How Space and Time Fuse Together to Form “Spacetime”

originally posted by: TrollMagnet

originally posted by: beyondknowledge2
a reply to: TrollMagnet

When you have two measurements changing, how exactly do you measure ether against the other? The distance alone changing would affect your time measurement as much as if the time alone changing would change your distance measurement.

Also your energy and heat relationship is nonsense because heat is energy. What you stated is like saying food has a relationship to a hamburger. The hamburger, in most cases, is in fact food.

If you had a better understanding of mathematics you wouldn't be confused. The variations in measurements is exactly what you use calculus for. This is why physicists are very good at math for the most part. What i said is true whether you can wrap your head around it or not

If I take the position that you’re right, I then have to be able to square that against a number of other points raised in this thread. That’s hard to do.

And, for that matter, for all the high-level mathing that’s allegedly going on we still (officially) don’t understand gravity to a great degree. So, that tells me the models are either incomplete, wrong, or stuck.

Personally, I think much of science has gone about as far as it can without a much better understanding of gravity - or at least physics. That tells me the models/methods/trains of thought everyone is using likely won’t get to a better understanding of gravity soon.

It will require some people to look at it all very differently. Some have (Tesla and Russel, for example) to see a giant leap forward.

Which is why I think exploring time as a medium, for instance, is not only interesting but also will require a willingness to come at a lot of long-held beliefs from a much different perspective.

I think of it like treating science more like art, and art more like science. Would be cool to see that someday.

My speeding fines do exist.

Time and space are not made from any physical particles, matter or energy that we are aware off. Time space is a real constraint on how all these particles, matter and energies interact.

originally posted by: kwakakev
My speeding fines do exist.

Time and space are not made from any physical particles, matter or energy that we are aware off. Time space is a real constraint on how all these particles, matter and energies interact.

I appreciate you noting “that we’re aware of”.

In the way you present it, yeah, I agree with you.

My thinking says there’s a reasonably high probability we are missing something, misinterpreted data, or just flat out refuse to see outside of the boxes we built.

One of the reasons I say that…

When it comes to understanding “g” in some detail, we simply don’t. Yet, oddly, we built an entire system and set of understanding around the other side unknown thing we call gravity. The one thing that effects everything is the least understood.

And by that I mean, we don’t know how to neutralize it.

If we can neutralize gravity, a lot of the impossible becomes possible.

So if we could figure out G and rebuild everything from the perspective of understanding gravity far better, many of our equations might look different - the math is right when gravity is the unknown constant, but not when gravity is known and you build from it. Two different starting points.

a reply to: wiredcerebellum

Aether is the missing ingredient. When they took that away, these theories from the past lost their logic (my opinion).

originally posted by: EmmanuelGoldstein
a reply to: wiredcerebellum

Aether is the missing ingredient. When they took that away, these theories from the past lost their logic (my opinion).

What is the Aether exactly?

Aether is the missing ingredient. When they took that away, these theories from the past lost their logic (my opinion).

What is the Aether exactly?

No wait, that's ether.

Couldn't resist.

originally posted by: Degradation33

Aether is the missing ingredient. When they took that away, these theories from the past lost their logic (my opinion).

What is the Aether exactly?

No wait, that's ether.

Couldn't resist.

I expected no better.

a reply to: VulcanWerks

When it comes to understanding “g” in some detail... we don’t know how to neutralize it.

That is a tough one to crack. With the ET / space tech situation it has been classified up the wazoo. If you do find some way to crack 'g' get ready for a lot of hot attention.

With how I currently see it, gravity is a byproduct of mass on a large scale. Mass is caused by matter dragging through space.

Good on you trying to understand and discussing how you see things. There are some smart cookies around here that can help polish some ideas up at times.

As for saying a 3D being cannot understand a 4D environment, we do live in a 4D environment. I know it can be tough trying to make sense of this world at times, keep at it and the picture does get clearer.

originally posted by: VulcanWerks

originally posted by: TrollMagnet

originally posted by: beyondknowledge2
a reply to: TrollMagnet

When you have two measurements changing, how exactly do you measure ether against the other? The distance alone changing would affect your time measurement as much as if the time alone changing would change your distance measurement.

Also your energy and heat relationship is nonsense because heat is energy. What you stated is like saying food has a relationship to a hamburger. The hamburger, in most cases, is in fact food.

If you had a better understanding of mathematics you wouldn't be confused. The variations in measurements is exactly what you use calculus for. This is why physicists are very good at math for the most part. What i said is true whether you can wrap your head around it or not

If I take the position that you’re right, I then have to be able to square that against a number of other points raised in this thread. That’s hard to do.

And, for that matter, for all the high-level mathing that’s allegedly going on we still (officially) don’t understand gravity to a great degree. So, that tells me the models are either incomplete, wrong, or stuck.

Personally, I think much of science has gone about as far as it can without a much better understanding of gravity - or at least physics. That tells me the models/methods/trains of thought everyone is using likely won’t get to a better understanding of gravity soon.

It will require some people to look at it all very differently. Some have (Tesla and Russel, for example) to see a giant leap forward.

