Time

[[LB]]

i know this is crazy but i was lying in bed last night and thinking about time while listening to 'time' by pink floyd. I drew a conclusion- that time doesent exist. It is merely something we have invented to catalog events which is kind of a cool thought.
Think of it this way- life and present is not like a little bar playing through the track of our existence.
Its just things happening- things occuring things constantly in motion. 
 to 'freeze time' everything would have to stop occuring, and this defeats the idea of things like time machines which are impossible, because you would have to reverse every occurence- i dunno my reasoning is kind of disorganized maybe you guys can express what im thinking in stronger words.

[Soup]

I love the reasoning behind time machines!
I have, through debate with friends, found it impossible to go back in time.  One example from Invader Zim (episode 15: "Bad, Bad Rubber Piggy") works quite well:  Zim creates a temporal displacement device to be rid of Dib by sending a robot to kill him easily.  When the machine rejects the robot, Zim, in a fit of rage throws one of GIR's rubber pigs through the portal.  He then spends the rest of the time replacing objects from the past with rubber pigs in a vague attempt to ruin Dib's life. Before Zim unleashes his plan, GIR runs through the logic, [color="#000099"]"Wait, if you destroyed Dib in the past, then he won't ever be your enemy, then you won't have to send a robot back to destroy him, and then he will be your enemy so you will have to send a robot back- ", [/color]After which GIR's head explodes from the endless loop.
Another theory is "Partical displacement".  This theory states that you cannot introduce particals to a time where they never existed. Given this theory, it would be impossible to go back in time.  While reverse time travel is impossible, forwards in completely plausable.  Since the particals already existed, you can go forwards.  This does however make going back to your original time quite difficult due to the fact that the machine has been removed from the original time and no longer exists there, thus stranding you in the future.

[LoneWolf367]

Time is indeed a abstract concept here only to give us humans something
to go by, a tool if you will. Time is also greatly cultural as weird as
that is.

Oh and a while back I looked for some time machines online and happened to bookmark some of them so here you go:
[url="http://www.wwujd.com/buildatimemachine.htm"]Build a Time Machine
Build Your Own Time Machine
Time Machine Q & A[/url]

Enjoy

And... I guess it may be possible to perhaps move forward in time but
it hasta do with traveling faster than the speed of light so it really
can't be achived even if it was true.

[Soup]

I remember see a time machine for sale on ebay once.  It was just a metal shell with some lights, a switch, a button, and something that looked like a really sharp pocket knife.  Aswell as pictures, there were links to videos of it working.  Basically how it works is you flip the switch on the side (turns the power on), push the button (starts an electric motor which is attached to the knife, in turn spinning the blade.  I'd like to add that in the video, the operator almost looses his fingers due to the precarious positioning of the button), and the thing is supposed to work.
IT WAS SCARY!!!  It looked like a whirling blade of infininte pain and death.

[KBlack]

Stephen Hawking said:

"If travel back in time was one day possible, why didn't we already get to meet people from the future?"

(I got the actual quote in french, it may be a poor translation)

[Sonthert]

IF time travel was possible, then you could get a gun and step "into" ten minutes ago where you could shoot and kill yourself, before you got into the time machine. Which, of course, is impossible. Time dilation does exist, so maybe time just varies in rate, but always marches forward."Paycheck" is about time travel (Actually remote viewing of the future) and a fine movie. As far as Stephen Hawking, if time travel eventually will be possible, we won't meet people from the future until we actually develop time travel. Besides, thats the equivalent of saying "I've never meet soembody from Nepal, so Nepal must not be a real country."What are UFOs? If you follow more movie logic, ie "Repo Man", UFOs are time machines. Well, actually flying saucers are time machines. UFOs could be just about anything, but some of them ar flying saucers which are time machine.I hope that clears everything up for everybody.

[KBlack]

I think you misunderstood what I said, Tangiers... Hawking war
reffering to time travel more as "travel in the past". So, what I meant
was that if that was one day possible, then people would discover it in
the future, then could come back in time to see us, even if we, in the
present, don't know how. Your nepal analogy doesn't apply, here... hope
it clarifies.

But, as far as my knowledge of space and time goes, that kind of travel
is just impossible, but time stretching across space (black holes and
all) is an interesting phenomenon.

