Einstein and Time

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Hi, guys, I was reading an article and came upon this paragraph:

{Einstein, too, was unable to make a clean break with time. "To those of us who believe in physics," he wrote to the widow of a friend who had recently died, "this separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, if a stubborn one."}

I wonder is it true that there is no separation of time (in our universe)? Is it just our illusion? Does anybody know why did Einstein think so?

By saying there is "no separation between past , present , and future" does he mean that time is a continuum of a cosimic lump that can be backtracked? A line or a space like the expanding of our universe mean that time travel is possible?

But when and where is the origin of time? Because when you think about time, you think about the flow of a river, the flying light, but when does it all started? From the BIG BANG? Because there is future there must be a past, right? But if there is no past and no future ?

I'm confused and interested in this kind of stuff but a layman meself, I wonder if anyone can shed some light on this....or what's your opinion?

I think this will be an interesting thread .......

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Lack of "separation" between past, present, and future, whatever that means, is not part of Relativity. The closest thing to that in Relativity is the treatment of time mathematically as being very similar to the three spatial dimensions.

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The idea may be that time is illusional, as we know it. It's not really I time LINE, with past, present and future, but those concepts help us percieve time. Really it's a part of space and space is a part of it. Thinking that time flows in a line from past to future is akin to thinking that the sun revolves around the earth. It's egocentric. In reality, of course, the earth circles the sun.

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Thanks for the replies, really appreciate. Sorry about that I don't think I can contribute too much on this thread, I now realize that I'm just too young and there are too much education and learning ahead of me before I can have any significant contribution on this kind of topic..........but reading all those discussion in the forum is still very interesting. Razz

I was thinking this topic is also a philosophical question, I mean, does time really objectively exist or is it just our subjective perception? Einstein says time is relative depending on your moving speed but ......... I guess I gotta read more on that.......

Maybe this topic should be put in the philosophy forum........

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Your condition is same as mine 5600hp Smile

I ponder for a moment about this question about every hour but still keep in vain maybe because of the lack of knowledge. :wink:

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The separation of past, present and future exists only in the minds of those who have memory of past events and can imagine a future.

We occupy a particular point in space that we call "here", but that does not mean that our place is a privileged one or that other points are any less real. Our minds are aware of a particular point in time that we call "now", but all other points in time (that we consider past or future because our consciousness has either moved past them or not yet reached them) may actually exist in a 4-dimensional space-time continuum.

Time may be seen as analogous to a spatial dimension and is thought to have originated in the big bang, just as space did. Suppose we had a universe with just 2 spatial dimensions. For each moment you could imagine a sheet of transparent paper on which the positions of each particle are plotted. Stack them up chronologically into a block, and the points indicating the position of each particle would comprise a vertical line if the particle was stationary and a sloping line if its position changed over time.

It may be that there is a maximum speed limit, so things that move faster though space must move slower through time (trigonometry: a2 + b2 + t2 = c2 ). Since photons travel at c through space, they travel at 0 through time. Since we are relatively close to 0 in our velocity through space, we should be moving at maximum speed through time.

We cannot jump to other points in time any more than we can teleport to other points in space. My guess is that we are constrained to travel at the speed of time by the physical laws of the universe, just as a photon is constrained to travel at the speed of light, and can no more arbitrarily reverse our course than could a photon.

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I was thinking of a "time field", like a gravitational field. Time is basically the rate of change of a particular object. Could it be that at an airplane, there is an energy difference or some sort of factor that makes an atomic clock's molecules or atoms /elementary particles move slower or faster than it does on the ground because of the acceleration or velocity opf the airplane? The people in the airplane would not notice the difference in time because they too are in the airplane and thus are experiencing the same sort of affect (metabolism, molecules etc, slower or faster rate of change), so is there a "time field" present? Rolling Eyes

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Ray wrote:

I was thinking of a "time field", like a gravitational field. Time is basically the rate of change of a particular object. Could it be that at an airplane, there is an energy difference or some sort of factor that makes an atomic clock's molecules or atoms /elementary particles move slower or faster than it does on the ground because of the acceleration or velocity opf the airplane? The people in the airplane would not notice the difference in time because they too are in the airplane and thus are experiencing the same sort of affect (metabolism, molecules etc, slower or faster rate of change), so is there a "time field" present?

