Here Today... Gone To Hell!

as the subject asks, does time exist?


if yes how would you define it? If no why not?

---

Im not a fatalist person to a great extent.. tho the only way i can seem for my self to make a beleiveable reason to why time does not exist is to be fatalist.. and to make it exist I cannot do it....

soo what do you think

I got into this conversation with my wife.  :P


I say no, because time is manmade, it is a measurement we came up with.

True :-\

Time is not manmade. Only the measurements of time are manmade. Universe all in all doesn't really care about the measurements of time man came up with. And to say cars for example don't exist just because they're manmade is just.. not smart.

Time exists. It is the so called fourth dimension. It doesn't really matter what grid we put on it - may it be minutes, seconds or years. The measurements are just there to put an abstract in perspective so that we can talk about it, and so that others somewhat can understand what we are trying to say. Just like weight, length, temperature or any other unit that the man has created to better understand the world around him. I hope that all made some sense.

I'd say ditto Skeba's post.............well......parts of it at least :-\...........

Now, on to my dumbass next-door neighbour..............WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU!?!?!?!?!?!?

...................you sound like me.................. :D

Starting a thread about whether or not time exists........... :no:..............jesus...........lets go to Tommies....

OH!!!! :o............just in case anyone is wondering......... ::)....I'm talking about, or rather to, Prom....


HAVE A NICE DAY : ok:

I don't have time to answer ;)

pool after supper perhaps?

hehehe


The way I look at why time doesnot exist is this;

How would you prove it?

well for starters how would you prove something that you can not see cannot touch cannot taste, cannot hear exists?

the only acceptable way I can see would be to see its affects on its surrounding enviroment. Like with air tress move in the wind.. etc. So if you left time pass. with something that decays rather quickly, you can see the effects of time acting on it... or do you? what you actually see is the affects of the enviroment acting on it... becasue if you were to take an object and remove from it anything that can affect it (except for time.... then the object wouldnt decay....

Can you save time?

no. any time you save is used by something else.. so you cant save 1 min a day adn on your death bed apply it to your clock and extend your life... can you?

can you capture time?

nope you so cant.. cause well based on what it is... it keeps on passing.. lol

the better question about time is this;

If time exists in a grand scale.. is it linear or dynamic?


to me it would have to be dynamic, and that linear time is only a human concept to allow us understand existance....and in a little theory of mine.. that would allow for people that have "future" flashes could actualy understanding time for a breif momnet in a dynamic way (can exist everywhere and no where... therefore where you exist is what time actualy is

I think time must exist because every minute feels like a fucking eternity when I am at work hungover....and every hour of every day that I don't get to see my bf cause he is away at school still....so yeah, it exists ;)

Dammit Izzy.  :rant:

I was goin to write that sentence...

Now you're the first one to play some funny here  :beer:

if you take time out of the equation then we would be left with objects that just sit there unmoving with nothing influencing them...time is change, from one moment to the next, time is movement from one place to the next, time is a reaction to forces upon atoms and molecules, initially the big bang(s) and the collisions that ensue ...and everything has a lifespan determined by what things are made of...without time there would be no life, just decay

time is a human concept for change and movement, can you save time by stopping every molecule in your body? maybe but can you stop random brownian motion? probably not

I was going to post the same as you, but then I thought: we measure time through change, but does that mean they are equivalent?


So what you're saying is, we use 'events' as yardsticks.  Take any 2 events and try to make a relation between them.   I am at Point A (event 1) and then travel at some speed.  After some 'distance/speed', I get to Point B (event 2).  

So our perception of the passage of time is through our observation of events.  

Event 1 occurs before Event 2 - but by how much?  Now we try to quantify it, and put little tickmarks at regular intervals.   Our act of measurement is imposed, but there is a natural ordering in the sequence of events that occur.

So let's remove all source of events.  All matter and photons, etc.  A completely devoid universe with no source of decay and change...   Now, does time exist without events?   What I mean is: Does an axis exist with no data points?  

I dont think so.  But of course I have no way to prove that!  It seems to me that time is intricately linked with the matter & mass in space.  Their interaction causes change which we observe and attempt to quantify.

Enough babbling for today.  :peace:

Such a huge question lol I think the fact that Day turns to Night, Night turns to Day and the way the seasons change give a sense of time.

Animals and plants react to different conditions depending on the time of day/year/season.
So i think we are probably about right. But it's all guess work innit?

