Define "time"

That must be good stuff you're smoking.

Time is the nonspatial linear continuum wherein phenomona are observed to transpire in apparently irreversible order. It is a fundamental, irreducible quantity neither subject to nor identified by any other fundamental quantity; it is an absolute. More precisely, "time" is "space time"; within our frame of reference, the two concepts, "time" and "space" are concomitant, interdependent, indistinguishable, inconceivable the one without the other, one and the same.



Any more questions?

Yes, I have a few.

Are you contradicting yourself, or am I misunderstanding you?

How can something be within a nonspatial continuum?

How can something that expands in all directions be linear?

Time is a relative term, and it is relative to space, same as hot is to cold.
They are really the same from different angles.
You say this, but not before you've stated that time is absolute.

I can agree that subjective perception of time is absolute, but that's as far as I'll go at the moment. Also, that has more to do with perception than what is percieved.

Example:
The sun is eclipsed. Four minutes later a powerplant malfunctions, and all electricity is temporarily shut down. Four minutes after that the last rays of the sun before the eclipse hits us, and so we are all inclined to say that the electric malfunction happened four minutes before the eclipse, when in fact it was just the oposite.

Cyracuz,

I will try to reduce Timberlanko's comments to everyday English.

1. Time is our name for perception of change.
2. Space is our name for perception of objects. (even if no thing is percieved).
3. Space time is our perception of change in the apparent position of objects.
4. "c" is the speed of light. This is called a "constant" in which all other things are measured against. It is also a speed that defines the limits of our observable universe.
5. We live in a universe where light travels 186,000 miles per second.
6. A second is a small fraction of the time that Earth requires to circumnavigate the Sun.
7.five and six have absolutely no relationship to each other except for us being able to relate them in a meaningful way, on Earth, here and now!
8.The rate of change, and therefore the speed of light that we perceive is dependent upon the speed of the accelerations of gravity.
9. This is what Einstein hit upon when he deduced the theories of relativity. All times and all motions are actually relative to our location and motion in the space-time. You'll have to get one of his books if you want to go any further with this.

It really gets hairy when you realize that all that we think that we observe as far as Universes, Creations, Time, and Existence itself, itself are all merely local perceptions and may or may not have a lot to do with reality, whatever that is.

I'm willing to talk more about it if you wish but be warned-- It does get very deep The conversation will include "Wave Theories" Quantum Theories, "Electro-Magnetism" and "Theories of Gravitation", all of which are related to our perceptions of "Time", which I can assure you does exist SOMETIMES Steven Hawkings and some others postulate a time that isn't for instance (This strange turn of non events is required by "Big Bang" theories.)

For all functional intents and purposes, time is little more than human perception of the sequential nature of events.

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Time is a necessary component of our experience. It is complicated to answer whether time is an innate property of the environment in-itself(independent of our experience of it) because it is unfathomable to try to completely define the world outside our senses and mental preconditions. Because we are confined to them, it is perhaps the case that we can only define time in terms of our phenomena.

In terms of our experience, time is the rate at which matter is changing in position relative to other matter. I think...

Mechsmith, thank you, but your facts are not new to me. And they have not yet been able to persuade me to change my mind as to time. It is but an illution.

a lizard, biting entropy's tail



http://www.tardyon.de/time.htm

http://www.tardyon.de/7ursache.htm

http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/entropy.html

http://www.spectacle.org/599/beckett.html

Cyracuz, and Ray
I used to think so also. It embarasses me now to think how assuredly I maintained that time is merely a human construction.

I am now fairly certain that that was an erroneous assumption.

I am also fairly certain that time itself runs at differing speeds which are at least partially location dependent.

But as of yet I am not willing to attempt to absolutely define it. I don't know how but somehow it is related to gravity and vice versa.

Consider the behavior of the high energy particles-waves that we call cosmic rays. That was the clincher for me as to the existence of time. Course it didn't show me much

It's now bed time :wink:

According to Einstein the objects in space determine the shape of space. And light, wich is the way we measure time, is also affected by gravity, and when it passes near a huge astral body it will bend slightly. Curiously, even though the light bends, we cannot say that it doesn't travel in a straight line. It does follow the shortest path from A to B.

Yes, I am familiar with his (Einsteins) concept. Unfortunetly that concept requires a view or definition of space and time that leaves a little to be desired.

If space is indeed described as the interactions of time and forces then we may as well describe a football game as grass.

But if indeed space is the absence of time and forces (no thing) then the forces, distances, and time itself become influences on each other within the stage so's to speak.

Personally I suspect that space is merely the stage or stadium within which the game of existence is played.

The difference between "space" (no thing) and matter-energies-forces (something) seems to be the difference between the Rose Bowl game described as matter-energies-forces, and the empty stadium. The stadium itself is merely the field upon which the game is played.

Consequently I have a little trouble with things like the Big Bang-Expanding Universe Theory. Since the speed of time (whatever it is) seems to vary with the densities of matter within space it is a bit hard to swallow that the whole Universe at the beginning of time was contained in a sphere or a singularity from 6cm cubed to infinitely smaller than that.

