Time organizes the universe into an ordered series of moments

Or as Ray Cummings pithily put it, in The Girl in the Golden Atom, time is “what keeps everything from happening at once.”

Then its a day, and the holy sun emerged to roll back the mists..

Couldn’t time be emergent from motion? If all motion stopped, what would “time” be? Then again, it seems a chicken/egg scenario. For motion you need space. But time is just another dimension…

“A lifespan is a billion heartbeats” is true for mammals other than humans. We typically reach a billion heartbeats sometime around our mid-twenties; roughly 3 billion heartbeats for a life span of 75 to 80 years.

I’ve always (since about the age of 15) defined Time as “the length of space in which it takes to do something.”

In a nutshell, if you take a “thing” that has absolutely no motion/activity/action/etc. Even the electrons in the atoms that make it up are not moving, does time exist for it? The (theoretical answer) is “No”, because if nothing happens, then it has no way of measuring that anything has changed, and if nothing changes, there is no (subjective) time.

To an outside observer, time would have passed….but if there are no outside observers then all is encompassed within a non-active state, and therefore there is nothing to compare the difference in location to…thus, nothing happened, including the passage of time.

Just my thoughts…which to this day (25+ years) still makes sense to me.

–Kevin.

” The past and future are equally real” – in a classical deterministic universe, and just maybe if the many worlds idea is true, but no. An “emitter” produces a wavefunction that expands out and then either a collapse occurs or else you believe all of the absorptions really happen (which, despite beggiing off, really does violate conservation laws.) Can you really imagine that running backwards, toward that single emitting point?

“every event in the past and future is implicit in the current moment” — My impression was that the Determinists hadn’t won the argument *quite* yet… surely, while people are still arguing about how to interpret wavefunction collapse, there’s still room for some randomness?

Would love to know if the talks of this conference will be posted online? Also, the other conference attendees might have posted blogs of their own about their take-away from the conference? If you know of any such blogs, it’d be amazing if you could post their links here. Thanks!

Humans must not fit into that 1.5 billion heartbeats. Our lifespans have going from 30 to 80 years so unless our hearts were beating a lot faster back then (maybe when we were outrunning tigers) it clearly isn’t as simple as you made it seem.

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH HATS????!!

“The past and future are equally real. This isn’t completely accepted, but it should be. Intuitively we think that the “now” is real, while the past is fixed and in the books, and the future hasn’t yet occurred. But physics teaches us something remarkable: every event in the past and future is implicit in the current moment. ”

So you’re saying the future too is fixed and in the books, and that this should be completely accepted. Given the implications for commonsense notions of human freedom and dignity, it’s unlikely this will ever come to pass, but I appreciate your advocacy.

Que?

We used to think that “temperature” was a basic category of nature, but now we know it emerges from the motion of atoms.

Same for time, no? You said as much in your #3:

Einstein came along and explained that how much time elapses for a person depends on how they travel through space (especially near the speed of light) as well as the gravitational field (especially if its near a black hole).

Or, as a layman, am I missing some nuance or other (i.e., “we’ll need to understand quantum gravity much better before we can say for sure.”)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vY_Ry8J_jdw
One thing everyone should know about time.

Imagine a one point particle universe. Just one stable particle. If true, then:
– motion and location are meaningless
– no time because no change
In other words, time is born from change. No change. No time.

My thought experiment is far out, I know. But does it say something about whether “time” is more a consequence of other things than it is a fundamental thing itself?

How to square increasing entropy – which says there is an arrow to time, pointing only one way, with all the physics/cosmological equations which say that time does not have an arrow? Have I fundamentally misunderstood something – or do we have a paradox?

I don’t need to live forever. I just need to live long enough that I can live long enough to live forever.

Each time they figure out how to expand our lifespans I’ll be around to get in on it, heh.

I gotta say — what esp. struck me here is that time is THE most used noun in English??! Whoa! Interesting, and a quick check reveals you’re essentially right , as long as pronouns etc. are discounted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_common_words_in_English

But isn’t that fascinating also — it’s only the 55th most common word at all! Apparently, we use verbs, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions and whatever else a heckuva lot more than nouns.. hmmm..

In fact, you may like this too — there are very few nouns at all in the top 100, and 2 of the others are time-related as well: “year” and “day”..!

Thx, otherwise also interesting post!
-M

derp

#11) Timekeeping, not time per se: Time-of-day has always been synchronized to the natural rhythms of Earth rotation. The Radiocommunication Assembly of the International Telecommunication Union will vote in Geneva in January 2012 whether to permanently disconnect all clocks on the planet from the rotation of the Earth. (http://futureofutc.org/)

I happen to know the Guy who created Time. Invented it you might say. To Him, the beginning is as fresh as this moment right now. Even from this point in time, He can see our distant future. We can learn much from Him, if we will only pay attention. Not a technical discussion, but an interesting and beneficial one for us.

@Lazy B
Getting the heart rate up during aerobic exercise serves to strengthen the heart so that it beats SLOWER while not exercising (which is most of the time). The net effect is fewer heartbeats per day.

Excellent article!

On the biological/sociological aspect, you might find this interesting (though not physics related at all): http://bit.ly/olEXeT [youTube]

I would add that we build our image of reality based on a finite number of events.

