Thief
Rogue Theologian
substance will remain at rest...until.....something moves it.
(science)
in the beginning......God moved the singularity into motion.
God is Spirit...not substance
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The Big Bang as evidence for God
- Thread starter LegionOnomaMoi
- Start date
(science)
in the beginning......God moved the singularity into motion.
God is Spirit...not substance
Ouroboros
Coincidentia oppositorum
The temporarily of perception. Being aware or conscious depends on temporality, i.e. time. To perceive is to experience things within a time.
I agree. I remember very well thinking after courses in differential geometry, linear algebra, etc., that I had a firm grasp of n-dimensional spaces (Euclidean or no), and while I still couldn't really visualize these, my intuition was sufficiently well developed such that the difference between my simplified visualizations and what I was trying to visualize was negligible.
Then one of my textbooks on dynamics/mechanics mentioned how we could represent the configuration space of two points in a rectilinear 3D reference frame with a single one in a 6D space. It's a simple idea, and I am kind of embarrassed to admit that it threw me for several minutes until I tried to work out how this would work in 1D or 2D spaces. My intuition wasn't as developed, or as clear, as I had thought.
I'm a believer in embodied cognition, a theory within cognitive neuroscience and the cognitive sciences more generally. It holds that we use metaphorical extensions of our more basic sensorimotor and perceptual experiences and abilities for abstract reason. The easiest example of this for illustration is probably language: we "construct" arguments", we might describe ourselves as being able to "see through" someone whom we find "transparent", when sad we tell people we feel "down", we tell others to keep their hopes "up", etc. This is certainly true when it comes to understanding mathematical spaces, even the "familiar" 2D Euclidean plane (which we understand via analogy to flat surfaces, but since we experience these as embedded in our 3D space of experience, it is possible to make errors by failing to appreciate e.g., the actual experience of a flatworm in such a space or, far more importantly, the nature of open vs. closed sets and other topological issues.
And, of course, general relativity (and therefore the big bang) is very, very deeply dependent upon tensor analysis, and tensors are used specifically because the are independent of particular coordinate systems (in ways beyond the vectors and matrices of linear/matrix algebra, although vectors and 3x3 matrices are kinds of tensors), which means that one has to gain an understanding of how "objects" transform beyond the transformations or changes-of-basis one gets used to in linear algebra, yet somehow keep in mind that unlike in pure mathematics often certain components have different kinds of physical significance.
And, actually, we often work in lower dimensional spaces to simplify models in physics, and I don't mean just for pedagogical reasons.
The problem is that there would be no place or space for anything else to occur in at the same time. This is one reason why thinking about spacetime rather than space and time here might simplify things conceptually, despite the fact that intuitively it can present an issue. Nothing can occur at the same "time" when everything that occurs does so in spacetime (or maybe it doesn't simplify things, I don't really know; I've been drinking the physics cool-aid for too long).
I second that.
gnostic
The Lost One
I didn't say that I don't like logic.
I am saying that your position is not logical - as in they are "illogical".
Re-read what I had written. You have changed the context of my replying, making things that I didn't.
Do you like using this dishonest tactics? Do you like twisting other people's words?
You mean, I fail to answer your question "When there was no space and no time, what was happening at that time"? I wonder...
I wouldn't know about that. Other than symposiums and occasionally taped lectures I don't watch youtube videos much, certainly not popular physics bunk. I do this for a living, after all.
It's because people like you are fundamentally mathematically illiterate and too close-minded to try to stop and think a bit about teaching examples such as that viole offered you. I hoped that an intuitive example of an absolute constraint might help (you can't go North of what is by definition the North-most point). But even so simplistic an example of the space we actually experience alludes you, because you confused the naïve notion of "up" with that of North (hint: your examples of what were "North" of the "North pole" are not only not North, they aren't even really "up" unless one fixes a particular coordinate scheme).
This would be when you confused "north" for a simplistic notion of "up"?
I didn't say "beyond", I said North. You can't go "North" of the North-most point.
Actually, I was simplifying a 4-dimensional reality with a 3-dimensional example that placed constraints upon a description of motion in 3D (movement "North" is embedded in a 3D space).
