Questions about time

[Farsight]

But aren't I getting older, remembering the past but having no experience of the future?

Yes of course. We all are.

It sure as heck feels as though I am travelling in a direction.

No it doesn't. Not really. Can you feel that time flowing through your hair? Where are you? In an office? Sit still, look out of the window, ask youself what you can see. Can you see yourself travelling in a direction like you're in a plane? No. What you can see is other things travelling. They're moving, in all directions. And if I snapped my gedanken fingers and "stopped time" but left you able to see and think, what you'd see is that all those other things aren't moving any more.

I can see I am always actually in the present, not travelling through time, but the present itself seems to be travelling forward. Or it always has this quality of past and future being distinguishable, not like red and black on the roulette table but like a fully formed and unchangeable past state, stripped of all potential on one hand, and an infinite range of possible futures on the other.

You're actually in your chair. The past is your way of thinking about where all those moving things moved from, and the future is your way of thinking about where they might move to.

Probably all bull, but I am interested to learn a little bit.

It isn't bull, check out presentism, but it takes a bit of getting to used to. It isn't easy to overcome what is essentially a conditioning as regards the way you think about time. You need to be strict with yourself. The best way to do it IMHO is to look hard at a clock and ask yourself what it really does. People say "a clock measures the flow of time", but all it really does is counts some kind of regular motion and shows you the cumulative total called the time. Pendulum clock, quartz wristwatch, it doesn't matter, that's what clocks do. Stop the clock and you stop motion, not time. Just bear that in mind, then give the priority to motion, and you'll get there. It's just a small shift: you don't need time to have motion, you need motion to have time.

 

[wheunis]

Other posters have already posted, and I feel compelled to share in some debauchery on the topic with you.
Flirting with these ideas are healthy, as long as you don't take it too far.

I have slightly re-ordered your question in an attempt to be more coherent in my own responses (failed as that might turn out).

[*]Does time even exist?

Time, as we know it, very much exists. It is a measurable element that we can record.
But, as the saying goes "Depends who you ask" - If you ask that same question of an electron just before or after it jumps - his answer might be different.

Even so, time does indeed exist.

[*]Is time as we view it an illusion?

Time very well could be an illusion, restricted in it's effect and "visibility", to only that which is consciously able to perceive it.
Many have gone so far as to claim that Einstein's definition of time as relative, indicates malleability to the point of illusion.

Other hypothesis stipulate that time might just be the visible effect that other dimensions might have on our perceivable dimensions.

Many different theories as to the real nature of time, including that of it being an illusion, exists. So far, none have been able to produce the reproducible results that Einstein had.
For that reason, until such results are forthcoming, we have to default to that which is known by the scientific method.

[*]Are we conditioned to see time in a linear way?

See above.
But moreover, I do not think so. Many theorists have gone out of their way, even dedicating their entire careers towards the investigation of time as non-linear.
That in itself suggests to me, that we have broken free from such conditioning, should it ever have existed.

[*]Has everything already happened but we are just viewing one moment at a

Many things in Quantum Mechanics/Theory suggests that this might indeed be the case.
One example often used is that of Quantum Superposition.
Quite simply (almost TOO simply) one thing can exist in many places all at once, but it is our perception that makes it appear one way/place/speed or the other.
It could be possible that everything has already happened, and we are merely observing it, as if played back after the fact on a DVD...
But as above, until such things can be shown by method as fact, we have to default to that which is already known.


I welcome any further discussion with you on this, should you wish to pursue it - on a strictly hypothetical basis of course.
While I can help, to certain degrees of efficiency, explain more complicated theories in a possibly more relatible manner - I must apologize and confess that some of quantum's deeper mechanics elude even the hardiest of intellects.

I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.

- Richard Feynman,
- The Character of Physical Law (1965)

 

[edd]

Ok with the gas in a box you would usually and usually correctly think it was spread out into its highest entropy state. However with lots of gas I could let it collapse under its own gravity and by doing so it would heat up and that extra energy that's gone into the heat needs to be counted as part of the disorder too.

Ordinarily in the gas in a box example you assume gravity is weak so that can be ignored and that it has no efficient mechanism by which it can lose the heat (and therefore pressure) it has to start with to allow it to collapse and release its gravitational potential energy and allow that to contribute to the entropy.

