Does Time Really Exist? Debunking Common Beliefs

[modmans2ndcoming]

what if time, rather than being a real thing used by the universe was just a tool we used to relate events to each other?

reletivity would still stand, as would quantum physics, because in each theory, time is not a fixed element of the universe but is dependent on the frame of refrence of the person making the observations.

 

[selfAdjoint]

This is true of non relativistic quantum mechanics, but not of relativity, either kind. In special relativity observers must compare physics using Lorentz transformations, and these mix time and space coordinates in linear transformations. So time can't easily be eliminated or downgraded in SR, or in any theory that dpands on SR, like Dirac's electron theory, quantum electrodynamics, the Standard Model, and all forms of String physics.

In General Relativity, coordinates, and physics, are subject to very general changes. Both time and space become somewhat "elastic" in definition. In both kinds of relativity, the same event, seen by different observers, can have very different time-space relationships.

 

[Saoshant]

I've thought of an interesting theory [well, interesting to me] about time being a spatial dimension, but that's for another thread and a later time.

 

[Janitor]

Saoshant,

Does your theory involve a metric? If so, what is its signature?

 

[Saoshant]

Originally posted by Janitor
Does your theory involve a metric? If so, what is its signature?

I don't know enough to answer that. It was just some philosophical musing recently that went too far and started making some sense. To weird people like me, at least. I'll post about it tomorrow, I guess, as I do not have enough time.

 

[The Green Giant]

Even if time did'nt really exist, it wouldn't metter. We would still be able to change the frames and shapes of the universe to "travel" in time.

 

[gizzybeans]

Time could never not exist, because it is simply the environment and the universe constantly changing. You don't pass through time, you change, and the result of you changing is what we call time. The only way time could not exist is if the universe's temperature dropped to 0 Kelvin. Then, I think, nothing in the universe would be able to move, therefore it can't change, and we would freeze to death.

 

[Erck]

Simple but true.

If time didn't exist... everything would happen at once.

 

[paglren]

Is time existent where there are no masses?

Time is not an independent variable. It is strictly related to space. So if time does not exist then also space would not exist.
Think at "time" as a clock like that one that makes computer CPU run: it is something "orthogonal" to space frame.
What I mean is that time is a fourth dimension whose spatial projection is the center of any mass (from which actually 3d space cohordinates departs). So "time" is not perceivable nor measurable like "space", rather its measurement is in term of "space modification".
I think that a further good question could be:
Does time exist where there are no masses (i.e. in vacuum)?
My point is that "time" exists only where a mass exists beacuse only there "space" exists. Moreover, when we measure time the measuring meter itself is made of matter, so it is modifying vacuum (and it is making time/space frame to exist).

 

[Organic]

Hi modmans2ndcoming,

According to SR, Time cannot be separated from space dimensions.

Space/Time's Signature = changes.

If there are no changes then nothing can be asked nor answered, because any question is its own answer.

Therefore there is a basic logical problem to use a question/answer system that contradicts the existence of a question/answer system.

Shortly speaking, if time does not exist then space does not exist.

Therefore modmans2ndcoming does not exist and is question cannot be asked.

In my opinion "What if...?" questions are very important to our evolution, and evolution means changes.

So, modmans2ndcoming keep use "What if...?" questions.

 

[sol2]

The Beginning of Time

In this lecture, I would like to discuss whether time itself has a beginning, and whether it will have an end. All the evidence seems to indicate, that the universe has not existed forever, but that it had a beginning, about 15 billion years ago. This is probably the most remarkable discovery of modern cosmology. Yet it is now taken for granted. We are not yet certain whether the universe will have an end. When I gave a lecture in Japan, I was asked not to mention the possible re-collapse of the universe, because it might affect the stock market. However, I can re-assure anyone who is nervous about their investments that it is a bit early to sell: even if the universe does come to an end, it won't be for at least twenty billion years. By that time, maybe the GATT trade agreement will have come into effect.


http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/bot.html

 

[selfAdjoint]

Good quote, if a little out of date - both in cosmology and economics!

 

[Les Sleeth]

Time is . . . is strictly related to space. So if time does not exist then also space would not exist. . . .Does time exist where there are no masses (i.e. in vacuum)? My point is that "time" exists only where a mass exists beacuse only there "space" exists. Moreover, when we measure time the measuring meter itself is made of matter, so it is modifying vacuum (and it is making time/space frame to exist).

According to SR, Time cannot be separated from space dimensions. . . Space/Time's Signature = changes. . . . Shortly speaking, if time does not exist then space does not exist.

There is a difference between saying time cannot be separated from space dimensions and to say that if time does not exist then space does not exist.

We normally think of space as that which exists where there is no mass. Of course, recent decades have shown space to be anything but "absence," with virtual particles popping in and out, dark energy and the Higgs field possibly lurking, gravity waiting to converge, etc.

One thing we know about space is that outside galaxies, particles etc., it is expanding. We know matter itself is losing integrity, which is why paglren's point "that 'time' exists only where a mass exists" makes sense. If things keep going the way they are (and of course they might not), at some point all will be "space." Yet if you are correct there couldn't be space because there will be no time. Time will have run out.

Time will have run out because, as Organic says, time is change; or more accurately, it is the measure of the rate of change. Actually, it is the measure of the rate of entropic change because that is the overall direction of the universe. We could say, for instance, that instead of so much time being left before the universe disappears, so many entropic events are left.

If that is an accurate representation of time, then what seems to contradict the theory that "if time does not exist then space does not exist," is the fact that as time runs out, space increases. I believe the concept of time is tied to space because change can only take place in space. It is simply a way to represent that fact conceptually. It doesn't mean "time" is essential to the constitution of space.

 

[sol2]

Good quote, if a little out of date - both in cosmology and economics!

I choose this because from the standpoint of historical, the evolution of thinking is being demonstrated throughout these three threads about the question on the beginning of Time, nothing ness and we are also talking about infinites, boundaries and such. There is a interpaly i the universe going on and we are trying to describe it?

Craig Hogan has a interesting perspective, about the universe and the atom, and this thought is in response to Ranyarts post to Erik.

Consider this seeming paradox: The biggest and smallest things in nature are the same things. At first this statement seems to make no sense, yet it is not an obscure metaphor or Zen koan. It is a profound truth about the universe, exactly and literally. It can even be represented by a picture (Figure 3). When we look at the largest structures in the cosmic background radiation—the largest and most distant things we can possibly see, stretching across the whole sky at the edge of the universe—we are looking at patterns that were imprinted in the first moments of creation, when these patterns were single quanta—the smallest amount of something (anything), according to quantum theory—far smaller than the smallest subatomic structure ever seen in the laboratory. Even though we are used to the idea that everything in the universe is connected with everything else, such a literal connection between the quantum world and the cosmic world is surprising. That is because most of the time when we look at large things—anything you can see without a microscope—they look continuous. There is no obvious sign that they are made of discrete microscopic elementary particles. So it is remarkable that when we look at the very largest things, we start seeing the quanta again. The universe expanding all around us acts like a giant microscope.

http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/14770;jsessionid=baa4GbvYtjDPBV?fulltext=true

So indeed we are all over the map here but we are speaking about the realities that have always been spoken,and to the degrees that certain conclusions have been drawn based on certain proposals.

Imagine time from a supersymmertical state? Has anyone realized that the quantum reality and the reductionist view has come to certain realizations?

What about cryptography qubits and such. How will this thinking rearrange the world from the reductionist standpoint so far understood. Dimension in a gravity sense has to be recognized. Numerical relativity?

 

[selfAdjoint]

Well, ordinary bits have been an epiphany to some - see "A New Kind of Science". I don't buy it, basically because I know that arithmetic is Goedel incomplete and geometry isn't. Since I think it's a requirement for a TOE to be complete in that sense, I stick with real and complex variables.

 

[sol2]

Well, ordinary bits have been an epiphany to some - see "A New Kind of Science". I don't buy it, basically because I know that arithmetic is Goedel incomplete and geometry isn't. Since I think it's a requirement for a TOE to be complete in that sense, I stick with real and complex variables.

Insights are a strange thing where such tidbits spark recognition of something much more advanced ,then anything we currently understood. Do you remember the Anomalies of perception

So even given this perspective, I think you recognize, as well as others, that such a mathematical basis is at the heart of all these creations. We are looking for consistancy.

I found a interesting comment the other day about mathematicians being the architects of reality.:)

http://www2.dsu.nodak.edu/users/edkluk/public_html/crt_aphys/feynman.html

...To summarize, I would use the words of Jeans, who said that "the Great Architect seems to be a mathematician". To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature. C.P. Snow talked about two cultures. I really think that those two cultures separate people who have and people who have not had this experience of understanding mathematics well enough to appreciate nature once.

http://www2.dsu.nodak.edu/users/edkluk/public_html/crt_aphys/feynman.html


My early conversations with Doc, helped to reinforce this undertanding, about what a calm mind might percieve, had it not been so busy on so many other things. That we had not recognized the one inch equation for what it is.

The geometrical basis is also understood from this persepctive, and such consistancy has to be found, expressed, in the reality of these conversations.

Mike2 attemtps at a logical foundation, is the idea from my perspective as well, and still, we engage, the many facets of the science currently talked about in these points of view.

GR is part of the consistancy of strings yet it is a theoretical thing that is supported by the maths. We have been taken to the Graviton by Witten in this formulation. Yet the graviational wave situation has not be changed much, and look at all the fabrications we are building to test it?

Again your restrain has been the anchor for many in terms of this enduring explorations into reality, and we need to be reminded it seems.:)

 

[tabloid]

a global time

is it possible for humans to start thinking in terms of a global time;a common refrence point,so that we simply start asking each other "what is the time" instead of "what is the time there".i think it could help if we think different and also if we are to determine the motion of celestial bodies and their effects on where we live.

 

[selfAdjoint]

But observers moving with respect to each other will see time passing at different rates and will disagree on whether two events occurred at the same time or not. This makes it questionable whether a common time can be agreed on, and what basis we should use for that agreement.

 

[paglren]

Masses and speed light

But observers moving with respect to each other will see time passing at different rates and will disagree on whether two events occurred at the same time or not. This makes it questionable whether a common time can be agreed on, and what basis we should use for that agreement.

This is true only at light speed or close: then space, time and light speed have to be strictly related each other.
My point is that speed light c is embedded in space-time: as to say that space is "generated" at speed light by the presence of a mass.
Think of masses as a "condensation" of empty space at c speed. When a mass explodes (or simply doesn't condensate longer) then a lightning is perceived because space is no longer "swallowed" by mass.
This leads only to a point-of-view change: all rules are respected because they are all relatively stated.
Yet light would be a still point and mass would be like a pulsating black hole that is limited in its contraction but that influences all space around at c speed.
If this is true, then we could affirm that gravitation speed is the same that light speed: each of two (fairly any force and any event in the Universe) could be assimilated to pieces of "information" gathered by a mass-point at c speed.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Without commenting on your suggestions about c generating space or the nature of mass, let me point out that the Lorentz transformation, which make time and space relative, are not just valid at high speeds but at all speeds. We don't notice the variations in our daiily lives only because they are so small.

But if you had a super accurate kitchen clock, and also a super accurate wrist watch, and you synchronized them when you went out in the morning, then when you came back in the evening, after moving around at a few dozen feet per second during the day, you would find that your watch showed an earlier time than your clock, by a few nanoseconds.

People have done this with super accurate clocks, moving them at about five miles per second (in orbit), and getting the effect.

 

[kronchev]

then change would be pretty impossible

 

[sol2]

Einstein wrote"...for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one."

Maybe from a dimensional understanding, there is no illusion?

If we shake the string, so it vibrates in a different mode, then the electron can turn into something else, such as a quark, the fundamental constitute of protons and neutrons. Shake it again, and the string could vibrate in the mode which describes photons (the quanta of light). Shake it again and it turns into a graviton (the quanta of gravity).

In fact, the collective set of vibrations corresponds to the entire spectrum of known particles. Instead of postulating millions of different particles, one only has to postulate a single object, the superstring. The sub-atomic particles are notes on the superstring. Our bodies are symphonies of strings, and the laws of physics are the laws of harmony of the superstring.

http://firstscience.com/SITE/articles/kaku.asp

 

[sol2]

Well, ordinary bits have been an epiphany to some - see "A New Kind of Science". I don't buy it, basically because I know that arithmetic is Goedel incomplete and geometry isn't. Since I think it's a requirement for a TOE to be complete in that sense, I stick with real and complex variables.

