Do we move through time,does time pass us by

[bchivers]

A topic that I have wondered about for quite some time.

 

[MetalStorm]

Time is a human concept, the units are effectivly arbitary. The definition of a second is "the time interval equal to 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium-133 atom. " All very interesting i know, but time can be defined in terms of what happens or how many things happen in a given period, but really peoples perception of time is what really counts.

Let me give you some examples, have you ever got really drunk and you wake up the next day and you can't remember bits of what happened the night before, or even large parts of the night before... You were definatly there and you were reacting (probably!) to the things and people around you, but because you don't remember it, it feels like the last thing you did, the last place you were was just a matter of seconds ago. Even when you sleep, do you really feel like it being 8 hours or so? I'm sure when your alarm goes off in the morning to wake you up and you put it on snooze to get a few more minutes and it goes off again, does it really feel like 10 or 15 mins? That's because the whole experience of time is totally based on your memory. Time does exsist, but what time is and what we perceieve are very different things.

A further example could be when you lock your car door, do you sometimes think "have i locked the car?" the point is that you probably have, but you don't remember doing it, it's not a matter of you being very drunk and the alcohol interfering with your memory in that way, but the fact that because you've done that task so many times, there's really no need to remember the information, there wasn't anything special or different about the action that needed remembering, it was just like the other 10000 times you've done it.

Food for thought I think.

 

[The Linuxator]

Originally posted by: MetalStorm
Time is a human concept, the units are effectivly arbitary. The definition of a second is "the time interval equal to 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium-133 atom. " All very interesting i know, but time can be defined in terms of what happens or how many things happen in a given period, but really peoples perception of time is what really counts.

Let me give you some examples, have you ever got really drunk and you wake up the next day and you can't remember bits of what happened the night before, or even large parts of the night before... You were definatly there and you were reacting (probably!) to the things and people around you, but because you don't remember it, it feels like the last thing you did, the last place you were was just a matter of seconds ago. Even when you sleep, do you really feel like it being 8 hours or so? I'm sure when your alarm goes off in the morning to wake you up and you put it on snooze to get a few more minutes and it goes off again, does it really feel like 10 or 15 mins? That's because the whole experience of time is totally based on your memory. Time does exsist, but what time is and what we perceieve are very different things.

A further example could be when you lock your car door, do you sometimes think "have i locked the car?" the point is that you probably have, but you don't remember doing it, it's not a matter of you being very drunk and the alcohol interfering with your memory in that way, but the fact that because you've done that task so many times, there's really no need to remember the information, there wasn't anything special or different about the action that needed remembering, it was just like the other 10000 times you've done it.

Food for thought I think.

Nice post :thumbsup:, nobody can define time, we can only tell how people precieve it to be, IMHO, time is a unit of measurement of intervals in between events, if there are no events there is no time really.

 

[bchivers]

Yes,very nice post. Thanks to the both of you. I read an article awhile back and to para-phrase it (poorly) two twins met at an airport,they synchronized their watches,one got on a high speed jet and flew around the world while the other got in his car and drove home. When they met at the airport the time of their watches was different. If that's the case then One twin would have been older than the other and would also mean that time as we perceive it stands still while we move through it. At least that is the way I interpret it.

 

[MetalStorm]

When an object moves at high speed time slows down, so really our seconds are really quite an arbitary unit of time. Atomic clocks use cesium-133 and there have been experiments done where an atomic clock was put in to orbit (and hence moving quite fast) and one was left on the ground with both their clocks synchronized. As you already know the clock in space registered less time passing than the one left on earth. So if you really think about it, it's not just the fact that the clock is orbiting that's giving it speed, earth is orbiting the sun and our solar system is moving around the centre of the galaxy as well as the galaxy moving as well...
So I wonder how long a second would be in respect to a second on earth if it was actually at a dead stop in space?

Really it's a very relative thing, and you notice I said relative to a second on earth because if you were to have an atomic clock that was at a dead stop in space, seconds would still be seconds as it is measured as a certain number of decays, but it would appear much faster to the outside observer moving at speed.

 

[alanore]

Einstiens right time is relative, you can have your life flash before your eyes in a splits second and if you go with it that split second seems to last an eternity.

In science time is relative as well, its the same as if you have two objects A and B. Dpending on which one you use as a referance A could be moving away from B or B could be moving away from A, but it still describes the same thing.

 

[bchivers]

"if you were to have an atomic clock that was at a dead stop in space, seconds would still be seconds as it is measured as a certain number of decays, but it would appear much faster to the outside observer moving at speed."

It sounds to me that time as we perceive it (TAWPI) is relative to speed or movement. If there is no movement wouldn't the concept of time stop as well and the clock stop registering.

