Nature of Time

but barring that, if you maintain 1G your spaceboard clocks will register "ticks" at the same pace as Earth clocks

A Bussard ramjet could conceivably achieve a constant 1g acceleration that would allow the pilot to make very long journeys. To an Earthbound observer, such a ship would take hundreds of thousands of years to reach the center of the galaxy. But because of relativistic time dilation, only 20 years would pass for the crew on the ship.

Time dilation would make it possible for passengers in a fast-moving vehicle to travel further into the future while ageing very little, in that their great speed slows down the rate of passage of on-board time. That is, the ship's clock (and according to relativity, any human travelling with it) shows less elapsed time than the clocks of observers on Earth. For sufficiently high speeds the effect is dramatic. For example, one year of travel might correspond to ten years at home. Indeed, a constant 1 g acceleration would permit humans to travel as far as light has been able to travel since the big bang (some 13.7 billion light years) in one human lifetime. The space travellers could return to Earth billions of years in the future.

Try this thought experiment. What if absolutely everything in the universe stopped changing right now. No stars move, no seasons change, no clocks hands rotate, no one ages, no one is born, no radiation moves through space, heat stops right where it is . . . all utterly still. Is time passing?

See, your "sense" is the more or less subconscious awareness you've had from birth of all the movement around you, all the change.

If fact, it is that constant loss and change toward our own death that cements the "sense" of time rather dramatically in people's mind.

While that is true, I don't see how disequilibrium is something that can be included as a source of order (along with quantum oscillation and gravity). IMO, that disequilibrium is attributable to universal expansion, so it seems more accurate to say it is a source of space.

... unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be what the mathematics of Einstein's relativity say:

I have ... the answer is not so obvious ... so I tried a slightly perturbed scenario: imagine you stop all changes in the universe except for yourself in order that you are there to observe ... is time passing? ... the answer is obvious - stopping change does not stop time ... your sense of time goes merrily on

Well, I disagree. Let's say after you die you are still conscious (just disembodied). And in that condition, you find yourself in a realm that does not deteriorate in anyway, and so is eternal. What does "time" mean in that instance?

There are those in fact who achieved experiences through meditation who say just such a realm exists. The Buddha (himself a great meditator) said, "There is, monks, that plane where there is neither extension nor motion. . . there is no coming or going or remaining or deceasing or uprising. . . . There is, monks, an unborn, not become, not made, uncompounded . . . [and] because [that exists] . . . an escape can be shown for what is born, has become, is made, is compounded."

I have myself experienced the stopping any sense of time, first with peyote when I was young and foolish, and then later through meditation. The mind tends to follow all the changes of the world, but when it is brought to utter stillness, one stops identifying with the physical world, and that includes identifying with its relentless progress toward disorder. In that experience, "time" seems to be be one, vast eternal moment.

The Equation is =

MJA

... anyhoo, take a look into the mathematics of stochastic processes ... two stochastic processes that are completely uncorrelated share nothing, whereas two stochastic processes that are correlated must have something in common ... for this "regularity" that you speak of to work - for the "regularity" of one process to be used reliably as a measure of another process - the processes must be correlated ... otherwise, you would be able to count the number of oscillations of a cesium atom during an Earth orbit and come up with ten bazillion, and then count the oscillations of the same cesium atom during a second Earth orbit and come up with two ...

One liners in big letters without realy meaning anything= MJA..:bigsmile:

MJA




The Equation is = God

... hey, check this out ... I dropped this line of argument because of an interpretational problem ... when you run two independent random signals through the cross-correlation function, they will show no correlation ... but when you run two independent but periodic signals through the cross-correlation function, the function will indicate correlation (the common periodicity) ... since the signals are independent (do not come from the same source), the interpretation of the correlation is the signals' commonality in time itself, due to the fact that signals are functions in time ... but then it occurred to me that you could simply reply that the cross-correlation function is just mathematics, and that you can interpret mathematics in any way you please - for example, that the correlation is just the "regularity" between the two "regularities" ... so I dropped it and followed an analogical argument instead.

But watch what happens when you merge the analogical argument with the mathematics of stochastic processes! ... I missed this earlier because, being trained as an electrical engineer, all I think in are functions in time ... but the fact is, rulers are periodic functions in space! (this would have occurred much earlier to someone trained in image processing!) ... so if you take an English ruler and a Metric ruler and run their ticks through the cross-correlation function, what do you get? - the same thing you get when you run the ticks of two oscillators through the cross-correlation function! ... so the analogy holds up under mathematical scrutiny - the implication being that whereas English rulers and Metric rulers are rulers in space because they are periodic functions in space, oscillators are rulers in time because they are periodic functions in time!

I know this isn't going to convince you that time is as real as space is, but I just thought it was too cool to keep to myself

But I don't understand how you reach the conclusion that time and space are real.

George Spencer Brown, (another self-styled genius, and I think rightly so)

My guess is that there was no Big Bang. The red shift is simply age effects on photons.

If the universe infinite and eternal. like you proposed this would solve the difficulty around, time, mass , matter, gravity and everything else

My guess is that there was no Big Bang. The red shift is simply age effects on photons.

If the universe infinite and eternal. like you proposed this would solve the difficulty around, time, mass , matter, gravity and everything else

An infinite universe would not have the difficulties relating to time

An infinite universe woud/is have intrinsic mass and gravity binding all that is and time would be localised, mainly as a measurement of how we move in relation to everything else.





Alan

xris - How do we know the universe is finite?

"Since before time and space were, the Tao is. It is beyond is and is not. How do I know this is true? I look inside myself and see." Tao Te Ching

This was Kant's solution, that what is prior to time and space is not an instance of a Category. This would be why we cannot imagine it or find it in metaphysics.

You are changing known facts to suit your purpose.The universe is finite ..The universe did have a beginning we are creatures of time and space and if it had a beginning it can have an end..There is no infinity..We can have no space no time but not infinity.