Daniel Foreman

The English Language contributes to many inaccuracies. After all, when you say the word "table" it has a general meaning, while at the same time fitting no specific table at all. Even gross generalisations such as "a blue table" or a "circular blue table" is open to massive interpretation. We use time in the same way, we talk about time as if it is past events, present events and future events all at the same time. I can say "Remember the time we did this?" Or "If you have some spare time can you do this" or "What time do you think it will rain today?" Now in the context of the sentences it makes sense. But time, is used in each one. This goes back to what I was saying with universal state. By setting the time variable in a sum to future, past or present events we give the false impression that time itself is a dimension and thus flexible. Mathematics is all about precision. I can't help but feel a better way of expressing time is as I demonstrated. Past State, Present State, and Future State. However in mathematics, a sum can only be verified in the Past State sense. That is, we have previous states to compare other previous states to. This is because, even so called "real time" events, require a period to convert into data, store, and process. By which time, the present "real time" has already moved on and we've converted it into "Past State" for comparison. As for Future state, we can guess what that will be with some clever prediction tools and we might even get it right, but we won't know until Future state has passed through Present state and been recorded into Past State, and then compared to prior previous states, in an effort to better predict future states and present states. Now when someone invents an experiment that allows us to merge the three states together, past, present and future so you can experience being in your mothers whom, on your death bed and at the prime of your existence along with everything in between. Then that is a valid demonstration of time. However, as we all know this isn't possible. Therefore my conclusion is, that time doesn't exist outside being an analytical tool.

I'll agree with that. After all, clearly the objects were sitting "on my desk" so they were limited in their Y axis movement, so when matter comes against other matter it takes a lot of force to make them pass through or merge into each other, and the result is going to be somewhat messy. So yes there are restrictions in movement. Odd that you're notably not coming up with any experiments that demonstrate time.

You want evidence? Here you go. Now as soon as you provide some kind of experiment that demonstrates time exists, perhaps a nice time machine, I will be happy to listen to your evidence. But as you can see from that video, I can easily demonstrate motion exists. You however can not demonstrate that time exists. Even GPS doesn't prove it, it simply demonstrates that it takes two radio signals different amounts of time to arrive to a receiver. Which frankly only goes to demonstrate that motion of radiowaves exists, aka they travel through space. But again, please if you have any experiments you can record and throw up on youtube demonstrating that time is a real observable element of the universe I'm happy to view your evidence. May I just take this moment to say... lol Both those quotes are from you Strange. First of all you try to defeat the idea by demanding evidence, then you turn around and say "well like, time don't need evidence to exist." to paraphrase you. "It just does". Well, I've demonstrated motion, now it's on you to demonstrate time. If you can't, then you're the one making baseless claims with no evidence to back it up. If you're going to set the rules, don't change them mid game. Also I would like to point out that newtons mechics work just fine without time. You can keep the existing time measurement system and simply relabel it "State of Universe" (SU) after all that's all time does in mathematics, compare previous states of the universe, to current states of the universe and possible states of the universe. Previous states is recorded information based on prior observation, current is active ongoing observation, and future predicted states can only be tested against active ongoing observation of prior information. Prior = Proven information Current = Real Time information (which after captured takes time to process and therefore gets converted to Proven information and compaired) Predictive = What we expect to happen theoretically but have not tested yet. Having the one word "Time" to describe these three states is very inaccurate, and I feel it gives the wrong impression.

That's ok, I understand your struggle. It's because time is treated more or less as a story all the time. It's a wonderful plot device. The time the murder killed the victim. The time traveller changing the past. Seconds ticking away in 24. It's only natural people will think in a narrative sense (that is, convert the world into stories) or try to relate something they don't understand to something they do understand even if it is wholly different from the original. Time is a measuring tool, nothing more. But again, I remind you. We do not measure "time" as we do space. With space we slap down a stick, put some regular marks on it, then call it an inch. That stick doesn't change or move (unless you cause it to). You can look at it for as long as you like and it will always take up the same amount of space. Now, time on the other hand isn't the same as this stick. With the stick you can look at the left side, then the right side, then the middle as and when you please. With time, you can either record a frame, or predict a frame or observe a frame. What you can not do is look at the past, You can only look at a recording of the past or a memory of the past, but you are always doing so in the moment. The same with the future, we can never see that, we can only guess at it, and use some clever tools to predict it. But those tools get less and less accurate as you go further into the future. So, I can observe space freely. I can not observe time freely. And until you build a time machine or someone else does, then time simply can not exist as many people believe it to. I 100% agree with everything you just said. Err, well. You just move. I feel this is the kind of trap people think themselves into. What you are basically doing here is crediting time as the all powerful god of the universe, organising matter into frames so everything doesn't happen all at once. You've taken the simple premise that all matter can not exist at the same point in space all at once, and therefore time must be separating it. But to do this time must have influence over every piece of matter in the universe as well as forces and dimensions. That is an extremely over complicated answer. The reason everything doesn't exist at the same point in space, is because there is plenty of space! If the Big Bang theory demonstrates anything, is that stuff likes to move. Matter flying freely around space freely is a far simpler answer than making time a universal influence on everything.