Ok, seriously time and space can't be separated, and seriously there was not and is not any universal reference time at all (simultaneity doesn't exist, which can be demonstrated with some simple experiments you could perform with some friends, a vehicle, and a flashlight our other emitter), the big bang is the origin of spacetime, so the origin point would (if your simplistic approach worked) actually be the entire space, there is no t0, and finally the existence of spacetime with the big bang is not the point at which "time came into existence" or but the change in the state of affairs describing when existence was (at least until you are able to grasp a considerably more sophisticated understanding of an atemporal state-of-affairs without space and be prepared to use language accordingly).
i.e., is embedded. So to demonstrate how one can imagine a 2D space not embedded in a 3D space, you give an example of a 2D space embedded in a 3D one. Hooray!
Given that you just tried to describe a 2D space that wasn't embedded in a 3D one as a "sphere" that "sits in 3D space", perhaps your point is to nail home the point that you don't understand and will continue to refuse to?
The reality in which we live? You know, that funny "space" which, it turns out, must be treated as having time as a dimension as well as 3 spatial dimensions (if not more). Don't worry about it. Stick with the idea that things in outer space are "north" of the north pole and in which I am "dodging" the question "what was happening before there was any time for anything to happen?"
Yerda
Veteran Member
That might be what our intuition tells us but it's wrong. In some ways it's meaningless.
My favourite metaphors come from sleep-dream time. How much space does a thought occupy and how much time lapse a sleeping mind encounters? A man after waking takes account of time. In dream, time spans may be different. And in sleep there is no time.
IOW, thought, mind and time are same. Space and time or spacetime may occupy no space --- ha ha.
Of course this is not physics. But it is also true that I am not drunk.
God, if there is one, need not be existing in a conventional waking state, even as we exist.
Yeah yeah.
Ben Dhyan
Veteran Member
Your obfuscation is of no avail.....how does your mathematical knowledge explain how time began or why? I mean show me the logical math that explains how time began? Miracles don't count in my book.....
Now all beginnings logically must be referenced against something...generally it is time...but when it is time itself that has the beginning, this is not an option.. But there is always a simultaneous ending of something that coincides with a beginning...so the beginning of time must logically be referenced against that which ended simultaneously with the beginning...an absence of time... Now it is true that we can not imagine what it means for there to be an absence of time...but nevertheless it is an inescapable fact that for there to have been a beginning of time...it had to have caused the absence of time had to have an ending.....
So logically the beginning of time was coincident with the ending of an absence of time... So Time = 0 is not only a beginning, it is also an ending..... time begins, timelessness ends...
Now none of this explains how or why the absence of time was replaced by the presence of time...so we are still left with the question of why it happened and how? ...miracles not counted ..
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It describes how empirical evidence that you could yourself demonstrate (were you so inclined) forces us to realize that
1) "time" is relative, at least (or, perhaps, at the very least) insofar as the sequence of events depend upon the reference frames of the observers. If you actually went out with a few lights and a vehicle and some friends and reproduced a few classic examples of dilation or contraction from special relativity you could prove for yourself that sequences of events differ in "time" depending upon the observer. There is no universal time, no universal reference point for time, and no simultaneity for there to be an agreed upon time in which anything happens
2) The fact that our experience of time can be shown to not only fail to hold universally, but to require a space in which "events", "causes", "past", etc. unfold which is not only 4D (at least) but non-Euclidean (if we go with the absolute minimum, and throw general relativity out the window, depending only on the simplest of experiments that demonstrate special relativity, then "space" Minkowskian).
It is impossible by definition for "time" to begin. There would have to be a "time" in which "time" could "begin" in. Thankfully, we know that although we experience a 3D world in which "time" unfolds linearly, this is contradicted as soon as we consider how we all experience "time" unfolding differently depending upon where we are in space. THIS in turn shows us that space and time cannot actually be considered separately, because increments of time as we experience them are actually increments of traversal of spacetime (everything you see, for example, is merely a matter of the traversal of space into your retina by light).
Hmmm...
I know classical propositional logic, predicate logic, quantum logics, fuzzy logic, modal logic, and other logics, but not this "logically if I assert something then necessarily you have to agree" nonsense. Perhaps if you gave a formal derivation of your "logical" conclusion (don't worry about the particular system; if I am not familiar with it I will gladly familiarize myself to help you here).
