Does Time Actually Exist?

[ZenGalacticore]

I'm not sure why, "Does Time Actually Exist?" should be a question posed on a science website at all. No paper, article, book, or essay I've EVER read suggests that time does not exist, or asks the question. (At least, that I can remember reading.)

That's not to say that time on the surface of the Earth is the same as time in orbit, or time elsewhere, like near a black hole's event horizon. In fact, we know that time in orbit is slightly different than time on Earth because the GPS people have to compensate for the difference, constantly.

According to all the physics we know, time exists. But it may transpire or "tick" at different rates depending on speed and velocity and other factors.

 

[thebigcat]

I sort of figured "Does Time Actually Exist" is more properly a thread which should be posted on a Marijuana Users Forum.

Like, Dude...does like, time actually like, exist? *tokes*

 

[MeteorWayne]

Why is this thread in SETI ? Unless we are debating whether God is an ET. What does a question about the existance of time have to do with the search for ET ?

That's a good question...the short answer is hysteresis. The thread is more than 4 1/2 years old, and existed here before I became a moderator. So I have left it here up until now. when I became a mod, I began to try to manage the subject matter of the forum to at least come close to the subject of the SETI...

However, I agree it doesn't belong in this forum so will find a new home. Now the problem is which forum does it belong in???

I'll take suggestions (I have my own ideas), place them on "The Wheel of Morality" and give it a spin in a day or so.

MW

 

[bdewoody]

How about the Unexplained, although time has been explained well enough for me. Or maybe physics?

 

[craigmac]

How about the Unexplained, although time has been explained well enough for me. Or maybe physics?

Since 99% of the physical universe is unknown I think it would be foolish of us to assume we have all the answers the big questions like "whats is gravity, matter, space, and time"???

 

[Saturnfly]

Perceptively, I think yes time does exist. We use it as a tool, that almost controls our lives and keeps our days orderly.
We need time, just like we need technology, we depend on it... however that does not validate it's primary use.
I think... we use time to define the occurrence of things that happen between one another, we use it to understand.

 

[captdude]

Using the basic definition of time as the measurement of objects moving through space - I have a thought experiment I would like some input on.
1) With the ever increasing expansion of the universe through cosmic inflation; at some point in the far distant future the universe should reach a state of entropy that will result in the net temperature of the universe reaching absolute zero.
2) At absolute zero all molecular movement stops.

Question #1: What would this mean in relation to time?
Question #2: Would all matter in the universe turn into a Bose–Einstein condensate? (assuming there were an observer to measure it)
Question #3: Would quantum fluctuations in the vacuum of space keep the temperature above absolute zero?

 

[nimbus]

I'm not sure why, "Does Time Actually Exist?" should be a question posed on a science website at all. No paper, article, book, or essay I've EVER read suggests that time does not exist, or asks the question. (At least, that I can remember reading.)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKsNraFxPwk[/youtube]
@ google books
@ Amazon

Physics, my 2c.

 

[fatjoe]

Attn: nimbus;

I'm assuming the you agree w/ the documentary and think time doesn't exist.....only the now to paraphrase.

Its my feeling that we don't have an accurate why of describing the fabric of space/time and this at the root of the problem.

 

[nimbus]

I don't know. Just food for thought. My understanding is that we have no means to tell for sure either way. Like asking a camera (regular lens+sensor configuration) to film inside itself, or film outside its field of view. The picture of time described in the documentary is one possibility. Time is certainly something that's taken for granted to the point of being a cognitive bias.

 

[marcel_leonard]

I don't know. Just food for thought. My understanding is that we have no means to tell for sure either way. Like asking a camera (regular lens+sensor configuration) to film inside itself, or film outside its field of view. The picture of time described in the documentary is one possibility. Time is certainly something that's taken for granted to the point of being a cognitive bias.

As long as people are willing to admit that don't have all the answers.......we will be able to ask the serious question that will lead to serious answers!!!

 

[ArcCentral]

I'm not sure why, "Does Time Actually Exist?" should be a question posed on a science website at all. No paper, article, book, or essay I've EVER read suggests that time does not exist, or asks the question. (At least, that I can remember reading.)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKsNraFxPwk[/youtube]
@ google books
@ Amazon

Physics, my 2c.

Glad to see somebody saying that time does not exist.

 

[dumbguy]

I believe that time is our perception of how each moment of our life is part of the whole in much the same way that if you had am observer that was in every possible slice of the moment from our perspective each observer would probably see the same particle in a different location because each observer would see in the moment of observation where the particle is when they looked yet the particle may be using smaller slices of time than the observer so that in trying to find its location you would have to be at every place that the particle was in the slice of time you used to measure it.

 

[ArcCentral]

Watched this video again, and although the gentleman has it correct, that time does not exist, he misses a clear understanding. He lacks the awareness that all that exist, stands as a representation of all that does not. Hence this one statement here puts it all in perspective: { In our universe, there are only ones, one at a time, where time is the nothing ones are composed of } A clear understanding of this one statement alone, will open the floodgates.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKsNraFxPwk[/youtube]

 

[RWJ]

People perceive movement as a function of time m(t), but use movements to measure time: clock pendulums, Earth's revolution around the Sun, electron motion in atomic clocks, crystal oscillators, and capacitors.
Velocity/time of chemical reactions depends on temperature, which is the average energy of motion.
Cryopreservation and hibernation slow down motion of the molecules, metabolism, and biological clock, decelerating individual time.

Could be (time as a function of movement/space t(m)) instead of (movement as a function of time m(t)) ?