That's because space is easy to quantify. I work with spacial co-ordinates all the time. So when I think about space I think in terms of X, Y and Z. Now I know these are mathematical terms just like T. But unlike Time, I can see space around me. In fact I'm designed to judge distances that's why human beings have two eyes, to do just that. I suspect you're thinking in terms of what is space, as in what is it made up of and how does it work? That issue only comes along when you try to equate non-matter elements of the universe into matter based metaphors. Space is space, it is the framework in which matter exists. Just like matter is matter, it is the stuff we are all made up of. I have little patience with people who talk about "the fabric of space" and start equating it to rubber sheets and the like. Because that's just translating something that isn't matter into a metaphor. There has to come a point were you stop doing that and allow it to be classified by what is actually is, that being... well space! We know matter doesn't exist all together at one single point, we know it likes to spread around. And once again, as is common to science, we observe the movement of matter as it exists in space and is affected by various other forces. Matter is the medium by which we translate these aspects of the universe. Which is a fundamental flaw in our approach, but we have nothing else to do it with.

But I keep loosing buttons off my shirt, I want to GPS tag them all so I don't keep having to buy them. epically as my new GPS tagged buttons are worth a few thousands a piece. It's a perfectly valid application even if you don't personally want use it. I also plan to GPS track socks. I'm not going to respond to everything else you said, simply because I've covered this multiple times with you in multiple previous posts. At this point I have to consider the words "The definition of a fool is trying the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result." At this point you either get what I'm saying or you don't. Dropping into picky pedantic's with you over GPS certainly isn't going to help. Not when you start answering your own questions in an effort to point score.

You kinda need space for distance to happen. You can argue this all you like, but some things are simply there no matter how you state it. P.S. they were not thought experiments, go chuck something, and you'll see space happening. Stretching a ruler to alter the measurement of a foot is what we call, cheating. lol. The only way a measurement is going to work is if you make a ruler out of an inflexible hard to alter material, then make a few dozen copies of it. You then use the copies of that ruler to calibrate all other foot long measurements, only breaking out the original when you need to make reference copies. This should be done as little as possible to preseve the original measurement. The same thing was done with kilo weight measurements for many ways, though I think they've changed the definition recently. Time is not shifting or changing of being altered in any way shape or form simply because clock misses a few ticks, operates to fast or two slow. Under those circumstances the clocks measurements are just plain wrong. No argument here. Space can not be altered it is the framework in which we operate (it is not simply an idea though, space is there. Anyone refuting it might as well try arguing that most human beings don't have a nose in the rough middle of their faces). As time doesn't exist as any force or dimension outside a math book so it also can not be altered. All you can do in the universe is play cosmic pool with atoms. I never said space was an object, I've always called it a framework. If I ever said it was an object, then it was in error. Only in mathematics. In mathematics you need to state the position of something using X, Y, Z and Time. But that's only because the purpose of mathematics is to predict the motion of something into the past or into the future using data sets. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyX8kQ-JzHI <<< try watching that, the video is from stanford university on classical mechanics, it deals with time within mathematical systems there. In the real universe, motion is just the act of moving. In the real universe there is no past, or future, there is only the ever moving present. I came across this information while writing an article about the sensors on mobiles phones. But I can't find it anymore. So feel free to disregard this statement until I find the source again. However are you saying that relativity calculations are not required to make the system work? People are always trotting out GPS as some kind of evidence of time.

