I started with your latest reply, Geo, and I don't want to disappoint you, but we are not thinking along the same lines. I am going to turn this reply into an exercise you may not be willing to entertain.
When clocks are sent into space, coming back with a different time on their displays, then there are two ways to explain this:
1/ Time dilated;
2/ Matter changed its behavior and the clocks show us that.
I am with #2. Time dilation is in my view an incorrect view, an inappropriate reversal of what occurred.
I even claim that Einstein's work got reversed by subsequent followers. I claim that Einstein was with #2, and his followers with #1.
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Time is a phenomenon, which means it is absolutely real, no doubts about it.
Yet it also means that it has no attributes of its own.
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I am not sure in how far you are able to read this. You have much invested in time dilation, and to then consider how matter changes instead of time (when placed in a different spatial setting), you may not read on.
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First a good example of a scientific phenomenon:
The Eye of the Storm.
The Eye is real, and yet the eye does not have any (windy) attributes of its own. The Eye is fully based on the Storm and yet there is nothing about the Eye that is windy, except for a depression because of the outward pull on that center.
There is truly regular air inside the Eye, so it did not become a nothing. Yet the Eye that we see for real does not have any (windy) attributes of its own while fully the result of the Storm nevertheless. The reasons for the Eye are not found with the Eye. That means it is a phenomenon.
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Same for time. It is truly there, but there are no attributes to it. The entire universe exists in the Now only, no matter that it takes eight minutes for sunlight to reach our planet.
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That means that we need to understand what Einstein did. If we explain the behavior of matter with Spacetime, then we have a conundrum on our hands because Spacetime and matter behaving a certain way is not a fitting label. They are not from one and the same setting; not the same kind. The label does not indicate anything about material behavior.
Einstein's Spacetime could have been called anything else, but Einstein did not know where to hang this hat. So he called it Spacetime.
Then, his followers decided that he was talking about actual Space&Time and not about the framework for matter to behave itself a certain way. They reversed what he was saying.
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The simple example to show what they did is the tape measure. A tape measure can very accurately measure how tall you are, but you would not agree that the tape measure had anything to do with how tall you ended up being, right?
So, when measuring all people and then seeing that the elderly are shrinking, we have a choice. We can say that the elderly are shrinking or that the tape measure stretched.
Those are our choices. And they are the same choices with time dilation and Spacetime. Which version are we going to accept as the bottom line?
With folks shrinking, we can take the folks as the bottom line (nature made them smaller), or we can take the tape measure as the bottom line (which must then stretch to explain the diminished length measured).
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If you can bear this, Geo, then Space is a phenomenon as well. It has no attributes. It cannot interact with anything. It cannot expand. It has no borders.
Once we strip what I call the nonsense away from the actual scientific data, we end up with two aspects: energy and matter, and they are existing in a setting in which time and space are phenomena (not interacting, but real nevertheless).
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Then we have to look at what matter is, and there is but one conclusion possible, that it came forth from energy.
We have no scientific data at all when energy first arrived. Our hands are empty, yet we do know that energy does not get lost.
So, we have two things:
1/ Matter came about
2/ Energy does not get lost
Had all prior energy turned into matter, then we would have had a weird reality on our hand. How can everything energy become something else (matter) and then not return to its original state in 15 minutes tops? Not possible. It would return to its original state at first opportunity.
Obviously, that is not what happened. The prior state of the universe broke at a fundamental level, and we live in a result that Gödel already showed does not contain a Mathematical 1. Let me explain this with a correct use of a Mathematical 1.
In religion, we have a top-down perspective, and we can start out with a correct Mathematical 1 (God).
In science, we have a bottom-up perspective, and the Mathematical 1 is simply not there. It does not exist in a bottom-up approach. Never, ever.
So, again, we have a choice to make. Are we religious priests trying to understand science as if it were an expression of God? I sincerely hope not.
Are we seeing reality top-down or are we seeing reality bottom-up?
Again, we have to make a choice. When we start with a Mathematical 1, then we are priests. When we start with the facts and evidence, then we are scientists.
Due to Einstein's strange use of Spacetime as the term, he is the reason that (others embraced) a reversal of the choice, mid-way.
Science went from bottom-up (which is still claimed as the correct pathway for science) to a top-down structure (though only for the big picture level), and no one paid attention. No one saw that the foundation of science had been infiltrated by a theory, something that should have never happened. The foundation cannot be based on a theory, because that is the religious structure and not the scientific structure.
The original state broke. What we should find (and did find) is a fundamental separation, while everything tries nevertheless to be as unified as possible (but ultimately fails except at the local levels).
I will investigate your further replies, Geo, because I can see you went deep into this. I’ll do my best to go where you are going. You are smart, but I do not know if you have it in you to accept the perspective that there is no scientific Santa.
