Constant Time

[Physman]

I agree with swansont that it is always 'now'. It is true that two observers with relativistic speed will never agree on time, although the same now independently of there perspective on an event X that may happen at an arbitrary point in time.

[Sisyphus]

I agree with swansont that it is always 'now'. It is true that two observers with relativistic speed will never agree on time, although the same now independently of there perspective on an event X that may happen at an arbitrary point in time.

 

He said "it's always now" is a meaningless thing to say, and it is. It is not, however, a "shared now." In one reference frame two events might be simultaneous, while in another they are not. There is no "independent of their perspective."

[Physman]

Perspective from one another not any perspective where you can view both.

[Eric 5]

I believe there is a universal time at which the universe ages. Clocks may run at different rates in different time frames but this would not put a single event in the future in one frame and the past in another.

 

Do clocks meaure a physical influence or energy that is motivating the clock?

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I must agree with asprung here, the universe ages at the same rate with different refference frames of perspective. two devices may not be synchronized but they measure the same time.

 

Again. What do clocks measure? Look at how a clock works. Do clocks actually measure some energy called time?

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No, you won't be in the past. You can never be in the past, because now is tautological. It is always "now," hence the term is not meaningful. This argument sounds circular, because it only makes sense if there is an absolute time, but you can't assume what you are trying to prove.

 

You can do this if you want to disprove the notion of absolute time, and since you can't exist in someone else's past, perhaps you've done that.

 

SWANSONT. Please provide scientific evidence of the mechanical workings of a clock that shows clocks measure some external energy or influence?

 

This talk of time being some type of thing is not based in science.

 

Look at the references concerning clocks or time and you will see that time is not a physical thing that exists as some form of enegy that can influence a machine such as a clock.

[swansont]

SWANSONT. Please provide scientific evidence of the mechanical workings of a clock that shows clocks measure some external energy or influence?

 

This talk of time being some type of thing is not based in science.

 

Look at the references concerning clocks or time and you will see that time is not a physical thing that exists as some form of enegy that can influence a machine such as a clock.

 

Why should I provide such evidence? I have not claimed that time was an energy or an influence, or a physical thing. In fact, I typically point out that inquiring about the essence of time is metaphysics, before moving the discussion to the Pseudoscience and Speculations section.

 

I will now caution you not to hijack threads. Answers to science questions need to be answered with accepted science. Raising other issues, building strawman arguments and pontificating about your own view of relativity is hijacking.

[ZolarV]

I think that you all have the concept of time wrong, Time is neither an energy or a measureable force, it is simply the invention of man to reference one point to another. any sort of relativity associated with time has nothing to do with time itself it has to do with the velocity of the object(A) in motion relative to the other object(B) and the space between them.

 

 

Basically time is nothing, there is no real time, no measureable force.

[swansont]

I think that you all have the concept of time wrong, Time is neither an energy or a measureable force, it is simply the invention of man to reference one point to another. any sort of relativity associated with time has nothing to do with time itself it has to do with the velocity of the object(A) in motion relative to the other object(B) and the space between them.

 

 

Basically time is nothing, there is no real time, no measureable force.

 

You are proceeding from a mistaken assumption. Nobody here is advocating that time is a force, AFAICT.

 

Isn't the "space between them" also an "invention?"

[ZolarV]

no not really the space between them is a measurable distance between the two objects on the plane of existence. i.e. one object cannot be in the exact same place as another object even at the quantum level, therefore there is space between them.

 

In the essence of the argument time is perceived as a single frame of reference for a particular event, and the argument is that "time" is the same for the event even when two clocks show different values associated with the event.

 

The two clocks are used to measure the "time", and the single frame of reference is the point of view were one clock is different from another. what I’m saying is that both clocks are fundamentally wrong because they are trying to quantify and measure a "thing or force, whatever you want to call it" in a specific way both in reference to a point.

 

In reality "time" flows at a constant rate because it cannot change due to any natural or unnatural factors due to its inexistence. and like I said the only real difference in the reference point is the velocity, and space(aka distance).

[insane_alien]

so how come two objects can exist in the exact same space yet at different times.

 

and the fact that crashes are time dependant.

 

or even just if i wanted to meet someone, not only would i need to give them spatial coordiantes, but also a time coordinate. its not good if they show up 3 weeks before me or something.

 

for instance, a popular place to meet up in glasgow is under the clock in central station. so you have a precise position. but without a time coordiante chances of meeting up with someone there are slim to none.

[swansont]

no not really the space between them is a measurable distance between the two objects on the plane of existence. i.e. one object cannot be in the exact same place as another object even at the quantum level, therefore there is space between them.

 

True of Fermions, but not of Bosons. (the problem of there being an "exact place" aside)

 

One can make a similar statement about separations in time; events have a measurable distance between them in time. You aren't showing that there is a distinction between the two cases.

 

In the essence of the argument time is perceived as a single frame of reference for a particular event, and the argument is that "time" is the same for the event even when two clocks show different values associated with the event.

 

The two clocks are used to measure the "time", and the single frame of reference is the point of view were one clock is different from another. what I’m saying is that both clocks are fundamentally wrong because they are trying to quantify and measure a "thing or force, whatever you want to call it" in a specific way both in reference to a point.

 

In reality "time" flows at a constant rate because it cannot change due to any natural or unnatural factors due to its inexistence. and like I said the only real difference in the reference point is the velocity, and space(aka distance).

 

If that's true "in reality," how would one confirm/falsify it? If you can't, it's a meaningless statement.

[ZolarV]

Well first, boson have yet to be fully proved.

 

You can fully disprove time simply becuase is no mathematical equations that accuratly describe time that has happend and time that is current. otherwise you could use such an equation to predict future time and possibly the "end of time" if there is one.

 

As for the example of two people meeting at a specific place at a specific time, agian time is a human invention and it was invented for a purpose, that is the purpose. otherwise we would subject ourselves to probability in events.

 

The real question is, when was time invented.

[insane_alien]

bosons have been directly observed. therefore no more proof required. in fact, you are observing bosons right now.

 

bosons inclue photons, W+/- particles, Z particle and gluons.

 

to say they haven't been proven is to say that forces do not exist.

[swansont]

Well first, boson have yet to be fully proved.

 

That should come as a surprise to the people doing Bose-Einstein condensation experiments.

 

You can fully disprove time simply becuase is no mathematical equations that accuratly describe time that has happend and time that is current. otherwise you could use such an equation to predict future time and possibly the "end of time" if there is one.

 

I don't see the connection here. The difficulty in predicting the future is in knowing the current state and how change propagates, rather than the existence of time. As for predicting future time, that's trivial. If it is now time t, I can predict that in 1 second it will be t+1 second.

 

 

As for the example of two people meeting at a specific place at a specific time, agian time is a human invention and it was invented for a purpose, that is the purpose. otherwise we would subject ourselves to probability in events.

 

 

But how is "specific place" not also an invention, under this view?

[ZolarV]

Hmm, i am sorry i guess i misunderstood the boson, i was more thinking of the Higgs boson which has yet to be observed, but with the completion of the LHC.

 

"As of September 2009[update], the Higgs boson has yet to be observed experimentally, despite big efforts invested in accelerator experiments at CERN and Fermilab."-Wikipedia.com or if you want i can go look it up at CERN itself.

 

the connection to the mathematical equation and the existence of time is simple, if it existed then we could easily describe it through an equation and using it we could account for the past, the present and then calculate the future.

 

As for the "specific place" now you have taken the statement itself out of context to ask for an answer to an unrelated problem, but even so i have an answer for you, i would say no simply because the specific place is a measurable area from a perspective frame to a place where the measurement is the same both ways (from-to, To-from) proving their existence, where as time from one perspective to another changes according to the viewer.

 

 

let me ask you this,

in the age before the institutionalizing of the Julian calender we had a calender system that had 10 months instead of the 12. when we switched to the Julian we "added" 2 months of time on our time keeping calender, yet time did not in fact change at all it simply flowed constantly like it does. we just changed how we wanted to perceive it.

[Klaynos]

Hmm, i am sorry i guess i misunderstood the boson, i was more thinking of the Higgs boson which has yet to be observed, but with the completion of the LHC.