The last I recall, there was an effort to reconcile quantum indeterminism with the appearance of reality we see everyday by a method called “sum over histories.” They wanted to use the concept of decoherence I think. Reading as carefully as I could, I believe they discovered that the past was just as indeterminate as the future. Which if you think about it, seems a perfectly natural consequence of the past and future being indistinguishable on a quantum level. If both past and future are indeterminate, in what sense are they real?

I am not a physicist, but physics questions and “theories” are all over my mind, mostly from a philosophical perspective. Lately I have this persistent idea that time is “merely” an illusion, just another part of this whole illusion that we call “reality” as Einstein points out. Therefore I am believing that all of the time pieces are actually happening at the same “time” which complies with #2 (The past and future are equally real), it is just our “consciousness” and the illusion it is being effected by that make us believe that past is gone and future is yet to come, but actually everything is just there happening all at once.

How does every living thing only get 1.5 billion heartbeats? Doesn’t our heart beat faster than once per second? If resting heartrate is around 70 beats a minute, the answer is yes. When we’re babies/children out hearts beat even faster. Well 1.5 billion seconds is equal to roughly 48 years. The math doesn’t add up for humans.

Is it not an oft-used lie that entropy and disorder are the same thing? Entropy is about energy distribution, not what looks neat to human brains. A ‘disordered’ (messy) room with clothes strewn about does not have access to any more or less energy states than an ordered room. Or if you have some ice cubes floating in a bowl of water, ‘order’ increases as the entire system becomes liquid water, but entropy increases as well.

Time (na na, nana na)
Time is time (na na, nana na)
Labadab dab dab time (na na, nana na)
Tiiiiiiiime! (na na, nana na)

“if reality were completeLY different from moment to moment. ”

I’m quoting, with attribution to you, these points in a science fiction short story, “Time Is Out of Joint.” I try to tie in the recent arXiv paper Joel Hamkins’ The set-theoretic multiverse. I posted a lovely quote from that paper on your Facebook wall.

I’ve taught half a dozen times a 1-week college level adult education course on Time Travel that uses Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics, and Science Fiction (ISBN 9780387985718) by Paul J. Nahin as de facto textbook.

Of course, my understanding of Time is influenced by our mutual friend Kip Thorne, and my co-authors Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Robert Heinlein. Ideas that fall short of working, equationally, and would likely not get past a referee, are still grist for the fiction mill. I’ve been paid a number of times for rather goofy Time Travel stories.

I can email you the complete draft of the story when done, to ensure that I have your permission.

@Stefen re: #9 – I won’t go willingly, there is more than enough space for us and every future human generation in this universe. In fact, we better keep and create every human we can. The problem is that we as humans are too focused on staying at home. We spend our money and energy on competing for resources and tribal domination, when the human race should be trying to expand beyond this planet. Take life with us and continue to fill the universe, there is no room for decay and death, what a waste.

I think the problem with time is that we think in terms of the present as moving from one event to the next, but the only reality we perceive is the present and it’s the changing configuration of this present that turns future potential into past circumstance. . So it isn’t the present which moves from past to future, but the events which go from future to past. The earth doesn’t travel the fourth dimension from yesterday to tomorrow. tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates. Reality doesn’t break into different worldlines with every quantum indetermination. It’s the collapse of future possibilities which creates past events. Time isn’t a vector, it’s a process.

As described by Sean Carroll in “From Eternity To Here”, time IS a coordinate in space-time. The snapshot of the Universe at 6pm today is different than the snap shot of the Universe at 9pm tonight. Your GPS may say you are in the same spot at both of those times, but the Universe would have changed around you, and that new TimeSegment you are in has a different coordinate in the SpaceTime Universe. As I understand…. So, disappointing, time may not be anything other than the observation of change, including entropy. Nothing magical about that. Shucks. I wonder if we could hold an absolute position relative to an unknown point of reference, would time stop (for us). I guess to do that we would have to stop time. It becomes circular.

After reading all the posts I have concluded that time ends when I die.

Instant Inspiration Translation

When the benefit of goodness translates to the over-bounding plusness of allgetting for the many we are all applause for the cause of clapping as gazing around to find cheek lifting smile style for long while when electronic audio party favors arrive in many flavors so joy juice flows throng grows in expansive trance dance eye glance round n round as bones jump to sonic shoe shuffle song mix tricks transfix clusters of crazy cats toast the most vibe ripe trip hop candy shop score store street smart instant art at the start beyond description sans prescription where sparks sizzle between synaptic snaps as the whole house hangs high above the sky born to fly from here to beyond the margins of any man made map fades into the ether place is then revealed upon your face we let loose the sticky strings which tie us to many things and drift away from gravity and it’s a gas as we become unglued from the get more moods heavy condition we evoke our own rendition via the collective minds ignition of sweet cognition so it’s there we all begin to share the aspect of our eternal travels and the thin mystery of moment unravels to reveal what’s really real as mystic events peal away the layers of paper lies from our naked eyes where time terminates ticks n tocks we step across the invisible line as easy as slipping into the soft abyss of bliss where that, becomes… this!

