What Is Time?

Defining time seems tricky compared to matter and action, but in many ways, it is overly simplistic views of matter and action that makes time seem rather complex in comparison to matter and action. Time is just a property of a source just like color or size or distance, all of which emerge from matter and action and therefore all sources tell time. While it is clear that clocks tell time, it is perhaps not as clear that all other sources also tell time and time, just like color, is just a property of all sources just like red is a property of an apple. Among the properties of the apple are its color and its ripeness and of course, ripeness tells time for the apple.

Just like the amplitude and phase coherence that are the two dimensions of matter, time likewise has two dimensions of amplitude and phase coherence. There is a long history from ancient Greece that defines two different kinds of time; Kronos as a kind of absolute time and Kairos as a kind of relative feeling of time. These two dimensions of time along with the two dimensions of matter provide realities for quantum charge and gravity that relate time and matter with the Planck action constant, h, in units of kg s. An objective atomic Kronos time is an interval dimension while a subjective decoherence Kairos action is the second time dimension.

While we think of sources as existing without change in one place in space until something happens, sources are always oscillating out of and back into existence including even the universe itself. Sources therefore change and move and evolve, albeit sometimes very slowly at the limit of 0.26 ppb/yr and time emerges from the action of that change. While we imagine inaction as the complement to action, it is only action that exists as less or more action and so an evolving universe is always matter in action. In a quantum universe, there is never really complete inaction and inaction simply means that a source matches our own action or motion. Inaction means that a source evolves just like time and just like matter and so there is never really inaction, just less or more action.

Each of the axioms of matter and action really have the same kinds of trickiness and the definitions of matter and action use words that simply mean the axioms as identities. For example, saying matter is a static dimension then defines matter in terms of time since dynamic is another word for changes in time. That circularity is even more confusing than time was in the first place. Saying action means a sequence of events is likewise circular since sequence is another word that means time.

Figure 1 shows Cartesian interval time as a line of either infinitely divisible moments or finite moments running from past to present to future. Time in this sense is just like a Cartesian displacement in space and this Cartesian view of time is part of general relativity where there is a continuous time with a determinate future. Block time is very similar except time is now made up of finite moments or intervals that run like the frames of a movie camera from past to future. The future for block time can be determinate and just waiting for the present to catch up or there can be many futures.

Relational source action time is an alternate view that tells time by the way that a source is put together as Fig. 2, which is a more primitive relational observer action time. This fossil view of time means that moments of matter come together with past actions and form a source of the present moment from any number of paths. By sensing the source with a matter spectrometer like our consciousness and knowing about the source’s fossil past, an observer can then tell time with any source. There are then a large number of possible futures associated with that present source, but there is no determinate future since all bonding is subject to quantum uncertainty.

Sources with very highly structured and periodic actions tell time as clocks in Fig. 3 as relational source action time. Clocks show very regular action and therefore keep a very precise interval time with moments of matter as long as the moments are very short and periodic. However, source actions are reversible since they are built by quantum bonds and it is therefore necessary to impose an overall decoherence action time in order to point the arrow of interval time. This decoherence or action time can be thermal as in a clock power source running down or a person aging, or indeed the decoherence can be intrinsic and the whole clock shrinks. A universal decoherence points an action time direction as well as a universal quantum force from both gravity and charge.

Axioms really defy further definition by any single term and so axioms are self-evident characteristics of the universe. Time emerges from the two axioms of matter and action and the trimal of matter, time, and action closes our universe. Matter is then a naturally more static dimension while action is a naturally more dynamic dimension and time emerges as the differential of action with matter, dS/dm. 

On the one hand, we think of interval time as a single static dimension of the past, since the past is like the frozen hands of a clock and does not seem to change except in the interval of a present moment. On the other hand, we also think of action time as a dynamic dimension that is all about the present moment, which changes and evolves into any number of possible futures. Just as we watch the second hand intervals of a clock evolve into as seemingly determinate future, we also imagine time in our experience of action that involves many possible futures. 

Our past is a series of moments or intervals like the frames of a video camera, but the present is a action without a determinate future or fate awaiting us in predetermined future frames. But is a moment of interval time accumulating as a past memory or a moment of action time counting down into a possible future?

After all, we know time as both the predictable frames of a DVD movie and the unpredictable moments of a life stage play. A moment of time is like the tick of a clock or the recursive neural cycle of our brain or a heartbeat. Unlike the past events of interval time, a moment of action time is a dimension of the present. Action time allows any number of possible futures and the future is not therefore predetermined.

Action time as a dimension is a very intuitive and understandable concept of a slowly changing universe and interval time is likewise rather clear in defining the present moment with the short period of atomic time. While action time is very slow, the intervals of atomic time are very fast and that is a little confusing since we really only seem to know time as a single fast atomic time dimension that is a past experience of action. In other words, time is in some sense two dimensional, but our memory of time is only of a norm or of a proper time. Yet there is both an action time and an interval time for all source change as orthogonal dimensions. 

Roughly speaking, action time represents the aether decoherence of past, present, and future while interval time represents the dynamic and immediate atomic time for an action in the present. Although we think of matter as largely static, just like time, all matter has both a slowly changing as well as a rapidly changing dimension. Our concept of matter as a single dimension of mass comes from the measurement of the gravity mass for a source, but the mass of a source is also in constant evolution as it exchanges matter with other sources. This second dimension for matter is a more dynamic dimension that is how sources exchange matter with each other. 

Matter as an axiom, you see, is ultimately defined only by both time and action. 

Dipole light is an oscillation of charge and light's color and polarization oscillate orthogonal to its propagation direction. Light is therefore a matter wave spectrum that is the dynamic exchange that bonds sources to observers in the universe. When light propagates, there is a complementary quadrupole biphoton exchange that bonds the matter left behind. Propagating light always has an entangled complementary photon and that biphoton quadrupole is in exchange with the boson matter from which space emerges. When an observer absorbs light from a source, that exchange bonds observer to source for some period of time.

Pairs of light photons called biphotons also represent a coherent quadrupole of neutral oscillation. The quadrupoles of biphoton light represent the propagation of matter amplitude as neutral gravity force. Each source also exists as a matter wave, both as a propagation of matter amplitude and an oscillation of that amplitude in time orthogonal to its propagation. The oscillations of matter waves from sources are extremely high frequency and therefore do not often impact our prediction of action. We like to think of a source that is not moving as stationary, but even stationary sources are comoving with an inertial frame of reference and undergo constant exchange and action with the boson matter of the universe.

