There is no conclusive evidence that time is quantized. However, the recent difficulties with the Standard Model, as it nears 50 years, for example, with non-inclusion of gravity in a testable way, and the estimate that it only accounts for about 4 percent of the known universe (as measured, but not yet explained), points to the need for alternatives.
Also, in order to harmonize general relativity (gravitation) with the theories of quantum physics that describe fundamental particles and forces, it may be necessary to quantize space and perhaps time as well [John Baez, Sci. Am.]
Therefore, rather than start with a mathematical theory, as done by others, this question asks for a physical model to quantized time. This may be useful to expand or replace the SM, and help explain dark matter/energy. For references, see https://www.researchgate.net/post/Do_we_need_to_abandon_the_Standard_Model_in_Physics?
NOTE: It is easy to deal with fantasy and nonsense posters in this thread:
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A physical model that doesn't involve mathematics is a meaningless expression. Whether time is quantized can't separated from whether spacetime is quantized. How this might occur isn't known in general and involves understanding how to count spacetime geometries. Some special cases where these can be counted are known, however.
This doesn't have anything to do with the Standard Model, because at the scale where spacetime geometry is subject to quantum fluctuations the Standard Model isn't the appropriate description of matter.
Whatever the appropriate description does turn out to be, it must reduce to the Standard Model when the spacetime geometry becomes approximately classical; just like whatever does turn out to be the appropriate description for spacetime geometry fluctuations must recover general relativity in the classical limit.
Hello Stam,
The question does not exclude mathematical models, it just asks that you don't start with one. A mathematical model can fit anything, but is it physical? Same here, we want to start with a physical model, if you don't have one, that is fine.
Just don't throw equations, a la string theory, to justify the math. We need to justify physical results, not papers only.
Cheers, Ed Gerck
Hello Stam and others,
To show what we mean by a physical model first, William G. Unruh, in the department of physics and astronomy at the University of British Columbia, asks the question in a slightly different way. By putting together G (Newton's constant of gravity), h (Planck's constant) and c (the velocity of light), one can derive a minimum meaningful amount of time, about 10^-44 second. At this temporal scale, one would expect quantum effects to dominate gravity and hence, because Einstein's theory links gravity and time, to dominate the ordinary notion of time. In other words, for time intervals smaller than this one, the whole notion of 'time' would be expected to lose its meaning.
The biggest obstacle to answering the question definitively is that there exists no really believable theory to describe this regime where quantum mechanics and gravity come together, according to Unruh. Other opinions say that time is no longer 1-dimensional!
Whatever it is, it seems time to change time, again. And this will change QM, and SM.
Cheers, Ed Gerck
First of all, it was Planck that introduced Planck units in 1899, not Unruh. Second, these reflect just dimensional analysis-whether anything indeed occurs when length becomes of the order of the Planck length, time the order of the Planck time and mass the order of the Planck mass isn't known simply because at those scales classical spacetime doesn't make sense, since Einstein's equations imply that any object of mass greater than the Planck mass, of size less than the Planck length, would be a black hole. And it's not known how black holes can interact quantum mechanically-which is relevant at those scales, since the assumptions that underlie Hawking's calculations break down.
So what notion of spacetime takes over isn't known, either, in full generality. That's why it's wrong to focus on such Planck scales-quantum effects, in fact, become significant at scales much larger than these, as Hawking and Unruh found much later.
But this doesn't have anything to do with the quantization of time itself; it involves spacetime as a whole. And it is possible to construct quantitative models of discrete spacetime, and the objects that can probe it, consistent with the symmetries expected, that do capture some aspects of what might happen under such circumstances.
The equations don't ``justify the math''-they are the math. Doing consistent calculations is the only thing that matters. And string theory is the name given to this framework. So what?
Hello Stam,
Thank you. I was years at the Max Planck Institut for Quantum Optics in Germany, and your citation of Max Planck warms my heart. Not just his voice, so careful with researchers who still believed that matter was continuous, and contributions to the thinking in science, as I detailed in my seminar at UCSD last year, available privately in video, and publicly in my home page in RG.
Now, Unruh is a more modern reference and went to time, our topic of interest, which Max Planck avoided, thinking of space and energy first. But history of science is poor science, you cannot draw scientific conclusions from the then-independent notions of magnetic field B and electric field E, for example.