Several meters? That's not very accurate at all. I'm just under 2 meters tall, so if I want it to pin point a button on my shirt it's pretty rubbish really 7 meters of error every minute is actually a lot more than I thought it would be. I mean that's 11.6 cm per second. That is a really noticeable amount. As for 10 K per day, if you want to find your house, then that's pretty far out of your way! Great, then we can agree the math doesn't work. It gets "in the ball park" but that's all. When faced with "stuff moves" and "stuff moves because time allows it too". I'll take the first response. Because yes, I can easily confirm that stuff moves. I can't easily confirm that stuff moves faster or slower because time itself is going faster or slower. I also don't accept that you can throw a crew across the galaxy at near to light speed as possible, only to have them age very slowly, while the earth grows old fast because time has slowed down for them. Now what I can accept, is that as you approach light speed matter within that ship is "dampened down", so it's less easy to move. I don't think it would have anything to do with time itself slowing down, I think it would be a mechanical process. After all you are moving relative to the motion of that ship with that ship. If you did hit light speed it makes absolute sense that while at light speed you wouldn't be able to freely move around within that ship. After all if the ship is moving at light speed, and you try to walk from the back to the front, then you are then breaking the speed of light are you not? I don't think what Einstein was describing was ever a dilation of time or the alteration of a time dimension, but simply a way of describing the behaviour of matter under the most extreme condition.

I don't need to, I just need to know that the figure, even passed through relativity and special relativity mathematics still aren't accurate. This means it's broken, the sum doesn't work. After all saying 2 + 2 = 5 is close to the correct answer, but it's still... well wrong. And that's what they are trying to figure out with the GPS system. GPS Errors are complicated, and occur due to a number of factors. There's time dilation, the effects of gravity and atmospheric conditions slow down radio signals. The general theory of relativity doesn't correct for these errors, so they are using the updated Special Theory of relativity which as I understand it basically takes into account gravity as well. If you want a complete error analysis you can find it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_analysis_for_the_Global_Positioning_System but what it all equates too, is that the calculations involved are still far from perfect. The bit that really interests me in that above document is: Notice that they state "GPS orbital speeds will tick more slowly" this doesn't indicate that time itself is slowing down, but instead that the internal mechanisms of the atomic clock are being affected by the speed, and or space at which these clocks are moving. Perhaps they are moving through thicker electromagnetic fields, or a patch of earth gives a greater gravitation pull than the rest (which has been observed on the moon). Perhaps it's undetected solar activity, or perhaps someone in a space suit is shooting a potato gun at it. Either way, the fact that they describe the system as ticking more slowly, rather then saying "time is moving more slowly" goes to demonstrate what I've been saying.

That about sums it up michel123456 yes. That motion isn't dependant upon time, it's just motion. To state that more completely, I think the question is. Why didn't GPS work at all when they first established the system until relativity was appled? Why even with the calculations provided by relativity do they keep needing to fix a drift in the system? Relativity doesn't fix the problem entirely it just improves the problem somewhat.

I have no problem with a 4 co-ordinate system, that's part of measurements. I have problems with people start talking about time dilation, time travel, and equating time as something a kin to a river or ocean. This is where the reality of time, and the science fiction definition of time become mixed up. I have never claimed time wasn't a measurement system. I've only claimed that a dimension of time as a physical real world element of the universe is a false impression.

I notice you didn't provide a link to that, I think you're taking a couple of liberties.

Oh god he's a conspiracy theorist. Show me where it's written down officially.

