New Theory Of Time (584 hits)
Category: Science & EnvironmentalRating: 1.54 on 18 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Ralph Master Nator (View user info) at 2003-08-11 05:39:10 EDT
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/time_theory_030806.html
New Theory of Time Rattles Halls of Science
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 06:22 am ET
06 August 2003
A radical new theory of time and motion has some of the world's physicists doubting the claim while others laud the 27-year-old college dropout who came up with it, an unknown big thinker named Peter Lynds.
Lynds says he's no Einstein. In fact, he is not a fully trained theorist. He has no real academic credentials. But he does appear to have a new career, now that one other theorist compared his work to the groundbreaking ideas of Albert Einstein.
In a paper published in the August issue of Foundations of Physics Letters, Lynds claims to see time and motion with unprecedented theoretical clarity.
Lynds refutes an assumption dating back 2,500 years, that time can be thought of in physical, definable quantities. In essence, scientists have long assumed that motion can be considered in frozen moments, or instants, even as time flows on.
In an e-mail interview from New Zealand, Lynds told SPACE.com how he sees the physical world:
"There isn't a precise instant underlying an object's motion," he said. "And as its position is constantly changing over time -- and as such, never determined -- it also doesn't have a determined position at any time."
Peter Lynds contemplates time in ways no one else has. Now he's thinking about his new career.
Nor does time flow, Lynds says. More on that later.
Importantly, Lynds claims his theory solves Zeno's paradoxes, which have frustrated creative brains for millennia.
Goals never reached
The most famous paradox invented by Zeno, the Greek philosopher, is called "Achilles and the tortoise." A tortoise gets a 10-meter head start in a race against Achilles. Zeno says the tortoise can never be passed. His logic: When Achilles has run 10 meters, the tortoise will have moved a meter; Achilles goes another meter, and the tortoise crawls 10 more centimeters. The race continues in this ever-more boring and incremental fashion.
A related paradox, called the dichotomy, argues that you can never reach a goal. First you'll have to travel half the distance, then half that distance, and so on. You might as well stay home.
Reality is different, of course -- goals are reached and tortoises often lose. But philosophers and physicists have not been able to explain the paradoxes away.
Lynds claims the paradoxes result from an incorrect physical assumption from long ago. From ancient times to the present, philosophers and physicists have assumed that objects in motion have determined positions at any instant in time. It's not true, Lynds says.
"I'm surprised this hasn't been realized before," Lynds said, calling many aspects of his theory very simple.
"I think much of the difficulty is the result of us actually consciously thinking in the context of an instant of time, and projecting this onto the world around us," he said. "I also just think that people haven't thought to question it and assumed it was settled and beyond reproach."
'I'm not the new Einstein'
Lynds' name and his new idea have barely reverberated through the halls of academia -- halls that Lynds has barely wandered. A recent posting on an online physics message board asks, simply, "Has anyone here heard of Peter Lynds from New Zealand? He does work on time and physics."
The ensuing discussion considers his work both brilliant and ludicrous. The discussion is heated, even vicious, and Lynds responded with a post of his own:
"I obviously won't get a Nobel Prize for the work and I'm not the new Einstein," he wrote. "I'm just a young guy from New Zealand who had some ideas and thinks they're worth chasing through."
Other scientists agree with that last part.
The importance of Lynds' work "resembles Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity," said Andrei Khrennikov, a professor of applied mathematics at Vaxjo University in Sweden and a referee of the journal paper.
Not bad acclaim for a theorist who attended university for just six months. Lynds is currently a tutor at a broadcasting school.
"It has changed my life," Lynds said yesterday. "Actually, after the past few days, I don't think it will ever be the same again. It's a bit scary."
'Profound ignorance'
In a press release accompanying Lynds' work, John Wheeler, a Princeton physicist who actually worked with Einstein, is quoted as saying he admires Lynds' "boldness" and pointing out that young new thinkers often "had pushed the frontiers of physics forward in the past."
Another referee of Lynds' paper, also quoted in the press release, took a dim view.
"I have only read the first two sections as it is clear that the author's arguments are based on profound ignorance or misunderstanding of basic analysis and calculus," said the referee, who was not named.
The naysaying referee was overruled and the paper was published. The journal, however, is one that some researchers view as a publication for lesser papers that do not merit appearing in the most prestigious scientific journals.
Lynds clearly has a long road to acceptance. He has, in fact, faced negative reactions for years, including from impatient former professors. He originally wrote the paper three years ago and is only now realizing significant attention from its publication.
One of Lynds' former professors, now-retired Victoria University mathematical physicist Chris Grigson, recalls Lynds as determined when the two argued about time.
"I must say I thought the idea was hard to understand," Grigson said. "He is theorizing in an area that most people think is settled. Most people believe there are a succession of moments and that objects in motion have determined positions."
Lynds says now that he's grateful for the encouragement Grigson provided at a time when academia was "extremely frustrating" otherwise.
"I think quite a few physicists and philosophers have difficulty getting their heads around the topic of time properly," Lynds said. "I'm not a big fan of quite a few aspects of academia, but I'd like to think that what's happened with the work is a good example of perseverance and a few other things eventually winning through."
No flow of time
One implication of Lynds' work is a really hard to wrap a mind around. If he's right that there are no instants in time related to physical processes, then there is no such thing as a flow of time, because such a flow inherently requires progression through definite instants -- exactly what Lynds forbids.
So are we all frozen in time and space? Impossible, he says.
"If the universe were frozen static at such an instant, this would be a precise static instant of time -- time would be a physical quantity." Again, you'll recall, Lynds does not allow this.
