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Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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Or do you believe all time - the past, present and future - exists right now, like the relativistic model, and it's just a matter of your location in the Universe? Is the state of the Universe - it's size, rate of expansion/contraction - a barometer or rather a clock that tells us 'absolute time', or perhaps, merely what 'time' it is in THIS Universe. Einstein demonstrated how fast time passes depends on the observer, and most theoretical physicists acknowledge time travel is at least theoretically possible if you can travel FTL or go through a wormhole, so I tend to believe it is.
It's interesting to see how the different religions view this. It's probably more easily accommodated by the Indian tradition of cyclic time...even in Mid-Eastern cosmology where time is strictly linear, God is 'outside of time', so the eschatology in a sense existed in the past, as it will in the future. Maybe the cyclic thinking of the Eastern faiths was some kind of knowledge about the eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth of the Universe, merely flux in the timeless absolute.
This is deep. We really have no way to know until we invent time machines to find out. Of coarse, if time is fixed, and we can only live in the now, they will never work. Back to Future uses the relative time model. Who knows?
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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Originally Posted by imapro
In my perfect world I really wish time is relative and can go back and stay in the 80s forever and ever.
Realistically speaking, as of now, it looks like Time is fixed, the past is gone forever. Which makes me sad coz I WANT TO GO BACK TO 80s!
Begs the question, is time really an independent entity or is it just the physical experience of the flux of the Universe changing state? I mean what are the 80s really? They're the styles, the music, the clothes the cars...we could quite easily 'bring back' the 80s in the sense if we all agreed with wear a lot of hairspray, shoulder pads, and the like lol.
I think cause and effect is an illusion and all time exists at once. There is no 'flow' of movement of objects, just the movement of consciousness. Since we can only perceive a small bit of time, we can only see a 'slice' of an object's true location in space time. The laws of physics do not dictate movement or force anything, they simply are a formula for predicting the location of an object somewhere in space and time if you know where it is in the present time and space.
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
24,544 posts, read 56,068,476 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by callmemaybe
I think cause and effect is an illusion and all time exists at once. There is no 'flow' of movement of objects, just the movement of consciousness. Since we can only perceive a small bit of time, we can only see a 'slice' of an object's true location in space time. The laws of physics do not dictate movement or force anything, they simply are a formula for predicting the location of an object somewhere in space and time if you know where it is in the present time and space.
So time only exists in your minds and perceptions, and sort of allows us to 'travel' around and see what is essentially a stationery, unchanging reality?
So time only exists in your minds and perceptions, and sort of allows us to 'travel' around and see what is essentially a stationery, unchanging reality?
Yes 4D spacetime is essentially unchanging, I think. Imagine a roll of sushi. Everything is there, but if you cut it into little slices, each slice of course, has continuity with the last slice, but is different. Passing through time is like only being able to see each roll of sushi at a time.
Begs the question, is time really an independent entity or is it just the physical experience of the flux of the Universe changing state? I mean what are the 80s really? They're the styles, the music, the clothes the cars...we could quite easily 'bring back' the 80s in the sense if we all agreed with wear a lot of hairspray, shoulder pads, and the like lol.
Well yes, back to the future and somewhere in time are perfect examples that we we could quite easily 'bring back' any decade in the past.
But like all movies it's just illusion. REAL time travel means and my kind of time travel is you go back to your past self whatever age you were in that decade in my case, i was a teenager in the 80s.
For me going back in time with your present age is WTF factor. Senseless.
The idea is that if you go back to the past as a teen, the BIG difference is - you ALREADY know then what you know now.
Or do you believe all time - the past, present and future - exists right now, like the relativistic model, and it's just a matter of your location in the Universe?