"Time" is a subjective experience that isn't reflected in even classical, Newtonian physics (but imposed upon it). There is no way, even in principle, to define a universal "time zero" as there is no way, even in principle, to devise a device or observer capable of measuring some universal sequence of events wherein there exists a t0 independent of any observers' reference frame.
There is never a simultaneous anything. Here's my refresher in the non-technical version of special relativity:
First, let's reintroduce the much abused characters from modern physics: the observers Alice and Bob. Second, let's recreate something like the kind of experiment I've said you could conduct: Bob is stationary on a train platform relative to Alice in a train car.
As Alice passes Bob, lightening hits the front and back of Alice's train car, instantly leaving a mark on the car where it hit and a mark on the ground.
Also, each bolt creates a light wave which propagates either from the front or back of the train and to the left and right (respectively). Both Alice and Bob agree that this happens, but they don't agree on the details. Here's what Bob says happened:
Thus to Bob, our stationary (S) observer (O), the lightning hits both sides of the train simultaneously and thus both light waves begin to propagate simultaneously: one from the back of the train car to the front, the other from the front to the back (as shown above). Alice, however, is travelling toward the light emanating from the front of the car and away from the light coming from the back. From her perspective we find something like this:
I've depicted the light waves, but it is vital to realize that this is what they are intended to be- Alice hasn't even seen that lightning hit the rear of the car because that light hasn't triggered sensory neurons in her eyes. Finally, Bob observers the two light waves hit the same point in the train at the same time:
Notice that in the last picture, whereas Alice still hasn't even seen the lightning strike the rear of the car, Bob has every reason to believe he was correct about the lightning striking both ends of the train car simultaneously (otherwise they wouldn't meet at the same point simultaneously). Alice contends that lightning struck the front of the train first, and then the back.
Here's the problem: they're both right. And things get far worse for this "what happened at some universal time t0" nonsense. Normally a physics text would bring in meter sticks, light cones, and attach the word dilation to some terms, but I'm going to try and simplify. We've noted that for Bob, not only did the lightning bolts hit at the same time, they met at the same point. While Alice can agree that the event of lightning hitting the front of the car happened and the same for the bolt hitting the rear, she doesn't agree that the two light waves ever met at the same point at the same time. The reason a physics text would bring in all the technical stuff is to show that even how long something is measured to be turns out to be relative, and it is more wowing to show that the properties of a physical object can be relative. However, there is still reason to wonder what basis we have for asserting that the two bolts observed by Alice are the same as those observed by Bob when
1) they don't happen at the same time
2) their effects (the light waves) are very different (in one case they meet at the same point at the same time, in another they don't; Alice and Bob can't even agree when either lightning bolt reached Alice, the point of scorched earth left by the other lightning bolt, etc.)
In fact, if we changed the thought-experiment around a bit, we could put Bob on a train travelling alongside Alice (S & S are inertial reference frames with respect to one another) and give them highly sophisticated watches. We could show that were a light emitted the moment their coordinate origin points O & O coincide and from that point, by the time it reached Bob's frame S it would appear to be a sphere centered at O, not at O which could by now be a mile or a thousand miles from O. However, to Alice in frame S, the spherical light wave is centered at O, not O. This is explained in relativity by quite literally positing that the two observations are of two different light waves, despite the fact that only one light wave was emitted and this was the source for both.
I'll wait to comment more on the "beginning of time" or "time" more generally until you have misconstrued and misunderstood my demonstration of the impossibility of simultaneity and need for spacetime.[/QUOTE]
Ben Dhyan
Veteran Member
You will never understand reality proper if you insist on involving an observer of reality in the equation...reality exists independent of any observer....all an observer can ever do is provide a relative perspective...It describes how empirical evidence that you could yourself demonstrate (were you so inclined) forces us to realize that
1) "time" is relative, at least (or, perhaps, at the very least) insofar as the sequence of events depend upon the reference frames of the observers. If you actually went out with a few lights and a vehicle and some friends and reproduced a few classic examples of dilation or contraction from special relativity you could prove for yourself that sequences of events differ in "time" depending upon the observer. There is no universal time, no universal reference point for time, and no simultaneity for there to be an agreed upon time in which anything happens
2) The fact that our experience of time can be shown to not only fail to hold universally, but to require a space in which "events", "causes", "past", etc. unfold which is not only 4D (at least) but non-Euclidean (if we go with the absolute minimum, and throw general relativity out the window, depending only on the simplest of experiments that demonstrate special relativity, then "space" Minkowskian).
