falling upwards, away from Earth due to its gravity instead of falling downwards. If we see that on Youtube, we'd know the video is edited to play in reverse, right?
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!
Those pure forms of energy particles are massless, they only have momentum which gives them their energy, and time in their world is zero![5]
Even our -not so trusty- perception of time changes relative to speed, after all, time and speed go hand in hand. Clocks tick differently when moving at different speeds, becoming hugely more noticeable as we approach the speed of light. The famous "twins" thought experiment by Albert Einstein, shows how you wouldn't experience time the same if you are to sit in bed here on boring Earth vs whizzing around on a rocket in outer space near the speed of light. (You'd have an exhilarating time doing the latter for sure if nothing else)
The twin that stays on Earth would become much older than the one riding the rocket. 🚀 [6]
Ps. Don't try to tell the police you were speeding to prevent aging, it doesn't work...
E² = p²c² + m²c⁴
In physics, mass and energy are interchangeably one and the same, nuclear bombs made sure to practically prove -with a bang- how mass can be converted into energy, and the Large Hadron particle accelerator in Geneva constantly creates mass from energy 24/7.
Energy and Mass, have always been manifestations of the same thing, nothing new, we were just blind before.
Similarly, space and time are interwoven. We call it "spacetime". (Spime?! 🤔)
You cannot talk about space without time, it wouldn't "exist", and vise versa.
Moreover, "mass/energy" and "space/time" are both tightly interrelated. There would be no spacetime without energy/mass and no energy/mass without spacetime.[8]
For calculations and mathematical purposes that holds true. But we can simplify the understanding further for the purposes of this post.
We can reduce the complexity by saying time isn't necessary. You wouldn't need time to describe positions in one still shot.
It only becomes viable as a variable if you need to describe sequences. Completely meaningless if no memory or consciousness is there to follow sequences, and try to predict what WILL happen.
And mass/energy, on the other hand, IS in other words the space.
Because even where you think it's lacking, aka "empty space", it's not empty at all. It's full of energy![7]
Energy seems to be the likely most fundamental thing, but so far, it's not really completely clear for sure which property emerged from what, and which aspect is the more fundamental one, if not even all have emerged from something more fundamental. 🤷♂️
Conclusion:
No matter how you look at it, you'd arrive at the conclusion that time is a concept of our imagination. An illusion!
Sure, it's affecting us from our point of view, but it's emergent. The underlying forces of nature are what creates that illusion. Time, along with what is called "entropy", are merely tools of our creation, useful for measurement. Nothing more.
To even talk about one thing happening and then another in a sequence, requires consciousness or at least a memory of some sort. Both of which to us, are a blessing but yet a curse. Both of which aren't there at what we consider the fundamental level of the universe, as far as we currently know.
Without memory, time would be meaningless!
♾ = 0 ?
It's funny and mind-boggling how the extreme opposites meet.
Being timeless means zero time but yet infinite.
Being massless, you have zero mass, but now unbound to travel at the fastest speed existence allows, practically becoming present at any particular point in no time.
Contrary to what they say, I do believe the microscopic "weird" world of particle physics is not really the weird one at all, nor is it as complicated. OUR world at these macroscopic scales is the weird one and surely is complex and deceiving.
Thank you for taking the time to read this space. And as always,
Until next time. 🙋♂️
1- Entropy | 2- The arrow of time | 3- T-Symmetry | 4- Antimatter | 5- Photons | 6- Twin Paradox | 7- Vacuum Energy | 8- Einstein field equations.
Note: The purpose of this post is to explore the concept of time in simple terms without getting into the technicalities, making it accessible to anyone without a prior background in physics.
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© 2021 @yaziris.
I hope you will excuse me for whizzing by, I'll take my time but that will be never. So, I guess I'll see you in the future, hahahahaha, excellent postulation @yaziris!
I believe that time is created by man, in his mind and imagination, so I agree 1000% with you, but you can't ask just anyone, as their particle field may just be empty.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this!!! It was this or food, and that just makes my hungry, and I don't have time for that now, maybe yesterday. Or never. hahahahaha!!!
I forgot to add that I believe we still have a mile long particle accelerator up the road here at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. I believe they changed the name though, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
You're most welcome to whizz by this space any time you like! @jamerussell
So glad you enjoyed reading this, knowing this, made my yesterday. 😁
Yes, that's true. 2 miles long. Generally speaking though, I think the US has been "SLAC"ing in their support to particle physics and the build of higher energy accelerators. LolI wrote that it was a mile, we were all told that growing up, and I believe you are correct, it's 2 miles long. I remember this growing up as well; it's up off of Sand Hill Road by Palo Alto, and I remember there is a lake up there called Diamond Lake that is north of there. That facility has been there since the early 60s I believe, and operated since 1966. And I also believe you're probably correct about being lax about the support of a whole lot of things, but as a side-note, not lax about support in the wrong things in this time period.
Oh, you'd know better than me about that for sure.
I go by what I read online about it, so I'm not sure, it says this on their Wikipedia page:
I did not know that they had shut down in the 2000s, wow, well, now I know hahahahahahaha!
Learn something new everyday!
Couldn't have come at a better time!!! hahahahahahaha!!!
That wiki page is a bit messy regarding timelines. LOL
I think the name change was in the 2000s (2008) so they considered it as a "shutdown" of the previously named one. The facility itself seems still operational till this day, but they consider it as a new lab or something.
I told you, you'd know better than me or even that wiki page, it might even be 1 mile as you first mentioned, just expanded with the universe over the years. 😋
Hahahahaha, yeah, that's it! It grew exponentially!
Well, I know this, that it started out to be a mile long, but the particles are accelerated so fast that it pushed it out another mile, and yes, it is 2 miles long hahahahaha; you were correct!
I'll do a little research on it, and let you know just for general information.
That is cool post. I have a question about this:
So certain equations are not reversible, like the heat equation. How do you reconcile that with the above?
Heat (temprature) itself too, is an emergent property. It doesn't exist when you go down to the individual atoms. It's a property that happens on the macroscopic when there are lots of atoms bouncing around, a measurement of their average kinetic energies.
I slightly mentioned that when talking about the "spilled milk" example and I quote:
So, for sure. Temprature as an emergent property does interfere with the reversal for the macroscopic. It's part of the "pile-up" I talked about, but it's not fundamental. 🙂
A very interesting piece I must say👍 First time being introduced to the concept of "entropy". Thank you for this💌
My pleasure, glad it was somewhat useful.
Thank you for stopping by!
My pleasure🌸🌸
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:
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.
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.
Time. Hmm
The concept of time is deep.
I see time as an asset that constantly reduce which it’s value vary with respect to the owner
From our point of view regarding our lives, it sure seem to be in short supply with an ever groing demand as we get older.
Thanks for stopping by!
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You're welcome. I read it and thought it was very informative content. Unfortunately I had nothing to say on the topic. Keep up the good work.
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This was my first post in this community, I'm generally new to HIVE.
I will delegate as soon as I'm able to! (I'm currently delegated some HP to help with the RC issue by the lovely people from @theterminal and their @rc-assist). But I will include the beneficiary in my future posts, for sure.
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I always have to little time for everything
You're just a busy bee who does 50 things at once! 😁