A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram



Of course my memory had to be jogged.

We taked about this early in superstringtheory forum.

Richard and Doc had a exchange here that lead to the question of, Laws of Form. A tool to explore the world of George Spencer-Brown's paradoxical Forms.



http://causaergosum.net/lof/lofn2.html

 

[Tachyon26]

Time Travel Possible Still?

I believe time travel is possible, however I wish to endeavor as to what everyone else thinks is a viable means of doing so. For example, in the movie Contact (good movie I thought), developed from the book by Sagan, the machine is used to create, essentially, a wormhole. Suggestions or comments anyone?

 

[selfAdjoint]

If you can get from one point in spacetime to another one in less time than it takes light to go there, then you can use that capability to go back in your own timeline. In general relativity there are several solutions of Einstein's equations for different physical situations that allow FTL/time travel. A wormhole is one of them. There is also the case of a massive body rotating very fast (like half the speed of light at its circumference). And the Alcubiere space warp which allows FTL transit can also be adapted to time travel.

None of these phenomena are currently achieveable, and many phsyicists would say they are physically impossible. We'll see.

 

[kenshuu]

For me, time exist as the universe's energy is communicating. First, if time don't exist, we can't even THINK.

Regarding time travel, I don't believe it is possible. Because, if i do, i wouldn't have to believe a infinite-multiple universes, which each universe exist as a time being, are existing.

 

[freemind]

The question is not whether time "exists" or not. Rather, it is 'what is time?' Is it just an "independent" variable included in mathematical equations? It is change? Or is it merely an abstraction (I think not)?


Note: How does this relate to the 'arrow of time'? (increase in overall entropy)

 

[Pergatory]

Time is a method we've invented to label duration of events. Nothing more, nothing less. To think of time as a spatial dimension or that you can travel back or forward in time is absurd. Time is merely a measurement of the propogation of causality.

For example, if our Sun exploded at this very instant, we would not know it for 8 minutes because that's how long it takes the Sun's light to get here. It could be said that the Sun exploded 8 minutes from now, from our frame of reference.

This is also how I believe wormholes will work. Let's say you jump a wormhole to a galaxy 1 million lightyears away, and you arrive instantly. Not just faster than light but infinite velocity. Effectively, you have just traveled 1 million years into the past. If before you had left, you looked at your destination through a telescope, you'd see it as it was 1 million years before your arrival. Accordingly, if you pulled out a telescope and looked back toward Earth as soon as you arrive, you would see an image of Earth as it was 1 million years before you left. The light is just now reaching your destination after 1 million years, as a reaction of that light being emitted 1 million years ago back here on Earth.

This is the only form in which time travel is possible. To jump back in the wormhole and come back to Earth 5 minutes later, I believe you would literally arrive 5 minutes after you had left. If you turned around and peered back at the distant galaxy to which you had just travelled, you'd see the ancient million-year-old light of your destination's past again.

Time cannot be traveled through, it can only be observed. Time dilation is merely the result of an increase in the delay of causality.

 

[freemind]

Your description pertains to the concept of time @ the macroscopic level. John Cramer's transactional interpretation of QM makes extensive use of advanced waves (waves traveling 'back in time') to describe particle interactions. Is time resultant of the CPT asymmetry @ the quantum level (it can't be propagation of causality, as causality is not necessary @ this level; particle interactions are time-symmetric, so the concept of 'forward and backward in time' does not really matter)?

 

[Pergatory]

You're right.

It is my personal opinion that QM is a pretty wrapping for "We don't have any idea why the hell this happens." It's the catch-all for when things don't go as our theories predict. When our understanding advances such that we can understand exactly what's happening, I think we'll see that quantum superposition is an illusion. Quantum probability is our inability to see all the variables. The need for QM will disappear, to be replaced by something more fundamental. My money is on a combination of the Harmonics and New Field theories.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not downplaying the importance of QM! In advancing our understanding of QM, we are gaining a better understanding of those phenomenon which matter most -- the ones we don't understand! However, I believe QM is a giant bubble of lack of understanding and eventually it'll burst and we will see the 'big picture.'