© 2010 • D.L. Nelson Ironworks Publishing & Focus Fine Arts®

First, every event in the past and future is implicit in the current moment therefore they are equally real? That is no physics I have ever heard of. What is implicit in the current moment is that there is a direction of time; the arrow of time. It says that because the current moment is the result of the past changes, so will some future specific moment be the culmination of its past events.
The only way that the future is implicit now is that there is no now without a future. In no way at all do future events specifically affect the present moment!! It only means that time hasn’t stopped now, FFS. Three days from now, or three billion years, our universe might cease to exist in the way it does now, perhaps a collision with some other part of the multiverse, or the sudden, spontaneous decay of gravitons into zigzag and corkscrew (flavors, like gluons’) anti-boson pairs, or whatever, we have no idea of how reality crumbles, yet it might or might not. This changes nothing about our present characteristics of reality, we only know that right now, we are in the future of the past and the past of the future, LOL. Having a future allows our present existence, nothing more, nothing less. Don’t give me specific future events crap. There is no physical theory that predicts, let alone concludes, a determinate future, let alone a future that determines or influences its past. The future is indeterminate, as any wave functin wil show you.
Finally, time can exist without matter or energy(they’re the same, Craig), but matter cannot exist without time, for matter is only defined by interaction which is exchange of energy ie change.

@craig#58: Time, energy, physical existence, is not subjective, okay? Energy and matter are equivalent, not two different and separate states that have different physical laws. Matter is ‘experienced’ so is also subjective by your reasoning. Kinetic energy can be ‘released’, from potential energy, and a coiled spring can uncoil, or an atom can fission, without anyone experiencing it, even without anything experiencing it.
Saying that energy is the container of time is a non sequitor. Arbitrarily assigning a perception as subjective is meaningless, because what you mean, I think, is not ‘subjective’ but ‘experiential.’ We experience time(change), matter(inertia), and energy(work), but so does everything – albeit not consciously. All you have done is say that a tree doesn’t make any noise when it falls if no one hears it.
You also said, “and no exterior phenomena as a frame of reference, there can be no space.” How do you know? A sphere has volume, doesn’t it? That is space. If the universe has so decayed(entropy) and expansion has accelerated past the speed of light, then fundamental particles will have no way of interacting and therefore determining spin or anything else, does this mean that time and space have ceased to exist? That the particle suddenly ceases to exist? That expansion ceases to happen/exist? That zero point energy ceases to exist, suddenly?
No. Space cannot exist without time, nor time without space, for without space, there is nothing to change, move, decay, whatever, and without time, space does not have duration, a period in which to exist.

As far as I can tell, this is unresolvable using pure reason without making assumptions(which is my assumption!). Space and time are co-fundamental(lol wut?), or fundamental properties of each other. Obviously, I am just inelegantly restating that we exist in a four dimensional time-space continuum.

I just hope we don’t spontaneously cease to exist before I hit the submit button so someone can set me straight =]

I have often thought of time as an invention for our convenience, a construct used to mark units in terms of years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds (nano included). We even mark the passing of time with birthdays, anniversaries, celebrations, and history. In the natural world, we are governed by seasons, the movements of the earth and the planets, the sun and the moon, and the indigenous peoples were much more in sync without watches and clocks and calendars. That said, I like these ten descriptions and movements and being part of them, and whenever possible, merging past, present and future into one great experience.

somewhere between too little and too much is something worth pursuing, somewhere we are going….never to arrive

Check out “Nothing is Random” by Mark Helprin, an excerpt from his book the Winter’s Tale. It may not be true about time, but it’s stuck in my mind for many years…

Re. “…why was entropy low near the Big Bang…?”

I am puzzled by the idea that there is a problem here, because in a strong sense, entropy was also nearly maximal.

As I understand it, most of the important physical degrees of freedom were near equilibrium at an early, pre-nucleosynthesis stage of the Big Bang expansion (disequilibrium was largely confined to weakly coupled degrees of freedom). Thus, the early universe was — given its volume — near its maximal entropy with respect to the physical interactions of interest to biologists and astrophysicists.

Expansion of the universe, by expanding the available configuration space for matter, increases the potential maximal entropy of its contents. Thus, expansion allows entropy to increase relative to what had been a state of lower, and yet maximal, entropy.

Viewing this from a thermodynamic perspective, the expansion provides us an ever-increasing volume of ever-cooler vacuum to use as a heat sink.

So, given the expansion of space, I don’t see how the increasing entropy of the universe per se poses an additional problem. The problem of the homogeneity of the early universe is a puzzle involving a surprisingly degree of equilibrium, that is to say, a problem of surprisingly high, not low, entropy.

Am I missing something here?

Time is a human construct and nothing more. It’s real in the way we use it, to measure events, to order our lives, etc… but other than that time doesn’t exist in nature, in the universe, and even at the quantum level. We perceive the idea of time as the progression of natural phenomenon, but at the fundamental level there is no time. There is nothing in nature that says after so many pulses of a cesium atom (a crude definition how we define a second) that a cell should split or an atom should decay or even that a light wave should travel (x) amount of distance. Everything in nature, even down at the quantum level works in either cycles or happens because of interaction with something else. Because of this and because of how we have defined time in our human lives it appears as if nature does work by a clock, but once you really understand time as we define it, then you can see that time is truly relative and because of that, fundamental time does not exist.

