Does time exist?

[ydoaPs]

you guys should read Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene. it describes time and space. i bet some of you are saying "screw that, it's string theory." well, most of the book has nothing to do with string theory.

[ecoli]

If time is a physical reality as some speculate' date=' then it would be possible to create energy by manipulating time (impossible except we bin conservation of energy). However, we create time each time we measure energy (there is no conservation of time). Energy is the only Universal fundamental.[/quote']

 

Just becasue we can't affect something, doesn't mean it doesn't exsist. We can't effect the occurances on distant solar systems, but that doesn't mean they don't exsist. Why can't time be considered a physical demension. We can't escape time much in the same way we can't escape the world of length, width, and hieght.

[YT2095]

If nothing changed then there would be no time. But thats not the case there is always movement.

 

 

what is Movement if not Change?

 

or have I misunderstood you?

[Daymare17]

If time is dependent upon the observer, then how did humans evolve. Since before the first human, there was no time. The same argument goes against the idea that time is just a figment of our imagination.

 

We can't touch or see time. It's abstract. But nevertheless it explains real relationships in the world. There are many things we can't see. These things are abstractions. But nevertheless they describe things that really exist, and are indispensable for understanding the universe.

 

This insistence upon the "observer" is the consequence of the stupid philosophy of Ernst Mach, which is that which has been most influential in 20th century science. One of Mach's followers actually tried to write a periodic table of the elements without using the atomic hypothesis! Since we can't see the atom, how can it exist? Keep in mind that our immediate senses tell us that the sun orbits the Earth, which is flat. Whoever said that philosophy and science should stay separated is entirely wrong, because everyone has a philosophy, and if you don't think consciously through your philosophy then you will invariably accept a wrong one. Like Machism. If all scientists accepted a consistent materialist philosophy then we would make much quicker progress.

[Daymare17]

One interpretation of the idea that "time is the fourth dimension" is that time can go backwards. If this is the implication, then what's the proof of this? It goes against the arrow of time. If there is no proof then it's just happy science fiction.

[Daymare17]

f you really think about it' date=' the past and future are merely illusions. There can be an infinite number of futures and an infinite number of pasts that could constitute the physical here and now. (Mathematically, the only thing preserved is the information of the current state which can correspond to a number of previous states.) And thus, with the conservation of information, the only actual physically real state is the "now."

 

So anybody who thinks the future is ‘out there’ is only deluding themselves. [/quote']

 

This ain't right. The past is fixed for all eternity. The future however, is not determined (other than within the broad limits set by the past). That's why we fear for the future rather than for the past. "Past is an illusion" - gibberish. The past is all around us: in buildings, in cars, in my old computer fro the 90's, in the medieval superstitions in the heads of men and women. In everything, to be honest. The future is also all around us, but the future can go in many different ways. So we can never predict it exactly, only more and more as we get more knowledge about the world. So even though there are 21st century ideas in the world along with 11th century ideas, that doesnt mean that the 21st century ideas will automatically stamp out the 11th century ones. If things work out poorly then we might well go back to the 11th century in the future, paradoxical as it sounds.

[ydoaPs]

One interpretation of the idea that "time is the fourth dimension" is that time can go backwards. If this is the implication, then what's the proof of this? It goes against the arrow of time. If there is no proof then it's just happy science fiction.

 

 

why would there be any proof? if time went backwards, then all chemical reactions would reverse which would erase your memory of the future. same would hold true for any reaction of any sort.

[1veedo]

This ain't right. The past is fixed for all eternity. The future however, is not determined (other than within the broad limits set by the past). That's why we fear for the future rather than for the past. "Past is an illusion" - gibberish. The past is all around us: in buildings, in cars, in my old computer fro the 90's, in the medieval superstitions in the heads of men and women. In everything, to be honest. The future is also all around us, but the future can go in many different ways. So we can never predict it exactly, only more and more as we get more knowledge about the world. So even though there are 21st century ideas in the world along with 11th century ideas, that doesnt mean that the 21st century ideas will automatically stamp out the 11th century ones. If things work out poorly then we might well go back to the 11th century in the future, paradoxical as it sounds.

It's not like there is some sort of a "cosmic cache" anywhere. The past, just like the future is undetermined. The exact same principles of many worlds can be equally be applied and arrived at "many histories".

