Enough with the questions about time, already

[lammie200]

I got burned out on Pink Floyd a long time ago.

[AdroitMage]

Is time an illusion?

Now that's a question. No one now, nor ever, not even Einstein has actually been able to answer that question with 100% certainty, and that is 100% certain.

[pauln]

Time is just one thing after another.

Time is what prevents everything from happening at once!

[pauln]

So are you guys block universe people?

or?

I like the concept, but once applied suggests reapplication. The block universe is supposed to be a self contained unchanging static object (phase space) complete, coherent, and consistent for all events.

If it were dynamic and changing (continuously and retaining its complete, coherent, and consistent quality for all events) we would not know, nor could any measurements or experiments detect such change.

However, we might imagine such changes and conceive "upwards" another block universe whose structure was the description of changes within our own block. Then we might imagine a third block universe to describe changes in the second, which describes changes in the first block, which describes changes in our universe.

It gets weirder if you go "downwards"...

[Mick-7]

Is time an illusion?

Now that's a question. No one now, nor ever, not even Einstein has actually been able to answer that question with 100% certainty, and that is 100% certain.

"The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." - Albert Einstein

[Strat-itis]

The past is now part of my future
And the present is well out of hand

[emanresu]

Now that's a question. No one now, nor ever, not even Einstein has actually been able to answer that question with 100% certainty, and that is 100% certain.

Just before switching to this second page here, I wanted to quote him because this is not true at all :
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results," - yeah. try to practice rhythm the "sane" way.

... unless music is insanity.

The quote might not be his, of course. So, we cannot trust anything that anyone has supposedly said, ever.

[AdroitMage]

"The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." - Albert Einstein

He's referring to time being relative, so the rate at which time passes is dependent upon the viewpoint of the observer, the speed he is travelling, and the gravity environment the observer happens to be in. For example: in the movie Interstellar, when they went to the Miller's planet near the black hole they were only there for about 3 hours in their time, but on the spaceship 23 years had passed. The fact that 23 years passed on the spaceship is a fact, not an illusion, the fact that 3 years passed for the astronauts who went to Miller's planet is still a fact not an illusion. The amount of time that passes for each of them, though, depends on other factors in relativity. What that reveals is that the rate time travels is not fixed, rather it's a variable dependent upon other factors of physics, like the speed your traveling and the gravity environment you are in. It's mind boggling.

[pamosmusic]

He's referring to time being relative, so the rate at which time passes is dependent upon the viewpoint of the observer, the speed he is travelling, and the gravity environment the observer happens to be in. For example: in the movie Interstellar, when they went to the Miller's planet near the black hole they were only there for about 3 hours in their time, but on the spaceship 23 years had passed. The fact that 23 years passed on the spaceship is a fact, not an illusion, the fact that 3 years passed for the astronauts who went to Miller's planet is still a fact not an illusion. The amount of time that passes for each of them, though, depends on other factors in relativity. What that reveals is that the rate time travels is not fixed, rather it's a variable dependent upon other factors of physics.

Heres the fun part.

What is a year?

[pcjazz]

What is a year?

Five minutes reading this thread.

[AdroitMage]

"The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." - Albert Einstein

That doesn't prove it with 100% certainty, though.

Here's another definition of time for me: It's something I possess that too many bastards have been wasting lately.

[AdroitMage]

Time is what prevents everything from happening at once!

For light itself, that's exactly what happens because light, travelling at the speed of causality, does not experience time.

Time is also what keeps the effect from coming before the cause. The C in E = MC² stands for "Causality," AKA the speed of light. Nothing that has mass can travel faster than that because it would also start traveling backward in time, thus violating causality, and the note would sound before you pluck the string.

Anything with no mass is born traveling at the speed of light and cannot travel slower than that because it would take an infinite amount of energy to slow it down below the speed of causality, C. The universe forbids any object from violating causality.

I don't know what any of that has to do with improv. Anyway, developing good time in music is actually not hard if you do the right exercises regularly. That's my opinion and I've helped students who were struggling with it get good at it, so I have some evidence to back up my opinion.

[CliffR]

The C in E = MC² stands for "Causality,"

You know that's bollocks, right? Why not put down the bong and post a clip of your playing to show us if you have any more credibility with your music than you do with your physics?

