What is time?

detective

hello all .. could time and space be tethered by this notion?

a simple model is a universe that is 186 miles in circumference and a photon (or a massless object that complies with the known laws of physics) has travelled back to exactly the same place it departed from...the time taken would be 1000th of a second...to us observers the time scale is negligible but very real

... as the universe grew to 1860 miles, we observe the time taken is now 100th of a second... and on and on

this reasoning can go back to the singularity or forward for what we call infinity

you can see as the universe expanded, so did time become more relevant to the observer but as we know ...time stands still at the speed of light, so relatively speaking the growing universe wouldn't be noticed as the travels around the circumference grew larger and larger....

could it be that time and dilation exist as a requirement for our convenience and is exactly complimentary to the expansion of space and entropy?...and taken back to the singularity or forward to infinity means nothing at the speed of light?

could this be possibly where our observations and measurements fail us and makes the question an unanswerable one, relatively speaking?

Drakkith

This thread seems to keep getting far off into speculation land. As this is against PF rules I am requesting a lock.

For anyone reading this, here's a link to help you understand what we consider time to be: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time
If your views are strikingly different from the general idea on that page, you should seriously think about WHY you believe so, as your ideas are probably not based on available evidence and an understanding of current physics and are not suitable for a scientific forum such as PF. (Note that I am not saying they are WRONG, I am saying they don't belong on this forum)

detective

i too suggest it should be locked...if only for the reasoning that freedom of thought, and the ability to convey that on this thread is being hampered.... with the end result, accidentally or not.. ridicule for the unwary .....

jtbell

Yes, this thread has run on far longer than it should have. Our apologies.