Are these time questions unsolvable?

[Obvious Leo]

Einstein for one. His theory of Relativity says that spacetime ACTUALLY curves and that is what gravity is.

"Spacetime should never be regarded as physically real"....Albert Einstein.

You mistake the map for the territory because spacetime is merely a mathematical METAPHOR for gravity, something which Einstein understood very well indeed. Many of those who followed in his footsteps were less fluent in the philosophy of mathematics and thus less metaphysically coherent.

Since space has no physical properties would you care to explain how it can perform these miraculous physical feats? How does it "expand", for instance? Does it just spread itself out a bit or do new bits of space arrive from somewhere to fill in the gaps?

If you stand at the roadside and watch a car drive away from you is the space between you and the car expanding or is the car just driving away from you?

[raw_thought]

Can you give a source for that Einstein quote? Einstein was not a logical positivist like Hawking etc. He believed that his theories described reality. Google "block universe" You will see how Einstein visualized * reality.
* Einstein was a visual thinker more then (obviously he could be abstract when he wanted to be) an abstract thinker.

[Obvious Leo]

Can you give a source for that Einstein quote?

Not off the top of my head but I'll look it up.

Einstein was not a logical positivist like Hawking etc.

I agree that Einstein was not a logical positivist like so many who followed in his footsteps but you have logical positivism back to front. It is they who insist that the map is synonymous with the territory and that the universe can only be defined in the language of mathematics. Einstein did not share this view and knew exactly what physics was and wasn't able to tell us about the universe. So did Niels Bohr.

"It is NOT the role of the physicist to explain what the universe is but merely to determine what he can meaningfully say about it's behaviour"....Niels Bohr.

Google "block universe" You will see how Einstein visualized * reality.

I've studied physics for over 40 years and need no instruction from Google, either on the Minkowski block or how Einstein regarded it. He knew from the outset that it was a mathematical metaphor and in GR he conclusively proved it.

This from a more recent theorist who EVERYBODY holds in high regard, including me.

"A hundred years on from GR physics still doesn't know what gravity is".....Brian Greene.

[Obvious Leo]

"A hundred years on from GR physics still doesn't know what gravity is".....Brian Greene.

This is a great tragedy because Einstein actually showed the world what gravity was in GR. The elephant in the room of physics is that gravity is a function of time. This is quantum gravity.

[raw_thought]

Bohr and Einstein were opposites when it came to scientific epistemology.
So you are claiming that Einstein considered the block universe to be a way of predicting experimental results but having no resemblance to reality?
You are confusing modern physics (Hawking for example stated that his theories have no resemblance to reality, they only predict results) with Einstein, who strongly objected to quantum mechanics because it has no explanatory power ( there is no way anyone can.understand paraconsistent logic for instance). Einstein for example used his EPR thought experiment to show why quantum mechanics must have a hidden variable. Einstein was of course later proved wrong (Bell, There is no hidden variable ). However, my point is, is that Einstein believed a theory should explain a phenomenon and not just predict experimental results.

[raw_thought]

"A hundred years on from GR physics still doesn't know what gravity is".....Brian Greene.

This is a great tragedy because Einstein actually showed the world what gravity was in GR. The elephant in the room of physics is that gravity is a function of time. This is quantum gravity.

Actually, Einstein showed that gravity is curved spacetime, not just a function of time. Are you actually claiming that Einstein did not unify space and time into spacetime?

[Obvious Leo]

Are you actually claiming that Einstein did not unify space and time into spacetime?

Einstein was credited with it but in fact it was Hermann Minkowski who did this. Einstein didn't buy it at all for a long while but eventually came to accept it rather reluctantly as a mathematical convenience. The true father of relativity was Henri Poincare and he didn't buy the 4D manifold for a single moment. He declared it nonsense from the outset because it is an aether theory which ignores both Michelson-Morley and gravity. Einstein never denied that spacetime is an aether theory but instead insisted that the 4D continuum should be regarded as a geometric aether rather than a physical aether. In other words spacetime is not a physical model of the universe but a mathematical representation of such a physical model. It's three pillars are SR, GR and QM and these models all contradict each other.

This is now almost universally accepted in theoretical physics as being the correct way to regard the spacetime paradigm. It is an epistemic representation of a deeper underlying theory which is yet to be developed.

[petm1]

OK, Einstein was wrong and you are correct.
BTW Time is a dimension. It does not dilate etc. However, velocity changes one's perspective. See Lorenz Transformation equations.

Einstein was the one who put time into the equations, he tied it to the count of a clock by multiplying a relative count by the square root of a negative one and the speed of light. We use the photon as our yardstick and the count of this dilating wave is how we measure the dimension of time.

