There Is No Single Instant In Time

tekkieRich writes "Some interesting news from the world of physics. Supposedly, in this paper, the author answers some of the major paradoxes (achilles vs. the turtle and Zeno) concerning our understanding of time. 'Impressed with the work is Princeton physics great, and collaborator of both Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman, John Wheeler, who said he admired Lynds' "boldness," while noting that it had often been individuals Lynds' age that "had pushed the frontiers of physics forward in the past."'"

Comments

So when was this article posted???

[Anonymous Coward]

There Is No Single Instant In Time

Posted by timothy on Sunday August 03, @03:46AM
from the all-is-flux dept.

That's just the state of a counter...

[Ayanami Rei]

when slashcode decided to examine it.

The posting act begins when the submit button is pressed, and ends when the database updates it's article index.

All "events" have a beginning and an end. Some of them have a known duration so the delta is not noted, but it still exists.

I don't know what's so revolutionary about that stance, especially from a practical standpoint, other than maybe the "directionless" nature of time. I think that, however, is an oversimplification that fits into the author's little mental framework he wants to construct. I prefer to think of complex intervals as very small closed sets around the approximate instant. There's nothing wrong or counterintuitive about that.

Re:That's just the state of a counter...

[whereiswaldo]

I'm not a scientist, but something tells me what is time can't be measured by us because we are inside whatever makes everything tick. Only those outside our system could measure the time inside our system. I would liken it to a computer program: it can't tell when it's being timesliced by the operating system, and it seems like it is running seamlessly, but it is not.

Is this a hoax?

[BobTheLawyer]

The article is either incredibly bad journalism and way over-simplifying the paper, or else it stinks of a hoax.

"Lynds also points out that in all cases a time value represents an interval on time, rather than an instant. "For example, if two separate events are measured to take place at either 1 hour or 10.00 seconds, these two values indicate the events occurred during the time intervals of 1 and 1.99999...hours and 10.00 and 10.0099999...seconds respectively." "

This is stunningly obvious. I learnt the resolution of this, and the tortoise paradox, at age 17 in high school maths classes.

Also, why is the contact for further information an "Independent Communications Consultant"?

Re:Is this a hoax?

[rajah]

Sounds like it.

Try Googling "Peter Lynds" or check out a similar thread at the Chinese University of Hong Kong: http://www.phy.cuhk.edu.hk/course/phy2002/forum/me ssages/300.html

Re:Groundbreaking?

[Keeper]

Zeno's theories are pretty well-established, you know "Man is walking across a road, if you keep on dividing the time intervals, he'll never get there." This Lynds seems to just be restating the theory with some fancy terms.

It isn't a theory, rather a paradox. If you keep dividing the time & distance intervals, the two objects never pass each other. They just get infinitely closer. Hence the paradox. The paradox (and most of science for that matter) makes the assumption that time can be measured in finite bits.

What this guy is saying that there are no moments in time (or rather, there is no basic/smallest unit of time), which is why the two objects pass each other.

When you think about it for a little bit, it makes sense. It's kind of like PI ... you can try and mark an instant in time, but that instant still represents an interval. The more precise your equipment, the smaller the interval, but the interval can get infinitely smaller.

Re:Nothing new under the sun

[Edward Scissorhands]

Heh, yeah, right, like we want our scientists to pay attention to philosophy. You know what would happen then, right? Scientists would realise that they actually know far less about the world than they realise and they'd all move to a cabin in the woods and write strange and impenetrable poetry instead of staying in the lab and coming up with useful theories which engineers can then use to create an even better dishwasher.

Listen, bub, we need people to design our machines and technology can't improve without a better understanding of our physical world. I want my flying cars, damnit, and no stinkin' philosopher is going to expose the hard questions to vulnerable scientists and engineers to distract them from making my dishwasher!

Re:Groundbreaking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Believe it or not, the whole paper-refereeing scene isn't that much different from the Slashdot moderation system.

Has any referee ever sent a paper back and scrawled on it: "J00 f4gg0t! If I ever meet j00 I will kick your ass!"

Questionable

[Durindana]

The journal's site is here, though the August (autumn) issue isn't yet available online.

