TIME

[CβL]

every dimentional aspect is omnidirectional, for example the third dimension is outward, it does not go inward, the second dimension is linear, a singular dimensionality, it cannot go contra-linear etc.

Time does not flow, perception does.

Hmmm, I'm not quite sure where you got those definitions from. As far as I know, the first dimension is linear, the second is areal and the third is voluminous. There exist 'objects' that are 2D (such as shadows, and reflections), and 'objects' which are 3D (such as matter). As far as I know, because I apply these dimensions onto reality (reality is what is), I can step forwards and backwards, and in my chosen frame of reference (the Earth), I am moving positively and negatively through the spatial dimensions. However, when I apply the concept of a time dimension (as something separating two events that occur in the same space) I find I'm unable to move negatively (based on the concept definition). I'm quite possibly missing something, so please explain.

[ThunderIdeal]

although zac may have touched on this better in the other time thread, somebody tell me how far off i am here

time slows down locally due to mass and therefore also acceleration. time passes slowly for a beam of light (time passes at all?)

could it be that the speed of light applies to four dimensions, if you have very little mass then you are blown along by time at about the speed of light (in the temporal dimension). when you move in 3D, you are moving diagonally in 4D, if you were still blown along by time at the same pace you would now be exceeding your maximum allowable velocity, which is why time must slow down for you. light is therefore moving sideways, very rapidly through space but hardly at all through time. not sure how mass fits into this concept.

does physics describe something along those lines? it's obviously very simplified.

[Sheather]

As far as I know, the first dimension is linear, the second is areal and the third is voluminous.

I would say instead, that each of the first three dimensions are linear, and when applied together become areal and voluminous. In this manner something may have a linear height, width, or length, without spreading into the other dimensions. If there is a reason that this can not be the case (Ie. Dimensions must be filled in a specific order) please tell me, I'm just going off what I think to be sensible here.

There exist 'objects' that are 2D (such as shadows, and reflections), and 'objects' which are 3D (such as matter).

I'm glad you added inverted commas to that. I don't think shadows nor reflections can be classified as 2D. Especially since reflections are a reflection of a 3 dimensional reality. Shadows are simply a lack of light that we perceive as a shape. It just shows a location from which fewer photons reflect into your eyes.

As far as I know, because I apply these dimensions onto reality (reality is what is), I can step forwards and backwards, and in my chosen frame of reference (the Earth), I am moving positively and negatively through the spatial dimensions. However, when I apply the concept of a time dimension (as something separating two events that occur in the same space) I find I'm unable to move negatively (based on the concept definition). I'm quite possibly missing something, so please explain.

I think that being a creature of three dimensions, you should find it impossible to apply the dimension of time to this reality. You cannot move negatively through time, but you would find that you can not move positively through it either. Time will pass, but you do not move within it. For a visual effect, imagine time as a river. You are a stone dropped in to this river, you sit where you fall, and don't move, but the time passes. Moving through time would require fins or legs. You're a rock, can't do that

That's just my view though. Your perception of the universe could simply be different. Also, I'm kinda making this up as I go. (Points for honesty though?)

[ThunderIdeal]

^ you can make the river flow past you at a lesser pace compared with another rock. that's kind of like swimming against a flow maybe, you can't beat it but you can watch others get pushed downstream faster.

[synchromesh]

[mescalito]

[CβL]

I would say instead, that each of the first three dimensions are linear, and when applied together become areal and voluminous. In this manner something may have a linear height, width, or length, without spreading into the other dimensions. If there is a reason that this can not be the case (Ie. Dimensions must be filled in a specific order) please tell me, I'm just going off what I think to be sensible here.

Yes, I agree. But it's a minor point that they are all linear and become areal and voluminous when cumulated.

I'm glad you added inverted commas to that. I don't think shadows nor reflections can be classified as 2D. Especially since reflections are a reflection of a 3 dimensional reality. Shadows are simply a lack of light that we perceive as a shape. It just shows a location from which fewer photons reflect into your eyes.

I fully disagree here. Depending on how deep from within the rabbit hole you're talking, objects flat out don't exist (pun lol), or they exist only in the abstract realm of eternal forms. I'm not really sure on where I stand on the issue. But if you are not debating an objects existence, then you can say that a shadow is a 2D object. Just because it's made from a 3D object doesn't mean it's not 2D.

