Edtharan

Actually what I find interesting is that your Code requiers the use of 0 (Zero), but at the time that the Dead Sea Scrolls were written, the concept of Zero as a number had not yet been invented. It is a bit like requiering that somone in the 16th century was driving around in a Ferrari. It just doesn't work.

Do you mean this (at wikipedia)?

No. Because you haven't given us the diagrams needed so that we can make one to experimentally prove/disprove it. So this also menas we can't rely on what you tell us either. No, but you keep telling us to build that machine, but without those detailed diagrams, we can't actually build it now can we... You can make claims in questions. These are claims about initial assuptions. For example: Why is the sky blue? In that question there are 2 assuptions 1) That the sky exists (on an airless world there would be no "Sky" we could talk aobut in this way). 2) That the sky is blue. Si in your opening post your question is: "Why are we not using Zero Point energy?" This also has two assuptions: 1) That ZPE actually exists. 2) That we are not using it. Well assuption 2 is easy to prove. There are no known powerstations that use ZPE extractions systems to generate power. So this assuption is accepted. However, people are questioning your first assuptions: That ZPE enxists. If ZPE doesn't exist (in a useable form)then the answer to your quetions is very simple: The reason we aren't using ZPE is that it doesn't exist (in a useable form). However, you clearly believe that ZPE exists in a useable form or you wouldn't beasking this quesiton in the first palce. So just by asking that question in the way that you did, includes the claim that ZPE exists ina useable form. So even though all you have done is ask a question, for you to ask that question means that you also have to make the claim that ZPE exists in a useable form. Someone making a claim has burden of proof about that claim. Actually, in my post I ahve made several claims and have provided proof of them (since the burden of proof was on me). How about you return the favour.

I remember hearing a scenario where by an Alien race (more advanced than ours) descides to supress any other race advancing too far because they might not be as compasionate as themsleves. They could come to this conclusion from the fact that they would have needed to have some form of agression (but now have advanced past it) to survive and become the dominent specices on their world. But, because they can't be certain that another species might develop a greater technology than them, and still be as compasionate, then they would feel that they have to supress the development (or even wipe out a species that is getting too advanced and showing signs of agression still) of other developing races. This would be the opposite of the "Prime Directive" approach, in that these aliens would have to activly suppress these other races (which might include annhialation).

Yes they don't form a proper Pyramid shape. In a pyramid, if the top was removed, then the shape of the new top section would be the same shape as the base (that is a square). But in those images the visible top section does not forma square. This indicates that it is not actually a pyramid shape at all. The top should make a kind of >-< shape. It is more like wedge than a pyramid.

I can see the triangle, but it doesn't look equilateral to me, Isosceles maybe or even Scalene. If you look closely the base (the side nearest the oval shaped protrusion) it is clearly shorter than the others. However, the side counter clockwise to that does appear to be the largest. Also that largest sized side appears to not be entierly straight. Well thats what it looks like after a few seconds of close examination. It seems that such glareing errors like that can be overlooked just so that someone can fit it to their desires. I would like there to be ailens, but I woulld rather get my hopes up for the reall thing that just go chasing after illusions. I think this is what seperates the two groups that want there to be ailens, one want it so badly that they will latch onto the tinyest bit of "thing" that might just hint that there might be some evidence of aliens. The other group would rather wait for good evidence that it really is aliens (and not just something, like a lense flare, mirrored images or as in this case fractured rock and shadows). I have seen rocks fractured into geometrical patterns before and by purely natural means, so that there are geometraclally fractured rocks is of absolutly no suprise to me. For it to be so close to a triangle is interesting, but it is not proof. Even if it was a perfect equilateral triangle it is not proof. Of what purpose would an alien race have of leaving such an obscure "message". If they had left the first 10 digits of PI in a binary code carved into the rocks so it could be seen from orbit, then that would be a decent message. But a Triangle? And something that is supposed to be a face. Why would they leave such a thing. What if we haden't evolved to ahve a face like that, what if we had more of a muzzle, or a completely different set of features (like that of a slug, or insect). We would not recognise it as a "face" at all. By the way, that face only appears in a couple of photographs because when viewed from a slighly different angle or the sunlight is at a different angle then the "face" doesn't appear as a face, but just as a collection of rocks that have fractured and eroded.

