Before I begin, I need to address an issue with my blog. I’ve essentially turned off comments to my posts. It is not because I don’t take criticism well. It is due to the ongoing frustrations I have been having regarding unsolicited bulk messages. It really does astonish me the sorts of bots people program in order to perpetrate various agendas. Actually, I really should not be surprised at all, seeing as given the opportunity and incentive, I too might be inclined to write similar bots. That all said, in order to combat this issue, my audience will no longer be able to comment directly to my posts. So I am offering an alternative.
I will let my audience know that they can reach me if they send an Email message to an address that is constructed by taking the name I used for these posts (also known as the “author”), and combining it with the domain of this blog (this does NOT include the “www.” portion, simply the “crimsoncyb.org” portion), placing the “at” symbol in the appropriate location to form a well formed Email address. Confused? I apologize, but I’m not going to make it any clearer, lest another bot will be able to form the address successfully.
Thus, having successfully generated the appropriate address, you may feel free to send me an Email message and comment all you want. Actually, there is the added bonus that you can simply communicate with me in any manner you like, beyond simply commenting on a post. I will be at your disposal, in a sense. If you like. It is up to you. I don’t receive a lot of actual feedback on this site, so I figure this is safe. Now, on with the blog.
In my last post, I indicated I would read about the Hafele–Keating experiment from 1971 in order to try and elucidate anything about time in itself. Unfortunately, after reading through the information (at least briefly), I realized that in order to properly address the experiment and its results would require me to first earn a degree in relativistic physics. I have merely a lay understanding of Einstein’s theories, and so I am less than qualified to really critique what is going on and how accurate the results may or may not be. And I refuse to simply refer vaguely to the argument that “because science” is the answer.
Instead, I will very briefly review what I do know happened in this experiment, and comment to the implications of the results. Very briefly, atomic clocks were placed on a couple of aircraft. Those aircraft were flown at a specific known altitude above the Earth’s surface in opposite directions, one flying in the direction the Earth is rotating, and the other against the direction of rotation. A third atomic clock is left on the surface of the Earth, as a reference. The clocks are synchronized at the beginning of the experiment. At the end of the experiment, the times are compared. It is found that the times on these three atomic clocks differ by amounts that (within a margin of error) suggest a confirmation with Einstein’s Theories of Relativity, or to be more accurate, with the theory of general relativity as combined with the theory of special relativity. I leave it up to the reader to pursue their own education into these rather heady topics if they so desire.
In layman’s terms, the idea is that the plane flying in the direction that the Earth is rotating is moving faster than an object that is “stationary” on the Earth’s surface (because that “stationary” object is moving the same speed as the Earth is rotating, because it is stuck to the surface). The other plane, flying in the opposite direction is moving more slowly than an object that is “stationary” on the Earth’s surface. The significance (according to Einstein) is that those objects that are moving more quickly will experience a slowing down of time, as compared to the slower moving object. That is, if we stand as an outside observer, and suggest that our experience of time is some sort of absolute reference, then we will find that the faster an object is moving, the less time it will experience as compared to us. For example, if I am “stationary” and you are moving at a very high speed (perhaps because you are travelling to another star), where I might experience ten years of time passing for me, you might only experience one year of time passing for you. Even in layman’s terms, this is still pretty heady stuff.
Einstein suggested that as one approached the speed of light, their experience of time would slow to virtual stopping. Essentially, if one could actually achieve the speed of light, time for that person would stop altogether. Hence why he considered it a barrier to the speed of objects. Furthermore, there was another element of this theory that suggested that objects also gained in mass as they approached the speed of light, achieving an infinite mass at the speed of light. Physics would suggest that this also causes problems as the energy required to accelerate an object is directly proportional to that objects mass. Thus, if the object keeps getting more massive, the amount of required energy also increases. Essentially, one would need an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an infinite mass, which itself is an absurd sort of enterprise. Ironically, Kurzgesagt just posted a video talking about detonating a nuclear weapon on the surface of the moon, and it is for the reasons I’ve just described that such an endeavor would not (significantly) alter the trajectory of the moon; in short, the moon is just too big, even at a mere fraction of the mass of the Earth, which is in turn a mere fraction of the mass of the Sun, etc. In other words, it is very difficult to move very large objects, and very fast moving objects become very large objects.