It is impossible by definition for "time" to begin. There would have to be a "time" in which "time" could "begin" in. Thankfully, we know that although we experience a 3D world in which "time" unfolds linearly, this is contradicted as soon as we consider how we all experience "time" unfolding differently depending upon where we are in space. THIS in turn shows us that space and time cannot actually be considered separately, because increments of time as we experience them are actually increments of traversal of spacetime (everything you see, for example, is merely a matter of the traversal of space into your retina by light).
Hmmm...
I know classical propositional logic, predicate logic, quantum logics, fuzzy logic, modal logic, and other logics, but not this "logically if I assert something then necessarily you have to agree" nonsense. Perhaps if you gave a formal derivation of your "logical" conclusion (don't worry about the particular system; if I am not familiar with it I will gladly familiarize myself to help you here).
"Time" is a subjective experience that isn't reflected in even classical, Newtonian physics (but imposed upon it). There is no way, even in principle, to define a universal "time zero" as there is no way, even in principle, to devise a device or observer capable of measuring some universal sequence of events wherein there exists a t0 independent of any observers' reference frame.
There is never a simultaneous anything. Here's my refresher in the non-technical version of special relativity:
First, let's reintroduce the much abused characters from modern physics: the observers Alice and Bob. Second, let's recreate something like the kind of experiment I've said you could conduct: Bob is stationary on a train platform relative to Alice in a train car.
As Alice passes Bob, lightening hits the front and back of Alice's train car, instantly leaving a mark on the car where it hit and a mark on the ground.
Also, each bolt creates a light wave which propagates either from the front or back of the train and to the left and right (respectively). Both Alice and Bob agree that this happens, but they don't agree on the details. Here's what Bob says happened:
Thus to Bob, our stationary (S) observer (O), the lightning hits both sides of the train simultaneously and thus both light waves begin to propagate simultaneously: one from the back of the train car to the front, the other from the front to the back (as shown above). Alice, however, is travelling toward the light emanating from the front of the car and away from the light coming from the back. From her perspective we find something like this:
I've depicted the light waves, but it is vital to realize that this is what they are intended to be- Alice hasn't even seen that lightning hit the rear of the car because that light hasn't triggered sensory neurons in her eyes. Finally, Bob observers the two light waves hit the same point in the train at the same time:
Notice that in the last picture, whereas Alice still hasn't even seen the lightning strike the rear of the car, Bob has every reason to believe he was correct about the lightning striking both ends of the train car simultaneously (otherwise they wouldn't meet at the same point simultaneously). Alice contends that lightning struck the front of the train first, and then the back.
Here's the problem: they're both right. And things get far worse for this "what happened at some universal time t0" nonsense. Normally a physics text would bring in meter sticks, light cones, and attach the word dilation to some terms, but I'm going to try and simplify. We've noted that for Bob, not only did the lightning bolts hit at the same time, they met at the same point. While Alice can agree that the event of lightning hitting the front of the car happened and the same for the bolt hitting the rear, she doesn't agree that the two light waves ever met at the same point at the same time. The reason a physics text would bring in all the technical stuff is to show that even how long something is measured to be turns out to be relative, and it is more wowing to show that the properties of a physical object can be relative. However, there is still reason to wonder what basis we have for asserting that the two bolts observed by Alice are the same as those observed by Bob when
1) they don't happen at the same time
2) their effects (the light waves) are very different (in one case they meet at the same point at the same time, in another they don't; Alice and Bob can't even agree when either lightning bolt reached Alice, the point of scorched earth left by the other lightning bolt, etc.)
In fact, if we changed the thought-experiment around a bit, we could put Bob on a train travelling alongside Alice (S & S are inertial reference frames with respect to one another) and give them highly sophisticated watches. We could show that were a light emitted the moment their coordinate origin points O & O coincide and from that point, by the time it reached Bob's frame S it would appear to be a sphere centered at O, not at O which could by now be a mile or a thousand miles from O. However, to Alice in frame S, the spherical light wave is centered at O, not O. This is explained in relativity by quite literally positing that the two observations are of two different light waves, despite the fact that only one light wave was emitted and this was the source for both.