A dimension is a mathematical object, not a physical one, so this statement requires some further clarification. Specifically a dimension is a co-ordinate system used to define the location and/or momentum of physical entities. In spacetime physics time is represented as a Cartesian dimension orthogonal to three dimensions of space and for this reason Einstein described spacetime as a mathematical entity and NOT a physical one. Representing time in this way was simply a mathematical convenience which can make no statement about the nature of the universe because Cartesian dimensions are bi-directional mathematical objects whereas time is patently NOT. The arrow of time is resolutely uni-directional whereas most of the equations of physics are time invariant. Significantly not all of them are.

Time is how we account for all the motion that we do not see, it is how we count existence of a single point in space time. +++-, ---+ the focal point for a coordinate system is always centered, in space-time with a clock an anchor point of mass.

Einstein's General Relativity shows that it is utterly impossible to synchronise two clocks, no matter whereabouts in the universe they are placed relative to each other. This has been empirically verified countless times and must apply all the way down to the Planck scale, which means that GR is incompatible with SR, which assumes the opposite.

Does not GPS show us that there is in fact one instant that we all share as the present, even if we can not see it?

Actually, Einstein showed that gravity is curved spacetime, not just a function of time. Are you actually claiming that Einstein did not unify space and time into spacetime?

After all the proof that a clock lower in a gravity well will tick at a slower rate that one higher you would think a longer second would account for the curve the closer to the center of mass.

[Obvious Leo]

Does not GPS show us that there is in fact one instant that we all share as the present, even if we can not see it?

Absolutely NOT.

I used a thought experiment elsewhere to illustrate this point. Imagine you have a gee-whiz imaginary telescope which can resolve the finest of details. You focus your telescope on a planet 100 years away and observe an old bloke looking at you through a telescope not unlike your own. You are looking at a bloke who no longer exists but what is he looking at? You haven't even been born yet as far as he's concerned.

We all exist solely in our own unique temporal referential frame because our real existence is in time alone. Our spatial extension of this is entirely a construct of our own consciousness with no ontological currency whatsoever. I prefer not to use the word illusory but there's not much point in gilding the lily on this because It's exactly what I mean. 3 dimensional space does not physically exist, as every major philosophy in human history has been telling us for thousands of years. Newton was WRONG and Leibniz was RIGHT. Michelson and Morley proved it and Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen proved it again beyond all possible doubt. There is no spooky action at a distance and no faster-than -light information transfer because entanglement becomes a perfectly routine prediction from GR.

[raw_thought]

It seems to me that that proves that time does not flow or move. There is no universal now that moves towards the future.

[petm1]

Does not GPS show us that there is in fact one instant that we all share as the present, even if we can not see it?

Absolutely NOT.

I used a thought experiment elsewhere to illustrate this point. Imagine you have a gee-whiz imaginary telescope which can resolve the finest of details. You focus your telescope on a planet 100 years away and observe an old bloke looking at you through a telescope not unlike your own. You are looking at a bloke who no longer exists but what is he looking at? You haven't even been born yet as far as he's concerned.

We all exist solely in our own unique temporal referential frame because our real existence is in time alone. Our spatial extension of this is entirely a construct of our own consciousness with no ontological currency whatsoever. I prefer not to use the word illusory but there's not much point in gilding the lily on this because It's exactly what I mean. 3 dimensional space does not physically exist, as every major philosophy in human history has been telling us for thousands of years. Newton was WRONG and Leibniz was RIGHT. Michelson and Morley proved it and Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen proved it again beyond all possible doubt. There is no spooky action at a distance and no faster-than -light information transfer because entanglement becomes a perfectly routine prediction from GR.

We can not see the present. everything we see is the past, If I see a one hundred-year-old man through my telescope one hundred light years away and could move instantly to his side I would find a grave because his present moment would get in my way of finding a one-hundred-year-old man. I like him exist in the same present moment the best I can do is join two present moments together in time which are the same regardless of position.

[petm1]

It seems to me that that proves that time does not flow or move. There is no universal now that moves towards the future.

Everything dilates in time, the count of a clock is how we measure this motion. We measure the Earth as dilating at 9.8 meters per second per second but we do not measure it with our rulers so we call it a force but Einstein said you can view Gravity as the Earth dilating out to the apple or as the apple falling to the Earth both are accurate within mathematics. Dilation is the comoving frame and has been since the focal point of energy we call big bang broke into all the focal points we call matter today. Space is the illusion we call the present and mass is the past we can touch.

[petm1]

If a Living entity on a planet two hundred sixty million light years away was looking our way, with a telescope large enough to see a single creature on our Earth. What if he saw the same creature that I am looking at now in fossil form? Now think of this same entity transporting itself instantly to earth, jumping the interval between itself and the creature he is looking at. Would you think that this interval between emission and reception of the photons he is receiving now would end with me and the fossil or would he end up with the living creature in the past? Myself I would think that our common present is the best he can do because I think we are both separate parts of the same time. The fossil and the photon have traveled the same distance in time even if I can just make a guess as to the distance traveled in space. Mass is the past.