Is there a reason Time is considered a stranger thing than Space?

[RagingWarGod]

Mostly asking because I have seen millions of articles, videos, etc about how time doesn't exist, is an illusion, things like that but none about space.

Time not existing: https://orbitermag.com/no-such-thing-as-now/

To the present being an illusion of the brain:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEuNa1Vp_b0&t=3s


Given relativity shows that time and space are linked and impact each other I guess I'm wondering why only one gets all the press. If relativity shows that time and space are linked so much that we contract the two to spacetime why is time such a bugbear?

IMO space being weird doesn't really affect our daily lives but time does.

This was mostly brought up to me by some guy on a physics forum saying:

Why does time seem confusing to you in a way that space doesn't? To me they seem equally intractably strange. In fact all fundamental concepts (energy, gravity, etc.) all seem to have a completely intractable strangeness to them. With each one, at a certain point no matter what I just have to accept the existence of that concept.

Why is time being singled out?

I guess my point is that all of the ways in which our intuitions about time run counter to physical theories also apply to space. So it stands out to focus on time as being illusory but not simultaneously suggesting that space is illusory.

I think what I'm suggesting is that if time seems strange and space doesn't, it might be that there is something missing in how you're thinking about space.

He brought up things like Length Contraction and Relativity of Simultaneity but there was nothing really concrete about why space should be seen just as weird as time should be. The main argument he used on me was that he had a PhD and knows this better but he didn't actually SHOW me anything, just asserted it should be the case. My guess is that it was due to relativity showing a link between space and time, but aren't they still different? Also I feel like space as a concept is far more concrete to us than time, which is kinda abstract.

Though I will say the relativity of simultaneity is kinda odd since a event happening can depend on your frame of reference, though that seems more like a time thing than a space thing.

 

[dmsilev]

Mostly asking because I have seen millions of articles, videos, etc about how time doesn't exist, is an illusion, things like that but none about space.

Please. No.

For the love of God, stop regurgitating Every Random Thing You've Watched On YouTube here. Ditto with your arguments with "some guy on a physics forum".

 

[RagingWarGod]

For the love of God, stop regurgitating Every Random Thing You've Watched On YouTube here. Ditto with your arguments with "some guy on a physics forum".

Well I don't really understand this stuff nor do I have an answer for it, I mean it's not like issues with time and space come up often in my daily life and physics was my worst subject in school

 

[Bardon]

Well I don't really understand this stuff nor do I have an answer for it, I mean it's not like issues with time and space come up often in my daily life and physics was my worst subject in school

I hate to break it to you but Ars is neither your personal therapy substitute nor your personal study substitute.

Do your reading, come up with a pertinent focused position to discuss and we'll happily dive into it. Simply saying "I don't understand this stuff" isn't a conversation-starter, it's a plea for someone else to do the work for you.

 

[Coriolanus]

Dude, just work on your resume. Ignore this other shit.

 

[MichaelC]

nm

 

[Kyuu]

You've probably been pointed that way before, but if you're really interested in learning about this kind of stuff (without getting a physics degree) your best bet is PBS Space Time, not random Youtube channels that make click bait. They have episodes that cover these topics you're struggling with, among many others, and the host and writing team are excellent science communicators. If you still can't quite get it (there are some episodes that I have trouble wrapping my head around), that's ok. This stuff isn't for everyone. Just do your best and accept your limitations.

 

[Scandinavian Film]

I feel like this is us at the end of most of RWG’s threads:


View: https://youtu.be/36GT2zI8lVA

 

[herko]

Pop science navel-gazing is exactly that, pop science navel gazing. Worse, anyone, literally anyone, can post a video to Youtube. The guy ranting about how ants are trying to enslave us in a street corner? He can make videos and post them to Youtube. The conspiracy-minded aunt who believes vaccines come with mind-control 5G microchips created by Bill Gates? She can write blog posts and have a substack that looks really professional. People may even subscribe to it.