/start sci-fi rant No it's not. Sure series like star trek have demonstrated iPad style touch screens and thin portable tablets. But at the same time we have yet to invent warp drive, shields, phasers, and transporters. This is the problem with sci-fi foke they purely focus on the few tid-bits that have appeared, and seem to forget all the stuff that hasn't. We don't have warp fields, anti-matter reactors etc. The list of technologies invented for the series is much longer than the technology that has appeared. Then there's sci-fi such as star wars. I mean come on, the force? Might as well give the Jedi wands and robes. Sci-fi makes stuff up as and when it needs too. Some authors do base their work in good old science, and then twist it into whatever they need to tell the story. Need I also remind you that series such as superman is science fiction? A solor powered man who can drag planets from orbit. Yeah ok, that's going to happen. Also if superman did throw a punch at full power he'd basically cause a sizable nuclear explosion. /end rant on science fiction What you are actually describing isn't time but a biomechanical process. At best you're describing the transition of high entropy objects that break down into low entropy states. Well for starters your claiming that time is as real as water, then equating the two. They are pretty metaphors, that speak more towards human psychology then the so called true nature of time. Yes you can, it merely means two things happen at once. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuC-htf8o88 Ok so that video wasn't a fantastic example but you have to admit it was cute. She might not be patting her head and rubbing her tummy very well, but she did at least demonstrate two actions happening at the time (time as a reference tool only) while not occurring at the same point in space. If this little girl was to do this dangling from a rope by her ankles 30 seconds later, she wouldn't collide with her past self, not because time (as in the extra dimension ) has mysteriously prevented it. But because she simply can't. You can not have any kind of time travel where the same two sets of matter suddenly decide to occupies the same space. In fact the only way this could happen is if time was indeed some kind of ever flowing magical river you can travel up and down at will running into your self within the same space. Which, as I've yet to run into myself, or explode because I suddenly appeared within me for no apparent reason, obviously can't be the case. Of course you are absolutely welcome to prove me wrong. If you start travelling back in time so that there are multiple's of you at the same moment I will absolutely accept that time is like a magical river. Until you manage to pull this off (photoshop doesn't count) then time as you are trying to represent it doesn't exist. If you are a straw man, then that's amazing! I'd like to know how you're able to type But all seriousness. Lets move on from that poor joke. Ok, lets imagine for a second that time is a dimension. Ok, so how does this dimension work? Presumably if the classical form of time travel is to exist (aka where you can swim around it like the river metaphor that's popular) dimensions must work by endlessly "copying the universe" after all, if you go backwards in time then the universe at that moment in the time stream is the same state as when you left that moment right? Big problem with that, you can not create energy or matter you can only convert between the two. So by those rules the time dimension can not be copying matter and energy like frames in a movie strip. So, therefore time must be something that matter moves through, in the same way it moves through space. So, my question is... why does time appear to control all matter? If you go back in time, suddenly all the matter around you reverts to a previous state, in which case, so would you unless you find some way of removing yourself form time. But if time is all that allows you to function, then now can you isolate yourself from the change you are inflicting on everything else? Heck, we're then back at the old question, what happens if you accidental kill your own dad? Oh dear, well if you kill your own dad by accident, then you can not have been born, therefore you can not have time travelled to kill him in the first place, so if this was to happen then you'd get a headache understanding why, on top of guilt of killing your own dad. So lets face it, when there's a paradox, then there's something that just doesn't work in the system so time obviously can't work in this way. So, if time isn't capturing states of the universe like an ever rolling film clip, and it's not allowing you go kill your own dad, it must work it some other way. If you have another way in which it could work I'd love to hear it. Also if time travel exists in the future, I have to ask the famous question "where's all the tourists?" cause lets face it, human beings would end up selling it if time travel did happen, it's the one constant in the universe. And if you start talking to me about phase cloaks that allow people to move around us unseen I might just have to gently slap you. Cause again, lets face it, human beings epically the tourist kind, just aren't that blooming intelligent. Yes that's because it doesn't exist at all. I've already talked about the two basic ways time might work, and I've yet to hear a compelling description of how the time dimension works. http://phys.org/news/2012-04-physicists-abolish-fourth-dimension-space.html btw there's some guys who don't think time is a dimension at all. P.S. Time can exist in mathematics just fine, you might even chose to call it an extra dimension. This leaves two possibilities, 1) time is real, and math has predicted it. 2) The sums are wrong, which is why they will predict something, and not explain others.

As soon as you start getting into the hyperfine structure and hyperfine states that atomic clocks use, you start arriving at words like electron spin, angular momentum, motion, etc. Now you can argue this point all you want, but it doesn't change my point. The basic language remains the same. So it's not unfair of me to say that time even within the mechanisms of an atomic clock is based on the transitions between movements. That is all that is being counted. Furthermore you repeating this point, doesn't affect my original statement. If you want to prove that time exists, then prove it. Otherwise you're just distracting from the overall concept.

