Astrophysicist Adam Frank's new book mixes cosmology with humanity. How does our understanding of the universe and cosmic time inform our daily lives? Especially if time is an illusion?
Posted 09.18.2012 at 1:30 pm
49 Comments
Gamma-Ray Burst
European Southern Observatory
The "rebels" who fight the Big Bang theory are mostly attempting to grapple with the concept of time. They are philosophers as much as cosmologists, unsatisfied with the Big Bang, unimpressed with string theory and unconvinced of the multiverse. Julian Barbour, British physicist, author, and major proponent of the idea of timeless physics, is one of those rebels--so thoroughly a rebel that he has spurned the world of academics.
Julian Barbour’s solution to the problem of time in physics and cosmology is as simply stated as it is radical: there is no such thing as time.
“If you try to get your hands on time, it’s always slipping through your fingers,” says Barbour. “People are sure time is there, but they can’t get hold of it. My feeling is that they can’t get hold of it because it isn’t there at all.” Barbour speaks with a disarming English charm that belies an iron resolve and confidence in his science. His extreme perspective comes from years of looking into the heart of both classical and quantum physics. Isaac Newton thought of time as a river flowing at the same rate everywhere. Einstein changed this picture by unifying space and time into a single 4-D entity. But even Einstein failed to challenge the concept of time as a measure of change. In Barbour’s view, the question must be turned on its head. It is change that provides the illusion of time. Channeling the ghost of Parmenides, Barbour sees each individual moment as a whole, complete and existing in its own right. He calls these moments “Nows.”
“As we live, we seem to move through a succession of Nows,” says Barbour, “and the question is, what are they?” For Barbour each Now is an arrangement of everything in the universe. “We have the strong impression that things have definite positions relative to each other. I aim to abstract away everything we cannot see (directly or indirectly) and simply keep this idea of many different things coexisting at once. There are simply the Nows, nothing more, nothing less.”
Barbour’s Nows can be imagined as pages of a novel ripped from the book’s spine and tossed randomly onto the floor. Each page is a separate entity existing without time, existing outside of time. Arranging the pages in some special order and moving through them in a step-by-step fashion makes a story unfold. Still, no matter how we arrange the sheets, each page is complete and independent. As Barbour says, “The cat that jumps is not the same cat that lands.” The physics of reality for Barbour is the physics of these Nows taken together as a whole. There is no past moment that flows into a future moment. Instead all the different possible configurations of the universe, every possible location of every atom throughout all of creation, exist simultaneously. Barbour’s Nows all exist at once in a vast Platonic realm that stands completely and absolutely without time.
“What really intrigues me,” says Barbour, “is that the totality of all possible Nows has a very special structure. You can think of it as a landscape or country. Each point in this country is a Now and I call the country Platonia, because it is timeless and created by perfect mathematical
rules.” The question of “before” the Big Bang never arises for Barbour because his cosmology has no time. All that exists is a landscape of configurations, the landscape of Nows. “Platonia is the true arena of the universe,” he says, “and its structure has a deep influence on whatever
physics, classical or quantum, is played out in it.” For Barbour, the Big Bang is not an explosion in the distant past. It’s just a special place in Platonia, his terrain of independent Nows.
About Time:
“Think of the integers,” he explains. “Every integer exists simultaneously. But some of the integers are linked in structures, like the set of all primes or the numbers you get from the Fibonacci series.” The number 3 does not occur in the past of the number 5, just as the Now of the cat jumping off the table does not occur in the past of the Now wherein the cat lands on the floor.
Past and future, beginning and end have simply disappeared in Barbour’s physics. And make no mistake about it, Barbour is doing physics. “I know the idea is shocking,” he says, “but we can use it to make predictions and describe the world.” With his collaborators, Barbour has published a series of papers demonstrating how relativity and quantum mechanics naturally emerge from the physics of Platonia.
Barbour’s perfect timeless arrangement of Nows into the landscape of Platonia is the most radical of all solutions to the conundrum of Before. But his audacity reveals an alternative route from this strange moment in science’s history. In an era in which the search for quantum gravity has multiplied dimensions and the discovery of dark energy has sent cosmologists back to their blackboards, all the fundamentals seem up for grabs. Barbour is willing to step back even further and offer “no time” as a more basic answer to the question “What is time?”
This is an excerpt from Adam Frank's book About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang, newly available in paperback. It's from a chapter titled "The End of Beginnings and the End of Time," discussing radical alternatives to the Big Bang.
49 Comments
To comment, please Login.