It's a pretty complex subject. We don't really know exactly what the nature of time is. It seems to appear to be linear, that is what we consider to be the Present moves from the Past and advances in the direction of the Future, which is regarded as the "Arrow of Time". Some think it may be a smooth flow, others think it might be in frames, and still others think it may be granular. Regardless, our perception of time is pretty strange. The Past has already occurred and we can see evidence of that. We can pretty well say that there will be a Future, but we have no way to directly observe any evidence of it because Future events have not yet happened. That suggests the Future, while it may exist, can be thought of as the unfolding of Future events. We can certainly plan for the Future, even make certain general predictions, but that's not the same as observing it. We don't really know what's there until it becomes part of the Past. As for the Present, if we were to try to pinpoint the exact moment that divides the Past and Future, it would probably be an infinitely small point that equals to zero time. In other words a point at which time no longer exists in any meaningful way. The smallest measurement is about 12 attoseconds (1.2 x 10-17 seconds), or 3.7 x 10^20 Planck times.
Yes, time is relativistic depending on your position and motion in space. Case in point, when we look at the Sun, that's what it looks like to us now (Present time). But what we are seeing is how the Sun looked about 8 minutes ago because that's how long it takes for the light to reach out eyes. What we're seeing is already 8 minutes old. If the Sun were to suddenly blink out of existence, we wouldn't know it for another 8 minutes. Our view is always of the Past.
Quote:
Is the state of the Universe - it's size, rate of expansion/contraction - a barometer or rather a clock that tells us 'absolute time', or perhaps, merely what 'time' it is in THIS Universe. Einstein demonstrated how fast time passes depends on the observer, and most theoretical physicists acknowledge time travel is at least theoretically possible if you can travel FTL or go through a wormhole, so I tend to believe it is.
The universe is expanding. There's no evidence that it will contract, although it's possible that Dark Energy (whatever is causing space to expand) might weaken at some point in the distant future with Gravity regaining control and contract. Again, there is no single correct view about an "absolute time".
Time isn't a physical object. It's a dimensional characteristic of space-time but it isn't a spatial dimension. It's a dimensional oddball. Just as there are elements to a 3-dimensional space, it's possible there could be more than one dimension of time. Space could also have more than 3 dimensions. We don't know. While it's a part of space-time, the dimension of Time differs from the three spatial dimensions we're more familiar with. There are some thoughts that if FTL could be exceeded, then supposedly time beyond that would reverse. There's no evidence that would mean time travel to to past though. In effect, that only has to do with baryonic matter in the universe. It does not mean the universe itself is restrained to the speed of light. It;s thought that the initial inflation of space following the Big Bang was indeed faster than the speed of light. And observations of some of the most distant galaxies are so extremely red-shifted that they are moving away faster than the speed of light. It's not that the galaxies are moving that fast, but rather that the space of the universe is expanding faster than light speed.
With regard to hypothetical wormholes, as far as I know, they're thought to be tunnels in the 'fabric' of space-time. It would only change time in terms of reducing the amount of time it would take to get from Point A to Point B - a shortcut. The problem with wormholes is that if they exist at all, it would be at quantum space. Too small for for us to consider for time travel. They're also considered to be extremely unstable and evaporate very quickly. Imagine if you could expand one large enough for a spacecraft to pass through. The wormhole could collapse before you got through it, which would pretty much end the travel as well as the spacecraft. If you could successfully pass through it, you'd have no idea where you'd end up. If you came out in the middle of a star, that probably wouldn't be very pleasant.
Quote:
It's probably more easily accommodated by the Indian tradition of cyclic time...even in Mid-Eastern cosmology where time is strictly linear, God is 'outside of time', so the eschatology in a sense existed in the past, as it will in the future. Maybe the cyclic thinking of the Eastern faiths was some kind of knowledge about the eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth of the Universe, merely flux in the timeless absolute.
The way different religions view the behavior of time is interesting, but it seems to be based on our human nature to recognize patterns in order to make sense of something unknown that doesn't otherwise make sense, much in the same way as looking at stars or nebulae and seeing patterns that look like they form recognizable figures. It's the same reason why acts of nature, especially violent ones, have been attributed to be the acts of gods.
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