Does Spacetime Exist?

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Einstein told us that space bends and time dilates. Space contracts parallel to the direction of motion. This always sounded sort of far fetched to me. Since it is motion of material matter that changes space and time, could we just say that space and time are immaterial artifacts of motion, like the wake of a boat in water, like somebody here said. Space and time might be seen as measures of motion, much as the time evolution of a pendulum through phase space (a space in which all possible states of a system are represented).

Then there's the problem of entanglement (spooky action at a distance), where changing something in a particle right here also affects an entangled particle way the hell over there. Is there really any space between them? Are they really the same thing when seen from say, a fourth dimension (a horseshoe shape would be something like two circles in 2 dimensions)?

Yet, in deep space, we are told that vacuum energy (like the energy created inside the wine bottle when you are pulling out the cork) constantly forms particles which immediately annihilate. So can we say that spacetime does not exist? What exists is a vacuum energy which, from our point of view, looks like expanding space (as witnessed by Hubble's Doppler red shift). So vacuum energy is experienced as space and time by us. It is all part of how consciousness constructs our picture everything, based only on what we can sense with our inadequate 5 sensual tracts.

Why is a frame of reference that permits a different view more "real" than our typical frame of reference.

No frame is privileged. Our perspective is as real as any other.

Time dilation has been experimentally confirmed.

To be more precise, there is no preferred inertial reference frame when making certain physical measurements.

The motion of the observer in an inertial reference frame does not change space-time -- it changes the measurements he makes of space-time. Those aren't the same thing.

Correct. The measurement is not the thing being measured. Measurements only describe what they measure.

I think I must either be misunderstanding you, or have missed the logical connection. How could the wake of water in a boat be an "immaterial artifact of motion"? The water is material, and it is moving due to the motion of another body within/atop it. The motion of water in such a configuration is what we call the 'wake'. The only way I am able to make sense of this is if you are saying the concept of a wake is immaterial because the only material substance present is the moving water (i.e. there is no matter which we can look at and say it's composed of particles of 'wake'), but if this is what you mean then one could make the same argument about wind (there are only air particles moving). And if you then would say wind is also an immaterial artefact of motion, the issue becomes more of a discussion over whether or not we should use nouns to describe a collection of particles moving in a certain manner, since I suppose they can give the impression we are talking about a new substance when we are instead describing a certain state (not in the way it is technically used) of another substance. But in the end, no matter how we refer to it, we are describing a real, material thing: moving particles.



If quantum entanglement is actually the result of a higher-dimensional object existing and our ability only to view it in three dimensions (I have never read anything postulating this, although it is an interesting idea), the question becomes: our ability to view it in three dimensions of what? Similarly with what you say about a potential fourth dimension; it would be a fourth dimension of space, producing a five dimensional spacetime.



I think I've really missed something here--I don't see how the vacuum energy would lead one to conclude that spacetime doesn't exist. The particles form and annihilate one another within spacetime. Could you further explain your reasoning here?

There doesn't seem to be any evidence, of which I am aware, that suggests spacetime doesn't exist. The evidence which suggests it does exist as a real thing is that it has its own behaviours, specifically curvature via general relativity. If something is able to go from one configuration to another and react to other things which we know are material, then it seems logical to conclude that it is a real thing and not just a definition or a conception we create to explain other phenomena. It's also worthwhile to note that even if spacetime weren't material, i.e. it turns out to be composed of something more bosonic than fermionic (this is not to say you can actually separate 'matter' from 'not matter' in this clear-cut way), that wouldn't mean it didn't exist. Photons are immaterial (not made of matter) but definitely exist.

Quantum entanglement of particles can be a tricky thing to fully understand, as one particle may have multiple entanglements over many dimensions (some higher, some lower) and over great distances (ie. across the universe). That part will make them much harder to sort out experimentally. Unfortunately, it is not always a simple two particle relationship in the same dimension.

Thank you for the comments, sailiamont.

How could the wake of water in a boat be an "immaterial artifact of motion"?

Well, if you look at the wake relative to the boat, no water is involved. It's like the hull of the boat rides above the water, imparting energy to the water via its motion. When you look at the wake from the perspective of the water, no boat is involved, and the wake is pure information; live information on a dynamic arrangement of water molecules. I think the human brain works that way too; just substitute neurons for water molecules and cascades of firing neurons for wakes.

But in all honesty, I did not have a logical connection between wakes and spacetime I used it to try to illustrate the idea of emergence; because I think I want to argue that spacetime is an emergent property that happens whenever a subject consciousness perceives an object. In order to view it as separate, we insert spacetime between ourselves and other things. But I think that quantum entanglement may be telling us subject and object are one. Maybe spacetime is just an artificial construct which allows us to perceive subject/object.


