Relaxation-Time Density Law

The relaxation-time density law is an empirical regularity reported by N. A. Kozyrev in his September 1967 paper Possibility of Experimental Study of the Properties of Time (distributed as Joint Publications Research Service report #45238, 2 May 1968). It states that the relaxation time t₀ of a body — the time over which additional forces of the time pattern persist after vibrations stop — is independent of the body's mass and inversely proportional to the square root of its density:

t₀ ∝ 1 / √ρ

The law is presented as one of the closing results of the paper's experimental section, following the account of the asymmetric torsion balance and the reported chiral shielding effects. It is a claim of the source, not an independently replicated finding.

Reported measurements

Kozyrev reports three relaxation times obtained with bodies of differing density:

The pattern is consistent with an inverse-square-root dependence on density: as density falls by roughly a factor of 20 from lead to wood, t₀ rises by roughly a factor of 5, close to √20 ≈ 4.5. Kozyrev treats this as the empirical basis for the law.

Why mass-independence matters in the source's argument

The claim that t₀ does not depend on mass is significant within Kozyrev's causal mechanics because it distinguishes the relaxation time from ordinary mechanical or thermal relaxation, which would normally scale with mass, heat capacity, or thermal diffusivity. In the source's framing, the relaxation time is a property of how a body interacts with the time pattern rather than of its inertia. This is offered as supporting evidence that the effect being measured is not a conventional force but something the paper attributes to time itself.

Relation to the torsion-balance experiments

The relaxation time appears in the same experimental program as the asymmetric torsion balance, whose reported parameters include a period T = 132 s and a free period T₀ = 75 s. The relaxation time is the timescale over which additional forces of the time pattern persist in the system after the vibrations stop, and is therefore the quantity that determines how long the instrument retains a changed state. Kozyrev's density law is a claim about how that settling time varies with the material of the suspended body.

Limitations and unresolved questions

• The law rests on three data points spanning roughly one order of magnitude in density; the source does not report uncertainties, repeated trials, or independent replication.
• The mechanism by which density, rather than mass or thermal properties, would set a relaxation time is not derived from first principles in the available text.
• The measurements are attributed to Kozyrev's own laboratory at the Pulkovo Observatory, with assistance from V. G. Labeysh and V. V. Nasonov; no external verification is cited.
• The result should be read as part of a historical and contested research program rather than as an established physical law.

Related work

The relaxation-time law sits alongside the paper's other reported regularities: the C₂ constant (reported as +700 ± 50 km/sec in a left-hand system), the quantized weight-change stages, and the inverse-first-power falloff of the causal-dipole effect. Together they form the empirical core that Kozyrev uses to argue, in his third general inference, that time possesses diverse qualities open to experiment.