David Custis Kimball - blog

Human Affairs, Humor, Mathematics, Physics, Psychophysics

Forget Time?

For Patrick, Spongebob’s sidekick that might be easy: just lie down and pull the rock over your head.  For you and me in this busy-busy world (4 dimensional space-time continuum) it just isn’t so easy ignoring one dimension.  Some, on a diet, like I should be after all the holiday food and my lower back aching, could reduce that one dimension -out let’s call it.  Now this might take extra time … to shop, to think of other stuff besides eating your Fav(s)… mine … turkey stew with potatoes, celery, garlic, onions, spinach, and seasoned with some mild curry… topped with whole cranberry sauce … I don’t have to spend the extra time making the calamondin-orange juice-cranberry from scratch … just cut the can!

So by reducing one dimension - out - it seems that other dimensions suffer and it’s not width or up… yep, it’s gotta be time.  Which may be the reason that people tend to believe that Diets Don’t Work.  ‘Just ain’t got the time.’  ref. Jerry Jeff Walker

To back up a bit, this essay was inspired by a submission, Forget Time, to FQXi contest on the Nature of Time, written Aug.  24, 2008 by Carlo Rovelli, professor of Physics, U. of Marseille. http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/237 In short his attempt to ‘ … understand quantum gravity is to build a system where the notion of time plays no role at all.’  He treats dependent and independent variables on the same footing … ‘to interpret mechanics as a theory of relations between variable, rather than the theory of the evolution of variables in time.’

I am a bit sceptical, too.  After all he’s really trying to ‘construct a quantum theory of gravity’ and it’s necessary to forget time to do so. His ‘How do we know that a clock measures time, if we can only check it against another clock’ in a section entitled ‘Back to Galileo and Newton’ . Yea Shure, time in the bottle … that didn’t get here until Simon and Garfunkel.  Suspicious of this Fysical Frenchman and all these integral signs and ‘ln’ this and that … and it bore fruit … I got to the end and sure enough - ‘I could of course be wrong’ …. that did it … waste of time these 10 single-spaced pages of small type essay and hours of going ‘Whaaa? and Eeeewwwww!’  Carlo continues - ‘but my own expectation is that the notion of time is extremely natural to us, but only in the same manner in which other intuitive ideas are rooted in our intuition because they are features of the small garden in which we are accustomed to living (for instance: absolute simultaneity, absolute velocity, or the idea of a flat Earth and an absolute up and down). Intuition is not a good guide for understanding natural regimes so distant from our daily experience. The best guide is provided by the theories of the world … general relativity challenges our intuitive notion of a universal flow of time …. seriously.’

What a let down … until I thought, he why didn’t he say anythin’ about E = MC*C  or E equals M C squared.

Well that’s were I come in:  since Einstein has basically proved this equation to be correct and it really only considers the particular mass that you have in front of or behind you, i.e. not all the world mass. Using some easy algebra,  C = Sq.Root of E/M.  

So when we assume that C is a Constant speed of light of 3 m./sec x 10 to the 10th power in a vacuum (pretty fast)  this governs our SENSE of TIME.  When my arm reaches for that cup of coffee, it seems instantaneous that I see my hand grabbing it and it does …. does …. ‘Houston we’ve got liftoff’,  or I can get that cup to my mouth without a lot of delay, calculation, etc.   (Maybe this is what Carlo was referring to as absolute simultaneity.)

However, if we raise the temperature of the coffee, the energy, E, - then we should reduce the mass, M, that is somehow integrated into these scene. Certainly, I’m going to take less coffee on my lips… whoa it burns.  This really isn’t a good example, perhaps.  Realize that the energy elevation is relatively small, say 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

Consider this:  I was about 22 years old and was the director of a residential treatment center with two programs, one for severely handicapped and one for emotional - social -educationally challenged - psychotic - epileptic - and some a combination with orphaned and abandoned in the mix.  Our goal was to keep these children and a few adults challenged by caring for animals, vocational pursuits, and chores on a farm/ranch setting with cattle, horses, swimming hole, riding and all around western ‘pioneer’ ambiance. 

I decided to go to the auction to buy some animals … goats for milking really hadn’t worked.  Nobody … including me really wanted that.  I had bought a Jersey cow named Roses Are Flossy and it ended up that I was the one who milked her every day … we had quite a relationship … she would turn her head and lick my shoulder with her sandpaper tongue, like I was her long lost calf.  I did get some watchers and a few of the kids really tried to do the milking … but it takes quite a while to master the art of being a milk ‘mensch’ and since it had to be done … time, energy, and mass all had my name and focus on it.  We sure did make some good ice cream though.

So back to the auction barn, there in Ash Flat, a Hackney pony with all his harness, came thru the ring.  Not a big whow or any rumblings and nobody was bidding.  A sign that I could do this … instant activity, transportation, excitement …. dare I say … challenge.  I bid … and maybe there was another bid, but not many … so for around $200 I purchased a pedigreed (with papers) Hackney pony … black with a white star on his forehead named ‘Midnight Magic’.

Another week and getting to know the pony and I found a hackney cart, bright red … seated two, and you were about 6 inches away from the butt of the pony  when it was all said and done.

Well, not knowing enough about how to gauge the situation for every detail and safety, but enough to get it all hooked up and ‘ready to go’, Midnight Magic and I made the tour around the front part of the 1500 acre farm.  We gave rides to several kids and the pony and I (I finally got my pony) were quite proud of each other, or so I thought.

