How can they say they invented a time machine when the entire theory of time travel has been pretty much debunked multiple times in history. And even IF it's possible it's something we should never ever EVER mess with.

Ugh, there are several outcomes predicted by several theories, and the experiment is intended to find out which one is right. Throw in a bit of media journalism, which is utterly unable to represent science correctly under any circumstance, and you get stories about a crazy experiment that will cause time travelling futurekind to come and destroy the universe.

Bon appetite, suckas.

Frankly, I don't think time travel ever will be possible because it doesn't exactly exist in our physical world. The only thing that represents time is the one human-made machine... clock. But that's just my point of view.

Er, time does exist. The clock is simply the tool we use to measure it.

That's like suggesting that heat does not exist, just the thermometer. Or that chlorophyll does not exist, just the fluorometer. Time is a dimension, so it cannot have a physical presence. Neither do the other dimensions. Are you also going to suggest that length, width and height do not exist, only the tape measure?

If there were no time, nothing would change. Nothing would move. All would be frozen in a single moment.

i think he means that time is something we have created, therefore how do we know that it actually exists.

SIMPLIFICATION: if aliens came to earth, and we asked them how long it took them to get here, or how old they were, would they know what we meant? if time truly exists, surely other intelligent lifeforms equal or better than us would know of it also. we'll have to wait for one to pop down to us before we're certain.

if it is real, it may be just our world or minds that perceive it, seeing as it dominates our race as a whole, keeping things 'on time' is how we move 'forward' in time, 'progress', ultimately keep us classed as intelligent beings (can you imagine no time? exactly).

maybe we've enslaved ourselves with time, afterall, Humans can only understand so much. WOOOO!

No. What I am saying is that without time, things would not progress. Nothing would change at all. Total halt. Except you can't even imagine what that would be like, because you imagine it like pausing a video, where you are an external observer still subject to time. Without time there is not even a timeline. If things are changing, moving, flowing, there must be at least one dimension of time through which three-dimensional space is moving.

The thing I meant was that everything just follows it's life cycle... thing... something like that, while time isn't exactly in the physical world. You can feel the temperature when it's hot or cold, while on the other hand, when you get old you just feel your cells dying, not time itself.

So I'm not the only one who thinks so... :p

what actually is time then? you cant see it under a microscope, you cant feel it, you obviously cant see it, why is it not possible that time is something that we have created ourselves?

you said yourself: these are actually things humans have created to help them, its just that all this stuff was done so early in time (ironic), and so subtly, that we haven't even noticed. time was obviously not invented, time was not discovered (due to the theory that its all around us and is us, and has been so since the BEGINNING OF TIME, therefore would be hard not to notice), this means that we can only measure time (like Height, Width, etc).

i think we're getting confused with the neccessities of something that exists. measurements do not actually exist, just the ruler and tape measure. same goes for time. also, if time does exist, and is not something created by man or maybe animals, whats jetlag all about? if it really does exist and is a natural source, then it shouldnt fault (lags, jumps ahead, putting clocks backwords and forwards, travelling into future/past). seasons exist and are natural, but if i close my eyes, hold my nose, and say "beejillywhizz" during summer, it doesn't suddenly skip to winter (or more 'turn' into winter).

therefore the measurement we use to 'measure' time is unreliable, meaning we do not fully understand time and cannot measure it correctly, which then begs the question: does it even soddin' exist?!?

there will be no resolve to this conundrum 'till a being not from this planet/dimension, of level or better intelligence than our own, turns up and says "yeah, its 5 o'clock back home", showing its acknowledgement of time.
time is the limit of our intelligence, breaking that limit is impossible (which may sound ignorant).

Okay, read my words carefully, because somewhere along the lines their meaning is being lost on you.

Time is a dimension. There are three dimensions of space through which we can freely move through (I'm not going to touch any of the others at this point). We know they exist: they are fundamental properties of the universe. You can't see them under a microscope any more than you can see the United States of America under a microscope. Each dimension is a right angles to each other, length, width and height. Take away one, and we end up in a two dimensional universe, the sort that you could represent on paper. A digestive tract could not exist in a two-dimensional organism because the tube from mouth to anus would bisect it in two.

Time is a fourth dimension, and it behaves differently to the others. Like the others, it is at right angles to the rest. Like the others, it has only two directions, forwards and backwards. Unlike the others, it is particularly entwined with something called causality, and we can only move along it in one direction, as if you has started your life at a great height and ended it at the bottom- there is no going backwards. You can imagine your life as a four-dimensional sausage, you foetal self at one end and your deceased self at the other.

Time exists. Clocks and other timepieces are tools used to measure our position and movement along the dimension. This is not a difficult concept to grasp. Time has elapsed with or without clocks to measure it. We did not invent time with the first clocks. If we had, we would have no history before that moment, because that would have been the beginning of time and therefore the universe. Reductio ad absurdum.

Hell, people kept track of time thousands of years before clocks and other tools were invented. They used the sun and the moon, whose passage across the sky and phases are relatively constant at the timescale human beings live their lives in.