I think i'm right in saying The Romans brought the concept of the months of the year, or at least named some after Gods or Emperors - To the rest of the world

Bless the history and Discovery channels lol
 

I think time does exist. It has to. I just don't have the time to get into this.  ;)  

If you've got the money, I've got the time.

ok technicaly the axis would exist.. but teh data would not.. so you could have space and mass but they would be static...since they cannot be plotted....so the axis would one big "not eqaul to dot".... but the mass and space could be plotted.. there fore.. one could exist with out "time" but by mere existance you create a concept of time....unless your existance was omnimpiment.. then time would be dynamic and you could exist at any point of ...... say teh life cycle of a star... you could be at its birth and death all at once.. you could see teh begging and teh end all in one glance....


Someone once argued to me that God cannot exist simply because he cannot possibly have enough time to handle things... But if god can exist at any point he sees fit.. then he would have all teh time in the world.... hell jsut because we exist in a linear time it doesnt mean that another race cannot exist with no concept of time what so ever.. they merely exist when they want to..

"puts a new spin on doing things over" lol but then again would you keep your knowledge of today .. 15yrs ago?

time and change are inextricably linked, time exists because of change, and change exists because of time

if you take matter itself out and leave the 4th dimension of time as the only dimension, then would time exist?  Since there would be nothing in the universe, how would you judge the measurement of time? I doubt if it is possible, so time and matter are linked also...but maybe i am forgetting about the other 9 dimensions that physicists seem to think exist

didnt they conduct experiments with an atomic clock and foudn that time actually goes slower in space?

I did have the time to answer with this post  :)

Time does exist!
The universe is about 15 billion years old (cheers google!). How much of that 15 billion years do you remember? It's as if that time went in an instant until you begin to remember things, which is our concept of time.

Visible light is a tiny spectrum of electromagnetic radiation and similarly I think we experience a tiny spectrum of time too, possibly due to our relative motion to visible things being minute. This time is linear time, the things we use everyday (seconds, hours etc). However, as has been predicted with some funky maths, time is dependant on the relative velocity of the observer and the event they are measuring. Space time is also changed by gravity in black holes and shit too apparently.

So the other spectrums of time are not detectable in everday life, but they do exist. Similarly other things in the universe may live in a different spectrum of time, where the laws arn't so linear.

..............you're a retard.................... :yes:

<trademark 'Donald Duck-ish' voice> And you're trying to confust everyone man...............but I know what you're up to................... :yes:............

Anyway........I was out last night..............but by the time I got there it really was a little late to go calling around.......so I just drank...................besides I got my assed kicked at West-Side earlier on.....(pool)...............so all it woulda been was a drunk.................. :beer:

Yes time exists.  If you don't believe me consult your WATCH!!!



Seriously though...it depends on how fast you're going...
If you're going at the speed of light (which you can't) then time become's a single point (i.e. the closer you get to the speed of light, the slower things appear to you).

Time exists, otherwise how would you explain anything?

Philosophically time does not exist since  it doesn?t go by/through us, we go by/trough it.

yup they sure did, and what they done was sync. 2 atomic clocks on the ground to like 1millionth of a second then took one and put it in a plane and flew it around 50,000 ft for a while and what they found out was that the one that few around was slower tehn teh one on the ground... what it was meant to prove was that gravity can distort time.. or our concept of it....and now they are putting a satilite in orbit that will meausre how much and if at all gravity distorts space at all.. pretty cool

Who says that we don't go through time or that time doesn't go through us?

And philosophically it could be said that since the universe is infinite, and the number of planets on which there is life is limited, and when you divide any limited number with infinite, you get a number so small that it can be said to be zero, leading to the fact that every person you come across is just the product of your imagination... (thoughts of Douglas Adams) With that said, I really wouldn't put too much weight on what can be said philosophically.

So in other words................you're a relativistic fuck-head :yes:

That made absolutely no sense at all.

Why would you divide the size of the universe by the number of people in it in the first place?

And who says the universe is infinite?

Utter, utter crap.



And MCT....yeah ;D

Of course that made no sense. It's from "Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy", a science fiction parody that he wrote.

And I know, the universe - by most theories that can be said to have any physical evidence -  is not infinite, but keeps expanding at ever slowing rate, and by the time we're like really really old (I think at least most of us will be retired) the universe will start shrinking, which will lead to a sort of a reverse big bang, although by that time there's not propably gonna be a whole lot life left because entropy and what not.

