Time

[DHiMac]

I have far more questions than answers.

If Einstein is right, we can travel forward in time relative to some other stationary observer. That part seems well founded in our current state of understanding. We just can't go fast enough for long enough to actually see the effect as casual Human observers.

The deep question is What is Time? Things moving at different speeds perceive time differently. But speed is measured involving units of time. I throw my hands up in defeat because everything seems relative. Is there no absolute thing in this Universe?

We don't really know what time is, so can we understand what motion is? Motion is relative to something anchored in something, and it appears that nothing in the Universe can be said to be truely anchored in an absolute sense.

Another thing puzzles me. Photons are said to not experience time since they move at light speed. But photons are acted upon by forces that have units of time in them. So photons are influenced by something they don't perceive. Or, our concept of force is flawed. My simple mind is exploding (perhaps another BB).

[salazar18]

Gravity has a different value at every point in space. Time flows differently at every point in space. The value we learn of gravity in class is an average for Earth. A second is the average length of time so much radioactive material decays to another state on Earth or the average time it takes for the mechanism of a second hand in a watch or a digital clock etc. to say a second has passed. Time is a continuum, it is a force. Better said, time does not really exist, it is just a human designation of one aspect of the Unified Force which behaves like a dimension within which interactions can take place. The interactions between forces create "time" which is really just another aspect or field within which forces interact. Time is a subjective, though useful concept. Many theorems now can be stipulated without using the concept of time.

[Marketa]

I agree with Salazar and want to add some more information.
Time is like space - it's simply a dimension.
Photons DO experience time - don't forget it's RELATIVE, so for photon the universe is flying... That's how photons can react, change (in time) etc.

[Eldar]

I like to look at time on more of quantum level personally. time fowards and time backwards are equal in the math, I think they are equal in reality as well. Its not hard to imagine a theoritical wave thats faster then light (hence moving backwards in time), to bring an effect in to being. Its very much shrodinger, but it makes sense to me.

[dleviwing]

DHiMac;

If one interprets Einstein's GR properly, it is the physical clock made out of physical matter that slows down as you accelerate. We do not have a clock that can reproduce the true concept of "time" and thus we use GR. An example is to take an electric clock that references to the 60 Hz line frequency and take it to Japan where the line frequency is 50 Hz. A slow physical time reference does not constitute travel in time.

Keep in touch with reality;
dleviwing

[AntonioLao]

DHiMac,

Is there no absolute thing in this Universe?

some people consider acceleration and length absolutes. To me, these are vectors and when multiplied together, the inner product is a constant, the square of the speed of light in vacuum.

antonio

when the absolutes of acceleration and length are merged with matter, the result is energy [math]E=mc^2[/math]

mass is oddness of space. Energy is the evenness of space. Space contains both odd and even. This oddness is related to 1/2 integral spins of all fermions and the evenness is related to integral spins of all bosons.

[kennap]

I'm thinking we outta make a different form of math to use for undefined expressions, we could call it "calculoid" it is simalar to calculus by the fact that it describes changes. Absoultes will be available to manipulate. It works on a primative number scheme that would be useless in everyday applications, but very powerful for describing absolutes (of time, space etc...) forces are operations noted with variuos symbols. Becuses it pertains only to undefined expressions, all values are ratios to infinity. Setting the ratio of infinty to infinty can be re-written as 1. Subtraction, multplication, inversion and all the other operatiions can be available (unless someone disagrees theres plenty of high-level mathematics i'm not familar with) defined expressions can be shown in that form.

[AntonioLao]

kennap,

i'm defining an absolute quantity called the unit scalar [math]\ddot{U}[/math] similar to the unit vector in vector analysis.

conforming dimensional analysis, this unit scalar allows the calculation of two absolute quantities when one approaches unity and the other approaches infinity such that the product is equal to the difference.

[math]ab=(a-b)\ddot{U}[/math]

[JAK]

See post #9

The idea of "vectors" and "dimensions" presents an interesting additional question about "time." We talk about "time" like it is a single dimension. But can it be multi-dimensional, just like space?

[AntonioLao]

But can it be multi-dimensional, just like space?

the theory (quantized space and continuous space) that I'm working on requires at least two directions of time (2 degrees of freedom). For brevity, let's call them the forward and backward direction of time. In this sense, time remains one dimensional because two-dimensional time necessarily implies infinite degrees of freedom.