We want to leave behind the container theory of space and time on which physical theories have been based up to now. To do this, we need to unveil two great mysteries: What characterizes the present as “now”? And what drives the flow of time? In order to get closer to an answer to these questions, we want to conduct a thought experiment.
Let's imagine a huge planet on which two twins arrange to meet for an experiment. One twin has walked around the planet at the equator and determined the circumference of the planet to be 180,000,000 meters using a rod whose length we would call 1 meter. The other twin is now given the task of determining the circumference of the planet by using a rocket to orbit the planet just above the ground along the equator. Both twins also have identical clocks. The space traveler climbs into his rocket and accelerates it to 3/5 of the speed of light c. After reaching its final speed and passing directly past his brother, both twins press the start button on their clocks. When the rocket passes the twin on the ground again, both twins press the stop button. The twin on the ground reads a time on his watch, which we call 1 second. The twin in the rocket, on the other hand, only reads 0.8 seconds on his watch due to relativistic time dilation. According to his measurement, the distance traveled along the equator was only 144,000,000 meters due to relativistic length contraction. However, he agrees with his twin about the speed of his rocket: the astronaut determines his speed as v = 144,000,000 meters / 0.8 seconds = 180,000,000 meters / second, while his brother comes to the same conclusion with v = 180,000,000 meters / 1 second.
At the moment the rocket passes by, both times the two twins are obviously in almost the same place and in the same present. However, the two twins disagree about the length of time and distance traveled in between. Consequently, the “now” cannot be determined by spatio-temporal coordinates. Einstein had already come to this conclusion with his considerations on the non-simultaneity of coincident events for observers moving in opposite directions.
What constitutes the present as now if it is not time?
Due to his fixation on clock time, Einstein was of the opinion that the now could not exist in physics. However, this attitude seems unsatisfactory to us, as otherwise the phenomenon of time would be extremely incompletely captured by physical theorizing. We would therefore like to make a suggestion as to what is actually behind the phenomenon that we commonly describe as the flow of time: There is one physical quantity that has undergone the same change for both twins between the two encounters: The effect ΔS = E * Δt. For the twin on the ground, ΔS = m0c2 * Δt, for the twin in the rocket is ΔS = mc2 * Δt' = γ * moc2 * Δt / γ = m0c2 * Δt, where γ = (1 - (v/c)2)-0,5 is the Lorentz factor. However, for this consideration to apply to twins that do not have the same rest mass m0, we must use the relative change ΔS / So rather than the absolute change ΔS.
During the transition from the present G1 to G2 the effect value S for each material particle and the macroscopic objects composed of them changes by a certain ratio S2/S1. The “equations of motion” of the basic building blocks of the material world should therefore not be formulated with time as a parameter, but as a function of the unitless relative value ΔS / So.
This also makes it immediately clear why all physical equations of motion can be derived from the principle of extremal action: What actually “flows” is not time, but the effect value. All physical objects take the path in space and time that brings them from A to B in the nearest possible present. Or to put it in quantum physical terms: all paths of a particle in phase space are weighted with the respective effect, because it is less likely that a particle on one path will only be detected in a later present than that it has already been detected on another path in an earlier present.
This brings us to the problem of measurement and observation, which raises serious problems of interpretation in quantum physics. We record all experimental observations in our usual macroscopic world of experience as spatio-temporal events. However, quantum objects create space and time in the first place and their behavior can therefore not depend on space and time at all. Instead, their behavior is dependent on other variables such as the relative effect value as the primary driver, which has not yet been reflected in the theories.
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