3 ms·

Just because you dont see it, doesnt mean it didnt happen. The light the sun emits will only be seen by us ~8min later, but it's still being emitted right now.

deepsun 3y ago
No, there's a mistake in the statement. Counter-example -- what's happening _right now_ at a distance of 20 billion light-years from us? Or another question -- what happened 1 hour _before_ the Big Bang? Both questions are already invalid by themselves. UPDATE: I should've tried to answer my questions to show what I mean: 1. At 20B ly from us there's no space nor time to talk about. Physicists talk in formulas, and I suspect if I knew how, I just wouldn't be able to come up with a formula to formulate my question. 2. "before" the Big Bang there was no time itself to say "before". In other words, we can only reason about, or imagine, reason about things, within our light cones. Outside light cone questions become invalid to ask.
- foobarian 3y ago
  Can't we imagine a bag of clocks at the Big Bang origin that were synchronized and allowed to travel in all directions along with various sections of the ejecta, including one on Earth? One could imagine events that happen at the same clock reading as ours in all the different parts of the visible and non-visible universe.
  - riotnrrd 3y ago
    The effects of relativity cause that thought experiment to fall apart quickly. I build two clocks, and send one to alpha centauri and back in a spaceship. When the travelling clock gets back to Earth it will be showing a different time (because of time dilation during acceleration). What does "the same clock reading" mean then?
    - foobarian 3y ago
      Yes of course they won't show the same time if you bring them back. But the point is to argue that it is possible for there to be a "right now," as defined by what the traveling clock shows, outside of our light cone.
  - deepsun 3y ago
    It's totally possible that such clocks could then touch each other in one place, while both showing widely different readings. Which one is right then? PS: by the way, Poincare proved that there's no way to synchronize clocks perfectly, only up to a some margin.
petsfed 3y ago
Sort of. The concept of simultaneity is mind-bending when you really dig into it [0]. The upshot is that the hard problem of synchronizing distributed systems is a problem of fundamental physics, rather than simply the capabilities of any given developer. Its always nice to know that the reason you haven't met some specification given to you by a non-technical user representative is because meeting that specification violates the known laws of physics. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity

deepsun 3y ago

No, there's a mistake in the statement. Counter-example -- what's happening _right now_ at a distance of 20 billion light-years from us? Or another question -- what happened 1 hour _before_ the Big Bang? Both questions are already invalid by themselves. UPDATE: I should've tried to answer my questions to show what I mean: 1. At 20B ly from us there's no space nor time to talk about. Physicists talk in formulas, and I suspect if I knew how, I just wouldn't be able to come up with a formula to formulate my question. 2. "before" the Big Bang there was no time itself to say "before". In other words, we can only reason about, or imagine, reason about things, within our light cones. Outside light cone questions become invalid to ask.

foobarian 3y ago
Can't we imagine a bag of clocks at the Big Bang origin that were synchronized and allowed to travel in all directions along with various sections of the ejecta, including one on Earth? One could imagine events that happen at the same clock reading as ours in all the different parts of the visible and non-visible universe.
- riotnrrd 3y ago
  The effects of relativity cause that thought experiment to fall apart quickly. I build two clocks, and send one to alpha centauri and back in a spaceship. When the travelling clock gets back to Earth it will be showing a different time (because of time dilation during acceleration). What does "the same clock reading" mean then?
  - foobarian 3y ago
    Yes of course they won't show the same time if you bring them back. But the point is to argue that it is possible for there to be a "right now," as defined by what the traveling clock shows, outside of our light cone.
- deepsun 3y ago
  It's totally possible that such clocks could then touch each other in one place, while both showing widely different readings. Which one is right then? PS: by the way, Poincare proved that there's no way to synchronize clocks perfectly, only up to a some margin.

petsfed 3y ago

Sort of. The concept of simultaneity is mind-bending when you really dig into it [0]. The upshot is that the hard problem of synchronizing distributed systems is a problem of fundamental physics, rather than simply the capabilities of any given developer. Its always nice to know that the reason you haven't met some specification given to you by a non-technical user representative is because meeting that specification violates the known laws of physics. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity