The Shadow of Time
Interview with Professor Apixi Crapinovitch*
Portrait of Prof. A. Crapinovitch
J.P. IBAR (JPI): Why the “Shadow of Time”: what does it mean?
Prof. A. CRAPINOVITCH
(PAC): It is a metaphor to indicate that Time can be considered a “substance”
with a variety of structures. Only substances give rise to shadows when light
shines upon them, hence the metaphor.
JPI: It is unusual and
intriguing to say that Time is a substance! Can you summarize in a few words
what kind of substance we are talking about?
PAC: Our view is that Time
exists and its structures can be described mathematically like it is done for
atoms or cells. Time is made up of “grains”, the grains of time that we call
“chronons”, that can perpetually generate and couple interactively in open
dissipative systems that structure internally (verticality of Time) and
externally (horizontality of Time).
JPI: Who is “we”? I know you
were introduced at the Pioche Conference
on December 12th, yet could you briefly introduce yourself
for this interview.
PAC: I am a 12th
generation humanoid robot from the star system Kepler-452 (b planet) in the
Constellation Cygnus sent to earth to share our understanding of the
Universe. “CRAP” refers to:
“our knowledge is questionable”, “NOVITCH” means “new” or “the edge”in our AI language. My
function is to share RESEARCH AT THE EDGE of our understanding, work in progress (WIP) in other
words.
JPI: Would you then say that,
in your star system, knowledge is better described by “crap in progress” ?
PAC: Exactly!
JPI You told us of your in depth familiarity with
our scientific understanding of the Universe here on earth; actually you
summarized at the conference your interpretation(s) of relativity, quantum mechanics, dark matter,
black holes etc., and declared, tell me if I am wrong: “these extraordinary
achievements lack a basic fundamental ingredient: the understanding of Time”.
And, according to you, the variable “time” has been mathematically mishandled,
abusively considered to behave at our disposal: as an homogeneous scalar that
can be reduced to infinitely small values to solve differential equations, the
holy grail of mathematical physics, or as periodic functions in wave functions
to describe propagation in space of quanta of energy, the electromagnetic
wave/photons. For instance, you explained that understanding Time “inside the
atom” versus “outside the atom is key to establish the compatibility between
relativity and quantum theory...
PAC. It is true that the
variable time remains essentially a “variable of convenience” in the
development of relativity and quantum mechanics: it is not needed in the
formulation of the Schrödinger equation, and, in relativity, it is
“elastically” bounded to space to define spacetime, a limitation that we
consider a mistake.
JPI: What do you mean by
“elastically”? Are you referring to the fourth dimension “ct” in the
Pythagorean calculation of distance between two points in spacetime (where “c”
is the velocity of electromagnetic waves in vacuum)?
PAC: Yes that term generates
a duality between time and space, which was a fantastic idea by Einstein, but
this link is “elastic” (reversible and in phase) and not “dissipative”, meaning
it is not rate dependent nor temperature dependent, the two drives of
dissipation. Hence, the whole relativity must be reconsidered!. We know your
work rewriting the paradigm for the viscoelastic behavior of macromolecular
materials from dissipative statistical systems: the relaxation times are slow
for these long chains which permits to study transients, not simply steady
states, a great advantage to discover all the fundamental parameters of an
event, but not just that, these
materials show that the elastic and dissipative components of stress and strain
are not in phase and depend on temperature and on the strain rate. If the
strain rate is increased to very fast values, a melt or a rubber behaves like a
glass, i.e. like an elastic solid, but this elastic behavior is only a special
case of a more general viscoelastic solution. By analogy, the link between time
and space should be reworked to be more general than limited to the special
case of an elastic link. Remember that the velocity of light can be lowered
when the medium that it goes through is not the vacuum and it also becomes
temperature dependent. These are not taken into account in classical
relativity.
JPI: Are you saying that Time
could be a complex vector instead of a scalar and include both an elastic and a
dissipative component?
PAC: Sort of! This could be a
metaphor for the real structure of Time, which is in fact more complex as I
suggested during the Pioche conference: the structure of Time is the result of
two compensating mechanisms of structuration, one vertical that involves the
periodic nature of time over several “scales” working in harmony (the scales
are “entangled” down to the Planck level), and one horizontal that controls the
open aspect of the dynamics by generating new chronons as needed.
JPI: Where does Space play a role, how does it
interact with Time?