Regarding string theory, some regard it as a barrier to physical thinking. No single experimental value can be predicted from string theory, and the energies needed to test it, are (safely :-) ) outside our reach. And it has no answer for dark matter/energy, or the 4 percent problem.
By trying to expand the SM with string theory on one side and gravitation to the other, we may have thought we are achieving a "theory of everything" but we may have ruined a perfectly good theory for particles, the original SM. It is a fact that a stronger thesis has usually the least amount of context to explain, if you enlarge the context, the thesis will likely become harder to defend.
The quantization of time has nothing to do with the quantization of space, although space and time can be transforned into each other. This seems like a better start for a physical theory. The fact that beer is sold in bottles (quantized, therefore) has nothing to do with being produced in bottles, it is not.
The quantization of time would need to get rid of old space-like concepts, and maybe time is the beginning of a new triade, 3-dimensional itself, where we are perceiving only its first dimension, the second being related to a physical concept of consciousness, not biological, but the precursor of.
Can we work with a 6-dimensional algebraic space, produce equations based on physical reality we can test, with a 6D spacetime? Can we provide a better basis for the physics of life? Instead of forecasting a dead universe, with no answer in physics even to the formation of dipeptides? Our only answer today is chance, but that is an impotent solution, when we calculate it.
Maybe the quantization of time can give us answers we need in the formation of life, in biology, the same way, metaphorically, that the Brownian motion study by Einstein opened the way (to Max Planck's delight) to atomism, and the quantization of energy by Max Planck. He, explaining the blackbody radiation spectrum, that we observe today in a cosmic scale, started with a simple botany experiment that begged for an explanation, finally given by Einstein, and physics still had to evolve more in order to provide it.
Cheers, Ed Gerck
“…The quantization of time has nothing to do with the quantization of space, although space and time can be transforned into each other…”
“Time” is the absolutely fundamental Rule/Possibility, which, with the absolutely fundamental Rule/Possibility “Space”, can be , and are, properly defined only in the “The Information as Absolute” conception https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260930711_the_Information_as_Absolute DOI 10.5281/zenodo.268904 ,
and which are fundamentally necessary for anything, including material objects, and the system of the objects “Matter” as a whole, to exist and to change their states.
For every dynamical objects/systems “Space” and “Time”, as the possibilities, form concrete spacetimes. For Matter, as that till now follows from existent experimental data, corresponding spacetime is the absolute [5]4D Euclidian “empty container”, where all material objects, i.e. particles, bodies, galaxies, etc. exist and change. This spacetime is composed by two temporal possibilities [i.e. the spacetime’s dimensions], “true time”, t, and “coordinate time”, τ, and by 3 spatial possibilities/dimensions, which are analogues to each other.
Both, space and time, fundamentally cannot be transformed at all by anything in Matter, including into each other. As well as either [any of both] times or [any of 3] spaces fundamentally cannot be “quantized”.
That is another thing, that with a rather large probability this empty container is filled by a dense lattice of fundamental logical elements, when every material object/system is some disturbance of the lattice, which moves simultaneously in the 4D sub-spacetime and in the 1D true time dimension with 4D speed of light; and which makes that step by step, when the steps’ lengths are universal for all Matter and rather probably are equal to the Planck length in all 5 dimensions provided the temporal metrics ct and cτ.
However this “quantization” has practically, at least till now there are no data from which something else follows, no relation to the QM quantization, which appears by another reasons on the scales more then the Planck length on 20-30 orders of the values ; and isn’t, of course, a quantization of the spacetime .
More about what are Time and Space see the SS posts at least in two last pages in https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_time_an_illusion?view=5ae9beda10569fc4a335e8f5
and papers that are linked in the posts.
Cheers
Hello all,
Conversations here have developed reasonably well, but with maturity comes a desire for more focus.
While this forum stays open to all, public, just asking to not go off-topic, the awareness so far generated is enough to raise the hypothesis that a new, moderated-entry forum is also needed.
Accordingly, since RG does offer a forum that has moderated-entry, I am starting a lower volume, moderated-entry, focused group on the subject matters -- time and its potential quantization, looking into the suitability of the SW, where to go from there, and dark matter/energy.
Admission to the second forum is restricted to researchers with at least a verifiable doctorate degree in physics, maths, philosophy, neuroscience, or most areas.