Popular Tags
Science
|
|
|
|
|
|
June 2013: American Energy Independence
Five amazing, clean technologies that will set us free, in this month's energy-focused issue. Also: how to build a better bomb detector, the robotic toys that are raising your children, a human catapult, the world's smallest arcade, and much more.
Popular on Popsci
Most Commented
Science
- Scientists Create First Cloned Human Embryo
- State Drops Charges Against High School Student Arrested For Science Experiment
- Space Tourism's Black Carbon Problem
- Cold Fusion Machine Gets Third-Party Verification, Inventor Says
- Giving White People The Illusion Of Darker Skin Makes Them Less Racist
- What Modern Humans Can Learn From The Neanderthals' Extinction
- FYI: Do Wind Farms Make It Less Windy?
- How Do You Make A Painkiller Addiction-Proof?
- Untouched For The Last Billion Years, Water In Canadian Mine Holds Ingredients For Life
- FYI: Could Climate Change Cause More (And Bigger) Tornadoes?
Most Emailed
Science
- Portland, Oregon, Says No To Fluoridation
- Got A Wound? Science Says Rub Some Dirt In It
- Was The Oklahoma City Tornado The Worst In History?
- These Self-Assembling Nanoflowers Are As Beautiful As They Are Tiny
- The Moore, Oklahoma Tornado, From Space
- The Oklahoma Tornado, From Space
- Synthetic Biologists Engineer A Custom Flu Vaccine In A Week
- These Self-Assembling Nanoflowers Are As Beautiful As They Are Tiny
- FEMA's 'Waffle House Index' Rates Moore, Oklahoma, At Disaster Level Yellow
- FYI: Could Climate Change Cause More (And Bigger) Tornadoes?
Most Viewed
Science
- Portland, Oregon, Says No To Fluoridation
- Got A Wound? Science Says Rub Some Dirt In It
- Was The Oklahoma City Tornado The Worst In History?
- These Self-Assembling Nanoflowers Are As Beautiful As They Are Tiny
- The Moore, Oklahoma Tornado, From Space
- The Oklahoma Tornado, From Space
- Synthetic Biologists Engineer A Custom Flu Vaccine In A Week
- These Self-Assembling Nanoflowers Are As Beautiful As They Are Tiny
- FEMA's 'Waffle House Index' Rates Moore, Oklahoma, At Disaster Level Yellow
- FYI: Could Climate Change Cause More (And Bigger) Tornadoes?
Online Content Director: Suzanne LaBarre | Email
Senior Editor: Paul Adams | Email
Associate Editor: Dan Nosowitz | Email
Assistant Editor: Colin Lecher | Email
Assistant Editor: Rose Pastore | Email
Contributing Writers:
Rebecca Boyle | Email
Kelsey D. Atherton | Email
Francie Diep | Email
Shaunacy Ferro | Email
Today on PopSci.com
Copyright © 2012 Popular Science
A Bonnier Corporation Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
I like to be on time. But time does not sit still for anyone.
If I try to hold time, there seems to be nothing to grab onto, yet time is on my side.
Why do we dwell on past times, when the past can never be changed.
Now is the time for great things to happen.
The future alwyas holds time for our dreams.
Does this mean time is history?
lol, I've been telling people time is a construct of humanity for years. Every time I see some crazy physicist talking about time travel I cringe...
It means NOW is all we have.
There is no such thing as matter.
There is no such thing as time.
What's next?
-
"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours"
- Stephen Roberts
I always thought time was just a measurement of distance from the big bang.
I am so stoned right now. Reading this article is freaking me out. I just bought the book on my iPad. Looking forward to tripping out while reading this.
-
"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours"
- Stephen Roberts
I guess their will be no more 'time outs' in sports, since we have no time.
I know what you mean Xionanx, I commented about this back in 2009 here on popsci.
- http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-07/experiment-tries-bridge-classical-physics-and-quantum-mechanics
I'm surprised it took this long for someone to write a book on it though.
It makes the concept of time travel/"Now" travel seem more plausible!
This is what I have been telling my boss all along..
And Light is exposing each NOW and each moment can be relit, traveled to, and seen with the correct light-time-exposure. All existing simultaneously. Thats what Leonardo was doing with those mirrors.
This is in fact a meaningless theory.
It reminds me of the something that was taught in Philosophy class I had. I forget who it was, but the person was trying to "prove" what is real and what isn't.
It starts like this.
I'm asking a question, so I know I exist in some "form".
Past that the person(s) tried to expand that fact to other facts, when the idea is that you can't trust any of your senses, because they could all be faked by some outside force.
I believe the person(s) believed they some how got around this and "proved" something, but in reality the only thing that is really possible to prove is "I exist".