There are billions of people on the planet with access to the internet. Let's say half the planet, for giggles. If just 0.001% are crackpots posting weird shit, that is about 30,000 human beings posting weird shit.

The rate of schizophrenia in the general population is approximately 1%, not 0.001%. That means that there are tens of millions of schizophrenic patients potentially posting on the 'net and making videos and putting them on Youtube. There are other psychiatric disorders. And you don't need to be a psychiatric patient to post weird stuff.

In other words, please stop bringing random stuff here for validation. We're not your faculty office hours.

 

[herko]

PS for the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster please wander into your nearest community college and sign up for whatever introductory physics, philosophy, and neuroscience classes they offer.

 

[hpsgrad]

I’m going to make a radical suggestion: the mods should seriously consider banning the OP from the Observatory.

Not because they ask silly questions; silly questions are fine. Not because they don’t seem to understand very much about the subjects they ask about; that’s the starting point of all learning.

They should consider banning the OP because every single thread of theirs is the same. Some pop-sci/pseudoscience thing is referenced and people are invited to explain why it’s wrong, or doesn’t seem to make sense. Folks reply with why it’s wrong, how you can tell that such things will be a waste of time, etc. the OP either ignores the explanations and suggestions or says something about why they don’t apply, or even says that that was really what they were saying in the first place.

Rinse and repeat.

They never ask follow-up questions or pursue a subject to clarity. They never deal with (never present and never engage with) non-YT content. They always deflect from the problems with their approach.

It is impossible to engage in a conversation about scientific topics. It’s impossible to engage in conversations about distinct topics (this same space-time woo-woo stuff has now come up in three separate threads). The OP has imposed repeatedly on the charity of those here, and ignored their suggestions.

There is a track record here of not-science, that is pretty convincing. Whatever the mods decision, I am following the evidence.

 

[zeotherm]

/// OFFICIAL MODERATION NOTICE ///

---

@hpsgrad I'll explain my reasoning. For the record, you are 100% correct--the point of the Observatory is to ask questions and I welcome them (even the un-informed ones.....)

I keep these open (generally) for two reasons: 1.) RagingWarGod isn't breaking the PGs. And 2.) honestly, it is you all (hand wave, royal we scenario). People keep bringing amazing answers to these--the posters here are insanely smart from wildly different areas of science and philosophy and I appreciate reading their responses. I don't disagree with really any of what you wrote, but none of it is PG breaking

When the threads hew too close to a PG violation, they do indeed get locked as soon as I see it.

 

[RagingWarGod]

You've probably been pointed that way before, but if you're really interested in learning about this kind of stuff (without getting a physics degree) your best bet is PBS Space Time, not random Youtube channels that make click bait. They have episodes that cover these topics you're struggling with, among many others, and the host and writing team are excellent science communicators. If you still can't quite get it (there are some episodes that I have trouble wrapping my head around), that's ok. This stuff isn't for everyone. Just do your best and accept your limitations.

I'll check it out, though I want to add that it's hard to tell the difference between what's good and what's bad information when it seems like everyone knows what they're talking about.

 

[ajk48n]

Since the thread isn't locked yet, I'll answer the question with my own opinion.

Time is considered stranger than space because we don't have the ability to control how we move through it. Either the speed or direction.

I do think fundamentally it's a really good question of why that is, but I've never come across any proof of the cause of that difference.

 

[zeotherm]

I'll check it out, though I want to add that it's hard to tell the difference between what's good and what's bad information when it seems like everyone knows what they're talking about.

Honestly, here is where it is good to stick with the big known names as opposed to the random YouTubers. That's not to say that there are not AMAZING physicists doing great science communications via that medium, but there are plenty of crackpots, so it's best to stick with gate-kept presenters. Hell, if you are up for a LOT of reading, Feynman's lectures are considered masterpieces for a reason

 

[hpsgrad]

Honestly, here is where it is good to stick with the big known names as opposed to the random YouTubers. That's not to say that there are not AMAZING physicists doing great science communications via that medium, but there are plenty of crackpots, so it's best to stick with gate-kept presenters. Hell, if you are up for a LOT of reading, Feynman's lectures are considered masterpieces for a reason

And have been repeatedly recommended, along with other options for lay readers.