I think I have learned that our sense of time basically is derived from the speed of light at our location. In other words "c". But "c" doesn't necessarily relate to a speed of 186,000 miles per second anywhere but here. So time is actually location dependent. Do you see what this does to things like ages of the universe and distances to the stars

Anywhere thats where I am coming from. I hope I haven't talked too much. Happy thoughts-- M


P.S There are many experiments that show that light is subject to gravity (if it's a force) or curvature of space (if space is something) The Hubble shows quite a few examples of lensed galaxies in their "Deep Field Survey" for instance.

There are also several experiments that seem to show that time varies with accelerations due to gravity and also with mechanical accelerations.

There is also one (the Harvard Tower Experiment) that shows that the energies of light and wave lengths change due to the influence of gravity.
(I haven't made up my mind on that one. Does the wave length change or does the speed of time change It gets curiouser and curiouser Best, M

We could, if we were seeking truth. Who knows where that might end. But when it comes to football we seek entertainment, so the notion becomes absurd.



So do I. But I also think of space itself as an influance in the game. I'm thinking that if the gravity of an object determines the shape of space around it, then everything that has gravity defines in unity the shape of the universe. If this is true the relationship between space and time is one of mutual dependence.
Time is not the string along wich evolution takes place. It is rather the echo of it, it's reverberations sounding off eachother, creating infinite possibility in every pattern imaginable.
I also like to think of time as one split second, not as a string of them. It could be that the terms past and future are useless when trying to figure out time. They imply an inconcievable vastness when there may not be anything but this one second, happening everywhere at once.

1. I prefer to think that there is a difference between gravity influencing space and gravity influencing every thing in space. But gravity does indeed influence time. The Mechanics :wink: of this are simple.

Gravity acts as an accellerant on everything that we can observe. For instance the starlight that we observe has been both slowed (wave length shifted to the red as it was emitted) and accelerated (wave length shifted to the blue as the light was falling toward the observer over the last umpteen.

A minor difficulty is since light has been shown to be subject to gravity it must always be a little behind time since it presumeably also exibits inertia. Electrons and electrical wave forms have been shown to exibit inertia. (this is why capicitors and condensers are necessary in electrical and electronic devices) I expect that photons and light waves do also.

2. Thinking of time as one split second tends to fly in the face of the principle of causuality which reasons that any event in the universes of matter and energy requires a previous condition in which these events are a result. This brings us back to "Time" as "Change" . Whether the change is in oscillations of an atom, the position of a planet, or the peturbations of an orbit there is still change. And change requires time what ever it is.

3. I had an idea as I was talking. I'll throw it out although I haven't thought enough about it.

Time may be the difference between the actual distance a photon travels at "c" and the distance that it would travel if it was a massless particle uninfluinced by gravity.

Perhaps for instance, behind the event horizon of a Black Hole the actual motion of a photon (or wave ) must be zero. The actual acceleration of gravity must be "c" or greater. Therefore is there no time at that location But black holes do change over time

So if that's true and there is no time somewhere we had ought to be able to figure we'd ought to be able to figure out what time is if we compare locations that are timeless with locations that have time. Worth thinking about sometime :wink:

Now I'm having trouble keeping up. I'll have to read it slower.

But I don't see how "time as a split second" defies the idea of causality. It's just that everything that happens does so within the present, wich is, as we all know, a point on a fictive timeline we have trouble locating.

Unfortunetly it seems that something has happened in the past which I notice was the present then.

I concede that the time is now but there were times that are not now and there will be times that are not yet.

The rather arbitrary units that we may use to measure time though seem to vary with the forces of gravity that happen to be in our neighborhood .

A particularly strange thing seems to happen with light waves. (or wave theory in general) We interpret them as colors. But the color that we see depends depends upon the speed that the light waves interact with our eyes. You see, wave length and frequency are directly related. But frequency is time dependent. And if our time is different from another fellows then who's right

Einstein never did resolve the question of who is right . It really doesn't matter too much until people, either Creationists or Big Bangers, start telling me that the universe is a certain age or some star is umpteen million light years away or that the Universe is some 15x10 to the ninth years old. Without some notion of what time is those figures aren't worth very much in our quest to understand the Universe.

I have put in too much overtime the last couple days and really need a lot more thinking time Best---

No. There were only things that are not now and things that are not yet. Time just is. Then, now or soon are but lables we put on changes within time. Memory has a timeline, but not memories.
So the time is indeed now. Past and future are notions that exist within the now, and never outside it, because nothing can.



Both, and none. Perception of time depends on location, but it is not time itself that changes, only the perciever's experience of it.

I thought that myself until it became rather aparent that time also influences things that can have no perception.

Then Einstein came up with the concept of space-time. That doesn't quite square with observation either but it comes pretty close. Matter of fact I suspect that space-time will be used in a definition of time.

Later--- M.

vegetative perception is also perception. Even rock do have perception if we do not use the term in such a narrow way we usually do.
I've always understood the term as "suceptible to outside influences", or something along those lines. A rock's perception is vegetative, and it is limited to that a rock can be influenced by the things around it, and it can in turn do the same.