This is only true if you assume that the time machine acts a bit like the transporters from start trek in that it has to dematerialise the matter to go back in time. If you used a massive gravitational field and rotated it, then it would twist space/time so that one of the dimentions of space was rotated into the dimention of time and that the dimention of time was rotated into that spatial dimention. In this case, time travel would be like walking up or down a road. There would be no materialisation or such. You could even set it up (well if you had the technology to do this you could) so that you could actually walk on your own feet. The big probelm with this kind of Time Machine though is that you can't go back before the Machine was built. But if you were using the type of machine I described above (or another like specially set up wormholes), then you would appear out the other side of the machine whereever it is. So if the end of one "mouth" of the machine was set for "Central Park West" and the other for "Central Park East", then because you can't go back past when the machine was built, you must come out from the other mouth where it was located at the time you arrive. The "mouths" would travel with the Earth (and Central Park)and therefore you would appear there. But even if you had a time machine that could travel to an arbitary time without the need for some kind of exit structure (like the Time Machine in "Back to the Future"), then all you would need to do is build it into a space ship so that when you traveled you coudl set it so that you appeared in empty space and then had a means to travel to the spatial location you desired.

The big problem with this is how can you tell if movement is being "undone"? If I move across a room from North to South, this would class as "movment". But if I then "undid" this movment by moving from South to North, I don't move backwards in time. Howewver, reverseing time would make me appear to "undo" my movments. And here is the crux of the problem. If time is dependant on movment (that is Time is caused by movment) then reverseing movment should reverse time like yoiu say. But we can see that just by reverseing movment we can't reverse time, so the conclusion is that Time is not dependent on Movement. As movments is described by a Distance over a period of Time, then we can therefore conclude that Movement is dependent upon Time, the opposite of your proposal. Human existance does not determine Time. So, even if you were to halt all processes in your body (the stasis that you are talking about), the boddy won't "Age", but Time will still go on. Ageing is different from Time. Ageing is the result of Time but Time is not the result of Aging. You just have to look at whether one can exist without the other. Can you have Ageing wiothout Time? Well if ageing is the result of the passage of time, then by definition you can't have agien without time. But, can you have time without aging? Well, looking to atomic processes, there does not seem to be an equivelent of "Age" as in the human experience, but Time does still apply. So we can have Time without "aging". Ageing is therefore dependent on the existance of Time, and Time does not need Aging to exist. This means that even if you removed the ability to Age, then Time will still occur. Placing a body in stasis will remove Aging, but Time will still continue. Its not a "Law" as such, it is the result of Relitivity (Special and General Relitivity). Yes, this is a problem for all Time Travel concepts. Under Quantum Mechanics, all matter can behave as a wave.When matter interacts in a closed system, the whole system can be described as a wave funtion (although a very complex one). As far as we know the whole universe is a closed system. Therefore the whole universe could be described using a (extremely complex) wave function. One feature of waves (and wave function) is that the can experience interference. This interference can be positive (the waves reinforce each other) or negative (the wave cancel each other out). You can set up a laser system with beam splitters and mirrors so that you split the laser beam into two paths. If you then redirect one path back on itself so that it negative interferes with its self, then light will never travel along that path, even if you only send it one photon at a time. You could do the same with ordinary matter (electrons, protons and neutrons or even whole atoms), but the set up would be far more complex and fiddly. Now, Time travel acts a bit like sending one of those beams of light from the laser back along itself (the time traveler is traveling back along their own time line). However, if the Time Traveler does something that prevents them from going back in tiem (a negative interference) then it would turn out that the Time Traveler did not go back and take those actions. The best example is the "Grandfather Paradox". Basically, if you whent back in time and killed your grandfather, you would never have been born and therefore could not have gone back in time and killed your grandfather. By thinking of the Universe as a big and complex wave function, this situation can't occur because it is a negative interference. You can, however, get the opposite, a Positive Interference. In this case it makes a certain set of actions inevitable. This can best be highlighted by this example: You from 10 years in the future travels back in tiem and gives you the designs for a time machine. It takes you 10 years to build it and at the end of that you travel back 10 years to give yourself the plans to make it. This is a positive interference as the actions lead to the actions occuring again (in the next time round the loop). In fact from the perspective of the future you, not going back in time and giveing yourself the plans is a negative interference so canceling that option out. Now, so long as the defineing events occur (or don't occur in the case of anegative interference) then there is still scope from varience. In other words "Free Will" (or random probablility) can still exist, but as everything is treated as a wave function, certain things are impossible or certain depending on whether it interfers positively or negatively.

