JaKiri Posted July 11, 2003 Posted July 11, 2003 Originally posted by Radical Edward maybe it only got through to me on a subconscious level. W says he doesn't have a subconscious. I say what the hell are you talking about you pretensious tosser.
Star-struck Posted July 11, 2003 Posted July 11, 2003 Time is solely a unit of measure. Most people think of time to concretely. Time itself does not exist. Think of the unit of measure we call the meter. A meter doesn't exist. There are things that are a meter in length, or several meters, but there is no meter. Therefore, time does not have an inherent direction. It starts where you start measuring and stops when you stop. You can measure from past to current, or current to past. If you believe that "time" is a chronology of events then the past has happened, is over, and can't be travelled to. The future hasn't happened yet, and therefore doesn't exist, and can't be travelled to. In order for time travel (as most people define it) to be possible everything that will ever happen, from the beginning of "time" to the end, would have to happen simultaneously with our consciousness traversing each moment. It would be like an old reel to reel movie. The movie is complete, from beginning to end, but you can only view each frame in order and at a predetermined speed. With a movie, of course, you have rewind and fast forward. You can jump to any point in the movie you fancy. You would need only discover a rewind/fast forward mechanism for traversing to each of times frames to "time" travel. This again assumes that everything is happening simultaneously.
Sayonara Posted July 11, 2003 Posted July 11, 2003 A meter is a unit of distance, a quantifiable dimension of which we can easily conceive. By your logic therefore 'a Time' is a unit of ???? Oh wait - it's an 'hour' is a unit of Time. I guess that makes time a quantifiable dimension then. Just as with meters, kilos or ohms, it doesn't matter how you quantify something - it's the fact that it can be measured against universally absolute scales that matters. You just restated what I said after that bit so I can't grumble The movie analogy is a fairly widespread way of looking at time although you do put it more succinctly than most people. I think to keep this model stable you would also have to enforce the additional assumption that there is only one possible 'timeline' that can exist in the universe, and we have no way of proving or disproving that (kind of a pain really).
Star-struck Posted July 11, 2003 Posted July 11, 2003 You are correct, but the fact that time can be broken down into further units of measure (hours, minutes, etc) doesn't negate the fact that time is a unit of measure itself. Time is the parent unit just as the Metric System is the parent unit that includes meters, etc. Why agrue symantecs though. I think we understand if not agree with each other on the meat of the matter. Now, I read a web page recently that states that time travel is possible if one can travel faster than the speed of light. While I certainly agree that if you travel away from something at a rate much faster than light, and then look back at your intended subject, you can observe past light emissions/reflections from your subject. You would have to perfect a way of looking back on your subject in a way as to achieve suitable magnification, and overcome the dissipation of the light the subject reflects, so you could actually see something smaller than a galaxy with any detail. But travelling away from something at a rate faster than the speed of light will only take you further from that point in space more quickly. Nothing exists except for here and now...unless you subscribe to the movie reel theory of time. The light an object emits or reflects is not the object itself. You cannot travel to it as though it was a place where things are happening. If I shoot my reflection in a mirror I will not be harmed (until my wife gets home ).
Sayonara Posted July 11, 2003 Posted July 11, 2003 Originally posted by MrL_JaKiri The meter is not a vector quantity. And....? I think he's trying to point out that the labels we apply to things for ease of reference are labels.
Sayonara Posted July 11, 2003 Posted July 11, 2003 Originally posted by Star-struck You are correct, but the fact that time can be broken down into further units of measure (hours, minutes, etc) doesn't negate the fact that time is a unit of measure itself. Time is the parent unit just as the Metric System is the parent unit that includes meters, etc. Why agrue symantecs though. No it is not a unit of measure. It is the subject of the measurement and as such cannot be applied to anything as a unit. You don't use "a volume" to measure the capacity of a bottle, you don't use "a distance" to measure the length of a plank of wood.The metric system is not a parent unit, it is a systematic framework of which the units of metric measurement are components. These aren't semantics, they are the bare-bone facts of what you're discussing. Your discussion of potential for time travel actually works better on its own rather than backed up with wobbly bits like that
Kettle Posted July 11, 2003 Posted July 11, 2003 But looking back at an object after having travelled away from it at the speed of light wouldn't *really* be time travel - you wouldn't be actually experiencing the past as such.
Star-struck Posted July 11, 2003 Posted July 11, 2003 You are correct. Counter to what many think, I think that is all we could hope to achieve by travelling faster than the speed of light.
Sayonara Posted July 11, 2003 Posted July 11, 2003 Originally posted by Star-struck You are correct. Counter to what many think, I think that is all we could hope to achieve by travelling faster than the speed of light. The energetics of FTL travel would have to be highly exotic. It's possible that - assuming you could travel FTL and survive the experience, there might be effects we can't currently predict. Anybody have any ideas (based on actual physics, not random nerve impulses) about that?
