Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum What's the time in the multiverse?

Perhaps someone can help me out here. I have yet to find a multiverse theory which explains if/how time might be coordinated from one universe to another. This may be because the only explanations I have met were in pop-sci books, articles etc.

Does anyone have any suggestions, or know of any theories?

The simple answer is basics of Quantum Mechanics all the times in the multiverse have to locked or else they aren't connected and not a multiverse.

It goes back to the concept of everything that can possibly happen does at once but the idea then goes much deeper.

A reasonable layman version which you should be able to follow is here

https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/d5d3dc850933

It's scratching the surface of the concept but it gives you the basic idea



This also makes QM the same as General Relativity where time only exists in the CTC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_timelike_curve) read the consequence section.

Thanks for the links, Orac.

I have no problem with the idea that time is emergent. In fact, I am inclined towards the idea. However, a few questions arise from the first article. I suspect there will be more.

“In the first set up, the observer measures the polarisation of one photon, thereby becoming entangled with it. He or she then compares this with the polarisation of the second photon. The difference is a measure of time.”

Why/how is this a measure of time?


“In the second, a god-like observer measures the evolution against an external clock which is entirely independent of the toy universe.”

All our experience is within the Universe; all our experiments are conducted in the Universe. Can we justify extrapolating this to an assumed situation outside the Universe?

Time can only be defined as the thing between two events it is the only simple formal layman definition you can give it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time



Now if you want to delve deep into the bowls of science General Relativity and QM have more complicated definitions of time.

General Relativity defines proper time
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proper_time

Quantum Mechanics defines time as state evolution of the waveform. As it is usual explained to students in introductory lectures

http://www.nyu.edu/classes/tuckerman/adv.chem/lectures/lecture_6/node3.html



Again it shows you the problem you are bound to time if QM is correct.




You can extrapolate if you like Bill S but it simply becomes not science more a religion

Science only allows for stuff that can be tested in our universe you need to talk to religious people for stuff beyond that

Precisely! Isn't that (non-scientific) extrapolation being made in this experiment?

What do you feel is being extrapolated that can't be measured in this universe?

In the experiment the “toy” universe is in the Universe, as is the external observer. It is, therefore, justifiable to accept that what the external observer observes is scientific evidence.

This is extrapolated to a situation in which the observer is outside the Universe. We have no scientific observation, precedent or evidence that would tell us that conditions outside the Universe are such as to justify this extrapolation.

It's a standard mathematical coverage problem.

Remember entanglement was a mathematical prediction of QM not something that was found by accident something you are sort of ignoring.

So when in mathematics you expect a line a do some reasonable testing and find points that confirm to the standard equation of a line

Y = ax + b

You don't declare you aren't sure if it is really a line because there might be a point which you haven't tested that does not confirm to the line

That is called a discontinuity in mathematics and it comes down to the behaviour of what the line is showing.

Entanglement is the mathematical behaviour of a wave at it's basis ... name any wave in any media or any condition that you know or have seen suddenly disappears or appears in a discontinuity?????

Waves interfere, can have polarity, can be coherent or not and do a great many other weird things but being discontinuous is not something anyone has ever seen.

In science we say assume nothing but that is not actually true you do actually rely on the nature of things and mathematics. The mathematics of natural waves says they can't be discontinuous and so we assume that is true.

So they are entitled to extrapolate outside the universe and even extrapolate results from a "toy" universe because of the nature of the thing they are studying and mathematics says that is fine.

Remember entanglement has been shown in our real universe and so if you have entanglement in a "toy" universe and the mathematics match it will work identical unless there is another factor at play interfering or interfering or interacting with the wave.

So your statement



Is wrong the nature of waves and mathematics of wave says they have every right to make the extrapolation.

So there are three possible arguments I can see

1.) The "toy" universe is not a reasonable approximation of the real universe. They have waves and can entangle and the mathematics works so you would have to spell out what you think is not reasonable?

2.) The edge of the universe is a discontinuity like the walls of a water tank. So you could argue the parts about outside the universe are wrong but you would then have rather strange effects to worry about for waves hitting a wall like reflection etc. Remember we have looked for these sorts of effects but it may be entirely possible we have missed them so it's semi valid.

3.) There are interferences and interactions with the wave in areas outside the universe we are unaware of. While true this falls to Occam's razor.


Number two is the only real argument in my opinion but these sorts of things do come with personal bias, so perhaps in more detail explain your misgivings with the work.

Let’s take your points one at a time.

1) No argument here. I feel sure it could be established that the “toy” universe would be a good analogy for the real Universe. I have raised no objection to drawing conclusions on the basis of what happens in and out of the “toy” universe.