The whole thing was written to make a point that basically anything can be said when you start thinking philosophically, and well.. because I wanted to amuse myself, and those of you who got the reference (might've been very few).

1. like I said, we supposedly go through/by time..time doesn?t go through us. you need to read about it.

2. it is also said that the things you don?t see are not there until you see them. For instance, the street you live in does not exist until you see it.

This is just so that I'll understand... Could you give me examples of things that do go through us apart from some very very small things such as fotons (I think they're small enough). Or in what sense do you mean "go through"? And do we not "go through" lives as well - and you know where that would lead. Or is that splitting hairs?

This experiment sounds really cool.  They want to measure how the rotation/spinning of masses  can also affect space-time.
Apparently, they have designed an immensely accurate gyroscope from a super-cooled spinning quartz sphere.  Very scifi-ish.

And... about your original question.  Did you mean it in philosophical terms, or in a more scientific basis?   Because what I see in this thread are scientific concepts like gravity, space/time mixed with philosophical statements, as well as the funnies.  :)

To Q:

I agree with you about time being equivalent to change on a certain level,  but I would be hard-pressed to establish any kind of proof without resorting to philosophical mumbo jumbo.  The reason being I am unable to quantify both sides of this equivalence.  The measurement unit for time is usually in seconds (microsecond, nanosecond, etc).  What are the units of measurement for change?  When we talk of change, we mean the change of something.  Change in mass [kg], change in volume [cubic meters], etc.   Are they equivalent in measurement units?  No.  There needs to be a conversion factor that expresses how the change of a physical quantity is a function of time.   In this sense we cannot say they are the same, or else the physics prof will dock points off.

And there is the issue of energy/heat.  You mentioned brownian motion.  As you probably know, this type of motion is dependent on temperature.  The colder it is, the less the motion, and we observe less overall change in the object.  We can set up experiments to show how temperature and change/decay are correlated.  

But how to demonstrate this with time?  We suspect that the flow of time (ostensibly in only one direction) has some effect on the change/decay of matter, be it mass, volume, etc.   To set up an experiment, we set out to prove the following two things:

Presumably if time stops, then all change in matter would cease, specifically change in physical quantities such as mass, volume, etc.

If all change (of physical quantities of matter) cease, does time stop?

I dont know.  If it is true, then we have proven the relation between change and time.

You want a good book that compliments this thread?

One that is a great story, by a great author, that is a hard-science/sci-fi?

"Calculating God" - Robert J. Sawyer

Yeah, sort of. But which philosophy? I thought there were many.

Time is money.  : ok:

Time certainly exists.  I saw it in the magazine rack at the news stand at the Copley T stop the other day.

that's exactly right.
time does not exist.

time must exist, it is a human concept explaining part of the universe...its not like the universe said to itself, "hey what about this time thing, do you think we should have it?"..everything in the dictionary has been defined by humans relating it to the world in some way or another and time is one of them.  do planets exist? yes because we have defined what a planet is ..are humans sentient? yes because we have defined what sentient means..does time exist? it must exist because it has been defined...it may not be the exact way the universe works but from our perspective it explains part of our universe...

copyright is mine, PHd please  :yes:

 :yes:

I think you hit a right note there.  A lot of concepts in science are models of reality.  But, as you point out, a model does not necessarily equal how the universe may actually operate.

I rememeber people asking our physics prof: Do electric & magnetic fields really exist?  Are there really patterns of field lines all around us?  It is just a model to explain the very real observations that Faraday made in his experiments.  

They exist in the sense that they accurately explain real-world scientific observations.  One could make the same argument for time.

Faraday was a cool guy.  I believe there is a museum in England dedicated to his work.  Maybe one day I'll get to visit it.

Random

this thread is open to what ever way one can articulate their concept of Time.. or the lack there of.

Alas it always comes down to this... "We can only believe what we can prove."

and in an odd sence whaen we say that "art imitates life, imitates art." Science is an art form where it is an interperation of human preception of Life and the world aropund us.

I don?t remember right now whose philosophy is this or if it?s just general philosophy...if I remember then I?ll let you know.

Thi to is the theory which I personally hold to be true.... However that being said how do you make sence of the changes in objects, and teh universe through the passing of "Time"? as i said above the only way that makes a beleivable sence of existance is our preception of "time", If time does exist however in a different context then what we preceive, would that make our measurement of "time" to be false and inaccurate? I say no, however if we were to beleive that time exists in a context other then our preception of time.. someting like that "time is static" not  "fluid", then I would have to be a fatalist.. and trust me I do not beleive in fate...