Requests to this moderated-entry forum should be directed to me by private Message, not posted here, and it is not anonymized. All members will be privy of participants, and the conversations follow RG terms, unmoderated, but subjected to the forum's charter. Otherwise, all conversations are private to start, considered copyright by owner and an unpublished comment.
This public forum remains unchanged, and participants of the second forum can direct any on-topic posting here, of course.
Cheers, Ed Gerck
Hello Sydney, Sergey, and ,
Thank you for your comments.
Sydney: Allow me to say that, fortunately the quantum of energy (Planck’s constant) began as the result of empirical research (from the failure in describing the black body radiation), later confirmed by other results, such as the laser itself.
That is almost what you wrote, except for evaluating it as "fortunately". Between nature and people's theory, no matter how famous or beautiful, or how simple, physics follows nature.
The quantization of energy came from a Max Planck's "big idea" before, which has yet to unfold. See presentation
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303912105_From_Atoms_To_Black_Holes_Find_out_how_a_Big_Idea_in_Physics_will_spread_to_Biology_Economics_and_even_Politics
Perhaps we can apply Max Planck's big idea here as well, not just as he did to find the quantum of energy.
Time has been a material property for more than 150 years ago, as formalized more than 100 years ago by the SR. Time and space coordinates can exchange.
Cheers, Ed Gerck
Ed Gerck. No "quantum of energy" exists. Planck found the quantum of action per cycle, h.
h is a relativistic invariant. Energy is not.
Wrong direction. Even reshaped and partitioned in 1905, the macroscopic macro-time remains a mere statistical emergence, flowing in the same direction as the entropy.
Not any mean to quantize it.
Even if you discover a new fundamental constant as Max Planck did, it will never quantize the macro-time, but quite another thing, a micro-thing in the field of the microphysics.
Hello all,
It might be interesting to review quantization of energy vis-a-vis the possible quantization of time. Albert Einstein found another example of quantization of energy, famously when he successfully explained the photoelectric effect, and confirmed the Planck's hypothesis.
Accordingly, one should find various examples of the quantization of time, and use the examples collectively, to help confirm and develop a same model. If energy were not quantized, also offers a model to investigate the non-quantization of time.
In general, we could look for physical models that explain quantization of energy, such as resonant frequencies and their width, to -- mutatis mutandis -- explain quantization of time.
For example, we may follow both Planck and Bohr in making an "if" assertion... and then use it to show that a new theory can coherently make that bold new assertion, that seemed to not follow from the data, and forecast the experimental results that defied an old theory. In other words, the "if" was successful in explaining more data than "not" could. The same may happen with time as well.
Cheers, Ed Gerck
What do you do with Pound and Rebka, next Pound and Snider experiments, based on Mössbauer resonance?
What do you do with the change of intrinsic frequency of an electron depending on its orbital?
Oh yes, both effects are relativistic...
Yes, I have one, but do You first accept that time is 2-dimensional? (at least two-dimensional!)
time quantification is an important and difficult issue. It is important because time is included in all equations of motion and because the problem of divergence in quantum field theory can not be solved without quantification of time. It is difficult because quantum mechanics is treated with time as a parameter that distinguishes different situations rather than a dynamic variable , and because the space of the wave function - Hilbert space - is not permissible to solve it because its solution violates the energy-related conditions of space , and because the concept of time itself is associated with problems of causality and reversibility .
Hello Muayyad,
Thank you. The problem of divergence in quantum field theory, at least in some cases, may be solvable without quantification of time. Nonetheless, time is expected to be quantized. Maybe we already found it, and did not recognize it, confusing with some aspects of quantization of frequency, which is well-kown to occur, and one-dimensional formulations.
Cheers, Ed Gerck
"THE TIME", singular and universal, is a clandestine assumption in the Göttingen-København sect.
Injustifiable.
In string theory one looks at the "string" as the fundamental object, not space-time. There is a 2-D field theory on it's world-sheet (σ,τ), involving classical fields Xμ where μ runs from 1,2,...,D and these very fields span a D dimensional space-time. Physical theories are then written (as usual) in such a D-dimensional space time which are invariant under appropriate transformation laws that mixes these fields. Then some commutation relations are postulated, satisfied by these D classical fields, including time as one of them, to get a D dimensional quantum theory.