[dizzing]

well, saying that time doesn't exist would be like saying that height, width, and depth don't exist.  it's a dimension created by science for the analytical study of the world around us.  as for the idea of time travel, it's far too complex to say that there's any clear reasoning behind why it can or cannot be possible.  any argument either way is far too limited to make a convincing point - the truth is, our science is not to the point where we can accurately discuss such matters.  any concepts we have about time travel are fundamentally wrong, simply by the idea that we do see paradoxes in certain aspects.  paradoxes are generally a sign that we need greater understanding, for there are always conditions to make any situation possible.  a sucky aspect of the study of time, black holes, etc, is that by default many of these concepts are completely impossible to study via traditional means.  you can't look into a black hole past the event horizon and come back to tell what happened.  this is why we're left with an incomplete picture of reality that has a few gaps init which can be real head scratchers...  but i must say we are coming closer every day to new ways of understanding and analyzing the fundamental properties of the universe, so within a few decades, who knows?

[Sonthert]

Yeah, I got you, what I was saying was the non-egocentric view (which Hawking never quite got) which is...well the Nepal thing. Just because one person doesn't have "knowledge" of a particular kind of person, whether its Nepalese or a time traveller doesn't stop that person from being real, its impossible to say. It a logical fallacy, appeal to ignorance: Since there is no evidence to the contrary, it must be false. For example, since there is no evidence that the Bible is false, it must be true, or since the there is no evidence that the screenplay for Star Wars is false, it must be real. I was trying to be cutsie and ended up be apocryphal. Sorry.You know there, I hate to rain on everyone's bubble, or burst your parade, but there is a group of highly accomlished physicists that maintain that black holes don't have this "time" discrepancy proposed. The idea itself seems kind of fantastic and mystical to me, wouldn't it be simplier and more logical if it was just a deep gravity well that sucked in light and matter? Why all this "Sucking in Time" idea, too? Acham's razor (Spelling??) says the simplest explanation is usually the correct one, right?

[KBlack]

You have a good point there, but hawkings was trying to be in-your-face, I guess... made for some interesting reflexion.

From what I know, as speed, mass and time are all interrelated, and
more cosely so when you approach the speed of light (you all know
einstein), the fact that black holes suck in light is of huge
significance. To me, there is nothing so esoteric there: time is merely
slower in a black hole, because a black hole is so dense that it
disrupt the fabric of time and space, allowing light to actually slow
down. We do know from science that time passes slower when in a huge
gravity field, or at great speeds. As a black hole's mass is
theoritically infinite, the gravitic field it generates would also be
near infinity. It would then be able to attract particles of a mass
nearly inexistant, such as the (still theoritical) particles of light.
(see newton's three laws of dynamics as well as the one on
gravitation).
Time is just our measure of a dimension. I won't go into quantic
theories here, as I don't understand half of them, but I hope this as
been as much of a source of reflexion for you as it is for me.

[Sonthert]

I'm with you man, I'm saying, there's physicists who reject some of the assumptions in what you are basing that off of. Isn't it more reasonable to think its just alot of gravity? What if spped, mass and time aren't interrelated? Its always bugged me that black holes suck in light. Light has no mass, right? Photon is massless. How could a gravity well affect it? It has a zero rest mass but a infintesimal active mass? What is the basic definition of mass: the amount of matter an object contains. So, if I start travelling half the speed of light, suddenly I have more matter? The implicit assumption that a black hole has an infinite gravity. Not possible. Mathematically it exists, but physically, to have an infinite gravitational field, it would have to have an infinite mass. That of course, in the real world is impossible. There is a finite amount of mass and a finite amount of gravity. Without revealing too much, most of these paradoxes will fall away when scientists discover the graviton (which right now is like looking for a drop of water at the bottom of the ocean). What if time and gravity are closely linked? Personally, I have read alot of stuff, not as much as other people, but I have a solid grounding in calculus based physics and specialized education in radio, cosmic, nuclear and quantum chemistry. Personally, I find some of what Albert Einstein proposes silly. GASP! Did he just say Einstein was...yes. I'm no expert, its just an opinion. For the longest time, SI Newton was a god among physicists until people started to question it. So, Einstein is absolutely right? He is the first person to have hit the nail on the head? Not likely. Just because mama bird, the physics professor, regurgitates that stuff down baby bird's throat (you), doesn't mean you have to swallow. For example: If I assume that my grandfather hadn't really died, he would still be helping my uncles with the farming. If he were helping my uncles with the farming, they would get more done. If I assume that since he is alive, he is helping them, they must be then making more money. Since they are making more money, and grandfather likes me, assuming if I came up with a good reason, I'm sure he'd loan me $100,000. If we assume that his intention is to loan me the money, then I should be able to go into the local bank and ask for the money, because they know me and my grandfather and when he was alive, he used to take me there and tell them to give me whatever I wanted. Assuming nothing has changed, I could go into the local branch of the bank and ask for the money.Are they going to give it to me?No. Many of my assumptions were fallicious or incorrect, so my conclusion, although more or less logically arrived at, is erroneous. Likewise, the whole black hole theory starts with an asumption or two, which we can't prove. So, we are left with a theory, which is not even evidence of truth or falsehood. Why is it that we believe theories are true nowadays? Scientists make mistakes, same as anybody. Why do we believe that chloro-fluorocarbons are causing the hole in the Ozone Layer? Why do we believe that greenhouse gases are creating a greenhouse effect? These are theories, nothing more, not facts.