2) I didn’t argue that the edge of the universe was a discontinuity. If the Universe is finite, I see no reason why your waves would necessarily be unable to leave it. However, I would suggest that you have no way of knowing what might happen to the waves once they had left the Universe. You cannot state with certainty that they would even be able to propagate as waves.

3) Using Occam's razor as an argument with respect to what might happen outside the Universe is as presumptuous and unjustifiable as maintaining that you know how waves behave outside the Universe.

Your disappearing line argument is irrelevant because your line is contained within the Universe.

If I were to argue that I can say with certainty that there can never have been nothing, otherwise there would be nothing now. If I justified that by pointing out that we have no example of physical “something” coming from “nothing” in the Universe, would you consider that to be a reasonable, scientific line of reasoning?

You miss the point Bill S you may be indeed right strange things may happen outside the universe but we can only deal with what we can measure.

Occam's razor simply says why worry about it you will never know.

This goes back to an old argument against newtons 3rd law you know the one that goes when one body exerts a force on a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction to that of the first body.

You can never actually prove the law you could argue there are a great many unseen forces which all just happen to cancel out.

So imaginary force A is always cancelled by imaginary force B you just never get to see it but one day in some strange situation it will jump out and become important and undo all your physics.

That is the sort of situation you are creating and it exists even in classical physics not just Quantum Mechanics.

Lets take it further how do you know gravity exists anywhere other than in our local solar system I mean that is the only neighborhood we have actual data in. The voyager spaceship may or may not of finally left our solar system so we have no concrete and valid data beyond that. Remember the current problem we have that gravity in the universe makes no sense we are looking for dark matter ... ring a bell.

I would argue QM is on more solid ground that classic physics on these sorts of issues because at least it has wave behavior to rely on what does classic physics have to rely on a wing and a prayer?

See the problem if I invoke your logic no physics will ever get up because there is always a "what if" even under boring classic physics.

That is why you invoke Occam's razor in these situations or you will go nowhere with physics .... EVER

So I put it to you if I follow your logic gravity may just stop and disappear we have nothing to believe it won't, you have nothing solid you can rely on other than limited observation. You also can't have any physics at all because there are a possibly a pile of unseen forces that may jump out of the woodwork and sink whatever you propose, so where do you want to go now?

I really am not trying to pick an argument with you here I just don't see where you go with this extrapolation is always a part of physics but you can challenge the basis on the extrapolation if that is your point and that is fine?

Orac,if by picking an argument you mean arguing against what I am saying, then please pick as many arguments as you think appropriate. My objective is not scoring points, or winning arguments; it is learning.

In no way am I knocking extrapolation, or the application of Occam's Razor within the Universe. Of course, we don't know how/if gravity works in parts of the Universe which we cannot directly observe, but unless we have some evidence to indicate that it might differ from that which we observe more locally, let's go with Bill Occam.

As far as I am aware, we have no evidence or observation to indicate that what we observe or deduce in the Universe is related in any meaningful way to what might be outside the Universe, therefore extrapolation from within to without is not science, it is philosophy at best, and wild guesswork at worst.

Uncharacteristically you didn't answer the last question in my previous post.

Time only exist in the mind.

something traveling close to or above the speed at which light travels
will not experience any time differences between or with its surroundings.

I know that this type of logic is hard for the fantasy scientist to comprehend
because the group or cult that they belong to fancies that time can be manipulated.

and they fancy this time manipulation in an attempt to protect mainstream
fantasy science.

if anyone can argue that time can be manipulated then I would like to
hear their argument.

to answer your question Bill s , if it is 12:00 noon on your wrist watch.
then it is 7:00 am on my wrist watch.

because we on earth use time as a measurement of the earths rotation.

24 hours.

this cannot be attached to anyplace other than the earth.

we use the year 2014 , however this universe is suspected to have existed
for apx 13 billion years.

so we cannot determine the time in any universe until we determine a static time on the earth itself.

ie... do you know what hour it is on the earth?


if you were on the moon , could you point to the earth and say that it is
12:00 noon on the earth.

LOL

In 1963 I was in Vietnam. My niece in Oklahoma was fascinated with the fact that my time was 13 hours ahead of her time.

Bill Gill

My original question had more to do with any ideas of co-ordination between universes in a multiverse (if such a thing exists) than with the niceties of modern chronology. However, your point (no pun intended) stirs some interesting thoughts.

If you were on the moon; standing on that ¾ ins of dust :); you could point to the Earth and say “It is 12.00 noon at that line of longitude", but as you rightly point out, you could not ascribe that time to the whole Earth. Similarly, you could not say it is morning, or evening over the whole Earth.