That's a mighty fine story you guys are telling yourselves. It's also total hokum. There is absolutely no evidence that time is a river, an ocean, or any other kind of liquid moving entity, force, dimension or whatever. This is the kind of rubbish that science fiction uses to paint a pretty picture in your minds. As far as I'm concerned it's right up there with harry potter waving his magic stick to turn mice into goblets. Don't confuse science fiction with proven fact guys. That's because time is nothing but a measurement. It is nothing more than the conversion of regular motion into measured units. What you are discussing there isn't time, it's motion. Obviously matter can not be in the same place in space simultaneously. Matter itself only occupies a small space. It can move freely within that space (unless an influencing force, or other matter gets in the way, or it simply has no more momentum left). Time has no governing factors, or all controlling influence over matter, we know that gravity does, electromagnetism does, we know we can apply kinetic energy to an object to temporarily overcome theses forces and that ultimately that kinetic energy runs out (unless in a vacuum without the strong influence of forces). None of this requires an all powerful time force/ dimension to work. It only requires classical mechanics which simply takes 3D space, and allows matter to move about within it. Time is a tool used to describe past events and predict future events within a system, it is nothing more or less then that. It does it's job very well. But time is nothing more than a measurement, and there is absolutely no evidence to the contrary.

Yes I do use time to demonstrate my examples, and yes I can see why that is confusing. So here's my clear definition of time to which you are free to reject or accept. Time is the change in state of a consistently regular motion. The easiest example of this is a pendulum, it's weight causes it to swing from left to right in 1 second intervals. The point at which 1 second is recorded to have passed, is when it swings to the top of it's arc either on the left or right. So what we are recording is the change of direction, or a change in the state of that pendulum from one direction to another. A second example would be a quartz crystal, which vibrates much faster when under a steady electrical charge. When a quartz crystal vibrates it moves subtly from one direction to the other. In the same way we do a pendulum we record it at the point it changes direction. So when I speak of time, I speak of comparing one form of motion to another. Depending on the device you are currently using. Therefore, I could say "As I drop the apple through space, I use another moving object in comparison by counting it's change in states. Instead of using seconds or milliseconds I could just as easily say. My apple took 91062 quartz crystal vibrations to hit the floor. I can then drop the apple from varying distances and record 42083 vibrations, 122930 vibrations and 158333 vibrations. The problem with this, is that hardly anyone will know how long that is, so of course I have to convert the number of vibrations into a standard unit of measurement. This is where seconds come in. I know that my crystal operates at 32768 hertz, or vibrations per second. So converting this into time is easy. 91062 / 32768 = 2.779 seconds, 42083 / 32768 = 1.28 seconds. 122930 / 32768 = 3.75 seconds and 158333 / 32768 = 4.83 seconds. So time can perfectly well exist as a tool, but just because we can count changes in state of motion, doesn't mean time dilation, or forth dimensions, or time forces, etc control the universe. By it's nature time is nothing more than a way of converting something regular and predictable. I could just as easily say that it was 10333716480000 vibrations ago that I went to school and 73924608 vibrations remain until I have to meet my boss. And yet from this simple every day concept people twist the meaning of time, into time travel, time dilation effects, treat it as a forth dimension, or something even stranger. in the hands of the general populace time seems to have transformed into this weird flexible rubber stuff with so many hidden doors that it's a wonder Shakespeare had time to write his plays due to all the time travelling tourists. So again, there is no time. There's just a vibrating crystal/ Cesium,/clockwork device ticking us all by.

I was referring to that. Time-dependent suggest to me that the device is dependant upon the "time force/ dimension" rather than the internal motions within in mechanism. I'm simply aiming to demonstrate that time's very definition is dependant upon the motion or internal workings of a device. That device itself doesn't require a time force or dimension in which to operate, it only requires some kind of internal motion.

Atomic Clocks are not time dependant. They are dependant upon the radiation which is arguably a moving particle. IF that movement or speed is influenced in any way you end up with an inaccurate clock. Once again demonstrating that time is nothing more than man kind taking smaller and smaller regular pieces of motion within a mechanism and then comparing it to other more random motion within the universe.

