Quote:
Originally Posted by modest
I might get some resistance by putting this in the language of physics, but I think it's best described with a lightcone:
described on wikipedia where the "hypersurface of the present" is outside our past light cone and therefore we do not experience it - we have no direct knowledge of it. I think this implies quite a bit about the workings of time and space. In particular, how our experience is limited to events not spatially separated from us. The further an event is spatially distant from us, the further in the past that event must be. |
Since you pasted that picture, I should comment that when I was referring to the "ontology of the simultaneity planes", I was talking about what is dubbed "hypersurface of the present" in that picture. With the definitions of relativity, the visualized surface is for an observer who is not moving in that picture. If the red dot was moving
in that pictured frame, his "surface of the present" would be tilted. Depending on the observer's speed, it could be tilted in any angle as long as it did not penetrate the light cones.
That means, if the observer was changing directions, its "surface of the present" would be said to tilt back and forth in such manner that some events would move through the present "backwards"; i.e. some things around the observer would move backwards in time (of course beyond the sight of the observer).
I.e, if you take relative simultaneity as ontologically real, you also assume that things around you in your "present moment" can move backwards in time if you change directions, but you just can't see it.
Of course at this point I should remind you that it is possible to build a valid view of reality where such simultaneity planes are not ontologically real. I think that is just one particularly interesting aspect of modern definitions on "time".
-Anssi