However one finds in Genesis [1:5] “God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day”. Does this mean that in the days when people believed the Earth was flat, it actually was flat? Could it be that we make our own reality to that extent?

Now to pose and push your thinking Paul

So now we have a problem does anything exist at all in that case? Exist implies time as does history so now you have dispatched human history as well

Perhaps we all just exist in gods mind?

Even simple answers open up problems



You should read science books some time Paul if you remove the above the speed of light you answer is exactly the same as what science says

A reasonable layman article is on ask a mathematician/physicist under the heading does light experience time

http://www.askamathematician.com/2011/07/q-does-light-experience-time/

The actual scientific answer he gave in a cute way



If you ever got remotely interested QM extends this in an interesting way but it's all fantasy so you wouldn't be interested.

ROFL I could answer Holographic principle it is flat remember only 2D so it is technically correct

Sorry did not really see the relevance of the last question originally it does not translate well for me I have really had to work at reading it. I couldn't put context around it to the rest of the discussion

The paper deals with things going in and out of the universe not the start of the universe which as I now read I take is what you are proposing is creation of the universe from nothing hence I now get the something from nothing now.

I think you are asking would I consider it reasonable to write a scientific paper on that and follow as a line of reasoning.

The answer from my point is yes definitely it would be if you could come up with a suitable experiment or "toy universe start". Just because we haven't seen it doesn't mean it doesn't happen, the deeper question we are interested in as scientists is why doesn't it happen and what stops it happening.

The problem in these sorts of area comes down to the usual crackpot filters in that the idea has to be testable in standard science practices.

It's not from nothing but "toy big bangs" have been created already so I think science has already answered your question with a loud that is perfectly fine. I am not sure how you would extend it to "nothing" but it's not for me to say it couldn't be done.

References:
http://phys.org/news/2011-04-big-simulated-metamaterial-impossible.html
http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2013/08...-early-universe

time is a measurement. it doesnt actually exist.



history is also a measurement , it doesnt actually exist either.

ie..

please put 1 pound of minutes and also a few pounds of recorded events in this shopping bag for me will you.

saying that something can travel into the past is like
saying time has some physical properties that can be manipulated.

also its like saying that a kilometer can be shortened or lengthened through manipulation.

time and kilometers are both measurements.

I believe that our reality is constructed from our surroundings.

and what we interpret our reality to be from what we can
see and feel could be misrepresented to our minds , due to our knowledge or lack of knowledge of our surroundings.

if you were the child of parents that were shipwrecked on a deserted island before you were born and they died before you were old enough for them to teach you any history or anything at all , yet you managed to survive.

what would be the extent of your reality?

you would have no way to mentally think about things.
you would have no words to use in your mind.

you would need to develop skills to categorize and name things before you could begin to experience thought that could help you to build your reality.

its amazing when you think about stuff like that , and it
reveals how long it could have taken for humans to develop
language and writing.

Oh lord the bitter irony Paul I got a fantastic laugh from all that you have no idea how close you are to what some of the more radical ideas in QM which you hate with a passion

Most of the others will recognize it and get a chuckle as well I suspect

Perhaps you might care to take a peek at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_reality

I didn’t really intend starting a discussion about the nature of time, fascinating as that is. What I had in mind was the fact that multiverse supporters often claim that past directed time travel can be achieved if there are other universes into which chrononauts could move. Also David Deutsch (The Fabric of Reality) argues in favour of the multiverse using the double slit experiment. His argument seems to require very close synchronisation between trillions of universes. It is the possibility/nature of such synchronisation that I find myself wondering about.

Again it isn't really an argument it is an extension of the mathematics behind QM which requires that lock. If you were correct and they aren't locked then QM is falsified. Under the QM mathematics they must be locked so now all you do is extend your thinking and come up with something that covers all the observations of QM.

I don't mind you asking or suggesting what you have my problem is you can't just keep QM and patch it to put it in perspective it would be like trying to patch GR/SR so the speed of light isn't a fixed constant ... you couldn't do it because that is the core of relativity you would need a whole new theory.

That's what I am being hard on you about you need to understand the full implication of your suggestion and it would mean QM is falsified and wrong so you have a big problem to fix. You can't just say I accept all the other bits of QM but no I don't accept the locked time bit, you can't do that as QM doesn't work without the states being locked.

It would be the same as you trying to tell me that entanglement doesn't exist. If it doesn't exist fine but QM is falsified because it predicts it must exist. You can't have QM without entanglement either.

That is the reason the extrapolation is fine because if this is wrong the whole of QM is dead anyhow and that is the basis of my objection to your idea.