Time, Entropy and Quantum Mechanics | Julian Barbour

From the big bang to Newton's theory of gravity, theoretical physicist Julian Barbour explains his theory of time and explores how this can fit with Einstein's theory of gravity and what this means for quantum theory.

#time #entropy #quantum #symmetry #physics

Julian Barbour is a theoretical physicist working on on foundational issues in physics for nearly fifty years, specializing in the study of time and motion. He is emeritus visiting professor in physics at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Absolute or Relative Motion? , The End of Time, and The Janus Point.​ Barbour's work on time has focused on the illusion of time. He argues, time as such does not exist but only change. He has shown how, alongside the relativity of motion, the notion of time as change can be built into the foundations of dynamics and looked at the consequences of this implication for the quantum mechanics of the universe.

For more from Julian Barbour watch:

Does Infinity Exist? | Julian Barbour, Laura Mersini-Houghton, Peter Cameron

Time, Space and Being | Julian Barbour, Huw Price, Michela Massimi

The Elegant Universe | Julian Barbour, Nancy Cartwright, Steve Fuller

DELVE DEEPER

[snoortpod]

I'm starting to think that QM and Einstein form a discontinuous blind spot from our vantage point/perspective on things which is entirely Godel-like, such that we can't see it with objective coherence to be able to bridge the gap. Consciousness keeps getting in the way. Maybe the deep way consciousness works drives in the wedge by default and there's not much we can do about it because we know not a jot how consciousness works at the outset, or even if it has any definable coupling with what we would call the 'here and now.'

[iookknn]

We offer you these four questions about dark energy
It is the force responsible for the rapid expansion of the universe

The first question
Is the rate of expansion of the universe increases and decreases every day or only increases
?
‏second question
‏What is the appropriate explanation if every day there is an increase and decrease in the expansion of the universe?
‏The third question about the vacuum areas of the universe
‏Is there a greater expansion rate in the galactic-free areas?
‏the fourth question
‏Are there molecules responsible for the existence of this dark energy in the universe?
‏Please seek more search for dark energy secrets
‏Please send these four questions to the Space Research Team

[jiohdi]

Time is just a measure of changing relationships that requires a conscious mind with memory to see... as to why things move in only one way, that has to do with energy loss in any system... we call that heat loss in electronics... there are no perfect circuits that do not lose some energy to heat. There are no 100% efficient car engines... this is why perpetual motion machines always fail... there is always some inefficiency in any system.

[penumbraman]

A decade ago I thought of the same idea. Something we don’t see is making time asymmetric. I call it the dumbbell theory. It would be the simplest theory to explain how time could be symmetrical in the “total” system. Maybe the other “side” is made up of antimatter? If so, an other mystery solved!

[kitten]

i think Dark Matter is Distant quantum entropy and Dark energy is Local quantum entropy. The ruler is variable because time is not linear. Time is space and space is expanding thus time is speeding up. Until science understands that Time and space are not separate they will continue to chase dark matter and energy.

[samparker]

I’m curious about the world we exist in when we sleep which seems to have a different sense of time space etc to our waking world .. isn’t this like another universe?

[margrietoregan]

