Space Time
No Time Theory
Space-Time and the Quran
Is the Universe flat? Or it simply unfolds in time?
What has passed is past. Future is not made yet, and the Now is all there is.
We are simply passing actors on the unfolding stage of space time.
Twenty years passed on Einstein when he was working hard alone through his final years - when everyone was busy with Quantum Theory - to unveil the nature of space and time after he united them in his great theory of relativity, and to unite Quantum theory with his relativity theory. What was it like when he met the Merciful, after he had spent years contemplating the wonders of his work and searching for his great thoughts, but the Quran slipped his hands? But for every book is a time. He will stay the dearest scientist to me, for his mature innocence and sincere trust in the Majestic judgment and thoughts of the Merciful. Space-Time explains why the universe is flat, that is because everything that happens on the stage of space and time, simply happens in stages, in papers of a book.
When more evidence is supporting a flat universe theory, past and future fade in an unfolding universe on the stage of space time, where space is constantly evolving, and the Big Bang is simply still banging!
Professor Julian Barbour stacks space in sheets of nows and Plato revealed time as an illusion: “time is not an element of the realms beyond the physical, sensible world. The other realms are eternal” and in Plato’s striking phrase, what we call time is but the “moving, unreal reflection of eternity”.
Verses from the Quran enter the debate with snapshots of the folding of the Heavens and the earth on judgment day “like the folding of the record to the books”, and the prophet revealed that dwellings record traces and that he ascended to a level where he heard the creaking of the pens (whose ink is water). And that the forever at the time of death is another scene etched and framed in eternity.
No Time Theory
Professor Julian Barbour was born in 1937; he grew up in Oxfordshire, England. He studied Mathematics at Cambridge and received his PhD in Munich. After receiving his PhD in 1986, Professor Julian Barbour decided to leave academic physics and follow his own path. He made a living by translating scientific journals from his home in Yorkshire and managed to freely contemplate the foundational issues he was deeply interested in, mainly the nature of time. According to Professor Barbour, the problem of physics is that it had been developed under the assumption that time exists and flows independently of the objects in the world. He felt this was quite wrong and that physics must be recast on a new timeless foundation.
What is time? Was the simple question that shaped his destiny, Professor Barbour argues that time simply does not exist and that we have no evidence of the past except from our memory about it, and that there is no evidence of the future either except in our belief in it. Barbour’s central conviction is that a false belief about the nature of time prevents physicists from achieving their final goal, the unification of the sub atomic world with the macro world of general relativity. The unification problem arises because each theory provides a totally different concept of time, and that physicists simply do not know how to reconcile the two views.
In Barbour’s view, change simply creates an illusion of time, and each separate moment we live is eternal in essence. He calls these moments Nows and describes them as pages in a book, each page exists separately, and it is the moving through them that causes them to look like an unfolding story. He says that despite the order they appear in, each one of them stays whole and separate. Reality is the mere passage of the nows. There is no proof of the past either except from the memory, but memory comes from a structure of neurons in the brain now. What is special about Barbour’s theory is his conviction that we are all immortal. We are always locked in one now he argues; we do not pass through time, as each new now is a totally different universe. Barbour also provides another problem to contemplate, the mere existence and that anything exists is a puzzle to him.
http://www.platonia.com
http://discovermagazine.com/2000/dec/cover/
June, 20, 2008
Space-Time and the Quran
The following are comparisons between Professor Barbour’s radical theory of No time and what the Quran and hadith have to say regarding this theory of a timeless universe.
Professor Barbour likens reality to a movie film, with eternal moments that do not disappear.
In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful.
081.010 And when the papers are spread.
081.011 And when the sky is scraped.
021.104 The day We shall fold the sky as the folding of the record to the books as We began the first creation repeat it, a promise upon Us that We shall fulfill.
He believes a No Time theory provides a merger of quantum mechanics and relativity.
“……… Then I was ascended to a level where I heard the creaking of the pens ………” Al Bukhari, No. 3342
“The first thing that Allah created is the pen, and said write, it said: Write what O Lord? He said: write destiny, he said: so the pen ran with what will be of that till the time of the hour, and He raised water vapor then ripped from it the heavens”. (Jarikh Al Tabari No. 1/33)
Abdullah b. 'Amr b. al-'As reported: I heard Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: Allah wrote the measures (of quality) of the creation fifty thousand years before He created the heavens and the earth, as His throne was upon water. Muslim No. 2653
“Bani Salama wanted to move beside the mosque, and the land was empty. The news reached Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him, he said O Bani Salama! Your dwellings, are recording your traces. They said we were not glad that we had moved.” Muslim: 665
His eternal “Nows” imply that the moment of death exists as an eternal moment in the universe.
003:154 ..….. They say: Had we any hand in the affair, we would not have been slain here. Say: Had you remained in your houses, those for whom slaughter was ordained would have gone forth to their resting places ……. .
Narrated Abu Huraira: The Prophet said, "Whoever purposely throws himself from a mountain and kills himself, then he is in the Hell Fire falling down therein abiding perpetually forever; and whoever drinks poison and so kills himself, then his poison in his hand, and he is drinking it in the Hell Fire wherein he will abide eternally forever; and whoever kills himself with an iron (weapon), then his iron in his hand and stabbing his abdomen with it in the Hell Fire wherein he will abide eternally forever." (Book #71, Hadith#670).
“There is no bondsman that dies, who has good with God, pleased to return to the earthly world, and that the world and whatever in it belong to him, except for the martyr, for what he sees of the merits of martyrdom, he is well pleased to return to the earthly world, to be killed once more.” Al Bukhari, No. 2795.
Is that forever at the time of death a scene etched and framed in time, or an eternal feeling?
Professor Barbour says that eternity is all around us, we have to recognize it.
“And on the day when the hour comes the criminals shall swear that they had not remained except for one hour, it is thus that they were deluded. 30:55”.
“And those who were given knowledge and belief said you have remained in Allah’s book until the day of resurrection, thus this is the day of resurrection but you did not know. 30:56”.
What kind of Knowledge and belief made them escape the barrier of time and enter eternity during this mortal life?
Physical reality is like a large television screen with photons hitting the screen and continually creating and recording changing images? Images forever printed on the pages of the Book of Life, someday we shall witness them unfold in unheard of speed and read them with great clarity.
006.059 And with Him are the keys of the unseen, none knows them but He; and He knows what is in the land and the sea, and there falls not a leaf but He knows it, nor a grain in the darkness of the earth, nor anything damp nor dry but in a clear book.
017.013 And each person We fastened his bird to his neck and We bring out for him on the Day of Judgment a book which he shall find unfolded.
017.014 Read your book, yourself suffices today as your reckoner.
But beyond the universal screen, which is not flat and not even 3D, lies what we humans struggle to understand, the actors on the stage of space-time, the complex entities with form, breath, memories, hopes, regrets, pride, visions and much more. We are not a now, a past or a future, we are eternal. But we cannot escape the fact that we are now caught in the making of the “me” and the need to continuously become a better “me”. That feeling of satisfaction in me, my attributes and accomplishments is the ever running destination we are continuously caught in the chase after, while it just keeps receding in the distance with
the same pace we exert to catch up with it.
Eternity is not that ever running mirage, and many meet death before they get there”. That “there” which is the true being and real home.
051.050 Flee then to Allah, I am from Him unto you, a manifest warner.
June, 18, 2008
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