 

"As of September 2009[update], the Higgs boson has yet to be observed experimentally, despite big efforts invested in accelerator experiments at CERN and Fermilab."-Wikipedia.com or if you want i can go look it up at CERN itself.

 

The LHC is not yet operational. It is possible that Fermilab has detected the Higgs Boson, but the data analysis is ongoing and the last I heard it was still very inconclusive.

 

the connection to the mathematical equation and the existence of time is simple, if it existed then we could easily describe it through an equation and using it we could account for the past, the present and then calculate the future.

 

Please see what Swansont said, the problem with predicting the future is knowing the current state.

 

As for the "specific place" now you have taken the statement itself out of context to ask for an answer to an unrelated problem, but even so i have an answer for you, i would say no simply because the specific place is a measurable area from a perspective frame to a place where the measurement is the same both ways (from-to, To-from) proving their existence, where as time from one perspective to another changes according to the viewer.

 

I'm afraid your wrong, length measurements undergo transformations between frames as well. Have a look on wikipedia for "length contraction." This seems to draw the conclusion under your own comments that space is as non-existent as time.

 

let me ask you this,

in the age before the institutionalizing of the Julian calender we had a calender system that had 10 months instead of the 12. when we switched to the Julian we "added" 2 months of time on our time keeping calender, yet time did not in fact change at all it simply flowed constantly like it does. we just changed how we wanted to perceive it.

 

You are in fact talking about units of time here, not time itself, the units are man made. In the same way the meter is a man made unit of length, that has changed length (if only very slightly) as our definition of it has changed. A more fair comparison to what you are saying is comparing the yard to the meter and saying "well they're different so it's just how we wanted to perceive it"

[zombie]

If I am circling earth at the closest speed to the speed of light that a human in a spaceship can achieve, and one year passes for me, say 4 years would have passed on earth, while time hasn't slowed or been manipulated, its all relative, right?

 

I don't know the math on it, but I know its possible to "travel to the future" if you are going extremely fast (at or near the speed of light), and you slow down and go back on earth, more time will have passed on earth than in your space ship

[asprung]

Time is a spaceing beween diffrent "nows". I think we will have a better understaning of the universe if we learn what it really is as opposed to making measurments.

[iNow]

Time is a spaceing beween diffrent "nows".

 

But, by your own logic, there is no such thing as "different nows." There is just one now, and all of those nows which came before are included in the present... a present which is itself fleeting, ethereal, and non-tangible.

 

Either way, that's all metaphysics, not Relativity.

[asprung]

While we only exsit "now" we have experenced past "nows",and it is my view that time is this flow of "nows".

[iNow]

I know, and that's meaningless metaphysics that's ill-defined and too broad to have any use.

[THX-1138]

Umph. I remember the cognitive dissonance I experienced upon first learning that a clock in orbit would not keep the same time as an Earthbound one. (Although in retrospect that's obvious, so maybe it was two clocks under different gravitational stresses rather than traveling at different velocities.)

[asprung]

If time is not the flow of "nows" what is it? Why is an event viewed from diffrent time frames as it occurs though the clocks in the frames may read diffrently?

[Klaynos]

Is space the flow of "heres"?

[phyti]

I think it is more reasonable to think that all time is constant. As in moves at the same rate at all times, although when viewed from differnet refference frames it can appear slower or faster. So what if all time was passing at a constant rate, but appeared different to another observer (as in faster or slower).I think it is similar to if I ride a bike past someone they appear to be accelerating in the opposite direction of me, but when looked at through a different perspective it is quite obvious that I am the only one accelerating.

Thoughts?

 

It seems you are saying events happening in the universe are grouped

differently within a time unit defined by the motion of the observer.

Example:

a distant star pulses (event-e) at a uniform rate.

all motion is perpendicular to the direction of the star.

at 0c, a records 12 per sec.

at .6c, b records 15 per sec.

at .8c, c records 20 per sec.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

a___________a________

b______________b_____

c___________________c

The same number of events happens for all observers (the constant time idea), the observers clocks slice them into different length sequences, depending on their motion.

If this is not a correct interpretation, please clarify.

Edited October 24, 2009 by phyti
spacing

[Klaynos]

Work out the same thing treating one of the currently moving observers as the rest frame, you will get a different result.