Yes it does matter. If time is the metaphorical river of ocean that one can swim around at will, providing one has the knowledge and tools to do so, then time travel in the classic sense becomes possible. With all it's paradox's and potential consequences. This would effectively mean that a whole new branch of physics is developed with a unique set of rules required to predict the outcomes of time travel so that, for example we'll know what happens if you personally murder your own father, or if such an act is even possible. But before we can start discussing time travel and how it would work, there must be a consensus as to what exactly time is, and what the rules of it's system are. We must then design experiments to confirm that we are right, or disprove the idea then move onto the next. Space itself exists that is a self-evident fact, and I can prove it with several experiments. Experiment one. Take one room, place a ball gun at the end of it calibrated to a specific speed. Set a timer to run when the ball is fired. Place a catcher at the other end of it ready to receive a ball. Setup a trigger sensor in the catchers mit that stops the timer. Now separate the machine and catcher across a range of different distances, record the times it's taken the ball to fly from the machine to the catcher. Conclusion: If the ball takes varying amount of time to reach the catcher, and providing that the time taken to travel is shorter at a closer distance than it is at a longer distance. Then we can confirm that the space between the pitcher and catcher exists. Experiment two: Look at your own feet. Conclusion: You're feet are quite a long way away from you and in fact not coming out of your face in any way. Therefore they must be separated by something. This is called space. Experiment three: Look at your own feet, and drop a hammer from your face, onto your toes. Conclusion: The release of the hammer didn't hurt the millisecond it was let go, therefore time must have passed between the release of the hammer and the breaking of your toes. The hammer must have travelled through something in that time. This is called space. Err, that's nonsense sorry. It's like me saying "If I stopped the world from spinning, yet it moved anyway, then spinning is still happening." Or the more logical conclusion is "The world never stopped spinning." Now if you are claiming to have frozen time, then my first question is: How did you do this, and how can you prove that time stopped. Now, that fact that I can A) as you that question, and B) you are standing there counting rather demonstrates that time is in fact still moving. Speed has nothing to do with it. But observation disproves your claim. That's not an easy answer, lazy yes. But not easy. Mostly because I've just given 3 experiments demonstrating that space does in fact in exist. Now if you want to demonstrate a repeatable experiment that proves that space doesn't exist, then please suggest it and I'll be happy to give it a go. Right now all you're doing is playing with words. Everything I've said is observable. What you're claiming is the worst kind of science fiction. Now, I fully accept that sending two planes with atomic clocks around the world in two different directions only to discover that their time doesn't match up, then coming to the conclusion that time is slower if you move in one direction than if you move in the other can be the result of anything. Vibrations from the plane, magnetic fields the plane travelled through. Perhaps one of the clocks was more greatly affected by solar activity, while the other wasn't because it had the earth between it and the sun. There's so many variables involved that I don't think the conclusion they came up with is right at all. I still maintain that time as a force, or extra dimension or some other kind of presence in the universe doesn't exist. That it doesn't have an all controlling influence over matter. That the fact that matter moves on it's own without the influence of time is a far simpler answer than what scientists have been trying to work with. You can talk about cesium clocks and relativistic speeds all you like. But until you dream up an experiment to disprove my conclusion (for I can demonstrate that matter moves, and if I'm asserting that time doesn't exist, then obviously there's no experiment possible that can prove that something doesn't exist. So the burden falls upon people who claim time does exist, to demonstrate it.) then it's all idle speculation with no more foundation in reality then harry potter turning mice into furry goblets... P.S. can anyone else say animal cruelty?

In the modern world 1 second is defined by the International System of Units as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom. However, need I remind you that this has been a discussion on weather or not time exists, not in the semantics of definitions. In such a discussion the origin of time is more important than the current definition of a single unit of time. After all an hour was clearly defined by a regular motion (aka the sun) and then divided down from that into fractions of time.Whether you want to count up from seconds, or divide down from an hour, it really makes little difference to the general theme of this discussion.

Actually that's not true. Ever wondered were the name "second" comes from? If I said to you that the winner came in second place there would be no doubt. The same rules apply here. It appears (if my understanding is correct) that the original unit of time measured was 1 hour. Which makes sense given the inaccuracy's of ye old time keeping equipment. Fractional time (aka a fraction of 1 hour) originated in the Old World with a base-60 or the sexagesimal numbering system was developed by the Sumerians in the 3rd millennium BC, and was passed down to the babylonians around 2000 BC. They developed both time keeping and positioning (which is why you get minutes in degrees and longitude, etc). I've not been able to find out what the word "minute" means or why it is used but I can tell you why second is used. Second means "the second division of 60". The Sexagesimal system was an early form of fractions, 1/60 is a minute and 1/60/60 is a second. Then we start mixing up modern standards (because only modern civilisation has had timekeeping devices accurate enough) with it and end up with milliseconds 1/60/60/1000.

Not really, if you go stand there now and wait until I arrive then time won't matter. Well, not to me anyway.

The old perception is reality argument doesn't hold much water with me I'm afraid, simply because perception doesn't appear to overlap. After all if perception was reality then God would most certainly exist; and until he parts the heavens and starts speaking to us directly I'm not going to accept that at all... heck even then I'd want a chemical analysis of the environment just so we can remove the god vision inducing toxins!

lol nice try guys.