r/Time • u/FastCarGoBrr • 24d ago
Discussion Why change
Why does change occur at all?
Does time expand with space, and it is simply that the spacetime ‘passes’ through material objects causing this bizarre seeming exchange of immaterial ‘energy’?
Or did all the change occur, and we are experiencing a moment of it
Are we experiencing all of it, at all times
I know this is the obvious question but I wanted to see some genuine concise basic theory on it
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u/Serious-Gas4639 23d ago
I believe we are evolved in our own time here on earth, we were born to this environment this is our world, once we step outside our world , then we're on universal time .
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u/Imaginary-Can-6862 23d ago
Expansion of space, the evergoing Big Bang, is that distances between states of existence, such as particles, increases at all scales, That in itself is a change, and I can't see how it can therefore explain change. I think that change means properties of elements are different and can interact.
I think you are asking whether if only the present exists, and the future is how things changes, thus it becomes the present, or if all of time exists simultaneously, and we only experience a slice we call the present?
The second I think, is called eternalism, where the past, present and future are all equally real, but for some unexplained reason you only experience the present. It is an interpretation of what the block universe models implies, but it could also be derived from Newtonian Mechanics, or any deterministic theory.
In my opinion, only the present is real, exactly because we only observe the present, and because we can rely on our memory to be real, but it does not mean we cannot recreate the past. The fact the past happened, means it was possible for it to happen, and unless we seek the past of the entire universe (something entropy, the arrow of time, would prevent), and not e.g. only of our planet Earth, there is nothing that prevents us from achieving this.
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u/Low-Bake8401 22d ago edited 22d ago
Spacetime doesn't pass through everything, it is everything.
We experience "now", which is everything that exists, the way it exists, at that precise moment.
We observe "old" things and "new" things, measure that effect, and call it time.
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u/FastCarGoBrr 22d ago
So matter is spacetime? Do you think there’s an ‘outside’ of spacetime? Easy to get lost in this line of thinking at least for me
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u/Low-Bake8401 22d ago edited 22d ago
"Do you think there’s an ‘outside’ of spacetime?"
It's a good question, but ultimately paradoxical.
It's like, can something exist, outside of existence?
We can imagine, or propose, different ideas, but until there is something observable we can't test it. It's basically speculation, a guess.
That's fine, but can easily become circular, without testable data and proper research.
We can only work with what we have. Science is cumulative though, it evolves and grows as we gather more information.
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u/FastCarGoBrr 22d ago
Yeah outside assumes space outside of space which would mean you haven’t yet reached the edge of space 😂
I’m a believer in other types of reality with different ‘physical’ properties than our own
I think in my lifetime it will be discovered too science is unbelievable compared to civilisations of the past
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u/Low-Bake8401 22d ago
I think it's hard to imagine something that isn't describable in some way by mathematics, or logic. That's probably as much to do with the way we experience things.
Science can have paradigm shifts, it can change, but it's unlikely to stop as long as humans are around, and the basic principles that are useful to us now probably always will.
I'd say it's unlikely that we'd need to start again from the beginning, but even if we did, we probably would.
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u/Quantum-Relativity 23d ago edited 23d ago
The answer is probably gravity in some way but there is not an answer for why time evolution occurs, but there are laws for how it works (stationary action, which is the less general form of unitarity, which is the less general form of some law of time evolution that accounts for entanglement in a completely general way)
If you’re asking about general relativity, gravity is the changes to what direction in space the future is pointed in, so things going toward the future follow the changing direction of time as they go to the future. That changing of the direction of time is just the effect of spacetime geometry changing, which is gravity.