Think of it like this. The speed of light is considered fundamental and unbreakable but as we define it, the speed of light is 299 792 458 m / s. What if we chose to define the length of a second differently? Then the second would either be longer or shorter and thus the speed of light would be different. You see time is completely relative and has no real fundamental connection.

Time is merely what we use to create order out of our lives and/or chaotic systems we don’t fully understand.

Just heard Sean on the TV program “Through the Wormhole” asserting that the direction of time is related to the ongoing increase in entropy since the beginnings of the universe. I’m a layman, not a physicist, but I challenge the notion that entropy (as it was defined, meaning more and more disorganization) has increased since the beginning. What greater chaos could there be than the soup of particles immediately after the Big Bang. Over the eons, these primary particles have organized themselves into galaxies and stars, complex atoms and molecules, and planets like ours (I presume we’re not unique) rich with weather patterns, geologic structures and even, in our case, life. Humans continue to create increasingly organized societies and ever more sophisticated buildings, cars and electronic devices, among many other things. This is increasing entropy??? Yes, the energy driving all this may eventually dissipate, but I would guess that the chart of the universe’s overall entropy is still trending down and has not yet hit its trough. And, again as a layman, I suspect that this energy may ultimately be conserved, with “spent” matter coalescing into massive forms that re-explode or re-convert matter back into new cycles of energy, leading to new types of physical order. Let’s speculate about time in some way other than linking it to this alleged entropy increase.

Mikmik #86 seems in my view to have it about correct. Absolutists will continue to adhere to a linear description of their universal precepts. I am late to this discussion, but believe anyone interested in this topic might be rewarded by a look at fractals and chaos theory.
We may like the concept of past and future, but Augustine of Hippo stated over 1600 years ago that neither exist. The past once was present, but is gone now and cannot be retrieved (only partically and poorly recreated by memory) and the future is not here yet and cannot be known. That leaves the present, which in quantum theory, is a duration of 10^-43rd seconds (for those who like the exactness of counting). Quantification of the successive “nows” by clocks of various types does nothing to answer the more fundamental metaphysical question: What is Time?
I suspect that thinking of Time as a fourth dimension only muddles the consideration. Ditto the stuff about psychological experience of time (age of perciever; pain vs. pleasure, et. al.).
Physics is not sufficiently philosophically inclined to help my understanding of this Meta-concept.

Brain fart in post #55: It’s consistent histories approach, not sum over histories approach. Consistent histories cannot find a determinate past any more than it can find a determinate future. Again, this is to be expected as it seems to be consistent with the reversibility of the equations of fundamental interactions. This also seems to be inconsistent with the block theory of spacetime Prof. Carroll seems to telling us is the prevailing opinion of the conference members. But this too is to be expected since no one, so far as I know, has explained how mundane reality is to be reconciled with universal quantum entanglement originating in the Big Bang.

It seems a little odd that a cosmologist would opt for entropy as cause for emergence of time. I would have thought that expansion of the universe would be their first thought.

Total chaos is low entropy. I think a simple explanation could go like this: Since every part of chaos is indistinguishable from another, there are no parts to arrange in different patterns. Essentially, there is one universal hodgepodge. Entropy is the tendency to increase the number of ways the parts of a system can be arranged. (This approach tries to relate entropy to Kolmogorov complexity. Which may be a gross amateur error, but I think is the standard view.)

i think time is related to our weird ability to have memory. imagine if you have no memory, then there would be no way to say if things move or not, i.e. we could not compare. world would seem totally different then

Sean,

Can you express these ideas in terms of cubes?

;^)

The Stillness Before Time
http://www.thestillnessbeforetime.com/

There is really only one Way.
It is without division or boundary.
It is without name or theology.
Awareness is its scripture,
Here now its venue,
You its witness,
Your life the journey.

* * * *
There has ever been now,
Will ever be now,
Is ever now.
Never has there been any time
Other than now.

* * * *
The manifest dance is timeless, momentary, eternal.
A reverie without beginning, without end,
Without cause, purpose or meaning,
Neither definable or explicable,
For it is beyond all rational appearances.
It can never be known, comprehended or understood
Except in the most roundabout, circumspect, fluid, abstract ways.
And in that which is intuited there is no gain or reward,
One simply wanders spontaneously free,
Whatever the course.

* * * *
All mythos, all sense of time and history,
Is the make-believe of adults.

Some of the statements which people have made appear wrong or unwise to me. Time is a product–or more accurately perception–of mind. Time does not “exist” independent of mind. Unless there is mind to perceive time, there is no time.

Does anyone remember that line from the song — “time keeps on slippin’. slippin’, slippin’ into the future.” that’s what came to my mind…. maybe not relevant but funny what you think of when you read an article like this….

Before you buy into the “time” story try reading Julian Barbour’s “The End of Time”. You can also go on his website http://www.platonia.com/ideas.html.

The book really puts a twist in the conventional understanding of reality and time.

I love how people keep asking the author, Sean, questions, yet he dasn’t deign to reply. Maybe, in time, he will reply. Pun most thoroughly intended.