Primal axioms or beliefs are a necessary and sufficient basis for closing the laws of the universe and anchoring the spectrometer of consciousness. We each need such primal beliefs to anchor and calibrate the spectrometers of our consciousness. Sometimes people feel as though they have no primal beliefs, but that is simply not true. The matter spectrometer of consciousness measures certain properties of sources, but first of all there must be primal beliefs to anchor the qualia of conscious thought. Qualia are the measured properties of sources, a red color for example, and our memory of sources relates them to other sources according to their common qualia.

Consciousness only begins when we calibrate our matter spectrometer with beliefs or axioms, because it is those beliefs that allow us to make sense out of the world. Neural recursion is the basic mechanism of thought, but without a set of primal beliefs, we cannot make sense out of the world. In order for people to engage in a useful discussion about the universe, they must have an understanding and agreement about their primal beliefs. Without some understanding of each other’s primal beliefs along with a common language and how their matter spectrometers are calibrated, people usually end up arguing about their primal beliefs even though the discourse was ostensibly about some other attribute of reality.

For example, a discourse about a philosophy of time will not be very useful unless there are complementary and compatible philosophies of the other axioms of matter and action, the other primal beliefs of the universe. Before discussing time, we need some manner of defining the lonely nothing that we call empty space and so there would need to be a philosophy of space as well. Two primal beliefs are the fundamental dimensions or axioms of reality from which a third emerges and it is only possible to define each primal with the other two primals. Since time is primal, time is defined as a combination of the other two primals, matter and action.

We often use an action, such as the tick period of a clock, to define interval time but time is also the decoherence of that tick interval over action time and an action of those tick intervals recorded by the hands of a clock. Time as a primal axiom is not really like any single thing and the definition of time is only in terms of other two primal axioms; matter and action. The axiom of time therefore includes both a matter moment such as a tick interval and an action that accumulates those ticks such as on the hands or display of a clock.

We can describe the action of a tick interval as a moment of matter that decoheres as an action time, which is the amount of matter that defines the interval of a tick along with a decoherence rate. For an hourglass, a matter moment would quite naturally be the mass of a grain of the sand. For a ticking clock, it would be the matter equivalent energy of the balance wheel resonance of the clock's mechanism. Thus an increment of matter defines a metric for a moment or interval time and it is the integration of those matter moments that becomes action time.

The second is our fundamental unit of time and is formally set as 9,192,631,770 or about nine billion cycles of the cesium 133 atom hyperfine resonance. There are then 86,400 seconds in every solar day and each tick of the atomic clock then also represents a very small matter equivalent energy of 1.1e-41 kg as a matter moment. The accumulation of these tiny moments over one year amounts to the action of about three hundred hydrogen atoms.

The matter spectrometer that we call consciousness samples reality as matter spectra of single moments that we call the present. We remember matter spectra of present moments that we call the past and use those memories to predict the many possible actions that we call the future. The prediction of many possible futures is a dynamic notion of time called A time while the memory of present moments is a static notion of static or B theory of time. 

Our notion of static time makes it seem like the future is also also frozen into moments that just wait to be played like a movie already recorded in Kronos time. This is the karma or fate of a determinate universe. Our notion of dynamic time, however, makes it seem like there exist an infinity of infinitely divisible present moments from which emerges an infinity of possible futures. The universe of discrete aether has two dimensions of time that emerge from both memories of past actions along with the emergence from the present moment of a large but finite number of possible futures. A two dimensional A-B time emerges from the discrete action of discrete aether as just a possibility from each moment.

An A-B time avoids the knife edge of a present moment that is squeezed by the A time past and future and A-B also avoids the messy infinity of B-time moments. Time is therefore not just a moment of matter, as A time, and time is not just an integration of matter moments, as B time, A-B time is really both matter moments and their action. The matter moment defines an interval and a relationship among the actions that we remember as past experience.

This interval might be the discrete ticks of a clock, the discrete sand grains of an hourglass, the discrete pulses of an atomic clock, the passage of discrete days, or the discrete neural recursion of human thought. The discrete memory of action can be in the positions of clock hands, the sand in the hourglass, the count of an atomic clock, the calendar of days, in the memory that we have of events, or in the possible futures that we imagine. But time itself is inextricably both discrete matter moments and the integration of those moments as discrete memories of discrete actions.

An hourglass keeps time with the passage of grains of sand as hourglass ticks as well as with an accumulation of those grains as the action of the lower hourglass along with a loss of grains in the upper hourglass. Time is neither action alone nor matter alone, but time has the two dimensions of both action and matter just as an hourglass is the relationship between an amount of sand and the matter of a single grain of sand. Likewise any definition of time necessarily includes the two dimensions of both matter and action. The sand in the hourglass bottom is a memory of the integrated gain or loss, the sand in the top is one of many possible futures, and each grain of sand through the neck defines the matter moment of that clock, its tick.

Neural time is how we tell the difference between the sources that we remember as our past and the actions that we imagine as possible futures. Our memories of a past action exist as matter in our minds as does how we imagine the future and the neural packets of consciousness differentiates those memories of action from the actions that we imagine for our possible futures. Just like time, we are conscious of both the matter of our memory and the neural packets of our thought. Once anchored, a time-like consciousness is why we are self-aware and why we believe that we exist with a purpose. The matter of our memory is the action of our past while the action of our neural recursion defines the matter of our neural moment.

• Recursion of time: Because we see other people act just like we act, we believe we are conscious, and since we are conscious, we imagine and choose desirable futures by acting just like other people act.

The definition of time as a series of moments from past to present to future is quite natural and intuitive. However, similar to the definition of space as a mostly empty void with only the volume of an occasional source, time might then also be mostly a timeless void except for occasional moments. But timeless, arbitrary eternities do not emerge to separate time moments and it is therefore curious that space emerges as an infinitely divisible empty void to separate sources. In contrast to an empty space with occasional sources, moments of time are what connect actions to each other with a common matter moment which gives each moment a composite of past and present as well as possible futures.

