t i m e

[dellcom200]

could the 4th dimension in it self be multi-dimentional?<br /><br />

 

[mcbethcg]

I certainly don't understand the scientific discussion of extra dimensions, beyond L X W X H + Time. I am skeptical that they exist or existed.<br /><br />Is there any experimental proof?

 

[dellcom200]

"Is there any experimental proof?"<br /><br />nope especially considering that it's hard to prove time even really exists, not to menchion the other 7 that are supposed to exist... <br /><br />EDIT: Just thinking about it and woundered if others shared this view...

 

[gfpaladin]

Interesting question. Can you expand on it a little?

 

[emperor_of_localgroup]

I always thought temperature or heat should also be considered a dimension, if time is a dimension. Although temp varies region to region.<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font size="2" color="#ff0000"><strong>Earth is Boring</strong></font> </div>

 

[jurgens]

Temperature is just the kinetic energy of the particles which can be described as motion in 3 spatial dimensions over time.

 

[gfpaladin]

Actually, not to nitpick, I thought temperature is a measure of the AVERAGE energy of molecules while Heat Energy is the kinetic energy of all the molecules in an object?

 

[dellcom200]

can you prove time exist's?<br /><br />it would be like proving your inside of a box, while being inside of a box with no souce of illuminiation. You could only theorize...

 

[vogon13]

Perhaps time is only a partial dimension. We cannot vary its rate nor reverse it, so it is not a fully developed dimension. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>

 

[gfpaladin]

Well, if you believe Einstein, then time was proven to exist, right (in the form of the space time continuum)?<br /><br />I recommend this book: http://www.psyclops.com/hawking/

 

[emperor_of_localgroup]

@gfpaladin, jurgens<br /><br />Every point of space has a temperature or heat, so does time. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font size="2" color="#ff0000"><strong>Earth is Boring</strong></font> </div>

 

[dellcom200]

"Every point of space has a temperature or heat, so does time."<br /><br />what of the parts of space where the universe has yet to expand to or energy arrived @ there would be no energy therefore not temp/heat right?

 

[aetherius]

A couple of thoughts regarding time--<br /><br />The concept of time is deeply embedded in our perception of reality. However, from reality's "perpesctive", time has no meaning. Reality is the sum total of all that exists at this instant, no wait, this instant, err this instant... In other words, the existence that our consciousness perceives is never the current manifestation of reality because it takes time for the electro/chemical reactions to be interpreted by our brain. We are always living in the past! <br /><br />Time only has meaning for an observer OF reality. Time is a human construct. In a universe without life there would be no time because there would be no one to develop the concept of time.

 

[dellcom200]

agreed Aetherius<br /><br />what i do find a little weird to think about though is...<br />If time is 1Dimentional then everything that will ever happen or has happened and is unchangeable and therefore predictable. so why do we traverse space at the "rate" that we do, why is it not perceived faster or slower? if this makes n e sense...<br /><br />also if a bug that's entire lifetime is 2 days, and a human's lifetime = 80 years would the preception of time for the bug and the human be equal, or is the rate of time perceived relative to your existance in time??<br /><br />

 

[emperor_of_localgroup]

"the piece of paper is the quanum fields" ?????????<br />I guess time is different for different people. That's why we have so much disagreement. If you want to define time by the behavior of elementary particles, time is useless or have a different meaning for the behavior of larger objects. <br /><br />Expanding balloon analogy is getting boring to me. If we are on the surface of an expanding balloon, what is inside the balloon? Forget about the outside. What is the thickness of the balloon materials? Is that thickness shrinking? What exactly is causing the balloon to expand? <br /><br />@dellcom200:<br />"If time is 1Dimentional then everything that will ever happen or has happened and is unchangeable and therefore predictable. "<br /><br />This is also where I have trouble with time travelers. I think the idea of time traveling has come to people when time is regarded as a dimension. Just like another spatial dimension. Just because we can drive along I-95 north and south, does n't mean we can also travel to the past and the future in time. That also means everything is fixed or predetermined. Religious people will have a ball the day we travel to the future and see ourself. There is no chance of that.<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font size="2" color="#ff0000"><strong>Earth is Boring</strong></font> </div>

 

[aetherius]

I think the problem is that time is a human construct and as such, it places constraints on our ability to comprehend reality, a nonhuman construct.<br /><br />Consider time and reality at the planck length. Planck time is the time it takes light to travel the planck length. Notice that somebody had to arbitrarily define planck time. If you assume that the planck length is the shortest length of reality then by construction, planck time has to be the shortest possible time span. t=d/r so if r is the speed of light and d is the planck length then the only way that time could be shorter is if the speed of light increases. So in other words, you start with a human construct, time, and you can place any limit you want to on it once you link it to something physical, like a tiny piece of reality.

