- #71
Chalnoth
Science Advisor
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Being able to infinitely divide space merely means that dividing space is the wrong way to describe motion.
SHISHKABOB said:I've only taken a class called contemporary physics that touched on quantum mechanics for just a portion of the quarter, but my understanding of it drew me to the conclusion that space was quantized. Or at least that's what I got out of the class. The idea that space is not infinitely divisible.
Therefore, unless this conception is erroneous, then walking past your desk *in reality* is not a matter of walking past something with an infinite set of points on it, but rather walking past something with a finite number of points.
If you take a line, and consider each and every single one of the infinite points on it as you move along it, wouldn't you never get anywhere?
alt said:I don't know whether space (or time for that matter) is quantized.
In post #18, a contributor said;
Super weird indeed. Moreover, if time exists, & it passes linearly, it should have an infinite speed, since it passes continuously..Time is weirder than existence itself
My comments which you addressed in the aove, were simply to respond to that. But in any event, I'd always thought that a point is dimensionless - and that there are an infinite number of points, in a line, as there are an infinite number of lines in a plane, as there are infinite planes in a solid. That's what I was getting at when I used my 'desk' example.
Regarding your last paragraph, this seems to me, a rephrasing of Zeno's Achilles and the tortoise paradox, which has been discussed here earlier.
Zeno's flying arrow paradox - now that's another thing. That one's really got me stumped, because imo, it goes to the heart of what the present moment, or an instant in time is. And that's a point I've been trying to explore for some time, but haven't gotten far.
Super weird indeed. Moreover, if time exists, & it passes linearly, it should have an infinite speed, since it passes continuously..Time is weirder than existence itself
Homesick345 said:MAYBE our existence, material universe, is finite & quantized, discrete, etc... And MAYBE our intellect or thinking is infinite, or at the very least - & this is even weirder - has a grasp of infinity, for some weird reason.
petm1 said:Time as measured with a photon has the speed of light tied to it thereby leaving no gaps in our view of reality.
This so-called paradox is trivially shown to not apply to reality based upon one simple fact:alt said:Zeno's flying arrow paradox - now that's another thing. That one's really got me stumped, because imo, it goes to the heart of what is the present moment / instant in time. And that's a point I've been trying to explore for some time, but haven't gotten far.
sahmgeek said:Can you flesh that out a little more?
Except they aren't the same. They are similar, but not the same.sahmgeek said:Actually, Zeno's flying arrow paradox makes perfect sense IF time and space are one and the same (i.e. if the true nature of time is another way of measuring things in space). I personally think this is a great candidate for the essence of "time".
Chalnoth said:Except they aren't the same. They are similar, but not the same.
sahmgeek said:true. maybe i should have said:
time = a measurement of different locations in quantized space, where the 2nd law of thermodynamics is fundamental, as experienced by a single observer.
I do not see how this helps. Time, though very similar, does not behave like space.sahmgeek said:true. maybe i should have said:
time = a measurement of different locations in quantized space, where the 2nd law of thermodynamics is fundamental, as experienced by a single observer.
Are you suggesting that time measured by something other than a photon has gaps in it?
petm1 said:No, I think that the sea of photons we see as space fills the gaps in time very well.
junjunjun233 said:Maybe time don't exist at all. Its a perception of movements/change/transformation and so on (Point A-B-C-D-E etc). Since at quantum level, particle vibrate and eventually moves unless absolute zero movement is achieved, yet or never.
Actually in a sense we don't experience time. We experience changes and movements that we perceived as time and exist as observation.
Drakkith said:Except that the movements/changes/transformations don't all occur at once. They take time.
We measure time through change and movement but this does not mean we do not experience it.
Homesick345 said:Time as our psychological interpretation of events, whether they occur sequentially or all at once. Could time be our mind's way to arrange things, regardless of how they exist or occur really?
Drakkith said:Except that the movements/changes/transformations don't all occur at once. They take time.
We measure time through change and movement but this does not mean we do not experience it.
SHISHKABOB said:are you suggesting that things that are observed to happen in one order could "really" happen in some other order? What would "really" be "reality" in that case?
junjunjun233 said:Take away the concept of time and all we have are observations that are stored in our memory projected as experiences. We still don't have the technology to reached an absolute based starting point for time on a micro level. Well, we do have quantum clock (aluminum ion) near to a zero point precision but unless we can narrow it down to zero vibration state. And it is unlikely to find zero resistant particle.
A bit fuzzy. but i don't consider the existence of time because it is always relative to the movement, mass and state we are in. We can only measure that state and called it time.
Experience is how the brain perceived of the leaps from one state to another and eventually stored as information in the brain as memory.
Drakkith said:Define an "absolute based starting point for time" and "zero resistant particle".
The existence of time is the only way two objects can occupy the same points in space. They do it at different times.
I don't see how this is related to time in any way. Whether we are here to experience it or not the universe has time.
junjunjun233 said:Zero point energy in a vacuum. And maybe it has to do with the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics that particles can't be stop completely. However, some behavior of specific particles interactions came close such as bosons given even number of electrons,protons and neutrons. When subjected to low temperature, bosons become a Bose-einstein condensate, in which a ground state occurs and the closest you can get to stopping their motion. However, there is always a fermion in each quantum state and obeys pauli excl principle that instead of going through a ground state, they fill all the lowest states in the system. Perhaps "Time" doesn't exist as objective but subjective. I might be wrong. Ill remain agnostic about it.
Drakkith said:I have no idea what you are trying to say here.
junjunjun233 said:It simply means that time might not exist, just entropy. Or Time is the cause for entropy.
Motion replaces time and time no longer exist. We live in motion not time.
This doesn't make any sense at all to me.junjunjun233 said:It simply means that time might not exist, just entropy. Or Time is the cause for entropy.
Motion replaces time and time no longer exist. We live in motion not time.
Chalnoth said:This doesn't make any sense at all to me.
Yeah.Drakkith said:A large part of this thread simply doesn't make any sense.
Chalnoth said:Yeah.
But in this case, equating entropy with time makes no sense whatsoever of a reversible adiabatic processes where entropy is conserved, but the system nonetheless changes.
junjunjun233 said:Adiabatic, reversible adiabatic, isentropic flow; everything that involve movements/changes has to do with time. And we fill each gaps with time.
Time only appears in the equation of physics but no one is sure about it.
Time is a concept that describes the duration or sequence of events. It is often measured in seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, and years.
Time can be measured using various units such as clocks, calendars, and atomic clocks. These units are based on the Earth's rotation, the Earth's orbit around the sun, or the vibrations of atoms.
No, time is not considered a physical entity. It is an abstract concept that we use to measure the duration of events.
Time cannot be manipulated in the sense that we cannot change the past or make time move faster or slower. However, time can be perceived differently based on factors such as gravity and velocity.
We know that time exists because we can observe and measure its effects on the physical world. For example, we can see the changes that occur over time, such as aging, growth, and decay. Additionally, the laws of physics and the concept of cause and effect also support the existence of time.