Some significant red flags here. First and most obvious is the wunderkind's lack of training and (presumed) familiarity with established concepts of physics and contemporary research. This isn't a deal-breaker, of course, but it's worth remembering. I'd love to see untrained theorists challenging - successfully - old-guard physicists with some astounding new insights, but I don't think that's happening here.

Wheeler's one-word endorsement - "boldness" - isn't ringing, and the bit about his age (he's 27) is irrelevant.

From a referee: "I have only read the first two sections as it is clear that the author's arguments are based on profound ignorance or misunderstanding of basic analysis and calculus. I'm afraid I am unwilling to waste any time reading further, and recommend terminal rejection." Ouch with a capital 'O'. There's no maths even referred to in this article, either, which I'd like to see.

"Lynds says that the paradoxes arose because people assumed wrongly that objects in motion had determined positions at any instant in time, thus freezing the bodies motion static at that instant and enabling the impossible situation of the paradoxes to be derived." This hasn't really been a problem since quantum indeterminacy.

From a "prominent Oxford mathematician": "A prominent Oxford mathematician commented, "It's as astonishing, as it is unexpected, but he's right." Unnamed source. HUGE red flag.

Within a quote: "Naturally the parameter and boundary of their respective position and magnitude are naturally determinable up to the limits of possible measurement as stated by the general quantum hypothesis and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, but this indeterminacy in precise value is not a consequence of quantum uncertainty." He gives no alternative explanation for the origins of this 'indeterminacy.' Up to this point the article's summary has proceeded along basic Planck/Heisenberg lines. There's really nothing new here, except the (in this article) unsupported assertion of a new form of indeterminacy that's not related to quantum effects on measurement.

"Lynds continues that the cosmological proposal of imaginary time also isn't compatible with a consistent physical description, both as a consequence of this, and secondly, "because it's the relative order of events that's relevant, not the direction of time itself, as time doesn't go in any direction." Consequently it's meaningless for the order of a sequence of events to be imaginary, or at right angles, relative to another sequence of events. When approached about Lynds' arguments against his theory, Hawking failed to respond." Ignores Feynman's 'arrow of time' characterization of antimatter as equivalent to matter moving in time-opposite fashion. Also ignores simple observation that time does, in fact, appear to move in one direction. In a layman's article it would be good to mention Lynds' explanation for this, if he has one. If he doesn't, well... And Hawking 'refused to respond' to whom? To Lynds? To the author? On what questions? In what timeframe? A phone call during dinner from Australia? Red flag.

"Although Lynds remembers being frustrated with Grigson, and once standing at a blackboard explaining how simple it was and telling him to "hurry up and get it", Lynds says that, unlike some others, Prof. Grigson was still encouraging and would always make time to talk to him, even taking him into the staff cafeteria so they could continue talking physics." Seriously big red flag. 'Hurry up and get it'? Sounds like high school bong-water theorizing.

"Although still controversial, judging by the response it has already received from some of science's leading lights, Lynds' work seems likely to establish him as a groundbreaking figure in respect to increasing our understanding of time in physics. It a

Re:Questionable

[ortholattice]

It wouldn't surprise me if this does get published in Foundations of Physics Letters - we'll wait and see - but here is why.

The Foundations of Physics (and the Letters companion) is a journal that seems to be a catch-all for articles on the fringe of physics. (By "fringe" I don't necessarily mean "new-age" garbage - that would be rejected outright - but I mean stuff that sometimes really pushes the envelope.) While the articles are peer-reviewed, the articles are sometimes speculative and many of them would have been (and were) rejected elsewhere. For example, there was a paper in the 1980s IIRC reporting on evidence for psi phenomena (and a theory connecting it to quantum mechanics) whose results have never been duplicated. The articles tend to be on the hairy borderline of real and pseudo-scientific, and whatever you read there (although often quite interesting, and for the most part scientifically correct, but not always) you have to take with a grain of salt and use informed judgment to evaluate the papers.

I found it puzzling that MIT's Science Library, which has about every physics journal imaginable, ended its subscription to FoP and Letters in the early 90s, although I never pursued why - perhaps some faculty member complained that its quality wasn't up to snuff. So while I use to enjoy reading it, it's way too expensive for me to subscribe to - perhaps another local U. carries it, don't know.