 

[gfpaladin]

<i> what of the parts of space where the universe has yet to expand to ...</i><br /><br />Ummmm, I believe the Universe is not expanding INTO anything...

 

[vogon13]

Thank David Letterman for this one:<br /><br />With out time, would every thing happen all at once, or would nothing happen at all? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>

 

[rogers_buck]

The only thing I would add to colin's explanation of time is that the lines of longitude of his baloon are imaginary time. Imaginary time is unlike real time and exists at right angles to real time in a matter of speaking. Real time is the thermodynamic arrow of time and relates to reality and entropy. Imaginary time is euclidian and is the time most relevent to physics, especially sum over histories. Imaginary time can exist at points on the baloon where real time has no meaning. Like before the big bang. Imaginary time is euclidean and can be traversed like any other dimension. <br /><br />For M-Theory there are 11 dimensions, for other theories fewer. The four large dimensions (space-time) and seven tiny (plank sized) dimensions curled up at every point. We lack the capability of visualizing on such small scales. The only place in nature we can see anything that small are from the modeling of the distribution of mass in the universe. What we might be looking at in the distribution of galaxies is the finger print of plank scale features prior to inflation.<br /><br />Thermodynamics is really a murphy's law kind of physics. It is a statistical approximation of an expected outcome, it is empirical. Change the entropy field and you will have a whole new set of thermodynamic constants. We owe our thermodynamic constants to a difference in entropy between the original and final states of the universe (the north an south poles of colin's baloon).<br /><br />Nothing in physics says you can't change the sign of time in a physical equation and it stops working. We just know from our experience that entropy won't allow such an occurence at anything but a miserably small probability. Silicon atoms never assemble themselves into a goblet, but there is nothing in physics that says they could not.

 

[rogers_buck]

You might enjoy Lynd's theory of time if you haven't read his paper. Here is an article from SDC LINK.<br /><br />Some experiments should have been figured out to test Lynd's ideas. Anyone know what the state of affairs are there?<br />

 

[aetherius]

Thanks for that link, I hadn't heard of Lynd before but I agree that it's possible to "redefine" time which in turn could provide new insights. Case in point, the imaginary time you referenced.<br /><br />I think the Achilles paradox is a math paradox not a time paradox. <br /><br />For example, instead of Achilles vs the Tortoise in a race we can think of the paradox in terms of a basketball game where each basket counts 1 point.<br /><br />Assume Achilles gives the tortoise a 10 point lead but that Achilles can score 10 points for every point the tortoise scores. After Achilles scores 10 points the score will be Tortoise 11, Achilles 10. (Notice that time does not play a role.) Next Achilles scores 1 point, then a second. Achilles has 12 points but the tortoise is still at 10 because you can't score 1/10th of a point. The tortoise remains stuck on 10 until Achille's score reaches 20. <br /><br />I am not saying that this resolves the paradox. But, I think it points out that the crux of the Achilles paradox is not time, rather it is the assumption of continuity.<br /><br />We could restore the paradox to the basketball game if we allow the score to increase continuously from 11 to 12. In this case after Achilles scores his 11th point the tortoise will have 11.1 pts. After Achilles scores .1 pts the score will be 11.11 to 11.1 and so on. Again, notice that it does not matter how much time it takes Achilles to score, only that we impose the restriction that the scoring is continous and we force the tortoise's score to increase in fixed proportion to Achilles. <br /><br />So in my view, time is an innocent bystander in the Achilles paradox. Time is just the human construct that allows us to measure the progress of Achilles in his impossible task of overcoming the tortoise given the assumptions of contintuity and fixed proportional progress.

 

[gfpaladin]

Very nicely put!

 

[paintwoik]

<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>We are always living in the past! <p><hr /></p></p></blockquote><br /><br />There is no truth to this. We are always living in the present as the only possibility. We cannot live in the past or future ever. A photon that comes from a star a billion light years away is not a glimpse of the past, but of the present. There is no elbow room here.<br /><br />

 

[siarad]

Yes it's information from the past but can only be in the present.<br />

 

[aetherius]

There is a subtle distinction. I agree we "exist" in the present. I was only tyring to explain that by the time our body/brain prcocess the stimuli that are associated with the "present", that the "present" has changed and become the past. <br /><br />For example assume that at precisely 1:00 PM a dog bites your leg. It takes a tiny amount of time for the bite to travel the nervous system and register in our brain. So, by the time we become aware of the bite it is after 1:00 PM. <br /><br />When I say we "live in the past" I just meant that there is a lag between stimulus and becoming consciously aware of the stimulus.<br /><br />That has to be case unless electrical impulses can race through your nervous system at a rate greater than the speed of light.