UKC

Seems like NASA want to create a Time Zone for the moon because of gravity differences. This is big stuff way above me little brain.

But does gravity affect time, or does gravity affect our instruments that measure the passage of time?

Is time what we call something spinning around and then count those 360 degree spins or how many times same falls from one glass to another sort of thing, and time does not exist other than a concept created by us?

From personal experience, there is very definitely a relationship between time and gravity; as I have got older, gravity's pull has become stronger.

Also, drinking things with a higher specific gravity makes achieving a vertical position more difficult.  This is why climbers should stay off the pop, as it's hard enough already getting up some climbs even without consuming more gravity.

T.

I love looking into all this stuff.

Time isn't our invention but there's a more fundamental way of understanding the universe which our senses don't have access to, and when the universe is viewed as a whole, the passage of time may well be an illusion. Time is just a dimension of spacetime, you pass through time just as you pass through space and there is no universal now just as there is no universal here.

At the scale in which our senses feel the passage of time, that passage of time is a real concept independent of us and our instruments.

The speed of time is not universal though and gravity is one of the factors that affects this. Under conditions of infinite gravity (a black hole) there is no passage of time, and this is not just our measuring equipment ceasing to function.

So on the moon where gravity is reduced the passage of time will really be faster. Our senses won't notice but our measuring equipment will be sensitive enough for this to matter.

I remember in the olden days that time dilation occurs in caves. Waiting your turn at the foot of a wet pitch in sodden clothing time would drag out. As the surface was approached (and last orders loomed) time would accelerate and watches noticeably speed up. Sadly, we never recorded any data but it definitely happens.

It can't be created by us per se, as surely it must be a concept shared in the main by all sentient beings.

I'd see it as something which is integrally and causally connected with the physical world, so more like your spinning dial or falling sand explanation.

However, the rate of spinning dials (or more usefully atomic clocks - falling sand definitely not!) appears to depend on gravity, which explains why they won't be in sync if kept in different gravitational environments.

I'm not sure I see why the different gravity on the moon would affect time zones.  I think it's accepted that very large masses can "warp" space-time, but I'm not sure either the earth or the moon count as "large" in this context. We have different time zones on earth because we all like to have midday (ie highest sun) at roughly 12.00 in our 24 hour cycle. If we weren't bothered about that we could have just one time zone for the whole planet. Moon "days" are, by contrast, roughly 28 days (as the moon doesn't rotate on it's axis, except once in each orbit of the earth). So moon dwellers could either use a totally new system of time which repeats itself every 28 days, or make do with one of the earth's time zones - probably the zone they've originally come from, although there might need to be some standardised arrangement if two separate moon bases want to communicate with each other.

Martin

If they have an "LPS" system then relativistic effects would be taken into account as they are here. 

The speed of light in a vacuum is a constant which is independent of the speed of the person measuring (strictly independent of the inertial frame) there is a thought experiment which involves a ‘light clock’ which is a beam of light bouncing between two mirrors moving past an observer on a train. The person on the train sees the clock ticking, as does the person on the platform, but, the distance between the mirrors is further for the platform observer because…. I’ve forgotten the details and I’m giving up! Anyway, it demonstrates that if the speed of light is constant (which it is) the speed of time can’t be for observers travelling at different speeds.

This is a different ‘thing’ than gravity affecting time, which it does, but I don’t think I understand why!
 

We don't know about a universe in which we don't exist, but we assume that the universe does not rotate (metaphorically) around our existence and we assume the laws of nature are the same with or without us. 

Time definitely exists, it's what prevents everything happening at once. 

Could it be that our consciousness is 'creating' time? Time being our experience of our existence. If our 'present' is like viewing an ever-moving series of film frames through a small aperture then everything may be happening at once. And what about the future? Is that also happening at the same time and our material brains just glimpse it as it moves into view? Anyway, it's nearly dinner time.

Our perception of time.

The Big Bang is seen as a single event. However, it is ongoing, as the ripples are still bouncing around the universe billions of years later.

The Big Bang happened. However, we exist within the Big Bang, to some degree.

The color temperature of the ensemble of decoupled photons has continued to diminish ever since; now down to 2.7260±0.0013 K,[6] it will continue to drop as the universe expands.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background

<Fetches Popcorn, LSD and Dark side of the Moon>

Back in my galaxy every 7 century old school child understands how this works.  I once tried to explain it to Einstein but he didn't get it.

If you speak not of time but of the Speed or Rate of Causality then it is easier to comprehend gravity has an effect.  All is governed by this as a light or radio wave though immaterial is a sequence of field transitions each of which causes the following transition - this chain and rate of causality is the speed of light.

Instead of SpaceTime you can think of SpaceCausality where effect follows cause at a rate determined by local conditions, including gravity AND acceleration relative to other frames of reference.

