Propagation of Time

[Sandglass]

Been thinking a lot about time lately and am trying to think through whether this idea has merit:
Time exists as a byproduct of a 'constant' speed of light.

Breakdown:
-As a fundamental aspect of nature, the speed of light is constant (in a vacuum).
-Time has no fundamental unit - its current "smallest length" of a Planck time is based on measurability, not an underlying property of nature.
-Matter with relative velocity to one another may have interaction events in which an ordered sequence of such events can be created.
-The universal timeline is unitless, so only the sequence has meaning.
-For matter to change, there must be a reason for change, i.e. an internal or external interaction must take place.
-Until an interaction takes place, there is no notion of time progression for given matter, if broken down into small enough components.

-Macro-scale systems contain large enough quantities of interactions for time to sync between separate subsystems.
-At high enough relative velocities, macro-scale syncing is impacted by relativity and time dilation.
-Many Worlds Interpretation is that universal configurations create all interaction sequence pathways.

Questions:
-How can this hypothesis be tested?
--Would there be real-world impacts? AKA if time only 'exists' when interactions are present and if interaction occurrence requires the existence of light.
---How limited are we as humans based on our brains being causally linked to time.

 

[dr froyd]

i dont quite follow the entire argument but the sentence "Time exists as a byproduct of a 'constant' speed of light." sounds quite problematic because it's meaningless to talk about "speed" without already assuming the existence of time - because speed by definition is change in spatial coordinates relative to temporal coordinate.

or another way of looking at it - does a modification of Lorentz transformations to accommodate a variable speed entail making the temporal dimension pointless or optional? I dunno.. not saying it's a ridiculous idea but sounds strange

 

[fluffy]

Time cannot happen without some object moving in relation to another object.

A void with nothing in it has no time.

 

[Cognisant]

No that just means you have no measure of time.

"Time exists as a byproduct of a 'constant' speed of light." sounds quite problematic because it's meaningless to talk about "speed" without already assuming the existence of time - because speed by definition is change in spatial coordinates relative to temporal coordinate.

This makes sense to me, that time isn't the byproduct of the speed of light but rather the speed of light is a byproduct of time.

Time behaves like a 4th spatial dimension in that light can travel faster than the speed of light (sort of) if we fold the space between the source and destination. This isn't really light going faster per say, rather the same distace/time is being travelled but by folding space the light is taking a shortcut.

It's like time and the three spatial dimensions are all variables in an equation where they all have to come to a set answer, you can't change one without changing at least one of the others.

 

[fluffy]

But is time a substance?

Can an empty universe have time in it?

Time "fabric" is a medium of particles travelling a distance.

But if all is static, what would time be?

 

[Cognisant]

If a tree falls in the forest does it make a sound if there's no one around to hear it?

To assume otherwise is solipsistic.

Reality isn't subjective, because if it was it wouldn't be real.

 

[fluffy]

That is the point,

Anything dealing with time involves real things in relationship to each other.

You don't get to say time exists independent of the particles. Time is not an immaterial fluid. Real stuff is required for time to pass.

 

[Sandglass]

it's meaningless to talk about "speed" without already assuming the existence of time - because speed by definition is change in spatial coordinates relative to temporal coordinate.

The two are certainly connected, but is it right to assume that time is more fundamental than speed? The crux of what I'm considering is whether time creates movement or movement creates time. Odd as it is, the speed of light is one of the few fundamental components of the universe, whereas all we can really say about time is that its direction appears to move towards entropy increasing (which is problematic due to us being casually linked).

Time behaves like a 4th spatial dimension in that light can travel faster than the speed of light (sort of) if we fold the space between the source and destination. This isn't really light going faster per say, rather the same distance/time is being travelled but by folding space the light is taking a shortcut.

That seems more like a crude trick though? You wouldn't be able to fine-tune the speed, you would just end up with effectively a multiple. The light would still be moving at its same speed. If time acted like a 4th dimension, we should be able to go back and forth and see all events synced at any given time, but relativity shows that outside of our standard approximation of everything being very slow, time moves differently for different subsystems. Having a constant time progression while maintaining the constant speed of light seems like it would over-constrain our system.

You don't get to say time exists independent of the particles

It seems odd to me, but this is the direction my mind is drifting towards. Like life is just a huge interconnected configuration going from the big bang to the 'end of time.'

I don't subscribe to simulation theory, but it can help with the visualization; if you imagine our universe's core conditions (fundamental forces, speed of light, initial conditions) are set like a computer program, photons would then propagate through space causing all of the interactions. We can't just tell events to "wait X time" to do something but instead have to follow a sequence of interactions.

 

[Thurlor]

I actually think that time is the most fundamental of 'things'. Without change all is static and indistinguishable from nothing.

 

[Sandglass]

But then how does it work? Would it progress like a clock ticking with infinitesimally small moments? If that's the most fundamental aspect of nature, I wouldn't expect high speeds or gravity to affect it.

 

[dr froyd]

i would say the big problem with assuming that constant speed of light is the basis of time is that you can easily devise a system with both time and variable speed of light by doing away with time dilation and length contraction. One example would be newtonian mechanics.

we know of course that newtonian mechanics is "wrong", but that was an empirical observation, not a theoretical necessity. People started to consider alternatives after, among other things, failing to empirically prove the existence of the so-called luminiferous aether

once again im not really opposed to the idea, and i happen to think constancy of speed of light is more fundamental to many physical phenomena than people think - it's a property that determines the geometry of spacetime itself (and for example is the real reason for the impossibility of going faster than light) - but deriving time itself from it.. that's deeeeep man, a real brainfuck