Wind is not moving. Flag is not moving. Mind is moving.

If the future is as real as the past, then free will must be an illusion. Cool. I can stop trying so hard now.

Time is the human attempt to measure the rate of decay of the universe; or measure the rate of evolution of the universe, to put it nicely.

> So you’re saying the future too is fixed and in the books, and that this should be completely accepted. Given the implications for commonsense notions of human freedom and dignity, it’s unlikely this will ever come to pass, but I appreciate your advocacy.

In a sense, the future is fixed; it just has not happened yet. We might not like that idea, but that does not make it false. Everything up until now has happened in exactly one way, and that is how time will continue to pass. It does not make our decisions any less valid. Just that things were bound to happen this way.

People like to think they are more important than they really are, and that we are in charge. They do not like to feel helpless or worthless. But this concept is not rooted in objective reality. If you think about all the complex processes that had to occur for millions of years for us to end up in this precise moment, well, to think “I control my own destiny!” is a comforting thought, but patently false.

I think you’re right,…. no, I’ve changed my mind. Time has passed between the two decisions without motion.

“Eyewitness testimony, it turns out, is one of the least reliable forms of evidence allowed into courtrooms.” – That’s an old chestnut that I’ve seen used only by those who are defending evolution in an evolutionist-creationist debate, specifically to justify calling a study a science when no one was present to record the events the study pretends to study. As it happens, the statement is, if not untrue, at least misleading. Direct evidence–including some forms of witness testimony–is more reliable than circumstantial evidence. The fact that one can monkey with witness memory does not discredit all eyewitness testimony. As usual, evolutionists are liars.

“Other than creationists, most people have no trouble appreciating the difference between ‘orderly’ (low entropy) and ‘complex.’” If that were true, there would not be much point in talking about it at a physics conference. But, as usual, evolutionists are liars. Speaking of which, what is with this fascination for bringing up evolutionist’s arguments at a conference on time?

You must have a lot of frauds going to Norway.

Aging related links:

http://www.thelivinlowcarbshow.com/shownotes/4190/478-evolutionary-biologist-michael-rose-on-achieving-biological-immortality-naturally/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/p00bg00v/

@CuriousTech – Not sight; touch. 80 ms is too long to react to either sound or sight. In 80 ms, a car traveling 30 mph travels about 40 inches (0.528 inches/ms). We might not be able to react that fast, but we might notice if something appears just 3 feet in front of us. So, our resolution of reality is finer than 80 ms. BTW, research has also concluded that humans have more than one signal processing pathway in the brain, one of which is much faster than the other. The faster pathway becomes active in highly dangerous situations, and involves much less signal processing than the slower pathway.

When I was a teenager, I once rode my moped along a road in a 55 mph zone. I made a left turn and heard tires screeching on the pavement behind me. I looked down and saw the front bumper of a dark green car with chrome trim about 3 feet from my left side. I estimated in that moment that the vehicle was traveling about 35 mph. I looked back up and felt the muscles in my right arm begin to constrict as I attempted to steer away from the car. Then, I found myself floating in space, in a bright, white light. All of that had to have taken place in little more than 80 ms.

“the past and future are equally real…”

Not scientifically proven. Not even remotely proven. Not even any legitimate scientific evidence for it.

Poor article.

Who said, “Time does not pass. We do.”? Nothing in the universe is stationary – isn’t that right? From the micro to the macro, all things, particles, objects, etc. are in motion. And motion, or sequences of events, of movement and motion, is what gives humans a ‘sense’ of passing time.

It’s about the wave function collapse, stupid!

I have trouble with Thing number seven, 7.

It would be hard to quantify the degree to which human consciousness and awareness are orderly; and this multiplied by all observers in the Universe.

In fact, I wouldn’t doubt that the total entropy of the Universe remains constant, at zero.

Not only do I find the possibility intriguing, that knowledge and awareness increase proportionally to the increasingly disordered motion of particles in the Universe -and therefore cancel, but the idea the Universe contains any implicit, measurable, or distinct quantity whatsoever, across its entire domain, to me is anathemous.

so until when I have to realize my goals in life?
can I beat time?
http://theregjoe.blogspot.com/2011/06/losing-time-or-losing-war-on-time.html

Time doesn’t exist, it’s an abstraction…. well it exist’s an abstraction, as an idea. It is not a thing. Show me the thing called time. Show me the empirical evidence of time. Scientists are evidence based when they have evidence, when not, they are as abstract as Terry Pratchet.

thanks everyone for this ‘STONE SOUP’ made of too much philosophical SEMANTICS for seasoning and not enough nutrition from LOGIC. Kuddos to #86 if opinions on this topic were trees in a forest you are barking up the right species. #107 also kuddos, I would guess your I.Q. is around 135 and your mental ability for abstract physics is above the 95th percentile. I invite you both to keep Plato in mind. I believe that his ‘ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE’ can get you to the right tree…. if you can see the enormous clue that he provides. Best Wishes…

I hate my life. I wish I could control time. I would fast forward the next 60 years and get this over with. It’s like I’m trapped here. This is all meaningless.