No offense taken. I haven't provided any links to data as I have not been providing any data. I have just been using the data other have provided and working out conclusions based on that. So the only "links" I can rally provide are to other people's posts (which I do when I quote them ). For example when we were talking about rate ice loss I used the data provided by others and then just did the calculations (admittedly simplified and conservative) to show what would occur. I didn't actually present the data of the ice loss rate, just used what others had provided. Ok, yes, wind can blow ice up hill, but it can also blow it down hill too. It can make a differecne, but I am not sure how big of one it is. I would guess that the rate of snow beling blown up would roughly equal the amount being blown down (or at some point an equilibrium would be reached - like once all the places where snow could lodge have been filled the wind would just sweep the snow over the rises). I would imagine it would be a bit like sand in a desert. When wind blows sand (or snow) it will pile up in drifts where something slows the wind down (like a crack in a rock - or a crashed C 130) enough that the weight of the particulates carried by it are too heavy for the wind to shift. These drifts then cause the wind to slow down and so on as a feedback loop develops. This causes the build up of particles (sand or ice) and it creates mounds that can easily cover very large objects (towns included). This is not indicitive of a wide scale increase in the particulates, but it is a strictly local phenomina. Without further knowledge of the surounding areas, this example does not prove your point (but neither can it be used to disprove it either). It is essentially a read herring (logical falacy) as it detract from what we are discussing. Unless you can show that this increase in height is a wide spread increase (on the scale of kilometres rather than a few hundred meters) then this proves nothing and does not contibute at all to the discussion. It is a bit like me sticking my head out the window and seeing that it is raining here at the moment and then concluding that it must be raining over the whole country at the moment. Also, the site of a landing strip would have been chosen for its stability. This means very little movment of ice. So a build up would be expected in this scenario as ice and snow would be accumulating (falling as prcipitation or being blown there) and very littel would be moving away from that area. Too much movement would create cravases and otehr hazardous concerns. So not only can the build up if snow over the C 130 be (partially) attributed to the fact that it acts like a wind break, you also have the other local phenomina that is the site would have been selected for its lack of movment of ice. This is good example of why the plural of "Anectode" is not "Evidence".

Ther eis a parasitic worm in Africa (I can't remember it's name) that has part of its life cycle in water. When it infects a human and it is ready to enter its water phase of its life cycle it causes a burning sensation in the legs of the infected person who then sooths them in water (and then the worm breaks out of the legs and enters the water. (off topic I know, but I find parasitology quite intersting)

Ok lets look at this: 1) 2) Once it has fallen as snow it can't move up hill (towards the centre of the continent). At 20 to 50 inches per year, this give aproximately 3 to 16 feet of growth each year. Well use the lowest value (the snow will compact and I am being conservitive). At 3 feet per year, over 100 years this is 300 fett increase in ice levels due to priciptitation. However, we are not seeing the edges of antactica grow upwards at this speed. In fact they seem to be about the same height. So then, according to point (2), as the snaow that has fallen on the edges of antarctia can't be moving inland, they must be moving outwards and that way lies the ocean. This all means that although the edges might be getting around 3 fett of snow each year, it also means around 3 feet of snow are being moved into the oceans. This is an equilibrium. The amount of snow being deposited is (roughtly) the same as the amount of snow being moved away (into the oceans). Increasing the rate at which this moves, by a small amount of warming, will tip this equilibrium. The result of which is that the amount of ice in Antactia is reduced and an increase in the amout of water in the atmosphere which contribute to further warming, or in the oceans which contributes to riseing sea levels. And the most important thing here is that the temperatures do not have to exceed the melting point of ice/water . In fact you don't even need to increase temperatures at all. Just a chang in the amount of precipitation will do this. Make a region colder and the water in the atmosphere will be dumped else where. Change the pattern of wind currents and the water in the atmosphere is moved and dumped else where. Global warming is not just about temperature increases. There will be regions where the temperatures will lower and even places where they remain the same. Global Warming is badly named. It is a hang over from when they didn't really understand the full complexity of what retaining extra energy in the atmosphereic/oceanic systems would do, they though it would just lead to increased temperatures. Climate Change is a much better name, but still not perfect. No. This indicates a change in the atmosphereic systems around Antactica. This means that patterns of prcipititation will change. This also means a lot of consiquences that we don't yet know. Just because Antactica is getting colder does not mean that we won't loose ice from it. If these changes mean that less precipitation falls, then there will be less ice build up and with ice removal increasing (faster moving glaciers), then ice will disappear from Antactica without it melting. Let me state this again for you: Melting is only one way for ice to be removed from Antactica. It is the ballance of ice that is being added by precipitation and the removal of ice through all the other means that keeps the ice locked up in Antactica. Shift the ballance away from addition to removal (by reduceing pricipitation, or increasing glacial flow), then you will loose ice from Antactia. You seem to be hung up on ice melting into water. This is just one of many ways that you can reduce the ice covering Antactica.

Sure you can use it. I think the strongest evidence that it is a fake is that the face is not distorted as it would be if it really was wrapped over a body. It even mean that the face is not even from an actual body, it must have been painted on some how. Yes, this means that it is not even a case of mistaken identity (that it might have been someone elses shroud). Because the fase is not distorted it can not be a real shroud, let alone the shoud of christ .