[KBlack]

First off, I wanna say, Tangiers, I have been impressed by your knowledge the very first time I came to these forums.

It is very true that when it comes to the definition of mass, time and
space, theoritical limits become impossible. Infinite is impossible,
sure, but theories help us
figuring out what's going on. And when I see laws that applies to
everyday life (Newton), and laws (einstein) that makes GPS and other
satellite calculus work exactly as planned (in places where newton only
would have failed), even after the death of their respective thinkers,
I am tempted to accept them as true, to a certain extent. There will
always be unknown variable, so there will always be assumptions. But at
least it gives us an idea of the bigger frame.

Have you read Godel's incompleteness theorem? I think it could interest
you. It's about how we can't be sure of a theory because at some point
it can't prove itself within the same system that it's trying to prove.
See Wikipedia if you're interested, As I lack the english fluency to
explain something as complex. But I'd be curious to know your opinions
on the subject.

[Sonthert]

Kind of like Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle? When you attempt to measure something, it may change it's state accidently due to your measurement, or something like that. Is Godel that Indian guy? The Indian guy (I can't remember his name) is the one I always hear talking about the black holes don't suck up time thing.Wait, I didn't say Einstein was entirely wrong, just some of his stuff seems a little fishy. Newton is essential, but flawed. I am saying Einstein is essential, but flawed. We haven't discovered one of the most prevalent and probably important particles in the universe, yet. The graviton. What interactions do gravitons have and how do they affect the physical universe? I remember four distinct areas in my physics book, mechanics, E&M, O&L and relativity. Gravitons will make a fifth section in the book. Everything we know up to this point will be subject to rewriting. Theoretically, all bodies in the universe attract all other bodies in the universe. Does that mean every asteroid, every meteor, every planet, star, nebula, pulsar has at least one graviton "pinging" me, right now? How many gravitons is that? We can't even say, more than conventional numbers can state. The other possibility is that since a graviton is theoretically a finite unit (could it be a wave? Or both, again) is it possible there's a tiny little moon orbiting a far off planet in the next galaxy that doesn't have a graviton "pinging" me? Maybe others too? How does that theory hold up, that every body attracts every other body? If its true, then there are so many gravitons pinging me, right now, the number is huge, at least 1e21. If we find the graviton, it will change everything, so don't start naming your sacred cows, just yet.

[HookahCaterpillar]

I know what you mean. As long as your talking about time here is
something i think about alot. "GOD" created the world in 7 days but
back then how long was a day?? A day could just as easily be 10 years
as it is 24 hours. Why is a minute 60 seconds? why is an hour 60
minutes? It is all made up by human beings to keep track of things.Why
was it created? I honestly think it was a big mistake imagine a world
without time, no appointments you just lived life without time or worry
of being on TIME. Time is irrelevant if you really think about it, your
born and then several years later you die. All in between is life and
it shouldn't be kept track of so much. I do think if i were put on an
island with no watch or clock i would go crazy.

[dizzing]

Yeah, something about Einstein that has always bothered me is probably just a product of my misunderstanding, but i'll go ahead and outline it here.If I understand relatively correctly, it's based on a few basic principles that have been observed in laboratory experiments.  First, no matter how fast something is moving in relation to a light source, the relative velocity of the light wave to that object is always 300,000 km/s.  Even if the object is moving away from the light source at a very high speed, the light coming at it still hits at 300,000 km/sec.  Well, this would concievably indicate that time ends up progressing differently from each vantage.  But say we're looking at light passed from each point to the other.  There would be absolutely no way to determine which object was in fact moving - technically they would BOTH be moving away from each other.  So the idea that time wouldn't affect both travelers equally seems ridiculous.  The only thing that comes into account is how long the light takes to get there, which would increase proportionally to the distance between the two objects.  That its rays hit each target at a constant velocity is interesting, but seems like a completely different issue from trying to get tangled up in the effects on the continuity of time.  I'm probably totally wrong here, but that's the way I've always seen it.  If i'm way off base, I blame Hawking for explaining it badly

[dizzing]

oh, and that first sentence of my main paragraph was supposed to say "relativity", not "relatively"

[Sonthert]

Yeah, I agree, I have read and studied that whole thing, I understand it, but I can;t help but think its the effect of an unseen force that we don;t understand yet. Essentially, the theory goes, whatever your relativistic frame of reference, the speed of light is the same. Kind of fishy. 