Perhaps you smell another paradox on the horizon.
However, Lynds reasons that the lack of instants is what allows Nature to have time that we can, in turn, watch go by on our clocks. Confused? You are not alone. It will likely be some time before Lynds' ideas are shaken out by his new, lofty peers and determined to be revolutionary, interesting or just plain wrongheaded.
Meanwhile, the tutor-turned-theorist has more papers written that he would now like to submit for publication.
"This includes a paper on cosmology and time, a paper relating time to consciousness, and also a philosophy paper on the foundations of assertion," he said.
While we await a verdict on the possible genius or hubris of Peter Lynds, perhaps the rest of us can get on with striving for our own goals armed with a new expectation of actually reaching them, even if we don't quite understand why.
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From www.space.com
User Reviews
Submitted by Nator (user info) at 2003-08-11 15:06:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
That's what I thought.
(That goes for Razor's comment and SubstnceP's)
Submitted by SubstnceP (user info) at 2003-08-11 14:39:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
After reading this...I must say I am quite intrigued. My only doubt about his time-flow theory, has to do with film. Wouldn't a photograph represent a definite moment in time? I assume that because of his infinite time theory, one could not specifically define this moment...but it would still physically show a perticular moment in time. Since we could document the exact "time" that this moment took place, we would need a time frame to work with, in order to pin point it's "location". His theory is that there is no time frame, or start and finish for that matter, really messes with my head. This brings about all kinds of questions dealing with how the universe started and where it is headed. What about entropy? If the universe is in a constant state of decomposition, what did it start from? Ugghh...I'm going to lie down now. Me likey sandwich!
Submitted by Razor (user info) at 2003-08-11 13:21:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Too early to make any kind of judgement
Submitted by Nator (user info) at 2003-08-11 09:50:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Me too. Makes me feel intellergant.
Submitted by Nicole3 (user info) at 2003-08-11 09:15:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Very interesting. I like stuff like this.
Submitted by Nator (user info) at 2003-08-11 09:13:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I'll do that, thanks phucket.
Submitted by phucket at 2003-08-11 08:58:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I mentioned this in a few posts back, but, if you like to contemplate theories like this, read Hawkins' The Universe in a Nutshell. Hawkins goes in to time and space and applies his own and Einstein's universal discoveries and extrapolates theories of technology and the rate of population into a sort of what the future may bring, mathematically.
Submitted by Insanethemind (user info) at 2003-08-11 08:56:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
One implication of Lynds' work is a really hard to wrap a mind around
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This is the part I agree with.
Maybe it is too early
Interesting nonetheless.
Submitted by Nator (user info) at 2003-08-11 08:55:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
"time is infinite!!! no point in time is definable, only the personal experience of the individual defines an event!!! and i can only say that because who ever is reading this exists as human kind knows itself and so do i!!!! we only originated time as a concept because the human intellect is so limited perceptually as a species and simplification is a stepping stone to progression!!!!!!!!! there is NO increment of reality to measure time, this only serves our desires for reference points in memory!!!!! even a dog knows better than that!!!!!"
I knew that. But I still thought of it as time being an unlimited amount of photographs of different moments, at unlimited intervals, which are all present *at the same time*. Our minds connect the individual photographs, and the sequence in which they do this is our concept of Time.
*I can't really say they exist at the same time, that would be saying there is time within time, I just said it that way to point out they have no predefined sequence.*
This new theory is more complex then this though, what you said in no way argues against the current established Theories of Time.
Submitted by Nator (user info) at 2003-08-11 08:44:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Errrrrr, yes.
Submitted by ruin (user info) at 2003-08-11 08:36:19 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
BOLLOCKS!!!
you know why this guy is so humble?!?!?!
it's because he knows this stuff has been talked about in the physics undergrounds for decades!!!!
time is infinite!!! no point in time is definable, only the personal experience of the individual defines an event!!! and i can only say that because who ever is reading this exists as human kind knows itself and so do i!!!! we only originated time as a concept because the human intellect is so limited perceptually as a species and simplification is a stepping stone to progression!!!!!!!!! there is NO increment of reality to measure time, this only serves our desires for reference points in memory!!!!! even a dog knows better than that!!!!!
yout think the language i am writing in now is any more sophisticated than a neanderthals grunt?!?!?! HAHAHAHHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
more power to the this new zealand guy for standing up and recognizing what people are saying
einstein once asked charlie chaplin what all the fuss was, what all the populist attention was about and chaplin said "nothing"
Submitted by Rivers_Liebig (user info) at 2003-08-11 08:24:46 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Cheers. Interesting stuff.
Good comment... part way through my mind was saying 'Damn Chris... its way too early and WAY too much like work for this'
Submitted by EspoDmouth (user info) at 2003-08-11 07:59:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
good stuff...be interesting to see how it all pans out.
peace
espo
Submitted by jimbobjoe (user info) at 2003-08-11 07:47:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Very interesting stuff here.
Submitted by drink_DDT (user info) at 2003-08-11 07:35:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Interesting, thanks.
Submitted by etruscan (user info) at 2003-08-11 07:13:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
This gentleman seems to have something to say. I would like to see a web adress where I could read this paper. I must point out however that acording to your acount he only proposes to question modern Phyics and adds no actually quatified thought to it. In other words he's got a long way to go if he wants recognition.
Submitted by Nator (user info) at 2003-08-11 06:42:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Hrhrhr!
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2003-08-11 06:40:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Owwwwwwwwwww!! My head HURTS !!
Further reading required methinks.
As soon as I start to think about time, my mind says "hey Jamie, how about we think about football/women/beer instead!".