 

[theridane]

Time is measured in seconds, one second is defined as "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom". This is independent of temperature or motion.

 

[RWJ]

source: http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/services/inms/time-services/faq-time.html#Q10

source: http://www.aero.org/publications/crosslink/winter2000/02_sidebar1.html

This adjustment process is where most of the work and complexity of the clock lies. The adjustment tries to correct for unwanted side-effects, such as frequencies from other electron transitions, temperature changes, and the "spreading" in frequencies caused by ensemble effects.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_clock#Mechanism

I'm not an expert in atomic clock, but I think that there are motions involved.

 

[theridane]

That's just a method of measuring the actual physical process (which itself is not based on motion). It's like saying that temperature is a function of density because we're using fluid expansion to measure it.

 

[ArcCentral]

Motion is like a gauge for time, much like a tire gauge is used to get a reading of air pressure. Without the tire gauge, we lack a reading on air pressure, but the pressure is still there in a tire. Without motion, we lack the method to gauge time, but it's still there, we just wouldn't have tic or tock. Motion is the facilitator for a guage, our sense of time.

 

[Antwerpo]

I think time exists. I even think there is a second time. One we don't notice and can't perceive.

Time 1 began with the big bang, things changed in our universe so time clearly has always been, we can witness it. Look at he moon and see the craters on there. Clearly some of them must have been there before any living thing could witness it.

Time 2 is a different story but also has to exist as it is impossible that there was nothing before the big bang. We can't noticed that time because it's outside the universe. It's the time of our multiverse but it's different to how we can perceive time as time 1 has a beginning and an end in contrary to time 2 that has a beginning but no end.

 

[dryson]

Time is a measure, like a ruler is used to measure distances or scales that are used to measure weights, time is used to measure the distance that an energetic particle like an atom travels based upon the particulars of the atom, the medium that the atom travels in as well as the atoms energetic particulars that are affected by the medium that would cause the atom to travel at a certain velocity as well as the interaction of two or more atoms between one another within a medium that create a distance between each other that can be referanced as the local point of travel (the atoms actual location on a plane) and the intial point of location from where the atom and the medium interacted, or where the two atoms interacted to create time or the measureable distance between two particles that have interacted with one another.

Can people be reborn in time? Can time travel occur? No, once biological system as well as non-biological particle has used all of it's fuel up it cannot be reborn or particles moved around in such a way to open a door to the past.

Once an event occurs in time the event may be recorded for later viewing but the particulars of the event that surrounded the central event can be be placed back into the pattern that they occured on the day in question. This would require everysingle particle in the Universe to revert to time prior to the time now meaning that all particles would have to be in the same location traveling at the same velocity and direction that they wre at the time of the event.

It's like someone that has given up drinking and the partying life and some slub drunk wants them to give up what they are doing now to cry and pine over the persons miserable life that they are living after the person they are trying to drag back into a past life after they have gotten away from it...I dont think so.

 

[Antwerpo]

Can time travel occur? No, once biological system as well as non-biological particle has used all of it's fuel up it cannot be reborn or particles moved around in such a way to open a door to the past.

There is nothing that prevents us from time travel, no law in physics will prevent me from doing what I will show you now/

Without the use of black magic or flux capacitor I will now time travel in the future! Watch carefully because here I go!

 

[Antwerpo]

Et voila! I have arrived!

Look at the timestamp of my former post and this one and you will clearly find scientific proof of my time travel in to the future.

 

[a_lost_packet_]

Et voila! I have arrived!

Look at the timestamp of my former post and this one and you will clearly find scientific proof of my time travel in to the future.

Bah! Obviously it was photoshopped..

 

[Fallingstar1971]

It keeps coming back to 0+0=0, 0+0=1, 0+0=+1(time to decay)-1 =0

0+0=+1-1

This is why you cant go back in time. Time is a state of decay, just like radioactivity. Once an atom has decayed from one thing to another, thats it. You cannot "un-decay" an atom. This chimes nicely with the second law of thermodynamics.

So in reality, my hypothesis is stating that "Time/Existence" is an anomaly caught between two nothings.

You start with zero
You end with zero

That is perceived reality. You put in nothing, and in the end, you get nothing. Somehow, we are something caught between two nothings. Indirect proof of a multi-verse? A place where 0+0=1?

Perhaps......

A "something" that started from nothing, and shall return to nothing....... So, does the "something" REALLY exist?

Ashes to ashes......dust to dust...... Nothing to nothing 0=0

"Time" is the only thing we have to prevent us from "missing" all the action. As long as we have time, 0=0 is delayed. In the "future" it will be 0=0, at the moment of the big bang it was 0+0=+1 -1. Consider each term, a universe. If the universe is infinite, than +1 -1 will take an infinite amount of time to cancel.

So now you have something from nothing as long as in the end, you end up with what you start with.
Since we could be dealing with infinities, you will need an infinite amount of time to cancel them back to zero.
It works because they are canceling each other back to zero. This "canceling" is understood by us as "decay"
Since its "decay" it can only work in ONE direction. Hense, NO going back in time. NO "un-decaying" atoms. You can "speed" or "Slow" the decay, and this is the only form of "time" travel possible, since it conforms with the law of zero.

Again, strictly a hypothesis, but a descent one I think. The Universe is in the process of calculating a simple math problem. "It" too has an "order of operations" (just like math). Once its solved, the Universe ends. Its a good thing it could take an infinity for the problem to be solved. Otherwise, "we" may never even have gotten started in this Universe.

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