What happens to physics when time stops?

[RainDreamer]

Subtitle: or, everything that will go wrong when you freeze time.

-----

So recently we got a new gimmicky third person shooter game called Quantum Break, where the main character can manipulate time to do some fancy tricks. Most notably it has areas where time stops completely, or playing itself in a loop and our character can use the environmental objects trapped in time to advantage by releasing a frozen object to play in the loop or freezing an object mid loop, such as releasing a frozen car mid crash so it flies into enemies, or freezing something looping around in mid air to be used as foot hold to travel around.

Now that's enough about the game, I only mention it because that game reminds me of something I have always wonder about the time stop situation, in that, how physics works in such an environment. Of course this has no bearing on the real world that we know of, but it is fun to think about scenarios.

 

Ignoring why or how time suddenly stop, I wonder what happens when, say, a person is capable of moving around freely in such an environment.

 

What happens to light, for example. If time stops, suddenly, all photons in the air will be suspended as well. How would a time traveller in such environment see? They would only be able to see as long as they move forward, but as soon as they move backward, no light will hit their eyes and suddenly the whole world is black for them. And then air as well, if no air molecules enter their lungs because they all freeze up, the time traveller would be choking right where they stand, and thus must be running to catch all the air they could.

And then I wonder about forces such as momentum works. Does the time traveller impart force on objects suspended in time? Will there be inertia? What happen, if say, the time traveller takes an object, and push it for a distance, and then time resume? Would all the momentum builds up in the object be released all at once?

Also compression. If all the atoms in the air is frozen in time, would the time traveller, by merely moving, compress them together to the point of fusion, because they are essentially moving faster than light? Every movement would trigger catastrophic explosion as soon as time resumes, wouldn't it?

 

I am sure there are more things that might go wrong in this time stop scenario, but I don't have enough physics knowledge. Any of you have other ideas?

Edited April 16, 2016 by RainDreamer

[Steel]

Well my first thing would be that if photons don't move then the electromagnetic force that governs all interaction between matter that we percieve stops and so everything stops being objects and reverts to being masses of clumped but non-interacting atoms. Thus anyone who could magically still experience time in a state where time has stopped wouldn't be able to interact with anything at all.

But again these conversations are always a bit pointless because it's asking what would happen to the laws of physics if you introduce a system that doesn't obey them anyway.

Edited April 16, 2016 by Steel

[Atlas2342]

Can the traveller even move? Does motion exist if time is stopped?

[Steel]

4 minutes ago, Atlas2342 said:

Can the traveller even move? Does motion exist if time is stopped?

No, but in this scenario we are assuming that he is magically able to exist as normal even though time has stopped

Edited April 16, 2016 by Steel

[Shpaget]

If you decide that a certain fundamental law of physics no longer aplies, than it is not reasonable to discuss any other aspect of physics.

Wave your magic wand as you please and have the situation behave as you like.

[RainDreamer]

Well, I meant this to be a fun thing and not a formal scientific enquiry. I am not necessarily seeking for answers, but rather crazy ideas of things that may happen.

It is like how people point out that when you go FTL in sci-fi you shouldn't be able to see any light save for the one directly in front of you. Or wonder how the Force works. Or thinking about the implications of time travels and multiple time lines. It is just curiosity.

[Martian Music]

Actually the answer to that is in a black hole, beyond the event horizon. The problem is, even the event horizon itself is basically a theory so it's just really hard to answer such a question in my opinion. But if it does exist, then there is a place somewhere in the universe where time stops. Which therefore would mean time CAN stop in the universe. What happens there? Jeez, who knows. Lots of crazy ideas would start popping up. What if time stopping would cause something else to start? Like a new kind of time that goes backwards for example ;p crazy ideas! Oh, and gravity is mostly known as a distortion in space and time. And gravity exists EVERYWHERE. But if there's no time, then gravity would be a distortion of space only? (assuming matter can still exist in time frozen). 

But something that makes me wonder, photons traveling at the speed of light experience NOTHING. They don't even experience time. So does that mean time stops at the speed of light? If so then how are the photons themselves are able to move? Gosh my mind is starting to hurt

Edited April 16, 2016 by Martian Music
Gravity!

[PB666]

3 hours ago, RainDreamer said:

Subtitle: or, everything that will go wrong when you freeze time.