If quantum entanglement is actually the result of a higher-dimensional object existing and our ability only to view it in three dimensions (I have never read anything postulating this, although it is an interesting idea), the question becomes: our ability to view it in three dimensions of what? Similarly with what you say about a potential fourth dimension; it would be a fourth dimension of space, producing a five dimensional spacetime.

Dimensionality of spacetime is an artificial construct (dimensions) atop another artificial construct (spacetime). I think that we create the idea in our consciousness.


I think I've really missed something here--I don't see how the vacuum energy would lead one to conclude that spacetime doesn't exist.

Maybe what we perceive as spacetime could be our conscious interpretation of cosmic vacuum energy. I see it as similar to how human vision renders the depth dimension by computing the relative images delivered by the two eyes.


There doesn't seem to be any evidence, of which I am aware, that suggests spacetime doesn't exist.

Logically, you can't prove a negative. There is no evidence that God doesn't exist, so based on that lack of evidence, should we conclude that he does?

The evidence which suggests it does exist as a real thing is that it has its own behaviours, specifically curvature via general relativity.

Wakes have their own behaviors too. So by the same token, they are things. General Relativity is just a theory. Just like Newtonian physics before it, there may be areas where the theory doesn't work. We know Relativity is one refinement of Newton. Maybe Einstein will be clarified. And as always with maths; do they depict nature (we can do maths with a zillion physical dimensions but that doesn't mean these dimensions exist)?

QuantumChemist

Quantum entanglement of particles can be a tricky thing to fully understand, as one particle may have multiple entanglements over many dimensions (some higher, some lower) and over great distances (ie. across the universe). That part will make them much harder to sort out experimentally. Unfortunately, it is not always a simple two particle relationship in the same dimension.

I would suppose, that if we believe in the Big Bang theory, that everything would be entangled, having begun as a single point of zero dimensions. But I am not aware of any evidence that everything in the universe is entangled. I wonder how that works.

Max1951: the clarifications were helpful. Is your idea, in summary, that spacetime curvature is an emergent property of the behaviour of the vacuum energy, as well as spacetime itself being a sort of axiomatic construct we use to be able to perceive other objects as separate from ourselves, and the reason we perceive the vacuum energy behaviour as a "curving spacetime" is due to the limits and structure of our relevant perceptive senses?

Please understand that my knowledge of physics is quite rudimentary, meaning I am not (yet) a physicist. While I have read about and watched public lectures discussing quantum field theories, modern cosmology and astrophysics, etc., my mathematical knowledge is only of a second-year university level (I've taught myself this from the Feynman lectures and via the internet).

Some more clarification here: is your suggestion just that spacetime (as per Einstein's theories) doesn't exist, or that the original ideas of space and time do not exist? (I have thus far assumed you meant both.)



I see. You were simply using the language with which most are familiar (i.e. dimensional) to illustrate a point, but in reality you didn't mean "dimensions", because your idea is one were spacial dimensions do not exist. If it were true that spacetime did not exist (this is not to say I think it is true, but supposing for a moment that it were), it would become very difficult to communicate. For example, even in your original argument you used the word "motion", which is something that presupposes space and time. This is why I said "axiomatic" at the beginning of this post: space and time as ideas in physics are just assumed, largely because the way we speak about physics requires there to be space and time. Of course this doesn't mean it actually exists, being that it's difficult to discuss quantum physics in non-mathematical terms (as I'm told) because the quantum realm doesn't work in the same way our intuitive ideas of the physical world (and therefore our language) works, but nonetheless quantum mechanics is experimentally verified and thus real. It's like when people try to talk about something non-temporally--it's extraordinarily difficult.



No we should not. What I said was in context; when there is no evidence in support of something, the null hypothesis is that it does not exist. However, once there is evidence suggesting something does indeed exist, then for one to conclude that it doesn't exist one must either give evidence suggesting it doesn't exist (while one cannot prove a negative, one can provide evidence for a negative) or discredit the evidence suggesting that it does. This is why I said what I did: because there is evidence for spacetime via general relativity (which is experimentally verified), and thus the hypothesis is no longer the null one. Your suggestion, it would seem, is that general relativity is not necessarily evidence for the existence of spacetime, because you're proposing the curvature is due to our perception rather than the real behaviour of some physical thing. This is very interesting.



Well, there already is an area where the theory doesn't work (quantum gravity). You are right in that the idea of space and time, at least until Einstein, was largely something whose existence was just assumed because it seemed correct intuitively. As a paradigm so ingrained into the way physics is done and discussed, it would be very difficult to contemplate what the field would look like if it didn't exist. I'm sorry to say that I don't have enough knowledge to know whether there's some piece of evidence refuting your idea or supporting it in quantum mechanics, specifically in relation to quantum entanglement, but that being said it is always important not to let the fact that something has always been accepted as real/true to pretend to be evidence for it (because of course it isn't; people have believed in a god for a long time, but this doesn't mean one exists). And as far as whether all mathematics represent real physical things: some physicists think this, although it seems a bit difficult to believe.

