How do you define Time?

Time is the rate of change of an object and thus it may vary between observers in different frame of references. That's my conclusion on time right now...

About the atomic clock experiment, I was thinking that since an atomic clock travelling in an airplane is in a certain speed, could not there be some sort of energy differences between it and another clock on the ground that would make the motion of the atoms or molecules of the clock slower or faster? Of course relative to us, but everyone in the airplane would perceive it as normal because their metabolism too experiences the same difference in energy or something? Just speculating here, maybe there's a "time field" or something you know like a gravity field?

Ray, I once read many years ago that traveling by jet causes us to 'reverse' time. Don't ask me how, but that's what I read.

Relativity stuff, studied it last year, didn't really get it.

I guess that explains how Superman can rewind time by flying around the Earth at really high speed...

Motion slows time ...while you are in the plane. When you get home you have to move your watch forward a few millionths of a second.

who was it that said?
that the only reason for time was so that everything didnt happen at once?

i believe that as you can only ever vouch that you exist and you can only know your own opinion, then time can only ever be relevant to yourself, therefore you cannot define it on the smae level as another person.

for examply i may have just spent an extremely boring hour listening to my maths teacher drone on and on (seems like ages). and you may have just spent a wild hour at a theme park (time flys).

therefore time is undefinable, it seems to speed up and slow down according to what your doing. Does this mean that time is relative to fun?

dunno if this will help at all.

Re: ...


Well, socialising with one another is a purpose and learning about each other can be useful. Perhaps not the ideal purpose of this forum but something that should somewhat be considered.



Yes and no... Even without proof intuitive understandings (while they should certainly not be considered as truth), can and perhaps should be considered merely to break up our preconceived notions if nothing else. Particularly on something so far afield as the nature of time.

Let's face it, the ultimate truth will not be uncovered by us here in our dialectic progress, all respect to A2K and its members.



Good way of treating it. I very much respect that outlook.



There's a difference between offering one and furthering one. Particularly in a non-formal context such as this. I'm not saying that in this case it wasn't an attempt to further one, I'm just pointing this out for future reference.



And if they're not?



Idle and somewhat random question... Why would that be a bad thing?

All things exist simultaneously. The being existing at the farthest corner of all that is, while possibly experiencing different environmental and personal circumstances, still exist in the same instant of what we call, 'time'. What this says to me is 'time doesn't change, the change occurs in the observer ... in birth, living, and death, time is an indifferent capacity for patience.
It has been stated that time requires 'movement' to exist ... I agree but to be exact, measured movement is what lends the'capacity' or dynamics to time.
There is a starting and stopping point in measuring time, a past [where started] a present [the currently measured] the present [yet to come]. The present is where we all live with infinity spreading out in both directions behind, and ahead ... for time to exist in a manner that is comprehensible to us of 3d construction we need to answer the question 'do we move through time, or does time move through us? It must be one or the other and the answer would dissolve a lot of mystery.

Pondering stuff ...

time = fun
well seing as we only know ourselves exist, and we can only ever know ourselves, our opinion, our lives etc, this means to the individual, that we are the centre of the universe, the centre of everything, we are the most important thing ever to have lived.

time is simply a dimention. if ourselves didnt exist, we would know it, we would be timeless.
as i have said before, time goes fast when we are having fun and slow when we are not therefore:
'time is relative to fun'

anyone agree???

Yeah.I agree.

wow!! thanx, lol!!

Time dilatation




I'm not sure that the apehelion of Mercury can be considered absolute proof of Einstein view of space, but since his relativity formulae described the motion of Mercury more accurately than Newton's, people gave him the upperhand and bostered his theory. I'm not really versed in Einstein's relativity, but I feel that you are onto something in suspecting the different speeds of time being the reason.

On the topic of speeds of time, I've got something from my late years of highschool that may shed some more light onto the subject of time and its dilatation...

Time dilatation happens when an object is in motion... Since we cannot use time to describe time (a circular definition), we will use something else; in this case, we will use a ball that bounces between two plates, as a time keeper. You need to think of time keeping as the action of counting cycles. In this case, it will be regular cycles of a forever bouncing ball, between two plates. We measure time by measuring the distance travelled by the ball as it bounces from one plate to another. The longer the distance the longer the time...

Also, for simplicity, we will assume that our time keeper is a 3-second time keeper. It means the ball will take 3 seconds to bounce from one plate to the other plate.


Our time keeper:

=====
O <-- position 0-second
.
.
.
.
.
O <-- position 3-second
=====

When our time keeper is at rest, the plates are not moving, and on my 17 inch monitor, the distance travelled by the bouncing ball will be about 3cm. This 3cm will represent our 3-second period. When we measure 3cm, we actually measure time (3 seconds).

Now observe the diagonal motion of the ball as our plates move from .A to .B


A B

===== --> =====
O. . <-- position 0-second
. .
. .
. .
. .
. .
. O <-- position 3-second
===== =====

For someone who moves along with the plates, he/she will still measure only 3cm (3 seconds), but seen from a stationary observer, the path taken by the ball is now a diagonal path, and its distance travelled from A to B is now about 7cm (7 seconds). So, to the stationary observer, the time has slowed down for the moving observer -- yet to the moving observer, his time is still the same. There is no real paradoxes since time proceed at different speeds for different motions.

Oops...
Oops, sorry everyone... seems that the webpage does not like me using spaces as characters in illustrating the moving plates...
The spaces were all truncated! Sorry about that...

Would one second on mercury be as long as one on earth?

If we are going to talk about space etc, then we need to make som distinctions:
do we define time as what we see on a watch, (which would make time different on other planets)
or do we define time as relative to ourselves?? (in which there would be no diferences in planets).

i think these definitions make the difference between collective and universal time, and personal time. Both have a use,
universal time when we say 'meet me at 7.00'
personal time when we say 'ooh that went really quickly
universal time is a constant and
personal time is relative to fun.

i think that sums time up pretty well doesnt it?

Axl, that's a good answer. If we are to put our frame of reference at infinity, we would certainly see a constant time, but if we put frames of references on beings within a system, then differences would occur. Only a hypothesis.

Hmmm... I guess the answer would be yes.... and no.
Yes, if you were walking on Mercury, one second is still one second. If you were on Earth, one second is still one second, but if you were on Earth, looking, through a big telescope, at a watch on Mercury, one second there is not one second here, and vice versa. At least, this is what I understand from Relativity.

yeah, things will sure get complicated in the future with things like popping to mars to do some shopping. lols!

Differnces in planets would only change universal time.

I think that universal time is only for convenience, the time that really matters is personal time, as this is our own judge of 'time'

Hehehe, AGREED !

Gelisgesti, you say that you believe that 5 exists independently of the formula 2+3. I, too, am almost illiterate mathematically, but it does seem to me that 2+3 is another way of saying 5.

I didn't know this thread was still in operation. Here's a classical definition from Socrates: "Time is the moving image of eternity." I would prefer to say "Time is OUR moving image of eternity.