When you stop to think, don’t forget to start again

Aging is not simply a function of time. Progeria, the premature aging of children, makes them look age to 75-100 years old at age six to eight, clearly demonstrates that physical aging is based on something inherent in our physiology, not simply a function of time. Focusing on that will do more to slow or suspend aging than anything!

The Universe is in constant flux. The only constant is change. Re: #3 Time is merely our perception of this change. Regarding #7 The Big Bang represents contraction (Yin) and entropy is the expansion (Yang) mode.

Re: # 9 When we shift our awareness/consciousness in meditation (traditional, moving, sound, or laughter meditation) and time appears to “stand still” does our aging process stop? Is there a link between perceived time and longevity? Inquiring minds in the laughter field are inquiring…

@Tom 168, you say that “Physics in the 20th century was riddled with theories driven by mathematics that were not correct. We continue to suffer from that today.” OK fine. Just please don’t be hypocritical and use a computer, iphone, mobile phone, GPS, CD player, credit card, microwave oven, radar system, plane, MRI machine, PET scan, etc, ever again, as they are all based on principles of modern mathematical physics. thank you for your co-operation in this matter.

For a photon, traveling at the speed of light, time in the rest of the Universe is frozen, non-existent. For a human, the past is a memory, the future is a construct, the instant is too short to measure. Time requires motion to be measured and an observer able to remember the past. Time cannot exist without matter, and a very special kind of matter from which consciousness has emerged. Time seems like it might be a construct we impose on the Universe to make sense of our experience.

What’s mind-blowing is that there are not 3 dimensions of space and then time, but the dimensions are hybridized space-time mixed together. If you manage to “sit still,” you are whizzing along time at nearly the speed of light. If you should move, however, your movement “takes away” from your maximum possible time speed, and time starts to slow as per the equations of time-dilation. If you manage to move at 99% of the speed of light, time slows over 7 times because of your movement. 99.9% slows time by over 22 times, and so on. If you could reach the theoretical maximum light-speed (but you can’t), all the possible speed would be consumed and time would stand still.

So, time is space. there was a bang and we said look, let’s call this TIME. the bang is still going on(Space) but how? the bang would not ever happen, there was no time before it! Is just would never have been there. in space or time.

From the perspective of a non-physicist (who loves physics and science )…..

Time is the comparison between events. The time it takes to write this sentence is the comparison of the typing of the sentence to the number of ticks (seconds) on a clock.

Time is what allows 3 dimensional entities (us) to experience the events of our reality in a fixed order.

There is no past or future as far as having happened and yet to be. There is simply time and where we are relative to the experiencing of these ordered events. I experience birth before death and events between these compared to the number of ticks on a clock provide the time (or measurement) of my life.

Your past and your future already exist and both are based on the choices you’ve already made (as well as others). We may not yet have experienced all of these events that come from our choices but that has more to do with our being 3 dimensional entities then whether or not they have happened.

It’s hard to properly convey using the written communication of our 3 dimensional existence but I think the above is close.

The “past” (as a word/concept/term) can be used in relation to what has been found to have occured (the factual) as much as what could have occured (the speculative). And likewise the “future” is used in relation to what remains to be seen, as much as what might take place.

The past and future may be implicit in the present but the number of possible pasts and futures implied by any given present is either very large or infinite. If the term “reality” is used in relation to both the facts as much as the possible (as is increasingly typical) the term “reality” can become somewhat stretched to the point of being totally ineffective – what does one mean by the word? For example, to say the multiverse is real is to say next to nothing about the multiverse.

The reason for the word “reality” becoming increasingly ineffective (or defective) is quantum mechanics. In QM the possible and the actual are found to be functionally related yet not equivalent.

Most of the posts claiming that time is a human construct and therefore fundamentally nonexistent contain the same error: they conflate the human concept of time with the phenomena itself. After demonstrating that our concept of time is human-created, they seem to imagine they’ve proven that the phenomena this concept seeks to explain must therefore also be artifical.

This actually doesn’t add anything to the debate, since the only thing it addresses is the half of the question that almost everyone agrees with already.

The real point – the point the more rigorous posters are attempting to explore – is the nature of the phenomena itself.

I’m no physicist or Mensa member, but here’s my take on things:
1. Everything comes down to Cause & Effect. Everything is based on the past, and everything effects the future. Everything is both a Cause and an Effect.
2. The future is set. Free will does exist, but only as an illusion. Every decision you make is actually dependant on Causes from the past. Your frame of mind leading up to the decision is effected by what’s happened to you in the day leading up to it, your past experiences are going to guide you in making any decision, the exact position and angle that you observe external stimulus from, and on and on into factors that none of us would ever believe could be significant enough to make a perceivable difference. Whatever you believe, the fact is that you were always going to make that particular decision at that particular time. You may change your mind 10 seconds later, but you were always going to do that too.
3. The past and future don’t physically exist. Matter only exists in the present. If time travel is possible, it’s only through non-physical means (I’m only 99.9999999% sure that phychics are all full of shit). You may also be able to create the illusion of time travel to the future by putting your physical body into a temporarily static state, but you’ll never physically be able to wink in and out of existance at different points in time.
4. There may be some special start and end points to time where they’re just a Cause or just an Effect, but I think it may be more likely that time is circular and everything will just lead us back to the same point again. If there was a big bang to create our universe, then whatever ends it will cause another big bang (so points 1 & 2 still hold).