Do you have any mathematical representations of your ideas, or are they more in their infancy? (I probably wouldn't understand them if you did, but I'm interested nonetheless.)

sailiamont,

Is your idea, in summary, that spacetime curvature is an emergent property of the behaviour of the vacuum energy, as well as

The only reason that I brought up spacetime curvature was that you mentioned it as an indication that spacetime must exist. To that, I replied, basically, that s/t curvature could be a figment of our imagination or hokum maths. Being capable of remembering things, we are forced to have an illusory concept of the past. Having a past leads us to another illusory concept; that there is a future. A universe sans time would be a stationary block. No space, no time, no movement.

spacetime itself being a sort of axiomatic construct we use to be able to perceive other objects as separate from ourselves,

Exactly. I think our mind might be inserting spacetime between our subjective consciousness and the object of our consciousness, perhaps to facilitate exploration of relationships.


Please understand that my knowledge of physics is quite rudimentary, meaning I am not (yet) a physicist.

I'm a retired computer applications designer, who became interested in Physics about 10 years ago. All physics requires a conscious observer to measure, so I read some stuff on consciousness, and it led to all kinds of interesting ideas. At least, they are interesting to me. Speaking Aspie, I perseverate on this stuff.


Some more clarification here: is your suggestion just that spacetime (as per Einstein's theories) doesn't exist, or that the original ideas of space and time do not exist? (I have thus far assumed you meant both.)

The idea I'm exploring is that spacetime is an artifact of consciousness, meaning that it doesn't physically exist "out there", but only in our heads. And additionally, we can not get outside our heads to empirically observe anything. Despite all its practical applications, we developed Physics based on what we subjectively observe. All the quantum weirdness out there might be telling us that we do not see clearly. We might be misled by optical and other sensory illusions.


I see. You were simply using the language with which most are familiar (i.e. dimensional) to illustrate a point, but in reality you didn't mean "dimensions", because your idea is one were spacial dimensions do not exist.

Yes. And not just spatial dimensions. I see Time as questionable as well. They are subjective concepts, but where is the proof that they exist? Why do we have to accept the Big Bang theory? Perhaps the universe is still the zero dimensional unity.

If it were true that spacetime did not exist (this is not to say I think it is true, but supposing for a moment that it were), it would become very difficult to communicate.

How would our senses ever be able to handle any subject/object relationship, without artificially setting them up as discrete things.

For example, even in your original argument you used the word "motion", which is something that presupposes space and time.

You got me, there. Obviously, if there is no space nor time, there can be no motion across space and time. Nothing ever happens. Everything that was ever considered past or future is sucked into the present and we have a universe that our mind can not handle without inserting space and time, which makes motion an artificial construct of our consciousness.

Your suggestion, it would seem, is that general relativity is not necessarily evidence for the existence of spacetime, because you're proposing the curvature is due to our perception rather than the real behaviour of some physical thing. This is very interesting.

Exactly. And I'm not saying that Relativity is any more wrong than Newton. Both have their applications. Just that perhaps we misinterpret or overlook something in how we see relativity working, just as Newton overlooked relativity.

And as far as whether all mathematics represent real physical things: some physicists think this, although it seems a bit difficult to believe...Do you have any mathematical representations of your ideas, or are they more in their infancy? (I probably wouldn't understand them if you did, but I'm interested nonetheless.)

Whenever I read about Chaos Theory and Fractals, it seems to me that all our current maths are built to solve the easy stuff. You simply can't be exact and say this is 1 and this is 2, when there are an infinite number of fractions between 1 and 2; when is it really exactly 1 or 2; how carefully will you measure? At what scope or level will you take measurements at? How can you trust your senses, when we know they make errors?. You simply can't say what the coastline of England is, because you can always measure smaller and smaller features down to the quantum level. I don't use maths much, except in finance. I think that Chaos theory is leading us to a more comprehensive, analog math. Perhaps you've heard of Stephan Wolfram's New Kind of Science, where he employs simple iterated rules in a Turing Machine to print out Cellular Automata resembling tree leaves, snail shells, and other objects found in nature?
Here is an article I read today on this subject.

http://www.livescience.com/51465-the-illusion-of-time.html

If you would use proper forum quotes, that would be far easier to read and understand. Enough so that I might try to read it. As it is, it is so distracting trying to figure out what you said and what you are responding to that it just isn't worth the trouble.

eric,

Hmmm...I had so much fun writing the post that I never thought about my readers. I tried to edit the post but couldn't do it. I tried to write it from the top and had trouble including more than one quote in the post. So that didn't work for me. If you are interested in reading it, maybe i can include the post I was replying to and insert my comments in bold or something, and send it by some off board means. Or, alternatively, you might want to try to educate me as to how to do what should be done. But, perhaps your interest has waned by now. Sorry for the frustration I may have caused you and others trying to decipher my jumble.