However defining time as only a series of time moments generates paradoxes and the philosophy of time has a long history of a discourse about exactly what a moment of time means. Is time a forward stream of events with only a present moment, the dynamic A time, or is time a patchwork of separate moments, the static B time? Is there a future action as a mement waiting for us to arrive, the karma or fate of a B time movie, or are there many possible future actions and we choose the futures we like from the moment that we are in, the quantum free will of an A time live play? Although the script of an A time play is determinate, the execution of a live A time play has many possible futures.

In aethertime, time is a primal axiom and time is not like any single thing except the other two axioms of matter and action. Time is not just the action of a moment in a live A time play nor is time just a series of frozen moments in a  B time movie; rather time is like a series of matter moments within an action. Time is both a moment and an accumulation or loss of those moments and we project moments and remember sources and actions much like the stop action of the freeze frame of a video camera.

But unlike a movie, what we play back in our mind is a highly selective and relational memory of an event that also incorporates the fading memory of a lifetime of related experiences into the action of thought. We tie every moment of time to a large number of related memories and possible futures and our experience of time is as much in those related but fading memories and possible futures as it is in the immediate sensations-feeling-action recursion of thought. We playback memories not as a DVD but with a selective focus on making predictions and choosing actions that help us survive and achieve our purpose.

The neural recursion of sensation-feeling-action in our minds generates neural packets that become the matter of our memory of an event. Memories of related experiences are an active part of neural recursion and so we relate the immediate neural recursion of the present to many past remembered events and form a relational memory of that new experience. With the power of our mind and memory, we project reality as a series of static moments and interpolate when our sensations cannot resolve an action or there is missing information.

Time moments are just a projection of our decohering memory of events and so moments are what we think of as time, but time is more than just the memory of moments and prediction of possible futures. Time is actually both the memory of moments as action and the decoherence of those memories as a matter moment that is the tick of our consciousness clock. The function of consciousness is time-like as is the space around us, but it is quite difficult to think about our homuncular recursion of time.

The homunculus is a little person inside of our minds that is looking at what we are looking at and so the homunculus is simply a restatement of the fundamental recursion of consciousness. A homunculus, though, also has a homunculus that is also looking at the same thing, and so on. This neural recursion represents the feedback of our brain and is a basic property of thought.

When we look at our own homunculus, though, we engage in a recursion or eternal recursion of sensation-feeling-action, since we look at homunculus, homunculus looks at itself and its homunculus at itself, and so on. If our homuncular recursion does not converge, just like any neural recursion in our brain that does not converge, the homuncular notion of self will make no sense and we simply will not understand and therefore will not learn the homuncular recursion of self as a truth. We will only recognize our self as different from the world if we the homuncular recursion makes sense.

We project experience from neural action and memory into a series of moments that we naturally interpret as time, but time is more than just memories. This natural view of time as memories of experience is one where we can overlook the many conundrums and paradoxes of that projection as long as we can adequately predict future action. Prediction of action is, after all, what is really important and a key to our survival and the discovery of the meaning of our lives. Evolution therefore favors any mental devices that permit us to better predict action and therefore imagine the many possible futures. Consciousness correspondingly overlooks a large number of illusions and mistakes in perception of sources as long as consciousness achieves the primary goals of survival and purpose.

All sources in the universe are a certain time distance or delay away from their observers and every source relates to the many possible futures of all other sources. Although we remember sources from our past and imagine many of those same sources in our possible futures, we can only ever journey to a future source. Sources in our past are only memories and there is no action that journeys to a memory.

We can imagine a Cartesian journey that returns to a source that we visited in the past, but such a return will not be to the same source nor along the same path. A journey to return to a source in our past is a future action with a different path to an evolved and therefore different source. All time paths journey to future sources but there is no time path to a past memory. It is rather the projection of a Cartesian return to a spatial source that misleads us to imagine that we might return to a past time.

Although we can imagine that Cartesian space does not evolve and change over time, the reality is that space does continually evolve and change. Any space to which we return at some later time, t, on the surface of our planet is a much different space than when our journey began at time zero. Even if we somehow remained fixed in a place within the cosmic microwave background, our most absolute cosmic reference frame, the very nature of space still evolves because of the universal decoherence of matter.

The Cartesian separation is really a time separation and what we imagine as the lonely nothing of empty space is simply a time-like projection of our minds. Similar to the hands and ticks of a clock, a walk through a park is a journey in time that involves exchange of matter and each exchange of a matter particle provides a tick of the integrated action that separates observer from source.

Complementary with time, matter and action are what make up the universe and matter and action are what bonds sources together and matter and action are also what we project as the lonely nothing of empty space. Matter and action along with time are the three irreducible properties (or axioms or qualia) of our universe and matter and its action in time are what make up the universe.

Time is not like anything and matter is also not like anything and definitions of matter are circular unless they incorporate the other two primal axioms. If we say that matter is a substance, for example, a substance is just another word for matter. Matter is an axiom and therefore only the differential of action and time defines matter.

Action completes the trimal of matter, time, and action that together describes our world as a matter pulse in time. An action necessarily involves integration of matter over time and even when we imagine sources as stationary and not moving, those sources still evolve and still change. Just like any source, though, a thought represents a highly relational neural spectrum within the set of 100 billion neurons in our mind and so our thoughts are also sources that are co-moving and evolving through space.

Therefore, the trimal of matter, time, and action completely describes the evolution of our reality along with the evolution of our universe. Just as time inexorably advances in matter, matter likewise inexorably decoheres over time and matter’s decoherence complements an increase in the atomic clock tick rate. Although there are many sources that are co-moving with us that we call stationary, no source is ever really static and unchanging. Change and evolution are a part of all existence and part of the nature of the universe.

Even though we can imagine an unchanging and static source remaining perfectly still on the surface of earth, that source is nevertheless comoving with the earth’s surface, rotating about earth’s axis, in orbit about the sun and galaxy center, and moving through the universe. And, the source’s matter exchanges and decoheres and that evolution occurs along with the ever-increasing forces that hold sources together.

Most words that we use to define time are in fact just synonyms for time and defining a word with a synonym is circular or recursive. For example, among the fourteen definitions of time in Merriam-Webster are these two:

      a. the measured or measurable period during which an action, process, or condition exists or continues: duration.

      b. a non-spatial continuum of events that succeed one another from past through present to future.