I myself have published a paper in FoP on an obscure topic (in my case not wrong or controversial, just too obscure for the mainstream physics journals to find a referee who thought it interesting or significant), that had been rejected elsewhere.

Re:Questionable

[fermion]

In real life we have to separate the reporting of science and the working of science. In this case, we have a story about a young, apparently untrained, coming up with a seemingly obvious solution to a problem that has plagued the greatest mind for years. This is a hook that usually sells papers, books, movies, whatever. It tells the populous what they want to hear. The the egghead PhDs who spent 25 years of their life at school are not really that smart and would have been better off with a high school diploma and maybe technical degree. It allows the populous to believe that intelligence and learning is just a matter of luck and they would have been able to earn an advance degree if they would had only been given the brains and the breaks. The fact that they slept and drugged their way though high school has nothing to do with anything. The funny thing is that this is also the kind of things that eggheads like to hear as well, because they know that sometimes a person is just initiatively intelligent, and these people sometimes bring new and interesting ideas to the table. These are the reasons for the positive bias in the article

From the point of view of science, the bias in the article is quite ludicrous. It is the first paper by a person of unknown capabilities. While the paper is published in a peer review journal, all this means is that it has no blatant errors and has interesting assertions. It's validity, and the reputation of the author, will be determined in the coming years as researchers dissect and ponder the logic. Even if the assertions themselves prove invalid, it may generate a new line of thought in the community, which in itself is worthwhile.

Your criticism tend to fall in the journalistic realm. In most published papers some reviewers agree with the paper and some think it is hogwash. Criticizing a sound-byte is unwise as it puts meaning into a meaningless statement. As you mention, the Hiesenberg uncertainty principle (dx dp > hbar) applies to location and only indirectly to time. However, the fact that he is now asserting that time is smeared, and gives not explanation why, is not a big issue. The famous Planck postcard did not give a justification for quantization, it merely indicated that the black body paradox was solved if one assumed energy was quantized.

In all, the assertion that time may be 'quantized' and inherently fuzzy is compelling, and I can understand why a journal would believe that such research would be interesting to it's readers, even if some would dismiss it as hogwash. After all, Feynman's spent a long time trying to prove that one interpretation of quantum mechanics was correct, only to prove they were equivalent. And although his assertion of 'one electron' is not likely correct, it is interesting to think about.

Re:God help the Mods

[tedrlord]

Well, as you say this goes over many peoples' heads, therefore what is considered "informative" can't be immediately determined as true or false. If the scientific community has such different views of the matter, how do you think that Slashdot will be able to come to a stable conclusion? People are modding up whatever sounds good, which is the right thing to do, as it brings the more sound arguments for and against a controversial theory to the forefront, which is the best we can do in this situation.

As for the value of the paper itself, most of your arguments in its favour are inconsequential to its veracity. Many papers are published in scientific journals that prove not to be true. The whole reason these journals publish papers is that they can be peer-reviewed, a very similar process to what is occurring here on Slashdot.

Also, his support is by no means overwhelming. He may have some prominent supporters, but he also has prominent detractors. It even mentions that this goes directly against one of Hawking's theories, and without any other evidence I'd be more inclined to trust Hawking to someone I haven't previously heard of.

The comments on the difficulties he had getting this printed, his lack of credentials, and the reaction of the academia say nothing about the value of his work. He does seem to be an underdog, but an appeal to our emotional response to such a situation is not a point for his side. There are many, many people who can't get published, have no credentials, and are disregarded by educated physicists. This is often because they don't know what they're talking about.

And comparing him to Einstein is not helpful either. Einstein was a particularly special case, and his work rose to the top due to its own merit. If Lynds' work is truly of the same calibre, it will do so as well. The suggestion that physicists pay attention to every amateur with a theory because he may be the next Einstein doesn't make sense. The reason they generally don't pay attention to amateurs is precisely because they are amateurs. Your average physicist is busy enough working on his own theories and examining other professional physicists' theories. Why should he devote even more time working on the theories of someone outside the field? Physics hobbyists are generally far less knowledgeable in the area, and are far more prone to erroneous conclusions compared to one that is educated in the field.