[AdroitMage]

Hey, I'm no physicist unless the armchair variety counts, LOL. The following was copied and pasted from an AI, which said this:


Search Labs | AI Overview


+7
While "c" in Einstein's famous equation E=mc² is often associated with the speed of light, IT'S MORE ACCURATELY DESCRIBED as the "speed of causality" or "celeritas". The speed of light is a consequence of this fundamental speed limit, not the other way around. This speed limit dictates that information and physical interactions cannot travel faster than the speed of light.
Here's a more detailed explanation:
Causality:
Causality refers to the relationship where one event is the result of another. The speed of light sets a limit on how quickly cause and effect can be separated.

AI says the speed of light is a result of the speed of causality, not the other way around. Wow!!!

[emanresu]

the whole world could be described without the time unit

[AdroitMage]

the whole world could be described without the time unit

How much time would it take you to describe it, though?

[pauln]

He's referring to time being relative, so the rate at which time passes is dependent upon the viewpoint of the observer, the speed he is travelling, and the gravity environment the observer happens to be in.

Relativity has all measurements of C return the same value, which means all observers measure identical rates for their local rate of time - "proper time" - what their clocks show despite relative motion or gravitational fields.

'For example: in the movie Interstellar... not an illusion... still a fact not an illusion."

Movies literally are illusions, based on no more physical principles than cartoons.

[Christian Miller]

Hey, I'm no physicist unless the armchair variety counts, LOL. The following was copied and pasted from an AI, which said this:


Search Labs | AI Overview


+7
While "c" in Einstein's famous equation E=mc² is often associated with the speed of light, IT'S MORE ACCURATELY DESCRIBED as the "speed of causality" or "celeritas". The speed of light is a consequence of this fundamental speed limit, not the other way around. This speed limit dictates that information and physical interactions cannot travel faster than the speed of light.
Here's a more detailed explanation:
Causality:
Causality refers to the relationship where one event is the result of another. The speed of light sets a limit on how quickly cause and effect can be separated.

AI says the speed of light is a result of the speed of causality, not the other way around. Wow!!!

The LLM has returned a correct answer

I wouldn’t get used to it if I were you

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[AdroitMage]

Movies literally are illusions, based on no more physical principles than cartoons.

True, but I heard a physicist say that the movie Interstellar got the physics correct on that.

[strumcat]

For those interested in physics from a lay perspective, the following books stand out as accurate, authoritative, and not misleading. If you read only three popular science books in your lifetime, these are the ones of most value, IMO. All three authors are highly-regarded, Nobel-winning physicists.


Relativity:
"Relativity: The Special and General Theory," by Albert Einstein

Quantum mechanics:
"QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter," by Richard Feynman

Black holes:
"Black Holes and Time Warps," by Kip Thorne

[AdroitMage]

For those interested in physics from a lay perspective, the following books stand out as accurate, authoritative, and not misleading. If you read only three popular science books in your lifetime, these are the ones of most value, IMO. All three authors are highly-regarded, Nobel-winning physicists.


Relativity:
"Relativity: The Special and General Theory," by Albert Einstein

Quantum mechanics:
"QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter," by Richard Feynman

Black holes:
"Black Holes and Time Warps," by Kip Thorne

Way cool, thanks for the recommendations. I'm just a lay person who finds astrophysics and particle physics absolutely fascinating. How much of Einstein's books on relativity do you think an average Joe like me would be able to comprehend? If I remember correctly, one of them requires some understanding of calculus to grasp the material effectively, but the other doesn't require all the college level calculus background. I can't remember which is which, though.

A different perspective on C: The speed of light really shouldn't be called the speed of light because it's really the speed of any particle that is massless. No particle that has mass can travel at the speed of light because it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate it to C, but any particle that is massless has to travel at the speed of light because of the fundamental properties of spacetime itself. That's why photons (light) travel at C. I suppose C became known as the speed of light because the other massless particle we know about, gluons, were not discovered until 1979. Hopefully, someday soon we actually observe the elusive, hypothetical massless graviton, which would be huge for physicists.

[Christian Miller]

Way cool, thanks for the recommendations. I'm just a lay person who finds astrophysics and particle physics absolutely fascinating. How much of Einstein's books on relativity do you think an average Joe like me would be able to comprehend? If I remember correctly, one of them requires some understanding of calculus to grasp the material effectively, but the other doesn't require all the college level calculus background. I can't remember which is which, though.