Although it is often useful to define a word with its synonyms, more typically a definition is a short description or story about what the source is like. However primal axioms are not like anything other than all other primal axioms as a description. The primal definition of time is as the differential of action with matter, matter is as the differential of action with time, and action is the integration or product of matter in time. As with any integration, action necessarily has a constant or offset and that simply means that action can be either bound to a rest frame or free in a moving frame.

The Merriam-Webster definitions of time incorporate actions, but only implicitly include matter and a definition of time as an axiom must have both action and matter. The words period or duration or continuum or progression of events or the past through present to future are all pretty much synonyms for time and so definitions with these words are equivalent to defining time as time, which is an identity. The accumulation of those actions as matter is an implicit part of these definitions.

When we say that time is a sequence or series of matter actions in space, unlike backing up in space, we cannot back up or go back in time and travel to the past. When we define time as both matter and action, then it is clear that we can only ever choose a future and never a past action. It is typical to describe a word such as time by the sources or ideas that it resembles and time is action divided by matter, which is an integration of matter, action, divided by the tick matter moment.

To complete a definition of time as a series of moments, we need the action of consciousness. The neural recursion of sensation-feeling-action is a homuncular recursion that is the action of consciousness. Independent of any mind, time is the action of sources along with the accumulation of those actions as matter, a duration. Every action of time is tied to a large number of related moments just as each tick of a clock is related to the accumulation of those ticks in the action of the hands of the clock or in its display.

The natural moment of earth is in the length of the day and the action of a year, properties that are tied to the solar system. The natural tick of matter is the frequency of the atomic clock, some nine billion cycles per second. The natural decoherence of that tick, though, is with classical universal decoherence of 0.26 ppb/yr, and so that means the atomic clock gains about one second every 124 years. The neural recursion of our brain, runs at about the rate of our heartbeat, 1.6 Hz and our lives decohere at about 1.3%/yr for an 80 year lifetime.

We naturally project the future and past into opposing Cartesian dimensions and this is where our projection of Cartesian space misleads us about time. Matter time shows that we project a three dimensional Cartesian space from time and not the other way around.

We project journeys in opposite directions in each of three Cartesian dimensions as forward and backward, up and down, and left and right. However, our journeys in Cartesian space first of all are actions that involve the exchange of matter over time and the integral of that change is the action that separates us from other sources. So a journey from one source to another is an evolution of our matter spectrum and our relations and interactions with other sources are what separate us from those sources. The empty space that we imagine separates sources is just a projection of time as action divided by matter.

Journeys on the surface of the earth have a beginning and duration and when we return to a journey’s starting place on earth’s surface, we naturally imagine that we might go back in time to a past memory of that source and of that place as well. However, when we return to the beginning of a journey, the earth and its surface are actually at very different places about its axis, about the sun, about the galaxy, and through the universe.

It is much simpler for us to project that we have returned to the same relative place in a comoving space but that is clearly not really so. The place to which we return is both a different space as well as a future time with evolved sources.

In astronomy and cosmology, a light year is the distance that light journeys in a year and is a very common measure of distance in the cosmos. In fact, all distance is equivalent to time because the speed of light does not depend on the relative velocity between two sources. The ticks of an atomic clock are therefore very precise and provide very accurate measures of spatial distance even for quite small distances. In fact, with the much lower velocities of human experience, it is quite common for people to describe distance as the time that a journey takes, like a twenty-minute commute to work or a ten-minute drive to the store.

Einstein described time as a fourth spatial dimension in order to explain an odd characteristic of light in space. Einstein showed why the velocity of light for a stationary observer does not depend on the velocity of the source of that light. In fact, Lorentz first derived the equation that showed the contraction of space by time that Einstein used in relativity. It was Michelson and Morley who first measured a constant speed of light that was independent of relative velocity and the Lorentz contraction of space was consistent with this observation. Einstein used Lorentz’s projection and then added time as a fourth dimension to our three dimensional space, thereby deriving a four-dimensional space time that has had many far-reaching consequences.

However, to explain the constant velocity of light, we could instead presume that light is in some sense stationary and it is us and our comoving sources that are in motion at the speed of light. In such a reinterpretation of reality, distance and separation would be necessarily time-like and matter exchange would describe all relations among sources. Time would not be just one of four spatial dimensions as it is in GR, time would instead describe all distance and the action of matter would be what we call Cartesian space that would provide Lorentz invariance. The projection of a three-dimensional Cartesian space is a very useful device of our imagination, but space would not therefore be necessary to predict action.

We both remember and imagine time by counting and recording actions such as heartbeats or footsteps, which are both about one per second, or we count the ticks of a clock at about two per second.  The sand grains from an hourglass fall at several per second and if we count the resonances of an atomic clock, they number about nine billion per second.

By counting and remembering past heartbeats we imagine that our future heartbeats will add to a past count, but we know that we decohere at 1.3%/yr on average. Thus a clock as time always includes two fundamental qualia for definition: a matter moment, such as a tick, and the accumulation or loss of those moments as action, such as the hands of a clock face. In a similar manner as a clock, a calendar counts, records, and anticipates the number of days, weeks, months, and years of our lives. Time is a reflection of consciousness and provides order for our past as well as order for the possibilities of our future.

We periodically adjust our clocks in order to keep them aligned to the natural cycle of the solar year, but we naturally presume that the tick rate of our atomic clock is otherwise constant. In matter time, our clocks tick 0.26 ppb/yr faster each year. We further interpret the past relics of ancient civilizations and the fossils of past earth as the cycles of eons and epochs of that same constant of atomic time.

Our memory or record of past heartbeats and our imagining of the possibility of future heartbeats is what we call time and time is therefore a dimension that we think of in the same way that we think of space. In reality, we should really think of space as a manifestation of time and not the other way around. Time differentiates a memory of a past action, which is simply a fossil record within the matter of our brain, from the imagining of a possible future action, which is an action of neural impulses. Therefore time is the progression or sequence of action in our lives and so just as space is time-like, our consciousness is also time-like.