Time, space, matter, energy, knowledge and information.
One of the largest impediments to any good, proper and complete understanding of our universe, of ourselves and of our own position within it, is the current failure to firstly define and understand ‘information’ itself.
Although I’m not prepared to divulge ‘information’s’ correct ontological identity here in these YouTube comments, I can quite confidently say that it is not ‘digits’ no matter how many of the latter one may have at one’s disposal, nor how cleverly arranged they are, nor how large, powerful, numerous and globally interconnected are any of the machines and devices operating on them.
‘Digits’ are, patently enough, very useful things with which to count and calculate - to add, subtract, multiple and divide. We first used our own anatomical digits - our fingers and toes - for these particular tasks, then we scratched marks on (prison !) walls, next we invented the abacus and although we chew constantly on the idea that our modern day computers and communications devices are ‘real thinking machines’ they are quite demonstrably not, but are, rather, only ‘bean counters’; they are none other than vastly accelerated, massively miniaturised, hugely interconnected, user-friendliarised, electronically-automated ABACUSES.
In ‘Life Beyond Google’ George Gilder makes note of this particular fact - that is, he makes note of the abacusial status of our now many and various computing/communicating machines and devices, concomitantly reminding us that these machines can only count and calculate and otherwise entirely lack the ability to actually ‘think’.
In spite of his recognition of these particular facts, Gilder has not yet figured out exactly what ‘information’ is - as a phenomenon in its own right and not just what any of it says or means - nor has he ascertained the exact nature of any of the directly information-related phenomena such as ‘thought’, ‘mind’, ‘intelligence’, ‘memory’, ‘understanding’, ‘knowledge’, ‘knowing’ and ‘consciousness’.
I can also quite confidently assert that once ‘information’s’ correct identity is recognised and as such factored into our understandings of ourselves and of our universe, it becomes eminently possible to, firstly, identify, define, describe and fully understand all of the directly information-related phenomena such as ‘thought’, ‘mind’, ‘intelligence’, ‘memory’, ‘understanding’, ‘knowledge’, ‘knowing’, ‘sentience’ and ‘consciousness’ (to far less than exhaust the list), and then by building on these particular understandings, it subsequently becomes equally eminently possible to establish the ontological identities of everything else here inside our universe - time, space, matter, energy, entropy, motion, inertia, knowledge and knowing.
Time ?
There is only the ever present now - the past no longer is and the future not yet is.
As it so transpires it turns out that that which we consider to be the passage of the river of time is nothing other than the persistence of our own personal memories of events that we each have already experienced and which now exist only in our memory of them, while the future is an imaginative projection of past memories into what we expect to experience in the next series of ‘nows’ as we step, one by one, into them.
A corrected understanding of everything here inside our universe - time, space, matter, energy, entropy, motion, inertia, sentience, knowledge and knowing (to less than exhaust the list) not only clearly debunks the Einsteinian understanding thereof, but even, gulp, dethrones the Newtonian one also, as with this corrected understanding it becomes eminently possible to recognise that matter - that all material being, both animate and inanimate alike - is a fully self-organising phenomenon; is a fully self-powered, self-moving, self-directed, self-timed, sentient/self-aware phenomenon in all of its many and various instantiations. Among other corrected understandings, it shows that we live in a panpsychic universe.
Because no information exists outside our universe - presumably that sphere or realm where the creator/sustainer of it all resides (if there is one), along with its reasons for so doing (if it has any), sadly there is no way we can apprise ourselves of any of these ‘externalities’.
But with ‘information’s’ corrected identity factored into the reality equation it becomes amply apparent that we no longer need to grapple with either a Newton or Einstein perspective. Indeed, ‘information’ aside, there is now essentially ample and fully conclusive hard evidence that our universe is a plasmatic one, one in which electromagnetic phenomena shape everything, and which phenomena is roughly forty orders of magnitude stronger than gravity, making the latter almost totally impotent, almost totally irrelevant, in regard to any good and proper understanding of ourselves and the demonstrably plasmatic universe in which we live, and move and have our being.
Nice try Julian, but around forty orders of magnitude off the mark.

[SandipChitale]

Hmmm....it is not clear by what Julian means when he says time flows this way (pointing to his right) on our side of the big bang and time flows that way (pointing to his right) on the other side of the big bang. It is not even clear what it even means by time flowing backward or in opposite direction. If the universe changes its configuration from antecedent state to succeeding state, then that is the direction of time. I think it may be that the entropy was decreasing on the other side of the big bang, towards the big bang. But time was still surely flowing towards the big bang. I think linking the direction of time to the increase in entropy causes this confusion. IMO the direction of time is simply, by definition same as the antecedent state -> succeeding state of the universe. I think even if the universe only went back and forth between two states one after the other the time will flow in the same direction.

[DarknessIsThePath]

Just because physicists and others haven't combined QM with General Relativity for about 70 years, doesn't mean that they won't in the next 70 years or years, or create a new model entirely. Sounds a bit like impatience.

[Blackvertigo]

I give you the power of eight technologies, please use them well. Signed Chad Davis.


Entropy is the state at which superposition meets relativity in time and space.

[kjustkses]

The problem with this idea is that you do not get two opposite arrows of time, you just end up with two “universes” with both the same arrow of time.

Unless the other universe of time starts with its death and decreases in entropy.

Smart nonsense.

[ilya]

It would make sense that the universe which is moving backwards in time is mostly antimatter

[petervandenengel]

Funny theory, but since the big bang all time went into the same direction, so there is no alternative universe going into the opposite direction. The thing is entropy does not explain the whole universe, only half of it and asymmetry is build into the system you call symmetry.

[ronjohnson]

also, this theory reminds me of the great lewis carroll's work on and in mirrors.

[zinalarfi]

But if we consider the multiverse hypothesis Janus point would not make sense ?!

[thomaswharton]

Physics is becoming the new religion - no longer science.

[davidabdollahi]

Please, don't call these ideas science. Pseudoscience, metaphysics, mysticism etc... Are better words.