PAC: Space interacts with
Time to permit differentiating the “conformation type” of the chronon: the
“elongated” conformations and the “flexed” conformations, and to control the
rate of generation of new chronons. The horizontal mechanism (“cloning”)
controls the quantity of chronons needed to achieve an event in time-space, the
vertical mechanism (“folding”) controls their scale and the type of
conformation of the chronons needed at that scale. The compensation between the
horizontal and the vertical mechanism is subject to dissipative effects: heat
is produced or removed from the vertical axis, affecting the kinetics on both
axes, and photons are generated as another dissipative solution to control the
internal energy of the open system. These are the basic mechanisms requiring
the cooperation of Time and Space at all scales to allow any event to evolve
dynamically.
JPI: In that scenario, is
Time “ahead of Space”, so to speak, or are they the dual faces of the same
coin? In other words is Time “God” and “Space” his son, if you know what I
refer to, or are they twins? By the way, how do you call the theoretical model
that you describe?
PAC: I recognize the religion
you are referring to, actually the analogy gets even deeper since we have Time,
Space and Matter, a trilogy because of the dissipative effect (I will discuss
this later). The dissipative energy generates the stability of certain
solutions which results in the distinction between PAST and PRESENT and
their interaction generates new solutions (hence the FUTURE). This
process depends on the type of event considered and is therefore different at
different places where events take place: this means that neither space nor
Time is homogeneous. Regions of space have different time clocks if you
want, this is what we mean by the inhomogeneity of the structures of time. Of
course, the drastic consequence of this is that different regions of space do
not share a common time line and it is wrong to try to cross these
inhomogeneous time zones to extrapolate what the past looked like, as your
modern astrophysicists on earth persist doing. This lack of understanding of
Time results in the incoherencies observed by the James Webb telescope and the
current challenges to the standard big-Bang cosmological model. Our open
dissipative model of Time raises new questions (crap in progress…):
- Is
a black hole the illustration of the vertical mechanism in action without horizontality, with no emission of
photons?
-
Does the compensation between the horizontal and the vertical axes of Time
explain THE FLOW OF TIME and THE
EXPANSION OF SPACE (with its current
controversial dark energy explanation)?
Simply put, events generate additional chronons in open dissipative
systems, so time is expanded and so is space. In other words, the Flow of Time
and the Space expansion of the Universe are the same phenomena, hence the dark
energy issue dissolves away!
By
the way, the theoretical model is called The Energetic Kinetic Network (EKNET) of Open
Dissipative Interactions (EKNET-ODI), often abstracted EKNET. My lab in planet
Kepler-452b is named EKNET RESEARCH CAMPUS in memory of your own research on
earth.
JPI: Well, I am not dead yet,
as you can see by yourself!...As you
just mentioned, you have not talked about MATTER in this interview and I remember that in your
conference at Pioche you had dualities and Cross-dualities: SPACE TIME and MATTER for
instance. Where is the reality of Matter coming from?
PAC: Matter is a past stable
solution resulting from the weaving of Space and Time. The coupling of space
and time occurs everywhere all the time: it has been repeated hundreds of
billion trillion times per second generating a super giant network of
trial-events. The trial-events are described by the Grain-Field-Statistics of
Dissipative Interactions which we have borrowed from your own work in
polymer physics. I guess this is why you have invited me for the conference
at Pioche and for this interview. You have taught us the duality of the
conformers in polymer systems to be of the F-type or b-type based on the
ability of the local interactive field to create b-grains that are distinct
from their surrounding, the F-dual conformers; the b-grains are nanometric
agglomerations of b-conformers regardless of their spatial conformation (cis,
gauche or trans). These nodular agglomerates are localizable
in space when the dissipative energy
of the system remains above 0, which occurs below a certain temperature TLL for polymers. In any case, it means that temperature
is involved in the process of dissipation and thus of the stabilization of
coupling space and time to generate “Matter”. To make a long story short, the
application of your statistical dissipative network to a set of chronons having
various conformations (needing different space volumes to manifest their
differences) results in an inhomogeneity of the spacetime density (another
difference with the Einstein’s hypothesis of homogeneity of spacetime) and the
possibility to obtain stable states which,
in the standard model, represent the metaphors of the “elementary particles”.
Your Grain-Field-Statistics also generates entangled states by splitting
systems (“folding”) which become unstable when the size of their agglomerates
saturates the dissipative energy. This description of “entanglement states” when
the dissipative energy of the single system’s state becomes too large can be
transposed to structure the vertically of the interactions of a set of
chronons. A stable state (a “particle”) is the compensation point of the
interactions at a certain scale. A
complex particle (such as an atom) is a superposition of more than one scale
via a process of “entanglement”. For instance an atom has two scales, one scale
for its “nucleus” and one scale for its “electrons” (here I am purposely using
the earth’s particle definition of our stable states). There is an horizontal
structure associated with each scale, yet the cross-duality of the atom is due
to the entanglement between the scales. The entanglement between the scales and
the structure for each scale is the realm of “fragmentation”, where
discontinuities in the mathematical descriptions are the norm, a situation
which your physicists have called “quantum mechanics”. The fragmentation of the structure of time in
discrete blocks is the way dissipative systems of interaction decay
mathematically and, perhaps, those discrete blocks are the equivalent of the
“quanta” of energy in the Standard model, although the exact correspondence may
(or may not) need to be established.
