Daniel Foreman

You just described simple motion swansont, not time. You might swing a hammer at my finger, that just makes my finger the destination, motion is not instantaneous it must go through intervening space before it arrives. But that's not time, that's motion. Time only becomes a retrospective tool or a predictive tool when applied after or before the event has happened. We can analyse the movement of the hammer and divide that movement into frames, but the universe isn't made up of frames just because we do that. Again the constant single event happening here is that people typically confuse the hammer for the nail. Or in this case, time for the motion of an object. In the case I must wait for someone more clever than I to answer them! While my own thoughts and idea's head off in different directions. I find that simplifying problems more often provides solutions that making things complicated. Yes I've heard the term space-time a lot, again I think it's something that's very mispresented in popular fiction. To me it sounds like a word that basically says "space and time are so close there's really no difference." so again I apply my idea of simplization, if they are so closely related perhaps people are commonly mistaking one for another. Aka again my very repetitive remark that time is a tool devised to understand the motion of matter within the universe, and that people confuse the tool for the subject. No problem there I'm skeptical of anything I can't test! Absolutely, this is the fundamental issue I have when people start talking about time as an entity. I phoned my brother up a couple of hours ago and asked him "What is time?" and he started going on about time being a rope. When I questioned him further his analogy quickly fell apart. Clearly it what something he heard or mishead and then tried to replicate without ever having really thought about it. I've done this myself in the past. I spent quite a long time teaching myself "not to relate these things to bits of real world matter" which is the natural thing for any human being to do! We see a tool like time, and people start saying it's apart of the universe a separate entity, dimension or force. I've come to the conclusion that I have little time for this approach After all, translating any kind of higher dimension down to 3 is going to be a total failure no matter what you try. I agree entirely, I think what you said goes back to this habit people have of relating things to 3D Matter. But my biggest issue with anything that goes outside the realm of our observable 3 Dimensions, is that it becomes more an act of imagination than anything anyone can prove let alone use. And if you can't use it, perhaps it doesn't really exist at all? My issue with maths describing things is that it's really only demonstrated itself within the 3D realm, it's a fantastic set of tools for understanding how many pounds of force is required to throw a lead ball six feet. But as yet, I'm not convinced mathematics has the toolkit required to explain how the universe works, and because of his errors in our understanding has given birth to a whole brach of physics that starts telling us there's in fact more space, and more types of space around his then we can detect or see.

I've discussed this quite a bit in http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/71644-what-is-time-does-time-even-exist/ Time as a dimension of space has not been demonstrated. With X Y and Z you can go forward, backwards, left, right, up and down at will. Time does not behave in this way, we can go forward and that's it. If time is a separate entity, or dimension my question is, why does it affect matter within X Y and Z. After all, if I move an object along the X axis, it doesn't affect it's position along the Y and Z axis. The dimensions are something that are clearly separate from each other. The idea is as I understand it, is that time controls the speed and direction upon which everything moves, like a train on a rail way track, you can reverse the train and go back to a previous state of the universe or go forward into the future. As far as I'm concerned this doesn't fall into what we observe with the first 3 Dimensions. If X, Y and Z do not affect one another, why should time affect the movement of matter within X Y and Z? No time to my mind doesn't exist. Motion within the universe (again it's motion that we use to create time, time doesn't create motion) exists, so time is a man made tool it's not a fundamental force or dimension of the universe, and there's no observable evidence that says otherwise. This can further be demonstrated by other models of time working in pockets or zones moving and different rates, heck even the idea that time slows down for the crew as they approach lightspeed seems unlikely to me, it's more likely that as matter approaches light speed it's own motion becomes sluggish. Heck for all we know the spacecraft might hit a maximum possible velocity and end up compressing itself into a very thin dense sheet. But I digress. as these things have not been demonstrated, including this forth dimensional stuff as time as the forth dimension doesn't exist in any demonstration. But it does make for good time travel science fiction Again this is part of string theory, and it's a very nice idea but my problems with these extra dimensions, including time are the following. 1) Why are these extra dimensions so different from X Y and Z and so unobervable? 2) Why does time as a dimension behave so differently and have such a controlling factor in the matter within X Y and Z 3) If strings are a complicated "knot" of dimensions and this forms matter, how come X Y and Z aren't soild themselves, why do they not exhibit matter like qualities? Quote: "To my knowledge there has been no experimental evidence of extra dimensions from CERN. This we agree on." Yay! It's nice when I can agree with someone for a change (one does start to wonder if they are simply insane when no one can relate, lol). Fair enough, clearly I'm no great expert either.

