The End of Time

[subversion]

Would it be theoretically true that the only way for time to "end" would be for it to undergo an absolute reversal? Please everyone tell me if this sounds smart to you or not. Your answers will help us all to understand how correct my interpretations of cosmology and the TOE possibly are. Thanks in advance, there's more theory where that came from...

genuinely,
SubVersion

[michellemfry]

That sounds like ripe material for a great science fiction novel. It is smart, Subversion. What could possibly exist that could cause time to reverse it's entire course, and I mean it's entire course? A great and powerful anti-time machine, perhaps? A new universe threatens our own in the battle of the eons. What fantastic things to think about possible in the mega-gargantuan world of the universe and time??
Let's let our imaginations go wild on this one. Open the discussion to the true, put it out on the table thinking.

[Guille]

Just look at the world.

The cold war was a main event (better said, sequence of events) for the 20th century. In the late 1980s the capitalist USSR fell and with it, the whole fight.

WW2's main cause was the separation of Germany, in 1989 it reunited.

The division between European countries started in the 16th century, due mainly to the division in religion, but later in several aspects. Now the EU wants to make of Europe one strong and united, this would be erasing the big event this is represented by the figure of Luther.

There are many dimensions of time, many times. The psychological, the physical, the biological, the measurement.... And the time of history. This one is the first that reverses, why? They will all reverse, this is a psychological condition, as the law that every action has a reaction. History is the first ne to reverse because in a sense it is the less important for us humans. I don't mean that all time depends on us, the physical time doesn't depend on us, nor the biological time. But history is reversing, because in the 80s we were reversing 20th century events, but now we're going all the way back to 1500s. Then the depends time, the measurement of time, and the biological time. And, ultimately, the physical time.

Can we stop this reversion? We can if and only if we jump to the next step of time. Time has steps, which are the events in the time of time, the square of time. This step is reversing everything, undoing it, I find strong connections between this Baudrillardian idea and Derrida's Deconstruction. We're deconstructing time, but at the same time this deconstructing of time is a part of time's construction. We just have to leave these bricks and go into the next level of the building of time.

[Planet_Bob]

Now the EU wants to make of Europe one strong and united,

What you are dealing with here is the cyclical nature of civilizations.
Every civilization goes through the cycle of juvenile, mature and senile. Europe is no different.

Time, on the other hand is down to sequence and duration. If there were such a reversal point, the next step you take is not backwards, but is just the next step in the sequence.

No matter which direction you are travelling, the arrow of time will always points forwards.

[Guille]

What you are dealing with here is the cyclical nature of civilizations.
Every civilization goes through the cycle of juvenile, mature and senile. Europe is no different.

Time, on the other hand is down to sequence and duration. If there were such a reversal point, the next step you take is not backwards, but is just the next step in the sequence.

No matter which direction you are travelling, the arrow of time will always points forwards.

What we say has the same consequence and gives the same explanation, but we talk about different things. You use the idea of cyclical time, I use the idea of reversal time. Your time goes round, mine goes curved halfway the circle's circumference, but instead of making a whole circle like you, it goes back the same way to the same half. Maybe it will go again, and all over again, but the importance is that mine doesn't make a circle.

[subversion]

What could possibly exist that could cause time to reverse it's entire course.

I was hoping one of you would be able to tell me. It is a force so powerful that nothing can overcome it. This force is going to do what it is going to do no matter what happens. It is absolutely incontroveritble. It will only happen after an "infinite" amount of time has transpired though. This is of course theoretically true, because we can never live to see an infinite amount of time, but an "outside" observer could. Besides which, a theory which is theoretically true is true in actuality. Can you guess what is the incontrovertible force? Is it primeval? Is it something incredible?

[subversion]

If there were such a reversal point, the next step you take is not backwards, but is just the next step in the sequence.

No matter which direction you are travelling, the arrow of time will always points forwards.

I believe it is a semantical argument that even if time reverses it still moves "forward" because in this case "forward" means backward.

[michellemfry]

This reversal of time would have to be perfect and absolute and an exact copy of the converted thing with no loss due to any process that we know of. Perhaps, beyond the laws of thermodynamics exists a perfect conversion of time, a seamless thing, that could be so perfect as to be undetectable by ordinary means, because we tend to see loss and imperfect processes in the natural world. Perhaps, a pre-natural, pre-thermodynamical behavior could exist in time. Embedded in this thing would be something so perfect, so exact, that one might be hard pressed to prove that it ever was possible.

[michellemfry]

I was hoping one of you would be able to tell me. It is a force so powerful that nothing can overcome it. This force is going to do what it is going to do no matter what happens. It is absolutely incontroveritble. It will only happen after an "infinite" amount of time has transpired though. This is of course theoretically true, because we can never live to see an infinite amount of time, but an "outside" observer could. Besides which, a theory which is theoretically true is true in actuality. Can you guess what is the incontrovertible force? Is it primeval? Is it something incredible?

Could it be, this incontrovertible force, the strength upon which a center of a universe could have been based? The "center" could be reached by any point in the universe, and that would be it's only factor and it's power from it's accessibility. Everything would come from the center, and since all things exist, the center no longer functions.
Is this some great recycling of time? And in this way time is eternal, always recycling itself perfectly, with no loss?

[harmonygirl]

wouldn't time going backwards or forwards or sideways be based on a linear conception of time? (I actually saw a really great episode of Red Dwarf where time did run backwards-good fiction) I am not sure that I ascribe to a linear notion of time, it doesn't make logical sense. Nothing else in nature is linear. I think of all time as happening simultaneously, so backwards is entirely possible, as long as one chooses one's direction. In any event, I don't believe time moves.