If there are only "Nows" and there is no relationship that binds them, whether you call it "time" or anything else then in fact you have no science, you have no truths, you have nothing, that you can act on.
Whats more this theory doesn't even stand up to very basic observations. We do predict things that are going to happen with great certainty. That is not possible with a series of unconnected "Nows".
Now if you want to say "we do not understand this thing called 'time'". That is a very real statement. But to dismiss time as not existing is just plain stupid.
Time to a human is the connection of "Nows" and that happens and is predictable for the most part. You can give it any name you like, but there is a relationship there.
Also that is not to say the the "rules of time" can't break down under certain circumstances, but even if that happens most likely there is another relationship that takes over, and it is pure syntax to say "isn't time", or if it is time in a different form.
Haha been telling people this for years. Time and space are based upon a fractal/antifractal in which every possible arrangement both exists and repeats itself indefinitely. Don't believe me? Look into the similarities between computer-generated fractal patterns and just about anything ANYWHERE in nature. It will drive you insane once you make the connection. From there it's just a few simple thought experiments to make the connection that time is space, this if space is fractal-based, then so is time!
I refute the plank-legnth, nothing but large time/spaces turning into smaller self-similar time/spaces!
I take this idea even further.
Do you really think you are holding the same wireless device a split second ago? A second ago the device you are using to read this website diminished by quiet a few of its atoms and gained quite a few of your human atoms dropping off from your body. We simply don't have the eyes(senses) to see these amazing minute things happen every split second so they don't matter to us.
We cannot hold on to time as much as we cannot hold to anything at all - even ourselves. The only constants are space and energy that eternally converts to another form.
In the whole scheme of the universe, nothing that we do really matters except to the fellow energies in human form who have the senses to see and interact with what we do.
There are some problems, however.
Among other things, while memory is one of the facets that make the supposed illusion of time to work, to whatever extent that memory is also a physical process, it, too, takes time. So what verifies that memory proceeds correctly? There must be an arbiter that views memory as it proceeds, that remembers the memory of an instant before and knows the flow of memory an instant later is correct. But there must be a super arbiter to view the arbiter, to make sure its record of memories is correct. And arbiters above arbiters above arbiters. Frankly, to work, the sequential process described must have infinitely many levels of arbiters working simultaenously. That is not impossible, but, it also argues against a sequential physical existence and not a fluid, continuous one.
Incidentally, unblike what the article claims, dark energy has been no more discovered than quantum gravity.
We're slow..... and, the reason we experience time is because we are like an old out of date computer. All the information of our position in the universe is already there it just takes us a long time to load all of the data, and that's why we experience a past and a present..... it's because we are flawed.
So, your ghost and your precognitive dreams were never magic. Maybe magic does exist in the real world of the architect of this conduit we inhabit. I'd like to know someday.
Actually, the memory aspect of the described model of time goes beyond just humans. Remember, every particle has to remember where it was so it can know where it can go in the next step in the sequence. That would suggest, for example, then, that there is some kind of structure inside a photon that allows it to remember where it was, despite the fact that all space is supposed to be the same, and know exactly where it should move to.
So... If "It is change that provides the illusion of time," then what causes change to happen? Isn't it time???
The point isn't that time does not exist. To say that is kind of a misnomer. The point is that the way we experience the fourth dimension (time), as third dimensional beings, is illusory. The idea is that time exists as one complete thing but our brains can only see the part that is right in front of us at any given moment, or "Now". Kind of like we are walking along a möbius strip not realizing that we've been walking in a big circle the whole time (pun). Another way to look at it is like time is kind of like a movie on a DVD but we can only experience one frame, or one scene at a time.
I can't see how anyone can dispute the multiverse. The only assumption that you need make is that infinite space exists, and in that space it is very slightly possible that a universe will just happen. This then predicts that there is already an infinite number of universes, each separated from the next by infinite space. This is basically saying that each universe creates its own set of dimensions.
Of course there is no time, if you are describing the universe in it's most literal sense. Time is not a force, mass, or energy. It is simply a convenient way to quantify how objects change with respect to one another from one's own perspective.
If I throw a ball in the air, how much time will it take to come back down? Let's replace "how much time" with "how many swings of the pendulum", or "how many degrees of Earth's rotation". Then we must ask, from whom's perspective are we making this comparison? The answer I get will be different from somebody who is traveling near light speed relative to my position.
No such thing as time? I guess there's no such thing as a "kilometer" or a "gram" either...
Buddhism has been saying time is an illusion for thousands of years. Glad it is happening during my life time.
Well, in a book (of NOWS) you can move from THIS NOW to THAT NOW sequentially--or you can open the book to ANY NOW that you want.
