Originally Posted By: Bill S.
I need to get my head round this.
How does it happen?
Does it happen before time stops?
If so, how does QM know time is going to stop?
If not, how can it, or anything else happen after time is stopped?

I suppose it could happen at the instant at which time stops; but that introduces the fun of deciding what an instant is, and how long it lasts.

The logic is detailed in the cosmological big rip but the discovery of the Higgs tells us that we have field(s) outside what we call space. It has a non-zero constant value in space and although usually unseen to us if we put enough energy into a localized area you can see a very brief interaction which is what we do with the LHC. The EM field is basically the same but has a constant zero value.

That unseen Higgs field is connected in some manner because we detect it via conservation of energy via QFT in the standard model. So in some way time in QM must connect to the Higgs field because QM has no other way to do energy conservation than quantum states in time evolution.

So we are back to frame of reference issues again just because time is stoppped for space it is not going to be stop for whatever the connection is in the Higgs domain as you can't access it. Energy in space and time has conservation with something in the Higgs/EM field domain.

The Higgs/EM fields will resist the change (conservation of energy again). Here is what happens when you collapse an electromagnetic field but constrain the reaction force in one dimension

The experiment take 1 battery connect each terminal to a piece of aluminum foil on a desk and place then seperated but not touching. Now drop something metal between the two strips blocking the field and see what happens.



That experiment sometimes goes by another name called a rail gun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun

There is a really layman friendly description of what is happening here
https://blogs.csiro.au/helix/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2013/07/lenzs-law-and-rail-guns.pdf

So the Higss/EM and whatever other fields there are will act according to QFT and oppose your change. The reaction to stopping time in a section of space would be swift and brutal and the best educated guess is it will try to "expel" that section of space hence it would create a rip.

What "expel" looks like in reality is hard to guess at because it hard to put structure and visualization around the field domain. What you can be sure of it's all bad for the section of space you froze time.

You may care to revise Prof Strassler on the Higgs
http://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/the-higgs-particle/the-higgs-faq-2-0/

Quote:
"No matter how you are moving, you are not moving relative to the Higgs field. That sounds bizarre, but remember something else bizarre: that no matter how you are moving, light is moving about relative to you at the same speed, namely 300,000 meters per second. Our intuition for space and time is not correct — that’s what Einstein figured out — and it is possible for there to be fields that are at rest with respect to all observers!"

The theory of how is easy ... what it looks like whole other thing smile

Momentum of field conservation is only briefly covered for layman here at end.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenz's_law
You need QFT to go into a proper deeper understanding.

Bottom line stopping time in what we call space would be a really bad idea the fields will react, it's just a matter of how much damage they do in conserving the energy between the domains.

Last edited by Orac; 09/01/15 06:24 AM.

I believe in "Evil, Bad, Ungodly fantasy science and maths", so I am undoubtedly wrong to you.