What Is TIME? Why Is Quantum More Fundamental Than Time?

A few obvious answers are at hand: The definition of Time shows why Quantum is more fundamental than Time. Trivial, but deep. As observed!

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Time is the ticking of a light clock, a device made of two separated mirrors, between which light rebounds, providing a periodic transfer of momentum, which can be measured. That makes time a local concept. The notion dates back to Lorentz, who used it implicitly, and Henri Poincaré, who defined it explicitly, building “Relativity” around it (19C)… Many years before a celebrated parrot… 

More subtle, and so far unnoticed: Defining time from light, as we have to, there is no other way, makes time less fundamental than fundamental Quantum processes, as light is the fruit thereof, and not reciprocally. This is philosophically consequent as far as the speed of light being an absolute notion. It also means that time is less fundamental than space. Indeed, time is used as one parameter group of transformation in fundamental Quantum mechanics.

Light Clock on the left is THE definition of time: LIGHT GOES BACK and FORTH Between TWO MIRRORS . Time dilation pops out readily. When it moves, it clicks less frequently, and not at all if it approaches light speed…

The speed of light is a local, loop concept. The speed of Quantum collapse or entanglement is a global concept… which can’t be limited in any sense by a local, point-like notion (such as the speed of light).

Both Relativity and Complex Numbers pop out of the physics of light, which then constitute their physical embodiment.

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The preceding are broad, contextual, extremely powerful (“philosophical”) arguments. They give good reasons to believe that Quantum Mechanics is more fundamental than time, and thus, would violate time.

However, the devil, physics is in the details. Can we check these broad ideas? Is there a violation of time somewhere? Yes!

CPT symmetry changing charge C, parity P, and Time T simultaneously leaves physics unchanged: it is a theorem of Quantum Filed Theory. However CP violation was observed in 1964 (Nobel 1980). That means time violation had also to occur, to compensate.

The preceding is the sort of very general reasoning physics is always driven by. A related example is an argument about antimatter. There is matter around, no antimatter (or, more exactly, ephemeral). According to the Big Bang, the LCDM model, there should be as much of one as of the other. If there is not, as we observe, the only explanation is CP violation. Thus the LCDM model, in combination with very little antimatter shows that there is time violation, time is not a fundamental symmetry. So much for time travel.

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Notice I did not mention entropy. The second law of thermodynamics says it augments… with the number of “states”, as in thermodynamical states. However, it’s hard to define “states” … In Quantum Physics, there are “states”, of course, even “eigenstates. However those states are relative to a particular situation, the experiment at habd Niels Bohr was (rightly) obsessed about. Now one can make analogies with the surface of black holes, speak about “information”, etc… All interesting, but far-fetched hypotheses by philosophical, or mathematical analogies. I do not want to deride those, as I myself make some… of my own… I claim mine are better, as they rest on clearer and simpler, deeper principles (for example no interaction at a distance at infinite speed).

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Where does all this want to go? If Quantum is deeper than light, and Quantum itself is enacted by Quantum Entanglement, we get to the conclusion that QE is the real architecture of the universe: both Quantum and Relativity are macro, emerging consequences… Hence the necessity for a Sub Quantum Physicsal Reality, SQPR.

We think, therefore we hope.

Patrice Ayme

P/S: Notice in passing that “quantum” was elevated from my grammar to the level of time…

FTL: Faster Than Light Communications Don’t Violate Causality

Many physicists take for granted that if Faster Than Light (FTL) communications were possible some signals could be received earlier than they have been emitted. That’s not correct. “Proofs” that Faster Than Light would demolish causality rest on a confusion between causality and temporality. Time is affected by motion, causality isn’t.

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LIGHT/GRAVITY OBSERVED SIMULTANEOUSNESS OF EVENTS IS SPEED DEPENDENT:

Let’s call the Fast Frame FF and the Inertial Frame IF. The great result of Poincaré is that if a clock in Inertial Frame is accelerated to Fast Frame, once it sits still in FF, it will run slow (it’s called the “Twin Paradox”). 

Henri Poincaré pointed out as early as 1898 (Einstein was 19), events which are VIEWED AS simultaneous in the Fast Frame FF may not be VIEWED AS so in the Inertial Frame IF  depending on the exact motion of FF. (If light behaved as sound, it would be obvious why: sometimes sound takes longer to catch up. It’s basically the same mathematical idea.)

The fact events look simultaneous, or not, depends upon defining simultaneity with light speed, and that c is finite. The sketch above is ROUGHLY correct… But not really, because it contains implicitly a subtlety which needs to come to the fore to be fully correct: the LOCAL time inside the train is NOT the same as the LOCAL time on the platform watching the train… so the detail of the drawing is not as simple as the first sketch… But the basic concept remains: light will be seen as hitting the left side of the carriage first if the carriage is moving towards the right…

It’s very simple. Let’s visualize IF and FF the former as a train station, the second as a train, rushing by. Consider the two extremities of a carriage, A and B, call M the middle of the carriage. Then shine a light at M. From inside the carriage, one can see (say by reflecting the light on mirrors), that the light arrived at A and B simultaneously. 

However, from the outside, as seen from the Inertial Frame, the train station, as the carriage is going towards M, the light is going to hit A first, and B, later. 

The proof rests only on the speed of light being finite (something we have known since studying the moons of Jupiter in the Seventeenth Century. 

So simultaneousness of events having to do with light as defined in the Inertial Frame will be different from simultaneousness of events having to do with light in the Fast Frame… As seen with light!  The order of some events may appear one way in IF, and the opposite in FF. If one defines causality as temporal ordering, one is lost. All of this was discovered by Henri Poincaré… and probably why Henri proposed to call this “the theory of relativity”… Relativity of light events as seen by light. All very enlightening, but all too light.

Now here is a philosophical question: suppose we have an instantaneous way to communicate when things are happening. Would that redefine simultaneity? Of course. now in the real world, spacetime is curved, and light goes neither straight, nor constantly, and may even not go anywhere at all:

Spacetime is curved, and in other words, light is neither straight nor constant. More precisely this means that parallel transport along a ray of light brings a rotation of frames. Also shrinkage in various dimensions.

At first sight, physics locked the notion of time down. Indeed, at first sight…. we have only two long range interactions: gravity and electromagnetism (light). Moreover because of Energy = Mass (Henri Poincaré, 1899, La Sorbonne, Paris), they go at the same speed.

At second sight, we have Quantum Entanglement… Yes, I know, many physicists say Quantum Entanglement can’t be an interaction, because it would go faster than light, and that would violate causality. They may as well quote the Bible… It’s faith on their part, and dogma, not science…

Moreover, time, as defined by light clocks is only local, a notion living in the tangent space to spacetime. An explicit illustration of that is local time in a GPS satellite is not Earth time, and modifications to clocks have to be made constantly.

In this real world, defining time only with light is not the only problem. Wait, some will say, do you have any better than light and gravitation to tell us of distant events? Of course, we do: Quantum Entanglement. In my vision of the matter, matter, and space are literally created by Quantum Entanglement. And that goes at a faster clip than electromagnetism and gravity, or things would fall apart.

Patrice Ayme