 

[whoisit]

And PBS SpaceTime has also be recommended multiple times, as well. By multiple posters.

 

[RagingWarGod]

Since the thread isn't locked yet, I'll answer the question with my own opinion.

Time is considered stranger than space because we don't have the ability to control how we move through it. Either the speed or direction.

I do think fundamentally it's a really good question of why that is, but I've never come across any proof of the cause of that difference.

What about relativity of simultaneity which seems to cast doubt on whether things happen at the same time and that it depends on the observer? Like...that one is really weird. Does that mean if I'm with someone else we could not be experiencing the same reality?

 

[dferrantino]

Does that mean if I'm with someone else we could not be experiencing the same reality?

Sure could. Reality could also be a hallucination created entirely within our brains. Question is, so what? Given that your reality has always operated in a certain way under a certain set of rules, and there's no indication that you can experience a different one, does it actually change a single thing if you're the only person experiencing your particular reality?

 

[ajk48n]

Does that mean if I'm with someone else we could not be experiencing the same reality?

No it doesn't mean that. At least not within the objective facts of what occurred. defarrantino has a good point about what your brain might interpret, but I'll skip over that option in my post

Unrelated to the idea that we can't control our direction/speed through time, you're asking something closer related to the speed of light. If two entities are very far apart and travelling at vastly different speeds, they have a difference concept of what's happening in their respective "now" if they were both watching the same event through a telescope.

But even in that case, they might disagree on what's happening "now" but they would still agree on the things that actually happened, and the order that events occurred.

 

[diabol1k]

What about relativity of simultaneity which seems to cast doubt on whether things happen at the same time and that it depends on the observer? Like...that one is really weird. Does that mean if I'm with someone else we could not be experiencing the same reality?

The action lab recently posted a video on this in his normal ELI5 approach
View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4dzQ2bq-HiI&pp=ygUOdGhlIGFjdGlvbiBsYWI%3D

 

[ajk48n]

The action lab recently posted a video on this in his normal ELI5 approach

Hmm that's interesting. And actually it says I was mistaken in my previous comment about both observers agreeing what order events happen in (in the case that one event happened far enough in space from the other event so that it could not have affected it)

Time for some more reading about this

 

[UserJoe]

Mostly asking because I have seen millions of articles, videos, etc about how time doesn't exist, is an illusion, things like that but none about space.

The deepest theories of time and space say that neither exists as an entity independent of the stuff in the universe. They both emerge from quantum events/interactions. Here's a description of an experiment that has been interpreted as showing how time emerges from the evolution of quantum entanglement.

Stephen Wolfram's Physics Project is a recent effort exploring this view of reality. This project starts from an even lower level and physics emerges from basic iterative calculations based on simple mathematical relationships.

 

[RagingWarGod]

The action lab recently posted a video on this in his normal ELI5 approach

I'll admit I didn't really understand the explanation for that one, especially once it got to the graphs and the lines. I was also having a hard time following when he was trying to describe different "nows" for two people, I didn't really get that part. One now is different from the person moving compared to the one who is standing still?

Stephen Wolfram's Physics Project is a recent effort exploring this view of reality. This project starts from an even lower level and physics emerges from basic iterative calculations based on simple mathematical relationships.

So what would that mean for reality then? If time emerges what does that mean about things happening?

 

[RagingWarGod]

Sure could. Reality could also be a hallucination created entirely within our brains. Question is, so what? Given that your reality has always operated in a certain way under a certain set of rules, and there's no indication that you can experience a different one, does it actually change a single thing if you're the only person experiencing your particular reality?

It actually changes more than can be said in words if I'm the only one experiencing my particular reality.

 

[ExhaustedTechConsumer]

It actually changes more than can be said in words if I'm the only one experiencing my particular reality.