So let us return now to the question of what this all tells us about time. If I simply assume that the experiment was a confirmation of Einstein’s theories, and time dilation is a real thing, does that help me establish (or refute) the existence of time as a thing in itself? Does time need to exist for these sorts of effects to take place, or can the theories of relativity exist and time still not exist as a thing in itself? Thinking about this, and I might suggest that there still need not be time in itself in this case. Consider the following ridiculous experiment performed by many people all the time: watching a pot of water boil.
As is often the case, people will suggest that if you watch a pot of water boil, it will seem as though it is taking forever. Of course, if those same people instead distract themselves with some other activity, the time it seems to take to boil seems much less. This is all well and good, but the seeming passage of time is not the same as the “actual” passage of time. At least, that is what anyone reading this is probably thinking already. After all, when I work hard at my job, and the end of the day arrives unexpectedly, eight actual hours still passed. But how do I know this is the case?
As I have been repeating through all my posts, time is simply a descriptive idea to help us determine what came before and what came after. Those things that come long after are simply long after because there are more events that I can count between that event and the now. Thus, in the case of the pot of water boiling or the time flying at work, it is a function of how many events I counted between the event that came before (the beginning of watching the water boil, or when I started my shift at work), and the now. The more events I counted, the longer the time has passed. When I distract myself from watching the water boil, and then return at the moment it takes place, I have not counted so many events. I was distracted. Similarly with working my job. On the other hand, when I watch the water, I am also particularly aware that “time is passing” as I compare my expectation of the future event against the second hand of my watch, or other reference events. In other words, I’m counting.
This is why time still does not need to exist as a thing in itself. Every time I am comparing every event to every other event, I am using the count of other events to provide a reference to the change in “time” between the events of interest. The more events in-between that I can count, the more of a difference I will have discovered. The less in-between events I can count, the less of a difference I uncover. To put this more succinctly, the problem is the clock itself, as an event generating object.
What is a clock? It is an object that generates reference events we can use to count. Clocks are expected to be reliable and regular. The second hand on an analog clock moves with regularity, sweeping the face fully in one minute exactly. On that same analog clock, the minute hand sweeps fully around each hour, and the hour hand sweeps fully each half day. Oh, wait, I hear you say. What about a digital clock? Even simpler. The display, if it shows the seconds, will change each second. If the display does not have seconds, then it will change each minute. Of course, you might have one of those digital clocks where the colon (“:”) between the hours and minutes flashes; then your display changes each second, but the resultant count is not presented so easily. In such a case, you would need to do the counting yourself.
In the end, the problem is the same. It is the clock itself that is generating events for you to count. And those same clocks are performing their event generation by counting other, much more frequent events, such as the oscillations of a quartz crystal, or the changing of energy levels of an electron. Events upon events upon events. Counting upon counting upon counting. Time never has to be a thing in itself. All we need to know is that something came before and something came after (and occasionally, something happened instantaneously with another event).
What this tells us about the atomic clocks on the planes is that after the experiment concluded, the atomic clock on the plane moving with the rotation of the Earth counted less events, and the clock on the plane going in the opposite direction counted more events. That is all that can be concluded in such an experiment. Why such things happened may possibly be predicted and calculated using relativistic mathematics, however, time still need not be a thing in itself for the results to occur.
It seems even such an article is of no help to me in answering my question. It is entirely possible that I will be unable to answer my question. Time, if it is a thing in itself, may simply be beyond my reach. I will ponder more on this, and see what I can come up with in my next post.