(Rate means rate apparent to an observer whose position will determine the perceived rate of causality)

"The Universe is the interior of the light cone of Creation": AM Turing.

The Big Bang happened every where at once. I think

The gravity well effect is significant enough that GPS satellites need to take it into account.

A clock placed at your head would run at a different speed from one placed at your feet - but it's suppertime and I can't be bothered to work but by how much. Suppertime is much more important. 

Is time a way to measure distance?

Distance, as in, repeatable gap of recording stuff that happens such as seasons or a ship moving across the seas and able to calculate it's location exactly?

Distance between yesterday and today to eat supper?

Gravity increases as time progresses.

My face has become slightly thinner and my middle slightly fatter over the years as the increasing gravity of years pulls it all southwards 

Time ticks quicker on the moon than earth and for navigation and communications you’ll want it to have its own time. It’s not an Earth time zone, that wouldn’t work.  Same for other bodies such as Mars.

The main problem is drinking things with a lower specific gravity.

At your hands? Or at your mouth...?

It's suppertime at my mouth and then suppertime when it reaches my stomach. My wife says I eat too quickly. I tried to explain the physics but to no avail.

Given that the difference between the moon and earth is about 1 second in 50 years I’m really struggling to understand the way the media are handling this.  God knows how we’re going to cope with space travel at any significant fraction of the speed of light or even having a probe going anywhere near Jupiter.

Scientific knowledge in 'the media' is pretty limited, I think.

Or they are trying to reflect the bogglement they think the ir viewers/listeners/readers will be suffering.

To say nothing about probes near Uranus

I correctly predicted this comment last night and your name was at the top of a very short list!

It's a fascinating part of the solar system with some great moons. If NASA ever sends a mission that way they'd have to call it after the great Italian scientist, Innuendo.

Isn't the current thinking that everything IS happening at once?

Time is relative.
Take the example of the tortoise that was mugged by two snails.... when asked for a description of the assailants afterwards by the police, he said he couldn't possibly, it all happened too fast.

Well I suppose if everything is happening at once, there is only current thinking. Or was that your point?

so cause and effect are illusory?

Scientists and philosophers at Cambridge and Harvard have been conducting research into the nature of reality for some years now. Here's a short summary of the current state of thought

youtube.com/watch?v=7otAJa3jui8&

When it happened there wasn't anywhere else!

Or, to put it a different way, "everywhere" was all in the same place.

Does anyone remember the end of The Ballad of Halo Jones in 2000AD, back when comics were good? The plot revolved around a planet where the gravity was so strong that time ran far more slowly. It blew my mind at the time and again when I found out that time actually was affected by gravity.

It's a humbling notion to realise that during the Big Crunch, everyone was a Num Num

Sorry to dissappoint you, but, in the little known unit of time that is sub Plank time, Scousers and Mancs were separated before there was any possibility of the possible existence of a Scouser or a Manc or indeed any kind of similarity.

I'm following the research into quantum loop gravy

It's probably the last (and only) time that Cameron was correct with 'We're all in this together'

Navigation and Internet which both rely on accurate timing. For that you’ll need atomic clocks positioned on and in orbit around the moon.  It won’t work with what it deployed on and in orbit around Earth.

I think there are all sorts of reasons why the current GPS satellites wouldn't help with Googlemaps on the moon quite apart from the relativistic issue!  

For sustained space flight any attempt to synchronise on a standard time is doomed by relativity, it's not just like agreeing a common standard.

I didn't really have a point. Very much a layman with this stuff. I read articles, watch documentaries etc, and try to understand best I can. It seems to me that modern theoretical physics, quantum mechanics etc is sounding more and more like philosophy and religion. The Hindu side of things particularly resonates with this. The wheel of time, the Universe in a cycle of destruction and rebirth, and yes, everything happening everywhere at once. 

Yes. As are free will and the arrow of time.

And quantum randomness?

I've encountered these before but they do seem to be getting into speculation as opposed to certainty. If free will actually was an illusion then I'd be wondering what was producing this constant stream of events that we experience? Are we part of a simulation, would we even know?

Lack of free will doesn't equate to simulation. The idea is that the physics/chemistry/biology of our brains is such that, given a current state and any set of inputs, a particular output/decision will be inevitable - simple cause and effect. Free will would therefore be an illusion, as the decision we arrive at will always be predetermined by circumstances.

With the growing influence of quantum uncertainty in many aspects of modern science, I'm a lot less convinced by this than once I may have been.

I'd possibly agree with that explanation for a simple reactive incident like picking something up off the floor or 'deciding' to have a cup of tea. What I find more difficult are more complex decisions say, for example, why the Allies chose to land in Normandy as opposed to anywhere else. Those kinds of events seem to be entirely down to the free will of the decision makers.