So I asked one of my senior counselors to join me on the cart for a test ride.  Young and foolish, I set out. She opened the gate to enter the hay field which extended along the Piney Creek about a half mile.  It was that open field, where hay was recently cut that triggered the Space-Time Continuum Event (STCE).

Midnight had his blinders on and all was well. A fast trot ensued, then faster until… he broke stride and started to gallop.  Well a short course on gallop vs. trot is that there is a wider reach (hence faster) to the gallop.  Now that would be ok if my face weren’t 6 inches away from the butt of the pony.  Breaking stride also caused a major catastrophy, one that I had never experienced.  The ponys tender heel tendon started to hit the single-tree - that 3 foot long horizontal wood spar that attached each side of the harness and allowed the movement to pivot on a axis in the center.

Well things started to get rather, let’s say, wacked - the cart started to bob and weave and when I pulled on the reins, no response and Midnight was getting really upset, but kept on.  So I looked at my counselor and she understood to roll off the back, thinking that that might help, rather than abandoning me.

Now all these few moments, I realized that the pony had steady control over his movements because he had horseshoes on designed for a track and had a half to three-quarters inch cubed square cleat protruding at right angles to the shoe.

I was in trouble, and then he turned and looked at me at the same time his hoof raised up above the single-tree and was heading for my face.  I saw this in a fraction of a second … but it seemed like more because I just had enough time to turn my face at about a 45 degree angle sideways to cause the right rear hoof to graze my right cheek, where my mouth and nose had been.    WAMMM

I was kicked off the back of the cart and I guess rolled  quite a bit. Luckily it wasn’t high off the ground, your but was only about 18 inches or so.  The pony, midnight continued to kick until the entire cart was in pieces and he at least a quarter of a mile away standing with his harness dragging.  Well I only saw that later.  

The important thing to do when you are in a shock situation… of so much adrenalin, blood, etc. moving thru.  is to lie down silent, eyes shut and try to understand that you are still here. Don’t venture to get any more stimulation.

I survived as did the counselor, although my jaw swelled up about the size of a baseball… but it wasn’t broken, whew. Maybe the moral of the story is that how things are connected is the dominant factor in the spacetime continuum. It’s the harness stupid. If I had a longer harness that would have allowed the pony to break stride and not hurt himself AUTOMATICALLY, then punishment would not have been structural, but could be timely as I imposed a punishment for breaking stride. Designing structure is a critical necessity to assure functionality. Another example was that told by my dad about his grandfather building the Panama canal: he put the most experienced digger using the massive steamshovels below the less experienced digger in a stairstep structure to complete the 10 by 10 foot tunnel thru the equator equivalent that was the Panama Canal. The less experienced digger learned quickly so as not to be undermined or really relieved of duty to be replaced by another hot shot young digger. Time is secondary to structure.

Back to the  C = SqRt E/M.

So the bigger the energy E gets, the more mass M grows to keep the same speed C or time sense.  But we know that  E is large and M very small to begin with because C is huge.  Now if we could force C into becoming faster, then time would appear to slow down.   Imagine looking up at a distant galaxy and all of a sudden the rules changed and light moved faster, well that galaxy that was already moving away.. and seemed very far away would jump towards us, because the light wouldn’t take as long to get to our eyes.  It would be the same distance away, but seem to move toward us rather than being fixed in the sky.

So too, if an increased Energy E involved with both me and the pony, perhaps the counselor also and there was no change in Mass M, this would force C speed of light to increase and it would appear that the hoof was coming at me SOONER than it actually was, therefore I would in effect be able to avoid it as well as see it arriving.

Given these are infinitesimal changes… but just enough to be conscious of.

Whereas the galaxy shift would be large.

There’s also the possible combination that in increased energy situations, Photons no longer become the major energy carrier, but Neutrinos take over and their larger mass balances energy E, but reduce the lag time of the nervous system… so it seems to last longer. So the perception of elongated, elapsed time is sufficient to protect oneself.

Of course this doesn’t ask the question:  Why did my pony kick me in the face?

Rather than postpone the subject here ….(but 10 days has elapsed since this subject is being now addressed)  Does that ten days really matter?

The pony kicked me because I allowed him into a situation where if  he broke stride from a trot to a gallop, he would hit  his  hock on the singletree.  My bad.  I should have had him in a harness that extended him farther out, so this would not have happened.   He may well have broken stride, but it would not have angered him.  I could have stopped him, and perhaps started again until he got the trot right and then rewarded him well with food and praise.

As it turned  out, everytime he looked at me, he became irrational, hurt … he blamed me it seems, and I couldn’t even approach him.   I left him in a stall, and I had someone feed him take him to the auction barn  asap.  Somehow, I think that is the event that he recognized, the being taken to an auction. And so his behavior may be sort of timeless.

A hysteresis, a loop, of output being fed to input, of energies, absolute energies, measured or singularly beautiful energies or close-call  energies.  Hysteresis amplifies itself upon itself like two mirrors facing eachother looks to infinity.  These things connected in some pattern, sequence or topology seem to develop within a time-frame or over the span of time, but energies do not involve contiguous time anymore than a dream involves  connected settings.  Time is an expression that links energy to converted energy to mass. Space expands or contracts with energy pushing or pulling on mass, seemingly unstoppable with what can involve inertia.

So in a way, can I Forget Time  … can it always claim to be there … but really doesn’t matter?  Or does time have a mass associated with what travels to where?  I asked Paul Dirac, after  his lecture on a x b ≠  b  x a  at Trinity College, Hartford, CT in 1969,  “Could time have mass” .  He answered, “ Just show it mathematically, and it will.”