[Lakemonster]

I think Time really is a man created thing. IT is simply reference we can use to calculate things such as rate.
 
Now..... what about the Law of Angular Momentum? One particle that spins in one direction, if changed.... will have counterpart that at the exact moment of the change will spin the opposite as well..... even if they are on seperate ends of teh universe.
 
If that is the case then 1 of two things needs to happen.
1.  Faster than light communication between the two
or
2. The universe is a "seamless whole" working as one, even tho particles would apear to be seperate and independant.
IF the 2nd reason is the correct one.... then wouldnt time adhere to the same principles?

[dizzing]

it is my belief that the 2nd is the correct reason, and time would in fact adhere to the same principles.  think about it, it's inescapable.  everything that happens has a cause.  even things that you do as a result of "free will" came about because of stimuli  that were beyond your control.  you made your decision based on the data available to you, even down to subconscious things that you may not have actively considered at all.  everything that happens causes everything after it to happen.  sure, it may be infinitely complex in practicality, something that we could NEVER hope to dissect even with the most advanced supercomputers, but it's all following a path which is inescapable at its basic level.  therefore everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen, could have happened no other way.  thus, there's no reason to think the percieved passage of time has anything to do with time moving independently - it is a whole which we, as a point traveling through a single dimension, percieve subjectively.  should it then be possible to adjust our passage thorugh time relative to other points?  well, that hinges on what you define these other points as.  does our universe as a whole exist as a point, or does every observer have his unique point moving independently through the dimension of time?  i think this is the real question, which has a lot of things to think about that i couldn't hope to :)but i'd say that if space works that way, maybe time does too.  if we look at everything complex and four dimensionally like scientists like to do, i guess that's a foregone conclusion.  but do they know what they're talking about? who knows? do i know what i'm talking about? who knows?  i'm inclined to say that i probably don't.

[Alqoshnia]

How bout a lil more Einstein - If you're in outer space and you throw a marble, after a number of years, the marble will hit you right in the back of your head. makes you think some more hhhhmmmmmmmm.
now for some more thinking..........if we created time, who created us - monkeys (supposedly) and so on allllllllll the way down to bacteria and little atoms and blah blah blah blah.............well all of this is created by GOD.............well.............who created GOD?? I've asked many of my grandpa's, who is deacon, friends (who are also part of the church) and they aaaallll say the same thing........he is merely a soul/spirit. Perhaps HE is a soul of a past "living" GOD from another galaxy......even THEN.......WHERE DID THE INITIAL GOD COME FROM!?!?!?! because he is the main source for aaaaallllll these questions.
 
My head starts hurtin when I start thinkin bout this sh*t. I need some more nargilah for some fresh air and more energy. ugh its 3:30 am just couple more hits

[txbrit31]

err. I hate to throw my 0.02 into this- but please understand my background- I'm a theologian. I come at this with a biased point of view.  Time, I think, is somethign that cannot be fully comprehended by our brains.  In Christian and Jewish theology there are two sets of "time" Chronos- which is how we humans measure time- is linear- we cannot (save time machines!) go backwards. We can only go forwards at a pre-determined speed.
God (and presumably the rest of the company in heaven who are not bound by human standards) resides in Kairos- complete time. God is present in all times- just as God is present when you the reader are reading this- God is present  in the year 70AD in Rome, and God is present in the year 3000AD at some hookah lounge in Istanbul. Where Chronos is linear- Kairos is circular. it has no beginning and no end.  Now my head is starting to hurt!
I would speculate, when we die and are released from the restraints of our human mind- we will be able to fully grasp time more.  Alqoshina- I would argue that there is one God- much more than a soul or spirit. The same God that created the entire universe- not just our little Milky Way galaxy! God has always been God and will always be God without beginning or end.  If we could understand God, then He wouldn't be God.  I have a bit of an issue with placing my trust in a God that a human mind could so readily comprehend.