∆ Energy not Time.

Figure 17‑1 The amount of energy heating each pot directly, and entirely, affects what happens, so what 'extra' thing does Time do?

Hopefully you can see here that what I am pointing at is that Time itself seems to have absolutely no relation to what actually happens in this simple situation. While the supply of gas or energy seems to have absolutely everything to do with what happens. So it is shown that it is always the case that the location and amount of energy applied directly affects where and how much change is, or is not, happening.

Interestingly enough if we took the battery powering the wall clock out, or if it just ran flat the clock would stop, but of course then we would abandon it as the indicator of time and immediately declare that time was still going on anyway whether the clock had power or not.

In fact the only way Time can be seen as justifying its existence here is if it is in some way an essential catalyst or ‘enabler’ that allows energy to do its job but without which energy alone would be unable to function.

This possibility of time existing yet being a somewhat invisible ‘catalyst’ shouldn’t be overlooked. In chemistry there are situations where two chemicals can be mixed together with no reaction occurring, unless a third catalyst chemical is added. This extra chemical is essential to enable the reaction, but does not actually form part of the resulting mixture. So the catalyst is both essential to the reaction but not part of the result. Perhaps if time exists it could play a similar role in the universe, enabling all things to happen but not being part of them. The problem with this idea is it follows on from some very poor reasoning, as follows… We initially assume ‘time’ exists because we think our memories and the world around us indicate the existence of an extra record of events, the temporal past. When this is shown to be an over-extrapolation of the facts, rather than just drop the idea we seem to think ‘ok, that’s not a good reason to prove time, let’s look for another reason’. And the logic behind the ‘invisible catalyst’ idea would have to be ‘we see no signs of anything, therefore perhaps something invisible and undetectable exists’ - this is the error shown in the ‘emperors new clothes’ parable all over again.

The catalyst is in fact completely recovered after the reaction.

Is time everywhere? Or just matter and energy?

The easiest way of checking this would be to leave energy and matter, the gas and the water, in place and remove Time to see if everything, including the wall clock stopped. But wouldn’t you know it, very suspiciously, one of the features of Time, this invisible and undetectable thing, is that it also apparently can never be simply switched off or removed[8].

Moreover, just as the invisibility of the emperor’s new cloak is given as proof of how finely it is made this elusive ‘invisible yet unstoppable’ attribute of time is actually given as part of the proof time does exist, and that time is universal. This, because we say, wherever there is matter there is change, and change only happens with time, thus this proves time exists and operates or runs everywhere. The error here is in the possibly false, implied but not proven, declaration that ‘change happens only with time’.

So we tend to think of time as something that infiltrates all the corners of the universe and we believe this because wherever we look we observe movement and change. But what is ‘also’ observably and experimentally true is that wherever there is matter there is also energy[9].

It is also one of the fundamental laws of the universe is that no object can be cooled to absolute zero[10] (see book ref), this means that every object, every collection of matter, no matter where it is or how cold it might be has to have some ‘heat energy’ within it, and it is agreed that where there is energy there is movement and change.

You can choose to add the idea ‘and this shows that there is also time everywhere’, but only legitimately if you can also clearly explain what you mean by this extra thing called ‘time’. So you need to explain where time resides, how it gets to be everywhere where matter and energy are, why time is essential for things to exist and move, or to just exist and do nothing, what powers ‘time’, and explain all of time’s other ‘baggage’, and even why you added the idea of time to your explanation of the universe in the first place.

Back to the kitchen. Disproving one fixed rate

If you consider the previous kitchen scenario you can see that we could have say four different water pots each being heated up on a different cooker ring at a different ‘gas mark’ or rate and all evaporating in direct relation to the heat they were receiving. But if we looked at the clock on the wall we would feel that the second hand just kept ticking by at the same regular rate.

If we had another mechanical device that looked similar to the main clock but whose hands moved at a noticeably and constantly faster rate so the second hand was going tick, tick, tick, tick, for every one tick on the main clock, we would probably choose to ignore the faster clock and say there was a problem with it.

But this is slightly odd and somewhat biased. We have the main clock, the faster clock, and all the different pots all changing at different ‘rates’ but we seem to choose one particular thing to be the definitive ‘rate’, and it just so happens to be the one thing we happen to be most familiar with.

This bias is a bit hard to see, but it is similar to the idea that your own native language is the ‘real’ language, and all other languages are the ‘different ones’ or not as valid.

What I'm saying is, is there any real proof that in the universe there is ‘a’ basic or fundamental ‘rate of Time’? Or do things in one location just move and change independently of how other things elsewhere move and change. Any similarity in the way distant and separate objects move and change just being a result of the laws of physics, forces, masses, inertia and so on being the same in different places. Is there a fundamental ‘tick’ or rate to the universe? Why isn't it just that pot ‘A’ boils away at its own rate, and pot ‘B’ at its own rate, depending on local conditions?

It seems more scientific to say that the rates at which A and B boil away are dictated by the laws of physics; in that everything is made of the same kinds of atoms, masses are similar, the strength of atomic forces, the effects of momentum etc are the same throughout the universe. And so these similarities will ‘link’ how a pot in one place boils in a similar way to a pot anywhere else in the universe, if it is in similar circumstances. But the distinction is that they will act similarly only because of all of the atomic and mechanical similarities – and this may mistakenly be interpreted to suggest that another, extra, thing called ‘Time’ exists and links them – but only if we force this extra, ‘functionless’ and ‘superfluous’ conclusion ‘that time exists’ into our observations.

>>Entropy, Is just Entropy.

Back to >> ∆ Timeless v.Time distinctions (Rhetoric and Semantics).

[1] If in our everyday lives we happen to leave a pan of water or something similar lying around it does tend to evaporate but this is because virtually everywhere on Earth there is a surplus of energy, don’t forget we live near a ball of nuclear fire one million times the volume of the Earth. (LOST FRAG??)

[2] As mentioned elsewhere some scientists think it may be a feature of nature that particle of matter can disappear or appear completely at random, but by definition ‘at random’ means this would not prove the existence and/or steady progression of Time.

[3] For simplicity let's say if you double the gas burn rate you double the rate the water evaporates.

[4] This is useful to note because normally we talk about a ‘moment’ as being a particular ‘Time’, here we can say that the ‘moment’ the water started changing was actually a particular place in the pan. XX EXPAND

[5] Really?

[6] As in previous footnote, generally speaking.

[7] We could add here that in fact atoms and electrons move at very significant fractions of the speed of light and thus trillions of ‘Time dilation’ effects could be said to involved here but this is to be covered elsewhere.

[8] Relativity suggests Time can be, and is ‘dilated’, i.e. slowed and even possibly stopped. So some might claim ‘Time can be removed’ to see what happens without it. But this dilation can also be seen as ‘rates of motion’ just being dilated ‘now’, this is covered elsewhere and would overcomplicate the point being made here if referred to directly.

[9] I don’t mean just rest energy here.

[10] Partly because it is physically impossible to achieve and partly because it violates the Heisenberg uncertainty principle that one cannot know precisely where an object is and how fast it is moving. If an object or particle was completely frozen, that is it had absolutely zero energy, then it would not be moving and so we would know precisely where it was and its speed (zero).