Just because there is a flaw in the system that must be compensated for, doesn't demonstrate the existence of time. It just demonstrates that a system is imperfect. Such errors can be attributed to our simple misunderstanding, or even a software error. Floating point calculations are far from prefect, we're always rounding numbers up and down with computer science in order to save processing time. The more accurate I attempt to get my own simulations, the more floating point errors become a bigger and bigger problem. After all, standard double floats at the moment only account for 15 decimal places, this is a pretty common limitation in C++ and other languages.

No, I can see motion. The thing upon which time is based. I'm reading your presented PDF. Quote: "No one denies that time and space are different; and it is easy to catalogue differences between them. I can point my finger toward the west, but I can’t point my finger toward the future" Right off the bat I think this statement is almost exactly wrong. The author is making the usual mistake, he's decided that time is a separate entity and then proceeded with that assumption, Has the author not considered that you cannot point to something that does not exist? I can no more physically point to a pink unicorn grazing upon moon rock, than I can the past or future. This is because neither exist. There is only the moment to moment experience, aka the so called present. We have memories of a previous state of the universe, but that state has moved on, it has changed and this is an effect of motion within that universe forcing things to change. After that initial quote the author simply goes into more fluid imagery that's slightly less reinvent than referencing a moon rock eating unicorn. Quote: "It is often helpful, when approaching problems in physics and in metaphysics, to draw a spacetime diagram. Spacetime diagrams represent the careers in space and time of some material objects" The rest of chapter two seems to be trying to convey one simple idea. Time is a train and space is the area within that train, space cannot change unless the train is moving forward. I've been through all this thought before, in fact only just last year I came up with the train metaphor myself, but it occurred to me that this is completely wrong. I've fallen into the same old trap of trying to invent things I cannot see and test then relate them to 3D space. This is very useful in story telling but bares no more reality than my aforementioned pink moon rock eating unicorn. He then goes on to muddy this simple idea even further, To my mind falling into the age old trap of letting his imagination run away with him powered by other people’s imaginations. A danger whenever you assign visual imagery to something. If you are going to describe time as the fourth dimension, aka the rail upon which the universe is based then the one thing he absolutely has to do is tell us is "why can't matter move, unless time is moving forward or backward? What is the direct link between matter and time? Why can one not function without the another?" The answer to my mind is simple. One is already functioning without the other. I see evidence of motion, I see evidence that time is calibrated by motion, but I see no evidence that time is a separate entity, dimension or force. As far as I can tell that PDF does nothing to tell us what the direct relational link between matter moving and time is. It completely separates time from matter than runs off describing this time force or time dimension or time element, whatever you decide it to be, and proceeds to barely mention how it controls absolutely every piece of matter within its region of influence. It suggests ideas that time isn't constant, that it has zones and that some of these zones might not even have a flow of time. Which passes into the realm of fiction to my mind. From simple day to day observation, I observe 1 single thing. Motion. I observe that any clock keeps time by creating a constant motion then counting that motion as it passes by. I have yet to observe any moment in which time slows down, reverses, or proceeds to do anything else unusual. If I boil a kettle the water heats, it's internal motion makes water fly off into clouds of excited steam before losing that excess energy and reforming. I have yet to boil and kettle and see water vapour collect from a cloud of steam and funnel into the kettle.

