Time doesn't exist...?

[tolworthy]

If at 2:00 i stood still for 5 minutes, i traveled in time... i traveled from 2:00 to 2:05

 

How do you know? Last night I saw the sun go down below the horizon, but did the sun really orbit the earth? Or is it just my point of view? I also played part of a computer game, and my character moved in time. Or was this simply a different state of the program, where all possible states are encapsulated in the static code?

 

Time is a good way to organize different states of existence, but that does not mean it is any more real than the tiny orbiting sun or the billion year history of my sci-fi game.

[infamous]

 

Time is a good way to organize different states of existence, but that does not mean it is any more real than the tiny orbiting sun or the billion year history of my sci-fi game.

I just truned 63 the other day, don't try and tell me time does'nt exist.

[CraigD]

The notion of time being a way to define the movement of matter brings up interesting questions.

Interesting indeed! I wanna take this quiz!

1) Would time stop at absolute zero?

A workable definition of absolute 0 is the absence of kinetic energy within some volume of space. So, at absolute 0, there’d be no way to measure time with any sort of device-with-moving-parts (even just moving electrons). Outside of the volume with 0 temperature, but in the same inertial frame, time would be measured as usual.

 

So my final answer is: no, time would not stop at absolute zero, but since nothing would change in a physical system at absolute zero, there’s be nothing to measure it.

2) Would light be able to travel through a lens at absolute zero, or would a normal, clear lens turn black to an observer once it reaches zero?

This is a trick question. A lens built of ordinary matter (such as silica glass) can’t be cooled to absolute zero – to eliminate the kinetic energy of the electrons in the material, you’ve got to separate them from their nuclei, or the Pauli principle forces them to have non-zero kinetic energy.

 

You could make a sort of a lense from some kind of degenerate matter (eg: “neutronium”), but since it wouldn’t have electrons to absorb and reemit photons, it would have to be a kind of diffraction grating. This lens would work at absolute zero.

 

A mirror at absolute zero (again, made out of degenerate matter) would reflect no light. If you could make such a thing big enough to see, I imagine it would be one of the coolest-looking things to ever grace a gallery or museum.

We're all travelling through time, every second, every day. In one direction only. Trying to reverse it, to travel backwards in time, would include changing the Laws of Nature, so that effects can preceed causes. That's gonna be a bit hard.

Does seem rather counterintuitive, doesn’t it?

 

If any of the designs for time travel into the past prove possible in principle and can be practically implemented, the resulting experimental data could have a profound impact on the interpretation of Quantum Physics. For example: successfully photon-transmitting time machine can be used to send a text message into the past instructing the sender not to send the message (or, more morbidly, a person travel into the past and kill their grandfather), would support the many worlds interpretation, an thought-provoking interpretation currently suffering from the lack of any falsifying experiment. Under this interpretation, effects could precede their effects without limitation, because doing so would in turn effect a different world-line than original effect’s.

 

PS: One of my favorite SF novels, “Thrice Upon a Time”, by one of my favorite authorsJames Hogan, explores this scenario (communication, not grand-patricide) at length. (Hogan’s science may be iffy, but IMHO his grasp of the process of science is excellent, and his ability to communicate it inspiring)

[tolworthy]

I just truned 63 the other day, don't try and tell me time does'nt exist.

 

Argumentum Ad Lapidem, eh? Fair enough. :shrug:

Oh, and happy birthday.

[Little Bang]

Was there an orderly occurence of events after the begining? If so then time existed.

[Qfwfq]

1) Would time stop at absolute zero?

2) Would light be able to travel through a lens at absolute zero, or would a normal, clear lens turn black to an observer once it reaches zero?

 

If not, then time can't be defined as having anything to do with motion, seeing as there's no particle motion at 0.

A0 means no thermal (disorderly microscopic) motion, it doesn't imply no motion at all. 'cept of course that all motion eventually ends up increasing thermal agitation, but that doesn't make the above statement correct.

 

If even a single photon is "trying" to get through the lens, that's motion, it's something happening, that's time elapsing. Does the lens become opaque black if the room is perfectly dark?

 

With absolutely no events taking place in the entire universe, there would be no notion of time. That couldn't really come to pass, though.

[Boerseun]

Time is something that happens to Space, and, of course, Space is something that happens to Time.

 

The two are interlinked, different facets of the same thing.

 

So - in order for something to happen to Time (eg. travel backwards through time, etc.) would imply changing the fabric of space as well.

