The closer we look at time, the stranger it gets

I bet Colin gets annoyed every time we point a telescope at far away objects as he has to rush around behind the scenes and paint in all the details.

he sends the electron both slits so is also doing some complex-numbers montecarloing. Since he has infinite ram he can sum every-single-path.

The fact that at speed of light time stops is just so bonkers to me.

A photon is, from its point of reference, at the point of creation and at the point of destination at the same "time". Its literally seeing both parts of the universe at the same time, and since its traveled some distance over that time it cannot perceive, its essentially connecting 2 points in spacetime.

If I understand it correctly, every photon exists, from its point of view, for only infinitely small amount of time (similar to how virtual particles do exist from our point of reference), but for us its so easy to "play" with the photon along its path, giving us plenty of time to even decide what we want to do with it after it has already been created.

Its just so bonkers that time can be perceived such differently depending on frame of reference.

> but if you were traveling at the speed of light, time stops

Are we saying then that it is theoretically possible that (a) photons have a zero or near-zero lifetime, but that also (in our frame of reference) (b) they exist for a finite duration of time and are visible during that time simply because time stops for them ? Or did someone manage to slow down light to some fraction of light speed ?

Also see the twin paradox, which is related to this and equally fascinating.

If one twin stays on earth and the other makes an intergalactic trip (with the speed of light), upon return, the one on earth will have aged much more than the one on the trip.

My favorite explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vitf8YaVXhc

I like Tim, his arguments come across as an honest attempt to answer real questions. I feel as if the current crop of physicists look down on things that appear too simplistic.

Their math give an answer with artefacts they can’t match to reality so they keep probing the outliers of these absolutely bonkers ideas, and rabbit holes keep getting deeper & weirder.

Time doesn’t exist. Do the people writing this garbage live in a vacuum? Is it AI slop?

Some of those might be AI accounts that found an ambiguous topic for upvote farming.

I'm only slightly disappointed that this is not the "Someone Else's Problem" version of SEP.

You might be interested in The Order of Time by Carlo Ravelli. Time and gravity are certainly linked, but from what I took away from the book (which is a lot to digest, even as non-mathy as it tries to be) is that Time is really heat. Heat moves only from hot to cold, dispersing in some entropic fashion as we move toward the final state of the universe, but in the meantime we can measure that time/heat "flows" at different rates, depending on how near or far you are from large bodies.

I likely need to reread it, though, as some of its ideas are a bit above my weight class when it comes to understanding physics. But, you may enjoy it!

Well, almost. Because these usual descriptions you give here are approximations. Yes, to the first order, gravity is expressed as the effect on time in general relativity. So you could describe how planets move simply by calculating how they move differently through time. But in the full picture, the way you move through space or near strong gravitational fields also influences your experience of space itself. So the ultimate realization is that gravity is space and time. Or spacetime. Basically exactly what the article says when it references general relativity. And it holds as well for quantum particles. They experience spacetime just as well as we do. The ultimate question is, does spacetime itself also come quantized when you look close enough? This is the true head banging one that noone knows.

A mote of dust doesn't ignore gravity in a vacuum ;)

We know empirically that time only flows in one direction, it can’t be described as just a perception. You’d have had at least the tiniest of evidence that time sometimes flows backwards.

"describe our observations of the universe"

Interesting that this comment appeared precisely when I needed and wanted to see it on the most unlikely of websites.

Thanks for your insights

Given how "western occult science" is just magical thinking and pseudo babble, it hardly fits on HN. Additionally, "western occult science" typically glosses over its 1920-1940s roots and branches. Wondering why...

Yes, the internet is full of BS. Good for you for reading!

> One problem that I have with trying to understand "time" is that we can't measure how quickly it "flows" or at least how quickly we travel through it.

Our experience of time passing is heavily influenced by the temporal granuality of our subjective experience-at the upper end, “now” lasts 2-3 seconds; at the lower end, our temporal discrimination goes down to tens of milliseconds for visual and tactile stimuli, and reaches down to microseconds for certain types of auditory stimuli. But, one supposes other species with different neurology would have these durations be shorter or longer, which would make time pass more slowly or faster for them, in subjective terms.

> we can't measure how quickly it "flows" or at least how quickly we travel through it.

I don't understand this, because it seems like "with a clock" is too obvious an answer, so surely you can't have meant what it sounds like it meant?

I guess I have to ask what more you're looking for, perhaps hoping for, than: 1 second per second?

Ooh, do the unified-field thing next!

Would you like to share any details?

The first problem with the nature of consciousness is describing what you mean by it. Try, and I guarantee you that someone will find a sponge, Apple product, or bathroom slipper that meets that definition.

Electro-magnetic radiation, on the other hands, is highly describable in precise, testable, repeatable terms.

When you can state Maxwell's Laws of Consciousness, we'll talk. And rename them "Grishka's".

> consciousness. Time might as well be an artifact of that.

Psychedelics can remove the sensation of time passing. But they are also modifying the experience of "consciousness" itself.

I got downvoted on here not so long ago for mentioning time as an emergent property of quantum consciousness so maybe it's controversial.

I recommend an ad blocker. I didn't see any ads.

For the "canonical" physics explanation, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_hypothesis

You can happily run physics backwards and forwards, and there's no difference. But assuming that entropy was very low in the distant past is very useful and lets us talk about fascinating things, like what happened last tuesday (or 12 billion years ago)

If you just know the current state of the a system, there isn't really any difference between running time backwards and forwards. Of course, if you know exactly the state of every particle, field, etc, and the past hypothesis is true, running time one way will lead to lowering entropy, and the other way will lead to raising entropy. But if you're a mere mortal and just know the macrostate, either way you run time, the entropy of the system will increase.

there is no flow per se, as it’s a subjective experience. it’s just that our current environment (specifically human environment) is predominantly structured in a way that the past makes an imprint on the present (in terms of biological memory, historical records, etc) and the future generally being unpredictable because we kinda don’t want it to be too predictable (eg you don’t want to be too predictable when a tiger is chasing you for example)

but in other environments (talking about same universe here!) the future is more predictable than here on earth, for example motions of planetary bodies can be predicted way in advance within error bars as in the past, and when you have that kind of relatively symmetrical system, any subjective experiences within those systems would be much less inclined to feel that time flows on way or the other. (of course, the only kind of subjective experiencers we know are made of biological stuff which structurally remembers the past and leaves the future open as form of evolved ability, so this timelessness experience may be harder to imagine for us)