No. Check out Einstein's original paper, "The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" published in 1905. He makes the reasons for time dilation pretty clear.

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Thanks, I'll check it out.

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I have just recently began to read up on Einstein and time travel so I was wondering if anyone could explain the slowdown factor based on the radius of Earth?

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Jazzfreak13 wrote:

I have just recently began to read up on Einstein and time travel so I was wondering if anyone could explain the slowdown factor based on the radius of Earth?

The rate at which different observers measure events to occur has nothing to do with the Earth at all, much less its radius.

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Brandon9000 wrote:

Jazzfreak13 wrote:
I have just recently began to read up on Einstein and time travel so I was wondering if anyone could explain the slowdown factor based on the radius of Earth?

The rate at which different observers measure events to occur has nothing to do with the Earth at all, much less its radius.

Not quite right Brandon. With General Relativity time dilation happens in a gravitational field. The Earth has a gravitational field.

When you are standing your feet experience time differently than your head (since they are closer to the Earth and experience stronger gravity). Of course this effect is very very small, but it is a real effect.

We have done experiments to confirm this using lasers reflecting off a mirror from a tall tower.

I don't have time to find or figure out the amount of dlation, but it is very small (yet measurable on Earth).

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ebrown_p wrote:

Brandon9000 wrote:
Jazzfreak13 wrote:
I have just recently began to read up on Einstein and time travel so I was wondering if anyone could explain the slowdown factor based on the radius of Earth?

The rate at which different observers measure events to occur has nothing to do with the Earth at all, much less its radius.

Not quite right Brandon. With General Relativity time dilation happens in a gravitational field. The Earth has a gravitational field.

When you are standing your feet experience time differently than your head (since they are closer to the Earth and experience stronger gravity). Of course this effect is very very small, but it is a real effect.

We have done experiments to confirm this using lasers reflecting off a mirror from a tall tower.

I don't have time to find or figure out the amount of dlation, but it is very small (yet measurable on Earth).

Yes, any gravity field will have an influence, but most of the time related effects, particularly those discussed popularly, are related to speed differences and also acceleration.

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Then surely my "speed" is determined by the rate of the earth's rotation and the radius of the earth...which I think was the point of the question. ...

(not to mention travel around the sun + the motion of the solar system and galaxy relative to any given point in the universe outside our galaxy)..

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Eorl wrote:

Then surely my "speed" is determined by the rate of the earth's rotation and the radius of the earth...which I think was the point of the question. ...

(not to mention travel around the sun + the motion of the solar system and galaxy relative to any given point in the universe outside our galaxy)..

No, the speed in question is the relative speed between two observers.

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To me the most suprising thing about special relativity is the concept of an interval.

If you put 2 dots on a blackboard then overlay them with a grid to give each one an x and y coordinate then the distance between the two dots can be computed by the square root of x^2 and y^2. If someone else places the grid differentley he will measure a different x and y but will come up with the same distance.

The same thing is true in special relativity but the two events must be seperated in space and time. Thus two events perhaps flashbulbs on each end of a train going off at the same time (relative to the train) will have a distance equal to the length of the train and a delta time of zero. The interval is given by square root (x^2 - (ct)^2) . Other observers moving with respect to the train will measure different times and distances but will all come up with the same interval.

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Einstein on time and relativity.

Quote:

"When you have a pretty girl sitting on your lap, an hour seems like a second; when you're sitting on a hot stove, a second seems like an hour."

Rap

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Einstein and Time

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