Why? You are not the only one experiencing your particular reality, not in any sense that matters.

I hope you've noticed that all these counter-intuitive effects of physics are expressed at either very small or very large scales. So what if someone travelling at a large fraction of the speed of light sees two events differently than you? I mean I suppose in principle you could contrive some chain of events which scale up to human experience in a significant way, but it doesn't seem like a practical concern. Maybe I just don't have the imagination, or maybe I'm just sceptical of extraordinary claims. You should be too.

And if time is an emergent phenomenon (which, by the way, if you look around instead of taking one link as gospel, you'll see is a consequence of a theory that is being actively researched but isn't established and recognised physical canon), again, so what? That doesn't make it any less real.

The music I'm listening to is an emergent phenomenon from electrons being coerced into performing a dance of particular patterns which then cause air molecules to collectively vibrate in a particular way. It's real. Two people may experience that music differently depending on whether they're in a car or in a perfectly sound-proofed room with acoustic baffling. But it's still real.

"More than can be said in words" is a problem. In a proper debate, which this isn't, it would be admitting defeat. If you can't express why it's an issue, is it really an issue? Please don't engage with random internet links, not even the ones posted here. They will not be helpful to you, nor, I suspect, to anyone without a very deep understanding of current physics. Someone (like you and me) lacking that deep understanding might come away thinking "Wow! Time isn't real! The universe is a hologram!" but their understanding is still superficial.

 

[NervousEnergy]

The universe is a very strange place when contemplated at scale - c represents the propagation speed of cause and effect, but also 'seems' shockingly slow at cosmic scale. The fact that we're here on this chat board discussing it is even more bizarre - self awareness / consciousness as an emergent principle isn't explained or predicted by any known theory of physics. The universe would make considerably more sense if we weren't here to ponder it.

The music I'm listening to is an emergent phenomenon from electrons being coerced into performing a dance of particular patterns which then cause air molecules to collectively vibrate in a particular way. It's real. Two people may experience that music differently depending on whether they're in a car or in a perfectly sound-proofed room with acoustic baffling. But it's still real.

You and I are a certain kind of pony. The OP may be a bit more tortured by existential angst.

Spoiler

 

[UserJoe]

The deepest theories of time and space say that neither exists as an entity independent of the stuff in the universe. They both emerge from quantum events/interactions. Here's a description of an experiment that has been interpreted as showing how time emerges from the evolution of quantum entanglement.

Stephen Wolfram's Physics Project is a recent effort exploring this view of reality. This project starts from an even lower level and physics emerges from basic iterative calculations based on simple mathematical relationships.

Quantum mechanics enables the electronics you are using, and special and general relativity allow the GPS in your phone to work but other than that none of this stuff is something you should spend time worrying about unless you are interested in it.

 

[RagingWarGod]

And if time is an emergent phenomenon (which, by the way, if you look around instead of taking one link as gospel, you'll see is a consequence of a theory that is being actively researched but isn't established and recognised physical canon), again, so what? That doesn't make it any less real.

In a sense it does because that means it’s not a fundamental force of the universe but rather a sort of phantom that exists so long as conditions arise.

Quantum mechanics enables the electronics you are using, and special and general relativity allow the GPS in your phone to work but other than that none of this stuff is something you should spend time worrying about unless you are interested in it.

Relativity of simultaneity contradicting our notion of “at the same time” seems like it would, especially since the cited video says that it happens in ordinary circumstances.

"More than can be said in words" is a problem. In a proper debate, which this isn't, it would be admitting defeat. If you can't express why it's an issue, is it really an issue? Please don't engage with random internet links, not even the ones posted here. They will not be helpful to you, nor, I suspect, to anyone without a very deep understanding of current physics. Someone (like you and me) lacking that deep understanding might come away thinking "Wow! Time isn't real! The universe is a hologram!" but their understanding is still superficial.

