About Time Two

Synopsis

Having made so much progress in the last century, the science of physics finds itself in a strange position – we understand far more than we ever did but continue to struggle with things that simply don’t fit in with everything else. When confronted with these situations we resort to inventing such things as dark matter and dark energy. Fundamental to these conundrums is our inability to understand what time actually is. This somewhat naïve paper attempts to raise questions about these issues based on our inability to explain what the vacuum energy is and why it’s there.

The source of all movement, Shiva’s dance,
Gives rhythm to the universe.
He dances in evil places, in sacred,
He creates and preserves, destroys and releases.

We are part of this dance, this eternal rhythm,
And woe to us if, blinded by illusions,
We detach ourselves from the dancing cosmos,
This universal harmony…

                                                                                                                                              (Ruth Peel)

Time

Brian Greene waxed elegantly about it in The Elegant Universe; Julian Barbour said it didn’t exist; Steven Hawking almost ignored it in a book that featured it in the title; Michio Kaku talked around it in four hours of television (without getting anywhere) and Brian Cox admitted straight out he didn’t know what it is. Perhaps only Fritjof Capra came near to the truth. It affects us all every minute of every day but how and why? Does it have a mechanism and can we ever hope to understand it?

Alongside this line of thought is an apparently unrelated topic. What is the vacuum energy and does it have a function? Everything in nature appears to be there for some reason. Is it possible that the vacuum energy is real but it has no purpose? Or is it just that we have not (yet) devoted enough attention to it in order to understand what it does?

Wave particle duality is quite well understood and one can take a simplistic view that matter moves as a wave and arrives as a particle hence the phenomena we call decoherence. This is a way of looking at the process in which two particles are required to come into contact with each other in order to become part of the real world. They only do this when their combined probabilities exceed a critical value and they then become real rather than an ethereal wave. As described so clearly in Richard Feynman’s elegant diagrams they are shown in two dimensions but what if a third ingredient is required in order for decoherence to take place? Supposing that the sum of the probabilities of the two particles alone are not enough to bring about collapse of the wave function but a third element is required and that is supplied by the virtual particles which emanate from the vacuum? Instead of:

P(a) + P(b)

we require:

P(a) + P(b) + P(c)

 to exceed the critical value where ‘c’ represents a particle appearing from the vacuum energy. As it has a rhythm which is time related itself, then we have a mechanism by which particles achieve a regulated motion. Whether the appearance of virtual particles is random or has a pattern is, as yet, undiscovered but either way this would not affect our appreciation of time as a random pattern at the quantum scale would not be apparent to us. So how would this affect the fundamental forces of nature?

The Weak Force

If we have a particle which has a very high probability (i.e. it is radioactive) and one from the vacuum energy also with very high potential, the one from the material escapes to decohere with the other thus only two particles are involved instead of three. When an element consists of particles which are ‘heavy’, i.e. it has excess particles and wants to emit some of them as in radioactive decay, then the wave form will be tempted by a high strength particle from the vacuum to collapse and produce a particle which appears to have ‘tunneled’ outside.

Gravity

Despite the second law of thermodynamics, we are happy that the planets are the result of ‘clumping’ due to gravity but then look for ‘get-out-of-jail’ cards in explaining the asteroid belt which should have ‘clumped’ ages ago but still shows no sign of complying. Gravity can be seen as an effect rather than a force without compromising any of Newton’s equations. This ‘effect’ is explained in two conflicting ways – firstly it is the result of ‘gravitons’ flitting back and forth between everything that exhibits mass and, secondly, as an effect whereby matter in motion simply follows the shortest path.

What if something else is involved which does not involve the invention of dark matter? Suppose the vacuum energy is not evenly spread throughout the universe but has extreme variations which involves the ‘clumping’ of matter in places where it is most dense. This would mean that there is little vacuum energy in space but great density where mass exists.

The explanation of matter clumping in the formation of galaxies and planets has always relied on the manufacture of gravitational models that are made to fit the outcome which, as we now see, does not always work; the current focus on dark matter being a case in point. If there are variations in the density of the vacuum energy then this would provide an underlying platform where matter particles would tend to decohere resulting in clumping. Whether such variations are by accident or design is another point for consideration but it is a scenario which could also explain the property whereby virtually all celestial bodies spin.

As this tends toward the assumption of an underlying intelligence, it seems unlikely that it will ever gain a hold with the scientific community.

Electro-magnetism

The equations of electro-magnetism have been around for over a century thanks to the inspired work of James Clerk Maxwell and Albert Einstein so we can calculate what happens but do we understand why it happens? Field theory provides mechanisms but not explanations. But what if the processes involved in electro-magnetism create a disturbance in the vacuum energy which is felt at distance? Could that create an effect in the surrounding area which is then felt back in our real world?

Dark Energy

As you get older time seems to speed up so that the years pass by more quickly. But what if this is true for mankind? Or even for the universe itself?

The rate of technological advancement due to scientific discoveries is seen to be accelerating. Consider the millions of years before the development in homo sapiens and how things started to speed up with mans’ adaptation of his environment.

• The stone age
• The bronze age
• The iron age
• The steel/steam age
• The electrical age
• And now: the electronic age

What next – the quantum age?

This seems to indicate that something else is going on with nature and time. If time is dependent on the vacuum energy, as we have proposed, then we don’t have any control over it. Our tools to measure time depend as much on decoherence as everything else so if it was not constant, would it be immediately apparent to us? Is there a possible clue in astrophysics. Since Hubble came up with his observations, we have measured red shift and come up with the conclusion that, not only is the universe expanding, but it is accelerating.

This is anathema to steady state proponents so an alternative paradigm is suggested. Suppose the rate at which the vacuum energy propagates is increasing, then it would now be faster than it was in past and the further back in time that we go, the slower time would have passed. If we look at light that was emitted in the past then its frequency  would appear to be shifted in a negative direction – hence red shift. And the more distance it has to travel, the greater the difference in the rate of time and hence the greater the shift in frequency.

The universe is not expanding – time is speeding up.

Time Travel

The disappointing thing about this theory is that it means that time travel is impossible. If the process of decoherence is dependent upon an underlying vacuum energy, then the sequence of particles is a one-off. That pattern of the vacuum energy has happened and will not recur hence the past is the past and never to be repeated. The patterns for the future have not yet happened and so the future will not be visitable.

A GUT Feeling

The search for a Grand Unifying Theory has occupied the minds of great scientists over many years and now the concentration is on string theory to bring together the macro and micro scales. Whilst these investigations will, no doubt, lead to new discoveries, is it possible that research into the vacuum energy would bring about wholesale revision of our model of reality?

PWS, April 2020, based on earlier papers: The Dance of Shiva (2005) and About Time (2014)