Different views on Time.

[BadRobot]

Anyone know what the general scientific community's view on time is as well as any other opinions anyone may have on the topic.

Personally, I'm not convinced it exists.

 

[JohnCU]

Ever heard of the space-time continuum?

 

[BadRobot]

You didn't answer my question.

 

[alpha88]

Time is an illusion.

Lunchtime, doubly so.

 

[DangerAardvark]

Asking what time is, is like asking what "up" is or what "is" is. It's a philosophical question in a sense. Relativity tells us that time is inextricably linked with space, and before the Big Bang there was neither space nor time. In fact, the concepts were meaningless before then.

We have convincing physical evidence pointing the fact that time is not infinite because we have evidence that the Universe has a definite beginning. This makes logical sense also, since if time was infinite it would stretch infinitely forward and backwards, thus resulting in all physical processes having played themselves out by now. It just doesn't make sense.

Speaking of sense, at some point in the endeavor to understand time, comes a point where you must go beyond sense to find a satisfactory answer. The best science has to offer come from laws of Quantum Mechanics which can be proven experimentally, yet do not obey standard rules of cause and effect. The lesson of this is that yes, something can come from nothing, and it can be perfectly natural.

With this in mind, I would have to say that time is a real, objective thing, just like space. What's subjective is how we perceive it. But, we are products of this universe, and this universe has time. So, our brains are equipped to make sense of it. What are brains are not equipped to deal with is what "existed" before the beginning of the universe and what will "exist" after the end of the universe. "Before" and "after" simply have no meaning outside of our universe.

 

[AllGamer]

well DangerAardvark already covered all the important faced of "time"

so adding a trivial comment, "Time" is just what you make out of it, 2 min is only 120 sec, but 2 min might seem like forever, when you are holding your pee in the huge line up at the movie theatre after a long movie, and you've had like 2 jumbo size Pop with refills.

a split second last only 1 sec, but it might seem like a minute, or a total pause in the time continuum, during extreme circumstances ignore times, your mind / body asses and react to the imminent danger. Like when parents save their child from being rolled over by a truck.

From my own personal experience it's best described by the movements seen in the Matrix movie, during what might have been potentially a fatal fall, over an sharp edge of a broken chair, between 2 rows of similarly dangerous landing places with sharp objects, during my flip over in mid air (after a class made pushed me over as a "joke"), during the mid air trip both body and mind reacted instinctively, but during that period everything in Real Time, was like in slow motion, to the point it was like almost frozen in time, meanwhile the mind choosed the best landing spot between the dangerous landing places, and when calculations were over, and did finally managed to fall.

yeah that still sounds ironically funny to me whenever i think about that incident "..calculations were done, and finally manged to fall..." it gives me a broader picture of Time, how long a time is, and or how short a time is, it's very subjective.

Sometimes i wonder, if our human minds, really has the power to Control time at mere will power.... reminds me of the "butter fly effect" movie, it was lousy movie, but the theory behind it sort of make sense.

if you think about it, during the time i was in mid air, it was less than a second, yet in that instant it seemed forever, i actually had time to think, "are we there yet? when i'm gonna fall back down?" meanwhile also thinking about "good choice: this is the best possible landing area under this circumstances", and then to finally land, and just before that my last though was "ok, extend my body to take up air space to cause air friction to reduce falling speed and cause an air cushion during impact time, at this travel trajectory, meanwhile protecting the back of the neck, the vital area that it was most at risk on landing over the rusted metal pole sticking out the chair"

after the event actually transcurred, and i did land, it all actually worked out the way i planned in mid air without even realizing it, and it was a smooth "poof" when i reached ground, and it didn't hurt at all....

of course after realizing what happened after reaching ground i spend a couple of sec, realizing how incredible that was, i came to my next more important realization....

"GO KICK THE CRAP OUT OF YOUR "FRIEND" for having pull a stupid stunt like that on you, it could have killed you accidentally".... then well the rest was the typical school fight and whatever.... the teacher split the fight, and class bell was about to rang, since it was in the wee hour of the morning.

anyways back to Time... as you can see Time is irrelevant, your mind and body will use and manage time as it is needed.

 

[lousydood]

We have convincing physical evidence pointing the fact that time is not infinite because we have evidence that the Universe has a definite beginning. This makes logical sense also, since if time was infinite it would stretch infinitely forward and backwards, thus resulting in all physical processes having played themselves out by now. It just doesn't make sense.

No, it does not make logical sense at all. The natural numbers, a basic mathematical concept, are infinite and yet also well-founded. That means there is a definite beginning, in an informal sense. Well-founded infinite sets are crucial to the development of important mathematical tools like induction.

 

[Engraver]

Time is part of perception; for us, it is a linear progression of events.

 

[f95toli]

Originally posted by: lousydood

We have convincing physical evidence pointing the fact that time is not infinite because we have evidence that the Universe has a definite beginning. This makes logical sense also, since if time was infinite it would stretch infinitely forward and backwards, thus resulting in all physical processes having played themselves out by now. It just doesn't make sense.

No, it does not make logical sense at all. The natural numbers, a basic mathematical concept, are infinite and yet also well-founded. That means there is a definite beginning, in an informal sense. Well-founded infinite sets are crucial to the development of important mathematical tools like induction.

I think Lousydood is refering to an argument by Kant(I think) who pointed out that if the world has existed forever everthing that can happen has already happened . As a result every non-reversible reaction would already have happened meaning the universe would now be static.
There is also another more down-to-earth argument, if the universe (and it stars) has existed forever the light from the stars would have heated it up to a very high temperature by now, the whole universe would be at in thermal balance at the same temperature. This latter argument was actually quite important in the initial debatte between the big bang and steady-state models in the first part of the 20th century.

