Object at Rest Never Actually at Rest

Tom

An Old Friend
Newton's First Law states that an object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an external force.

There is a fundamental flaw in this...Relativity
The flaw is that nothing is actually ever at rest relative to everything.

Lemme splain;

Consider your chair, the floor or the ground where you are standing.
Its all moving in many ways but relative to your own perception it might 'seem' at rest (a delusion).

As the relative observation of any given object moves into the sub-atomic or quantum realm, you will find that everything is in constant motion relative to its heat (energy).
But, moving outward at more macro relativity the motion is more understandable.

Lets say you are considering a rock at your feet as the object at rest (or pick any object).
Relative to you, it is not moving. Thus, it is at rest.
Relative to the Earth, it is moving around 500 mph.
If you stopped that rock relative to the rotation of the Earth it would fly off around 500 miles per hour.
Now, consider that the Earth is wobbling on its axis. That rock is now moving around 500 mph and back and forth.
Now consider it relative to the Sun.
Its moving around 500 mph and back and forth plus its moving thru space around the Sun.

But wait, it gets even more motion as you expand your relativity reference.
Being locked to the motion of the Earth around the Sun it is also moving in relation to the Sun moving thru the galaxy.
So now it is moving in its Earthly movement but around the galaxy and up and down as the Sun moves up and down in relation to the plane of its orbit in the galactic plane.

We're not done yet...
The galaxy is also moving as it orbits the galactic cluster and travels thru intergalactic space.
It is also moving in relation to the Virgo Super-cluster of galaxies and that is even moving in relation to the Universe as a whole.
The Universe, expanding as it does, is also moving as a whole in the super-universal medium in which it exists.

So, any object within the Universe is always in motion, never actually at rest.
As a matter of fact, that rock is actually booking really fast.
Relative to you, it is stationary but in reality, its not.

The space we occupy now will be gone in one second from now. Its already "Waaay" back there and we will NEVER be in that spot ever again.

That object you are holding in your hand is also moving at great speeds relative to your perceptions, its breath-takingly fast.
How fast exactly is anyone's guess? You would have to know all the vectors for its position and the all the movement velocities.

Some of you might or might not be aware of this.
Relativity is a deception.
Relativity applies across multiple domains.
We often accept the delusion reinforced by relativity perception.

Relativity is complex and many times we can't tell the myth of relativity from reality.

Newton's Law is accepted because in our relativity it applies.
The flaw of presuming anything can ever be at rest limits this law as a perception regulated law
and not a fundamental law of reality.
If it is flawed in one way, it is flawed.
 
Correct!

How about time? - Now?

I say now never exists - you would have to freeze all motion, freeze the universe for now to exist.

I know there are those who will say we exist in a perpetual now - A fantasy.

Again I say - Only the future exists - We live in a perpetually hypothetical state of reality
- which in final analysis is itself only hypothetical.



"
“We have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up to now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future.”
― Max Planck, The Universe in the Light of Modern Physics
 
The way I think about time is that every moment we are aware of is the past.
If you think about the speed of light and the speed of senses to brain/brain processing everything that we can sense is happening in the past. There is no 'now'. At least not that we can actually sense.
Its like sound at a distance. At a distance, a man strikes a metal plate. We see the man strike the plate but it takes a bit of time for the sound to reach our ears.
Likewise, the sunshine that reaches Earth is about 7 miniutes old.
Everything you see, unless it is a direct source of light immediately at your eye takes time for the photons to strike an object and be reflected to our eyes. We see colors and hues because light strikes an object and refracts to absorb or reflect different parts of the spectrum. Those different colors move at different speeds, slower or faster from infrared to ultraviolet. If it didn't, everything would be pitch black (absense of light) or brilliant radiance (presense of all spectrums of light at the same time). Black is not a color, its the absense of reflected light. White is not a color it is the presense of all light being reflected.
Then it takes time for that photosensor to register the light and more time for that sense to travel to the brain. Then the brain has to decipher that input signal to register it as light and tell the rest of the brain it is light.
We only sense the past.
Likewise, an artificial detector that registers light also detects the past in much the same way.