Basically, this paper may have merit and it may not. It might be a great breakthrough or completely worthless. Apparently both opinions exist in varying quantities. It's a theory coming to unusual (or in some cases obvious) conclusions coming from someone that is not actually a physicist with no mathematical proofs. That really lowers the chances of its being accepted because it lowers its chances of being true. There isn't some big physics conspiracy going on here. That's just how science works.

You're missing the point

[arevos]

I think you're missing the point. Let's take a more practical example; assume there's a set of mirrors facing each other, with the mirrors getting ever closer in a geometric sequence:

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If a lightbeam is fired in it'll zigzag between mirrors, with the zigzag getting smaller and smaller. Now, obviously if, say, the distance between each set of mirrors halves each time, then we have the sum of a geometric sequence. If the lightbeam travels 1m between mirrors, then 0.5m, then 0.25m and so forth, then the light beam will travel 2m in total. So the lightbeam will eventually emerge from these infinite mirrors. So what direction will the lightbeam be heading in? Up, or down? It depends on the last mirror- but there is no last mirror! Thus we have a paradox.

Of course, today we know that matter is not infinitely divisable, but that was Zeno's point! You cannot have a continuous function in real life and divide it into discrete segments! In fact, 'poor Zeno' was well ahead of his time, not only arguing against infinitely divisible, but also touching on Relativity! His 'stadium' paradox of two bodies of objects passing each other essencially begs the solution of Special Relatively.

In the archilles paradox, the runner will always have further to go. If time and space can be divided into discrete slices, then the runner will have to transverse an infinite number of slices to get to his destination, which is impossible. Infinity isn't a number, it's a position which is unreachable through finite additions. Therefore, the runner cannot overtake the tortoise, because he has to go through and infinite amount of 'time-slices' to get there. The solution in the article is that time is continuous; there cannot be a discrete slice of time, only a duration of time between two points.

Re:You're missing the point

[arevos]

At this point, the distance between the mirrors is zero, which means the light must be standing still. If light cannot stand still, this must mean the distance between the mirrors is not zero, and hence does the example not apply (because it makes the assumption that mirrors can have zero distance).

Infinity isn't a number, and something infintesimately small is not zero. However far you go with the mirrors, the light is still bouncing. Assuming a light beam has no width to speak of, there is no point at which the light beam is not bouncing. And yet the distance the light beam travels is finite, even if the mirrors are infinite! Therefore the light will emerge in a finite space of time, and at every point will be bouncing and zigzagging along. You're right that it's impossible, of course, but that's why it's a paradox!

What do you mean "there cannot"? If time is discrete, Zenon's paradox does not apply, because it talks about timeslices smaller than what the actual ones would be.

Sorry; I meant you cannot have a discrete slice of time if time is continuous. However, I've said elsewhere that the paper in the article seemed, well, dubious. I'm not saying I agree with the paper, or that the paper is of any import as the article seems to suggest. Just that the original poster misunderstood what the paper was proposing.

Zeno's paradox does not claim Achilles can never catch up with the tortoise; making such a claim would require talking about infinite time -- Zeno's paradox does only talk about the time before Achilles catches up with the tortoise, hence the correct conclusion is "Achilles cannot possibly catch up with the turtle in the timeframe before he catches up with the turtle".

Well, the quote for Zeno's Achilles paradox I have is: "The slower will never be overtaken by the quicker, for that which is pursuing must first reach the point from which that which is fleeing started, so that the slower must always be some distance ahead."

Re:God help the Mods

[pmj]

Some "experts" need to be reminded that once upon a time someone wrote a very special paper, also widely denounced, also widely refuted for a while. And that person wasn't a department head at a prestigous university, nor was he being funded by wealthy patrons to run his own lab. He worked at a patent office.

He also had a PhD, did theory and therefore didn't really need a lab, and was most certainly not someone you can reference in this context. His papers were important because they HAD mathematical foundations worked out, and were't just philosophical ramblings.

I hate to break it to you, but until you understand the math and physics behind our current theories, it doesn't make sense to make up new ones. He may be getting some press, but that doesn't mean much.

pmj