Many conservation laws are found in references, also selection rules and exclusion rules. Time passage is taken for granted, but I don't find any law that compels time to pass.
Discussions in other threads explored that possibility that passage of time is started by creating particle pairs with mass out of a swarm of photons. Mass experiences the passage of time while photons do not.
Consider an end of time. In theory all the mass would convert to photons including black holes. Entropy the arrow of time would go to zero. Distances could not be measured, and might not continue to exist. This begins to sound much like descriptions of our early universe many researchers have given, which is the reason for this question.
Roger Penrose in the book Cycles of Time and in many speeches has a dilemma that enormous length of time is required for black holes to evaporate in the manner of Stephen Hawking. A remedy might be found in some other mechanism for time to stop passing sooner.
Comparing other laws, it seems likely that time should continue to pass unless something causal occurs or a permissive is lost in physical cosmos.
In other threads topics were explored about possible ways time might stop by natural processes, and other possibilities that human activities working with extreme high energy densities might cause time to stop locally in a bubble of quantum modified space.
Researchers debate what might happen to a modified bubble, and how large it would need to be before it could begin to expand uncontrollably to fill the cosmos. Also they make theories about how a bubble might be stopped. A few researchers look to such bubbles as a source of dark energy.
The question is asking if researchers have other information or theories about passage of time.
Does Any Law Of Science Require Time To Continue Passing?
Dear Jerry,
I think that the definition of derivative d/dt (and all equations that use it) require continuous, not discrete, time to work. But I'm not sure.
Our perception on Time is totally different. The real time on reality is not the Time that we think, as duration that can be described as second, minute … .
https://www.academia.edu/38071066/Time_is_Relative
regards
Dear Jerry Decker
What do you think about the constant speed of light? The existence of the constant is impossible if quantum time isn't a constant too. Einstein's relative time is a composition (multiple) of the constant of quantum time (≈ 1,6 x 10-24 sec). But in between Planck's constant there is still a flux of infinite small amounts of change because the quantum isn't a particle, it is a fixed amount of the local topological deformation by the electric field.
With kind regards, Sydney
Thanks to all for answers.
Special relativity tells us that photons and other objects that move at light speed do not experience the passage of time. It is postulated that they can continue to exist if time stops. Not so for any objects that have mass and travel less than light speed.
In other threads I proposed velocity to be the basis of coordinate systems. more fundamental than position or distance, as a way to construct coordinate systems of higher dimensions. Then each velocity component can have a separate clock attached with different readings in agreement with Special Relativity, making 6D..
The question relates to a case when all three clocks are not measuring time passage. They must be moving at light speed with no rest mass, or must turn into photons.
In looking at conventional equations of energy and momentum, also in relativity, it seems questionable if energy and momentum can be conserved without the passage of time, conservation laws relating conditions at one time to conditions at another time.
One exception seems to be uncertainty principle which uses time or distance together with energy or momentum. In other threads it was suggested that uncertainty requires time to pass as long as the mass energy density is sufficient at some moment in the allowed time interval.
In the same way that uncertainty seems to cause ZPE to exist, it may also cause time to pass subject to limitations.
Dear Jerry Decker,
Greetings, Thanks for a basic question! I think that the second law of thermodynamics, in particular Entropy concept, can be known as the base of continuing requirement for Time.
Regards, Saeed
This question is closely related to Hume's paradox (David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding). Hume asks: How do we know the future resembles the past? Because it always has in the past? That is assuming the very point in question!
Hume decided there was no rational argument for assuming the future resembles the past. The same could be said about the assumption time will continue. Schroedinger answered Hume's paradox by stating that we assume the future resembles the past because, if we hadn't, we would not have survived natural selection.
Kathleen-Rosser
Thank you for reply. In much research of natural history one episode did appear to follow another of basically the same type, with some significant interruptions. In very early universe there does appear to have been epochs that were not much at all like the previous ones. In all of these the evidence appears to say that time was passing. An exception might be at the very beginning for people who have opinions of that type.
The question is also interested in scientific laws that might be a conservation rule. As far as research can discover, energy plus mass, and separately momentum are both conserved together during events in familiar space time. In this representation time is associated with mass. Time might stop if mass converts to energy, as photons. This violates the conservation rule except in very special cases. The general case requires energy to decrease or momentum to increase with no apparent cause, because mass moves less than light speed, while photons travel as light.
A disruption of stability in familiar space time might change the rules and exceptions. Example is de Sitter universe converting locally to Anti de Sitter universe by arrival of stress energy waves from distant places. Much is written about this.
Disruption might occur when mass travels close enough to light speed that uncertainty allows conversion of mass to photons without violating a conservation rule shared with momentum. That means velocity v might approach close enough to light speed c that the difference becomes sufficiently uncertain for mass to appear as photons and local time to stop within some disrupted space, which if sufficiently large volume according to other researchers might propagate to other places.
In human progress the possibility arises that some action might accidentally or purposely cause a disruption of space time. Several of my threads are asking opinions about possible limits and critical conditions, how to avoid, and consequences of not moderating.
The answer appears to be that mass stabilizes passage of time when the mass is moving slow compared to light speed.
To stop time requires mass to be converted to gamma rays while conserving both energy and momentum at the same time. It doesn't happen for slow mass. Momentum doesn't work out for the energy conserved.