Time is one of the few fundamental quantities in physics. Velocity, speed, momentum, acceleration and more, all require time to be a real, fundamental aspect of the universe. If time is nothing but a human invention, so too are these. And yet, this would imply that before we invented time the universe was in chaos: planets, stars, comets, galaxies and everything did not have momentum, would not have speed, nor velocity, they could not speed up or slow down. In such a universe, life would never have arrived to invent time. Not least because nothing could change, as I already explained, everything would be at an eternal standstill, where "eternal" refers to the only moment in existence. Reductio ad absurdum again.


Also, measurements do exist. In quantum physics the nature of the universe is altered by the act of measurement.

I love Physics... Makes me wanna shag a telescope...

Kudos to BM

I don’t know entirely how serious you’re being with these, but if these problems really are muddling your perception of time, then I’ll run the risk of addressing them.

Jet lag has nothing to do with existence or not of time. Don’t muddle time, the regular and ongoing progression of all things universe‐wide, with time, the attempt by humans to divide the Earth’s orbit and rotation into comprehensible chunks of equal duration. If you’re at one particular location on the planet, your body will naturally keep you in good synch with daily cycles of light and night. If you then go somewhere else, your body clock will be offset a bit, or a lot. Nothing to do with warping of time.

Not that the warping of our measureet of time disproves the existence of it as a dimension. Time can be warped just as space can be. If you’re massive enough, you can warp space to create gravity; if you travel fast enough, time for you slows down while the rest of the universe keeps on going.

Do you also think that we can’t trust in the existence of our spatial dimensions until alien visitors arrive?

What would happen if one were to replace Time with Treacle?

That would be a very sticky situation.

Ack! Now I'm having second thoughts...
But wether time is a dimension or not it should definetely not be messed with. Humans don't even know much about self, let alone a whole dimension.

We're all getting crossed wires about our definition of time here.

There are two types of time.

Absolute Time. This is whats shown and measured by external zeitgebers and is the dimension.

Personal time. This is time how we perceive it as measured by our internal body clock (set at a 25 hour standard) which we can make faster or slower by our actions. This is not a dimension so much as our reaction to time.

As for all this messing with time business it really depends on your philosophical views though I believe that any disruptions in the time line won't affect me as I am here as living testament. You can't argue against that by saying it may happen in the future as its already happened in the past and it made me so the universe as we perceive it will be unaffected. What is a possibility is that a parallel dimension appears containing what happened when the time line was messed in (Like on BTTF) this is unknown and again could only possibly affect us in the future because it has already happened.

I'm no ace at physics, I got a B for GCSE, didn't take A level and cringes whenever someone mentions 'String theory' (although I am to believe its something to do with there being 22 odd dimensions) but thats my understanding of time :).

no no no, everyone, i mean Time does not actually exist, its just a tool used for helping the human brain comprehend and calculate distance, speed, size, age, etc. thankyou all for the helpful explanations (genuine), and i find it intriguing, but it's not the point i'm trying to prove.

maths doesn't exist, its a mental tool with matching symbols used by humans to help calculate and predict different scenarios. i feel the same goes for time: it is a mental tool, no actual existing body.

it almost definately represents some other 'force' that is similar, but not time. time is a tool we created in the attempt to harness the much bigger force that does exist. like i said before, it is beyond the human brain. E.G: try to imagine nothing. try to imagine no colour (including black & white). try to imagine a creature that has a physical form that is similar to nothing on Earth what-so-ever. but we are intelligent enough to realise what we can't do/handle/comprehend.

also, thanks for the jetlag explanation, thats cleared that up.

To sum up your argument into one sentence...

Time is a human concept to help explain the passage of duration.

Am I right?

and we have a winner!!
*sirens & confetti*

fuck me.

And duration is time. All you have managed to argue is that time exists, but our understanding, experience and terminology of time is created by humans.

Kudos, you have wasted our time stating the obvious.

*shoots BM's high-horse*

copied straight from the dictionary.
its the PERIOD of time, not time itself. like time of time, therefore my theory still stands;
calm down BM, i'm not wasting 'everyones' time, its just friendly debate. and i do genuinely beleive in my theory.

Molluck, you just got owned by BM but sadky it doesn't let me add more rep to him :(

Well, this is certainly an interesting discussion, and I don't really have much to add to it, other then to say maybe some of you are nitpicking over the definition of the word rather then the existance of the dimension- time (seconds and minutes) is a measurement that mankind has created to measure duration, but you cannot deny that duration itself exists also.

I'd also like to add that mankind still dosn't fully understand time, and that time itself is a matter of perception. Though we think (percieve) of time as going forward, what is there to sugggest that at the end of the universe, timestarted to reverse and that we are currently traveling through time backawards?

Just somthing to think about.

