Stopping/Slowing time...

[trisweb]

I was thinking the other day how nice it would be if I could just stop time for like a week (or longer), to sleep and catch up with all the work I have to do, maybe write a book, make some scientific breakthrough, you know.

Then I got to thinking about how this might be achieved. I thought maybe it would have to be a bubble of time flowing extremely quickly relative to normal time (don't know what I'm talking about here, just ideas). We couldn't get it to go infinitely fast in order to completely stop the time outside, of course, but if a year of my time goes by in less than a second real time, then that would be equivalent in all practicality.

This brings up a lot of questions. First, one would still age as fast as the timeframe they are in, so in one second (using my previous example) you would age a year, and that would look pretty weird to the real world upon re-entry into real time. Also, how could you interact with the real world? I don't think you could, because anything you touch would be in your bubble. I thought of a river flowing in real time, and what if I wanted to jump in that river while I was in the fast bubble; the water would be in the bubble too, and it would start flowing, but the water outside the bubble would be blocking it like a wall, so then the water would just be like a still pond. Then again, how could I know if I could even ever walk with this bubble around me, I wonder if it would have to be fixed in space in order to work, or maybe confined by some huge magnetic field of some sort, I don't know.

Any other thoughts? This one is fun to think about

 

[imgod2u]

If you somehow managed to get a power source on the entire world and had it propel away from you at near c speed, time for the rest of the world would slow down relative to you. So an hour for you would be only a minute on Earth. But you'd have to find some way to move the entire Earth.

 

[Elledan]

When v approaches c => t for the moving object appears to be going infinitely slow (standing still) to an outside observer.

It should give you enough time to catch up with your lost sleep.

Perhaps some kind of temporal distortion (so I watched too much Star Trek...) could be formed around you, disrupting the 'flow of time' (time doesn't 'flow', is build up out of 'timeframes', like a movie is build up out of frames; time itself is very poorly understood as well). This way you won't have to build a spaceship capable of traveling at near-c speeds, also saving you the issue of running out of fuel before being able to return to earth.

 

[azkiwi]

Time is just the passage of events, so if you stopped time ( which of course you can't) you couldn't do anything in the period - not even take a nap. Relativity theory says you can speed time up for yourself, relative to the rest of the universe (by travelling faster), but not retard it.
So I think to catch a nap without getting even further behind in your work you would have to accelerate the universe with the exception of yourself. Try going to bed earlier and goofing off less, instead.

 

[ShadowWolf]

I agree with azkiwi, time really is just a reletive term so I think it would be impossible to stop time ( you'd have to stop the movement of the entire universe ). Now, you COULD always slow down everyone ELSE and keep yourself at the same speed, which would then cause "time" to slow down. I have no clue how to do this though.

 

[Mingon]

<< I agree with azkiwi, time really is just a reletive term so I think it would be impossible to stop time ( you'd have to stop the movement of the entire universe ). Now, you COULD always slow down everyone ELSE and keep yourself at the same speed, which would then cause "time" to slow down. I have no clue how to do this though >>



I dont entirely agree with the above, as has been said time has been showed to be relative, but each persons perception of time is slightly different. The easiest way to think of time is to look at how as you get older time gets quicker. Think of it this way when you are 5 1 year is 20% of your current life and hence goes slowly, now when you reach 50, 1 year is 2% of your life and as such is perceived as going very quickly. So our perception of time changes as we age due to the addition of new memories etc. So to slow down time you would need to change how you perceive it, this can be done slightly through meditation and other methods but in reality is very difficult.

Another example is the fly its perception of time is faster than ours due to a shorter lifespan, but their time is relative to them, so as such a day is the same as a year to us. You could now look at another extreme such as a parrot, they live twice as long as humans so their perception is slower.

 

[trisweb]

This is all very interesting.
I think I agree, as we all do, that it would be impossible in reality.

Azkiwi, I understand that if I stopped time in general, then I would also be in the stopped time, and obviously would not be able to do anything. But then again, time could be starting and stopping for us relative to some other point, and we would never know the difference, because in our "timeframe," time simply keeps going. It's like pausing a video -- nothing happens from the POV of the viewer when the pause button is on, but if you were "in the movie" then you would not notice a difference -- the timeframe of the movie picks right up where it left off when you take it off pause.

"Perhaps some kind of temporal distortion (so I watched too much Star Trek...)"
This is, I think, where I got my idea for the bubble, but didn't know it at the time. A Star trek episode where they got caught in some temporal rift and only parts of the ship started to age oddly -- like a bowl of fruit rotted in a fraction of a second from the POV of the observers. If you were in the bubble (distortion, whatever) then you would effectively see the outside world practically freeze.

Perception of time is another interesting concept... I heard about that thing about flies. Now if only I could make my brain percieve time slower like a fly, I wonder if you could do that... that's almost like the Matrix, bullet time. Everyone else would see you going really fast, but it would, from your POV, be the same time frame. This time thing is extremely complex, I imagine. Blows my mind.

"Try going to bed earlier and goofing off less, instead." Now that would give me more time...

 

[Freejack2]

The only real way would be to speed yourself up to a point where say one hour for you was one minute to others. However shows like Star Trek and X-files forgot to mention that the human body most likely wouldn't be able to handle that kind of speed.
Imagine your body crashing into a wall at 60x normal speed? Can you say pancake?

 

[Mingon]

they also said that the human body would blowup at speeds over 15mph

 

[Elledan]

<< they also said that the human body would blowup at speeds over 15mph >>


Actually, they said that with the first trains, people would suffocate because they would not be enable to breath the 'fast'-moving air.