Now, and the Flow of Time - by Richard A. Muller and Shaun Maguireb 2016 - Article review

This document contains article review "Now, and the Flow of Time" by by Richard A. Muller and Shaun Maguireb written in 2016
To order to read the article select: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.07975.pdf

• The text in italics is copied from the article.
  
• Immediate followed by some comments
  

Contents

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Experimental Test Using LIGO
• 3. Dimensional Analysis

Reflection

• Reflection 1 - Time: Abstract Time & Clock Time
• Reflection 2 - Abstract

1. Introduction.

Time is unified with space through the Minkowski concept of space-time, yet time and space have qualitatively different behavior in a way that goes beyond a minus sign in the metric.

Difficult

Given any coordinate system, we can stand still in space but not in time; time inexorably flows.

Difficult

The rate of flow depends on the velocity of the local Lorentz frame and on the gravitational potential. Yet this description of the relative changes in the rate of flow does not address the key disparity that time flows yet space doesn’t.

Why is it important to introduce the concept that time flows? The concept of flow has to do with the behaviour of physical processes, that something moves toward a different position. The problem is that time is not a physical processes and does not flow. Also frames don't flow. In principle you can link a frame to object. But a frame, is like time, not a physical process. It is much more a mathematical concept. Mixing physical concept with mathematical concept creates all different problems, as the text indicates.

In many ways a simpler problem is the arrow of time, the intriguing question of why time flows forward rather than backward, given that most of the fundamental equations of physics show a forward/backward symmetry.

The most basic problem in physics is that there exist no physical process that with a 100% accuracy can be described by any mathematical equation. Only highly simplyfied conditions can be decribed and be simulated in a computer. The reality is always different. As such to claim that an equation also describes the evolution of a process considered under time reversal can be mathematical correct. From a physical point of view this does not make sense, because in order to reverse any process always certain time critical modifications have to be made, which require time and which make a complete instantaneous reversal operation impossible.

For the behaviour of elementary particles this description might be different.

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2. Experimental Test Using LIGO

3. Dimensional Analysis.

4.

Reflection 2 - Abstract

The progression of time can be understood by assuming that the Hubble expansion takes place in 4 dimensions rather than in 3.

The flow of time consists of the continuous creation of new moments, new nows, that accompany the creation of new space.

This model suggests a modification to the metric tensor of the vacuum that leads to testable consequences.

Two cosmological tests are proposed, but they present both experimental and theoretical problems.

A more practical and immediate test is based on a predicted lag in the emergence of gravitational radiation when two black holes merge.

The question is to what extend the merging of two black holes or the merging of objects, has anything to do with the concept of time (abstract time).

In such mergers (as recently observed by the LIGO team), a macroscopic volume (millions of cubic kilometers) of space is created in the region in which the gravitational wave is generated; this one-time creation of new space should be accompanied by the creation of detectable level of new time, resulting in a time delay that could be observed as a growing lag in the emission of the wave as the merger takes place.

Any binary system is accompanied with gravitational waves i.e., a fluctuating gravitational field. Any third object, attracted by this binary system will influence this gravitanional field. As a consequence the third object can merge with any of the two original objects even leading to a merging of the two objects.
I have doubt, nor I understand, why this physical process will create some form of new space. During the merging of any object, the pattern in the gravitational waves observed could change, but this has no influence on abstract time. In case of a total merge, the gravitational disturbances will die out.

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