Well, how much area is in the glacial feeder zones and how much is outside the feeder zones? Precipitation falling outside the feeder zones will not contribute to adding to the glacier (that is obvious). So if the glacier is loosing mass, then it must be going somewhere else (outside the feeder zones). It took thousnads, if not millions of years for the ice on Antactica to build up. 200 years is soon. Very soon . Sure it may not be in your life time. But humans will still be around, you decendants would have to deal with it. 200 years might sound a long time, but even within 100 years we will be seeing the effects, and that could be within your own children's life time. Remember that 200 years is to get all the current ice into the ocean. We wouldn't need all of it to start to raise the ocean's height by significant amounts. My point is that you don't actually have to melt the ice to get the rise in sea levels. Even if the glaciers just increased their speed, putting more ice into the oceas, but not melting you would still get sea level rises. It is not about the rate of melting (so you don't need to increase the temperature to the melting point), it is about the rate of water (as ice or as liquid) entering the oceans. There are only two places wher ethe water can go: Into the atmosphere or falling as prcipitation (rain or snow). If it is staying in the atmosphere, then is bad news. Water vapor is a greenhouse gass. This will therefore lead to an increase in temperatures (and more melting ). If it is falling as precipitations, then (statistically speaking) it will be less likely to fall back onto a glacier (in fact Antactica is one of the dryest continents), so it will be falling else where and not gettign locked up in ice sheets. The only place for it to go then is the lowest points, or the oceans. This is also bad news as this will mean an increase in ocean heights. Another bad thing is that when you get water precipitating out of the atmosphere, it releases energy into the atmosphere. This means higher atmospheric temperatures (again leading to more melting and more water vapor entering the atmosphere), stronger winds, more and more powerful storms, and so on. It is a double whammy. Water vapor increases atmospheric temperatures and precipitation causes increase atmospheric temperatures. Increased atmospheric temperatures causes more water to be evaporated into the atmosphere and so on in the cycle. But for the effects to be felt we don't need a 100% loss of ice. It might take those 11,818 years to loose all of the ice, but even 1% of that amount of ice entering the oceans will cause a significant increase in ocean levels (BTW: 1% of 11,818 years is 118.18 years, or close to 100 years). Lets say that ever 50 years the rate is doubleing (conservitive). Your numbers are at 220km^3 per year. So for the first 50 years this give a total of 11000km^3, but for the next 50 years this gives and extra 22000km^3 and a grand total of 33000km^3. Your link indicated a doubleing ever 10 years. Lets look at that. So for the first 10 years we have 2,200km^3 The next 10 years (total 20) we have and extra 4,400km^3 (total 6,600km^3) The next 10 years (total 30) we have and extra 8,800km^3 (total 15,400km^3) The next 10 years (total 40) we have and extra 17,600km^3 (total 33,000km^3) The next 10 years (total 50) we have and extra 35,200km^3 (total 68,200km^3) The next 10 years (total 60) we have and extra 70,400km^3 (total 105,600km^3) The next 10 years (total 70) we have and extra 140,800km^3 (total 246,400km^3) The next 10 years (total 80) we have and extra 281,600km^3 (total 528,000km^3) The next 10 years (total 90) we have and extra 563,200km^3 (total 1,091,200km^3) The next 10 years (total 100) we have and extra 1,126,400km^3 (total 2,217,600km^3) Or 2.2*10^6 . So, if it continues to double, then yes, in 100 years (or there about) it would all be melted. However, I still don't think it would double for 100 years. It might not get that far, but even if it peaked at around the rate of the 50 year mark, that is still a very significant amount of water (ice or liquid water) that is going to enter the oceans. However, if we continue as normal, then we could be looking at the doubling scenario, or even worse (the rate if increase increases). Not if the rate of loss increases, as observations seem to indicate it is doing. 20 years ago, the loss was not as big as it is today. 10 years ago it was greater than it was 20 years ago, but still less than to day. Why wouldn't the rate of less be larger in the next 10 years then larger again in 20 years than larger again in 30 yearas and so on? The rate of loss is increaseing (aproximately doubling every 10 years). The cuases of this doubing are still there. They are still causing this doubing. So we can project what this doubling would cause by projecting it into the future. Your extimate has this major flaw. You assume that dispite the fact that loss rates have beeen doubling, future loss rates will occur at todays loss rates. It is a bit like being in a car with you foot planted on the accelerator. You glance at you speedo and see that you are only doing 60km/h and assuming that dispite your foot on the accelerator, you will still only be doing 60km/h in 1 minutes time because you are only doing 60km/h now.