@ swansont The atomic clock is completely dependant on motion, in this case the vibration of the atom used. It's counted by directing an osculated beam of microwave radiation into the atom then fine tuning the frequency until you get the highest level of absorption by the atom. Then the frequency of the wave is simply counted. So in fact we have two forms of motion being converted into time, the frequency of the waveform, and the vibration of the atom. The reason that atomic clocks are so accurate is because it's impossible to make pendulums with the exact same mass, and weight. However atoms as far as our understanding goes are all the same size and mass. It's this uniformity that makes atomic clocks so accurate. @ michel123456 The difference is that I can see my hand move through space, and I can see my hand move. By these simple observations I've established two things. "Space, in which distance is used to measure, and motion because the distance varies from a target point as it moves. I have not however established time as a separate entity from these two things. I have only demonstrated varying distances at different points of the objects motion. It is motion that time is based on as discussed above, motion is not based on time and never has been.

Thank you that was a very interesting response, I'll look up the works you've described and have a read. Regarding your examples of your observable effects within our (I assume you mean 3D world) I would have these brief comments. 1. How does one define large or small extra dimensions. With X Y and Z I presume you would define these by detecting the edge of the universe and then seeing how far beyond even that you can go until some kind of barrier is reached. I understand this idea of gravity operating at a higher dimension and somehow "filtering down to us", and it's a compelling idea as to why gravity is so much weaker than the other forces. I think this is a very clever answer. But it assumes that every force has to be the same strength, or more importantly exert the same kind of pleasures upon matter. Is it not equally possible that the matter which we observe simply presents greater resistance to gravity much like a resistor inserted into a circuit. Is it not also possible that that natural resistance simply expels gravity as some other kind of force, for example the small nuclear force that binds these things together? After all we observe gravity indirectly by the behaviour of matter rather than by detecting or dealing with the field directly. 2. If the LHC provides compelling evidence of extra dimensions I will be the first to get on board with it, but until such time it's not something I'll take as written fact.I would also point out that again we are detecting these particles and emissions within our usual 3 Dimensions. 3. Again I see this more as an error in our understanding rather than a demonstrating of higher dimensions. Again if anyone every shows me a repeatable experiment with a clear conclusion demonstrating higher dimensions, and even better a practical day to day use for it then I will certainly take a very practical interest in it! Oh I absolutely do not in any way discount extra dimensions, but I mostly view it as a way of getting certain mathematical examples to work which may simply be the wrong approach.

Time doesn't exist at all there is only the motion of matter within the universe. Time is measurement tool set by certain regular mechanical motions be it via gears, or a crystal vibrating. Even the measurement itself is defined by piece of matter with regular and predictable motion. Sorry about the swansnot! It was a typing error nothing meant by it. Atomic clocks are no different from mechanical clocks or crystal based clocks in principle. Of course they are far more accurate! But the principles are the same. You take an object, be it a pendulum on a grandfather clock, a crystal or an atom, and resonate it. You then count those resonations and that becomes units of time. So the whole "Time Tool" as I'm coming to think of it, is simply the act of counting the resonator (a piece of matter in motion) as it moves back and forth. So again, I submit that time as a separate entity within the universe, or a force, or a (forth dimension) is a completely inaccurate view of time. Just because everything goes forward it doesn't mean that time exists.