 

[anglolawyer]

Thanks Farsight, Tubbythin and edd. All very interesting. I'm off to look up 'presentism' and to try and remember whether high entropy means high or low order.

 

[Farsight]

Er, I am hoping low entropy = highly ordered. If the universe started with a big bang, surely that was very disordered wasn't it? There were no streets or houses or complicated structures waiting to be brought into a less ordered state.

No, everything was very smooth and uniform, the temperature didn't vary much, everywhere looked the same as everywhere else. The latter is still true of the Universe on a large scale (probably) but it certainly isn't true locally. I'm sure Sol Invictus or someone will be along shortly to explain this better.

You have to take a bit of care with entropy. Check out entropy and usable energy. The size of the system is important. If you start off with a small universe, something like the "frozen star" black hole interpretation, where the energy density is uniform, there's no usable energy. If you end up with a large "heat death" universe where the energy density is uniform, there's no usable energy. In between you have energy-density gradients and available energy, and life.

 

[Merton]

Thanks Farsight, Tubbythin and edd. All very interesting. I'm off to look up 'presentism' and to try and remember whether high entropy means high or low order.

You probably shouldn't think about entropy as a scale between order and disorder, as that can get confusing. Entropy is the potential to do work and it always increases in a universal scope, even though certain systems will decrease it locally. For example, a lot of creationists like to say that life couldn't have arose from non-life or that evolution couldn't occur because of the second law of thermodynamics (ever-increasing entropy). However, even though energy from our star is dissipating, losing potential to do work, and increasing entropy (these phrases all mean the same thing), Earth has an input of energy from the sun. This increases the potential to do work on Earth, such as creating more-ordered molecules, life, advanced life, etc. Hopefully that helps a bit.

 

[anglolawyer]

Thanks to both Farsight and Merton. Interesting stuff. Farsight's link threw up this:

The implications of the Second Law of Thermodynamics are considerable. The universe is constantly losing usable energy and never gaining. We logically conclude the universe is not eternal. The universe had a finite beginning -- the moment at which it was at "zero entropy" (its most ordered possible state). Like a wind-up clock, the universe is winding down, as if at one point it was fully wound up and has been winding down ever since. The question is who wound up the clock?

Eek!

And then this:

The theological implications are obvious. NASA Astronomer Robert Jastrow commented on these implications when he said, "Theologians generally are delighted with the proof that the universe had a beginning, but astronomers are curiously upset. It turns out that the scientist behaves the way the rest of us do when our beliefs are in conflict with the evidence." (Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers, 1978, p. 16.)

Jastrow went on to say, "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries." (God and the Astronomers, p. 116.) It seems the Cosmic Egg that was the birth of our universe logically requires a Cosmic Chicken...

I guess the fact the universe can be wound up (like a clock) doesn't break any laws because the energy for the winding up must have come from outside the system?

 

[Merton]

I guess the fact the universe can be wound up (like a clock) doesn't break any laws because the energy for the winding up must have come from outside the system?

You're beyond my realm of knowledge at this point. I haven't heard anything about the energy being created (this "winding of the clock")... I thought it was just kind of present after the Big Bang.

 

[Merton]

Also, anyone who asks "who" did something rather than "what" did it, is a schlemiel in my book. That's just bad science.

 

[edd]

Don't read too much into analogies with clocks being wound and don't read too much into the theology or whatever.
It's undoubtedly an important mystery as to why the universe began this way though. Sean Carroll seems to write a lot on the topic for a general audience - you might want to add his name to your googling.

 

[anglolawyer]

You're beyond my realm of knowledge at this point. I haven't heard anything about the energy being created (this "winding of the clock")... I thought it was just kind of present after the Big Bang.

It's highly unlikely I am beyond anyone's realm of knowledge on this thread. No fear of that!

 

[anglolawyer]

Don't read too much into analogies with clocks being wound and don't read too much into the theology or whatever.
It's undoubtedly an important mystery as to why the universe began this way though. Sean Carroll seems to write a lot on the topic for a general audience - you might want to add his name to your googling.