Our memory of the count of moments is how we keep track of time and we project our past and future actions as a calendar of events. In all past action, time was equivalent to a distance between sources as well and when we imagine possible future actions, we also imagine a calendar for future actions in a way very similar to the past. This time order very effectively allows us to remember the past as a progression of events and to imagine and predict future events by projecting that memory of the past.

Our science has long known that the speed of light is constant in all frames of reference and this has always been difficult to understand and communicate. If a light source moves, doesn’t the light from that source also then move? In fact, the light from either a traveler or a twin with different relative velocities has the same velocity even though each person’s light will appear as a bluer or redder color depending on whether they are moving closer or apart, respectively.

Einstein resolved these various conundrums associated with the speed of light by imagining time as a fourth spatial dimension. According to Einstein, in order for the speed of light to remain constant in all frames of reference, atomic time necessarily varies between two people with different relative velocities. As a result, he also showed that the relative velocity between two people distorts or curves the Cartesian space between them and both of these predictions have been repeatedly verified with observations.

But there is another way to resolve the conundrum of constant light speed. In matter time, space essentially shrinks at the speed of light and it is this shrinking of space that determines all force and also makes it appear that the speed of light is constant in a comoving frame of reference. Ironically, the traveler motion decreases the shrinkage of space ahead and increases the shrinkage of space behind the traveler. This means that the traveler cannot detect a change in light’s velocity although the frequency of the light does change.

Einstein did not talk about any relation between time and memory and imagination and he also did not discuss what would happen if space was not axiomatic in our reality. What if space where a projection of time and matter and not axiomatic? The past is not only in our biological memory; the past is also in the fossil memories of past action. There is no action that rewinds reality and so we can not go back in time because until the end of the universe, there is no action without a reaction. Action can only create new memories and new fossils for the future.

Nevertheless we can imagine actions that rewind time because of our Cartesian projection. Poincaré, in fact, proposed that any system of particles in seemingly chaotic motion will still cycle back to the same initial state with some probability, i.e. all systems show a possible reversal in time. However, Poincare’s proposition assumes that the particles and their space do not evolve or change with time. In matter time, space and matter both evolve in time and that means that Poincaré’s hypothesis is therefore based on different axioms from matter time.

Time is just one of the three primal axioms of matter, time, and action and time is simply the quotient of matter by action, the clock count divided by its tick action. Time differentiates memory from imagination and while we remember a past time as a count of actions, we imagine a future time as a distance in space, a collection of matter ticks on a aether clock. Thus, our memory of past time is just the marker of matter while we imagine a future time that has both matter and action. 

Since we project Cartesian paths with opposing directions as we journey forward and backward, up and down, left and right, it is quite natural to project time with opposing directions as well. We organize time from the present as a past into a future, but we actually project space from time and not the other way around. We project our memory of past sources and actions into a path in space, typically a straight line, and we project a future action into the opposite direction in space from our past.

Any future action between sources involves a change in the time distance with action and so there is no sense to a journey to a memory. A journey always involves actions that are positive time distances in a chosen direction and a future action is only one of many possible actions and those possibilities are always in our future and never in our past. Once we experience the single reality of what a source did become, it is that single reality that we remember as a past moment and the many other possible futures for a source simply decoheres away.

Time as a dimension is then simply the distance between sources and time is an accumulation of matter, divided by the aether action metric. As our heart beats, the distance between heartbeats defines both a time and what we project as space. Even though we may stand perfectly still on the surface of the earth, the earth rotates about its axis, about the sun, around our galaxy, and within the universe. All action on earth defines time as distance and the loss or gain of matter with action. The events of our past are simply memories or relics or fossils of what did occur even as we imagine the possibilities of what might occur in a possible future action.

From the action of sources from time delays, we project a three dimensional universe with sources on continuous time trajectories and we predict action both very precisely and very accurately with continuous space and time. We have an innate notion of a continuous void of empty space and Euclid defined the first geometric axioms some 2,300 years ago in ancient Greece and those same axioms are a fixture of our science and engineering even today. Euclid’s right angle is still the cornerstone of our Cartesian reality even though Cartesian space loses meaning for sources at very small and very large scales. The more primitive dimensions of discrete matter, time delay, and action as matter exchange have meaning for all sources in the universe. The primitive reality of matter time augments our understanding of reality for sources that exist in the realities of frozen space and time.

We know about a source in either of two complementary ways. A very common and intuitive understanding of physical reality projects a source on an event path relatively unperturbed by other forces, which is a straight line in Cartesian space or a parabolic trajectory on earth. However, we actually sense or perceive a source by what it might become, i.e., by sensing some of its many possibilities, and not by what that source actually is.

Our sensations represent just a very small number of a source’s possible futures and the totality of those possibilities is a complementary representation of that source. Yet even with the very small number of possible futures that we actually sense, we imagine quite a large number of possible futures, even those that do not actually make sense. By seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and/or touching, we sense a source as a very large number of possible futures as opposed to what the source actually is.

That source might not move or it might be moving, it might change color, or it might even disappear or suddenly change its form. We imagine the reality of a source on the basis of a rather limited number of our sensations of the source’s possibilities, but we relate that source to similar sources from a lifetime of experience with similar sources. Because of our past experience, we do not normally need to sense very many possible futures for a source in order to accurately predict that source’s actual future, but we can be and often are fooled by our sensations.

There are in fact many illusions that fool us just as there are also very many unlikely futures for a source that surprise us as well. So our imagining of a source on an event trajectory represents a convenient and succinct way for us to reliably predict that source’s future in our universe.

The rigid Cartesian reality that we project in our minds can make it very difficult to understand time since space is a projection of time. When we project a source onto an event trajectory, we also project the context of a Cartesian space as having a forward and a backward and therefore an opposing dimension. Quite naturally we project time backwards as a spatial displacement into the past, but we first projected a Cartesian displacement from time as a useful prediction of action. Action, after all, only ever moves us closer to or further from other sources.

We can actually never return to the place where we began a journey because that place no longer exists in the universe. We could imagine getting on a spacecraft and reaching a relative velocity that would maintain a place in a universal or proper space despite the rotation of earth about its axis and about the sun and about the galaxy and through the universe. However, the universe itself is shrinking in size and matter and so the universe would change even if we somehow remained in one place in space.

