Re: Time does not exist.
Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2016 4:27 am
I quess the point to consider, is what is matter made of? Atoms? What are atoms made of? Subatomic particles or quantum particles. What is the nature of quantum particles in quantum field theory, essentially they are waves or energetic excitations in the fields. What quantum particles are not, is anything like our traditional notions of particles as well defined in time and space and possessing inherent properties. I don't claim to fully understand the issue of "particles" in "QFT" but one can easily understand such particles as processes in the field rather than anything like our traditional notion of matter. So in some sense it is excitations or disturbances in the space time filed more like a process than a traditonal particle. In our universe, flux is a more fundamental feature than permanence and thus if time is change, time is a fundamental feature and reality is really a process (process philosophy).Terrapin Station wrote:]I'd agree that everything is in motion relative to other things, but I wouldn't say that matter is "just process," as I think the idea of that is incoherent. "Process" is simply a term for relative motions, after all. Something has to be moving. It can't be "motion all the way down."
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q ... rLA2oSLCrA
The concept of particle in Quantum Field Theory
Eliano Pessa*
Despite its name, Quantum Field Theory (QFT) has been built to describe interactions between localizable particles. For this reason the actual formalism of QFT is partly based on a suitable generalization of the one already used for systems of point particles. This circumstance gives rise to a number of conceptual problems, stemming essentially from the fact that the existence within QFT of non-equivalent representations implies the existence of field theories allowing, within the same theory, different, inequivalent, descriptions of particles. This led some authors to claim that in QFT the concept itself of particle should be abandoned.
After this complicated trip in the endless field of theoretical physics, we still are in a state of uncertainty. The naïve concept of particle, adopted by most practitioners of QFT, evidences intrinsic contradictions and therefore should be abandoned. This in turn implies a deep reformulation of the whole apparatus of QFT. In this regard, however, all proposals so far made are plagued by serious shortcomings which, so far, prevents from the introduction of a new, and more firmly grounded, concept of particle. It seems, after all, that we do not need a rigorous definition of the latter. QFT can work and produce acceptable previsions even in absence of it. Nevertheless, from a practical point of view, we need to summarize a number of experimental facts and theoretical features by introducing the concept of particle which, undoubtedly, allows more economical descriptions and more easily understandable pictures of dynamical phenomenology. Within this context, we can be satisfied with a definition of particle as a construct having a citizenship within an effective field theory, more or less like quasi-particles. As such, this construct must necessarily be endowed with dynamical features, which were absent in the old models of pointlike particles. Of course, the technical ingredients needed to introduce the new “effective” definition of particle are still incomplete and lot of work is necessary before obtaining significant advances along this direction. While this situation is satisfactory for most physicists, we acknowledge that it could be embarrassing for those searching for the “fundamental particles”. However, nobody prevents from thinking that, at very high energy, the “effective” description of particles will reduce to the one of (almost) pointlike particles. And most actual efforts of theoretical as well as experimental physicists try just to prove the validity of this hypothesis. The ones which will remain unsatisfied for this state of affairs are the philosophers (or at least some of them). Namely the solution we have sketched above entails the disappearance of the haecceitas of particles, which are reduced to mere auxiliary constructs, useful for practical purposes, but in turn making reference to deeper constructs. For these philosophers the problem now becomes: what are these constructs? Do they coincide with fields? In this regard there are already some indications about a possible negative answer to this question (Teller, 1990; 1995). Perhaps, as suggested by Cao (see, Cao, 1997; 1999), the best ontological basis for QFT is given by its structure itself (inextricably connected with the processes it describes) rather than by specific entities (particles or fields).
