Relativity, relatives and other relationships

After watching a very thought provoking movie, ‘The death and life of Otto Bloom’, I found the need to clarify ‘time’ and related influences insofar as our individual lives are concerned as well as the ‘bigger picture’. It has always been difficult to describe Einsteinian relativity in the context of basic semantics, in a way that you and I can make sense of things. So this is my contribution to that end. In doing so I will add my own bit to extend this fascinating concept.

What is space-time? Well let’s first start off with the dimensions of space. There are 3 dimensions of space – length, breadth and height. And within this space, there is mass of objects and movement through time – an object moves from A to B at a certain speed which is defined as the distance covered in a specific time. What if we made ‘time’ the 4th dimension of this space such that we no longer just have space and time but space-time? What does this look like in the context of our reality?

Consider the following analogy: We are surfing in the sea and facing out to sea, observing the formation of the waves in front of us. Where we stand is the point that the formed wave crashes against us. Behind us, the wave continues to roll to the shore. In front of us we see the wave gradually form from a swell which begins to grow taller until it breaks by rolling forward. It’s origin as a swell is way in the past, coming closer to us is the past approaching the present. Where it crashes against us is the present. If we had to capture all the stages of the build up of the swell transforming into a standing wave and it’s subsequent crashing against us, and freeze it all into one frame, we have space-time. This includes all the past and present configurations as they moved towards us through distance (space) frozen in time. This is past and present in space-time. What of the future? This is the wave that continues moving behind us and which we do not observe. We can assume that it continues rolling towards the shore and dissipating it’s momentum. But without actually observing it, we can only project and assume.

Does the past influence the present in space-time? Indeed it does. It is the basic substrate together with its energy and forward momentum that drives the process from the past to the present. Does the present influence the past? Absolutely. In the space-time analogy, if a giant hole had to appear in the sea bed where we are standing, the forming swell which is to evolve into a standing-crashing wave would lose height and forward momentum as it approaches. So the end point (the ‘present’ in this analogy) affects the past (the consecutive fixed wave points preceding the impact with where I’m standing ).

Does the present influence the future? It does in that it provides the substrate, energy and forward momentum into the future. This gives rise to the probabilities defining the future but not the reality of the future. In physics terms then, the future is in ‘superposition’ – a potential state. It is only when it ‘happens’ (referred to as ‘collapsing the wave of superposition’) that it’s potential becomes space-time reality (the base state in physics terms). Therefore we may ask, does the future affect the present? The answer is no. It can only affect the present when it converts from superposition to base state reality, and by definition, that moves the future into the new present.

It becomes apparent that time or more precisely space-time, moves in one direction. It is a direction which is determined by the sequential wave collapse of superposition into space-time reality. Bearing in mind that everyone’s physical experiences occur within a space-time environment wherein overlap between different space-time dynamics occur, we begin to appreciate the complexity of the collective space-time dynamic. The final level of complexity I would suggest, results from the fact that all physical entities have an energy equivalent (E=mc²). Therefore the space-time reality is also represented within an energy dimension (the singularity?) in which there is no separation in terms of time and space – everything is connected and orchestrated through the resonance of similar frequencies. In the context of this complex interconnected reality, death is no longer an entity. It represents only a cessation of observable physical existence in space-time but not in interconnected singularity.

Further reading:

http://www.pninet.com/articles/Oscillate(A)v2.pdf

                                         Copyright reserved - Ian Weinberg 2017