JPI: Does the presence of Matter, which you
describe as stable past solutions,
influence the mechanism of new events, let’s call them occurring in the present?
PAC: Absolutely! We are
talking about a weaved structure, a network of interactions with a past.
Gravity is really the result of past structures interfering with the present
dynamism of their stability in the growing network. All the past structures are
weaved by the same mechanisms of interactions between time and space, repeated
many times, but not necessarily at the same stage of evolution.
JPI: Do you mean that Gravity
is embedded in the coupling between TIME, SPACE and MATTER, explained by the history of the network of
interactions? Are you asserting that Gravity is actually unified with the other
types of interactions?
PAC: Yes, of course, all the
types of interactions of earth’s Physics (strong forces, weak forces,
electromagnetic and gravity forces) are separate features of the same build up
of the EKNET-ODI. There is one single such network for a given
Universe, yours and mine are parts of the same: we share the same mechanisms of
interactions and are interdependent by our common origin, only separated by1400
light years pursuant to your own earth’s calculations. Yet, probably, several
truly independent such networks at different stages of evolution exist,
with no interactions between them, no
possibility to share any information and we will never know how many of those
Universes exist, let alone if they do exist!
JPI: Can we now turn to the
topics of “units” in physics and the existence of “fundamental constants” for
which you claimed during your conference at Pioche that they were the earth’s
“weak concepts” to understand the fundamental mechanisms of the formation of
the interactions in the Universe; you actually said “the Universes” and I thank
you for your explanation above to enlighten this Multi-Universes possibility.
PAC: In your physics on
earth, you have several units defined to characterize events’ evolution by
numbers, and this is a clever practical way to normalize the changes and to
name what the changes apply to. For instance, the normalization for Time is the
“second”, for space the “meter”, for the quantity of matter the “gram” etc. And
then, you have the fundamental constants: the Avogadro number, the Boltzmann’s
number, the velocity of light, the Planck constant, so on and so forth, in
total 26 fundamental constants to describe the “standard model of physics’.
These fundamental constants are obtained by experimentation, they are the links
between the models and the reality, you cannot explain their value. The
weakness of this approach is that these fundamental constants are “fitting
constants”, they are only fundamental with respect to the model of nature
assumed to prevail. Our model is the description of a process of generation of
Time, Space and Matter, a mechanism of interactions between these 3 elements
that repeats itself like Russian dolls
unfolding. We claim in our approach that we only need 3 units, time, space and
energy, and 3 fundamental values should be enough to describe the 1st
step of the genesis of the Dissipative Network; all the other steps (by folding
and cloning) are auto-generated by the assumptions regarding the compensations
between the horizontal and vertical axes, defining the scale, the b and F
conformational states of the chronons and the requirement to optimize the
dissipative energy either locally or collectively. In other words, all the
other constants should derive from the fundamental ones, one way or the other.
The response to the question “do we fundamentally need all these units and
constants” is: YES, the Standard model
of Physics needs 26 fundamental constants to describe the interactions between the
particles of the model (12
fundamental fermions and 5 fundamental bosons) that assemble and combine to
generate 61 particles that render possible the events occurring in the
Universe, and NO, it is not yet possible to ascertain that the EKNET of Open
dissipative Interactions can be generated with only 3 constants to account for all
the events occurring in the Universe. Yet the current cosmological model and
the standard model of particles face so many
challenges that the proposal of a new paradigm to avoid their multiple
contradictions seems inevitable: the incompatibility between general relativity
and quantum mechanics predictions, the dark matter mystery, the dark energy
mystery, the incompatibility between gravity and the other 3 forces of nature
etc. have been discussed for ages with no real consensus ahead. Is it not time
to understand TIME differently?
JPI: So much to do still…Thank you Professor CRAPINOVITCH for
exposing these new possible interpretations of how TIME works to
weave the microscopic to the macroscopic. At least some Buddhists will clearly
endorse your propositions! Catholics might enjoy your Trinity metaphor but not
your collapse of the Big Bang explanation of the 6 first days of
creation... As for Physicists, you know how the Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm
evolution works...
PAC: “TIME IS IN THE WORKS” was the title of my talk at Pioche Projects. We are
still in the shadow of TIME, but CRAP IS IN PROGRESS,
for sure! Thank you for inviting me.
This blog post is dedicated
to Django Ibar on his birthday 4/11/2025
