The “time case” is simple:
No time would mean no event and no event means no time. Timelessness as such would mean no matter as well. The universal event establishing “the time” is the transformation of matter from its mass status into its energy status and the re-transformation of the energy into mass again. This process-re-process is permanent and is in balance with certain intensity differences between the two.

The three basic parameters are: mass, energy, time.

The realised by the institutional science conflict between the General Theory and the quantum theory stems from Einstein’s mistake in the time formula (the reciprocal character is missing). Contrary to the “official” Special Theory, the motion speeds up the time flow. With this input, the General Theory is different and today’s quantum theory is also different. And there would be no conflict to speak about.

The institutional science, with all my respect to them personally, does not listen to this as the science would only be the privilege of those within it.

There is no space in a blog to prove my points above, but my works “The Energy Balance of Relativity” (trafford.com/06-3261) and the “Quantum Energy and Mass Balance” (trafford.com/08-1547) give the physical and mathematical proof.

All the best to you all
Z

And a direct extension of relativity shows that person A’s future can be person B’s past due to differences of velocity, direction of motion, and spatial separation. If this is true, then all of spacetime must exist: all of space, all of “time”. Spacetime would be like a huge loaf of bread. The slice of spacetime that I call “now”, could intersect with someone else’s “past.” This depends on how the loaf is sliced by each person, and that is determined by each person to be slightly different according to the comparative warping of spacetime due to relativistic effects.

So, you can see that this does indeed have meaning-of-life type implications! It would mean that determinism might rule after all. Except in the case of the uncertainty principle, where the details of a slice of spacetime here might depend on the actual result of a wave function collapse in a different frame. But then, all slices (or frames), are defined differently for each observer – yet the whole loaf of bread, or the whole of spacetime, still exists independently of how it may be sliced.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!

All the physics that completely does away with time faces these problems. It is not a lack of creativity on your part to dismiss the way the world works. You are a scientist, an observer. The observable principles of physics (nott the models, the observations) are more worthy of belief than the trickery of mathematics. We can write the math any way you want, we can even reinvent it, come up with entirely different ways of doing things.. that activity is not really interesting in itself, it is just a consequence of how we think. Logic was supposed to be interesting, because it is inherent in the universe, but mathematical systems are not. Your observations and reflections on the world are far more interesting, especially when tthey coincide with some sort of representatiion that we *happen* to comprehend and write down in symbols.

For e.g, we know for sure that things seem to ‘change’, because things are distinguishable from each other. Why though? Why are things different? Your essay laid it down prretty nicely, and it is even understood since antiquity: things are different because they can be, dancing along the moving arrow of time. And ‘Different’ is a term that implies information portrayed by the world, and information is mysteriously linked to tangible things like energy (see Landaur et al). So, although Barbour can probably *describe* his submission of the paper in a way that answers your question, I’ll bet you he woulddn’t want to stick his hand in a burning flame. If information is physical, the act off classic computation itself defies a truly timeless universe in a tangible, observable manner.

They just can’t see it.

At the risk of sounding homely, this sort of reminds me of something my aunt once told me. “The older you get, the faster the years slip by”. How right she was, and perhaps as I say the same is ultimately true of the Universe.

My point is this: It’s not about what we can ‘gain’ from thinking of the world of timeless. Time is either an emergent property or it is not. I for one believe that understanding the true nature of time for its own sake is more than worthwhile, whether it exists or not – whether or not we stand to gain something more from doing so should not be paramount. I find it saddening that just because timelessness is counter-intuitive/against the opinions held by some (although, thankfully, not all) of the commenters, they see fit to label Dr Barbour as a crank, with little other justification.

*Before anyone tries to misconstrue that: By ‘listen to’, I mean exactly that. Just because someone has been working in a field for as long as Dr Barbour has does not mean that his idea could simply be flat out wrong. Regardless of that, he is an expert in classical general relativity and not some readily dismissed crackpot.

By the way, when Sean says “Protons are made of quarks, but you don’t hear particle physicists going around claiming that protons don’t exist.”, he is touching on a profound epistemological issue in the layering of scientific explanations. When one uses an explanation to deny the existence of what one originally set out to explain, one is playing a very dangerous and ultimately self-defeating game. This tends to happen when one tries to turn the explanation into an all-embracing metaphysical worldview.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyonic_Antitelephone

What about tachyons?

I don’t see how you can eliminate time and retain causality in any meaningful way. I am not a professional scientist but I am sort of attached to the notion of causality as a fundamental feature of reality.

e.

My own feeling is that the commonality of description of time in the quantum and classical world relates to the appearance of change with the passage of time. Things change around us and within us even if we try to avoid it. Similarly I think fluctuations in space time are the equivalent to the passage of time in the classical world, but happening in discrete steps.

I seldom agree with Sean but I wholeheartedly agree with him on his reaction to eliminating the idea of time. Even if you can reduce time as an emergent property of fluctuations in space related to thermodynamics, what’s the point. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

For sure there is an interesting issue lurking here — but whatever it is, what is needed at this point is a deep physics argument with lots of equations.

Magnetism is an artifact of continuous electrostatic field lines and the finite speed of light. If the speed of light were infinite, there would be no “magnetic force”, or lateral shift in the direction of the electrostatic field lines of force. That being so, I predict that magnetic monopoles will never be found, because they do not exist. Neither do centripetal monopoles exist.