Another Time Theory

[Abasia]

I have heard countless times that time is some sort of 4th dimension or something that flows around us, and it really got me thinking about how that was possible. I found that it isn't and time is actually only a measurement. A measurement of movement. Think about it. You could take almost anything with a time measurement in it and replace it with movement. "I am 5 days old." A day is only (from our perspective) the movement of the sun when it make a circle around the earth, so you could also say something like this. "I am 5 rotations of the sun old." Also it is not time that ages us, but movement. If we were to be in a vaccum of sorts, with no motion whatsoever, you could not age. How could you?

I look forward to posts that poke holes in this, I love a good argument.

[Rune175]

Interessting thought really. But even though you do not move, your body will still age. Unless you could come up with some sort of "stasis" (is that what you mean when saying "vacuum"?), I doubt that you would not age.

 

The only way for your body to stop ageing would be if your internal intestials and metabolism would stop - e.g. you freeze down your body, but even this on the long run will damage your body.

 

If you are conscious in the vacuum I see a problem with the teory, but if you would simply "drift" without your body having any functions, then it is more likely, but I'm no expert on this area yet.

[Abasia]

I mean there would literally be no movement, no brain activity, no solar winds, essentially no energy of any kind, because to have any energy would mean that something is moving.

 

I'll also post my ideas on time travel (if it's possible and how it would work) later

[Rune175]

Ok then it makes more sence with a complete shutdown of all functions of the body.

[swansont]

But someone moving very fast ages at a slow rate, relative to a stationary observer.

[thedarkshade]

I have heard countless times that time is some sort of 4th dimension or something that flows around us, and it really got me thinking about how that was possible. I found that it isn't and time is actually only a measurement. A measurement of movement. Think about it. You could take almost anything with a time measurement in it and replace it with movement. "I am 5 days old." A day is only (from our perspective) the movement of the sun when it make a circle around the earth, so you could also say something like this. "I am 5 rotations of the sun old." Also it is not time that ages us, but movement. If we were to be in a vaccum of sorts, with no motion whatsoever, you could not age. How could you?

I look forward to posts that poke holes in this, I love a good argument.

Time as the 4th dimension has a different meaning from what people usually imagine with 'dimension'. Here's a simple view. To find any location you need three numbers, length, height, and width. This is why we say that locations are determined by a 3dimensional number. On the other side, to locate and event except the three spatial dimensions used to determine locations, you need another dimension which is time, thus we say that event are determined by a 4dimensional number. That's all the fancy stuff about time as the fourth dimensional basically.

 

And the aging thing just violates common sense. How could you breath in vacuum in the first place? Our organism is highly depended from the medium around us, and removing the medium roughly means removing us too!

[Rune175]

The way I understand his hypothese is that you should not even breath, you would be in a complete "stasis" - if not you would go brain dead and die in 5 mins because of no air.

[Abasia]

"And the aging thing just violates common sense. How could you breath in vacuum in the first place? Our organism is highly depended from the medium around us, and removing the medium roughly means removing us too!"

 

I'm not saying that it's practical or even possible (which it's not), I'm simply saying that without movement nothing would age (or I suppose live). You could replace the word body with anything from a rock to a cow and it would still have the same point.

 

Thanks for the 4th dimension thing, i've always thought of it as simply a point of view, the first not being able to see the second, second not being able to see the third, and so on, but your explanation clears things up.

 

"But someone moving very fast ages at a slow rate, relative to a stationary observer."

 

Okay, I'm stumped. I've asked around and no one seems to know what this Law seems to be called. Most think it's just a bunch of Sci-Fi. Searching around on Google hasn't given me anything. Tell me what it's called, or a website to read about it and I'll hopefully find some way to counter you, but without raeding into it a bit there is little I can do to defend my Theory.

 

Now... Time Travel. An interesting topic explained as a trip to an Alternate Universe, or sometimes a symbolic fork in the river. Forget about that.

 

Let's start with going back in time shall we?

 

Since I've already stated that movement is time, it would only make sense to assume that turning back time is the same as turning back movement. In order to go back in time, you would have to undo movement. Something I don't believe can be done to specific things. So let's say you have a pretty time machine that you can tun on at the press of a button. You press the button and you go right back to....... when you pressed the button. Huh. There's the first problem: you can't go past the point when you actually pressed the button. And then ofcourse is that other problem where EVERYTHING in your body got rewound, you unpressed the button, your memory was rewound, every single sub atomic particle in your body and the rest of the universe gets turned back. That means you are in the same thought process as you were when you first pushed the button, and so you push the button again. Rinse and repeat. I'm sure I can hear the argument of "Why would you you make yourself go back too?" The answer: Think of a video tape. When you rewind it, you rewind the whole movie. Not individual characters. Yes I realise that life isn't a movie, but I can't think of a single thing that would be able to keep a force that is able to undo movemet from affecting the entire universe.