@ michel123456 Quote "If time doesn't exist, what is that t we encounter in so many equations?" We encounter the universe sliced up, for the predicting of previous or future events. Time "as a measurement and tool" is very real. But it is just that, a simple manmade tool. However most people treat time as a separate entity, this is most prevalent in fiction. Some authors defining time as a river that can be swum up and down, or a tangle of dimensions that can be navigated through to other times. But in reality all we are doing is using time as a set of labels. We mark a snapshot of the sum at 1 second, then the next as section 2 and by carrying on in this way we can create predictions for second 3, 4, and 4. This is mechanics 101. You collect a set of data, you collect a second set of data (or more) you compare, and mathematically describe the changes of these sets of data and use them to predict future or previous outcomes. But this in no way makes time real, it makes it a very useful labelling system for that data set. @ caKus Quote: "Electromagnetic waves have a frequency (thus a relation to time), but can exist without any material support (thus, without physical motion). So, time "exits" independently of any matter or movement." What I take you to mean is that electromagnetic waves have regular intervals based on the frequency at the time, you change the timing of that frequency and you change that frequency. We use time here as a tool to predict when the next peak will arrive, but it's the motion or frequency that electromagnetic wave that requires us to attach any kind of timing. Again this is simply so we can predict the shape of the waveform in both past and present based on its current frequency. So this isn't evidence for time, simply evidence for the internal motion of that waveform, and how the measurement of time tool can be used to analyse that waveform. @ swansnot Quote "Clocks causing time to exist isn't a serious proposal by anyone, AFAIK." Yes, it's not a serious experiment, but it depends on how you chose to define time. A clock is merely a measuring device, and its motion is constant. But again, this is my point here is that time is nothing more than the motion of the hand, or the predictable vibration of the quartz crystal. I find the more I think about time the more I come back to this idea of motion. And if time is merely an expression of motion within the universe, and if we only use predictable motion to time random and seemingly more chaotic events, then the while idea as "time" as this single controlling entity falls apart in my mind. I simplify time as motion of matter, or changes of matter both internal and external. So again, I submit that time doesn't exist, it's merely a manmade invention to help break the universe into convenient slices. @ elfmotat Quote: "I said "time is what's measured by clocks," not "clocks cause time to exist." You're being silly." Quote: "Why would your state of consciousness have any effect on the rate at which clocks run?" Yes the first was a little silly. But the issue here is that time is not defined. If it is a simple measurement, then time itself doesn't exist in the universe outside being a tool made by man to label slices of the universe. It's a fantastic analytical tool! But it's no more a part of the universe then a tape measure is a part of distance. Again, human consciousness would not affect time, but many people confused personal perception of time as time itself. Thus we design a tool to eliminate our rather inaccurate sense of time. So going back to the original issue. Quote: "Time is what's measured by clocks as far as physics is concerned. Questions like "is time real or a manmade concept" are untestable philosophical questions. There's no way to test which is correct. " Time is clearly a manmade concept as far as physics is concerned, it's a great way of labelling the universe into sets of organised data. So ignoring the manmade issue for how, I would ask something else. Is there an experiment that demonstrates that time, as a separate entity or even spatial dimension exists at all? Can you think of an experiment that proves that everything in the universe is regulated by this force known as time? Conversely I would point out that I can produce many experiments that demonstrate the motion of matter, so that is a given certainty, simply by throwing a ball at the wall and catching it I demonstrate that the motion of matter exists. So why, if I can prove motion exists, can I not say "motion is time, time is motion, they are the same thing"?

@desmond In the hopes you might find flaws, submit ideas, or you know. Engage in a discussion. Just because I put my idea's forward doesn't mean you have to agree with them, and it doesn't mean we can't discuss the differences between those points of view. @elfmotat Why can't it be tested. I would propose a simple test, if you turn off a clock does time stop? Of course not, the universe is completely unaffected by a clock. A second experiment would be human awareness. When you are unconscious time may appear to stop for yourself, but if you leave an icecube next to your bed under a constant heat and calculate how long that ice cube will take to completely melt under normal observable conditions, then if you wake up and that icecube has melted we can come to the conclusion that time has passed for that ice cube, and your surrounding environment. Now from both of these experiments I can conclude that if my awareness (and I assume this is done alone with no other awarenesses going on) doesn't affect the passage of time at all. As the word time, and the measurement of time are human inventions then the two are indeed separate things. @Swansnot Quote "Time still passes even if there is no motion" I would refute that. I was say that if a piece of matter is without both internal and external motion then it is changeless and thus time does not pass for that piece of matter. But even if there is any internal motion at all, even down to the basic vibration and movement of the atoms within, then time is indeed passing as the internal motion of that object.

