What IS time?

[cecallred]

I posted this to another thread... but it wasn't really in the vein of the discussion, so I want tot try it here...

I have a question, being a layman in this, but is Time itself an entity? What I mean is that we as human beings have given time a mathematical reference based on tangible criteria, but is TIME an entity? Today, right now, it's 12:27 pm where I sit in Knoxville, Tn. tonight it will be some time, say 8:00pm, and I can see and measure that on clocks. The few hours that passed have passed for real and because I have accepted the illusion of time so that I can function in this world along side of all of you. .... But what is TIME? Does it exist purely within itself?

Cec

 

[jordanz]

Seems to be just a man-made measurement. If you reference to a time hours from now, all you are doing (I feel) is pointing to the possible point in which entities will be precisely placed. When people talk about going back in time, it's just a question of placement of objects. My question with 'time' is, if you place every object into a spot it's been before (given all characteristics, inside and out, which the object had at that moment before), is that going back in time? It seems to just be a re-placing of a certain measure, but, wouldn't it also be like a 'reset', a 'going back in time'? I'm not questioning or stating that this could be accomplished in any way, just wondering as to how others may feel on that.

 

[Geomagick]

On that basis a time machine would be a matter reorganisation machine, with the traveller being protected from its effects. The one major problem with making that possible would be to calculate the exact location of everything in the universe down to a sub atomic level and then be able to rearrange it all. I don't think this method will work, but local "time variations" may be possible on this logic in a confined space like a particle accelerator with a known number of particles in it. Not very practical though.

 

[MrDudeMan]

Originally posted by: jordanz
Seems to be just a man-made measurement. If you reference to a time hours from now, all you are doing (I feel) is pointing to the possible point in which entities will be precisely placed. When people talk about going back in time, it's just a question of placement of objects. My question with 'time' is, if you place every object into a spot it's been before (given all characteristics, inside and out, which the object had at that moment before), is that going back in time? It seems to just be a re-placing of a certain measure, but, wouldn't it also be like a 'reset', a 'going back in time'? I'm not questioning or stating that this could be accomplished in any way, just wondering as to how others may feel on that.

i respectfully disagree. placing something in exactly the same place it was before is not going back in time. you can move a can of coke, then put it back, and you went only forward in time.

i do agree that time is a man-made measurement. i see no reason why time would exist in nature. nothing depends on time except humans. therefore, i think time travel is not going to ever be possible because its not really a thing. i do know a little bit about relativity and what happens you start going really fast, but i dont think that answers the question of time travel.

 

[jordanz]

With what I was saying, as time is just a measurement, placing everything back into a position it's been before, and I mean EVERYTHING. Such as if a man was moved into another position, his thoughts, his atoms, all the way down to his electrons and atoms in the brain, all things possible moved back into place. Would that just make the illusion of a deja vu moment? Or if it happened and we didn't know, would it be time travel?

 

[ElMonoDelMar]

Could we ever place everything back in any given position? We can't place the electrons of any given atom in the position in which they were formerly in. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle prevents us from knowing the velocity vector and position of any electron at any given time. Surely this would have some affect on the way the rest of this time period would play out.

 

[infosponge]

I'm new here as you can see by my # of posts. That aside, IMO time is not an entity. It is simply a tool that earlier man created to keep track of certain things. When to plant a crop, harvest that crop, make sure the snowshoes were in good repair, etc... Whatever crude methods were first used to calculate it have evolved into what we have now.
Secondly, if man were to ever truly travel back in time and make changes, we would ultimately cause our own demise. How? Well, I see it like this...I believe in creation, as such, it is my feeling that we mere mortal men will never posess the wisdom to precisely calculate how a changed event will alter future events since everthing snowballs from each event before it. An earlier post mentioned Hitler as an example. Say one were to go back a little further and keep Hitler's father from "knowing" his mother--no Hitler would have been created. Or would it have been even worse---no way to know. Therefore when (if) you reach a point where your 500yrs into the future from the change you made with Hitler's family, what new events did your change create? Again, too many variables for a man to calculate.====== Our own demise. Just my opinion .