One of the most notable philosophers (Wittgenstein) spent a good amount demonstrating the limitations of language to the point that it’s basically fact. So something being more than can be said in words isn’t a problem, it can likely mean the implications are far too deep and widespread than can be realizable communicated through something as limiting as language. It can be an issue even if you can’t express it.

One doesn’t really need language to explain why assault is bad, their experience alone is enough.

Another reason could be that the implications are so vast that they cannot be covered in the current situation.

In this case the links I gave are more or less saying that the universe is a hologram and that time isn’t real. Thought time not being real seems more popular.

But for why being the only person experiencing your reality as it is see “the problem of other minds”/solipsism. It’s not new.

 

[ExhaustedTechConsumer]

In a sense it does because that means it’s not a fundamental force of the universe but rather a sort of phantom that exists so long as conditions arise.

<Shrug>. Lots of things (almost everything in fact) are phantoms by that logic. That's not a useful position to take. Do you decline to eat your breakfast because it's a sort of phantom? The overwhelming amount of evidence is that in fact it's not a phantom, it helps people start the day well. So you might as well treat time as non-phantomlike because there's even more evidence that time passes than that breakfast is healthy.

One of the most notable philosophers (Wittgenstein) spent a good amount demonstrating the limitations of language to the point that it’s basically fact. So something being more than can be said in words isn’t a problem, it can likely mean the implications are far too deep and widespread than can be realizable communicated through something as limiting as language. It can be an issue even if you can’t express it.

One doesn’t really need language to explain why assault is bad, their experience alone is enough.

It doesn't "likely" mean that the implications are far too deep. It "likely" means that you are not thinking clearly about what your issue is. Either way, there's not much more to be said is there, if language is the problem.

 

[ajk48n]

Relativity of simultaneity contradicting our notion of “at the same time” seems like it would, especially since the cited video says that it happens in ordinary circumstances

The cited video says that it happens for a very specific setup with lasers, hardly ordinary circumstances.

But more importantly, it says that it only happens with events that can not be casually related, and that is a large distinction.

Since most things we care about affecting in the world stem from cause and affect, then the relativity of simultaneity doesn't come into play. And, as mentioned in an earlier comment, you are definitely not interacting with human beings that are travelling relatively near the speed of light so you're really not ever encountering anything where this is going to make a difference.

It's a shame if this thread gets locked because it gets diverted from the original question. Time being different from space and the relatively of simultaneity are both extremely interesting and strange, non intuitive aspects of the universe.

But they don't mean that reality is not like what it seems, at least in the context of how we interact with it.

 

[ExhaustedTechConsumer]

It's a shame if this thread gets locked because it gets diverted from the original question. Time being different from space and the relatively of simultaneity are both extremely interesting and strange, non intuitive aspects of the universe.

Possibly even weirder than time being not real, or emergent, are the theories (I think it's pure mathematics, really, rather than a physical theory) of space-times that can be described with more than one time-like dimension. That is somehow harder to get your head around than the possibility of there being more than 3 space-like dimensions.

 

[ajk48n]

When you get to those types of theories, is the differentiator between what's a time and space dimension literally just "do we control our movement through it"? Or are there other aspects of those dimensions that make the mathematicians call them "time" vs "space"?

 

[RagingWarGod]

It doesn't "likely" mean that the implications are far too deep. It "likely" means that you are not thinking clearly about what your issue is. Either way, there's not much more to be said is there, if language is the problem.

Not really, to list everything out would take a long time and would require walking through all the steps along the way to show why this affects so much. Hence the "more than words can say". Usually when people say that it does run too deep.

The cited video says that it happens for a very specific setup with lasers, hardly ordinary circumstances.

The example given though was with one person on a train and someone else just walking by.

 

[ajk48n]

The example given though was with one person on a train and someone else just walking by.

You've missed the very important next sentence in my reply:

But more importantly, it says that it only happens with events that can not be casually related, and that is a large distinction

Again, that is a very important aspect.