As for the future, we use our experience of the past in the present to effect the future. The future can be over-ridden by many things so it can never be a sure thing. The only thing that is an absolute is the past.
 
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I also think what we call the present (not the 'now') is a series of 'static states' that have an extremely short duration. Our brains put those static states together as a "Flow of Time" we call the present. At any given change there is potential for tangents but since we anticipate the next state change, it requires a tangent change that prevails before we realize a change has happened. Our brains are so 'tuned' that those changes in states appear to us as an ever-changing present.

Its more than a lifetime series of photos because it encompasses all our senses, not just sight.
Think a sensory display playing at a few quadrillion frames per second.

At carnivals, they used to have a machine that used static images to produce movement. The movement we detect when we turn the drum is an illusion our eye creates from those individual images. Now, think if you could do the same with all senses. That's what our brains do. That's what we detect as time passage.
 
I agree with most of what you say but.......

The only thing that is an absolute is the past.

Yes and No - The thing is in viewing the past 'now' {however you see it}, perspectives change with
the point and time of observation - So exactly what happened in the past may not be {or appear}
the same seen from different points in time and space. - Maybe there is nothing in this world that
is really 'absolute' ?



“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
― Max Planck
 
Yes and No - The thing is in viewing the past 'now' {however you see it}, perspectives change with
the point and time of observation
First, Merry Christmas.
Perspective is nearly always a consideration of assessing the past.
Viewing the past in the 'now' is not a choice.
The 'now' requires events to pass before they can be assessed.
To view events in actual 'real-time' would require the ability to observe AND process events as they are happening.
This might seem like what we do but in actuality, the real-time events we observe and process are already established events.
The light we see from a light bulb turning on has already happened by the time we see the light.
The light from the Sun has already erupted from the Sun about 7 minutes before we see it.
The issues is not the amount of light but the time delay between initiation and reception and processing.
In the case of the light from the Sun, there are many things that can occur between the time it leaves the Sun and it reaches our eyes and is processed as light by our brains.
In the reference of a light bulb, the duration is shorter but there is still duration.
That duration establishes the past.

This understanding is important because relative to our own perception we might think we exist in real-time but in actuality we always exist in the past.
Now, consider that if everything we experience is the past and that past is a series of snapshots of time, focusing on a single snapshot could establish a destination for time travel.
The problem with time travel is that we might be able to focus on past events from recorded history, we do not have enough data to focus on the precise moment of occurrence of any event.
The Universe has changed from that 'state'.

Not only must the time device calculate the exact moment of the observable state, it must calculate the exact state of all unobserved states that existed in that moment in the entire Universe. So, even tho you might focus the destination on a single event in a given life, if the Universe is not aligned with the events that transpired during that specific event, you have no stable destination.

From a different perspective, To accurately describe events that happened during a significant event, all the parameters must be considered for that specific time according to the present state of the Universe at that specific time.

This all lends to the idea that the perception of the individual dictates the reality that actually happens. If the event happens before the assessment (which it does) the event is locked to the conditions that were occurring at the actual time of the event, not the perceived time of the event.

Take Messier 87.
The events we perceive happening at Messier 87 are actually events that happened 52.49 Million Years ago.
The light that we see in real-time now, happened at Messier 87 52.49 Million years ago. We are only just now seeing it as a reality.

That same light speed limit applies to all light.
So when you are in the dark and turn on the light switch to light the lamp for your room, that light striking your eye and being processed by your brain has already happened by the time you understand it as light.
You can probably calculate the duration of time it takes but the significance to this thread original topic (OP) is that duration has occurred and what we see as real-time is the past.

Since human existence is locked to the past, the only thing any person can consider is the past.
We exist in the past.
If we could experience the presence, as actual now, we may have a different take on reality.