I think that being a creature of three dimensions, you should find it impossible to apply the dimension of time to this reality. You cannot move negatively through time, but you would find that you can not move positively through it either. Time will pass, but you do not move within it. For a visual effect, imagine time as a river. You are a stone dropped in to this river, you sit where you fall, and don't move, but the time passes. Moving through time would require fins or legs. You're a rock, can't do that

Well, as a simple analogy, that suffices. But you can move relatively, faster forwards, through time. Time dilation (thought not yet practical) seems to be theoretically and physically possible. The experiments to date suggest it's a fully real phenomena. So if I take a rocket trip to Alpha Centauri, and come back - you might be geriatric by then. With your inertial reference frame, I have moved at a different rate through time than you have. As there are no preferred frames of reference, this result is significant.

Lastly, I don't think you can say that we're creatures of three dimensions. I think you can probably say that we conceptualize (for the most part) in 3 dimensions though. I'd be more inclinced to say that we're 4th dimensional creatures as a matter of opinion - not that I can justify this opinion at the moment.

[botanika]

Can any women here explain time? Can they do it?

[Amazonian]

Can any women here explain time? Can they do it?

 

Well , i could , but it would just go over everyones head .

Joking, of course^ . What i believe, has already been said ...Time is an illusion.

.The illusion of time is there to keep the illusion of this world real.

[Sheather]

Time dilation (thought not yet practical) seems to be theoretically and physically possible.

I do not agree with this theory. The concept of time dilation is meant to be applicable only in reference to an unaccelerated frame of reference, which doesn't exist.

As there are no preferred frames of reference, this result is significant.

If we are ignoring the unaccelerated frame of reference part, then from your frame of reference, I would be accelerating away from you, and thus it would be me who passes through time faster.

I'd be more inclinced to say that we're 4th dimensional creatures as a matter of opinion - not that I can justify this opinion at the moment.

It would indeed be interesting to hear such a justification. I say we're 3D because we take up space on three dimensions, but none in a fourth. If time is indeed the fourth dimension, we don't cover an area of time, (IMO) we would be experiencing multiple times at once if that were the case.

But if you are not debating an objects existence, then you can say that a shadow is a 2D object. Just because it's made from a 3D object doesn't mean it's not 2D.

A shadow is the absence of light. It has a shape, but is not an object. An object is visible only because of reflected protons, and one in shadow is just reflecting fewer towards your eyes. Would you say a dark room is covered in this "Shadow" object? Everything is enshaeden in any case, because what is a lack of shadow? You can always shine more light on something.

[synchromesh]

'The years shall run like rabbits,

For in my arms I hold

The Flower of the Ages,

And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city

Began to whirr and chime:

'O let not Time deceive you,

You cannot conquer Time.

'In the burrows of the Nightmare

Where Justice naked is,

Time watches from the shadow

And coughs when you would kiss.

'In headaches and in worry

Vaguely life leaks away,

And Time will have his fancy

To-morrow or to-day.'

[qualia]

(PhysOrg.com) -- The concept of time as a way to measure the duration of events is not only deeply intuitive, it also plays an important role in our mathematical descriptions of physical systems. For instance, we define an object’s speed as its displacement per a given time. But some researchers theorize that this Newtonian idea of time as an absolute quantity that flows on its own, along with the idea that time is the fourth dimension of spacetime, are incorrect. They propose to replace these concepts of time with a view that corresponds more accurately to the physical world: time as a measure of the numerical order of change.

In two recent papers (one published and one to be published) in Physics Essays, Amrit Sorli, Davide Fiscaletti, and Dusan Klinar from the Scientific Research Centre Bistra in Ptuj, Slovenia, have described in more detail what this means.

No time dimension

They begin by explaining how we usually assume that time is an absolute physical quantity that plays the role of the independent variable (time, t, is often the x-axis on graphs that show the evolution of a physical system). But, as they note, we never really measure t. What we do measure is an object’s frequency, speed, etc. In other words, what experimentally exists are the motion of an object and the tick of a clock, and we compare the object’s motion to the tick of a clock to measure the object’s frequency, speed, etc. By itself, t has only a mathematical value, and no primary physical existence.

This view doesn’t mean that time does not exist, but that time has more to do with space than with the idea of an absolute time. So while 4D spacetime is usually considered to consist of three dimensions of space and one dimension of time, the researchers’ view suggests that it’s more correct to imagine spacetime as four dimensions of space. In other words, as they say, the universe is “timeless.”

“Minkowski space is not 3D + T, it is 4D,” the scientists write in their most recent paper. “The point of view which considers time to be a physical entity in which material changes occur is here replaced with a more convenient view of time being merely the numerical order of material change. This view corresponds better to the physical world and has more explanatory power in describing immediate physical phenomena: gravity, electrostatic interaction, information transfer by EPR experiment are physical phenomena carried directly by the space in which physical phenomena occur.”