I can prove the Shoud of Turin is a fake with a very simple experiment that anyone can do at home. 1) Get a piece of material that you can drape across someone's face. 2) Get a texta that can mark the cloth. 3) Drape/gently wrap the material across an assistant's face. 4) Trace the features of your assistant with the texta onto the cloth. 5) Unwrap the cloth from your assistent. You will see that the features are slightly distorted. This is due to the fact that you have "mapped" a 3d surface onto a 2D surface. In the computer graphics circles, this phenomina is well understood (because you have to drape a 2D texture onto a 3D model). But, if you look at the Shoud of Turin, the face is not distorted . This means that the face that you see on the shroud did not get there by being wrapped over a face as it would have if it really was a shroud. Of course they probably didn't know this in medieval times (or at least far less people would know about it), and a faker would want people the see a recognisable face (the distortions would make it hard for observers to recognise whos face it was supposed to be). There is no physical way that the face on the Shroud of Turin got there by imprinting a face it was wrapped around. The geometry of it is completly wrong.

IF you read that article, then you would have read that coinsiding with an increased speed fo the glacier was an increased thinning of it. This thinning was also putting water into the oceans. Imagine if this were to occure with the antarctic glaciers too. Not only speeding up their decent, but also thinning out. They don't need to melt like ice cubes in a drink, they can thin and water from the thinning ends up in the oceans. It is not melting as such, but it can come from the fact that weather patterns change and less snow gets domped onto the glacier, but it has to get dumped somewhere and this could be in areas where the glaciers aren't forming (which if you think about it, it would have to wouldn't it), or it might be that the ice is ground up more by the fast moving galcier (which would generate some extra heat, but the ground up ice would be more likely to melt due to localised increases in temperatures, or finally due to the fact that salt decreases the mealting point of ice and where the glacier is in the ocean, this would increase the amount of melting there (and if it is ground up then this would occur quicker). This isn't mentioning sublimation. If the atmosphere is dry, even if it is very cold, it can cause the ice to sublime and then this water in the atmosphere will have to be dumped eventually somewhere (and likely no over a glacier forming region, but elsewhere where it will casue increased precipitation and therefore more water getting into the oceans. To put it simply: The way Ice and enter and leave glaciers is complex and not yet completely understood. But there is many ways other than just "melting because of high atmospheric temperatures" that Ice can be removed from a glacier and enter the oceans. In fact even if you just moved the ice in the glaciers without melting it from the land into the oceans, it would cause a rise in ocean levels. You can try this experiemnt yourself. Just get a glass and fill it to the brim with water. then get some ice cubes and gently place them into the water. You will overflow the glass. Yes, when ice is already in the water then when it melts the height will remain the same, but the ice from glaciers is not in the water it is on land. When it moves from the land into the water, it is like placeing an ice cube into that glass of water that was already full to the brim. So melting is not the only problem.

No, that is wrong. The first line is right: Perception=Flawed but that is about it. The Physical is perfect (not as in the Platonic concept of perfection, but perfect as: itself is a perfect implimentation of itself), it is our perception of it that is imperfect. It is not so much that is ti mistakes of learning, but due to the processing of the sensory inputs needed to achieve what we might call awareness. Think of it in terms of: Stimulus -> Processing -> Response Processing is just turning the Stimulus into a Response. It is this processing that creates the flaws, it creates the illusion that we become aware of. It is not even biology, it is all about Information. If you had a camera and shone a light through a coloured filter, this would count as processing too. And Information seems to be something fundamental to the Universe (and by Information, I don't mean that the Information has to be menaingful to us). It seems to be as fundamental as Energy and just as tangable. You can't exactly hand me a particle of energy can you, but you can hand me a particle that has energy. Information is the same. You can't hand me a particle of information, but you can hand me a particle that has informaton. In fact all particles have infomrarion and when they interact the exchange it.