Time does exist because Guns N Roses have not released a new studio album in a long TIME. :no:

I believe time exists.  The measurement of it may be arbitrary, and man made, but, then again, so are MANY measurements...yet we don't argue that matter exists.

The single best supporting argument that time exists is "The Big Bang" (mentioned earlier in this thread).  The universe is expanding outward, due to the force exerted on it billions of years ago, and, when the energy of that "explosion" has been used, the universe will begin to contract.  Without time, there could be no expansion, or contraction. Everything would be static.

The exertion of force on something results in the generation of energy, and the expulsion of that energy begins and ends.  The period between the begining of the application of force, the begining of the generation of energy, and the point at which all the energy generated has been expulsed, is time.

Now, does time exist outside of the world of matter (and thus, outside the world of force and energy)?  That's an unquatifiable philosophical question, much like "If a tree falls in the woods, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound".  Since there is no observer to the stated situation, the answer is impossible to find.

**It doesnt hurt to use the word "theoretically" in statements like that.......

Besides........the THEORETICAL 'contraction' really has nothing to do so much with the energy from the THEORETICAL Big Bang being "used", as it does with the force of gravity pulling things back together.....THEORETICALLY that is..........

we know matter exists.... im typing on matter not time



OK to pick holes.. MCT covered that it is not fact it is theory, we cannot prove or disprove teh big bang, its just a theory.  The statement that the "when the energy of that "explosion" has been used, the universe will begin to contract." is flawed as if the engery could be used it it would contradict physics, making it seem that engery can be destroyed, as we all know "engery can not be created or destroyed, it can only be treanformed" (Law of consveration of engery). If teh Big Bang was a true and absolute statement, and the universe will expand til such time that gravity from the entire mass of the universe began the "big crunch" another big bang would occur as all teh mass would "crush itself to critical mass adn "boom" it starts all over again. Now you say without time there could be no big bang, I say BS, once critical mass was reached, and the enivitabilty of a contraction has been established this process could go on forever unchanged.

all teh lack of time would do is make events irrivalent, teh fact that we could see a Supernova does not matterand teh only thing that matters is the cycle.

and then due to randimaiztion, as no isntace in teh cycle would teh outcome after teh big bang be exactly the same, then the fact that life occured on earth in this cycle does not meant that life would exist here again in the next... for that matter... the mere existance of life on earth could be deemed a miricale, by relgion, fluke by science, and whatever by the cycle. So at that case it would be fair to assume (knowing that it makes an ass outta you and me) that God must exist....



THEORETICALLY of course

What the fuck is that?!?!?!? :o...................EMU.......!!!!!

Conservation or Conversion..................... ???

Moving on.................

..............anyone smell that????...........smells like someone got burned...........

NO NO NO..........I'm not talking about Prom you idiots......I'm talking about pilferk.............. : ok:

Fine, theoretically, based on demonstrable physics, assuming "The Big Bang" is, in fact, the correct theory about the creation of the universe.  The theory itself is irrelavent...it's the observation of the phenomena that occurs during energy transference/expenditure that is important.  There is a definitive point where energy begins transferrence and ends transferrence to the surrounding environment.

Take a Tuning fork, bang it against your desk (exert force).  It will begin vibrating (transferring energy into the environment around it), and it will end vibrating (once all energy is transferred).  Same situation.  There was a period between those two events.  That's demonstrable time.

1) It's the most widely held scientific theory about the creation of the universe.  I didn't think I needed to preface my point with that....since the validity of the theory, itself, is irrelevant.  You can demonstrate the same points using a tuning fork and your desk.

2) "The statement that the "when the energy of that "explosion" has been used, the universe will begin to contract." is flawed as if the engery could be used it it would contradict physics, making it seem that engery can be destroyed, as we all know "engery can not be created or destroyed, it can only be treanformed" (Law of consveration of engery)."

Correct, I have having a "senior moment' when I  used the word "used".  I was hunting for a better word, had it on the tip of my "finger", so to speak, but couldn't come up with it.  The proper word should be "expended"..and yes, then it would be gravity performing the contraction.

3) You misunderstand.  I'm not saying that time is the cause of "The Big Bang" (that would be mass, energy, inertia, etc).  Rather, the Big Bang is a good demonstration of the fact that time exists.  From the begining of the "process", to the end of the "process" demonstrates the existance of time. If "time" didn't exist, there could be no begining, and no ending, to that process...or any process of energy transference/expenditure.