You can't do that with time.
I can tear the pages from the book and they will be numbered (presumably) and can throw them into the air and jumble them all up. And I can, methodically, resequence them in any order I wish and re-create my 'book of NOWS'.
So those NOWS are related by page number but their physical relationships will be whatever order I chose to reset them to.
You can't do that with time.
But I beg to differ that each page is independent because each page-if not ordered sequentially--makes no sense--because you ripped apart the order of those pages. This is because they weren't paginated and some paragraphs went from page to page and hence incomplete if not ordered correctly. So the pages are non-sense NOWS and different that the ordered NOWS.
I'm probably not making and sense NOW so I better stop.
Never forget, prior to having space, there was the nothing and it was the nothing that help create the space.
Our sense of life with time cannot be reconciled to the physics of the universe and the reasoning necessary to explain the universe. If I try and wrap my head around the universe based on my perception of the life I live here on earth I will not understand any theory of the universe. Metaphors only go so far to help understand.
When you look into a telescope and you see the stars you see light from eons ago and you cannot see their light at your current time and you never will. This begins to cause problems with space-time fabric. Without light and our perception of light we would be having Hellen Keller discussions maybe.
Light is delivering all the simultaneously existing NOWs in our perceived sequence which does in fact have order just like the expansion of the universe itself.
Place a person in absolute darkness and they lose sense of time. Light is how we perceive time.
Time is an illusion and lunch time doubly so ~ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
If you select multiverse you have to expand universe to contain repetitive big bangs? Infinitely looping doesn't satisfy the progenitor Zero and Time will not satisfy either' existence.
You are and have already been at the same time.
You will find most of Barbour's argument developed in greater detail to much the same general conclusion in 11th book of The Confessions of St Augustine, circa 397 AD. The language is different but the results are basically the same, save that Augustine reserves the immutable [sic eternal] 'Now' for God alone.
Funny thing that I just discussed about the nature of time with my friends couple days "ago" and offered an explanation which is in some ways similar to the one described in this article.
I described time that flows "perpendicular" to what we usually perceive as "arrow of time". By that I mean the future and the past, as we perceive them, do not exist. And that, in fact, both can change.
However, after reading this article, I became a little confused. Now I'm wondering if "time" (or "Now") is actually a dimensionless dot.
Only thing that is actually needed is some kind of "coherence principle" that keeps the Universe stable (as we know it). That coherence principle would disallow "creation" of incoherent past or future, or even new laws of the nature. It would keep the Universe "existing".
Some implications that may follow from this are, for example, that we may be creating the Universe as we go. Also there might be a tight connection between "consciousness" and the existence of the Universe in its current form.
Time, like matter and energy, is relative. Dr. Barbour seems to have transcended space and time somehow and is perceiving a different universe than the rest of us see. I blame it on the 60's.
This is very insightful. This is stating not that the idea of time itself doesn't exist, but that it isn't the fundamental process which hold the universe together and just another measurement based on the span of connected nows that create the cycle of a second in the dimension that we exist in. This means that we are forced to delve to the 5th and 6th dimension where time is everywhere at once and its following level where time is only in your now in relation to you allowing full movement through the multi-dimensional folding of the universe and all nows to creating an infinitely sizeless body of all points connected everywhere at once. This means that 'time travel' is just the forced connection of different nows through access of the deeper dimensions. This would, however, require a completely redefined level of physics that would explain a lot but leave ever more to learn as with all of the remaining nows that we relate to presently.
My favourite aspect is that there is no way to conceptualize lack of time because our minds work on the basis of these nows and go through them as they process it creating the lag and interpretation of other elements of the universe all organized around the fact that we are slow and perceive our level of now with an interlaced web of neuron based processes with self-contained particle memory. Nothing like theoretical physics to get you going!
Mhayden, I am confident that you hit the nail on the head with this comment. Time does exist but as one "thing." But, if that's true and someone had the key to unlock the human limitation of only being able to see "now" then that person could know the future and the past all at one time or all now. Time could be viewed like a big flat picture with all events in it's own place or pixel within the picture. Existence is being in the pixel. Energy allows everything to move from one pixel to the next. Wait, that couldn't be because that would mean energy itself would be moving everything by will which would make our thoughts, choices and intentions to do this or that just a big illusion. It would all be preprogrammed and written for all time.
On another note. If we had to quantify that amount of data like we do with digital photography there would be no word to describe how astronomical the number would be but I imagine one must exist.
Ok, the creepy thing about my train of thought is if time is a sheet of paper and every event of everything exisance from beginning to end spread out on it why do we have order or at lease what we perceive is order and predictability? My point is life seems more mathematical and planned than just random events.
