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Why would Time need to have been created? Time just is, innit?
Mebbe so? 'scuse me but this just reminded me of a very interesting book. I sometimes dream about this passage:
Quote:
Quote:
I paint things as I think of them, not as I see them.
~Pablo Picasso
After the Fauvists celebrated light, the next essence to be revised by artists was space. Einstein, too, thoroughly revamped our notion of space. Contained within the filigree of his mathematical equations were such severe distortions of mundane, commonsense experience that few could imagine them. Because of this difficulty, the radical changes in the conception of reality buried in his deceptively simple formulas did not trouble the world until after their publication in 1905. However, a graphic representation of relativistic principles coincidentally appeared in a revolutionary new art style – Cubism.
In the everyday world of experience, a second of time delineates a segment of space that is spread out like a 186,000-mile-long caterpillar. But, like a character in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, this space contracts for an observer moving through it at ever-increasing speeds, becoming shorter & thicker just like the accordion segments of a compressing caterpillar.
... Explicit in Einstein’s formulas & implicit in a Cubist painting is the concept that all frames of reference are relative to one another. The only unique seat from which to have a unified view of reality is the theoretical one astride a quicksilver beam of light, where front & back lose their meaning, & past & future cease to exist. It is important to remember that space & time are reciprocal aspects of reality even at non-relativistic speeds. This connection is not apparent to our visual apparatus only because we move so slowly in relation to other objects. But a scientist using sophisticated instruments can detect relativistic effects even in our sluggish inertial frame. Our inability to sense these changes compels us to continue to imagine that light travels only through space in time.
In fact, light just is, while space & time change in relation to it. The mathematician Hermann Weyl described the spacetime view of reality, “The objective world simply is; it does not happen.
Only to the gaze of my consciousness, ...does a section of this world come to life as a fleeting image in space which continuously changes in time.”
~From Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time & Light, Chapter 14, Cubism/Space by Leonard Shlain
The book is beautifully written & consistently keeps to the focus as suggested by the title by examining the advances in understanding by the physicists & these demonstrated, represented, & celebrated by the artists.
& so it goes.
Last edited by ChiGeekGuest; 08-26-2019 at 05:24 AM..
The Big Bang Theory gained acceptance because it not only was a plausible explanation of observations, but also fit in nicely with the Genesis description of Creation in the religious literature.
That theory implies there was nothing- no space, no time, no matter, no energy, then suddenly there was.
However, let's say we can go back in spacetime by half steps- each step one half the distance from our present position to "zero."...We would never actually be able to get back to zero then, only approach it asymptotically.
There didn't have to necessarily be a beginning.
BTW- if spacetime (ie- "The Universe") is expanding, what's it expanding into?
The Big Bang Theory gained acceptance because it not only was a plausible explanation of observations, but also fit in nicely with the Genesis description of Creation in the religious literature.
That theory implies there was nothing- no space, no time, no matter, no energy, then suddenly there was.
However, let's say we can go back in spacetime by half steps- each step one half the distance from our present position to "zero."...We would never actually be able to get back to zero then, only approach it asymptotically.
There didn't have to necessarily be a beginning.
BTW- if spacetime (ie- "The Universe") is expanding, what's it expanding into?
'Scuse me if my comment here re: bold sounds a tad 'koan-like' ~ here it is:
So it all boils down to this. When asked about the beginning
Creationists say it all started with God and people perceive that to be a lazy way out of explaining the unknown.
Non-creationists say that the universe always existed, but it isn't something that can be explained or observed.
I think the honest approach is to say that the follow-up to "in the beginning" is most likely unknowable. I won't close out the possibility of an answer, but given the track record of the answerers to this question, they probably have an ax to grind and aren't being as honest as you are by asking the question.
"If science and God do not mix, there would be no Christian Nobel Prize winners. In fact, between 1900 and 2000 over 60% of Nobel Laureates were self-confessed believers in God.3" https://www.rzim.org/read/just-think...believe-in-god
Because humans have beginnings and ends, we created time as a convenient measuring tool.
According to scientists, our days 1.7 billion years ago averaged 21 hours in length; even less the further you go back.
Non-creationists say that the universe always existed, but it isn't something that can be explained or observed.
That's not quite true. There are a number of scientifically reasonable hypotheses about how the observable Universe was formed from its conjectured predecessor, including a quantum fluctuation or a black hole singularity. It's entirely conceivable that in the future other Universes may be detected using scientific instruments, much as at one time we discovered that the Milky Way isn't the only galaxy.
"If science and God do not mix, there would be no Christian Nobel Prize winners. In fact, between 1900 and 2000 over 60% of Nobel Laureates were self-confessed believers in God.3" https://www.rzim.org/read/just-think...believe-in-god
First, since some Nobel Prizes (peace, literature) have precisely nothing to do with science, the total number of Nobel winners (which necessarily includes individuals in those two categories) is inapplicable to the notion of science and religion.
Second, those prize winners in actually scientific categories (chemistry, physics, etc.) won their prizes based on science. Period. That they were able to compartmentalize their scientifically baseless beliefs is no more relevant that a Tarot card reader who can do geometry, or a flat-earther who is a brilliant geneticist. It just means those people can apply logic to contained scenarios while simultaneously holding to ideas that have no evidentiary bases.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sunbiz1
Because humans have beginnings and ends, we created time as a convenient measuring tool.
According to scientists, our days 1.7 billion years ago averaged 21 hours in length; even less the further you go back.
You're confusing universally-defined units of time (the second, and all units which have the second as their base) and varying observational units of time (days, years, etc.). The Earth's sidearal day is currently about 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4 seconds, and it is lowly decreasing due to tidal interactions with the Moon (and, to a much lesser extent, the Sun and other celestial bodies). The year - the time it takes the Earth to orbit the Sun once - is also decreasing, albeit it at an even slower rate (due to gradual mass-loss of the Sun and that effect on the Earth's angular momentum).
I always question any conclusion that comes from our extremely limited dualistic views of the world around us. Sure, we are able to manipulate matter in useful ways in order to engineer things for our convenience - but our ability to REALLY understand time or space or even Euclidian geometry is limited by our hugely imperfect perceptive apparatus. We have a tiny aperture into the universe where we can see a few things dimly and darkly, and measure a few parameters with crude instruments - yet we have the arrogance to think that we really understand something like the "origin of time".
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