I'll wait to comment more on the "beginning of time" or "time" more generally until you have misconstrued and misunderstood my demonstration of the impossibility of simultaneity and need for spacetime.
Now since science is mostly about practical application of the knowledge of reality for the benefit of mankind...this is an indeed an important perspective to develop and employ...but when it comes to pure science...pure knowledge.....duality as in an observer and observed is not applicable or appropriate...
That is why the error for the need to have a beginning of time arises in the first case....the dualistic mind can't apprehend reality itself directly...it must rely on concepts to represent it....and all the while reality is not dual...there is only the one existence...all perspectives on it are relative as your post is meant to show.. The difference with my position is that I am only using concepts as an expedient to convey to you that concepts are useless to apprehend the beginningless nature of the Cosmos...you either realize it or you don't and theorize about it instead...
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Thief
Rogue Theologian
did anyone say?.....a sphere is described by only one dimension....
the radius.
hehehehe
Thief
Rogue Theologian
I would say.....memory
I've seen report of injury that erased a man's past.....and it was never recovered.
strange part....he did not lose any everyday skill
and time had nothing to do with it
Thief
Rogue Theologian
[/QUOTE]It describes how empirical evidence that you could yourself demonstrate (were you so inclined) forces us to realize that
1) "time" is relative, at least (or, perhaps, at the very least) insofar as the sequence of events depend upon the reference frames of the observers. If you actually went out with a few lights and a vehicle and some friends and reproduced a few classic examples of dilation or contraction from special relativity you could prove for yourself that sequences of events differ in "time" depending upon the observer. There is no universal time, no universal reference point for time, and no simultaneity for there to be an agreed upon time in which anything happens
2) The fact that our experience of time can be shown to not only fail to hold universally, but to require a space in which "events", "causes", "past", etc. unfold which is not only 4D (at least) but non-Euclidean (if we go with the absolute minimum, and throw general relativity out the window, depending only on the simplest of experiments that demonstrate special relativity, then "space" Minkowskian).
It is impossible by definition for "time" to begin. There would have to be a "time" in which "time" could "begin" in. Thankfully, we know that although we experience a 3D world in which "time" unfolds linearly, this is contradicted as soon as we consider how we all experience "time" unfolding differently depending upon where we are in space. THIS in turn shows us that space and time cannot actually be considered separately, because increments of time as we experience them are actually increments of traversal of spacetime (everything you see, for example, is merely a matter of the traversal of space into your retina by light).
Hmmm...
I know classical propositional logic, predicate logic, quantum logics, fuzzy logic, modal logic, and other logics, but not this "logically if I assert something then necessarily you have to agree" nonsense. Perhaps if you gave a formal derivation of your "logical" conclusion (don't worry about the particular system; if I am not familiar with it I will gladly familiarize myself to help you here).
"Time" is a subjective experience that isn't reflected in even classical, Newtonian physics (but imposed upon it). There is no way, even in principle, to define a universal "time zero" as there is no way, even in principle, to devise a device or observer capable of measuring some universal sequence of events wherein there exists a t0 independent of any observers' reference frame.
There is never a simultaneous anything. Here's my refresher in the non-technical version of special relativity:
First, let's reintroduce the much abused characters from modern physics: the observers Alice and Bob. Second, let's recreate something like the kind of experiment I've said you could conduct: Bob is stationary on a train platform relative to Alice in a train car.
As Alice passes Bob, lightening hits the front and back of Alice's train car, instantly leaving a mark on the car where it hit and a mark on the ground.
