Koichiro Matsuno (kmatsuno@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp)
Tue, 30 Nov 1999 09:06:31 +0900
Dear Stephen an All,
Stephen Paul King <stephenk1@home.com> wrote:
>> May I add one more to the list? That is thermodynamics taking note
>>of the presence of heat sinks. Heat sinks are and have to be concrete
>>in what they have absorbed so far.
>
> Umm, but would you not agree that this thought of "heat sinks have to
>be concrete in what they have absorbed so far" as implying a temporal
>duration?
You have just hit right at the mark. This is exactly the point!
Thermodynamics is already implicit in what globally synchronous time looks
like. But, its recipe is quite different from Newton's. In addition, if we
can say something sensible about time, it would have to be circular or even
tautological in the very good sense of the words.
> If the "agency of making distinctions in progress" is a material body
>capable of acting as a heat sink, could we see the convergence of the
>"present progressive" to a "present perfect"?
Once the present progressive converges to a present perfect, it may lead
to the end of time. All of the movements have been completed, and the future
has been frozen. The future sun eclipses have been completed in mechanics
because the movement in mechanistic dynamics is upon the equality between
the present progressive and the present perfect expressed in the present
tense. However, the future earthquake which may hit near Tokyo area must be
a time phenomenon par excellence because it has literally not yet been
completed.
>> Time conceived in this way is locally relational and not absolute in the
>> Newtonian sense.
>
> Yes! But, does this give us a way of creating the "illusion" of
>absolute time for finite neighborhoods ("nebula") of interacting clocks?
>I think so! :-)
This is a matter of choice. We have at least two different alternatives
for getting illusive synchronous time, either Newtonian illusion or
thermodynamic. I am currently bidding for the thermodynamic one.
> Here I see a heat sink as a material body or system that is capable of
>or the potential for "tending toward equilibrium". Once it is "at"
>equilibrium" (present perfect?) it would be unable to be a heat sink any
>more. It is interesting that the notion of open "Hubble expansion" of a
>space-time acts like a perpetually cold heat sink, except at the Big
>Bong singularity! :-)
If our cosmological heat sink is already full of garbage and cannot take
in any more, this must be the end of the brief history of time.
Cheers,
Koichiro
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