-----

So recently we got a new gimmicky third person shooter game called Quantum Break, where the main character can manipulate time to do some fancy tricks. Most notably it has areas where time stops completely, or playing itself in a loop and our character can use the environmental objects trapped in time to advantage by releasing a frozen object to play in the loop or freezing an object mid loop, such as releasing a frozen car mid crash so it flies into enemies, or freezing something looping around in mid air to be used as foot hold to travel around.

Now that's enough about the game, I only mention it because that game reminds me of something I have always wonder about the time stop situation, in that, how physics works in such an environment. Of course this has no bearing on the real world that we know of, but it is fun to think about scenarios.

 

Ignoring why or how time suddenly stop, I wonder what happens when, say, a person is capable of moving around freely in such an environment.

 

What happens to light, for example. If time stops, suddenly, all photons in the air will be suspended as well. How would a time traveller in such environment see? They would only be able to see as long as they move forward, but as soon as they move backward, no light will hit their eyes and suddenly the whole world is black for them. And then air as well, if no air molecules enter their lungs because they all freeze up, the time traveller would be choking right where they stand, and thus must be running to catch all the air they could.

And then I wonder about forces such as momentum works. Does the time traveller impart force on objects suspended in time? Will there be inertia? What happen, if say, the time traveller takes an object, and push it for a distance, and then time resume? Would all the momentum builds up in the object be released all at once?

Also compression. If all the atoms in the air is frozen in time, would the time traveller, by merely moving, compress them together to the point of fusion, because they are essentially moving faster than light? Every movement would trigger catastrophic explosion as soon as time resumes, wouldn't it?

 

I am sure there are more things that might go wrong in this time stop scenario, but I don't have enough physics knowledge. Any of you have other ideas?

Time can only stop between observation frames, you have to go very fast. The other guy will see you as stopped, to yourself you are still moving

The process of time at the quantum level is quasirandom, however the accumulation of events statistically processes through time. The level is very very small, it does not accumulate up to scales of a human. Its is like many things at the quantum scale, for example quantum wormholes are possible, actual spacetime wormholes probably impossible.

You can think of it like this..... If you need to make something move at FTL speeds its not so hard to do at the quantum level if you abide by certain rules

1. You can subdivide the object into atomic or subatomic particles <----
2. That individual particles could be in many places at once for example the position and momentum of a particle are best defined statistically.
3. that the starting and ending points are within or very close (as in a chain or relay) to the statistical places that the particle is normally expected to be.

Increasing the size say 100 fold or the distance 100 is very difficult.

Electrons may be exceptional because it is possible to create resonance states in which the electrons probability can exist over 4n+2 atoms at once, as far as I know there is no limit to n, so n could be infinity. You place an electron on a sheet of graphene atoms, and you can pick it up immediately on the other side. It cannot flow at FTL, but its speed is exceptionally close to the speed of light. You could for instance place 100s of electrons on a graphene sheet at once, and take them off at the same moment on the other side.
 

Getting back to the topic, at the relativistic scales we live in spacetime, it doesn't stop for us (OK maybe for 10-44 second). Time just keeps rollin along.

 

 

 

[Steel]

8 minutes ago, Martian Music said:

Actually the answer to that is in a black hole, beyond the event horizon. The problem is, even the event horizon itself is basically a theory so it's just really hard to answer such a question in my opinion. But if it does exist, then there is a place somewhere in the universe where time stops. Which therefore would mean time CAN stop in the universe. What happens there? Jeez, who knows. Lots of crazy ideas would start popping up. What if time stopping would cause something else to start? Like a new kind of time that goes backwards for example ;p crazy ideas!

But something that makes me wonder, photons traveling at the speed of light experience NOTHING. They don't even experience time. So does that mean time stops at the speed of light? If so then how are the photons themselves are able to move? Gosh my mind is starting to hurt

Not quite. Time doesn't stop for someone crossing the event horizon, however for an outside observer they see the person falling towards the horizon seem to slow to a stop just outside the boundary. However time carries on for both of these observers.

Edited April 16, 2016 by Steel

[Martian Music]

So it's just unknown what happens after the event horizon?

I mean, the stronger the gravity, the slower the time is, right? So there might a point on a black hole where gravity is strong enough to stop time?

[Steel]

2 minutes ago, Martian Music said:

So it's just unknown what happens after the event horizon?

I mean, the stronger the gravity, the slower the time is, right? So there might a point on a black hole where gravity is strong enough to stop time?

