Can Time Exist Without Mass in the Universe?

[mickaelparis]

Hi there,
First thread on that forum
I just have a question, that would probably sound ridiculous for many of you but although I'm passionate with physics I've never studied that subject at school. So please be indulgent.
I was watching experiments showing time dilatation by putting a clock inside a moving plane.
I know Einstein explained that in his general relativity principle.
Could it be interpreted that way? :
The plane by moving faster and faster is reducing gravity. The mass of the Earth is losing its attraction upon the clock.
It could mean that a clock on a smaller planet would go slower.
It would then imply that without mass time would not exist.
Now a tricky question has time always existed --> are there places in the universe where there is no time? --> What would happen if we were to enter those area, would we create time, how fast would time go in that area compared to Earth time, could it be a way of traveling further and faster?

Maybe you'll think all of that is non sens but once again it is only a question of a rooky.

Thanks

 

[sokrates]

Your argument begs the immediate question::

what is time?

 

[DaveC426913]

There was a time in the universe when there was no mass yet time passed. It was in the first few milliseconds after the BB. It was so hot and dense there was only energy. The universe had to cool before matter could condense from energy.

 

[DaveC426913]

The plane by moving faster and faster is reducing gravity. The mass of the Earth is losing its attraction upon the clock.

No. You are misunderstanding. The plane could move faster and faster in space - independent of gravity - and still have the same effect.

 

[ralilu]

Hi there,
First thread on that forum
I just have a question, that would probably sound ridiculous for many of you but although I'm passionate with physics I've never studied that subject at school. So please be indulgent.
I was watching experiments showing time dilatation by putting a clock inside a moving plane.
I know Einstein explained that in his general relativity principle.
Could it be interpreted that way? :
The plane by moving faster and faster is reducing gravity. The mass of the Earth is losing its attraction upon the clock.
It could mean that a clock on a smaller planet would go slower.
It would then imply that without mass time would not exist.
Now a tricky question has time always existed --> are there places in the universe where there is no time? --> What would happen if we were to enter those area, would we create time, how fast would time go in that area compared to Earth time, could it be a way of traveling further and faster?

Maybe you'll think all of that is non sens but once again it is only a question of a rooky.

Thanks

i am not a pro either ,but i have read some books. this is how i understand it, correct me if I'm wrong:
the universe is made of a 4-dimensional fabric called spacetime. spacetime can get warped by energy, mass and motion. when spacetime gets warped, space contracts and time dilates thus creating gravity. And there are places in the universe where time stands still (or doesn't exist) called singularities which are found in black holes.
thats what i understand in a nutshell.

 

[ralilu]

oh and mass does sort of create time because it causes time to pass by slower while reducing space. think of it as crushing a bottle: if you reduce the length of a bottle by crushing it then you increase the width. so when the space dimension contracts, the time dimension dilates

 

[mccoy1]

Your argument begs the immediate question::

what is time?

Time is when you say the Earth was created/emerged/whatever term you like "6 billion years" ago.

 

[sokrates]

Time is when you say the Earth was created/emerged/whatever term you like "6 billion years" ago.

6 billion years with respect to whom? Time is relative you know.

Is time discrete? or continuous? is a time step infinitely divisible and so forth are questions that are yet to be answered...

The "age of the universe" to give a definition of time is hopelessly anthropo-centric.

 

[mccoy1]

6 billion years with respect to whom? Time is relative you know.

Is time discrete? or continuous? is a time step infinitely divisible and so forth are questions that are yet to be answered...

The "age of the universe" to give a definition of time is hopelessly anthropo-centric.

Time is continous.

 

[ralilu]

time is just a dimension that points in one direction.

 

[WaveJumper]

6 billion years with respect to whom? Time is relative you know.

Is time discrete? or continuous? is a time step infinitely divisible and so forth are questions that are yet to be answered...

The "age of the universe" to give a definition of time is hopelessly anthropo-centric.

Agreed, i could always find frames of reference where the universe is 4 hours old, or 1000 years old, etc. There is no preferred FOR outside of our subjective experience. The perceived "flow" of Time is really a great mystery.

 

[WaveJumper]

There was a time in the universe when there was no mass yet time passed. It was in the first few milliseconds after the BB. It was so hot and dense there was only energy. The universe had to cool before matter could condense from energy.

I think this is misleading. Singularities in black holes do have enormous mass. The amount of gravity that something possesses is proportional to its mass and counter-proportional to the distance between it and another object and we know that black holes do exhibit immense gravitataional attraction. So from the Newton's law of universal attraction, it follows that if singularities exert immense gravitational pull, then they do have immense intrinsic mass.

 

[DaveC426913]

I think this is misleading. Singularities in black holes do have enormous mass. The amount of gravity that something possesses is proportional to its mass and counter-proportional to the distance between it and another object and we know that black holes do exhibit immense gravitataional attraction. So from the Newton's law of universal attraction, it follows that if singularities exert immense gravitational pull, then they do have immense intrinsic mass.

What does any of this have to do with my post? I never even mentioned BHs.

 

[mickaelparis]

There was a time in the universe when there was no mass yet time passed. It was in the first few milliseconds after the BB. It was so hot and dense there was only energy. The universe had to cool before matter could condense from energy.

First of all thak you for replying.
Big bang has not been proven to be the biginning of the universe. It is the the biginning of what what we know today as the visible universe but we don't know if we are not part of something bigger, a lot older than that. Also I don't think we can establish if there was a time with no mass.

 

[DaveC426913]

Big bang has not been proven to be the biginning of the universe. It is the the biginning of what what we know today as the visible universe but we don't know if we are not part of something bigger, a lot older than that.

None of this is relevant. Our best theory, the BB theory, tells us what happened back to a few microseconds before the BB. What might have happened before that is beside the point.

Also I don't think we can establish if there was a time with no mass.

D'oh! What was I thinking? It msut have been late. I claimed there was a time when there was no mass. This is not true. While there was a time when there was no matter, that's not really relevant to this thread.

 

[mickaelparis]

None of this is relevant. Our best theory, the BB theory, tells us what happened back to a few microseconds before the BB. What might have happened before that is beside the point.



D'oh! What was I thinking? It msut have been late. I claimed there was a time when there was no mass. This is not true. While there was a time when there was no matter, that's not really relevant to this thread.

Hey, sorry didn't want to upset you.
I was not questionning th BB theory. I was just saying that BB might not be something unique and that if it looks like a frontiere for us at the universe scale it might be nothing.

I would be very interested if you could give me some references (books, documentary,...) regarding what you are saying about a time with no matter. Thank you in advance.

I think my remaks were relevant to that thread (that I created) since we might wonder if there was a "time" without time, A universe with no beginning, something that "always"existed, always meaning nothing in that sense but since everything is relativity...

 

[DaveC426913]

I would be very interested if you could give me some references (books, documentary,...) regarding what you are saying about a time with no matter. Thank you in advance.

Probably best of you Google 'early universe timeline' and read up on the first 10^-6 second.

 

[Rebel]

D'oh! What was I thinking? It must have been late. I claimed there was a time when there was no mass. This is not true. While there was a time when there was no matter, that's not really relevant to this thread.

But initially it was put as relevant for the thread, since the initial claim of the starter was that there is no time without mass... surely was the same mistake, as you were thinking all for matter then.

There are different views about time in quantum gravity, so I cannot be so sure as Mccoy1 that time is continuous.