 

[lousydood]

No, I'm just pointing out that his reasoning is faulty. Knowing that time has a definite beginning does not imply that time is finite.

Current physics and thermodynamics suggests that after an extremely long period of time (quadrillions of years) if the universe continued to expand, then it would coalesce into black holes which would slowly dissolve into an imperceptible and meaningless haze. (Meaningless in the sense of high-entropy, low-information). It is not known whether the universe will continue to expand like this, though.

 

[aCynic2]

Originally posted by: DangerAardvark
We have convincing physical evidence pointing the fact that time is not infinite because we have evidence that the Universe has a definite beginning. This makes logical sense also, since if time was infinite it would stretch infinitely forward and backwards, thus resulting in all physical processes having played themselves out by now. It just doesn't make sense.

Don't physicists still consider time to be a dimension, a fourth to our usual 3-space, making it x, y, z, t?

If so, couldn't it be seen that we are simply progressing along this dimension in one direction?

 

[sandorski]

By coincidence, I'm listening right now to a Radiolab(WNYC) podcast on Time. Google it or check it out at the iTunes Music Store, it's a free download and quite interesting.

 

[Born2bwire]

Originally posted by: Engraver
Time is part of perception; for us, it is a linear progression of events.

Technically, the linearity depends upon the medication you're being prescribed.

 

[HVAC]

Time just keeps everything from happening at once.

 

[HVAC]

order. Time things keeps in

 

[BadRobot]

If time does not exist and it is perception based, then it does not keep anything from doing anything nor does it cause anything to happen.

 

[Game Boy]

Time is not "out there" in my opinion i.e. we can't travel to the past or future because there's no preserved/created instance of that time yet.

 

[Looney]

Originally posted by: Born2bwire

Originally posted by: Engraver
Time is part of perception; for us, it is a linear progression of events.

Technically, the linearity depends upon the medication you're being prescribed.

Even some unprescribed 'medications' may have an effect.

 

[Looney]

Originally posted by: Game Boy
Time is not "out there" in my opinion i.e. we can't travel to the past or future because there's no preserved/created instance of that time yet.

We can look into the past, so i would argue it is 'out there'.

 

[Nathelion]

General relativity holds that the three spatial dimensions and time are all interrelated and form "space-time". Quantum physics is more complicated and possibly incompatible with this view. It is expected that String Theory or Quantum Loop Gravitation or some other such theory will be able to bridge these differences.

So yeah, basically, what time is for all practical intents and purposes depends on what you're smoking

 

[Game Boy]

Now we can't look into the past. We are looking at light that encodes information bout the state of the universe some time ago, much like a history book.

Just because I have a history book about World War II doesn't mean i can go there.

 

[Looney]

Originally posted by: Game Boy
Now we can't look into the past. We are looking at light that encodes information bout the state of the universe some time ago, much like a history book.

Just because I have a history book about World War II doesn't mean i can go there.

We ARE looking into the past. What do you think sight is? But light bouncing off objects. These are light that are thousands, millions, billions of years old. If we could somehow have a telescope set up to look at the planet in detail that is a thousand light years away, we would be looking at life as it is one thousand years in the past on that planet.

That past is PRESERVED (your prerequisite) exactly as how it was at that time.

As for 'going there', that's a completely different discussion. And nothing you've said is an argument against it. In fact, this thread discussion has been about our perception of linearity of time, and you seem to be stuck on that.

 

[manowar821]

Originally posted by: Looney

Originally posted by: Game Boy
Now we can't look into the past. We are looking at light that encodes information bout the state of the universe some time ago, much like a history book.

Just because I have a history book about World War II doesn't mean i can go there.

We ARE looking into the past. What do you think sight is? But light bouncing off objects. These are light that are thousands, millions, billions of years old. If we could somehow have a telescope set up to look at the planet in detail that is a thousand light years away, we would be looking at life as it is one thousand years in the past on that planet.

That past is PRESERVED (your prerequisite) exactly as how it was at that time.

As for 'going there', that's a completely different discussion. And nothing you've said is an argument against it. In fact, this thread discussion has been about our perception of linearity of time, and you seem to be stuck on that.

I'm going to agree with Looney, here.

There is a lot of discussion going on about the "arrow of time", and why time HAS an arrow (a direction to which it is default to move in) to begin with.

I'm sometimes on and off when it comes to believing that time is an actual entity or that it exists.

Sometimes I think "it's an invented term to allow us to understand our world and to keep things in order".

But then I continue "But what about the arrow of time, and why wouldn't the physical universe also need a real device to keep everything moving and in order...?"

It's very interesting, to say the least.

I lean more toward thinking that Time is a real "thing" that has a direction. (And as such, could possibly be toyed with...).

 

[Gannon]

What are my thoughts on "time"

Time is really an artifact of space, what we really percieve as time is motion behaviour towards some arbitrary pre-determined point. Also "space" is not a "nothing" it is a something. When people think of space they think of 'pure empytness or 'null'', but the truth is space is made of stuff.

For instance William Sidis theorized that their exists a reverse universe, a universe exactly like ours that runs all physics backwards in lock step with every "time movement" forward in our universe.

I theorize that the universe in regards to time is similar to flows of electrons around a circuit, this would explain times "directional flow" or the arrow of time.

Time might be percieved as an energetic pressure (push) forward on the laws of physics themselves... thats why the behaviour of things we describe/discover behaves and functions as it does.

 

[SsupernovaE]

I believe for a full description of time, we are going to have to explain some of the mystical properties of consciousness.