legacycentral bbs

Sitting in class the other day I was curious about something. What makes time go?

Here's my thinking on what gets up to that point...

Time and space are both infinite, and both directly related. If you have an instant in space, there is a corresponding finite point in time directly related to it.

Since no two points can occupy the same location, each location in space has a corresponding location in time. No two points in time can occupy the same location in space, and no two locations in space can occupy the same point in time.

So, quite obviously (based on that), every point in space moves along with a point in time. Every specific point in space has a corresponding location in time.

But I'm curious about this....

What causes the progression from one finite point, on an infinite scale to the next finite point?

I just had a HUMUNGOUS conversation with a very intelligent friend of mine about this, but I'm still very curious. I think I understand the concept of the movement of space and time (which is fairly simple to relate to mathematics. One finite point has a corresponding finite point on a parallel line.) It's what causes that progression that gets me.

Anyone have any ideas?

Oh, and don't bother with any spiritual things. I'm more interested in the "big picture" and not just spiritual existance.

I still think you should ask to have your title changed to Thread Whore

Anyway, I spend oodles of time thinking about this stuff. You're trying to say that every particle in the universe as we know it never occupies the same exact location for more than a single instant of time? And you want to know why?

I don't know how to answer thoroughly without using some spiritual references, although I'm not a Christian anymore, I consider myself merely a Deist, where God created the universe, then left it alone. So that won't help my discussion.

Anyway, there's no better way to explain why the universe progresses as it does, as was your question, than there is a way to explain why the earth rotates about its own axis and has been for who knows how many years. We just know it does.

Have you heard much about the chaos theory?

As far as I understand it a large part of it goes likes this:

You take a decaying quark which has broken down to a couple different particals. They will have opposing spins. Well you can seperate these two particals but if you change the spin on one, the other will change as well no matter how far apart they are seperated in time or distance. That just blows my mind. Basically, as you go farther into it it says that although science acts in a way that we can pretty much understand on the level of atoms and electrons, once you get lower than that, things act in a way that looks totally chaotic and yet, it somehow has some sort of meathod to its madness. I could be wrong a bit on some of the actual details, but that is the gist of how it works.

I read that when Einstein heard about it he disbelieved it, and tried to disprove it. Well, he ended up beleiving it. I believe it was him that said it was very diconcerting to discover.

-Ryan

subyluvr2212 wrote: I consider myself merely a Deist, where God created the universe, then left it alone.

mm.. i learned about that in history class once.. changed my life, yes. That idea alone makes sense to me, as it would explain all the shit that happens.. but i contradict myself with the whole "god makes things happen for a reason" bit, as well as divine intervention.. but alas, its a nice way to live your life without having too much intrusion from christianity and conformity..

good call,
-=tristan

Einstein found a few things in his scientific career that he tried to disprove because he couldn't bring himself to accept the theological consequences.

The "cosmological constant" was what Einstein called his "biggest blunder", yet the recent discovery of a "dark energy" in the universe pretty much fits the profile for what the CC did.

Quantum physics and the behavior of subatomic particles is easily the most unrealistic science practiced today. No matter what laws of the universe we think we understand and comprehend, you have to throw the book out sometimes and simply start from scratch.

Subyluvr - I am asking what causes the progression from one finite location in time (since every finite point in time has an instant in space) to another finite location on an infinite scale.

In relation to that, I'm also asking where time begins and ends. Since there is an infinite number of points between a point, can something ever REALLY run out? We live instant to instant on an infinite scale, and energy cannot be created or destroyed.

Did time have a beginning? Does it have an end? If the universe stopped moving one day, would time halt, and everyone and everything be frozen in that instant? If that happened, would we know it happened?

I want to learn more about the Chaos theory, as it's extremely interesting to me, and perhaps it might help explain some of this.

We also only understand time relative to time withint our solar system. Since time for us is based around rotations of the earth along with the rise and setting of the sun. How would our concept of time differ if that wasn't the case?

I've heard of Dark matter, is Dark energy the same thing?

Phil - You should check out a book by Paul Davies called About Time.

BAC5.2 wrote: I want to learn more about the Chaos theory, as it's extremely interesting to me, and perhaps it might help explain some of this.

Look up the book "The Tangled Web." I think that is what it is called. The author explains it in laymans terms. I read it in a philosophy of religion class. Be forewarned, the book basically talks about how she deals with believing in God and believing in modern science at the same time. Kinda of interesting in that respect. She seperates the two realms completely almost.