We are so accustomed to return journeys on the surface of earth that we do not realize that every action that we take on earth involves an opposite reaction by the earth. When we jump up from earth, she falls down away from us. When we step in one direction, mother earth backsteps in the opposite direction of our stride. Our forward is her backward and our backward is her forward.

The actions of our footsteps and of our heartbeats represent not only the duration or time of a past journey, but actions also represent a Cartesian distance for that past journey. Each footstep is an action for us as an observeron an event trajectory that was a part of a past journey. The memory of footsteps as an accumulation of space allows us to imagine a future journey among a large number possible journeys given a variation of our future footsteps.

During a walk or run, we can turn around and change direction or we can speed up or slow down to avoid obstacles, all without any concern for the effect our stride has on earth’s rotation about its axis or earth’s orbit about the sun or earth’s place in the galaxy or indeed earth’s place in the universe. And yet all of our choices during a walk do affect the earth’s rotation as well as earth’s orbit about the sun as well as the sun’s path through the galaxy, not to mention our galaxy’s journey in the universe. Although the impact of our stride on the earth is quite small, we can think of changes in time instead of changes in distance.

                                     

When we look up in the sky at night, we see only the fossil light of the past. The distance of a source that we see is the time it takes for its light to reach us and so the speed of light as a constant defines all distance as time. Every meter that light travels is about three billionths of a second or three nanoseconds, one nanosecond per foot of light travel. That constant speed of light associates an interval time with a distance and is as if everyone walked with the same speed or had exactly the same heartbeat.

A second time dimension, an interval time, represents the perpendicular distance between a source and a reference direction and along with the rotation or phase of the source around that reference direction projects that source into our Cartesian space. Thus, these two dimensions of time and one dimension of phase provide an equivalent representation of our Cartesian space with a time map instead of a Cartesian map. Our earth frame of reference usually provides us with a reference direction along with many other sources as landmarks.

Since the perpendicular distance between a source and a reference direction is always positive, it is the second time dimension, interval time, along with the phase or rotation of a source about the reference direction that determines a source’s direction. Cartesian space is, then, just a convenient projection of a two-dimensional time universe with phase. We imagine that there are two opposing directions for each of three Cartesian dimensions when in fact Cartesian space is just a projection of matter, time, and phase.

The right angle or 90°of Euclidean geometry is equivalent to the π/2 phase angle between time and matter. The uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics involves a phase relationship between matter and time that is a complex number, -i, which derives from the the same 90° phase angle that is the right angle of Euclidean space. In matter time, Euclidean geometry reduces to a basic action equation of our quantum universe, the Schrödinger equation.

A time map of a source involves two time dimensions that we project into a Cartesian plane. There is an interval time as the distance to a source and an interval time as a separation of that source from a reference direction and a phase or rotation of that source about that reference direction. We project a three dimensional Cartesian reality from two dimensions of time, event and interval time distances, and one dimension of phase or angle about a reference direction.

Now what exactly does it mean to have two dimensions of time? Very simply put there is an action time and an interval time and action time is the particular time associated with an universe action and interval time is an orthogonal atomic time associated with the co-moving source frame of reference. Matter-time’s reinterpretation of reality with two time dimensions and a phase is very different from Einstein’s approach that begins with Cartesian space and then projects time a fourth spatial dimension. Einstein imagined a four-dimensional reality called space time with only a single time dimension along with our three Cartesian dimensions.

The recursion of time in relativity results in a great deal of complex mathematics called tensor algebra. Since Cartesian space is a projection from time, it is distorted by time and adding time as a fourth dimension time mixes back with itself in a recursion that forms the basis of space time. Matter time has instead just three dimensions, two of time and one of phase.

Although the dilations of time and therefore of space between sources traveling at different relative velocity are identical between matter time and space time science, the existence of two time dimensions in matter time complements the two dimensions for all matter as well. Given a common phase between time and matter, matter and time exist in a kind of holographic reality that defines our universe as a complex Fourier transform between the universe as a pulse of matter in time and the universe as a spectrum of matter amplitudes.

In space time, the speed of light is constant and relative velocity distorts time and space between a traveler in motion with respect to a stationary twin. In matter time, light is in a sense stationary and it is actually sources of matter that move away from a light source at the speed of matter. Sources never move faster than the speed of light because motion in one direction slows the matter collapse along that great circle of the universe. In effect, our co-moving velocity is at the speed of light in all directions and once matter has slowed completely down, it then becomes light.

The collapse of matter in time is a constant of matter time called m_dot, and determines both gravity and charge force. Along with two other constants and the Schrödinger equation, m_dot determines all forces and action for the matter-time universe and amounts to a decoherence of 0.26 ppb/yr or a gain of about one second every 124 years of the 9 billion ticks per second atomic clock.

When the accretion of matter is greater than some amount, Einstein’s four-dimensional space collapses into a black hole singularity, which is a very unusual but well accepted characteristic of space time. A black hole represents a singularity of space time where no light can escape, time literally stands still at its surface, and inside of the black hole, the laws of our physical universe no longer apply. It is very clear that astronomers have observed the effects of a number of very large matter accretions that center most galaxies, often termed supermassive black holes.

Science has more difficulty observing the much more subtle effects of smaller black holes that should form from the collapse of a class of stars known as supergiants. Moreover, the progression of a collapsed star known as a neutron star into the more massive black holes is very uncertain because of the role of angular momentum. It would appear that heavy, slowly rotating neutron stars might behave like black holes and that lighter, rapidly spinning black holes might behave like neutron stars.

Space time physics, then, is still an incomplete story for our universe and we await an improved story that includes the unification of gravity and charge forces. Such a story will likely not only close a chapter in our understanding of time and matter, it will open new disciplines for study.

In the prevailing paradigm of space time, space exists as an empty void that separates sources. The past memories and future imaginings that are in our minds represent sources that we separate by space, so consciousness is part of the source that is our mind. Our consciousness would then seem to exist as a source in time and we could then imagine a disembodied timeless mind. Consciousness would then be a convenient projection of space time and the same projection of consciousness would differentiate our memory of the past from our imagination of possible futures.

In matter time, the past memories and present thoughts that are in our minds are not just sources of matter, they are time-like. Memories are matter sources of action embedded in our brains, but the neural recursion of sensation-feeling-action is action-like. Our consciousness is therefore not just a matter source or an action, but really consciousness is the time-like differential of action with matter. Just like a two dimensional time, consciousness would then also have two dimensions; event consciousness and action consciousness.