Ok, here is another proof: Entropy. Unless repeated BB wipes out all information from the universe, then we have an entropy problem. As far as we know (that is there have never been any evidence against it), in a closed system entropy must reamain the same or increase. So if any infomaration can be passed from one cycle of big bang to another, this means that entropy will also be transferred. As the Universe is increaseing in entropy (because it is a closed system), then repeated BB will keep this entropy increasing. However, when we look back at the state of the Universe 14 or so billion years ago, the entropy was quite low. So even if we assume a life time of a Universe of 14 billion years and only 1 BB before ours, then we should be seeing a lot more eveidence of entropy around the time that we think the BB occurred. But we don't. So a prediction according to the theory of repeated Big Bangs says that after the latest BB we should see more entropy than we do. This means that evidence disproves that theory and therefore that theory must either be dropped, or modified to account for the observations that contradict it. However, once you adjust the theory to account for the contradicting observations, you end up with the same as current BB theory . Modern BB theory developed because there were people that though this way. They proposed repeated BB cycles and they used the scientific method (hypothosis -> test by observations -> adjust the hypothisis to fit with the observations -> repeat) and this line of inquery strengthened what we now know as the Big Bang Theory because peopl looked at alternitives. Many aspects of modern technology either directly or indirectly rely on the theories that the Big Bang is based on. If Scientists had got the theories that requier the Universe to have had a Big Bang wrong, then the knock on effects would have prevented us from developing much of modern technology. If Relitivty was wrong, then GPS systems would rapidly go out of allignmnet (iirc about 1km of error per hour of operation - I think we would notice an error that big don't you). Reletivity tells us how matter moves on the large scales, forming into clumps (galaxies, etc) and describes the behaviours of matter and energy. Police Radar guns use shift in frequencies of light to determine how fast a vehical is moving, or allows astronomers to determin if a galaxy is moving towards us or away from us and how fast. If the theories underpinning these were wrong, then the inventions would not work. But they do work, so this is evidence that the theories are correct. When you apply these theories to the Universe as a whole, then you end up with the Big Bang. So, to deny the big bang, you have to deny radar guns and GPS systems work.

This is what theya re talking about, that sea leve rise will increase substantially. Sea ice doesn't have much impact, but Ice shelves do. In Antarctica these are acting like dams against the flow of Glaciers. If these break apart there will not be much stopping glaciers from flowing into the ocean (and then melting). Also remember it is an average rise in temperature not an equal rise all over the world. Some places will get colder and this allows other places to warm up further than the "average". Remember these are average temperatures. It can get warmer than these temperatures. All it would take is more time at higher temperatures and more ice would melt in the summer and less in the winter. Cumulatively this can make a big difference. Besides, there was a time when Antarctica was free of ice and global temperatures were not 50° hotter. So it won't take a rise of 50° (or 30° as a minimum) to melt the ice of Antactica. At the moment because the ice sheets of Antarctica are kilometres thick, it is like being on top of a mountain, so of course the surface temperatures are going to be colder than they would normally have been. Once this ice sheet starts to thin (due to glaciers takeing the ice away, then htis height will be lost and the surface temperature will also go up.

The void in question (according to the article) is the aftermath of the interaction, not actually the other universe. There is nothing in the area because the interaction cause matter and energy to vacate the area.

There are outside forces acting on us, it is just that none of them are supernatural. Other people influence our behaviours (ever heard of peer pressure), and these other people are outside of us. Science was once known as Natural Philospohy. So if you are saying that philosophy exists, but science doesn't you are not really makeing any sense. You are essentially saying that philosphy does, and at the same time, doesn't exist. Which makes no sense. It is not that everything in siceince can be disproved, it is that they attempt to disprove everything. Anything left standing must be correct (or as near to being correct as we can test). The aincient greeks used to believe that thought and logic alone could describe the universe. There was no need to actually go out and do something as crude as checking if their hypothisis actually worked the way they though it did in the real world. This is the concept of philosophy that you are talking about. They came up with all sorts of theories and could logically and mathematically prove that they were corrct. One such a philosopher was Zeon. He came up with a logical proof that said that if you shot an arrow at a tortise then the arrow would never hit. As he said, if you shot the arrow, then by the time it had moved half the distance to the tortise, then the tortise will have move on a bit. There fore the arrow now has more than half the distance to travel. By the time the arrow has traveled half this remaining distance then the tortise will have moved on a bit further still. So on and so forth, this means that by the time the arrow has traveled half the remaining distance, then the tortise will have moved on and mathematically this means that the arrow will never catch up to the tortise. But, if you were to go out and stoot an arrow at a tortise, you would definitly hit it. It is from paradoxes like these that some philosophers were vrude and impolite enough to actually go out and test the logic of their betters. What they found was that pure philosophy was not adiquate to describe what occurs in the real world. So philosophies created that depended on checking with the natural world became natural philosophy which we call science. So in this sense science is far more real than philosophy because pure philosophy only deals with thoughts and not the physical world around us.