When mass velocity approaches light speed closely enough the conversion might occur within the momentum difference allowed by uncertainty.
Results are suggesting that with continued expansion of the universe, regions of high speed mass may occur with potential to stop time passage. This is decay of false vacuum from 4D to 3D. Without time there is no way to measure distance, which becomes undefined in the region.
Time is not an objectively and independently existing quantity. Time or the impression of the existence of an objective time is caused and is visible in processes/reactions/procedures/changes etc. of the matter given on the spot.
So the initial question is put the wrong way around. Matter exists in processes and changes. So, a "time" will always and everywhere appear, whose normal, however, is determined by the prevailing conditions.
Einstein's relativity theory is not at all the end but the beginning of the realization of a relativity of all sizes in the universe.
All fundamental laws of physics do not change with space and time; they are independent per se of spacetime and are the same in all coordinate systems. This was well established by Albert Einstein in his theory of relativity.
Regarding massless particles like photons, their clocks do not tick and said to be frozen. Thus, a photon travels between any two events with zero time lapse and dilation as seen by its frozen clock.
More details are shown by Neil deGrasse Tyson in this short Nat-Geo YouTube video
https://youtu.be/u8lx19V7SNg
“…Many conservation laws are found in references, also selection rules and exclusion rules. Time passage is taken for granted, but I don't find any law that compels time to pass….”
- yeah, that is completely so; however in that the physical laws directly don’t compel time to pass there is nothing surprising – all real physical laws, etc., are some fundamentally non-provable [mostly as some mathematical equations] assertions, which are postulated in physical theories only as somethings that are derived from/by fitting to experimental observations of what exists and happens in Matter,
- and the using these postulate/theories allows to describe/to analyze adequately to the reality what exists and happens, however since, again, all laws are fundamentally non-provable, all the laws are really taken for granted.
Most of the really fundamental laws are independent on each other, including the taken for granted definition of the variable “time” in physics is derived from the observations, firstly seems by Newton, who had understood that in every real science, including in the naturphilosophy, all terms must be rigorously defined, and so defined “time” [and “space”, though] as
“…Absolute, true and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature flows equably without regard to anything external …..”
- where time evidently has direction, i.e. “arrow”; and that was well observed, and used well before Newton, as that, say, a passed way, S, is S=Vt, where t well flows equably, and the t-value is measured by “clocks” - which, of itself, and from their own nature tick also equably without regard to anything external, including to time.
This Newton’s definition is hold in mainstream physics till now, with the SR “correction” - though time flows, however it fundamentally isn’t absolute; and so, say, this flow is “dilated” in moving reference frames, besides the clocks aren’t independent, but the flowing, including “dilated” time forces clocks to tick in accordance with the flow – “time is what clocks read”.
Really, since in the mainstream philosophy and sciences, including physics, all fundamental phenomena/notions, first of all in this case “Matter”– and so everything in Matter, i.e. “particles”, “fields”, etc., “Space”, “Time”, “Energy”, etc., are fundamentally completely transcendent/uncertain/irrational,
- practically many physical laws [besides the utmost fundamental laws/links/constants, as, say the conservation laws] are some transcendent assertions, which are adequate to the reality only in some limited – though wide – conditions; and when physics addresses to some really fundamental problems, applications of the laws, etc., applications become to be non-adequate to the reality.
Any scientific definition of the fundamental phenomena/notions can be, and practically all known ones, are, scientifically defined only framework of the Shevchenko-Tokarevsky’s “The Information as Absolute” conception https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260930711_the_Information_as_Absolute
- where it is rigorously proven that there exist nothing else than some informational patterns/systems of the patterns that are elements of the absolutely fundamental and absolutely infinite “Information” Set.
Which - the Set - exists absolutely objectively, because of it fundamentally – logically - cannot be non-existent and so exists eternally, having no Beginning and no End.
Including “Matter” is absolutely nothing else than some informational system/element in the Set; whereas the utmost common definition of the absolutely fundamental phenomenon “Information” is
“Information is something that is constructed in accordance with the set/system of absolutely fundamental Rules, Possibilities, Quantities, etc. – the set/system “Logos” in the conception”
More see the Shevchenko-Tokarevsky’s informational physical model
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354418793_The_Informational_Conception_and_the_Base_of_Physics,
- here note only that “Space” and “Time” are the "Logos” set’s elements, which are absolutely fundamentally obligatorily actualized for/in every concrete dynamical informational pattern/system as its concrete “spacetime”. For/in Matter that is the fundamentally absolute, fundamentally flat, and fundamentally “Cartesian”, [5]4D spacetime with metrics (cτ,X,Y,Z,ct),
- where, of course, time dimension doesn’t flow/pass somewhere, however everything in Matter constantly changes its/their states, and so constantly moves in the spacetime with 4D velocities that have identical absolute values be equal to the speed of light, and in the “true time”, “ct”,
- and with some speeds [more see 2-nd link] in “coordinate time” dimension, “cτ”.
If a material object is in an inertial motion, its speed in the “cτ” dimension is constant; and so, say some object “a clock” ticks uniformly and equably, so is used at measurement of the illusory – however, again, very adequately to the reality in everyday practice - time variable.
However the flaw of this illusion appear in fundamental problems, more see https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358801098_Title_page_Article_type_Review_Title_The_informational_physical_model_some_selected_fundamental_problems_in_physics
Cheers
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