Once you can accept this, it is easy to understand how we understand time.
The past has already happened, the present is happening now but is only perceived after the fact and the future is a projection of present events that could occur based on our own perception and evaluation of the past which we experience.
The future is dependent on the past.

All this is fundamental to me.
Its as real as the electromotive force that makes objects 'feel' solid.
The atoms in the keyboard in which I am typing this have a force that allow me to punch the keys in such a sequence that they make sense.
Those keypunches are happening in the past, as I type.
I press the "M" key and time happens from the time I pushed the "M" key and the time it is displayed on the monitor. By the time the "M" shows up, time has passed.

As an application to science fiction, this can be significant in some ways.
The details of time travel destinations, the understanding of reality of the characters and much more.
A character that can assess real-time events will have an edge over those locked to the past.
How much can you get accomplished in the duration of a light bulb lighting a room?
At our present abilities, none. Thing is, in science fiction, we can violate that delay.
Science fiction is not locked to existing in the past.
Science fiction allows us to violate time.

When we observe and process the light from Messier 87 we have time to make many things occur during the 52.49 Million years since that light left Messier 87.
Well, its the same with the Sun at about 7 minutes and the light bulb that "seems' instantaneous.
Imagine what you could do with a millisecond of time.

Even if you place the light bulb against the eye, its journey requires duration for it to have significance.
It must register on the photo receptor of the eyeball, that signal has to journey the optic nerve, that information must stimulate axons and dendrites to establish memory. That memory must be processed by the brain as light and transmit that significance to our higher brain functions so we can understand it as a light being turned on.
All of that takes time.
We may understand it as real-time but it really isn't.
 
There is a fundamental flaw in this...Relativity
Well, yeah. That's just one of the many reasons why Newtonian physics has not been considered accurate for over a century. They are approximations useful for their simplicity. You're arriving rather late to the party to
"disprove" something that is no longer physics.
 
NOW.........When is now?

I said it before and I'll say it again - The state of 'now' never exists, or at least it can never be perceived
accurately.

Why? - Because your initial premise "Object at Rest Never Actually at Rest" is correct
- But this holds true for the universe as well - It is never at rest.

Time evolves ceasely and can never be stopped.

So we are always defining the future - What we expect the future to be.

We can perceive most of what happened in the past - But it IS illusory to think you can define it
from the 'now; point - That point passes as soon as you perceive it.

This why I've said 'only the future exists' - Another words we only exist hypothetically in a future state.

Welcome to the real World - And the real World is SCIENCE FICTION !!!




SCIENCEFICTIONALISM the Way of the FUTURE
 
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The way I see it only the past exists.
The future hasn't happened yet and the present already happened by the time you recognize it.

The past is always gone and the future is only a possible past.
 
The way I see it only the past exists.
The future hasn't happened yet and the present already happened by the time you recognize it.

The past is always gone and the future is only a possible past.
I think I can see where you are coming from - But how could you maintain an existent state
without a hypothetical future in play?
 
how could you maintain an existent state
without a hypothetical future in play?
A reasoning brain able to make predictions based on memory and conditions.
All futures are both hypothetical and voided possibilities.

I'm walking.
Each step I take is based on the reasoning that there is something there to step on.
My surety that next step will land on a surface is based on my experience of the conditions observed.
If I step and there is nothing there, I fall down.
I sense the immediate future and base my actions on those sensed conditions.
If I am presented with a future that changes those sensed conditions, I adjust.
So I stop walking before I step on nothing.

The immediate future is based on the experienced conditions observed.
When its wrong, ya fall down.
Sometimes before the change in patterns of condition can be recognized the reaction signal from the brain is already sent for you to take the next step and you step in a hole and fall down.
In hindsight, you know the hole was there but you stepped because of conditional expectations on automatic reaction.

I'm walking, walking, walking, "a hole", fall down (or stop).
 
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