Quick link to an experiment that purportedly suggests that time is an emergent property of quantum entanglement:

https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/quantum-experiment-shows-how-time-emerges-from-entanglement-d5d3dc850933

The implication, apparently, is that if we could look at the spacetime universe from outside, time would not exist for us.

Comments

[SPatel]

Looking, experiencing, realizing you are outside something - these all require time. Tallis has a good Youtube Video called Killing Time that puts paid to some of the sillier ideas about a "timeless realm" coming out physics and mysticism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J7BOoaFfbA

Lee Smolin covers more of this in his varied books, the most recent being The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time.

[n/a]

"The implication, apparently, is that if we could look at the spacetime universe from outside, time would not exist for us."

Okay, now let's say that we are in just that scenario. We're looking at our spacetime universe from the outside. Okay... can we (as observers) count to three? Can we (perhaps only in our minds) utter the words "I am observing the universe"?

If so, time would still exist...

[Michael Prescott]

I should have phrased it better. What I mean is, a Godlike observer looking at the spacetime universe from outside would not perceive any changes or evolution in the spacetime universe - the cosmos would appear static. Thus there would be no time in the universe as perceived by this outside observer. The issue of time existing subjectively for the Godlike observer is a different matter.

I don't pretend to really follow the science behind this. But it's an interesting idea and apparently has some empirical support.

[SPatel]

Yeah sorry Michael if my initial post came off as an attack.

I think there's something weird about the idea of a timeless realm where everything has happened according to God's plan, just as there is in the NDE telling us that our actions in this life are are ultimately a kind of game or education simulation.

I think William James said it well:

"If this life be not a real fight, in since something is eternally gained for the universe by its success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which we may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight -- as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with our ideals and faithfulness, are needed to redeem."

[Juan]

How can there be a outside from space-time? A outside assumed a space, so that the external observer is already in space and therefore in time.

[JW]

The article concludes "It’s one thing to show how time emerges for photons,.." the implication being that photons experience time. Since the particles are photons they move at the speed of light and by definition, according to the Theory of Special Relativity ("TSR"), never experience time. This could be the rationale for the theory proposed herein - if you move at (or exceeding) the speed of light time does not exist, hence the theory of a block universe perhaps being explicated here. BTW, Einstein, discoverer of the TSR, was a fan of the block universe explanation of a timeless universe.

[SPatel]

If you're moving at the speed of light, you are experience time because speed implies motion which implies change which implies time.

Really Whitehead and Bergson had the right idea that Time should be spatialized. Fuchs and Mermin are two physicists who're challenging the idea of the block universe, ideally they can correct some of the logical errors that have (IMO anyway) pervaded physics. In short, Einstein was wrong. :-)

After all, as Smolin notes in The Trouble with Physics, "dark matter" and "dark energy" are actually concepts created b/c the alternative is to question relativity:

"There is always more mass needed to explain the observed motion of the stars than is seen by directly counting up all the stars, gas, and dust.

There are only two explanations for this. Either the second method fails because there is much more mass in a galaxy than is visible, or Newton's laws fail to correctly predict the motions of stars in the gravitational field of their galaxy..The dark-matter hypothesis is preferred mostly because the only other possibility - that we are wrong about Newton's laws, and by extension general relativity - is too scary to contemplate."

--As for dark energy, same thing:

"The expansion of the universe, set in motion by the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago, appears to be accelerating, whereas, given the observed matter plus the calculated amount of dark matter, it should be doing the opposite - decelerating.

Again....two possible explanations. General relativity could simply be wrong. It has been verified precisely only within our solar system and nearby systems in our own galaxy. Perhaps when one gets to a scale comparable to the size of the whole universe, general relativity is simply no longer applicable.

Or there is a new form of matter - or energy...that becomes relevant on these very large scales: That is, this new form of energy affects only the expansion of the universe...."

[Bruce Siegel]

Juan said:

"How can there be a outside from space-time? A outside assumed a space, so that the external observer is already in space and therefore in time."

Here's another possibility, one that I believe is correct.

Space-time is not a physical location, but a state of mind -- one which we can indeed be in or out of.

Precognitive dreams happen because, as we sleep, we leave one state of consciousness and enter another.

[SPatel]

Correction to an above post of mine:

Really Whitehead and Bergson had the right idea that Time should [NOT] be spatialized.

apologies for my sloppiness,

SPatel

[Lynn]

"Space-time is not a physical location, but a state of mind -- one which we can indeed be in or out of".

I agree "Bruce", "Amos,s" post of Rich Kelly's NDE explains it so well.