I did have the Einstein book but don't remember much - I think you could get a decent handle on basic General Relativity if you have college level calculus. It has been 25 years since I studied it at uni, but there's a difference between being able to explore the basic properties of the Schwarzchild metric and solving the Einstein field equations which we never did (which remember Einstein himself didn't do.)

Interestingly they did show us a way the Schwarzchild metric does drop out of Newtonian mechanics, but that's not the real solution, just a cheat haha.

The necessary field of study is Reimannian geometry which I remember falling in love with but also I remember it not being too hard (although I was cleverer back then). It's the field that explains the geometry of curved surfaces in general, such as the transformations you need for map projections for instance, and is abstracted to the 4 dimensional spacetime of Einsteinian physics.

The brain busters for me were all Quantum Mechanics problems. Horrible. I hated it. It was possible the course was badly taught but I had real problems with the math..... GR was my jam.

If you really want to understand physics, you need to learn physics. Everything else is an imperfect analogy, really. But that means starting with Newton and Maxwell. Calculus and fields.

A different perspective on C: The speed of light really shouldn't be called the speed of light because it's really the speed of any particle that is massless. No particle that has mass can travel at the speed of light because it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate it to C, but any particle that is massless has to travel at the speed of light because of the fundamental properties of spacetime itself. That's why photons (light) travel at C. I suppose C became known as the speed of light because the other massless particle we know about, gluons, were not discovered until 1979. Hopefully, someday soon we actually observe the elusive, hypothetical massless graviton, which would be huge for physicists.

I doubt we'll observe directly, from what I understand. The particle accelerator necessary to detect it cannot be built in the foreseeable future (the energies are crazy). However, we may be able to infer Quantum Gravity through astronomical observations and cosmological models. But it's bit of a problem for fundamental physics. We were hoping to detect supersymmetric particles back in the 80s and 90s, but no luck, so that's ruled out a lot of early Quantum Gravity models.

[Christian Miller]

True, but I heard a physicist say that the movie Interstellar got the physics correct on that.

It's a mixed bag. Kip Thorne wrote a pop science book about it. There are some fudges, but notable things it got right.

I mean, they'd all be fried to a crisp by the radiation in that system, and it's hard to see how that system would have formed naturally, but anyway. Also the spaceships not very realistic. More realistic than Star Trek, obviously, but landing and taking off from planets very energy intensive, and those shuttles didn't seem to be carrying massive fuel tanks around. Orbital mechanics around the Gargantua system, very hand wavy. But that's all for story convenience. As far as the last act... well, it's science fiction. I enjoyed it.

Interesting thing - of the things it got right were the effects of spacetime in a (rotating) Kerr metric. This is different from yer vanilla Schwazchild spacetime that more astrophysics types know about, and as GR is Kip Thorne's academic specialism (he literally wrote the book) he was able to 'well actually' a lot of science bloggers who thought they'd got it wrong, which was quite fun. IIRC the time dilation on the first planet is correctly calculated for that type of black hole and I think they use the Penrose process near the end?

[equenda]

I'm so tired of seeing posts or threads asking about keeping time. Like WTF?

Keeping time is the most simple, basic thing in music. ..................

I think we all agree if we say that rhythm is the most important thing in Jazz. But in reality there is NOT just one way to play in time. Let me give an example. We all (I apologize very much for those who have physical problems of various kinds) can walk because we learned it when we were very young children.
But it is true that each of us walks (and runs) differently. Similar but different. The same is true of what we call "playing on the beat." Some musicians follow the "beat" precisely but others do not, and it is not certain that those who play "out of time" always get a bad result.
Many contemporary jazz musicians play very differently from those of the past, and a Great players like Bill Frisell follows a very different tempo than Charlie Christian.

I'll give another example hoping not to cause confusion with English, which is not my language.
Imagine two CIRCULAR TOOTHED GEARS that rotate but are separate and are not in contact.
One of these is the tempo of the rhythm section and the other gear is the tempo that follows the soloist. These two gears have to turn at the same speed.....but until they lock together there can be variations. I believe the famous term "TO PLAY IN THE POCKET" refers to when the two GEARS are engaged with each other and therefore turn EXACTLY at the same speed.
In conclusion: there are various ways to play.

- Unhooked from the beat
- In time with the beat
- "inside" the beat.

So "playing on the beat" is different than "playing inside the beat". Personally, it took me more than 30 years to understand this difference.

Ettore

[Strat-itis]

I think we all agree if we say that rhythm is the most important thing in Jazz.

I do not agree. :P