 

[Harvey]

< humor >

The reason for time is to keep everything from happening at once.

I've found it's also good for telling the drummer where 1 is.

< /humor >

 

[jordanz]

Originally posted by: ElMonoDelMar
Could we ever place everything back in any given position? We can't place the electrons of any given atom in the position in which they were formerly in. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle prevents us from knowing the velocity vector and position of any electron at any given time. Surely this would have some affect on the way the rest of this time period would play out.

I'm not talking about actually being able to do it, that's not the point. I'm just asking if that's what it would be/seem like.

 

[everman]

Is time dilation proof of the existence of time being more than just a measurement? As you approach the speed of light, time flows slower for you relative to an observer on earth.
How do the physics calculations work that supposedly permit time travel?

 

[DrPizza]

I actually just covered this in physics class yesterday with the students who were here (a lot of absences due to a competition, so I used a "filler activity" that isn't necessarily in the curriculum)

I gave them a few handouts; some of them came directly from howstuffworks.com

I suggest that you go there, search for relativity, and check out the info. They also have a decent description of time travel via wormholes (at least that's where I think I got it) - it relates to the twin paradox and wormholes.

 

[cecallred]

OK, so basically we are in agreement that TIME iself is not an entity, but a man made measurement. So that being the case we can't travel "to" time, but we as human beings have long thought about traveling "in" time to a moment of specific destination.

Lets say for the sake of argument (please) that we could never go back and interact with things in the past.... could we possibly build a Viewer, say a room we stay within, that images things around us (think holodeck) and we'd go to a place at a different time and watch it as a sort of 3D surround video? (picture the room seeming to disappear and we simply stay and observe. {For those who read Douglas Adams, it would be like watching the Kricket Wars.}

 

[FuZoRBlade]

Time itself is actually the 4th dimension, and since traveling through dimmensions is possible, it would follow logically that time travel is possible.

 

[jordanz]

Time is only implied as a dimension because we say so. May not even be anything of that at all.

edit: I just restated the obvious. I think it's time for bed.

 

[santaliqueur]

Originally posted by: FuZoRBlade
Time itself is actually the 4th dimension, and since traveling through dimmensions is possible, it would follow logically that time travel is possible.

it would logically be possible, but ONLY if we were 4-dimensional beings, which we are not. picture a 2-dimensional man on a plane. he can only imagine length and height, but not depth. when we, the 3-dimensional beings, put our finger through his plane, it appears to him that we are appearing from nowhere, he only sees the cross section of our finger. the same would apply to 4-dimensional beings and our 3-dimensional physical world. the 4d guy could "stick his finger" into our space, and it would appear to come out of nowhere.

*before you tear this theory apart, consider that it did not come from lowly old santa liqueur. it came from dr. michio kaku, world famous physicist.*

CJ

 

[HeatMiser]

Originally posted by: Harvey
I've found it's also good for telling the drummer where 1 is.

HEY!! I resemble that remark. Time is also good for telling a guitarist when not to solo.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: santaliqueur

Originally posted by: FuZoRBlade
Time itself is actually the 4th dimension, and since traveling through dimmensions is possible, it would follow logically that time travel is possible.

it would logically be possible, but ONLY if we were 4-dimensional beings, which we are not. picture a 2-dimensional man on a plane. he can only imagine length and height, but not depth. when we, the 3-dimensional beings, put our finger through his plane, it appears to him that we are appearing from nowhere, he only sees the cross section of our finger. the same would apply to 4-dimensional beings and our 3-dimensional physical world. the 4d guy could "stick his finger" into our space, and it would appear to come out of nowhere.

*before you tear this theory apart, consider that it did not come from lowly old santa liqueur. it came from dr. michio kaku, world famous physicist.*

CJ

My senior thesis: exploring 4-dimensional "objects" by looking at 3'dimensional cross sections and shadows of those objects. 1 Thesis... hundreds of tylenol for the headaches thinking about it.