As the scientists added, the roots of this idea come from Einstein himself.

“Einstein said, ‘Time has no independent existence apart from the order of events by which we measure it,’” Sorli told PhysOrg.com. “Time is exactly the order of events: this is my conclusion.”

In the future, the scientists plan to investigate the possibility that quantum space has three dimensions of space, as Sorli explained.

“The idea of time being the fourth dimension of space did not bring much progress in physics and is in contradiction with the formalism of special relativity,” he said. “We are now developing a formalism of 3D quantum space based on Planck work. It seems that the universe is 3D from the macro to the micro level to the Planck volume, which per formalism is 3D. In this 3D space there is no ‘length contraction,’ there is no ‘time dilation.’ What really exists is that the velocity of material change is ‘relative’ in the Einstein sense.”

Numerical order in space

The researchers give an example of this concept of time by imagining a photon that is moving between two points in space. The distance between these two points is composed of Planck distances, each of which is the smallest distance that the photon can move. (The fundamental unit of this motion is Planck time.) When the photon moves a Planck distance, it is moving exclusively in space and not in absolute time, the researchers explain. The photon can be thought of as moving from point 1 to point 2, and its position at point 1 is “before” its position at point 2 in the sense that the number 1 comes before the number 2 in the numerical order. Numerical order is not equivalent to temporal order, i.e., the number 1 does not exist before the number 2 in time, only numerically.

As the researchers explain, without using time as the fourth dimension of spacetime, the physical world can be described more accurately. As physicist Enrico Prati noted in a recent study, Hamiltonian dynamics (equations in classical mechanics) is robustly well-defined without the concept of absolute time. Other scientists have pointed out that the mathematical model of spacetime does not correspond to physical reality, and propose that a timeless “state space” provides a more accurate framework.

The scientists also investigated the falsifiability of the two notions of time. The concept of time as the fourth dimension of space - as a fundamental physical entity in which an experiment occurs - can be falsified by an experiment in which time does not exist, according to the scientists. An example of an experiment in which time is not present as a fundamental entity is the Coulomb experiment; mathematically, this experiment takes place only in space. On the other hand, in the concept of time as a numerical order of change taking place in space, space is the fundamental physical entity in which a given experiment occurs. Although this concept could be falsified by an experiment in which time (measured by clocks) is not the numerical order of material change, such an experiment is not yet known.

“Newton theory on absolute time is not falsifiable, you cannot prove it or disprove it, you have to believe in it,” Sorli said. “The theory of time as the fourth dimension of space is falsifiable and in our last article we prove there are strong indications that it might be wrong. On the basis of experimental data, time is what we measure with clocks: with clocks we measure the numerical order of material change, i.e., motion in space.”

How it makes sense

In addition to providing a more accurate description of the nature of physical reality, the concept of time as a numerical order of change can also resolve Zeno’s paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise. In this paradox, the faster Achilles gives the Tortoise a head start in the race. But although Achilles can run 10 times faster than the Tortoise, he can never surpass the Tortoise because, for every distance unit that Achilles runs, the Tortoise also runs 1/10 that distance. So whenever Achilles reaches a point where the Tortoise has been, the Tortoise has also moved slightly ahead. Although the conclusion that Achilles can never surpass the Tortoise is obviously false, there are many different proposed explanations for why the argument is flawed.

Here, the researchers explain that the paradox can be resolved by redefining velocity, so that the velocity of both runners is derived from the numerical order of their motion, rather than their displacement and direction in time. From this perspective, Achilles and the Tortoise move through space only, and Achilles can surpass Tortoise in space, though not in absolute time.

The researchers also briefly examine how this new view of time fits with how we intuitively perceive time. Many neurological studies have confirmed that we do have a sense of past, present, and future. This evidence has led to the proposal that the brain represents time with an internal “clock” that emits neural ticks (the “pacemaker-accumulator” model). However, some recent studies have challenged this traditional view, and suggest that the brain represents time in a spatially distributed way, by detecting the activation of different neural populations. Although we perceive events as occurring in the past, present, or future, these concepts may just be part of a psychological frame in which we experience material changes in space.

Finally, the researchers explain that this view of time does not look encouraging for time travelers.

“In our view, time travel into the past and future are not possible,” Sorli said. “One can travel in space only, and time is a numerical order of his motion.”