Khôr’nagan Posted September 8, 2003 Posted September 8, 2003 Well, first of all, I think both Star-struck and Sayonara3 are correct. Time is, according to countless experts (including Stephen Hawkings, who's movies I have watched since I was 7), an existing continuum, occupying a dimention. It is resonable to assume that space-time is credible, because all these experts wouldn't say so for nothing, (and, besides... I actually undertand it). However, scientists have, in the past, been very, very wrong. For countless years people beleived that heavier things fell faster than lighter things. Granted, that was before this huge age of technology, but that doesn't mean there is infalibility. For, simply because time might not be a continuum, doesn't mean there isn't still a constinuum. Just not a time one. With our limited knowledge, the Human race is unable to comprehend certain things. For all we know, there are more colors than the rainbow, beyond what we know.And it is no use denying it, because the fact of the matter is, Humans have a hard time imagining what they've never seen. It takes the greatest minds to do that, and they are those like Einstein, Hawkings, etc. Although once presented with the data other humans can comprehend it, normal humans cannot see beyond their own imagination (which is surprisingly smaller than anyone could believe). Humans only have the ability to take what they see. They cannot possibly imagine the color red if they've been colorblind all their life. It's just not possible. The cosmos are something normally beyond human comprehension. We have, however, been able to observe them, and thus take what we see to comprehention. This comprehention only goes so far, however, and even the best Human cannot comprehend it all. It would be in ignorance to go against this, even as it is in ignorance I say it. For their is no true knowledge, no true fact. We know only what our brains interperet, and there are countless times more things that the Human brain can't interperet than what it can. Therefore, we do not know whether time exists or is merely a measurement. We do not know whether their are alternate dimensions or not. We know only a small piece of the puzzle, but even that piece contains colors and shapes intertwined in the image that our minds cannot process, cannot pick up, and thus we cannot seethem. We have a distorted image of a distorted fraction of a puzzle with infinite pieces. No one can say that, in truth, an object that humans percieve as blue is actually blue. They can only say that they percieve it as being blue, but there is no way for us to prove whether it is or isn't. Color is a human perception. Time is a human perception. Sound is a human perception. Feeling is a human perception. Thought is a human perception. Therefore, knowledge (as we know it) is but a human perception, to us fact, but not (neccessarily) in truth. Accepting this is the first step to understanding that which we cannot understand. Only the truth will set us free. Agree or disagree, accept or deny. It will not change the facts: That there are no facts, and the only truth is beyond our comprehension.
YT2095 Posted September 8, 2003 Posted September 8, 2003 Time is an Arbitrary unit of measurement used to quantify change. thats all it is. we happen to use the "Second" as our baseline. inches and Cms have nothing in common really, yet both can be used quite well to measure distance. Our "Second" performs just as well for time measurement as long as our measing unit remains a constant, I see no difficulty in some of Star-Stucks statements
atinymonkey Posted September 8, 2003 Posted September 8, 2003 Sayonara³ said in post #65 :Stephen Hawking has movies? He sure does, there was a TV special on him that got dumped on DVD in the US. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0780631315/qid%3D1063019966/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/104-0502272-1760747 Plus the popular kids cartoon, Stephen Hawking and the Masters of the Universe.
Sayonara Posted September 8, 2003 Posted September 8, 2003 It's not a unit of measurement, it's a scale of measurement. The units are pico~ nano~ & milliseconds, seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, weeks, years, centuries, and millenia. Calling time a unit is the same as calling distance or volume a unit.
YT2095 Posted September 8, 2003 Posted September 8, 2003 True, I guess it`s too late to call it a Typo? Seconds are the unit Time is what is measured.
Sayonara Posted September 8, 2003 Posted September 8, 2003 Hurrah! \o/ Someone who "gets it"! And there was much rejoicing, tra la la la laaaa :banana:
YT2095 Posted September 8, 2003 Posted September 8, 2003 hehehehe Right....Now having got all that established, and the "Second" as our unit basline constant. that the second is used to measure Change, and only when all change ceases is when Time stops. therefore by default, where there is change there is time. that`s why time exists on a 1 D plane, getting from point A to B (obviosly in a straight line) will take TIME. I know it sounds like I`m making Bold Statemnets of the bleedin obvious, but without these accepted "ground rules" there can be no argument/debate. Time is a function of Change and is measured in Seconds (multiples or divisions of) without Time everything would occur simultaniosly. (need a break, back later)
YT2095 Posted September 8, 2003 Posted September 8, 2003 and the rellevance is? Ya kinda lost me on that one?
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