So yes, you're correct that it can happen in day to day life technically (I was wrong when I mentioned just the laser setup)

But this does not mean in any way that reality is broken, or that what is happening isn't real. It's just an interesting fact related to the finite speed of light in moving reference frames. It does not imply, for anything practical that we ever experience, that reality is broken for the two observers in the example.

 

[continuum]

Not really, to list everything out would take a long time and would require walking through all the steps along the way to show why this affects so much. Hence the "more than words can say". Usually when people say that it does run too deep.

You should list it all out, otherwise you're just wasting all our time, not to mention your own time.

 

[ExhaustedTechConsumer]

When you get to those types of theories, is the differentiator between what's a time and space dimension literally just "do we control our movement through it"? Or are there other aspects of those dimensions that make the mathematicians call them "time" vs "space"?

The latter.

In regular 3-D space the square of the distance between two points is the sum of the squares of the distances in each of the x, y, z coordinates.

In 4-D spacetime the "distance" between two events is the same but you subtract the square of the time interval. The spacetime "distance" is significant in relativity just as the regular distance is important to us in three dimensions.

That's my understanding of it exhausted!

Edit to add this from Wikipedia (I got the subtraction the wrong way around, but essence is that the difference between space-like and time-like dimensions is one of sign)

 

[tb12939]

Relativity of simultaneity contradicting our notion of “at the same time” seems like it would, especially since the cited video says that it happens in ordinary circumstances.

Relativity of Simultaneity (RoS) happens in ordinary circumstances but requires a very precise measurement to detect.

RoS is one of the things which means that the speed of light, which is finite, can appear constant regardless of its direction and the relative movement of various observers - however unlike Lorentz contraction of time/distance, RoS is proportional to relative velocity, not the square of relative velocity, so it's a bit more obvious in 'ordinary' sounding experiments

Imagine a line of beacons, arranged left to right, each at some fixed equal distance apart, flashing at some rate, simultaneously. For simplicity let's make the distance and flash rate such the each beacon sees the previous flash from its immediate neighbors exactly in time with its own subsequent flash.

With this setup, an observer almost perfectly in line, from either end, will observe all the beacons flash at the same time. They realize that each subsequent beacon is exactly one flash behind, and when they calculate the time delay using the speed of light, they conclude that the beacons are all flashing with perfect timing.

They would also appear to be in perfect time according to any static observer, once they correctly allow for the time the light takes to reach them, but the end-on view is simpler.

Now think about an observer moving from left to right - they see the beacons as moving towards them. They see every beacon flash 'in time' as well. But when they calculate the time delay from each beacon based where the beacon was when it emitted each flash, using the speed of light relative to themselves, they will conclude that far away beacons flashed a little ahead of schedule (the alternative explanations, e.g. that the beacons' light propagates unusually quickly, are way more problematic)

This 'difference of opinion' regarding the beacon timing is Relativity of Simultaneity.

If the relative velocity is high enough, the moving observer will also see differences in beacon distance and flashing rate as well, but RoS is noticeable at much lower speeds.

 

[ajk48n]

That's my understanding of it exhausted!

Edit to add this from Wikipedia (I got the subtraction the wrong way around, but essence is that the difference between space-like and time-like dimensions is one of sign)

Thanks for that! That definitely addresses the difference in how distances are measured, but it's unclear if it gets to the heart of what actually makes the dimension types different.

We're well outside of my understanding at this point though, and my guess is we're entering heavy math territory where the only way to truly understand is to study the equations.

 

[ajk48n]

Imagine a line of beacons, arranged left to right, each at some fixed equal distance apart, flashing at some rate, simultaneously. For simplicity let's make the distance and flash rate such the each beacon sees the previous flash from its immediate neighbors exactly in time with its own subsequent flash.

That's a good thought experiment overall. If I understand what various posters have mentioned above, this is all true as long as each beacon in signalled independently from each other correct?

So that if each beacon had a photoreceptor on it, and only triggered when it actually saw a different beacon trigger, then all observers would agree upon the order that the beacons lit up.