4) I'll completely leave the "god" conclusion alone.

Time only exists to mere mortals such as ourselves, who have but a finite lifespan.  Time does not exist to the universe.  It's been here forever, it extends forever, and it shall exist forever, hence, there is no time.  We are but mere specks of dust underneath the boots of the universe, we mean nothing in the big picture.

 but u just confirmed my point, however you came to a different conclusion.  If the cycle goes on....... then there is no "start" or "finish", its just a continuing cycle.. like the "water" cycle you can observe from any point after seeing it once to know the end result....... there fore "if" you can use teh theory to predict the ending of it then you already know what the begining would.."will" be and time is irrlivant.. that being said it would translate to time does not exist if the cycle can be predicted..... so if "big bang" is corect and "big crunch" is correct then time doesnot exist.

in theory of course

Sounds good to me.  Our concept of time is just a measure of relative duration between events of the physical world (like the tuning fork).   Without physical events, it is very difficult to formulate some notion of 'time'.  The question of whether one is the cause of the other is also equally difficult to answer.

Your point about the big bang though... I just want to say that it may be a widely accepted theory, but it is still just a theory.  I am pretty sure that in all college courses covering relativity, one of the first things you learn is how the widely accepted theory of the existence of 'ether' was proven to be false!  

The infamous Michelson-Morley experiment showed that there was no ether, thus leading to Lorentz and a dude named Einstein formulating a new theory: there is no absolute reference frame.  The relative time between two events depends on the observer's reference frame.  

Time is such a fluid, slippery concept.  I dont know about you, but that leaves me feeling giddy!

iN SHORT JARMO IM GOING TO BLOW UP THE BOARD!!!!!!!!!

IT ATE ANOTHER HUGE POST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow..you all talk a lot of crap.  I mean...you seem to believe your own bullshit about "time is a concept" and "we pass through it so it doesn't exist" and ...seriously...what the fuck are you talking about?

I just wrote this post.  Yesterday, I hadn't written it.  It's really quite simple.

My birth and my first birthday didn't happen at the same point.  They happened at different points.  Some other stuff happened in the middle.  Time went by.

Wow... we seem to have run the gamut in responses to this thread.  On one end we have:


No proof, no supporting argument.  Apparently AxlRocks_MyWorld has the word of God...

And then we've got Miz telling us how crappy everyone is:

Actually, I was making the case for its existence, not against....   ::)  All of my posts have attempted to do that from different angles.  



But look at what he did.  He defined time in terms of physical events, in other words, change.  Sound familiar?   :yes:  Almost everyone here has done that.  It is the most natural definition of time.  

Did you try to quantify how much time went by between your birth and the present day?   That's where it becomes a fluid concept.  If you dont believe in prevailing scientific theories about relativity, then dont worry about it.  

But to one observer you might be 21 years old, to another you might only be 15 years old.  Time is not so cut and dry as you might believe.  

We have tried to prove or disprove its existence using the physical world of matter.  But, as has been said before by myself and others, if you remove all sources of events, does time exist?  

That's where you enter the realm of philosophy which is where I make my exit.  : ok:

Don't mind Miz...........back on the 28th he never had his tea and crumpets........ :D...........

I don't think Axl believes in time.  Go's on late all the time and yet still no album.  

I didn't say that it appears to everyone and everything the same.  It doesn't.  I said it existed.  Which it does.

A person I know was in a motorcycle accident. Was touch in go for 4 weeks, during this time he can remember being awake for about 15 mins from the accident till he pulled through. As far as he was concerned maybe 2 days had gone by. A week at most, yet it was 4 weeks. Without events time has no "mass", without an observer for those events have no "mass", which would mean that time has no mass until there was an observer, therefore without people. There would be no time, as it is a concept of the mind. And the perceptions, by the mind, of time passing can be altered and influenced. Here?s an experiment for you;

Take 3 babies; put them in 3 separate rooms. Room/baby 1 will be called room A; r/b 2 = Room B; and r/b 3 = Room C

Room A is the control baby

Room B will make everything 3 times faster then the control room (sound, sight, feeding, and time passage)

Room C will make things 3 times slower then the control room (sound, sight, feeding, and time passage)


You have the "time" to do the experiment for 30yrs and then record your results.