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_histories

[boka-fett]

by "many histories", are you reffering to how different people see history different ways? In a sense, I believe we do have a past, and things have history in them. It's the element that everything revolves around the sun that makes us percieve that something unrelevent to that limitation has a 'time'. I would parallel that to being in a car crash. The person inside the car is the one experiencing whatever elements are being subject to him/her, while an oberver is not affected by what is happening. If one is in deep space, where there is no light, he has nothing to gadge the distance between events, exept if he had a clock or something. But even then, the clock is based on Earth time. The consept of past time as in if an event happens before or after or another is quite real, but the consept of gadging the distance, frequency, and occurance of events is a human consept.

[boka-fett]

please forgive my terrible spelling. I wrote this on the fly.

[1veedo]

The idea is that two or more actions can constitute the present...

 

If there is a pile of wood in your basement, there could be many ways for it to get there. Your parents could have carried it in. A helpful neighbor. Whatever. And then there could be many ways to get it there. Wheelbarrow, one-by-one, carry as many in each trip. Cary two in one hand and one in the other...you get the idea.

 

The effect of any of the above combinations is the exact same. You get a pile of wood!

[Guest mostly_sane]

In order to understand that time does not exist, you must think of matter and energy. I believe someone posted a topic about sitting in a chair where others sat before him before. But think, if time does exist, what is the smallest unit of it? Wouldn't there techincally have to be a seperate plane of existance for every infinite moment in time?

No! Matter and energy exists as it does now, everything around you is moving forward at the same rate. Now with light you can technically see images that existed before the moment. But light is a physical reality, so it's the same as staring at a photograph. So when you think of going back into the past, think of how energy and matter exists now. Technically, not only would your matter have to be re-arranged, but every single thing that exists in the universe would have to revert to a state as it existed before. And as for the whole black hole thing...You'd probably just be crushed by the immense pressure into a super dense mass.

[ydoaPs]

The idea is that two or more actions can constitute the present...

 

If there is a pile of wood in your basement' date=' there could be many ways for it to get there. Your parents could have carried it in. A helpful neighbor. Whatever. And then there could be many ways to get it there. Wheelbarrow, one-by-one, carry as many in each trip. Cary two in one hand and one in the other...you get the idea.

 

The effect of any of the above combinations is the exact same. You get a pile of wood![/quote']

 

 

how do you explain memories, videos, or photographs?

[Guest XIIIthEffect]

My thought is,

As long as there is energy and matter, there is time.

[Johnny5]

One definition of 'exist' is this...

 

To exist, is to be in the current moment in time.

 

By this definition, if time exists, then it inside of itself, in German... ding an sich. So you should ask yourself what you mean by the word 'exist' in your sentence. For that matter, you should also ask yourself what you mean by 'time'. You cannot taste,touch,smell,hear, or see time. I would ask you only this, is time something that you can sense?

 

Regards

[gisburnuk]

I have talked about this subject on several occasions to a freind, he beleives that time is a increase in disorder of things or 'entropy'. Trying very hard to picture this idea of objects becoming broken and remaining broken wasn't too hard.Whether this constituded towards his belief that time does exist remained unknown. I cannot express my views on this complicated subject because like 4 dimensions it is hard to picture. Has anybody raised the subject of time dilation and the extended life of muons?

[darth tater]

If time is required for anything to happen, then time exists because much has happen since the BB, or the creation, or whatever other method of initiation the universe went through.

 

How can one wonder if time exists and at the same time accept that light has a finite speed? Or that Earth's orbit has a measurable duration to complete a cycle?

 

If time did not exist, wouldn't we already be at the end of it?

[Daecon]

Time exists for the same reason that space has a volume.

[Jacques]

Time exist only has the denominator of motion. You cannot have time without motion. If motion didn't exist then time wouldn't exist.

[J.C.MacSwell]

Time exists for the same reason that space has a volume.

 

The big bang?

[darth tater]

Time exist only has the denominator of motion. You cannot have time without motion. If motion didn't exist then time wouldn't exist.

 

And vice versa.

[Jacques]

Not exactly motion is more fundamental. Time is one aspect of motion. Space is the other aspect of motion.

[quick silver]

there were several people that i agreed with here. the future is define by our choices in the past. and in the present. one person said that the past is everywhere... that person has the right chain of thought. or at least i think so.

[BlackHole]

Time and space exist, but neither are physical entites nor are they deceptions. Time is an abstract change parameter. Change is primary, time is something we deduce from it.

[Oxidizer]

Time is the magnitude needed to make the rest of the magnitudes real.