She has a good simple explanation of the chaos theory, though. Where she goes with it afterwards is thought provoking, a little odd, but interesting.

Just FYI.

-Ryan

There are a couple of the famous light-slit experiments that you can do with no special equipment, that rely on the same principles as the quark experiment. Basically, the light is split into two parts, then you pass it through slits, and the second half of the light somehow "knows" what you did to the first half, without the passage of any time. It shows the same interference patterns as the first half, even though you didn't do anything to it. Very creepy.

Einstein didn't like the light slit experiments a great deal, either.

There have been folks trying to make switches that rely on this type of "communication", but it doesn't (yet) work for reasons I've forgotten. If you could do this, you could make very fast logic chips.

I had a very good and readable book about these topics, but I don't remember the title. Lots of quantum mechanics and a little chaos theory, all reasonably understandable.

georryan wrote:We also only understand time relative to time withint our solar system. Since time for us is based around rotations of the earth along with the rise and setting of the sun. How would our concept of time differ if that wasn't the case?

Our concept of time is man made. Before the callender, time still happened. Man didn't "invent" time. We just measure it with days, minutes, hours, seconds, whatever. Our concept of time is a difference in location of space. An incriment of movement.

1 second isn't a point in time, it's an average from point to point. .111 to .112 takes 1 second, and it's a constant. Every point in space is correlated to a point in time.

I just want to know what causes the progression from point to point.

You could say perspective, but that's not good enough because it's a spiritual definition (you die, time is over for you, but your remains still exist). Since energy cannot be created or destroyed, nothing ever really ends, just like time, energy is infinite.

Something has to cause the progression in space and time.

time does not move. the only reason why it does is because we say it does in relation physical motion. you are right in that there are infinite amounts of points between two points therefore it is imposible for time to move completly between 2 points or from beginning and end of time. it is implsible for the universe to stop too. the only thing that would be possible is for the universe to come apart and at that point we would know it and life would go on in complete darkness until earth got cold enough and everyone dies. end of time is only measureable on a personal level as in when you die. if you know it or not is based on whather or not you belive in an afterlife.

Nothing moves, as an instant time and space are frozen. At an instant in time, there is a corresponding instant in space. Time moves just as much as space does, which is, not at all. But SOMETHING causes the progression from point to point.

In calculus there is what's known as instants and averages. Instants are specific finite locations (.1111 is an instant, for example). Averages are ranges. Human concept of time is based on averages, and not instants, because the human concept of time is a measurement, like a mile is.

Before the human concept of time, time still existed in a series of instants. Things take time. Time is double edged. It's a measurement (it takes 10 seconds to do something). It's also a definition (X location in space is X location in time).

SO, "time" in the first definition is a measure of movement. That time does not move, that's just a reference point to spatial movement. "Time" in the second definition only moves from instant to instant, but each instant is frozen. The questions I have are what cause the movement from instant to instant (what causes "time" in the second definition, to go).

I'm also curious as to how you would measure something that is imobile, like the "time" (in the first definition) that you are in an instant of time and space.

SOMETHING happens to make whatever happens next, happen. I want to know what that something is.

I know what your asking Phil, but I don't know if we humanly and scientifically figured out what that is yet.

It's like looking at a wave function. A wave is the view of something over a period of severval instants, and yet if you look at it in freeze fame, a single instant, you will only see a point. Even that point could be broken down to infinate amount of points.

Once you freeze it you lose the wave, but gain a point. It's the same issue with trying to see light as a wave, because once you freeze it to look at it in an instant of 'time' you see the partical.

The question of what causes all these instants to combine together to form a section of time and move form time period to time period is something that I have never seen tried to be explained. It has always just been accepted and been more of a starting point than a proven thing. At some point in all frames of thought, your beliefs on how things work start from a basis of faith (spiritual or not). There is always an assumption that is accepted as a starting point. Maybe the fact that time just moves is one of those.

It's said that your vocabulary determines what you can think. You can't have ideas that you don't have words for. Have you ever thought something you can't describe?

I feel (notice "feel") that this might have some relation to why we can't wrap our minds around time. We experience time in 1 dimension, how can we even think of it in 2?