Also, each bolt creates a light wave which propagates either from the front or back of the train and to the left and right (respectively). Both Alice and Bob agree that this happens, but they don't agree on the details. Here's what Bob says happened:
Thus to Bob, our stationary (S) observer (O), the lightning hits both sides of the train simultaneously and thus both light waves begin to propagate simultaneously: one from the back of the train car to the front, the other from the front to the back (as shown above). Alice, however, is travelling toward the light emanating from the front of the car and away from the light coming from the back. From her perspective we find something like this:
I've depicted the light waves, but it is vital to realize that this is what they are intended to be- Alice hasn't even seen that lightning hit the rear of the car because that light hasn't triggered sensory neurons in her eyes. Finally, Bob observers the two light waves hit the same point in the train at the same time:
Notice that in the last picture, whereas Alice still hasn't even seen the lightning strike the rear of the car, Bob has every reason to believe he was correct about the lightning striking both ends of the train car simultaneously (otherwise they wouldn't meet at the same point simultaneously). Alice contends that lightning struck the front of the train first, and then the back.
Here's the problem: they're both right. And things get far worse for this "what happened at some universal time t0" nonsense. Normally a physics text would bring in meter sticks, light cones, and attach the word dilation to some terms, but I'm going to try and simplify. We've noted that for Bob, not only did the lightning bolts hit at the same time, they met at the same point. While Alice can agree that the event of lightning hitting the front of the car happened and the same for the bolt hitting the rear, she doesn't agree that the two light waves ever met at the same point at the same time. The reason a physics text would bring in all the technical stuff is to show that even how long something is measured to be turns out to be relative, and it is more wowing to show that the properties of a physical object can be relative. However, there is still reason to wonder what basis we have for asserting that the two bolts observed by Alice are the same as those observed by Bob when
1) they don't happen at the same time
2) their effects (the light waves) are very different (in one case they meet at the same point at the same time, in another they don't; Alice and Bob can't even agree when either lightning bolt reached Alice, the point of scorched earth left by the other lightning bolt, etc.)
In fact, if we changed the thought-experiment around a bit, we could put Bob on a train travelling alongside Alice (S & S are inertial reference frames with respect to one another) and give them highly sophisticated watches. We could show that were a light emitted the moment their coordinate origin points O & O coincide and from that point, by the time it reached Bob's frame S it would appear to be a sphere centered at O, not at O which could by now be a mile or a thousand miles from O. However, to Alice in frame S, the spherical light wave is centered at O, not O. This is explained in relativity by quite literally positing that the two observations are of two different light waves, despite the fact that only one light wave was emitted and this was the source for both.
I'll wait to comment more on the "beginning of time" or "time" more generally until you have misconstrued and misunderstood my demonstration of the impossibility of simultaneity and need for spacetime.
I think Albert's book had a more to point example with a train ride involved.
see yourself dropping a heavy ball from the window as you pass by an observer.
you see the ball drop to the ground in a straight line downward.
the stationary observer will see the ball move in a curve.
movement is relative.
you don't need a watch to make note of it
It describes how empirical evidence that you could yourself demonstrate (were you so inclined) forces us to realize that
1) "time" is relative, at least (or, perhaps, at the very least) insofar as the sequence of events depend upon the reference frames of the observers. If you actually went out with a few lights and a vehicle and some friends and reproduced a few classic examples of dilation or contraction from special relativity you could prove for yourself that sequences of events differ in "time" depending upon the observer. There is no universal time, no universal reference point for time, and no simultaneity for there to be an agreed upon time in which anything happens
2) The fact that our experience of time can be shown to not only fail to hold universally, but to require a space in which "events", "causes", "past", etc. unfold which is not only 4D (at least) but non-Euclidean (if we go with the absolute minimum, and throw general relativity out the window, depending only on the simplest of experiments that demonstrate special relativity, then "space" Minkowskian).
It is impossible by definition for "time" to begin. There would have to be a "time" in which "time" could "begin" in. Thankfully, we know that although we experience a 3D world in which "time" unfolds linearly, this is contradicted as soon as we consider how we all experience "time" unfolding differently depending upon where we are in space. THIS in turn shows us that space and time cannot actually be considered separately, because increments of time as we experience them are actually increments of traversal of spacetime (everything you see, for example, is merely a matter of the traversal of space into your retina by light).
Hmmm...
I know classical propositional logic, predicate logic, quantum logics, fuzzy logic, modal logic, and other logics, but not this "logically if I assert something then necessarily you have to agree" nonsense. Perhaps if you gave a formal derivation of your "logical" conclusion (don't worry about the particular system; if I am not familiar with it I will gladly familiarize myself to help you here).