In #1., the author stated “thank goodness”. Some might rather say “thank God” that time is not completely chaotic. For the brave among you, here is a related article that might bring some insight to the topic. Evolution Ex Nihilo.

I think #196 T, can be shown to be correct, And INSPIRED me to write up the following thoughts,

(related VIDEO ‘Do things ‘take time’ to move, or just move ?’
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV3VjsY03Hk&t=1m4s)

PAGE >> https://sites.google.com/site/abriefhistoryoftimelessness/mathematics/what-do-clocks-measure
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(with respect) Sean’s first assumption ‘Time exists’ … setting alarm clocks proves it – can be seriously and logically questioned, e.g…

- The ability to create something we might call an alarm ‘clock’ may seem to confirm the existence and nature of ‘time – IF – we start with the assumption time exists*, but an ‘alarm clock’ does not necessarily prove the existence of ‘Time’ (with its flow, direction, Past and Future etc.)

(*just as if we watch a mind reading show with the ‘assumption’ that mind reading exists, are assumption may ‘seem to be confirmed’ – but we may still actually be mistaken).

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Consider making a large heavy mass, free to rotate on good bearings. We attach a small ‘arm’ so it sticks out from the mass at one location.

Then we set the mass spinning… any steady speed will do, but a speed matching the speed at which the Earth happens to rotate will be simplest… ( only for us here on Earth =)

With this set up one could place a ‘bell’ at any point around the spinning object, such that the protruding arm will strike and ring the bell where the two meet.

Now if for simplicity we do set the mas to spin at the same rate the Earth happens to be spinning at, then in Time terms, putting the bell 15 degrees on from where the protruding arm is will effectively make an alarm clock, which is set to go off in ‘one hour’.

But look from fundamentals what the set up actually shows and does not show.

-the spinning mass shows that objects can exist, rotate, and have inertia.

-that energy can be put into an object, and

-that energy is needed for objects to move

-the protruding arm shows that a moving thing can be heading for other things, (the bell in this case)

But the device does not prove that….

-as things move they leave or create a ‘temporal past’ behind them, or that

-ahead of moving things there is a ‘temporal future’, or that

-moving things head into a temporal future, or that

-a temporal future is constantly arriving, passing through an infinitely thin present, and into a ‘past’.

-or that, as well as ‘energy’ things also need a thing called ‘time’ to be existing and flowing.

This section might cause some irritation as you read it, but we should not assume that ‘If we are feeling irritated – this is a scientific proof that our currently held views are correct, and those views that irritate us are incorrect’. (in fact often the opposite is true ‘feeling irritated’ can be a sign that we are not being scientific).

Further more it is worth considering that the concept of an alarm clock may ‘seem to confirm’ the existence of time – if it is looked at ‘as if time exists’ – but if it is looked at as if ‘just matter and motion exist’ then this simpler* view will also seem to be confirmed.

note also that ‘seeming to confirm’ an assumption is not the same thing as proving an assumption from first principles, or direct observation.

*Simpler because it doesn’t call on the existence of an invisible past, invisible future, the ‘unpowered’ flow of an invisible thing called time – through an ‘infinitely thin’ present.

( See web link above for DIAGRAM.)

matt welcome

My 12 year old daughter is so inquisitive at times, I begin to wonder about things I had up until that point accepted as fact.

In the case of the big bang theory, and my limited knowledge of it, my daughter had asked, “What is the big bang theory?” Well, without grabbing numerous texts and scientific journals on the subject, I attempted to explain it in the simplest terms, which coincidentally fit my simple mind.

As I explained it, I began to wonder about the origin of it all.

Let me put it simply. I explained there was some huge ball of matter, which somehow exploded, the pieces were sent outward throughout space, and formed the various galaxies. Supposedly the universe is constantly expanding. If we were to build some kind of super-fast spaceship, we would be able to travel far enough past the debris to a point where the universe ends, an eternal blackness of nothingness.

My question which comes from this rudimentary answer is, “How the h*ck did we come up with this one?” My guess is someone took a telescope and a computer, then progressively more powerful telescopes and computers, and pointed it into outer space, and determined there appears to be a limit to what we can see out there in any infinite direction. The fact that “what we percieve determines what is” is a horrible basis for what is, in my opinion. I get the impression that whomever devised the theory of the big bang have determined that the Earth is the center of the universe. If they have not, I’m guessing SOMEONE is probably wondering where that supposed center is. It must be calculatable taking into account the direction of the various galaxies and particles if such an explosion could occur in the vast matterless vacuum of space billions of years ago and still be in motion from a perfect zero friction environment.

Funny thing, she also asked about dark matter. Again, armed with my vast knowledge and intellect on the topic, I explained that there are things that exist in the world that cannot be verified light or the reflection of light off it, thus the term dark matter. Not to be confused with the experiments on objects which light is able to bend around, the “cloak of invisibility” experiments of recent history.