 

[ElMonoDelMar]

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: santaliqueur

Originally posted by: FuZoRBlade
Time itself is actually the 4th dimension, and since traveling through dimmensions is possible, it would follow logically that time travel is possible.

it would logically be possible, but ONLY if we were 4-dimensional beings, which we are not. picture a 2-dimensional man on a plane. he can only imagine length and height, but not depth. when we, the 3-dimensional beings, put our finger through his plane, it appears to him that we are appearing from nowhere, he only sees the cross section of our finger. the same would apply to 4-dimensional beings and our 3-dimensional physical world. the 4d guy could "stick his finger" into our space, and it would appear to come out of nowhere.

*before you tear this theory apart, consider that it did not come from lowly old santa liqueur. it came from dr. michio kaku, world famous physicist.*

CJ

My senior thesis: exploring 4-dimensional "objects" by looking at 3'dimensional cross sections and shadows of those objects. 1 Thesis... hundreds of tylenol for the headaches thinking about it.

I can't even visually grasp the concept of 4 dimensional objects.

 

[icarus4586]

I'm not sure what you mean by an "entity." Time isn't a dimension in the normal meaning of the word, but it does resemble one. Time is an integral part of everything, it doesn't just exist because at one point man started measuring it.

Time and space are hard to pull apart, hence general relativity. But (at least as I'm understanding your question) it is an "entity." Meaning it exists. It's part of space, and space is part of it.

 

[Loki726]

Originally posted by: ElMonoDelMar

Originally posted by: DrPizza

Originally posted by: santaliqueur

Originally posted by: FuZoRBlade
Time itself is actually the 4th dimension, and since traveling through dimmensions is possible, it would follow logically that time travel is possible.

it would logically be possible, but ONLY if we were 4-dimensional beings, which we are not. picture a 2-dimensional man on a plane. he can only imagine length and height, but not depth. when we, the 3-dimensional beings, put our finger through his plane, it appears to him that we are appearing from nowhere, he only sees the cross section of our finger. the same would apply to 4-dimensional beings and our 3-dimensional physical world. the 4d guy could "stick his finger" into our space, and it would appear to come out of nowhere.

*before you tear this theory apart, consider that it did not come from lowly old santa liqueur. it came from dr. michio kaku, world famous physicist.*

CJ

My senior thesis: exploring 4-dimensional "objects" by looking at 3'dimensional cross sections and shadows of those objects. 1 Thesis... hundreds of tylenol for the headaches thinking about it.

I can't even visually grasp the concept of 4 dimensional objects.

That's the point

 

[ElMonoDelMar]

So it is.

 

[BitByBit]

An object in our Universe must have three spatial dimensions, and one temporal dimension.
This is why physicists refer to Space as being 4-dimensional.

If an object were to collapse into two spatial dimensions, it would vanish.
It would have no substance.
Just as that object would also vanish if it lost its temporal dimension; an object must have duration.

When an object accelerates, its time dilates (it 'stretches'), along with its spatial dimensions.

It all seems to be down to energy.
A black hole, which is essentially dimension-less, is an intense concentration of energy - the result of a collapsing star.

 

[Sahakiel]

Time is a change in entropy.

 

[deveraux]

Originally posted by: Sahakiel
Time is a change in entropy.

What Sahakiel said. According to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, there is an arrow of time. So all the arguments that time is solely for the purpose of man is not really true. Everything in nature obeys the Laws of Thermodynamics and hence "follow" its arrow of time which implies that time is embedded into nature IMHO.

And for all those saying that time is the 4th dimension, yes I know where you are coming from. However, from what I understand, time being the 4th dimension is the direct consequence of special relativity and from its equations (please correct me if I'm wrong). But keep in mind that this is just a theory and that quantum mechanics supercedes this theory. And therefore, if it is not stated in quantum mechanics or a direct consequence of it, there is still a chance that it isn't true.

As to whether time is real, I really don't know. I like to think of it as the 4th dimension because I find it easy to imagine 3rd dimensional objects "moving" through it like an axis (but I'm sure most people find that easy too).

My $0.02.

 

[MAW1082]

I think time is only a symbolic way to represent reality.

Time is reality.

Math is a symbolic representation of nature, which inevitably incorporates time.

What's the question again?