Introduction

There are a number of problems with ‘time’ in modern physics and cosmology, which undermine most of what we are told is ‘The Science’, including Relativity and ‘The Big Bang’.  Many posts on this substack outline why both are false, but one could simply take the concept of ‘time’.  ‘The Science’™ is unscientific about ‘time’. In fact many within ‘The Science’™ declare time to be an illusion.  They are right. Spacetime as a 4th dimension is indeed an illusion.

When we critically review what ‘time’ actually means, we began to understand that much of modern cosmology is simply a philosophical exercise based on assumptions, many of which are wrong.  Metaphysics is not physics.  It is part of faith.

What is ‘Time’?

‘The Science’ has its own fictitious definition of ‘time’.  In Einstein’s relativity theories, time operates within the fantasy world of ‘spacetime’.  Spacetime is now accepted as canonical gospel, but it is a fabricated, never proven 4-dimensional mathematical construction, derived by ‘magic’ according to some scientists.  It was Minkowski, Einstein’s maths teacher who first proposed it, at least in its modern form. Einstein initially was aghast and rejected it, than when it was necessary and useful to fill out his theorems he consumed it whole without attribution or reference. In this simulation, time is merged into space.  To explain how this operates, the gospel writers invoke divine revelation through advanced mathematics.  Only a few incense-bearing priests of ‘The Science’™ have the celestial wisdom and knowledge to understand what these arcane equations might reveal but they are certain that time can travel backwards, forwards and even stand still. Don’t ask for proof, that results in an excommunication.

Elastic ideas

Mechanically, ‘The Science’™ agrees that a specific definition of time was established by 1967.  ‘Time’ is calculated as the duration of a number of oscillations of light from a certain atom, under particular circumstances.  This specificity seems rather elastic.  Using this definition time can be measured against a meter of distance.  Time measurement can also be applied to light travel, denoted as a light year which sounds ‘short’ and which is only 6 trillion miles in human understanding (keep that in mind when fantasists claim that we can whiz over to Alpha Centauri which is ‘only’ 4.3 light years away and cavort with Chewbaca and the comely aliens in the local bar).

Defining time as duration of light oscillations from an atom might permit cosmologists to work back toward a beginning of the universe to estimate the age of what we see around us.  As Newton perceived though Einstein denied, space or the universe is the most logical reference frame against which to measure cosmological time.  The universe itself however, has no conception of time and given that we don’t know much about ‘time’, or even the invariant speed of light, it is entirely reasonable to assume that time varies by distance, by epoch, by calculation and by observer.

What we do know is that time, because it is a calculation, can never be merged into a spatial map.  More here