Which is why I think exploring time as a medium, for instance, is not only interesting but also will require a willingness to come at a lot of long-held beliefs from a much different perspective.

I think of it like treating science more like art, and art more like science. Would be cool to see that someday.

I feel i am trying to explain a concept to a class of kids who don't understand the concepts required to understand the answer to their question.

We are moving through spacetime right now. The earth is moving us through it no matter what, even if it stand still. If the galaxy stopped rotating and the earth came to a stop, time would stop and nothing would happen. But if that happened and you moved you would experience time.

You are always traveling with constant speed. When you stand still you are traveling through time and space. If the speed is directed so as to carry you through space then the component remaining to carry you through time is diminished. If the speed is entirely used to carry you through space, (at the speed of light), there is nothing left to carry you through time.

Your arguing about spacetime being real is arguing against relativity being real. Relativity is correct even if it doesn't work for quanta, that's just a limit of our math. If you put an atomic watch on a plane and have the plane fly around, the clock with come back slow.

Without math, or a bunch of pictures and videos is really hard to explain this.

I suggest anyone who does not get it read the theory of relativity (it was written for normal people to understand) and purchase a book called thinking physics which covers all of this in depth with pictures and thought experiments.

Spacetime is the ether of our reality.

Anyone who does not understand the fact that time and space are interconnected needs to read up more before arguing about it. It's a very simple thought experiment and all covered in the 1st 1/3 of the theory of relativity which you can find for free in pdf on Google

a reply to: TrollMagnet

I also want to add, if you do read the theory of relativity, it will give you a lifetime of something to think about because of how much it applies to. You tube videos and things like that leave out the most important parts which is that Einstein setup thought experiments so that you can come to the conclusion yourselves, and they take time to think about and grasp. You don't need to understand the super crazy math to understand what he is getting at. If you were able to do differential geometry already
you wouldn't be reading this thread.

Here is the theory pdf for free: www.ibiblio.org...

originally posted by: quintessentone
New theories...what do space and time emerge from?

Matt does a good job in that video of explaining some of the history of our concepts of space and time and how we got to where we are at today, a relativity based understanding.

originally posted by: TrollMagnet
Spacetime is the ether of our reality.

Einstein actually said that his relativity theory includes a "new ether", and of course the term "new ether" didn't stick, and now we call it space-time. It does have properties, but they are quite different from those of the luminiferous ether concept which preceded relativity.

Relativity has certainly earned its place of respect as a valuable model which fits observations well, but it may not be the ultimate theory, and to possibly develop a better theory, there are theoretical physicists like Nima-Arkani Hamed saying things like "Space-time is doomed" meaning that some more advanced theory in the future may not use the same concept of space-time that we use today. If anyone is interested in a theoretical physicist's thinking on this, you could listen to what he says about that but it's rather esoteric, theoretical physics stuff, not as geared toward the layperson as the PBS space-time video above by Matt. Nima starts talking at time 3:45, you can skip the introduction before that.

Nima Arkani-Hamed: The End of Space-Time

So space-time is an interesting topic which according to some theorists is doomed, but for the layperson, I don't think you need to worry about that too much until the theoretical physicists actually prove their case for that, if ever. When Nima says space-time is doomed, it's not because he doesn't understand it, rather he says it's part of the spectacularly successful theory of relativity:

But the goal of theoretical physicists is to come up with an even more spectacularly successful model in the future, which may or may not include space-time as we know it.

Regarding the opening post, here's where it goes off the rails:

originally posted by: wiredcerebellum
But wait, if space is literally the absence of matter (has zero physical properties) and time also has no physical properties either, how can the two “fuse” together to form a 4-dimensional structure that can bend and ripple like a physical fabric?

When you say space is the absence of matter which has no properties, the absence of matter part is correct, but the has no properties part, according to relativity, is incorrect.

What physicists do is make models of how they think nature works, then they make observations to see if nature is observed behaving in a manner consistent with the models. In the case of relativity, the model posits that space has properties (that space-time has properties too), and nature is observed behaving in a manner consistent with the model. So if you want to say that model is "wrong" in some way, maybe it is, but you can't stop there and expect anybody to throw a successful model like relativity away without anything to replace it.

George Box said "all models are wrong, some are useful" which is probably true. So in order to throw the space-time away in relativity like Nima Arkani-Hamed and some other theoretical physicists want to do, unlike the OP, they plan to come up with something better to replace it. The opening post basically reads like "I don't understand the model. It doesn't make any sense to say that "nothing' can have properties, therefore it must be wrong", which is not a very good reason to toss it, especially since the OP doesn't discuss any replacement model which explains observations better. So really physics is about having models and seeing if nature behaves according to those models, that's it. Space having properties isn't the only model some people don't like; some aspects of quantum mechanics models are even harder to process intellectually, and maybe we don't even really understand WHY nature does what it does, but we can say here's the model we have developed, and observations are consistent with the model.