As has been shown the information you are aware of from your senses is not emperical. Why do you keep insisting that it it? But what you see, hear, feel, taste or smell are all contructs of our mind too. What is smell but a chemical reaction within the nose. But we perceive and aware of a rose. We get a very specific experience out of it but what our senses are detecting is not a rose, but a combination of volitile oganic chemicals. In fact, certain chemicls in one cencentration will give us one "smell" but those exact same chemicals in a different concentration will give us another but different smell. Ever smelth the smell of the Ocean? This is one of this kind of sents. In a low concentration (like you get near the ocean) it gives a plesent (to some) smell, but in higher concentrations it give us the smell of cabages and in a higher concentration it becomes quite repulsive (and in really high concentration is it toxic). It is the exact same chamical that is causing the smell of the ocean and cabages, just in differnet amounts. OUr perceptions say they are different, but the reality is that they are the same chemicals. Our awarness says that they are differnet, but reality is that they are the same. Perception and awarness are not a reliable determination of reality. Ok, do you accept causeality? That is that there is one event and it can cause other events to occur? Can we measure that a cause occurs before an event in the lab? Can we repeat experiments to confirm that causeality occurs? If you answered "Yes" to thse, then Time has been demonstrated in the Labs. It has been described (to some degree) by science. What I mean by "some degree here" is that even gravity is only described "to some degree" as well. Lets avoid using double standards. Lets apply your thinking and reasoning to other subjects. Lets start with gravity: We litterally feel gravity. Check We can do experiments that demonstrate ther effects of Gravity (things fall). We can also do experiments that demonstrate the effects of time (causeality). We can't create gravity in labs, we don't know what it is that makse graviuty work the way it does, we say: "this is the procedure it is created and we can do that over and over as much as we want". Neither can we for time. It is looking like you have to accept gravity as being in the same philosopy as time. Maybe time is subject to human psychology too? No double standards here. If Time is only a construct of human psychology (that is it has no existance beyond what we percieve) then so too does gravity. But I geuess that you would not be trying to argue that gravity only exists because we are aware of it. You have argued that without human perception or awareness of Time then it doesn't exist. But if you apply all your arguments (that we can't exactly describe Time, that our perceptions alter our perception of time, and so forth) to gravity, space, and other phenomia that most people (and I assume that you do too) considder as being real and not dependant on human perceptions and psychology, they too run into this exact same problem. I am saying that there is no problem, it is the problem itself that is the construct of humans. There is no discrepancy between how we percieve Time and what time really is. Our perceptions are just that: Perceptions. And as you have agreed Perception is not reality. In fact the whole issue is one massive logical fallacy: Association fallacy We can see Time occuring (causality) and we have a perception of Time. They are associated, but it is not in the way you seem to be describing. You have our perception of time as the cause of time, where as I am saying that our percetion of time is an effect of Time existing independently. Take this little story (a common device used by ainceient gree philosphers): Plato and Socrates are standing is a stream. Socrates says to plato, "I am the source of the stream. Water appears beside me and flows away from me, thereofre I must be the source of the stream." Plato then says, "If this is so, why is your back wet?" You are claiming that Humans are the "source" of time, it is our perception of time that creates time. It has no existance beyond us. You are syaing that we are the source of the stream. I am saying that just because we percieve time does not mean that we are its "source". I am saying that our perception of time is a perception of something that exist beyond us. I am saying that your back is wet. Causality. Simply that effects come after a cuase is experimental proof of time beyind our perceptions. No matter how we change our perceptions, can we make an effect preceed a cause (we might percieve it as such, but investigation will reveal that it was an illusion caused by our brain operation. Case in point is the sense of Deja Vu. In a Deja Vu we have a perception that effect preceeds the cause. We get a sensation that we were aware of the event before it occurred. However, studdies of the brain show that there are two paths that infomarion takes to reach our conciousness. There is one that is slow, but gives more useful information, and the other is quick, but reduces the quality and quantity of the information. Deja Vu occures when this dual cuircuit glitches. Noramlly we recieve information from only one pathway or the other. But in a Deja Vu we recieve it from both. We get the fast, low quality information (which is useful in emergency situations like a lion jumping out at us or a car nearly running us over) but then we get the second set of slow but high quality information. This gives us a sense of being in that situation before because we were aware of the same situation just moments before. Our perception of the flow of time is messed around with, But Cause still preceeds Effect. Regardless of our perceptions, Cause will always preceed Effect. But don't mistake Causeality as being Time. It is an Effect of Time. Just as things falling is not Gravity but an effect of Gravity.