 

And for something to severly influence Space, would also need to bugger up Time.

 

The one place we hypothesize this as happening, is Black Holes. Black Holes thoroughly and completely screw up both Space and Time, and at the singularity both Time and Space come to a stop.

 

I suppose if you look at an empty fishtank (just to illustrate a given space), then there'll be Time inside the tank as long as the volume (Space) is there. Time will only stop once the fishtank contracts to a singularity, or is sucked in by one (a passing Black Hole).

 

It's kinda like watching your Uncle George from the front, and then from behind. Two completely different images, but just two perspectives of essentially the same thing.

 

Visualising Time and Space as being the same thing is a different story, though...

[Qfwfq]

Time is something that happens to Space, and, of course, Space is something that happens to Time.

:xx: :eek2:

[emessay]

If our existence is two-dimensional[LxW], I think we've better understand in observing space-time. Is there possible a 'conscious creature' in two-dimensional or one-dimensional, so that mass or volume tend to be fictious or illusory. Am I wrong ?

[motherengine]

wish i could go on about space-time and nautical calculations but my adhd addled brain will suffice to say the idea of time paradox [i.e. michael j. fox's hand disappearing] just seems ludicrous to me. i see many movements of energy in space as leaving traces through memory though space remains constent regardless of whatever object moves within it. in other words i could see traveling into an alternate past which is in its space a present, though not shifting space in our universe to conform with time or element of time. humans are creatures of time moving through constent space. :eek2:

[geokker]

We think of time in terms of change becase we change. We measure with intervals between events. The units of measurement are of course, completely arbitrary and for our convenience. Time is relative and needn't be considered in all cases.

 

For instance, we assume everything is changing - rightly or wrongly. If the universe had no kinetic energy i.e. not even sub-atomic movement, there would be no reference to measure with time. If in this stagnant universe a rocket ship makes its way from planet to planet, it has its own changing relationship with the universe as its reference for time. As it is now, we have limitless references in the form of changing or degrading clumps of matter and movement. It is because we move we change. It is because we change we have the notion of time - time only exists because of these considerations.

[Question]

The past is the present.

 

And the present is.....

 

the future.

[daytonturner]

Hoping this thread is not dead. No one here has expressed my lamebrain concept of time which I posted on a different thread in relation to a slightly different topic.

 

My concept of time is that it is an expression of the relationship between energy and matter. The basic form of energy, light, travels at a constant rate of speed. However, this rate is only measurable in relation to points of space which are denoted only in relation to matter. Wherein both energy and matter exist, time exists.

 

This relationship is structured such that when matter attains the speed of light, it ceases to be matter and becomes energy; when light is slowed down (such as when it is made captive to a black hole) it ceases to be energy and becomes matter. In either of those conditions, time did not, does not and will not exist.

 

Thus, and I swear this is my very own original thought, time is relative.

[Tormod]

This relationship is structured such that when matter attains the speed of light, it ceases to be matter and becomes energy; when light is slowed down (such as when it is made captive to a black hole) it ceases to be energy and becomes matter. In either of those conditions, time did not, does not and will not exist.

 

Thus, and I swear this is my very own original thought, time is relative.

 

This has nothing to do with relativity except perhaps the fact that relativity theory predicts that matter cannot reach light speed since it requires infinite acelleration.

 

You fail to explain how this relates to time, though, and how the relationship between matter and energy at light speed is so fundamental that it creates time.

[IMAMONKEY!]

Another aspect of time is that it is not discrete. There is no "moment" of time. The present is gone as soon as it arrives.

 

So in a sense there is no such thing as present is what you are saying? If as soon as the present is here it is gone, then that would mean the present is not just what is happening now, but what happens as the universe goes on?... :Waldo: I am confused.

 

If the present doesn't exist then that means we are constantly living in the past. By the time the present has passed our brains were too slow to realize it so there is a lag between what we percieve as the present and what the present actually is. I think that makes some sense.:hyper:

[ldsoftwaresteve]

IMAMONKEY:

So in a sense there is no such thing as present is what you are saying? If as soon as the present is here it is gone, then that would mean the present is not just what is happening now, but what happens as the universe goes on?... I am confused.

Allow me to quote Dark Helmet in Spaceballs. "When will then be now?".... "Soon."

:Waldo:

 

Hey! I just went back and saw the Mel Brooks reference! Great minds think alike

[Qfwfq]

IMAMONKEY! is more or less talking about this: http://hypography.com/forums/showpost.php?p=57514&postcount=16