Just as we have difficulty defining time and space, for the same reason we also have trouble defining the two dimensions of consciousness. Time and time-like concepts all share the characteristic that they are axiomatic and not really like anything except combinations of other axioms. However, we do not have similar difficulty defining the axioms of matter and action.

Matter is the static substance of all sources and so comprises the air, water, stone, soil, and fire of our alchemie. So all sources are like matter, but matter itself is an axiom and is only explicable as the product of action and time. We can easily imagine matter or we can just as easily imagine the empty void of space as not matter or nothing.

Action is the evolution of a source over time and so action is a very familiar and intuitive dynamic concept, just like matter is a static concept. We can easily imagine either action or the absence of action as a co-moving source that we think of as immobile or stationary.

However, when we imagine time, it is very difficult to imagine a complement to time as timelessness. What is timelessness like? The contrapositives of matter and action are straightforward with the opposite of matter as empty space and the opposite of action as inaction and it is only with these contrapositives that we can define timelessness. Timelessness is then the inaction of empty space, a definition of eternity, and once again, we find empty space linked to the contrapositive of time.

Timelessness is the inaction of empty space and represents a kind of eternity where time is the action of empty space. In fact, what we imagine separates sources in time is the aether and action that we project the action of aether as the empty void of space. We do experience timelessness during sleep, for example, or during other unconscious states. There is a rich language associated with timelessness: eternal, immortal, perpetual, everlasting, and so on. In fact, many of our religious traditions are embedded into the semantics of a timeless and perpetual eternity that addresses various transcendental questions.

We know that we are conscious because the sources and actions that we remember from our past are different from the sources and actions that we imagine in our future. That is time. The timeless nature of our dreams mixes memories and imaginings and in a final dream, the neural impulses of our conscious mind become progressively slower thereby stretching time out. In effect, the timeless nature of a final dream represents the eternity of a final and fading conscious thought. Our final dream ends in either a point of ecstasy for a life fulfilled or in the circle of despair for a life unfulfilled.

All sources that are in the universe are in our possible futures at a certain time distance away from us. Although we remember sources from our past, there is no journey that will take us to those past sources and time only projects sources into our possible futures.

One very odd thing about time is embodied in the principle of relativity, which is that atomic clocks tick more slowly as they travel away from or towards a stationary twin clock. If a traveler accelerates to 0.8 c on a journey from a stationary twin, in five years according to the stationary twin’s clock, the traveler will journey four light years away from the twin. However, during that journey, the traveler will only have aged three years and so after the traveler slows down to the twin’s inertial frame, it will seem to the traveler that that journey’s velocity, 1.2 c, was faster than the speed of light. The traveler aged 3 years during a journey of 4 light years and traveled faster than the speed of light in the twin’s frame of reference.

A traveler’s distance age can exceed the speed of light relative to the twin’s stationary frame of reference left behind. Once the traveler slows back to the twin’s inertial frame, the traveler has only aged three years while the twin has aged 5 years. Of course it will take 4 years to communicate that information back to the twin and 4 more years for the twin to acknowledge that communication and so the traveler will only know that this has occurred 8 years after reaching the destination.

We can and do describe the distance between sources in space by the time it takes light to journey between those sources. Therefore, we are conscious because there is a time distance between all sources for all actions in our universe, including our neural impulses. The sequence of neural impulses in our minds represents a time distance between neurons and therefore time is a part of our consciousness.

In space time, a universe of the lonely nothing of empty space is possible even without any matter, but in matter time, there can be no universe without matter. Just as no universe is possible without time, no universe is possible without matter and action, either.

Unification of charge and gravity force

The nothing of empty space seems to be what makes up most of the universe and is the single most important common intuition of mainstream science. Sources move around in the emptiness of space over time and observers keep track of those sources and predict their futures in space and time. However, making the nothing of empty space into an source in effect creates something out of nothing and so there are well-recognized limitations for notions of continuous space and time. 

Space simply does not include all sources in the universe and the notions of space and time do not apply to ether very large or very small sources. The space inside of a black hole, for example, has no meaning despite a black hole occupying a well determined volume in the universe. Likewise the microscopic space called the Planck volume at the center of all particles likewise has no meaning either. The space inside of an electron likewise has no meaning.

Mainstream science describes the universe from the foundational notions of mass, empty space, and time and science defines these fundamental quantities or axioms only by the rules for their measurement. A one kg bar of an iridium platinum alloy defines mass and the wavelength and frequency of light defines both length and time. Thus science defines its axioms as continuous and infinitely divisible even though science knows that quantum reality is discrete.

Therefore there is a simpler way of describing the universe beginning from discrete matter and discrete action instead of continuous matter, space, and time. The discrete nature of matter and action in the universe finally includes the notion of quantum phase and thereby unifies charge, gravity, and consciousness into one single foundation. But there science must significantly change its foundation principles of physical reality and in particular, continuous matter, space, and time all emerge from discrete matter and action. 

Mainstream science has not yet succeeded in unifying charge and gravity due to the limitations of the notions of continuous space, motion, and time. Furthermore, the nature of consciousness is a fundamental part of objective reality since it is by subjective notions of reality by many observers that science comes to agree on an objective reality of sources.

Given a proportionality between matter and action, dimensionless ratios of either discrete time delay or discrete space emerge. Time and space both emerge as ways for observers to keep track of sources and predict their futures and discrete time and space naturally emerge from discrete matter and action. All spatial separations are equivalent to time delays and all motion is equivalent to changes in mass by the matter-energy equivalence principle. The alternate coordinates of discrete aether and discrete action augment the standard notions of continuous space, motion, and time in the aethertime scheme that finally unites charge and gravity forces as a common aether decoherence rate. The now compatible forces are both part of the universal quantum force of aether decoherence. Discrete aether and action keeps track of the objects of physical reality and augment the more limited notions of continuous space and motion and time for tracking those same objects.

