Against Space-time

Western governments spend vast treasure trying to understand space-time. About $750 million was spent on the development, launch and data analysis of just one experiment, Gravity Probe B (GPB). According to NASA, GPB confirmed space-time’s geodetic effect to an accuracy of 0.5% and the frame dragging effect to within 15% of the expectations of General Relativity. Did they actually detect a bent and twisted vacuum? Do satellites really sense the vacuum of space is bent by gravity? bends in the vacuum of space? Clocks and spherical cryogenic gyros do not actually detect time or space; they merely define them.

Isaac Newton rejected crowing roosters and sunsets, used by many generations, as time markers. Instead he defined a mathematical time with clocks. He wrote, "Absolute, true and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external." He also believed that, "Absolute space, in its own nature, without relation to anything external remains always similar and immovable." Absolute space and time allowed Newton to invent the mathematics of clock time (calculus) and predict clock-like orbits. Newton’s immutable time was founded upon an assumption that had its beginnings with Aristotle. Isaac’s system depends on the notion that the intrinsic properties of matter are fixed.

Einstein continued Newton’s idea that “time is what clocks measure.” However, he allowed clocks to change speed and empty space to bend. If clocks and vacuums are not consistent, how can empirical science exist? Einstein’s formulas embody a pure mathematical version of time. Any clock can change speed relative to all other clocks. Einstein’s formula version of time allows every clock to be “corrected” to a fit his mathematical version of reality - relativity. Einstein’s formulas tick at a fixed rate because they depend on the Aristotelian / medieval notion that the essence of substance is fixed. In modern terms, atoms are believed to be intrinsically immutable and dither with perpetual motion.

Solomon’s version of time is unlike either Newton’s or Einstein’s. He wrote that God put olam in our hearts (minds) so that we cannot discover all that God has done from beginning to end. Olam is a Hebrew time word, translated as aeon in Greek. (The original meaning of aeon was a lifetime - Aristotle. Eon is the English transliteration of aeon.) God gave us the ability to organize our societies with eon ideas. Only humans make calendars and write histories. When things change and move, we classify these changes as time. Time, however, is a mental construct; it has no independent actuality either for God or man (Ecclesiastes 3). When considering Solomon’s version of time, it is important to reference it to his physics. In Solomon’s day, histories recorded planet orbits changing; the duration of life changing as days and years changed. No one in that era could imagine that matter itself was not changing or that time was an independent thing that flows at an unchanging rate.

Is time a mental construct, an idea, not a reality of nature? Do things change relationally, as people believed in Solomon’s days? Relational change is where, in every local environment, the nature of reality changes in parallel, orderly and together. Solomon lived more than two millennium before the idea that substance does not change began to control western minds. He clearly denies the possibility of a valid science. Ecclesiastes 8:16-17 “When I gave my heart to know wisdom and to see the task which has been done on the earth (even though one should never sleep day or night), and I saw every work of God, I concluded that man cannot discover the work which has been done under the sun. Even though man should seek laboriously, he will not discover; and though the wise man should say, ‘I know,’ he cannot discover.”

Is time an invisible substance that flows at a steady rate without respect to anything else? Does it twist and bend the vacuum with ticks that can only be understood with relativity formulas? Is everything relative to the fixed nature of atoms? Relational changes can account for the visible universe without mathematics. When things change relationally, they change in parallel - together. Relational changes are not permitted in scientific empiricism. [Read Hans Reichenbach’s Philosophy of Space and Time. He shows that scientists must deny universal forces that effect all local bodies equally. Such effects could not be measured with an empirical system because they would affect both the measuring units and the measuring instruments.

Yet if relational changes exist, we could see them. We can see the distant past and compare it to the present, optically. Indeed, with telescopes, we see cosmic history back to the creation era. We see that galaxies started out as tiny naked globs without starry arms. All of the billions of primordial galaxies clock minuscule frequencies, compared to local atoms. We also observe how the stars came out, accelerated out, as billions of isolated galaxies intrinsically grew into huge, local, growth spirals. Not only does every clock change speed, but the star streams also accelerate outward. Galaxies cannot intrinsically grow unless the properties of matter are emerging, changing relationally. (Evidently local orbits appear clock-like because clocks and orbits both accelerate together). Indeed, the clocks from the Pioneer spacecraft changing, relative to NASA’s hydrogen maser clocks of the moment, the farther they got from earth. The Pioneer anomaly fits what we observe in billions of distant galaxies - that all clocks are accelerating as they age. Over the centuries astronomers have measured optically a steadily reducing optical solar parallax as though the whole solar system also keeps expanding.

Only a biblical version of natural history fits the visible history of the universe. The Bible states that God calls the stars to come out in unbroken continuity. He continues to spread out the plural heavens like a tent. The Bible even mentions how the Earth also spreads out in unbroken continuity and that this occurs above the waters. Indeed, we find a global expansion seam in every ocean continuing to form new seafloor. The continents fit together on a tiny globe without major seas. The undisturbed sediments in the subduction trenches clearly show that subduction is a scientific myth. Only biblical physics admits that all things are changing. The Bible clearly states that the whole creation is in bondage to change - Greek phthora.

Space-time is a synthetic idea, not part of the reality of our universe. It was invented to promote Einstein’s core idea - that the essence of matter is not changing in a relational manner - that matter does not change as it ages. Look a the distant galaxies and you will see the real reality, the reality of real, relational change. Look!

The graphic is from NASA and shows Gravity Probe B as it allegedly follows the bends in the fabric of the vacuum.

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Last modified on August 22, 2011