Einstein's theory involves large celestial bodies, that contain a large amount of mass. Bodies of large mass dialate time.
There's ridiculous amount of irrelevant math involving "1 inch higher than" math. It's almost like trying to measurements, as you enter a black hole. The numbers could possible determined, but are uncomprehensively minuscule.

Timespace does exist. The clocks on space stations run stations run slower due to this.

Time seems to flow more slowly for any mass-possessing object in motion because time is considered another dimension of space in the block universe. So, just as you don't get as far North by traveling Northeast for a given time, you don't travel as far in time, when you are also traversing space concurrently.




Sorry diminished57, I do not know what you mean by "1 inch higher than" math.




Sorry diminished57, I failed to pick up your point here. Spaghettification happens when you go down a black hole. As for taking measurements, I say that they are never right because they are never exact, and when you have an iterative system, even .00001 can be very significant. At say 50k iterations =(1.00001)^50,000, which is approximately 1.64. If you had dropped the .00001, as being insignificant (I mean we can calculate only a finite number of digits in a fraction and need a number of decimal places to cut off at), you would have missed the 64% increase in the value. For deterministic Chaos, (when we know the outcome but not the path by which the outcome was reached) we are making some headway in Chaos Theory. Chaos Theory can predict the path for a very short span, which is useful in getting around the infinitely long fractional values. But we can't predict anything in non-deterministic Chaos. I'm not sure that any of this was on point, but you can't say I didn't try



The clocks in any moving object, run slower than those in a stationary object because their motion is distributed among the 3 spatial dimensions plus the time dimension. The more you go through space, the less you go through time, and vice versa. I have used the words "time" and "space" in this post because I need to address the concepts. But I feel that time and space are properties of consciousness, not of any physical thing. Why? Because by giving us a memory, we know what happened and what will happen. Time is nothing more than that information in our consciousness.

In what would our consciousness exist, if in anything? And if it does not exist in any sort of consciousness-space, does it exist at all? Even a stationary block is something which exists either inside a space or as the space itself (if it is the universe, as you say). I was about to say no space, time, or movement would be nothing, and in almost all senses of the word it is nothing, however that doesn't necessarily mean physical laws wouldn't exist or that there'd be no phenomena. Obviously what you're proposing is not that there are no phenomena at all, because there evidently are in reality, and in what you have said the phenomena of consciousness is required. Perhaps you're suggesting that there are only the various fields required to produce the matter that creates consciousness, and the fields do not exist "in" something, i.e. the fields themselves are the entirety of the universe (kind of like when physicists produce universe models and people ask "what's outside the model"; the answer is, of course, that "outside the model" is like "north of the north pole").



And your idea about this is that discontinuity doesn't exist physically, just as there are always an infinite number of fractions between two apparently discrete numbers on a number line. So if one were to look at a tree and some air beside the tree, one can never really say "here is where the tree ends and the air begins", because you can always measure on a smaller scale. And then when one adds in the idea of quantum mechanics this becomes even more so the case, because even what seems to be a discrete particle is actually a probability curve from the wavefunction, and therefore is very much continuous. So the concept is basically that one cannot really draw a true distinction between 'oneself' and 'the object', because neither things are actually discrete in the way we tend to think they are.



I'm 17 and beginning university in the fall, where I'm going to study mathematical physics (with the intention of becoming a physicist). It's interesting to me, also.



But your suggestion isn't simply the old metaphysical idea which said that there's no such thing as the 'matter', but only the 'mind' (i.e. Bishop Berkeley, who had ridiculous philosophies), correct? You do think there are physical phenomena that are real, and you don't think we're all some sort of spiritual/ethereal oneness (or whatever the folk who believe stuff like that tend to think)? I just need to be clear on this aspect.



I have no idea. I'm fairly certain there isn't currently enough of an understanding of consciousness to know for sure. The subject/object relationship as it is now defined likely requires the subject and object to be separate, but these things change as our understanding of the physical reality changes. Case in point: a single thing was always defined as something at a single place in space, but we now know one thing can be in many places in space at once.



In a way, what you're saying sounds like the four dimensional static spacetime of relativity (in which each event is a static thing that exists at a certain 4D coordinate). Everything all exists at the same time (not really time, but this is just the limit of using language to describe a maths concept) in the 4D graph/universe. I realize the analogy is very flawed given that the theory requires spacetime, but the way you have just described it there made my brain draw the parallel.



I haven't, but thank you for the link; it sounds very interesting and I love to spend all the time I'm able learning about this sort of thing.