 

[MetalStorm]

No I don't think so, time slows down with increased speed, so i guess the only way to get time to stop is to go at the speed of light... what happens when you're at a dead stop though... I don't know, it won't be infinitly fast but I would image it's a good bit faster than what we percieve.

 

[Remy XO]

Originally posted by: MetalStorm

Let me give you some examples, have you ever got really drunk and you wake up the next day and you can't remember bits of what happened the night before, or even large parts of the night before... You were definatly there and you were reacting (probably!) to the things and people around you, but because you don't remember it, it feels like the last thing you did, the last place you were was just a matter of seconds ago. Even when you sleep, do you really feel like it being 8 hours or so? I'm sure when your alarm goes off in the morning to wake you up and you put it on snooze to get a few more minutes and it goes off again, does it really feel like 10 or 15 mins? That's because the whole experience of time is totally based on your memory. Time does exsist, but what time is and what we perceieve are very different things.

A further example could be when you lock your car door, do you sometimes think "have i locked the car?" the point is that you probably have, but you don't remember doing it, it's not a matter of you being very drunk and the alcohol interfering with your memory in that way, but the fact that because you've done that task so many times, there's really no need to remember the information, there wasn't anything special or different about the action that needed remembering, it was just like the other 10000 times you've done it.

Food for thought I think.

So you mean all those times I've been drinking to the point where I dont remember the idiotic things my friends were telling me I did is because I just stopped trying to remember instead of the results of long term alcohol abuse?

 

[herm0016]

if you add up your volicity vectors in the 4 diminsions of time and space they always = the speed of light. so if you are traveling in a jet your speed in the space diminsions is something like 300 mph while the speed you are moveing through time is 300 mph less than normal. just think of a unit of time as a distance in the time diminsion. this is the easyest way i have found to describe a very complacated subject.

also think about this. . . the speed of light is a constant no matter the frame of reference. say you are in a train car and your friend is on the platform. the train is moving at a good percentage of the speed of light. . say 5% about 14 million meters per second. you measure the speed of a light beam traveling in the same direction as the train and find it to be about 3 * 10^6 and your friend while not adjusting for the speed of the train will measre the same speed of the same light beam while not moving at the same speed as the train. he will also get about 3*10^6. its a werid concept that has stumped many great minds. though is still not too hard to imagine this as the total speed of everything in our 4 diminsions is the speed of light.

 

[bchivers]

Very interesting. I have to go out for awhile but I will be thinking about this.

 

[MetalStorm]

Originally posted by: Remy XO

Originally posted by: MetalStorm

Let me give you some examples, have you ever got really drunk and you wake up the next day and you can't remember bits of what happened the night before, or even large parts of the night before... You were definatly there and you were reacting (probably!) to the things and people around you, but because you don't remember it, it feels like the last thing you did, the last place you were was just a matter of seconds ago. Even when you sleep, do you really feel like it being 8 hours or so? I'm sure when your alarm goes off in the morning to wake you up and you put it on snooze to get a few more minutes and it goes off again, does it really feel like 10 or 15 mins? That's because the whole experience of time is totally based on your memory. Time does exsist, but what time is and what we perceieve are very different things.

A further example could be when you lock your car door, do you sometimes think "have i locked the car?" the point is that you probably have, but you don't remember doing it, it's not a matter of you being very drunk and the alcohol interfering with your memory in that way, but the fact that because you've done that task so many times, there's really no need to remember the information, there wasn't anything special or different about the action that needed remembering, it was just like the other 10000 times you've done it.

Food for thought I think.

So you mean all those times I've been drinking to the point where I dont remember the idiotic things my friends were telling me I did is because I just stopped trying to remember instead of the results of long term alcohol abuse?

No, it's the alcohol, I did mention the fact that you don't remember things after drinking a lot, it was to demonstrate a point.

 

[imported_Oderus]

The faster you go, the slower time clicks away. If you were to position yourself on the event horizon (the point closest to a blackhole before being sucked in) time would pass so slowly that within seconds (based on your watch let's say) the time passed on earth would be years, decades or even thousands of decades. Time is relative to everything. Even GPS satellites have to compensate for speed when they make their calculations as they are moving very fast.

 

[bchivers]

Originally posted by: MetalStorm
No I don't think so, time slows down with increased speed, so i guess the only way to get time to stop is to go at the speed of light... what happens when you're at a dead stop though... I don't know, it won't be infinitly fast but I would image it's a good bit faster than what we percieve.