How you look at the universe and other universes is key here and largely based on assumptions we can not prove. If you assume that space in universal, and that every universe is a "bubble" of matter floating around in it, then you can most certainly go visit other universes in the same way you might travel between galaxies. And if such is true then one universe can most certainly affect another. If one collided with another, they might merge or destroy one another, or simply pass right through each other depending on how the whole mechanism works. If you assume that space is not universal but merely a framework for a single universe to exist in, then you can consider something like string theory which basically has matter existing in the same area bit vibrating at different rates, only one kind of vibration can interact with another vibration at the same rate. One might suppose that reality is nothing more than an on off state, and that it only exists in brief moments like a film, and between those moments other universes are given the chance to exist. Think of a Sin wave, at the peak of the wave our universe exists, but anything other than that peak state seeds our universe not exist. Well if you have a lot of other sin waves working at different rates and peaks, then there's no reason all these alternative universes can't exist within the space space as our own. To visit them all one would have to do is adjust their own frequency so to speak. Another school of thought might be that other frameworks other than space exist. Our X Y and Z existence may be completely unique, and may not exist in any other universe in which case I fear any other universe would be impossible to visit. Ultimately such questions are pointless. We can guess at how our universe started, and how it came to be in the first place. But at the end of the day until we have some kind of observable data anything is simple guess work. We have to work out how our own universe works first before starting to work out how anyone elses might!

To control matter precisely there's one of two things you can do. The crudest would be to use one piece of matter to move another piece of matter. The easiest way to do this is to heat matter such as Iron up, and pour it into a mould, which lets face it is what 90% of industry does. The alternative would be to somehow control the governing forces that control matter in the first place. The most obvious of these is Electromagnetism, however the trick is creating tiny electromagnetic fields small enough to move groups or individual bits of matter in the first place. There are other forces, such as small nuclear, strong nuclear, and gravity. You could possibly use the repulsive effects that some particles enact upon each other. But this is all alot of work when you can just heat something up into a liquid and pour it into a mould Now I know you are looking for a fancy sci-fi device. If you want something to "appear" to disappear and reappear then you're talking the idea of high dimensional states, That is the old wormhole theory. But it doesn't vanish and these higher dimensions are at best theoretical and at worst completely wrong. Another method would be to somehow jam detection equipment, after all if you can't detect it then for all intents and purposes it will appear to vanish at one spot and reappear at the point detection resumes. I would also like to point out, that if you do indeed "destroy an atom" and "recreate an atom" in another location, you are not moving anything. You are destroying the original and recreating a new one. If you used this on a human being it would be no better than Murdering the victim at the start and then creating a clone who thinks he's the original at a new location. Even if you broke it down to energy, and moved that energy to a new location then reformed that energy into a new person, who's to say the energy where his or her arse was, isn't being used to create a new brain? So again you've basically murdered the original configuration and recreated a butt brain'ed replicant..

