The Anti-Time Theory

[Woodsey]

Surely time itself exists, just the only interaction we have with it is through units of measurement?

If we could travel through whatever dimension it is then you'd see that it is "something".

 

[nezroy]

Look into the article or follow some links therein before contributing further.

I salute your effort, but honestly, it will never work. People aren't going to accept the fact that it takes serious study and concentrated learning to reach the point where they could contribute something relevant and interesting to any modern, non-trivial topic. They have been fed too many American-dream fantasy movies that lie to them about the nature of genius and brilliance. Yes, all these people honestly believe that they too can just wake up one day and have a "new" idea, and that that's how Einstein did it too.

It's particularly funny to watch this effect in action on AGW debates. "Oh my god, the sunspots! I KNOW they didn't think about the sunspots!" ... yes, because all the climatologists in the world haven't once thought to look at one of the most obvious natural cycles impacting the sun -- one known since the beginning of astronomy -- as a possible variable in our climate. The fact that any climate scientist worth their salt could rattle off dozens of natural cycles regarding solar, planetary, oceanic, and geological phenomena that would blow your mind and which you never had a clue existed should not dissuade you from believing that 3 minutes of watching FOX News has empowered you with the ability to divine the one blatantly obvious natural cycle that decades of researchers have failed to ever think about or take into account.

Yeah, um, bit of a digression there, but anyway. I think the point was simply that you are not alone, and please don't despair in the futility of your rational pleas.

 

[BlueTomfoolery]

"Time" is the word we use to lable the strict progression of cause to effect.

 

[Calgetorix]

I think you guys are missing a big thing. Time isn't defined as the time it takes Earth to revolve once around the Sun. Taken from Wikipedia, a second is defined as:

the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom

from this article [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second]. So there are objective ways to measure time.

Also, a metre is just not a metre. It's defined as the distance light travels in free space 1⁄299,792,458 of a second.

 

[Quiet Stranger]

Oh god I remember thinking that. I also remember hearing about it in a movie or a show or something. But meh, time or no time, the real question is, why is a tree?

I feel like there should be more to that question about the tree

If the tree falls down in a completely empty place where there is nothing to 'hear' it, mechanical, biological or chemical, does it make a sound?

Okay....but thats the IF a tree question he asked the Why is a tree question (which I never heard of before) and of course it does!

 

[not_the_dm]

Oh god I remember thinking that. I also remember hearing about it in a movie or a show or something. But meh, time or no time, the real question is, why is a tree?

I feel like there should be more to that question about the tree

If the tree falls down in a completely empty place where there is nothing to 'hear' it, mechanical, biological or chemical, does it make a sound?

Okay....but thats the IF a tree question he asked the Why is a tree question (which I never heard of before) and of course it does!

Or does it merely make a noise because there is nothing there to hear it and assign meaning to it. A sound without meaning is just a noise isn't it.

 

[xDarc]

What I find interesting lately is the concept that the atoms in our bodies are billions of years old, atoms that likely belonged to many other organisms before us.

 

[Quiet Stranger]

Oh god I remember thinking that. I also remember hearing about it in a movie or a show or something. But meh, time or no time, the real question is, why is a tree?

I feel like there should be more to that question about the tree

If the tree falls down in a completely empty place where there is nothing to 'hear' it, mechanical, biological or chemical, does it make a sound?

Okay....but thats the IF a tree question he asked the Why is a tree question (which I never heard of before) and of course it does!

Or does it merely make a noise because there is nothing there to hear it and assign meaning to it. A sound without meaning is just a noise isn't it.

Well I'm sure if a tree fell and nobody would be around to hear it (and as you say assign a meaning to it) it wouldn't make a sproing sound as it hit the groud, it'd still make a crash

 

[GundamSentinel]

Like space, time has essentially 3 dimensions, and since we only see one of those, we see time in snapshots of the 4th dimension. 5th and 6th are out of our comprehension. (Which is a good thing as that would give us serious troubles with causality as that would imply time travel. At least, that is what I understood from a friend who studies physics. I don't think he really understood it either.)

Basically, we're just trying to get our minds around something our mind is not equipped for. Just as we still say that the sun goes up and comes down, we still have our crude way of comprehending time.

 

[DancePuppets]

Actually time does exist, we can measure it, time does not pass at the same rate throughout the universe it can be warped by particularly massive objects or by travelling extremely fast, general and special relativity respectively. One proof for general relativity can be found by studying Mercury's orbit around the sun which differs from the predictions made by applying Newton's laws, this is due to it being so close to the sun that the mass of the sun warps space-time around it and so changing the rate at which time passes on Mercury.

 

[DancePuppets]

(...)

OT: So then there are only three dimensions? Because I was under the impression that the fourth dimension was time.

There are sixteen dimensions

Wow... seriously? *scurries off the read about this "M-theory"*

EDIT: My mind has been blown.

EDIT 2: Although, from what I've read thus far, there are only 11 dimensions; 10 dimensions with an 11th to unify them.

Depends which multiverse theory you read. The Polakov equation give 26 dimentions in the flat space (bosonic) string theories as opposed to ten or eleven in superstring and M-theory.

@OP 'A body with large mass, such as a galaxy, bends spacetime around itself for an object directly behind it to be viewed indirectly' thus meaning that time is part of the fabric of reality

Actually, thus far M-theory and the rest of string theory have yet to have anything other than theoretical support as they make very few testable predictions. The only testable prediction I've heard of was for the cosmological constant, which is found to be negative by string theory but has been measured as positive. If the current iterations of string theory are correct then the universe would be busy collapsing itself back into a singularity about now. Mankind can only definitively say currently that there are 4 dimensions, the 3 spatial dimensions and time, although a number of theories posit more.

 

[Iconoclasm]

Look into the article or follow some links therein before contributing further.

I salute your effort, but honestly, it will never work...

Yeah, um, bit of a digression there, but anyway. I think the point was simply that you are not alone, and please don't despair in the futility of your rational pleas.

Thanks, mate.

Wouldn't be so bad if I weren't making a life-long commitment just to make some progress. For now, as my professor says, 'At least, until they sober up, they're interested.'

... such is the modern discourse.

Anyway, for anyone who has looked into the articles I've posted on the subject, you can check out one possible way out of the A-theory/B-theory time trap, as posited by Dr. Mellor of Cambridge (a chemical engineer by trade, he contributes heavily to the philosophy of science).

Here's a link to an outline of the book:
http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/dhm11/Time.html

No doubt some of you right proper google-ers can find the full-length text or an article.