Instead of the four dimensions of spacetime for Einstein's general relativity, a discrete aether universe has two dimensions for each of matter and action; amplitude and phase.  For quantum action there are many possible paths for an object while there is only one possible future for GR action along its geodesic.  Within the limitations of continuous space and motion, the actions of objects represent spatial displacements as well as moments of time. But what is not very clear is that a spatial displacement along the dimension of motion and time evolution are both essentially identical with the discrete aether dimension of action. 

The equivalence of time and space as proportional displacements means that the continuous time and space of spacetime emerge from the discrete action of aether. Although quantum action is usually based on the conjugates of continuous space and momentum, the corresponding aethertime conjugates are discrete aether and action. Discrete aethertime provides a common quantum basis for both charge and gravity forces even while aethertime is consistent with the principles of both relativity and quantum action.

Aethertime therefore unifies gravity with quantum action by using that second time dimension, the aether decoherence time that we already know exists outside of the atomic time of our mind. This involves time and matter that augments space or alternatively, space and matter as emergent time. Even though our intuition as well as mainstream science use the whiteboard of spacetime for predicting action, predicting the future of an object based on just matter and action is also possible. It is very difficult to imagine that space and time are a result of action of matter and action instead of spacetime as a place for action to occur. The key to a quantum gravity is in the realization that continuous time and space are just two different representations for the same reality of discrete aether and action.

Space and time emerge from the discrete actions of objects and therefore space and time are all mixed up with discrete aether and action. In the common parlance of mainstream science, space and time emerge from the actions that occur with discrete aether and continuous time emerges from the discrete time delays of objects. Given the fact of a constant speed of light, time dilation and matter changes that occur depend on the frame of reference. Projecting spatial displacements from discrete changes in time delay and matter results in the dilation of space as well. Since all prediction of relativistic action occurs with discrete matter and time delay, the 4-space for predictions of GR remain valid within the limits of continuous space and time.

In aethertime, photon and other matter exchange explains all force and the primal force is aether decoherence. A dipole photon exchange particle binds electrons to protons together into atoms and molecules and a mono-quadrupole biphoton exchange particle binds neutral atoms to each other in the universe as gravity force. This notion, in a nutshell, describes the way that discrete aether and quantum action unify charge and gravity forces.

Light is a rather unusual matter wave made up of photons created at the CMB entangled with the photon exchange particle that binds charges together as well. An exchange of a photon between an electron and nucleus represents the charge force that stabilizes an atom, which is the basis of quantum electrodynamics and is well accepted by science. The entanglement of bonding photons with those emitted photon at CMB creation is the entangled biphoton that is gravity.

In discrete aethertime, it is actually coherent mono-quadrupoles of biphotons that are the exchange particles for gravity force and that is certainly not yet a common understanding in science. Most ideas of quantum gravity in science invent a new exchange particle called a graviton, but gravitons or any other gravity particle simply cannot exist in the current conundrum of continuous space and time. In contrast, the simple notion of biphoton discrete exchange determines gravity force with a really appealing symmetry that a complementary photon pair exchange that binds atoms to each other in the universe.

The figure shows two hydrogen atoms that are each bound by a photon exchange between their respective electron and proton. In the process, each atom must lose that equivalent photon energy as a photon to the universe. This emitted photon is really both a wave and a particle and is in an exchange that binds each atom to the boson matter of the universe.

In order for an atom to form from an electron and proton, it must radiate its binding energy as a complementary photon and that emitted photon is equivalent to the atom’s binding energy, which is the Rydberg energy for hydrogen. There actually can be and are many photon emissions and absorptions of various energies and so this description just simplifies the more complex chaos of many events into one single entangled event.

The Rydberg photons emitted from a pair of hydrogens exchange with the universe and that exchange force is part of what binds each hydrogen atom to the matter of the universe with an orbit that is coherent with the orbit of the electron around the proton. The photon exchange from two such atoms binds each atom to the universe mass and the shrinkage of the universe about those atom’s center of mass represents what we interpret as the binding force of gravity between these two particles.

The two emitted photons represent coherent polarization phases between the two atoms. Charge polarization still dominates the forces between two atoms and it is only when a large matter accretion reaches about 1e39 atoms that gravity force is equivalent to charge force for two bodies. Two such bodies exchange large amounts of light with the universe and with each other as well and that exchange results in what we call gravity action.


Since there are two complementary spin = 1 photons, each gravity state is a multiplet of spin = {0, +/-2}. Although the gravity of general relativity dilates space and time, there is still just one future for the determinate paths of gravity action under general relativity, and this causality is consistent with our intuition. There are many strange results of general relativity having to do with simultaneity and frame of reference, but objects far away from a gravity action still do not affect a local action very much.

The phase coherence of quantum gravity provides many more possible futures as compared to the determinate geodesic paths for the gravity action of general relativity. Quantum electrodynamics fills space with an infinity of vacuum oscillators as a means of moving charge and light around. Therefore a key step called renormalization ratios out that infinity and focuses only on those futures that are most likely. Aethertime's quantum gravity is based on a very large, but finite, number of boson particles in the universe and so also depends on a kind of renormalization to focus on those futures of quantum gravity action that are most likely.

Of course, this schematic is a gross oversimplification of the difference between charge and gravity forces. There are quantum exchange and phase effects between two hydrogen atoms that actually forms a molecular bond that is very much stronger than gravity force. Then, hydrogen molecules bond to each other as a liquid or solid with dipole-induced dipoles, higher multipoles, including further quantum exchange forces. Once an object of hydrogen has accreted sufficient mass through all of this charge force bonding, the center of the accretion begins to show the effects of gravitational compression of biphoton exchange and the concomitant heating.

The heat generated by gravitational compression is equivalent to the gravitational binding states of that object as well as its charge binding states. The light emitted as a result of the object's gravitational heat represents the gravity bonding states of the object and correspondingly the gravity force between that object and other objects. All of the photon pairs emitted by an object contribute to the quadrupole that we call gravity force.

What this all means is that gravity force and charge force are both due to the same decoherence rate of universe matter. Charge force represents the inner decoherence of dipole force on the dimensions of the atom and electron while gravity force represents the outer decay and the dimensions of the folded quadrupole universe and its fundamental boson, the gaechron, m_ae. Just like all of the theories of quantum gravity, there is a smallest scale of matter or energy called the Planck scale and the gaechron mass is just the result of the matter spectrum from a Fourier transform of the universe time pulse.