I will do that ... In fact, I just did and he looks like my kind of guy. Thanks.

 

[Merton]

I will do that ... In fact, I just did and he looks like my kind of guy. Thanks.

Yeah, Sean Carroll is THE MAN! I'm not sure if anyone else here is as crazy about The Teaching Company as I, but he's got a lecture series produced and distributed through them about Cosmology. It is titled Dark Matter and Dark Energy: The Dark Side of the Universe.

The Teaching Company (TTC)
http://www.thegreatcourses.com/

Dark Matter and Dark Energy: The Dark Side of the Universe
http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=1272

 

[anglolawyer]

Yeah, Sean Carroll is THE MAN! I'm not sure if anyone else here is as crazy about The Teaching Company as I, but he's got a lecture series produced and distributed through them about Cosmology. It is titled Dark Matter and Dark Energy: The Dark Side of the Universe.

The Teaching Company (TTC)
http://www.thegreatcourses.com/

Dark Matter and Dark Energy: The Dark Side of the Universe
http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=1272

Looks good. Thanks all. You guys rock imho.

 

[sol invictus]

What's tricky is going from a speed of zero to a speed of c in no time flat. It takes infinite acceleration to do that, which takes infinite energy, and it's a no-can-do.

Nonsense. The energy required for a certain total amount of acceleration is independent of the time it takes to accelerate, because the change in energy depends only on the initial and final velocities (or momenta for a massless particle). Massless particles can, for example, reflect off a mirror at 90 degrees, undergoing a change in velocity of 2c.

When a massive particle decays into two massless particles, the rest-mass energy of the massive particle goes into the kinetic energy of the two massless particles, which fly off at speed c. There's nothing weird or tricky about it.

 

[ynot]

IMO - Time is not a thing that has independent existence and function. Time is synonymous with bounce.

 

[keyfeatures]

I don't see how "numerical order" is a definition of "change observed". Could you elaborate on what you mean?

1st state
2nd state
3rd state
nth state

In order to number the states there needs to be a difference (in movement/material) - otherwise they are the same state. There has to be an identifiable difference. The same state cannot be reproduced (Leibniz is correct in this and it's something Newton glossed over).

All our notion of time does is number the observation of movements that are observed against other movements. For example, there are 50 pendulum swings in the time it takes for the ice to melt at temperature x. That these movements have a synchronicity allows us to assume they have a consistency. However, what if all universal movement stops and starts in unison (forget the paradoxical mechanism that would be required for this to happen), how could you say how much 'time' had passed? You couldn't. It's an observational fallacy to suggest that time is the unit of value. Movement (or material change) is the unit of value. We can see this from the ways in which we have measured so-called time (all of them based on observation of movement).

All units of time are tautologies of movement. Time itself does not exist. It's a metaphysical concept.

 

[keyfeatures]

The neutrinos fly away at c, because there was always something going at c in there.

Vibrations within vibrations.

Also, the path integral (if considered a real physical event) must be averaged in part from the superluminal. Is c a meanie?

 

[fuelair]

Thanks, fuelair! I think my embarrassment is more due to the fact that I'm a newbie on a skeptic forum... and this isn't exactly how I wanted to start things off! lol

There have been far, far, far worse - and most of them never figure it out! Stay loose and keep asking questions and commenting - the only fun way to learn!!!

 

[RobDegraves]

However, what if all universal movement stops and starts in unison (forget the paradoxical mechanism that would be required for this to happen), how could you say how much 'time' had passed? You couldn't. It's an observational fallacy to suggest that time is the unit of value. Movement (or material change) is the unit of value. We can see this from the ways in which we have measured so-called time (all of them based on observation of movement).

All units of time are tautologies of movement. Time itself does not exist. It's a metaphysical concept.

1. What if all matter ceased to exist? Would there still be physical dimensions?

2. A statement of opinion is not the same as a proof.

So far all I have seen from you and Farsight have been arguments largely based on assertion and semantics.

Examplia gratia... Time is a measure of motion, therefore time does not exist.

This begs the question and is a fallacy. You define time, therefore make your argument from there.

Here is a question... time dilation, explain how it affects all forms of measurement equally.

Let's try from there.