The Nature of Time: Physicist's Interpretations & Thought Experiments

[ijdavis]

I am interested in how physicists view time, and in any thought experiment (eg. anti-matters time direction, spinning black holes that may have the time dimension no longer orthogonal to the three special directions, delayed quantum eraser experiment that might permit backwards in time signalling, the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics, entanglement, teleportation, wormholes, negative energy, etc,) that support their interpretation of time. At the most basic level does our current understanding the universe, special and general relativity and quantum mechanics imply that:

a) the universe has no past or future, only unconnected currents. To talk about past or future is simply an artifact of the observers current state, rather than a reality of our universe

b) the current moment is merely an artifact of the observer at some point in space-time. At each point in time the observer naturally claims that the current moment, but past and/or future are as much part of space-time as any labelled present and so as legitimately labelled current time by an alternative observer.

b1) at the level of thought experiment (based on our known universe - not an invented one) time travel is possible, not possible, or is not currently known (assuming b above).

c) some other conclusion

 

[UltrafastPED]

You can start by reading some of the many physico-philosophical essays about time written physicists; here is a random sampling:

http://users.wfu.edu/brehme/time.htm[/URL]
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_space_and_time[/url]
[url]http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/multimedia/2013/sep/23/lee-smolin-on-the-nature-of-time[/url]
[url]http://fqxi.org/community/forum/category/10[/url]
[url]http://www.nature.com/news/theoretical-physics-the-origins-of-space-and-time-1.13613[/url]
[url]http://www.wired.com/2010/02/what-is-time/[/url]

 

[ijdavis]

Thank you for these references.

Ian