[insane_alien]

"But someone moving very fast ages at a slow rate, relative to a stationary observer."

 

Okay, I'm stumped. I've asked around and no one seems to know what this Law seems to be called. Most think it's just a bunch of Sci-Fi. Searching around on Google hasn't given me anything. Tell me what it's called

 

i think you'll find that it comes under the theory of special relativity. it also shows up in general relativity.

[swansont]

 

"But someone moving very fast ages at a slow rate, relative to a stationary observer."

 

Okay, I'm stumped. I've asked around and no one seems to know what this Law seems to be called. Most think it's just a bunch of Sci-Fi. Searching around on Google hasn't given me anything. Tell me what it's called, or a website to read about it and I'll hopefully find some way to counter you, but without raeding into it a bit there is little I can do to defend my Theory.

 

 

Time dilation. As insane_alien notes, it's a part of the theory of special relativity.

 

Have fun countering it, because I've got a boatload of empirical data on my side.

[Abasia]

"Have fun countering it, because I've got a boatload of empirical data on my side."

I'm not talking about disproving special relativity, but finding a way for my theory to live in harmony with it.

 

Thanks, now I'll go look that up and hopefully be back later....

 

Okay, here's my first crack at it, I think I might have found something, but remember that I don't quite fully understand Time Dilation.

 

There seem to be two types of Time Dilation: Gravitational and Velocity. So I got to thinking what could cause these two different things to have similar results (The slowing down/ speeding up of movement) and why would a ship still be moving fast if it's occupants were moving more slowly. That's when I came up with the only thing these two seem to have in common: pressure. Gravitational Time Dilation makes things closer to the ground (more pressure) move slower than those higher up (less pressure). Now when you take a space ship and put it in well, space, there isn't much pressure on it or it's occupants. When you start to move the craft the spaceship itself might have no or at least very little pressure with nothing in it's way, but the passengers themselves will be feeling quite a bit of pressure as they are not moving through their own means. Sort of like a rollar coaster when you are pushed up against your seat.

 

Now you can start poking holes.

[swansont]

That's when I came up with the only thing these two seem to have in common: pressure.

 

Dilation doesn't scale with pressure.

[Abasia]

The gravitational pull in gravitational time dilation would cause pressure would it not? The closer you are the more presure, the more time dilation. Although I must admitt that I might have found something wrong with my theory anyway. Is acceleration the only thing that causes pressure when we talk of movement or does all velocity cause pressure (even if you can't feel it.) On Earth you are alwas pushed down into your vehicle by gravity, but assuming that you maintained a constant speed in space would there still be pressure?

[Klaynos]

You must ask yourself a constant velocity relative to what?

[Abasia]

I'm not sure I understand. Relative to movement outside of the craft I suppose.

[Edtharan]

Since I've already stated that movement is time, it would only make sense to assume that turning back time is the same as turning back movement. In order to go back in time, you would have to undo movement.

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.

 

I'm not saying that it's practical or even possible (which it's not), I'm simply saying that without movement nothing would age (or I suppose live). You could replace the word body with anything from a rock to a cow and it would still have the same point.

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.

 

Okay, I'm stumped. I've asked around and no one seems to know what this Law seems to be called.

Its not a "Law" as such, it is the result of Relitivity (Special and General Relitivity).

 

Yes I realise that life isn't a movie, but I can't think of a single thing that would be able to keep a force that is able to undo movemet from affecting the entire universe.

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.

[Klaynos]

I'm not sure I understand. Relative to movement outside of the craft I suppose.

 

Well movement is relative, it's perfectly valid to say that an inertial reference frame is at rest, or moving at a set velocity, as long as you are consistent.

 

So if you consider the reference frame of the ship then it's actually stationary and everything else is moving.

[thedarkshade]

There's one thing I don't understand here Abasia. Let's suppose that what your 'theory' is correct. What would we benefit from that? Understand time? I really don't think so. I mean, there are dozens of papers out there beginning from ancient times that give a better explanation about time than you are. If I were you I wouldn't really spend much time on this because I see nothing I could benefit from this. If you are doing this to create your own point of view for time then OK, that nice, but you really need to see what will you get before you being doing anything.