[Cavenglok]

This is where you introduce your ideas about time. Personally, I think time is like many beads where an infinite amount of strings go through them, where the strings go in different directions. As you drag the beads along the strings, the strings gather and turn into one. In case of time, the beads are the "now's," and the strings are situations, events. The strings that go in different directions are the potential situations. Let's take two. How about, "Earth surrenders to aliens" and "Earth fights aliens." As the "now's" move along, the strings all turn to one, and one of those situations happen. The now's are what is happening at that certain point of time. Each "now" could be in a different situation. In fact, if I time travelled, and I landed in another "now," for all I know, Earth could have been demolished a long time ago. Or phoenixes were flying around trying to eat dinosaurs. However, it is impossible to stop a bead. If you were to time-travel, you will always go onto another bead.

The Greeks once said, "Time is the motion of objects," or something like that. I'm not even sure they said that, but I heard it and I figured if this is true, time must depend of space and motion, and space and motion must depend on time. This is because if there is no motion or space, there would be no time. And if the statement is true, then time HAD to exist if space and motion existed.

I hope it isn't too confusing. Go ahead and post other ideas.

[Guest]

Holy crap, it works! Hey Brainden, I'm from the future!

As for the nature of time...

I'm with Douglas Adams on this:

"Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so"

One of the interesting things about time is that we perceive the passage of time. Yet there is no moment which can be identified as "now", since, if you consider time as a whole and single out any moment of time, that moment would always be perceived as "now" by any intelligent beings which were aware at that time. Looking at it from a wider (time-independent) perspective, I don't think we could conclude anything other than that the "passage" of time is a big illusion. The very notion of time "passing" is defined circularly anyway, but thinking outside of time is not in our nature.

[Cavenglok]

I'm with Douglas Adams on this:

"Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so"

One of the interesting things about time is that we perceive the passage of time. Yet there is no moment which can be identified as "now", since, if you consider time as a whole and single out any moment of time, that moment would always be perceived as "now" by any intelligent beings which were aware at that time. Looking at it from a wider (time-independent) perspective, I don't think we could conclude anything other than that the "passage" of time is a big illusion. The very notion of time "passing" is defined circularly anyway, but thinking outside of time is not in our nature.

True, time can also be seen as an illusion. But I must say, so is numbers. Numbers are a human creation, units to define the amount of things. Therefore, are numbers real? Likewise, time is a human creation, because although the flow of things is not man-made, the idea of time is. Therefore, is time real?

I think your idea fits very well, too, and it leads to more questions.

Edited March 24, 2010 by Cavenglok

[Guest]

i tend to agree time is mostly "illusion" in the sense that we can perceive the change of moments, but there is no universal clock so to speak.

[Guest]

True, time can also be seen as an illusion. But I must say, so is numbers. Numbers are a human creation, units to define the amount of things. Therefore, are numbers real?

Some are, others are just imaginary, lol. Just kidding, the construction of numbers is a human creation but it is just a matter of us labelling and perceiving mathematical reality (which we do because it turns out to be useful). We didn't really create numbers, but we did label them.

Likewise, time is a human creation, because although the flow of things is not man-made, the idea of time is. Therefore, is time real?

I think the idea of time arises naturally from how our perception works. If you look at the path of a particle as a line through time, it may not be a single line but a branching one, in the sense that any point along the line has one past but many futures. Perhaps this is at the root of why we perceive the passage of time the way we do. Alternatively, maybe it's that our universe arises from a point (the Big Bang) where the state of the universe is arbitrary or just an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, but not defined in terms of any other part of space-time. So all other areas of space time are linked to the Big Bang by lines of consequence, thus the future is always defined in terms of (The Past + Laws of Physics). This enables us to remember the past but not the future, and be affected by things in the past (which includes our perception of "the present" which consists entirely of links to past events, even what you see is in the past at the time you are seeing it). And maybe it's a result of that asymmetry between past and future which gives rise to perception of time "passing". Because we perceive past events but not future ones, it makes sense to feel as though we have moved "from" the past and are moving "to" the future. But it must be an illusion because all ideas of motion rely on time which is why I said we tend to define it circularly. In truth we simply exist throughout our lives but such that the later end of our lives is defined in terms of the earlier end. The big illusion is that there is a moment which can be called "now", and that such a moment is in constant motion along the stream of time.

And while we're on the subject of time, it's "time" for me to return to 2011. I'm a bit worried that if I post too much in this thread the version of me from 2010 will notice, and I'll have altered the course of history.