If I'm stopped in space and the clock is stopped in space with me then it seem that time should be infinity fast.

also think about this. . . the speed of light is a constant no matter the frame of reference. say you are in a train car and your friend is on the platform. the train is moving at a good percentage of the speed of light. . say 5% about 14 million meters per second. you measure the speed of a light beam traveling in the same direction as the train and find it to be about 3 * 10^6 and your friend while not adjusting for the speed of the train will measre the same speed of the same light beam while not moving at the same speed as the train. he will also get about 3*10^6. its a werid concept that has stumped many great minds. though is still not too hard to imagine this as the total speed of everything in our 4 diminsions is the speed of light.

Your right,it is weird. I would have bet that the speed of the beam would measure 5% slower when measured from the train. I don't feel so bad though since it has stumped many great minds.

This seems to contradict the above example.

if you add up your volicity vectors in the 4 diminsions of time and space they always = the speed of light. so if you are traveling in a jet your speed in the space diminsions is something like 300 mph while the speed you are moveing through time is 300 mph less than normal. just think of a unit of time as a distance in the time diminsion. this is the easyest way i have found to describe a very complacated subject.

 

[Falloutboy]

so because of the way time acts as you aproach the speed of light, if we ever got a ship near that speed say .8C thier perception of time would be alot less so they would only need to carry supplys as if it was a shorter trip than the people standing on earth perceave the trip. i'm not sure how much time is reduced but lets say its linear a 80 light year trip would only be 16 years for the people in the ship? am I interpreting this effect properly or am I off somehow.

if this is true intersteller travel actually becomes alot more plausable since the main issue after the how do you get going that fast is how to keep people alive for that long.

 

[Phantom1983]

If I'm stopped in space and the clock is stopped in space with me then it seem that time should be infinity fast.

There's no such thing as "at rest"; you will ALWAYS be moving relative to something. If you were "at rest", though, all of your space-time velocity vector would lie on the time axis and the result of THAT would be... well, answers on a postcard. Thankfully, it can never happen.

Time has been debated for thousands of years (and we're STILL debating it; progress, eh?) and one little question that always throws a spanner in my works is: "why can't we remember the future?" There are any number of little posers like this, so this topic might live a while yet...

 

[bchivers]

"why can't we remember the future?"

Maybe when we have deja vu it is really bits of the future.

 

[MetalStorm]

"why can't we remember the future?"

Eh? That doesn't make sense, last time I checked "remember" was past tense, and I would have thought it was obvious why we can't remember the future!!

 

[kotss]

It seems everyone is caught up in the whole speed affects time thing. It really boils down
to gravity. Gravity is what ultimately defines the passage of time. As you increase your
speed your total energy state increases and this can be seen as an increase in mass-energy, since larger mass-energies are more greatly affected by gravity you hence have
the reason for time dilation due to high speeds. That is why you do not need to be
going real fast and still experience time dilation. Just sit near a blackhole. The only thing
with time dilation is you do no directly experience and change in your time sense. It only
changes for those relative to you.

 

[bchivers]

Gravity is what ultimately defines the passage of time.

I thought there was no gravity in space. How would this apply there?

 

[CSMR]

Time is a property of our perception. However that does not make it imagination.

 

[insename2]

Originally posted by: Falloutboy
so because of the way time acts as you aproach the speed of light, if we ever got a ship near that speed say .8C thier perception of time would be alot less so they would only need to carry supplys as if it was a shorter trip than the people standing on earth perceave the trip. i'm not sure how much time is reduced but lets say its linear a 80 light year trip would only be 16 years for the people in the ship? am I interpreting this effect properly or am I off somehow.

if this is true intersteller travel actually becomes alot more plausable since the main issue after the how do you get going that fast is how to keep people alive for that long.

u cant travel @ 8C because u would need infinate energy to do so even @ C

if u were traveling @ 8C, it would take the ship 10 years to travel 80 lightyears

mass just cannot travel at the speed of light

 

[Falloutboy]

Originally posted by: insename2

Originally posted by: Falloutboy
so because of the way time acts as you aproach the speed of light, if we ever got a ship near that speed say .8C thier perception of time would be alot less so they would only need to carry supplys as if it was a shorter trip than the people standing on earth perceave the trip. i'm not sure how much time is reduced but lets say its linear a 80 light year trip would only be 16 years for the people in the ship? am I interpreting this effect properly or am I off somehow.

if this is true intersteller travel actually becomes alot more plausable since the main issue after the how do you get going that fast is how to keep people alive for that long.

u cant travel @ 8C because u would need infinate energy to do so even @ C

if u were traveling @ 8C, it would take the ship 10 years to travel 80 lightyears

mass just cannot travel at the speed of light

.8C Near the speed of light which is doable even by our understanding of phsyics

 

[SaintDevil]

of course there's gravity in space. see that peice of space junk floating by you? that emits (not sure if thats the right word) gravity. that star in front of you? it emits gravity. you would have to leave the universe to be rid of gravity.

 

[systema]

Any mass has gravitation properties, anywhere.