But by what mechanism is this 'free will' exercised? What makes us think that anything other than the state of our brains (as a result of previous experience/stimuli) and the current environmental inputs will determine our response? There's a very strong argument to say that our conscious feeling of making a choice is simply justifying to ourselves the decision we were always going to make deterministically.

Allied landings would then be an inevitable consequence of the decisionmakers at the time being of a mind to interpret that option as 'best' in the circumstances. Best, that is, based on their personal history of military strategy - and therefore already encoded within their brains.

I'm not convinced about the lack of freedom of choice. I agree that many of our immediate actions are effectively in operation before we've even contemplated them. When you get to the level of complexity that generating a strategy requires then I think that nothing is inevitable. I could come up with a plan to run for years and it would change with changing circumstances. I can't see the overall outcomes as being inevitable or predetermined. Immediate decisions (like ducking to avoid a bullet!) possibly. I can't see how we'd even work out the true situation given that we cannot get an overview of it. I am a flatworm contemplating the third dimension.

Ask yourself what is the difference between the responses/decisions you're accepting as possible due to their simplicity, and the more complex ones you're uneasy about accepting as inevitable. Where is the dividing line and why would there even be a dividing line?

My opinion is that it 'feels' so convincingly like we're choosing between two or more courses of action, that we're reluctant to accept that such a strong feeling may turn out to be illusory. It's the same conviction that some religious adherents must feel when they have 'experienced' a personal connection with the Divine: surely a feeling that strong couldn't possibly be simply due to an internal condition within the brain? But really, why not?

Of course, rather like parallel universes (though not at all like religion), there's little if anything to suggest that believing in free will, or otherwise, could have any practical effect on our choices or our behaviour.

I think for me that it is the complexity itself which convinces me that we do have free will. The feeling that I have the free will to choose whether to go to Mull or to Skye is better explained by freedom of choice rather than an unfounded theory based on speculation. It's actually the simplest explanation too. My choice to go to Mull is a considered one rather than a reaction to unseen fate. A friend might ring up a few days later and persuade me to go to Skye. To think that they were also guided by unthinking impulse to change my course of action just seems too far fetched to me. The flatworm contemplating three dimensions analogy also suggests to me that predestination can't be proven but of course I am not a theoretical physicist. I do suspect that the universe is exceedingly strange though and that often the obvious is not always the true situation.

Whoa! The 'theory' is simply to not accept feelings as a causal factor, there being no apparent mechanism that would explain how that could happen, rather to suggest that they may actually be something like a byproduct of the decision making process which we've evolved as a way of explaining it. What caused the feelings that caused the decision? I'd suggest it would have to have been external events, which itself suggests that it's not entirely down to us. As usual in primitive explanations of complex events that we don't have the knowledge to grasp properly, we put ourselves front and centre and assume everything centres around our own concept of self, or at least of human society.

Fate is an unhelpful way of describing it, as it seems to suggest a pre-ordained behaviour. While the reality may be similar in practical terms, the inevitability stems from the fact that each decision is in our best interest, at least as computed by our brain (with or without any conscious involvement).

If a friend rings up, that changes the equation. Of course that may mean that your brain perceives your best interest now to be served by going to Skye. Was it your decision (which rather presumes a conscious override) or simply that the state of your brain was now altered and a different neurological reaction and outcome ensued?

I too would take some convincing that free will or otherwise was even theoretically knowable, but I remain sceptical about awarding it a place in the very centre of our consciousness simply on the grounds that it 'feels' like it's real.

The questions that you're asking above could be 'explained' by any number of unproven reasons. The one that is the simplest (free will exists) is the obvious one. There isn't any hard evidence (that I'm aware of) for any other explanation. To venture that it's all predetermined is currently a theory, so free will has to be 'the very centre of our consciousness' until proven otherwise. You mentioned religious experiences earlier. How different is speculation about the nature of free will? It's interesting to hear about parallel universes but there is no testable evidence that they exist. To me, it's bordering on philosophy.

I suppose free will seems obvious, but only because it's our commonly rationalised explanation of what we're doing (though singularly lacking in actual evidence). There's no underlying explanation for it, not even a theory as to what it involves as far as I'm aware.

I'd argue that neurological cause-and-effect is actually a much simpler explanation. The state of the machine changes, or the inputs change, then the outputs change. What could be simpler?

What mystifies me is why did I drop my dinner on the floor last night? Was this a preordained event that fate/God/time had lined up for me? Perhaps, somewhere in an alternative universe that branched off at that moment, there is another me that made it unruffled to the microwave and ate, blissfully unaware of the small kitchen disaster. I'd like to think so.