What would you see? Control would be like us.. same perceptions of time as us, B would have a hard time communicating with us as he would talk faster and do everything based on a shorter time relative to control, though it would still be a 24h day. Subsequently distance measurements would be increased to accommodate the change in the passage of time. And the opposite would be true for Room C.

"We are only a Burdon of our concept of time"

Yeah, so each baby would percieve things differently.  But time would still exist.

And for your friend...being unconscious kinda hindered his ability to percieve anything...but time still passed...his wounds healed.

See what you're talking about is how people percieve time...not whether it exists or not, which was you're question.

Actualy Miz if you read "everything" you would have noticed that im pretty much on the fence with it, and that i think it was my first post i sad that "Time si a man made concept, which is refering to our understanding and measurement of it." thats the jist of my first post about it .


WEll its not my first post its the 2nd or 3rd but here is an excert


 that is why preception is such a important aspect to this question, as i said to random;




ill give this one a shot for ya Miz... dont know if you'll follow or not, however i shall try. Take an alien, that lives for ever, has no concept of time as we know it, it simply "is". its mind is so open that it can "exist" at any event in it s past or future all the time. The best explaination of what space and time actually are is given in the Critique of Pure Reason.  Briefly put, space and time are the a priori forms of our intuition.

Intuition, for Kant, is not just a gut feel (e.g. woman's intuition). Rather, it is the way our minds interact with that which is real apart from
us: numenon.  Space and time are a priori in that they come first; they are an inherent part of the human mind.

Numenon is that which exists as itself, apart from us.  To use language from later philosophy, its things-in-themselves.  We do not live in a world of numenon; we live in a world of phenomenon.

Phenomenon is the interface between mind and numenon.  It is defined both by that which exists apart from humans and by the human mind.  For Kant, space and time do not exist apart from us.  One of the great usages of this, at the time, was to better explore causality.  He countered the "uncaused cause" proof of God's existence by defining causality as part of the human mind's ordering.  Apart from our minds, things simply are.  It is us who orders them in space and time, and arranges them with causal links.

What is neat about this worldview, is that it has a better explanation of why we are surprised than does idealism.  After all, if one is an idealist, and phenomenon is simply the shadows of our own mind, then why should we ever be surprised?  But, if phenomenon is also dependant on that which exists apart from human minds, then surprises can be expected.

Indeed, this gives a very good place to stand when trying to understand QM. If electrons don't exist apart from the human mind, then it isn't surprising that their properties don't exist apart from observation.

oh and Random some of this is for u in that "blow up board psot" i made above


BTW there are excerts from another discussion that i had about this with another person this is not all my work

Ok, so you're alien can just pick a point from it's memory and go back there and watch what went by as if it was there?  Is that what you're saying?  Because...people can do that.
This alien must grow from something, and in order to grow time must pass.  It can't just exist...unless you are implying that it predated the big bang, or in fact that the big bang theory is wrong.

I'm not 100% sure what you meant about the alien "existing" at any point, but unless you are suggesting that it can actually alter things that happened then it does nothing to disprove that time exists, it is just a different interpretation of it.

You could however have meant that it's a superior being and can travel through space and time at will...in which case i'm not gonna bother trying to reply because i'm not a quantum physicist and my IQ isn't high enough to get into an in depth discussion about time travel.


The rest of your post didn't seem to have much direction.  It seemed like you're  saying things just appear the way they are, but they're not necessarily like that?
I dunno...

ahh Miz you think so 3D, so stuck that only entnies with bodies can be alive. Perhaps this alien is engery based?

As for teh "exist" at any point, that would have to employ that it can not alter jsut simply exist.


as for everythign else im bored.. some school our IQ challenged friend for me

:)

So time does not exist since there are propably 1, 2, 4 or more, but not 3 dimensional energy based aliens?

The thing is that, well, we (as a race - humans) do live in a 3 dimensional world, and that pretty much goes for all the trees, buildings, tables and your average random planet you may choose. And we (again - humans) and animals too, view the world in 3D. Now as a part of this handicapped 3D world, there is time. It can not be seen, just as you can not see any other dimension by itself - hell even 2 dimensions can get lost if you just happen to be at a funny angle. Maybe, in another universe, or at some other higher enrgy levels where these 2 dimensional aliens live, there is no time. And once you try and make contact with these supreme beings you go to the higher energylevels only to notice that you simply can't come back because, well that would require time. And boy would that person be embarrased if only he could, but even then.. Even then we (the 3D handicapped people) still have to deal with the crappy fact that we will eventually die.

