The nature of time and motion in relativistic operational reality

Abstract

We argue that the construction of spacetime is personal, specific to each observer, and requires combining aspects of both discovery and creation. What is usually referred to as the block universe then emerges by noting that part of the future is contained in the present, but without the limitations that the four-dimensional block universe usually implies, of a reality in which change would be impossible. In our operational approach, reality remains dynamic, with free choice playing a central role in its conceptualization. We therefore claim that Einstein's relativity revolution has not been fully realized, since most physicists do not seem to be open to the idea that objects move not only in space, but also and especially in time, and more generally in spacetime, with their rest mass being a measure of their kinetic time energy. When relativistic motion is revisited as a genuine four-dimensional motion, it becomes possible to reinterpret the parameter c associated with the coordinate speed of light, which becomes the magnitude of the four-velocity of all material entities. We also observe that the four-dimensional motion in Minkowski space can be better understood if placed in the broader perspective of quantum mechanics, if non-locality is interpreted as non-spatiality, thus indicating the existence of an underlying non-spatial reality, the nature of which could be conceptual, consistent with the conceptuality interpretation of quantum mechanics. This hypothesis is reinforced by noting that when observers, or experiencers, as they will be referred to in this article, are described by acknowledging their cognitive nature, of entities moving in a semantic space, Minkowski metric emerges in a natural way.