I've long thought that the only way to test whether events are predetermined from the beginning of the Universe would be to create an identical Universe (which would by definition NOT be the same!) and then observe its entire history up to now, including measuring whether the same nuclei undergo decay identically in sequence, time and space throughout that.

As we don't have a complete history of the universe, creating another totally identical one is impossible and we could not live long enough to observe it all and anyway the observation would change the sequence and we don't have the data handling capacity I conclude that I am an Agnostic in the true sense of the word - I believe that we can never know whether predestination is real or not.

Living in a simulation?  The clue would be the white mice!

Nope, that was thanks to my voodoo intervention. I have a doll for each of UKCs regular posters

So the argument is that random decay of the elements and the completely unpredictable quantum level movements are all happening as predictably as a domino being knocked over by the one falling onto it. I get the idea but is there anyway of proving it or, perhaps more importantly, any relevance to how we experience life. Someone might use this idea to become fatalistic in their outlook but that would be wrong. 

This is what I'm beginning to suspect. Can you please stop it raining now?

It's an intriguing idea.  Maybe someone should make a TV series about it...

https://youtu.be/d3JMI3qS-ZY?si=jS9fsrAdmYU9M1dW

I mentioned earlier that I wasn't sold on the idea of deterministic decision making, largely due to this quantum uncertainty. But there's still a gulf between non-deterministic and free will. There may well be no way of knowing in advance what a decision may be, the outcome left to chance, but still we may have no conscious control over the decision making process. The idea of free will may have developed and become popular simply as a way for us to rationalise our perceptions and experiences, in much the same way as the concept of the Divine helps many people to rationalise many other aspects of our world.

why do you link free will  with self conscious awareness?

I would have thought that free will could be largely subconscious.  Proving it truly exists or does not exist is I think  impossible, particularly as we can never know whether the Universe is wholly deterministic and the absence of that quality is a necessary precondition for the existence of free will.

I don't think theoretical physics sounds anything like dogmatic religion.  Incomprehensible to most of us and totally counterintuitive, I agree, but still based on trying to explain the observable and testable.

Because what we talk about when we give examples of free will are conscious decisions ('I decided to go to Skye instead'). If a decision is made without us being aware of making it, then it what sense would that have been a free choice? In fact, subconscious decision making is what I would call an entirely mechanistic process over which we have no conscious control. What we have been discussing here is whether we have the capability of consciously overriding that process or whether our consciousness is just providing the illusion of having been involved.

I think I disagree quite strongly that subconscious decision making is entirely mechanistic.  A subconscious wish can surface dramatically like someone surfacing from being underwater.  That wish need not be mechanistic any more than conscious "apparent" decision making.  I'm definitely of the view that what we think of as the all important conscious self could just be the kiddy in the back seat with a Fisher Price steering wheel thinking he's driving the parent's car.

Over the decades I rate my conscious self lower and lower in comparison to what lies under the surface

In which case we're deep in the realm of the unknowable, and rather close to the transcendent for my taste. It matters not how the brain's subconscious information processing takes place if the only observable interface we have with it is our conscious mind. If you want to ascribe some independent (or perhaps better termed 'spiritual'?) agency to your subconscious mind then go ahead, but I see nothing that can't be adequately explained by a complex information processing machine continually refining its data and algorithms and reaching different conclusions. What I would ask is what grounds your subconscious would have for changing its (sub)mind? If it's new input then that's explained perfectly well by the simple mechanistic model. If there's no new data then it's somehow re-thinking an existing situation, which could also be explained by having had more time to process complex data more thoroughly. Keeping your consciousness informed as this processing is progressively refined would well explain the perception of changing ones mind. I'm still failing to see where the need is for any subconscious magic ingredient.

As for 'kiddie in the back seat' consciousness, I wouldn't argue with that as a workable analogy!

I'm not arguing for spirituality in the subconscious mind though no doubt it (whatever it is) would be as much down there as in our conscious self.  I'm simply saying that perhaps the meniscus that separates our conscious self from what lies below might be a lot higher up the glass than we think.  The conscious self feels very important to itself and I think is rather inclined to dismiss what it doesn't know about or comprehend, or how much that part of us is part of our whole self.

So if it's not mechanistic and it's not 'spiritual' (whatever that means!), then what is it?

My argument is that we have a perfectly good mechanistic explanation for how people might arrive at decisions, and that to refute that theory would require either a reason why it could not be the case, or a plausible alternative hypothesis.

Mechanistic is a term you introduced.  I'm simply saying that I don't see a difference between the subconscious and the conscious self in relation to whether either is mechanistic or not.   It's just that we feel we directly experience the conscious self rather than the subconscious self.  Though we experience interactions with the subconscious self from time to time.  Personally, I have learned consciously to submit problems or tasks to the subconscious me when I feel the conscious me does not have the immediate ability or time to reach a solution.