It seems to depend on the idea that time moves forward in one direction; an intuition that is theoretically refuted from deduction of scientific observation (I can't remember the specificities, perhaps someone like apo will). — darthbarracuda
Why a temporal mobius strip would be the way it is, I have no idea. It's just a funny idea I've been toying with. — darthbarracuda
An odd argument I came across recently: — jorndoe
That's the kind of "dancing wu li master" nonsense that gives serious systems science such a bad name. — apokrisis
No, it isn't sound, as Hegel pointed out in his criticism of Kant, one can select any arbitrary chunk, as it were, of infinity and progress from the assigned beginning to the assigned end. — Wosret
The problem is modern western science has focused on her beauty to the exclusion of humor — wuliheron
But the problem here is that you have just destroyed causality, and causality is something we would expect to be able to extract from "a better model of time". Causality is what we observe in the world - it is why we believe it to be "time-like" - and so at the very least, an arrow of time ought to be the emergent feature of any good model of time.
That was the problem of Newtonian time, and the reason for recent thermal models. Newtonian time could not build in a direction. As a result you can get insane metaphysical notions like "the block universe", or "eternal recurrence". — apokrisis
these days arguments of the impossibility of an infinite past are only made by people that do not understand mathematics well — andrewk
Here are some bad/good (nonsensical) things about it — andrewk
In any case, though, the notion of causality has been attacked, many times. — darthbarracuda
1. if the universe was temporally infinite, then there would be no 1st moment — jorndoe
Temperature may be a better label than time for the evolution of the universe
Perhaps time is the wrong marker.
Perhaps what we call time is merely a labeling convention, one that happens to correspond to something more fundamental.
The scale factor, which is related to the temperature of the universe, could be such a quantity.
In our standard solutions, the scale factor, and hence the temperature, is not a steady function of cosmic time.
Intervals marked by equal changes in the temperature will correspond to very different intervals of cosmic time.
In units of this temperature time, the elapsed interval, that is, the change in temperature, from recombination till the present is less than the elapsed change from the beginning to the end of the lepton epoch.
As an extreme example, if we push temperature time all the way to the big bang, the temperature goes to infinity when cosmic time goes to zero.
In temperature units, the big bang is in the infinite past!
In an open universe, the temperature drops to zero at infinite cosmic time, and temperature and cosmic time always travel in opposite directions.
In a closed universe, on the other hand, there is an infinite temperature time in the future, at some finite cosmic time.
A closed universe also has the property, not shared by the open or flat universe, of being finite in both cosmic time and in space.
In this case, the beginning and end of the universe are nothing special, just two events in the four-geometry.
Some cosmologists have argued for this picture on aesthetic grounds; but as we have seen, such a picture lacks observational support, and has no particular theoretical justification other than its pleasing symmetry.
If we are looking for clues to a physical basis for the flow of time, however, perhaps we are on the right track with temperature. — Foundations of Modern Cosmology by John F Hawley and Katherine A Holcomb
If we argue from Big Bang models, i.e. extrapolate to a definite earliest time, then other infinites just show up instead, infinite density and temperature. — jorndoe
A convenient explanation need not always be the correct explanation. — darthbarracuda
You seem to be claiming that causality fails in some generic sense. I ask where are the facts that suggest that? — apokrisis
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