Oh, and could this sheet of paper really be laying on top of or within something way bigger with way more data? Who knows?
I just wasted five minutes of my precious time reading this incoherent sensationalist rambling, which seem to be at least 100 years out of date. Time is of course not a thing, but it can be money, at least that's what Frank must be hoping.
To say "there is no time" is like saying "there is no dark" or "there is no cold". All are true. In reality there is only lack of light, lack of heat or, I believe in the case of time, lack of change.
Any amount of change would invoke the idea of time. This is true on any scale, from the quantum to the galactic to the universal/omniversal.
If time is just an expression of rates of change within a given space, this could shed light on everything from Time Dilation to Expansion Theory following the Big Bang.
In this posit, no choice of command control parameters or abilities of a traveler in a tessaract would change at all.
Ya know, there just never seems to be enough time...
.... sigh.
So yes, there is no time.
I would have to emphatically disagree with Adam Frank that Time does not exist.
Time moving on into the future is a function of space expanding further out into the abyss. As cosmologists have confirmed time and again the Universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. This expansion further into the abyss is intricately entwined with the passage of time, the further the Universe expands, the further out time has passed as well.
The expansion further into the abyss/passage of time is what scientists refer to as time/space, time an integral component of the phenomena of expanding space.
This has lead me to believe that we as human beings today live in a unique moment in the history of the Cosmos because as the Universe expands further into the unknown filling up the ethereal vacuity with space-time, we are living at the very precipice of time, a point which the Universe has never been this far out in time-space, as such, we are living on the very latest precipice of time/space the Universe has ever existed,
expanded into.
Interesting article. Its good for science that an expert is taking this view seriously. Whether his hypothesis pans out or not is irrelevant. It all adds to our understanding of time.
How do you know that you were not created at _this_ instant with all your memories intact? You cannot.
So, if the only way to perceive the passage of time is through that possibly artificial construct we call memory (and/or the 4th dimension) then wouldn't you consider things that are created to exist and be experienced and then remembered to be inherently 4 Dimensional?
This suggests that there are forms of art and creativity that are 4D in nature.*
Things such as cooking, ice sculpture, improv, extemporaneous oration, jazz, and many others are created to be experienced, savored, to cease to exist and then be remembered.
They are, by design, Fourth Dimensional Art.
At present there is a celebration of such things that takes place every year in Nevada. It is called Burning Man.
*Yes, I know that all things in our universe are 4D but our perceptions of change are so inadequate that if I look at the Mona Lisa, go away, and return a week or a year later though it has certainly changed, its changes are imperceptible to my naked eye.
So what Barbour is saying is that we cant perceive the 4th dimension so the other 3 must not exist ether. They are the squire trying to comprehend the box.
“When Ignorance lurks, so too do the frontiers of discovery and imagination”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson
Time is nothing more than a convenience to man!
www.AnonNation.tk
Watch this video by Swami Dayananda, who explains that there is only awareness and time merges into awareness and there is no time :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDTsDSFrBm4
Very Beautiful!
I'll go you one further than this guy. Time doesn't exist because we don't exist. Well things in "existence", blink in and out through the one consciousness that is everything. Within this consciousness, which we are an infintisimally microscopic, part. there can "exist" anything, including his Platonia. However, it doesn't actually exist. You, as a small part of this conciousness, can experience the truth of what I am saying by pulling away from the river of thoughts pouring into you. Its very hard at first, but with lots of practice, becomes easy. Give it a whirl.
"Time" is the measurement of the motion and decay of matter
"Space" is the distance measuable between matter at any given point in "Time"
Neither exists on the sub-atomic level where there is no more motion or decay or space
because every atom has a frequency as it moves and decays between any 2 points you can move to any point in "time" and "Space" by vibrating the right frequency of that point in "Time" and "Space"
This stuff's been known for at least 100 years,why is it such a big deal(Besides the average Academic Physist being 150 years behind the Military Scientific Research Curve on "jumping"?...lol)
Retired "grunt" scientist (don't guess,test it)
only space and events exist. sequence of events create the illusion of time. memory records events and the mind counts an arbitrary periods we call time. it is amazing when we see children learn the concept, like when playing the piano. during anaesthesia a gap with no events exist between induction and recovery. in alzheimers disease we lose sense of space and sequence and illusion of time disappears!!
time is not necessary for matter and space, only magnitudes and unique characteristics matter,time(momments or periods) is only critical for/during change/motion/transition/decay/formation! examples playback of records, fermentation or creeating artificial diamonds