Disclaimer: Lots of sarcasm when discussing the topic of my “intellect”…

How extraordinary you all are with your opinions and conjectures of time!
In fact no need for Eisteins/Newtons’Hawkins/Dawkins/Hitchins/Hubble’s Uncle tom cobleys billy connonleys …whatever.. what a band of nonsense-makers you all are.
Time is sinply a man-made invention a clock -face with two hands to keep you all enslaved
to money-making for survival to keep the elite and mockery democracies in business.
Time of itself does not exist, simply a process like your age you live/decay/die like all things
as portrayed in the four seasons. Time is a man-made invisible enslaving master used by
pleasure seeking deluded aristocrats,politicians, and all the other human ingredients
required to keep them in business…armies/navies/celebrities/hollywood arsetists.
Go on tell me my email is not valid!!! hey hey.

Alphacarey points out that the Billion heart beat rule doesn’t apply to Humans – They claim that Humans reach the billion heart beats point around age 30. What they fail to point out is that human lifespan is no longer bound by the laws and time spans of nature – Keeping ourselves alive through technology and and drugs.

“It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three dimensional existence.”
This is exactly the sort of extrapolation from a theory that tends to be thrown away as science moves on – the kind of extrapolation that can’t be verified directly (unlike, say, mass-energy equivalence) and which comes from taking the theory literally when scientific theories are just working models, and may later prove to only approximations to the truth (as, for example, K.E.=0.5mv^2 is an approximation, and becomes inadequate near lightspeed).
To say of things based on this, “This isn’t completely accepted, but it should be.” is nonsense. It should never be completely accepted by anybody with the slightest experience of science – if you only know one thing about science, let it be the fact that our theories are always liable to change, unless we have observed them directly. We have observed directly (from space) that the earth is round. We definitely haven’t observed directly that the past and the future exist, and we never will unless a time machine is invented.

ERROR: as per comment 47, “Part of the “job” of complex structures is to increase entropy,” should read “Part of the “job” of complex structures is to DECREASE entropy.” Living systems produce a localised decrease in entropy at the expense of an overall increase in entropy of the system of which they form a part. Rather like an up slope back eddy in a river flowing downhill.

It is my opinion that time seems to go faster with age due to an unconcious realization of impending doom, or death.

Bing Bang why do they keep pushing that
if there is no beginning and no end
Infinite
its to bad we can’t measure it or wrap are small brains
around it
I’m sure I have already posted this and will again in the future

Time created by Humans to reminds them their vulnerabilities [Me]

Interesting idea, a lack of motion and what effect that would have on time. However, it couldn’t happen. Without motion, the sun wouldn’t be able to produce heat or shine, I think. There should cease to be any gravitational pulls anywhere, and…what? A lack of motion would have to inexhorably lead to motion so, I don’t think it’s possible.

On the past future bit. I like to think of our present selves as being a collection of our past experiences and our future hopes rather than just existing “in the moment”. So, I’d be really interested to read more on our linear understanding of time.

Would it not be correct to say that change is fundamental, and time is a perceptual overlay?

Tom

Is it really mysterious that touching one’s nose and foot “simultaneously” should be experienced as happening at the same time? For electrical impulses (which move at the speed of light) the increased distance is hardly significant, and in any case it seems obvious that we’re not equipped to perceive the resulting microscopic difference in timing (nor are we capable of perfectly synchronizing the act of touching both spots anyway).

I also don’t believe the 80ms latency applies to all types of experience. Certainly 80ms have not elapsed between the time when I touch my nose and when the sensation is experienced. As a music producer, I know that I can perceive a latency as short as ~20ms when playing keys on a MIDI keyboard (the question of latency comes up when setting the buffer size of software to strike a balance between accurate timing and the increased strain on system resources when lowering it). Professional drummers with a very highly developed sense of timing can perceive even shorter latency values.

“10. A lifespan is a billion heartbeats”

Do the math. In general, true, but for humans, it is significantly more. For parrots as well. Go figure. A billion human heartbeats is only 30 years.

One might argue that the natural human lifespan is 30 years, and the extra 30–60 are the gift of science. True, but no cigar. Animals in captivity, with fewer dangers, better medical care etc do live longer, but not 3 times longer as their counterparts in the wild.

At present time is measured with reference to the Sun being at our Zenith and only the galaxy exist. But if we take a more broader picture of the universe and various other galaxies then we need to shift to make a different reference point to measure various events at a time to follow the history of various activities of various creatures in various galaxies.

and yeppers, it would seem “change is fundamental, and time is a perceptual overlay”. (# 232)

There is Form and there is Flow. Form creates and limits Flow, Flow creates and limits Form. Time may in fact be our snapshot view of this phenomenon.

Consider the following:

The stillness
in stillness
is not
the real stillness.

Only when
there is stillness
in movement
can the spiritual rhythm appear
which pervades
heaven and earth.

Ts’ai-Ken T’an

Hi Monica,

Our perception is not limited to our thinking/being in the conscious mind. Intuition is an inherent awareness and we can “know” something without consciously thinking it.

Actually, how else could one explain that over 5,000 years ago the great Masters understood polarity and many other aspects of Energy without the use of the technology scientists currently use. They sat very still, honed and heightened their awareness.

Many of us have lost this ability by becoming slaves to our “busy” minds. In doing so, our minds are in the past or future. Can we be fully present? I think with practice, we can have the experience some of the time.

Funs