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swerdna
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Is it possible to have distance without also having time?
Thanks - The other post that said you can has mysteriously disappeared. Does that mean it was wrong?bluesurge863 said:General relativity says no, you cannot have one without the other. They are deeply interwoven at a fundamental level.
Thanks - General Relativity aside, would it be possible?bluesurge863 said:I don't think the poster fully understood what you meant, and so deleted his post.
swerdna said:Thanks - General Relativity aside, would it be possible?
None of this is sensical. Time gets along just fine without us, and in fact without life at all. It got along for a billion years before life came traipsing through the kitchen in its muddy shoes.Technocreep said:We measure time by our finite definition of life.
If we lived eternally, without dying, without needing food, without the need to regenerate-or-die, would we even be worried about time? Is time real or just an illusion brought on by our limited lifespan?
Is time really bound exclusively to just space or are there other variables, if time really does exist that is?
Sorry but I can’t relate any of that to my question.Technocreep said:Let's start with an example of time: If you dropped a cup from a table here on earth, it would take a certain amount of time for it to hit the ground.. agreed? Now, drop that same cup from that same table while on the moon.. it would take a different amount of "time" before it finally hit the ground. The distance is the same in both cases, but the time very different. So, this begs the question.. Is time real or simply relative?
We measure time by our finite definition of life. We are only here for a certain amount of "time", as we see the sun come up and go down each day. So we measure time as a function of recurrence, by which we can say 'so many recurrences and we finally cease to exist.' Is time real or merely a perception?
If we lived eternally, without dying, without needing food, without the need to regenerate-or-die, would we even be worried about time? Is time real or just an illusion brought on by our limited lifespan?
Is time really bound exclusively to just space or are there other variables, if time really does exist that is? From the example of the falling cup (forementioned), it would seem that we must at least factor in gravity to get a correct calculation of space in both instances, if we are to keep time in the equation.
swerdna said:Sorry but I can’t relate any of that to my question.
Thanks - That's probably the best answer for my purpose.DaveC426913 said:Do you mean "what if the laws of physics as we understand them were not the laws of physics as we understand them?"
You would get unicorns and faeries.
Technocreep said:@swerdna: It is totally relatable to your question in that it did NOT require the same amount of time to travel the same distance; therefore, distance is not bound to time; also therefore, it IS possible to have distance without time.
Don’t see how a thing taking different times to cover the same distance in different circumstance means in any way that “it IS possible to have distance without time”.Technocreep said:@swerdna: It is totally relatable to your question in that it did NOT require the same amount of time to travel the same distance; therefore, distance is not bound to time; also therefore, it IS possible to have distance without time.
f03cuss said:What would happen to everything if time ceased to exist is a much more philosophical question, one that I can't answer. I was merely saying that mathematically distance is not time-dependent. You could freeze time, slow it down, speed it up, but the distance between two stationary objects wouldn't change because of these manipulations. We could say that distance couldn't exist without time but it becomes kinda meaningless if nothing at all could exist without time. So we might have to just agree that time exists, then we can look at what concepts it actually plays a role. If THAT makes sense lol.
bluesurge863 said:OK, so let's run that thought experiment. Say we want to speed up time to the point where travel is instantaneous. Is it meaningful to have instantaneous travel with nonzero distance?
f03cuss said:Hmm, interesting question, but again, now we are talking about motion/traveling. Distance does not require motion, motion requires distance, or rather, space. So we can talk about distance without motion.
For something to travel a distance instantaneously (because of time manip) time would have to be moving forward at an infinite speed. At which point you could be in all points in space at once. And probably would be. Infinite mass.
bluesurge863 said:But it wouldn't have to move at infinite speed. Due to relativistic effects, it would only have to travel at the speed of light.
(And by the way, I didn't say that travel would have to occur, just time would be sped up to the point where instantaneous travel would be possible. )
bluesurge863 said:I'm not entirely sure it's meaningful to assign a rate to time at all, so to say it can pass with a certain speed is sort of playing fast and loose with the underlying concepts. I think of time as more of a continuum that can be stretched (slowing down) and compressed (speeding up).
bluesurge863 said:When I said something would have to travel at the speed of light, I meant the object (or person?) that was observing the travel to be instantaneous, and would therefore view any possible trip as having zero distance. Us on the outside, however, would still view the trip as taking a certain amount of time.
bluesurge863 said:So not only is distance forever correlated with time, it is also entirely dependent on the perspective of the observer.
f03cuss said:What would happen to everything if time ceased to exist is a much more philosophical question, one that I can't answer. I was merely saying that mathematically distance is not time-dependent. You could freeze time, slow it down, speed it up, but the distance between two stationary objects wouldn't change because of these manipulations. We could say that distance couldn't exist without time but it becomes kinda meaningless if nothing at all could exist without time. So we might have to just agree that time exists, then we can look at what concepts it actually plays a role. If THAT makes sense lol.
Which applies only to massless particles like photons ...from its perspective, it travels zero distance in the direction of its motion, in zero time...the entire universe passing by it in less than the blinking of its eye...fascinating.DLuckyE said:I think the point is that when time slows down for you (and thus relatively speaking speeds up for everyone else) distances get shorter, to the point when times stops moving everything is at the same place.
If everything is at the same place, then the distance is also zero, so no time no distance.
PhanthomJay said:Which applies only to massless particles like photons ...from its perspective, it travels zero distance in the direction of its motion, in zero time...the entire universe passing by it in less than the blinking of its eye...fascinating.
But can we?Drakkith said:You could have distance without time if we could suddenly "freeze" time...
swerdna said:Is it possible to have distance without also having time?
With kind deference to DaveCLargeinteger, who I think knows a lot more about this stuff than I do:DaveC426913 said:Corrected.
But can we?
It's a 'what if?' thought.
vcurious said:With your permission, perhaps this could be restated as:
Q. Can we have (a) space without time?
A. In this universe, no. Time is fundamental to our universe. Regardless of what size space we examine within our universe, time is part of that space.
With kind deference to DaveCLargeinteger, who I think knows a lot more about this stuff than I do:
B. In a thought experiment universe/space patterned after our own, if we remove/stop/freeze time, that space would go utterly void - no matter, no virtual particles, absolutely nothing.
(It must be event-free to satisfy the "no time" requirement.*) That would give us a space without time. I don't see any other way to satisfy Q. above.
*By the way, I've come up with an aspect of time, but I don't know how to put it in words very well. Time is the filler between events.
So: No time, no events.
If time, then events, matter, stuff, antispoons, you know. :-)
"Distance Without Time: Possible?" is a concept in physics that suggests the possibility of measuring distance without the use of time as a factor. It challenges the traditional understanding of distance as a function of both space and time.
This concept suggests that distance can be measured by using other physical quantities such as energy or momentum, instead of time. This challenges the traditional understanding of distance as a function of both space and time.
If proven to be true, this concept could have significant implications in our understanding of the fundamental laws of physics. It could potentially lead to new theories and models that could explain phenomena that are currently unexplained.
Currently, there is no concrete evidence to support this concept. It is still a theoretical concept that is being explored and debated by scientists. However, there have been some experiments and theories that suggest the possibility of measuring distance without time.
This concept challenges the principles of Einstein's theory of relativity, which states that distance and time are inextricably linked and cannot be measured independently. If "Distance Without Time: Possible?" is proven to be true, it could potentially lead to a new understanding of the relationship between space and time.