The only question that remains is that when I do die, do I get to go and live with my 1 dimensional alien friends for all eternity (or whatever it is that they call it where they're from)??

I recommend Steven Weinberg's book "The first three minutes". It doesn't have all that many aliens if I remember correctly, but he does have some good ideas (even won a nobel for some of them).

And this post is not to insult anyone or anyone's view of it all. It's just to say that even though I, or anyone for that matter can say what is everything, where it's coming from or where it is going, the way  we see this world, will - for some time, have the concept and abstract of time in it.

OK not to be an ass. but... is it only me that has seen teh damn thread grow beyond its orgional purpose to a point of preception and proving weather or not ime exists ahs become irrlivant and we are all saying that it exists and that only preception is what changes. and that time is a man made concept...


*walks a way shaking head*

now we all know that length, width and depth are man-made concepts also and not real, therefore no dimensions exist in the real world

couldnt resist prom lol

sometimes you can be a real dick "Q"


LOL

how about making everyone into a Q for a day?? please

i like it real, any other way wouldnt have the same feel lol

hmmm a Q nooo, we are out of Q's, how about Neelix?

"There is no time to argue about time, we don't have the time"

bump

welcome back mister prometheus, we've...missed you lol

its been a long time hasnt it :P

haha.... got sick of watching teh same shit without me yelling.. lol   soooooooo i had to come back and drive the masses to the end of days.......LOL

I think you are talking about weather and seasons, even though, I can tell you if you live for a month in the ARTIC you'll probably know that 6 month you can watch the sun and the other 6 month you are in the dark, so the only thing to meassure month, years and stuff like that is time, yes it was created by us to be a little more "responsable" and be in control.  :peace:

so heres your starter question for 10

if time didnt exist, would every atom stay in exactly the same place?

Ok I'm shit at this stuff? but anyway here's a guesse:

No, atoms would still be able to move through space but not time

 :smoking: Izzy? :smoking:

by the simple method of moving would imply some type of underling existance in time, for without being able to measure the amount of movement based on any scale we know they cant move.... atoms in a solid form tend to resonate where they vibrate at a certain frequancey.  and the same is true for all atoms though in the diferent states they tend to move over greater distance and such. Now where freq. is a time measurement then time would have to exist... or nothing could move and the universe could not exist.

 :o I need A Whisky!! What's with time anyway?, people need time or just an excuse tu justify our urgencies of inmediate preceadures?  ???

Isn't it possible for an atom to exist at two different places at once? So with zero passage of time the atom has effectively 'moved'.

Depends if you treat the atom as a localized point particle, or a de Brogli wave (that exist throughout space) - those physicists are sneaky  :hihi:

You made me think about 'electron clouds' around the nucleus of an atom - that cloud describes the probability distribution of where the electron could be.  So yeah, they're basically saying the little electron can exist here,  or here, or here, or over there (but with different probabilities for each location).

It's amazing anything gets done in science with such uncertainty.  :hihi:

Have any of you read 'Pastwatch' by Orson Scott Card?  It's sci-fi mixed with a little bit of history and some meddling with  Father Time.  It was a good story.

science orders the chaos around us :P

de Brogli? wasnt that a character in Jungle Book?..way over my head these answers so ill just nod and say hmmmmm

OSC.... hmmm did the main character ahppen to be alvin or ender did it or some combination of teh two?... LOL.... OSC hahaha

There is actually people here who think time is a man made concept?? So according to that theory, if all the clocks were broken, time would stop? Gimme a break! I think time is basically a dimension in itself. It has always existed and always will. If the world were to end tommorow, time would still move forward. As scientists are able to look further and further out into space, maybe some of the questions about time can be answered. One question I would like answered is, Did time exist before the Big Bang?

remember that time and movement and dimension are what we perceive...all dimensions are man made concepts...remember width height and depth are only there for us to explain the existence of everything around us, who says it should be measured at right angles?

its called the observer effect.... once something is observered it is changed and the observer becomes part of what it observes.

no time didnt exist within our universe prior to the big bang as the universe did not yet exist. and nothing could exist within the pre "big bang" , nor at teh instant that it occured, so time could not be observed so it could not exist.

time is not a man made concept but is a interpertation in the accepted view of man is a man made concept, as we have no other way to view time then by our own preceptions/interpertations then time to us can only exist in that manner. Do not forget that time measurement has changed over teh course of human existance, because our preception and interpertation of how it was to be measure also changed

mowgli de Broglie - that should be a good name for a pet  :rofl:

I'll try to explain because science is no good if it's sitting bottled up in academia.  But if I get too boring, just tell me to stop  :hihi:


So, let's start with light.  Young showed that light can create interference patterns (patterns of dark & light regions) - but only waves do that!   With a wave, you have the concept of peaks (light regions) and troughs (dark regions), wavelength, and frequency, and here was light behaving in this manner.  So people said if light acts like a wave, then it must be a wave. 