[Guest]

All very interesting thoughts. Have you also thought of the fact that we have a sun that rises and sets. Lets us know some form of time change and even a way to measure that change to some degree. Or the fact that constalations in the sky that can also calculate time periods. Just a thought

[akaslickster]

Time is incalculable. No one today can prove how long ago since everything known to man had been created. So why have a new years day? Just to party?

[Guest]

Here are my thoughts:

Time is a great illusion caused by motion, which is actually influenced by energy. If the whole universe were 100% void of energy, then it would seem to an observer that time had completely stopped. Of course, if there was an observer, then the place wouldn't be 100% void of energy, and the observer would be pretty darn cold.

Likewise, it is impossible to travel through time within this universe. To do so, you would need to go to a completely different parallel universe that was similar to the one we are in, although at a different point in history/future.

And sorry for going off on a tangent here, but to expand on the last paragraph, I also believe there are other possible dimensions that we cannot visualize, infinite parallel universes all coexisting in different dimensions. There are 3D worlds, like ours; then there are worlds in 2D, only using the x/y axis; then worlds in 4+ dimensions, where there are other axis perpendicular to the x, y, and z axis that we cannot visualize because we only recognize those 3. If we could, possibly, travel between dimensions to another 3D universe like ours; we could, in theory, travel to different points in time. How to do so, though, I have no idea. (Create a teleporter that zaps you with 1.21 gigawatts of electricity? )

edit - clarification

Edited March 27, 2010 by harvey45

[Cavenglok]

Actually, harvey, you're starting to get what I was thinking. By going deeper into the philosophy of time, we may also touch other topics, like dimensions. Speaking of dimensions, I heard from a friend that the fourth dimension is time. I disagree, because we live in a three-dimensional world, and therefore there is no way the dimensions cross over. Even pictures have an extremely thin layer of ink, which proves the 2nd dimension wrong. Going back to the fourth dimension, I don't think there is even a fourth dimension. However, as harvey states, there could be a fourth dimension/world where there is an extra point that we do not recognize. If this is true, that means living things in the second dimension would not recognize the third axis, Z. But I must say, I do not think the fourth dimension exists. What do you think?

[Cavenglok]

Time is incalculable. No one today can prove how long ago since everything known to man had been created. So why have a new years day? Just to party?

lol True.

But I have a question. Does this mean that time existed before everything? Since apparently there was nothing before the Big Bang, how do we know whether time flowed before the Big Bang? When did it start? Will it end? If so, when? Those are impossible to answer, but we could go somewhere from there, I think.

[Guest]

Actually, harvey, you're starting to get what I was thinking. By going deeper into the philosophy of time, we may also touch other topics, like dimensions. Speaking of dimensions, I heard from a friend that the fourth dimension is time. I disagree, because we live in a three-dimensional world, and therefore there is no way the dimensions cross over. Even pictures have an extremely thin layer of ink, which proves the 2nd dimension wrong. Going back to the fourth dimension, I don't think there is even a fourth dimension. However, as harvey states, there could be a fourth dimension/world where there is an extra point that we do not recognize. If this is true, that means living things in the second dimension would not recognize the third axis, Z. But I must say, I do not think the fourth dimension exists. What do you think?

Actually, this section of the Wikipedia article on the Fourth Dimension addresses your concerns about time as a dimension. It says that if time were the fourth dimension, then it would be a non-Euclidean dimension and since we think of the world in a Euclidean way, it doesn't fit with our model of our 3D world.*

I don't have a link right now (though I haven't looked very hard), but some physicists theorize about the existence of up to 11 dimensions (or more). I think there are a lot of competing theories, though a lot of different groups do have general consensus regarding the direction of dimensional theory. In part, there are articles on higher dimensions on Wikipedia on the fifth and sixth dimensions specifically (though the article on the sixth dimension is heavily inundated with mathematical implications and doesn't focus on the physical implications so much).

* Euclidean geometry deals with planes and shapes within planes. Squares, triangles, lines, etc. are all aspects of Euclidean geometry. Non-Euclidean geometry involves calculating shapes and figures on non-Planar spaces such as on the surface of a sphere (technically the true situation of Earth and thus an important study for plotting airline routes and such. Look at a flat map of the Earth with airline routes marked on them and the paths look very strange. ).

[Guest]

Guess time is just another virtual scale of man........... But then, what about the effect on it with the enviorenmental energy??? Slower tower clocks and faster wrist watches??? It reallyt beats me...

[Guest]

"Time is a piece of wax, fallin' on a termite, that's chokin on the splinters." -Beck