More information:

Amrit Sorli, Davide Fiscaletti, and Dusan Klinar. “Replacing time with numerical order of material change resolves Zeno problems of motion.” Physics Essays, 24, 1 (2011). DOI: 10.4006/1.3525416

Amrit Sorli, Dusan Klinar, and Davide Fiscaletti. “New Insights into the Special Theory of Relativity.” Physics Essays 24, 2 (2011). To be published.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-scientists-spacetime-dimension.html

[qualia]

if time is traveling in space, then surely it can be reversible?

or biologically i suppose it could be impossible due to energy loss during irreversible chemical reactions,

[kindness]

oh wish I had the time to read all this.... so ignore this comment if it has been said.

Cannot time only exist with something to measure it by - is not time only able to 'be' because we are revolving around the sun and that gives us something to measure?

now what is life? thats my question... clearly life cannot be without death, so what is death?

[synchromesh]

Time is abstract.

[kindness]

if time is abstract then why are we measuring it by the planets orbit around the sun? Is that not a concrete enough marker?

[synchromesh]

Time speeds up when you're having fun...

[mescalito]

.....and don't it drag on when you're not

[CβL]

1 Time

2 speed

3 fun

123, 132, 213, 231, 312, 321

Time speeds up when you're having fun...

Time funs up when you're having speed...

Speed times up when you're having fun...

Speed funs up when you're having time...

Fun times up when you're having speed...

Fun speeds up when you're having time...

Lol

[Thelema]

BLAH BLAH BLAH

"Time is what stops everything from happening all at once"

"I know what time is until some-one asks me"

C'mon Kids, stop this nonsense, I can't take it anymore:

TIME is not a THING!!!

In fact, in 4D physics, tempoposition is defined as sqrt(x^2 + y^2 +z^2 - t^2)

We cannot talk about time as a normal thing due to its negative "valence".

So many words wasted, including this.....

Yet did you notice the time it took to read this?

I doubt you did, until I stimulated your reterospect just now.

[FancyPants]

Touche.

[synchromesh]

[ballzac]

I do not agree with this theory. The concept of time dilation is meant to be applicable only in reference to an unaccelerated frame of reference, which doesn't exist.

 

Special relativity is an approximation. It is valid, but only within its domain of validity, just like any other theory. Nature doesn't care whether you "agree with the theory". Time dilation occurs whether you like it or not. From the viewpoint of general relativity, an object falling towards a massive body via the gravitational 'force' is actually in an unaccelerated frame of reference. Spacetime is a 'smooth' manifold. That is, there are no 'corners'. This means that locally, all spacetime is flat, just like the Earth is flat locally. Even though the Earth is curved on a larger scale, we can perform experiments on salt-flats using the assumtion that this region is locally flat, and it is a very accurate approximation.

If we are ignoring the unaccelerated frame of reference part, then from your frame of reference, I would be accelerating away from you, and thus it would be me who passes through time faster.

 

This is not true. It is trivial to perform an experiment to determine who was accelerating (EDIT: essentially, if Newton's laws hold, you are in the inertial frame. If they do not, then you are in the accelerating frame). If you only take into account inertial frames, then yes, this symmetry holds.

It would indeed be interesting to hear such a justification. I say we're 3D because we take up space on three dimensions, but none in a fourth. If time is indeed the fourth dimension, we don't cover an area of time, (IMO) we would be experiencing multiple times at once if that were the case.

 

If we exist in four dimensions, this doesn't mean that multiple times would be experienced at once. What it means is that our existence can be measured at a specific time and a specific place, and then at another specific time and place. This is absolutely the case. We are smeared out through time. Experiencing multiple times at once would actually be an argument AGAINST time being another dimension, as it would mean that it has no extent. Just as if you measured something's length in the x direction and found that it all occurred at one point, but had extent in the y and z direction, you would know it was 2-dimensional.

Edited May 8, 2011 by ballzac

[hutch]

'The years shall run like rabbits,

For in my arms I hold

The Flower of the Ages,

And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city

Began to whirr and chime:

'O let not Time deceive you,

You cannot conquer Time.

'In the burrows of the Nightmare

Where Justice naked is,

Time watches from the shadow

And coughs when you would kiss.

'In headaches and in worry

Vaguely life leaks away,

And Time will have his fancy

To-morrow or to-day.'

 

Your not WH Auden are you?

http://www.poemhunte...-one-evening-3/

If so, lovely poem, if not.....mmm

[synchromesh]

If it were mine, then why would it have quotation marks?