I will quickly address my ideas on time. I think that time the measurement and actual time within the universe are two things that people confuse. Time the measurement is a man-made invention, it is very useful when predicting events and breaking down sequences of events. But time within the universe no more comes in seconds and minutes then it does miles and fluid ounces. Time the measurement can be reversed and manipulated at will. With it we can take “snapshots” of the universe and attach it to individual units (milliseconds, seconds, minutes etc) and interpolate the data from one frame to another. This is an extremely useful tool when it comes to analysing everything around is. It helps define beginnings, middles and ends within a limited framework. Because people mix up the idea of time the measurement and time within the universe we can create all sorts of wonderful fictions like Back to the Future, Continuum, Star Trek, and other famous time travelling TV shows. As a writer myself I understand the appeal of assuming time the measurement and time within the universe are the same thing. But over the years I’ve considered what time is and I’ve come to a single conclusion. Time doesn't exist in the way we are trained to think about it. Instead time boils down to two things. Space and Matter. In order to observe time, we must observe matter. In order to observe matter we must have a spatial framework. Therefore I conclude that what we perceive as “time” is simply “the motion of matter”. Therefore time, and matter are indeed one and the same. If all interactions between matter ceased and all expansion within the universe stopped then for all intents and purposes there would be no time. But as matter moves throughout the universe in its ever moving flow we get change, and it is this change, or interaction of matter that we perceive as time. For what is time, if not change? Within this model backwards time travel isn't possible under the current rules of the universe. In order to reverse time, you must reverse every direction and interaction of every piece of matter within the universe. Even a slight change in this will create an “imperfect recreation of previous states of matter” and as we all know, with any process there is always a margin of error. If we did manage to do this I highly suspect we’d have a “corrupted” form of the past. And I don’t mean silly things like, if we reversed time the Nazi’s would have won, or a president or two wouldn't get into power. I'm talking something far more catastrophic, such as every single cell in every single living creature becoming cancerous and damaged. Even rocks themselves becoming corrupted at the molecular level. So if time is simply the motion of matter within a spatial frame work, then time itself is no more than an analytic too created by man, useful for prediction and data gathering but no more than that. Thus time doesn't exist, only motion does.

There is a lot of talk about higher dimensions, and this is a very misunderstood concept in science fiction. Too often I hear dimensions and alternative universes lumped into the same thing. They are not the same thing at all! Dimensions are in fact the most mundane and boring thing in the universe. Dimensions are simply the space in which we live. Our up, and down, left and right, forward and backward. So next time you hear about someone slipping into a set of parallel dimensions and discovering a whole new world. Just giggle and shake your heads at them, because they are quoting one of Science fictions biggest crimes towards public misunderstanding. I in no way believe that you can slip through a higher dimension, (that’s higher as in higher than the usual 3. X Y and Z), and suddenly find yourself in an alternative universe, or alternative reality. That’s not how the universe works to my mind. What you can do, according to popular theory, is move through a higher dimension at one point in space and appear at another point in space. The general idea is that space is curved in ways we can not see, and by hopping through a higher dimension we are taking a short cut. I personally don’t have much time for this either. From pure observation I know that just because I walk to my left, I can’t expect to be any closer to an object in front of me. In fact if I'm centred onto an object and move right then I am in fact increasing the distance between myself and my target. So why, from this piece of observational evidence should I assume that moving through a higher dimension can suddenly move me closer to my target? To my mind this makes little to no sense, as I can not square it with my day to day observations. I understand where this concept comes from. The idea of a wormhole puts the individual on a curved planet, walking along the radius of that planet may seem like a straight line, when in fact the real straight line is to burrow through the surface of the planet to reach your target. But this has nothing to do with dimensional space. It’s the same old 3 dimensions it’s just that you’re walking on a curved planet to begin with. The original though example involved being a 2 Dimensional being with no concept of a 3rd dimension. But again we're not aware of such a creature, and the example falls flat when faced with the real world. Higher dimensions were originally created to make some very advanced very clever mathematics work, but when you have to start making up evidence to make mathematics fit the observed result I have to question that mathematics validity in the first place. It may predict a few specific things, but it may predict those things in completely the wrong way. For example if I point to my left to indicate an object to the right of me, technically if you walk along the surface of the planet in the direction I indicate you'll eventually find the object on my other side. But it's a hell of a trek to go see an objects 5 cm to my right So ultimately I don't square my day to day observations with the idea of this of higher dimensional space because apart from anything I can not see them. One might point out that I can't see radio waves, or even the air around me either. But the difference is that I can detect these things, and they are pretty obviously operating within the usual 3 dimensions.