We aren't anywhere in space or a timeframe, but this world is purely an illusion. When we die, and give up our mammalian body, out consciousness just expands to join that of the universe. Where we come to understand that our egocentric world is a self-perpetuated belief system.

I also think, that if we understood that, we could manipulate matter, and each of us connect psychically to the universe, much as we do during OBE's, PSI, remote viewing, Spoon Bending, NDE experiences etc, etc.

I think consciousness is capable of almost anything -if we believe, therefore we can. Cheers.

[Amos Oliver Doyle]

Wow! I can clearly see how much easier it is to be a materialist. As a materialist I do not have to consider ideas about space/time or any of the other things associated with a possible non-material i.e. spiritual reality.

What a relief that would be!

Questions concerning the reality of NDEs, OBEs, apparitions, automatic writing, reincarnation, after-death communication simply do not exist for the materialist because those things are not quantifiable. As a simple-minded materialist I would be able to disregard those things, wipe them clear out of my mind and not spend tiresome brain-aching hours contemplating whether or not there is convincing evidence that those things are real and represent contact with another state of being.

Sometimes I think that being a materialist is a very desirable state to be in. - AOD

[Art]

Most "skeptic/materialists" seem to be stuck in an 18th Century Newtonian way of thinking about the Universe. It's like they haven't discovered quantum physics yet, and if they've heard of it they can't or don't believe it influences the macro world in any way even though it seems to have profound implications for the micro world? They just dismiss offhand that there is any connection between the world of the quantum and our world. Besides which they all seem to be angry about something? {grin}

[Rabbitdawg]

One of the ineffable aspects of deep near-death experiences is the passage of time. Experiencer's report that they can't accurately describe it, but when pressed to try, they end up describing a state where everything happens at once, multiple conversations happen simultaneously, and events are perceived from a 360° point of view. Yet, they also describe a progression of events.
To the average person, this doesn't make a lick of sense. Even though the experiencer tells us right out of the gate, that what they're trying to tell us can't be described using words, we push them to try and they get ridiculed and embarrased.
No wonder so many NDEr's are reluctant to share their experiences with doctors and members of their family.

With our current everyday consciousness trapped in a linear spacetime framework, it is impossible for us to wrap our minds around the Transcendent perspective.

[doubter]

||Sometimes I think that being a materialist is a very desirable state to be in. - AOD||

Indeed. "As an explanation of the world, materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has just the quality of the madman's argument; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out."

(from G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908)

[Lynn]

I think I have mentioned this experience before. Some years ago I was at our family holiday home, when a police program came on about a missing person from the area. With no information about him, I put it out there, that if he had passed, I wouldn't mind if he came to me- as I would then know he was deceased.

Nothing happened so I went to bed and forgot about it. I had not been in bed long, and closed my eyes and snuggled in to go to sleep. When I momentarily opened them again, there was the head of a young man blown up hugely beside the bed, in what looked like a sort balloon shape.

I thought about this experience again recently as I think its what those who have had a NDE, talk of when they say 'all information is there at once'. I looked at the person and didn't recognise him, and instantly a thought was there that this was the missing person. In the documentary, he had longer hair and looked scruffy. This man was younger with close cropped hair- and looked very different.

For some reason, I think you get in a bubble of sorts with the person, as it seems common that people don't have an initial fear when this is going on. After that I told him to go away as I was terrified, suddenly realising where I was.

So I feel when they concentrate on someone, they share consciousness, and so the information is just there instantaneously between you.

Similarly in another experience in which my uncle came to me one night, I could feel him moving through me as he imparted his personality into my consciousness, and that is how I knew it was him. It was kind of like if someone rings you after 20 years and you hear their voice, and go, "oh thats.."Only its all their traits at once. Cheers.

[Lynn]

I just want to add- as Rich Kelly's says of his NDE. I think once back in the universe however, you personally can access all conscious as you are now pure consciousness again. And that as Seth says, all thoughts, all actions remain -there is no present or past. But that bubble of conscious experiences in the universe, and you merge with that totality when you pass. Lyn x.

[James Oeming]

Off topic: Just ran into this link for a new book that purports an overview of psi evidence -- the first of its kind in 40 years, it says. I haven't delved into this book. By looking at the table of contents, I don't see what they put the word "Drugs" so prominently in the title. As mentioned, I haven't checked out this book -- this just a link to an ad for the book. Passing it on...

[James Oeming]

... accidentally sent the previous message without the link. Here it is...

https://www.academia.edu/14623341/Drugs_and_psi_phenomena