Time Doesn’t Belong to Physics – When Bergson met Einstein

The “angle” of time vs space is different based on perspective. Each perspective sees a different direction of time through the 4D space-time.

Yet from any perspective, the space time regions coordinates are still best represented with three real values and one imaginary value.

This is the form of coordinates in the space time interval equation, and reflects time dilation and space contraction.

So space and time are identical stuff, but from any vantage point you will see “your” time dimension acting differently than 3 spatial dimensions.

It’s a really interesting property.

According to GR, gravity per se is a kind of illusion caused by the movement of particles in a curved space-time. The more basic effect is spacetime curving itself around mass(/energy).

Now, whether this interaction itself is quantized or not (if the curvature comes in integer multiples) remains unknown. It is very much possible that gravity/space-time curvature is a different kind of effect than the other three fundamental interactions, and that it is not in fact qunatized, so there is no graviton.

And unto string theory, the problem with it is that it doesn't explain anything new. It posits some ideas of how gravity might work in a qunatized form, but any actual tests of the correctness of those calculations requires studying a black hole up close, which won't happen very soon. And of course, it infamously does so at the cost of adding lots of new elements to physics (extra dimensions, extra particles) none of which are testable or observed. And it still doesn't fix other problems of QM/QFT, most notably the measurement problem.

Plus, there is no actual need for String Theory to say that it's the best option we've got for X. For whatever we want to model, we can use either QFT or GR.

That's not a great example, since conservation of energy is actually violated in current cosmological models. The expansion of spacetime actually implies violation of energy conservation at the global level. It's only locally that energy is conserved.

Similarly, while there is definitely something special about the speed of light, it may or may not be a limit in the sense we typically use. That is, GR and QFT are consistent with the existence particles to have speeds greater than C, it only prevents any particle from accelerating from below C to C or above. It also puts certain limits on observations of those particles. However, it's hard to say what overall implications there would be for all of our models if such particles were actually found to exist, or if there is some modification possible for those theories that would entirely prevent the existence of those particles.

I haven't got into the depths of Bergson's argument, but I think I see the point in the headline that time belongs in philosophy, and I can easily imagine he was right that Einstein was smuggling in philosophical assumptions in the particular choice of words he used to describe the implications of his findings.

Not in any way that is inconsistent with an evolving universe, actually. Sure, an observer may exist at some coordinates in 4D spacetime where they are detecting light from Sagittarius A that in our frame is 1000 years old, but also light from the Sun that in our frame is 1000 years from now. But that observer cannot be meaningfully said to be either in our present nor in our past. And if we ever "meet" to discuss our observarions, it is guaranteed that it will be no less than 1000 years from now, after we also see the sun evolving. We'll essentially only disagree about how old the light from Sagittarius A was.

Most importantly, SR is not consistent with any ordering of events that breaks causality. If I drop a mug and it shatters, no observer can see the mug shatter and then see me dropping it. So, there is no reason to believe that the shattered mug already existed somewhere in space time when I dropped it, though there is also no reason to believe that it didn't.