Every now and again God puts us on pause. Can we detect this?
Imagine that God has many universes to deal with or just needs a break sometimes. He has a pause control.
What plausible mechanism does God use to perform the pause without breaking the laws of physics he has created? Is there anything in our current knowledge of physics that forbids a pause? What is the minimal thing that has to be done to produce a universal pause (rather than intervening with every particle individually)?
If God uses this minimal method, can we detect that we have been paused?
Update (taking into account some of the answers and comments)
My assumption is that all the laws that we see are still there, exactly as we know them. There could however be an extra law that we simply don't know about. It doesn't change the other laws--it just exists alongside them. Effectively it is used to stop our universe relative to other universes and Heaven. I'm wondering if we could find out about the extra law by the fact that something changes suddenly, for example the amount/proportion of dark matter in the universe suddenly changes.
[Please notice the hard-science tag. Soft science that is verifiable is also welcomed.]
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/28377. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
No, because of Hamilton's equations and conservation laws.
At some time $t$, the configuration of the universe is represented (classically) by a point in phase space. Phase space describes the position and momentum of the components of a system. We can define these locations using canonical coordinates $q_i$ and $p_i$ (components of the vectors denoting objects' locations in space and momenta). Hamilton's equations say that $$\frac{\mathrm{d}\mathbf{p}}{\mathrm{d}t}=-\frac{\mathrm{d}\mathcal{H}}{\mathrm{d}\mathbf{q}}$$ $$\frac{\mathrm{d}\mathbf{q}}{\mathrm{d}t}=\frac{\mathrm{d}\mathcal{H}}{\mathrm{d}\mathbf{p}}$$ This describes how the configuration of the universe changes in phase space over time - in other words, how the universe evolves. Normally, this could be represented by a smooth curve. In this case, however, at some time $t_1$, there is a discontinuity, where $|\mathbf{p}|=0$. From God's perspective, you have a finite $\mathrm{d}\mathbf{p}$ and a vanishing $\mathrm{d}t$, which means an infinite force, as $\mathbf{F}=\frac{\mathrm{d}\mathbf{p}}{\mathrm{d}t}$. That quite clearly violates the laws of physics.
Is there anything in our current knowledge of physics that forbids a pause?
Oh, yes. It violates this reasoning, as well as conservation laws aplenty, including energy, linear momentum, and angular momentum. Any energy associated with motion instantaneously disappears, with no possible mechanism for its loss.
To more specifically address the question of whether or not we could notice it, the answer is simple: No. If everything has been paused, then nothing should have changed during the "time" elapsed for God during the pause. There's simply no way to tell, because nothing is different.
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