We can also say, if you have a better model, let's see the evidence for it. So far I haven't seen evidence for better models than the models we have, but theoretical physicists are working on them, and time will tell if and when they come up with something better, and when they do, spacetime as we know it now, may or may not be part of the more advanced model.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

But what about this? youtu.be...

a reply to: wiredcerebellum

I think the problem may be down to the 2-dimensional nature of the analogy.

Spacetime is not paper, and in the context of Einstein's theory of general relativity, its a four-dimensional continuum.

a reply to: andy06shake
Exactly. The youtube video takes an analogy too literally. It's true what we see on popular science shows on television portrays the "fabric" of spacetime as a sheet, though usually it's a rubbery, stretchy sheet, and not paper. But neither of those analogies can be taken too literally. Another analogy physicists use is to say the galaxies moving away from each other are like the raisins in raisin bread dough moving away from each other as the bread bakes. You can similarly find lots of ways in which the universe is nothing like the raisin bread analogy.

Taking it one step further, we can say that EVERY analogy fails to accurately represent what it is being compared to at some point. That is just the nature of analogies, and someone really needs to explain this to that you-tuber to not take the analogies too literally, whatever they are.

The phenomenon he's not understanding well is called "frame-dragging". Here's an article about some evidence found of frame-dragging near a black hole:

Evidence found that spinning black holes drag spacetime

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Avid Star Trek fans--and physicists--have known that spacetime gets distorted near certain galactic objects, but now they have more precise information about the way that distortion works near spinning black holes. Researchers led by an MIT scientist recently obtained the first observational evidence that massive, rotating black holes in our galaxy drag space and time around with them as they gather matter into their spiral, much as a twister picks up objects in its path.

They switched analogies, instead of saying it's like a fabric sheet, they say the phenomenon around a black hole is like a twister, but of course it's not exactly like either of those nor any other analogy. The twister analogy at least solves the problem of the sheet of paper getting stuck, and the fact the rest of the universe doesn't have to rotate with the twister, but in spite of that I wouldn't take that analogy too literally either.

a reply to: wiredcerebellum

What if "spacetime" is neither space, nor time, nor a fusion/combination of both? But just a confusing term invented by Einstein in a somewhat poor attempt at explaining the concept of relativity (or a specific aspect of it)? So that the phenomenon of relativity exists, but no actual spacetime (edit: as a fusion of space and time, cause just because there is a relation between space and time as the perception of either is affected by and dependent on the relative conditions and position of the observer, does not mean that a fusion of space and time, i.e. spacetime, itself exists, other than as a mental construct, "a mathematical model" as mentioned in the definition you used, more on that below; come to think of it, I think the term "spacetime" is just meant to refer to, and short for, "space-time relativity", so if you think it through, it's actually space-time-observer relativity, there's no actual fusion of these 3 things going on here, they're just all involved when you want to explain the phenomenon of relativity in this context).

Does that make more sense? Just a thought, I don't know if that's the right way to describe it. But ever since I first read Einstein's research on relativity and came across the term "space-time", I've felt like something like that was going on. The concept of "spacetime" as it is often thought of now (as being some kind of combination or fusion of both*, without the "-" it encourages that impression), doesn't seem to actually exist. *: keep in mind that mathematical models exist as mental constructs, which is a different type of existence than for example space, or "the 3 dimensions of space". Time is so weird (the odd one out) that I thought it best not to use that one as an example here, but I think the same point still counts for time vs a mathematical model such as space-time.

Note also the differences between the definition you quoted, where it is specifically pointed out that it is a mathematical model (and it's the model that does the fusing, i.e. the person proposing or using the model, it's not space and time that have fused together in reality, it's just thought of as such to account for the phenomenon of relativity, for the purpose of more accurate calculations and for depicting relativity visually), and the way they describe it on the wikipedia page for "the theory of relativity". The latter giving much more the impression that space and time are actually fused together and exist as spacetime (a fusion of both):

It introduced concepts including 4-dimensional spacetime as a unified entity of space and time, ...

originally posted by: Arbitrageur
a reply to: andy06shake
...

Evidence found that spinning black holes drag spacetime

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Avid Star Trek fans--and physicists--have known that spacetime gets distorted near certain galactic objects, ...

In light of my previous comment, if one were to re-phrase the bolded part to "relativity works differently near certain galactic objects", would one still be talking about the same subject?

Space and time?
the old film reals have lots of little photos.
each one is Space, no time.
reactions occur and you get the next frame in time.
Like a running film!

years ago people thought seeing this
moving film was magic or witch craft.
We know better now.
but you still see space And time as magic or witch craft.

Four-dimensional space-time: In the theory of relativity, space and time are considered as two aspects of the same four-dimensional structure, which is called "space-time". This space-time has three spatial dimensions (length, width, height) and one time dimension. Thus, it describes the physical environment in four dimensions.

a reply to: whereislogic

Well according to Einstein's theory of general theory of relativity, space-time gets distorted in the presence of mass and energy.

Or in other words, massive objects, like planets, stars, and black holes, cause space-time to curve around them, and this distortion is responsible for the gravitational effects we can observe.

Einstein's theory of general relativity has been confirmed through numerous experiments and observations.

It's pretty much a fundamental concept in modern physics and cosmology.