Hello Biswajoy,
Thank you. Because string theory does not consider space + time + other dimensions as fundamental, it cannot introduce them on a structureless base, already formed in its world-sheet as a 2-D field theory. There seems to be lack of freedom in describing a physical theory, resulting from the choices already made.
Another question is that, if string theory does offer an unrestrained playing field for physical theories, why do we need it?
Cheers, Ed Gerck
I cannot understand your second question. The first one has an answer in the language of self consistency. In some sense the "string" generates space-time in which it propagates.
- In general D is not 4, D-4 dimensions are periodic which are compactified. Below compactification scale there is effective field theory,
- Low energy effective field theory should be standard model or it's extensions such as SU(5),SO(10),E6,
- Problem of quantum gravity is addressed,
- Some more upshots are also hoped, supersymmetry, black hole physics, three chiral families, etc etc.
Finally string theory is not a complete theory yet, it is at best under development.
Hello Biswajoy.
Thank you. Yes, string theory seems to embody the gauge principle, at the core of the present standard model, and has given us clues about how it could be generalized.
But, I am a skeptical and our focus interest in this thread is a physical theory for time, so how could the work already done in string theory help?
First, can we deny using the core gauge principle, seeing it as a known redundancy that may not be justified outside of itsef?
If we start by looking for solutions of the B field that do not use the scalar and vector potentials, no gaude priciple at all, this is the first place where the gauge principle is required because it is used (a circular argument?), the photon could exist without the gauge principle, as a particle resulting from the field equations. Light without gauge principle?
Would this undermine the standard model at the start, and present a new direction?
Second, if time and its relevance to reality, is to be expanded, would it mesh with it a new world-sheet model? The structure of string theory seems rich enough, also as extended already by 3-algebra symmetries.
Third, could we find alternatives/extensions to the basic strings as generators in the theory, replacing with even more basic, natural, and potentially more powerful structures such as the prime numbers, naturally quantized?
Cheers, Ed Gerck
One can follow discussions of following question:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_Quantization_of_Time_theory_possible_Can_we_quantize_illusions
dear Ed, I have asked You: what about quantization of 2-dimensional time? (because time isn`t linear). well, I`ve got no answer. ergo:
Hello Paul,
Thanks for insisting. I try to give space for anyone to answer to you, the RG model. I do not want to monopolize discussions.
I think that time may be more than 2-dimensional, maybe a triple . Time may be the first coordinate of a system of three. The question is fitting the equations, and nature.
Cheers, Ed Gerck
Hello all,
Please see another question, that was partly motivated here, regarding special relativity, if it should be used in models of time. It should also satisfy those who want to discuss the existence of special relavity, which is off-topic here. The question is:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Why_is_special_relativity_still_denied_today
Cheers, Ed Gerck
measuring implies units, that is: discrete. i.e.: aproach continuous phenomena by using discrete sets. what if time were countinuous?
Hello al,
Fundamentally (Cantor), the set of positive rational numbers and the set of positive integers are of the same size, there is a one-to-one correspondence.
So, if we see a set of what seems to be very fine fractional or, seemingly, continuum (real) levels when measuring time, are they creating a non-quantum series?
Not necessarily , we can break them down into components, including sublevels, to reach positive integers in a global respective series, which is now in a one-to-one correspondence to the set of positive integers. This represents the Cantor theorem, in cardinality.
The observations that cannot be so re-ordered would be for the reals, which have higher cardinality (size) as the rationals. However, a real number, with its infinite precision, is not measurable, although they may exist in nature.
Therefore, all measurable numbers in time CAN be quantum, in a one-to-one correspondence to the set of positive integers.
This is one basic argument, for the possible quantization of time, EXPERIMENTALLY SEEN. But there is, perhaps, a more fundamental reason, which is also even more fundamental theoretically.
Linking also to underlying topological properties of homotopy, as even more basic than QM and the Cantor theorem given above.
The number of topological holes is an integer number, you cannot transform topologically, a very general transformation, a 1-hole into a 2-hole; a cup with a loop-handle into a doughnut is OK, they both have 1-hole.
The correspondence with the quantum representation seems more general, for the quantization of time, than using the Cantor argument. There is also no such thing as a topological half-hole, or 1/3-hole, and so on -- only integers.
Cheers, Ed Gerck
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