When an atom gains or loses energy and has to adjuct the orbiting elctron(s) path accordingly. Before it settles on a new orbit it chooses all possibilities instantaneously so that the 'dot' electron would look more like a doughnut (mm doughnuts ...), therefore inversely violating the theory that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. This is a quantum leap. I think the progreession of time is merely our perception like we can only perceive three dimensions. Everything is and ever will be. If there were a singularity at the end of time (if the universe collapsed in upon itself as it was born) the energy would go to infiniti and then time and space would 'end' in a pure energy. At this pint all rules of physics would break down completely. I try to think of that as reference to space/time so I can picture it outside the limitations of my own perception.

I hope this shit makes sense as I'm tired. It's been a long day. My ex called this morning. I miss that damn woman.

Steve

I didn't think it was invalidating the theory that two objects cannot occupy the same space, as it's one object occupying several spaces at once (when the question comes up of whether it's really one object, or several clones of the same object).

Right, the progression of time is a perceptive thing. We see fluid motion, not frame after frame as if you were watching a movie. But the actual act of the progression of time is what makes me curious. We SEE time progress smoothly, but I want to know what REALLY happens.

All I know is that I don't want the universe to end in a big poof and a cosmic fart. That would ruin my day

What did the Ex want?

Just talking about what's going on with her family and stuff. She said she had been thinking more about me than usual lately. Probably my stress or the fact that I've been thinking of her a lot. We have a minor phychic connection so it was likely one of those things. Its not like she wants to get back together (as most normal people suggest) its just that we have some kind of bond I'm pretty sure is lacking with her husband.

The universe ending in a singularity would make sense as it could be a cycle like everything else. Still, what the hell do I know? I think it would be interesting to ponder what pure energy would be like (if our consciousness still exists - hope that isn't too spiritual, but you could think of our consciousness as being many things).

Steve

Hmm, that IS interesting to think about, what, exactly, pure energy would be. Kinda freaky. Hard to NOT picture some celestial body of some form.

Whoa, this is way over my head. You guys are on your own!!!

Sitting in class the other day I was curious about something. What makes time go?

Time doesn't go anywhere, it's stands still. We measure time with our senses hence the reason it appears to "move". It is another dimension and can actually be measured in meters if you use a timespace diagram.

It seems like a pure mathematics discussion. I think the short answer to what it seems the question, I think, would be energy. It takes energy to move matter and it takes a finite time to move a given mass a given distance. Movement is about reference frames and positions of masses overtime and relative to one another as in special relativity.

From the view of any inertial frame of reference all motion can be described as being relative. If you are standing by the side of a road and a Subaru goes by at 60 mph, to the person in the Subie you are going by at 60 mph in the opposite direction. The key element of special relativity is that the speed of light is constant in all reference frames. No one really has time and space figured out because if they did then there would be no question about what gives rise to consciousnes which is the tool we use to sense and measure physical quantities.

In my own opinion I think it strange that we try to separate consciousness from physics. It's like trying to say that we can rely on a tool that we have no way of calibrating or knowing if it's even possible to calibrate it but that's more of a philisophical discussion which, obviously, is a separate argument.

If there was no consicousness there would be no time because time is a physical quantitiy we measure through our senses, like a sound or a mass. Time is a dimension like length, width, and height. Measurements are taken in inertial reference frames. In fact, time moves at different speeds in relation to gravity and the speed of the observer.

creel wrote: It (time) is another dimension and can actually be measured in meters if you use a timespace diagram.

hmm...I've never heard of time being measured in meters, could you elaborate on that?

As for the original question, I agree with whoever on here said that it isn't possible for us to really explain what is going on with our vocabulary (or even words for that matter), if we picture time as something that was "set in motion" at "the dawn of time," it is impossible to comprehend what outside force could cause time to start moving, however, if we think of time as something that has been moving for all eternity, we can't comprehend how that can be possible because, my mind at least, keeps trying to think about how it MUST have started moving at some point, meaning that it wasn't moving at one point...

yea...I know that made absolutely no sense, but like people have said, I don't think our vocabularies or even our minds are advanced enough to really understand or explain this stuff

It's extremely interesting to think about though, I'm really liking this thread!

The vocabulary as a limit to thought is a question posed by Orwell's magnificent 1984 and one that I've considered many times. I've concluded that this is not necessarily true - vocabulary itself did not give rise to thought. Vocabulary exists to communicate thought. If there were no words for certain things, then I would have extreme difficulty communicating it with anyone else, so those thoughts, ideas, etc. would be probably remain my own. Saying that, there probably aren't words to effectively describe time/space due to our perception, but that's not to say one couldn't imagine the correct concept (even if unproveable).

Steve

my brain hurts.

but i agree with steve on the 1984 thing