Yes, by definition light cannot escape and so we cannot get information from inside the event horizon. The thing about gravitational time dilation is true to a point, but it's all to do with reference frames, so time will never completely stop for any reference frame unless they all stop

Edited April 16, 2016 by Steel

[Martian Music]

Well crap. But let's go full theoretical, what would happen after the event horizon? Only gravity is getting stronger and stronger until we reach the "surface" of the black hole?

Also is there a limit to how strong gravity can get? If there isn't then nothing prevents gravity from stopping time right? Oh and since time is relative, why wouldn't it stop at one point and go on at a different one?

Edited April 16, 2016 by Martian Music

[Steel]

19 minutes ago, Martian Music said:

Well crap. But let's go full theoretical, what would happen after the event horizon? Only gravity is getting stronger and stronger until we reach the "surface" of the black hole?

Not a huge amount for the observer falling towards the centre, they experience no unphysical effects other than being very quickly killed, as

Quote

From here to the central singularity will take 0.0001 seconds in proper time, in free fall, for a 30 solar mass black hole.

From Wikipedia. All that happens is that you lose any ability to influence the rest of the universe in any way.

19 minutes ago, Martian Music said:

Also is there a limit to how strong gravity can get? If there isn't then nothing prevents gravity from stopping time right? Oh and since time is relative, why wouldn't it stop at one point and go on at a different one?

You cannot dilate time to a complete stop, as this would mean that in that frame of reference the laws of physics would not apply, which violates the fact that the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames.

Edited April 16, 2016 by Steel

[Steel]

Also bear in mind that time dilation doesn't change time for the observer falling into the black hole, just how an external observer perceives the faller experiencing time. So time doesn't stop for anyone.

Edited April 16, 2016 by Steel

[PB666]

2 hours ago, Steel said:

 

From Wikipedia. All that happens is that you lose any ability to influence the rest of the universe in any way.

 

Your energy becomes part of the black hole, its a singularity only from the outside point of view. The hole idea of black hole radiation is the energy communicated to a black hole cannot be lost, eventually it has to be communicated back. The larger the hole the better able it is to hold onto that energy, but eventually it has to let go. Since time slows down in a black hole, the tiny amount of energy that it radiates would seem large from the point of view of the observer in the hole.

Theoretically a black hole could become so large that it could never communicate any radiation back, but that might be the state beyond which triggers a big bang. The concept of entropy is that the universe is always going from a state of order to disorder, our energies should eventually diffuse into space and become shifted to wavelengths longer than long wave radio signals. A black hole that does not radiate starts to violate this.

I should point out here that the discussion generally ignores the observer-observed relationship, time slows down from an observer looking at the observed falling into the black hole. The theory of relativity basically argues that there is no preferred tempero-spatial reference frame (alas since i am referring to relativity and not quantum mechanics its a premise to the argument). But a black hole is a special case of space time because the comoving spacetime at the event horizon is extremely dynamic. What you see at this horizon in terms of particles is equally energetic and exotic.

 

[Darnok]

First define time
Second define how you measure time.
Then we can talk about scenario when time has stopped.

 

[todofwar]

Well, if instead of "stopping time" you go with a more quicksilver/flash approach then XKCD did a fantastic case of what happens when a baseball accelerates to the speed of light. Yes everything goes boom. 

I remember from my modern physics class a while ago we went through relativity and discussed how from the frame of reference of something traveling at the speed of light, all things happen at the same time in the same place. In that sense, has time "stopped" for massless particles?

[YNM]

Time doesn't exist for massless particles travelling at speed of light. That's why you can cram them in (bosons).

For OP question : You're asking something that breaks physics while requiring nothing else be broken. So, verdict :

You won't even feel that it has been stopped.

Like xkcd's time machine, where it automatically turns itself off out of time reversal.

Edited April 16, 2016 by YNM

[PB666]

1 hour ago, YNM said:

Time doesn't exist for massless particles travelling at speed of light. That's why you can cram them in (bosons).

For OP question : You're asking something that breaks physics while requiring nothing else be broken. So, verdict :

You won't even feel that it has been stopped.

Like xkcd's time machine, where it automatically turns itself off out of time reversal.

The lesson there is don't take a baseball bat into a time machine.

 

[Martian Music]

27 minutes ago, PB666 said:

The lesson there is don't take a baseball bat into a time machine.

 

Heh, exactly ;P

Edited April 16, 2016 by Martian Music