Exploring the Possibility of Space and Matter Existing Without Time (2024)

I was reading on relativity and the speed of light being constant and I thought of a something that seems too farfetched to be even remotely true so I won't throw my homegrown crackpottery at you right now, but I have a question though.

Is it possible to have space and matter without time?

:uhh: this probably sounds like one of the elemetary questions you always see (kinda like "if i was going at C, what would light look like?") but I can't think of anything outside of time and space being together, so I turn to you for help

I think space and time are always present together...
in SR,with a change in measured time,changes also take place in measurements taken in space...(I mean both are relative)

Space and time co-exist

Space without Time = Time without Space.

And that's all I can say (bits of physics philosophy)

yogi said:

Perhaps in a metaphysical sense - but not on these forums

no, i don't mean metaphysical. what I'm thinking of is more of the quantum world

Mentz114 said:

There's no time in LQG. You have to make it up as you go along.
Seriously, with no time it's not possible to define change so the timeless universe just freezes and is of no interest (?)

Are you claiming that there are no changes in LQG and that LQG is of no interest? :rofl:

Certainly not. The two sentences should be taken separately. The first word of the second sentence implies that the line above should not be taken seriously.

I know that in LQG a quantity which always increases can be found, against which to compare other things to define change.

But I think some sort of 'time' is required to define change.

MeJennifer said:

In a way, space-time is space without time.

Mathematically -> 4 dimensions:3 spatial + 1 time(like).
Discard or neglect the time ,and what are you left with is...
Math has no problem with it.
But physics...

tehno said:

Mathematically -> 4 dimensions:3 spatial + 1 time(like).
Discard or neglect the time ,and what are you left with is...
Math has no problem with it.
But physics...

Note that the time axis in space-time is not the same thing as the measure of an observer's proper time.
Since an observer who applies a boost, which is a change to a diferent frame, is semi-rotated in space-time it follows that an observer's measure of time depends on the orientation towards the time axis.

time at c

Ki Man said:

Time stops at c, doesn't it?

Do you consider that we can not synchronize clocks that move with c?:rofl:

time at c

Ki Man said:

Time stops at c, doesn't it?

Do you consider that we can not synchronize clocks that move with c?:rofl:

Do you consider that we can not synchronize clocks that move with c?

I would think that if I could hitch a ride on a photon everything would appear the same right down to our clocks, i.e.. There is nothing out there that says our visible universe could not be seen from "some" vantage point as a photon.

Ki Man said:

I was reading on relativity and the speed of light being constant and I thought of a something that seems too farfetched to be even remotely true so I won't throw my homegrown crackpottery at you right now, but I have a question though.

Is it possible to have space and matter without time?

:uhh: this probably sounds like one of the elemetary questions you always see (kinda like "if i was going at C, what would light look like?") but I can't think of anything outside of time and space being together, so I turn to you for help

Unsurprisingly, there've been an awful lot of responses of dubious value to your question. This is par for the course here in the relativity forum.

However, let me add the following. Many formulations of physics exist that do not make any reference to explicit notions of "time". Perhaps the best known of all of these are those which are based upon Jacobi's interpretation of the action principle. Instead of the usual approach to action principles and their configuration spaces, Jacobi's approach seeks to describe physics in terms of geodesics on a configuration space that correspond to physical motions of constant energy. Interestingly, it turns out that this approach makes no reference whatsoever to external notions of time; indeed, time pops out of your equations as a secondary concept.

Even more interestingly, some really cool research has been done over the past five or so years that suggests that *all* of classical physics (including Einsteinian relativity and pretty much all gauge theories) can be formulated in this timeless manner. It's a pretty hot topic at the moment in some approaches to quantum gravity since it represents perhaps the pinnacle in "relational" physics.

petm1 said:

In my mind, time is the aether, while space is what we measure via EMR.

So we measure space, and time is the aether. I don't suppose you would care to now define aether, and indicate exactly which properties of space we measure with electromagnetic radiation?

So we measure space, and time is the aether. I don't suppose you would care to now define aether, and indicate exactly which properties of space we measure with electromagnetic radiation?

I think of time as being a dimensionless point with the potential for movement, it would only have two possible movements unto itself either expand or contract. Time as dimensionless points, would fill our universe with the potential for movement. While not all points would be expanding, if the majority of these points were, we would have an expanding universe that was not limited to the speed of light but limited to the number of points and the rate at which they were expanding. When you excite one of these dimensionless points into expanding at its maximum of c while also traveling through this aether, it could be thought of as a wave, or visualized as an expanding cone. Either way you can see that what we measure with the movement of one dimensionless point just shows us the time it traveled between some point where it was excited and my detector which is a very limited view of our universe.

Ki Man said:

I was reading on relativity and the speed of light being constant and I thought of a something that seems too farfetched to be even remotely true so I won't throw my homegrown crackpottery at you right now, but I have a question though.

Is it possible to have space and matter without time?

Let me start my home brewed nonsense then. :)

No it is not possible to have space and matter without time. Space only has meaning within time.

The reason why space is around us is because it takes a finite amount of time for light to reach each unique point in space from us and vice versa. Space is formed through time and only exists within the context of time.

Rather than calling it space-time, calling it time-space may be more accurate.

Ki Man said:

I was reading on relativity and the speed of light being constant and I thought of a something that seems too farfetched to be even remotely true so I won't throw my homegrown crackpottery at you right now, but I have a question though.

Is it possible to have space and matter without time?

:uhh: this probably sounds like one of the elemetary questions you always see (kinda like "if i was going at C, what would light look like?") but I can't think of anything outside of time and space being together, so I turn to you for help

my 2 cts: I suppose you can, but if you have space and matter without time, you cannot observe or measure anything about them; because measurements take time.

My final comment should justify inclusion in this discussion, if not, I apologize.

I used to enjoy challenging fundamental laws of physics such as Newton’s and Einstein’s interpretation of gravity. A question that colleagues and tutors never satisfactorily explained was the following. Suppose there are two masses only a few light minutes apart and that a huge number of hydrogen bombs are exploded on the side of one of them such that it is deviated from its’ original path. Does the second mass carry on accelerating in the original direction for a few light minutes, or does it immediately deviate towards the displaced mass? If it carries on accelerating in the original direction where is the force that motivates in that direction? If it deviates immediately has it received information faster than the velocity of light? I have been reading the various papers and comments on Push Gravity, as that seems the neatest way to explain the scenario. I used to be fobbed off with the explanation that it was a distortion of Space-Time, but that raises two further issues. Does the distortion of Space-Time act faster than the velocity of light, and what exactly is meant by the distortion of Space-Time? If an elemental mass is completely isolated from other masses and from any form of electromagnetic radiation that might perturb it there can be no concept of Space or Time (Space and Time only come into existence when there is radiation), so does the elemental mass still have a gravitational field?

Thanks for any comments.

Anarcher.