You need to provide proof that animals don't have a sense of time for this to be true. Howver many animals show a sense of time. Take Cicadas. They live for 14 years or so under ground. They can determine seasons through the variation of the makup of the sap in the tree, however, they must somehow understand the passage of time so as to syncronise their emergence. A mild winter or a cold summer might confuse a system that soley relied on the sap changing. So they must have some concept of the passage of time. And these are insects with very primative brains. They were around long before humans and this abiliy you think of as only being humans and making us special seems to be present in them. This is a big hole in your argument. So are you saying that our awarenes of time is different from our perception of time? But to percieve something means we are being aware of it. I thought in this case perception and awareness were synonomous. I am saying all our perceptions and awareness of time are an "Illiusion". But by illusion I don't mean false, but an interperetation of the outside reality. Lets look at another sense that many of us think represents the outside world: Sight. People who are colourblind see the world fundamentally different than those that aren't colour blind. Different types of colourblindness give different colour percetions between them too. We think of sight a bit like a camera. But if you have ever done any work with a camera you will know that what a camera sees and what a person sees are very different. The eye is like a cammera, but it is there where the similarity ends. What we "see" is an interperetation of what our eye sees. What you "see" as the real world is only an "Illusion" of the outside reality. We rely mainly on our sight to "see" distance and it is because of this sight that we think of distance as being concrete. But this "distance" that we see is no more necesarily as real as out perception of time. Sure distance actually exists, but it doesn't necessarily have a reality as we percieve it. Time exists, but is not the same as what we percieve it as. The perception is an illuion, an interperetation of the underlying reality, just like every single other sense we have. Why should this one sense (of time) be any different to all our other senses? We literally feel heat, but it really only the motion of molecules and atoms. We literally feel touch, but actual touch is imposible (as the electrons in one atom repell the electrons in the other atoms and so they don't actually touch). We litterally see things, but this is just electron magnetic waves/paricles breaking apart certain moleclues in cells within our eyes creating an electrical charge. Any perception we experience is an interperetation. We don actually "Litterally" sense things we sense them and then we are aware of an interperetation of them. I am not denying that one can have a differnet experience of Time. Actually it is my point. If human perception of Time reflected what Time really is, then there would be a perception of time that everything could experience the same. But as you point out that doesn't occur, there is no single universal perception of time and therfore our perception of time can not be used to state what time is. No you misinterperested what I was saying. I was saying that both are wrong. Perception is not reality, it is an interperetation of it. We also like to make things up. So what is your point here? May be it is our ignorance of Time and that we made up explainations without knowledge that is keeping us from finding out what time really is. If we are relying on our (flawed) percetions then we can never really say what time is because what we are describing is not tiem bau a flawed percetion of it. It is a bit like the Blind mena and the elephant. Each is only looking at a part of it that they can percieve, but if they stoped arguing that their perceptions are the true picture and started trying to find out what it is without relying on their perceptions, then they might understand that it is an "elephant". This is my point, we are groping blind men using our limited percetions to describe what we percieve. Now as far as describing what we percieve, perceptions are an ok place to start. Howver, if we are trying to describe reality, then perceptions are not a good place to start as all we can ever doo is describe what we percieve. Why? You know whqat, we don't fully understand gravity, electromagnetism, quantum mechancis, forces, chemistry, electronics, etc, etc, etc. Does this mena that when we first found out about them we should ahve said: "Oh well we don't unerstand them yet, so lets just give up now." If we had we would not be here having this conversation. Just be cause we don't understand Time now. Does not mean that it is entierly a human construction. Just because we don't understand it does not mean that we can never understand it. Logically, shoudl we use emperical evidence that is confirmed beyond our perceptions, or should we rely somthing that has been proven to be unreliable as an accurate representation of reality. It is a no brainer. Relying on something that can not be relied on to give an accurate representation is inferior to something that give us an accurate representation.

What is so special about us that makes us able to create this concept of time? Besides, if we create time, then why do you have a perception of time that is different from mine? If we are the createors of time because we percieve it, then does my perception of time superseed or is subject to your perception of time, or does this mean that I am the only real person percieveing time and everyone else is just acting like it? Why do we need to create a "philosophical" concept of time that is different from the physical concept of time? Once you understand that our perceptions are not reality then the disparity between our perceptions of time and physical time disappears and eliminates a need for a philosophical notion of time. Viwed in this light, any notion of a philosophical concept of time is meaningless as it is no longer describing and actual concept (well only one created so as to have something to be philosophical about ). The need for a philosphical concpet of time only arrives because we need a way to match our perceptions of the flow of time to the reality of time. But, becuase our perceptions are different form reality, this measn that although we percieve a flow of time, there doesn't actually have to be a flow of time. Perception is not necessarily a reflection of reality. It is but an interperetation designed to allow us, as an organism, to survive and reproduce.

This chain of events can occur if (and only if) you exist to start the chain of events in the first place. So if you don't exist, then you can't have started the chain of events. If the chain of events dosn't exist, then you could exist. I think that it is a bit like the Particle/Wave duality. Just as the Universe can be though of as linear (particle) it can also exist as a multiverse (wave).

Can you give me a piece of distance that I can knock a coffee cup over with? No. But you don't think of distance as not being "objective". Same with Time. I can't hand you a chunk of time as a paper weight, but I can measure it and demonstrate it's existance indipendent of my own (by showing that your perception of time is different and seperate from my own).