But then Einsten did a different type of experiment in which he used light to eject electrons from a metal surface.  A higher intensity of light should knock off more electrons that a lower intensity light, correct?  The light is essentially tranferring some energy to the metal's electrons which ionizes them.  The problem was, the light's frequency (number of cycles per second) was having an effect on the electrons.  That's not explained by waves because the energy of a wave is from its amplitude (intensity).  Something else was going on.  So he proposed that light consisted of little packets called photons and their energy was related to their frequency.  This explained the results!

So which is it?  It depends on what you do to light.  If you set up Young's experiment and then used that light to do Einstein's experiment, you'll be forced to conclude that it is both a localized particle and non-localized wave.  Does that sound messed up?  It's our only explanation of light  :peace:

So what about matter?  things that have mass, like an atom or an electron.  People were trying to explain the line spectra emitted from different atoms when you ionize its electrons.  Why did the atom emit light only at specific, discrete wavelengths?  Something was constraining the electrons, and therefore the emitted light.  De Brogli proposed: what if we think of the electron as being a circular wave existing all around the atom instead of a tiny point particle revolving around the nucleus.  Basically, let's treat the electron as a wave, and bring in the idea of wavelength.  Why?  Because this is the constraint on the electron!  It can only exist if its wavelength is such that it 'fits' - like imagine placing rings of different diameter on your fingers.  Depending on which finger, some rings will fit, others wont.   So here, we have matter behaving like a wave!   At the level of atoms and electrons, it's easy to observe this wave behavior.  We say that all matter has wavelike properties, but it is too tiny to measure for things ordinary size like an apple or something.


Basically, they observed something and tried to come up with an explanation that fits.  Even if the explanation was completely crazy, if it fits the observations, then use it to estimate other things.  If our estimate agrees with Nature, then we're confident with the explanation.  But that brings up the thorny question:  does it really exist like that or is it just a trick to make things work?  Would an alien with extra senses/perception come up with the same explanation? 

Which brings me to time - in Slaughterhouse Five by Vonnegut, there are aliens who can 'see' time the way we can see space.  They can see it as if you unrolled a map and laid it flat on the table.  But us primitive beings are forced to measure time by essentially counting, and using real-life events as markers.  We almost start thinking of the ticks & markers as being time itself.  Something funny happens to these ticks & markers when you travel close to the speed of light - but I better leave that for another post.

random fact of the day:  People usually think of scientists as being dry & boring, but Schroedinger was a notorious sex fiend  ;D

And once forth the joketh came:


Dr. Heisenberg is driving along when he's stopped by a policeman.

Policeman: "Do you know how fast you were going?"

Dr. Heisenberg: "No, but I know where I am!"



And the people did rejoice, with much ho-ho-ness all around.

random.. you always get em hot when you talk about science this and that...... soooo wanna make out?....  :love:

random no longer loves me.....  :'(

you've been a terrible lover.

but you can redeem yourself if you woo me with a romantic passage from The Physics of Star Trek - preferably related to time travel, of course.

Have you ever encountered a visitor from the future?

Im so sorry my love that i ws not more concerned with your needs.... I was so selfish.... please forgive me

well in my attempt to woo you back to me shall strike upon the voyager (as enterprise... well id have to stay here all day typing) episode called     which is the series finale, and future janeway travels back through time and space to up tech the ship with advanced weapons and sheilding. She was inleague with a Kilingon who had developed a time machine powered by nadeion particles. The reactor it self somehow creates a vortex in space and time using neutrino's and tachyons. the vortex tears a hole through subspace altering a specifed area at teh point of orgion and destination to exist in a stae of flux causing them to exist in 2 places at once. once through an inverse nadeon beam is required to disrupt the vortex and reset both areas back to their normal parameters. Residual radtion for the process can damage organic cells to a very large degree so you must use a special antiradtion medcine that has been developed by StarFleet medical, though the radtion its self will disapate rather quickly usually leaving teh system winthin minutes.


is that waht you were looking for my love?