"Time" is a subjective experience that isn't reflected in even classical, Newtonian physics (but imposed upon it). There is no way, even in principle, to define a universal "time zero" as there is no way, even in principle, to devise a device or observer capable of measuring some universal sequence of events wherein there exists a t0 independent of any observers' reference frame.
There is never a simultaneous anything. Here's my refresher in the non-technical version of special relativity:
First, let's reintroduce the much abused characters from modern physics: the observers Alice and Bob. Second, let's recreate something like the kind of experiment I've said you could conduct: Bob is stationary on a train platform relative to Alice in a train car.
As Alice passes Bob, lightening hits the front and back of Alice's train car, instantly leaving a mark on the car where it hit and a mark on the ground.
Also, each bolt creates a light wave which propagates either from the front or back of the train and to the left and right (respectively). Both Alice and Bob agree that this happens, but they don't agree on the details. Here's what Bob says happened:
Thus to Bob, our stationary (S) observer (O), the lightning hits both sides of the train simultaneously and thus both light waves begin to propagate simultaneously: one from the back of the train car to the front, the other from the front to the back (as shown above). Alice, however, is travelling toward the light emanating from the front of the car and away from the light coming from the back. From her perspective we find something like this:
I've depicted the light waves, but it is vital to realize that this is what they are intended to be- Alice hasn't even seen that lightning hit the rear of the car because that light hasn't triggered sensory neurons in her eyes. Finally, Bob observers the two light waves hit the same point in the train at the same time:
Notice that in the last picture, whereas Alice still hasn't even seen the lightning strike the rear of the car, Bob has every reason to believe he was correct about the lightning striking both ends of the train car simultaneously (otherwise they wouldn't meet at the same point simultaneously). Alice contends that lightning struck the front of the train first, and then the back.
Here's the problem: they're both right. And things get far worse for this "what happened at some universal time t0" nonsense. Normally a physics text would bring in meter sticks, light cones, and attach the word dilation to some terms, but I'm going to try and simplify. We've noted that for Bob, not only did the lightning bolts hit at the same time, they met at the same point. While Alice can agree that the event of lightning hitting the front of the car happened and the same for the bolt hitting the rear, she doesn't agree that the two light waves ever met at the same point at the same time. The reason a physics text would bring in all the technical stuff is to show that even how long something is measured to be turns out to be relative, and it is more wowing to show that the properties of a physical object can be relative. However, there is still reason to wonder what basis we have for asserting that the two bolts observed by Alice are the same as those observed by Bob when
1) they don't happen at the same time
2) their effects (the light waves) are very different (in one case they meet at the same point at the same time, in another they don't; Alice and Bob can't even agree when either lightning bolt reached Alice, the point of scorched earth left by the other lightning bolt, etc.)
In fact, if we changed the thought-experiment around a bit, we could put Bob on a train travelling alongside Alice (S & S are inertial reference frames with respect to one another) and give them highly sophisticated watches. We could show that were a light emitted the moment their coordinate origin points O & O coincide and from that point, by the time it reached Bob's frame S it would appear to be a sphere centered at O, not at O which could by now be a mile or a thousand miles from O. However, to Alice in frame S, the spherical light wave is centered at O, not O. This is explained in relativity by quite literally positing that the two observations are of two different light waves, despite the fact that only one light wave was emitted and this was the source for both.
I'll wait to comment more on the "beginning of time" or "time" more generally until you have misconstrued and misunderstood my demonstration of the impossibility of simultaneity and need for spacetime.
Nice. I had read an equivalent version of Bob and Alice example long back, written by Gamow in Scientific American.
The sequence of events doesn't depend upon the reference frame of the observers. They may see the sequence of events differently but the sequence itself isn't changing is it?
Ouroboros
Coincidentia oppositorum
"Past"...
Past, present, future, now,... are all temporal references.
Temporal = has to do with time.
Memory is something that only works within time.
Short term memory, lasts only for couple of minutes or something.
Long term memory, memories from the short term memory stored in a process (process is something that is also temporal) into the long term.
Memory, most definitely requires time.
A sequence is defined by the order in which it's elements are listed. Consider a set of events E= {a, b, c, d,...}. Let s1 be the sequence of events a, b, c, d,... and let s2 be some permutation of E. Them s2 is necessarily different from s1.