If an object has observable height, length, and width, you would infer that it is three dimensional, and thus there are three spatial dimensions large enough for us to perceive. And yet despite events having a duration, you refuse to accept that this implies a dimension along which this duration runs. I can’t really argue against that idea. Hell, I came up with it myself a few years ago when I said something like ‘I don’t time is an actual thing; I think it’s just something we came up with to explain why stuff happens.’ Can’t argue with that, but then you can’t argue against the validity of solipsism, but good luck genuinely believing it.

Your "theory" is not the same as the one you came with. Which is fine, it's good to change your mind, but not to change you mind and then say you were right all along. That's called moving the goalposts.

It's not your position that annoys me, it's your debating "method" in which you will not accept anything as being contrary to your views, and never mind whether it is or not.

no i haven't! the basis of my theory has always been that something exists that is time, but we can never understand it because the only 'representations' of time that we have are all 'man-made'.

oh, so the great conundrum of time itself has been settled because Laser said one person got 'owned' by the other?

i dont think so. if people would stop being so arrogant and 'brainwashed', we might get somewhere, instead of BM constantly dismissing my theory in unbelievable short-sightedness. until now, i have been using me noggin for my theory, but seeing as most people are on BM's 'side' as usual, i thought it best to attempt to find an internet source that does not contrast with me.

may i say i was very surprised by what i found;

http://www.iep.utm.edu/t/time.htm

i genuinely did not know of this information, and it also proves that the question "what is time?" will never be answered. i think the whole site just proves that the human mind cannot possibly comprehend the theory of time as a whole, hence why i mentioned;
EDIT: @Max: no, i dont think im in the Matrix.

The problem here is that you are addressing a philosophical viewpoint, and I the scientific. Specifically, yours seems to be that time neither flows not has a present through which the universe flows, but is an intellectual structure that we use to compare events and order them sequentially. This for me is exceedingly unsatisfactory, since it is an anthropomorphisation (something that I always oppose) that implies that without humans to observe the universe, time does not exist. This further implies that therefore time is not necessary for change, since change has clearly occured without a present observer. This leads to the requirement to have a way to distinguish time from change, and holds that time itself cannot be measured, this last point to me is like fingers on a chalk board.

Ultimately it is a philosophical angle, and I haven't had a very high opinion of philosophy since a friend of mine answered a philosophical exam question with an otherwise irrelevant philosophical argument to the effect that the question does not really exist and that his answer is therefore not an answer and should not contribute any marks. He got an A.

In science, as I have said, time is a fundamental quantity. It is used to define many physical concepts that we know to be real (speed, acceleration etc) so must be real itself. However, being a fundamental quantity, it cannot be defined by another fundamental quantity, since this would lead to a circular definition to the effect of "time is time" or "time exists because time exists" which is unacceptable and most unsatisfactory.

Science has and needs only an operational definition of time. Like temperature, which is defined in terms of operations with a gas thermometer, a most accurate and sophisticated instrument by which we can standardise it, and thus derive figures from the world around us for use in calculations. Is temperature, then, subjective, anthropocentric and ultimately undefinable? Likewise, the operational definition of time, specifically the SI-unit of time, the second, which is itself defined, officially, 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.

This definition refers to a caesium atom at rest at a temperature of 0 K.

The ground state is a stationary state in quantum mechanics, and therefore a state of definite energy whose corresponding probability density has no time dependence. It is also set at mean sea level, or the gravitational time dilation effect would change the length of the second with altitude.

This is our means of measuring the passage of time, yes, but for 9,192,631,770 periods to occur there as to be a regular transition of crest to trough in a sinusoidal waveform, which of course there it. Here we stray into trigonometry, which, along with waves and transitional periods of radiation, exist whether or not there are intelligent beings using them to quantitatively define the passage of time in order to usefully measure their experience of change and time, which inevitably occur.

In order for there to be crests and troughs in a wave, there has to be at least two distinct states for the universe to exist in: one in which the emitter of the wave is emitting at peak amplitude and another in which the emitter is emitting at nadir amplitude. And then the universe must move from one state to the other, with any intermediate states in between that form a (functionally) continuous bridge. This change of state is time, it is permitted because time exists. If time did not exist, there would be no way for the universe to change from one state to another, thus, it would be locked in one state. I would use "eternally" to describe this, but that is meaningless without there being time.

Alien intelligence probably does not use Caesium-133 to define their scientific unit of time. This does not mean that it is impossible to convert one to the other as we would feet to meters. Their experience of time may be significantly different to ours, and their unit(s) may reflect this, but such would be down to their metabolic speed, which would affect their nervous/equivalent rate, but not the nature of time. Indeed, intelligence cannot exist without time because (and this is but one of many reasons) intelligence requires information to move from one place to another, which cannot occur where the universe cannot proceed from one state to the next.

no, i think that a much bigger force similar to time (as in what we have created in an attempt to understand it) actually is the true time that we are trying to understand, but never will. TIME FLOWS! its the time we have created ourselves that doesn't flow. this is what im trying to explain: we only imagine time as what we can calculate to an understandable effect, this is balls, time itself is incomprehensible to the Human mind because time flowing constantly is unconceivable to us;

we must question everything, otherwise we fear we may not understand a concept, thus is Human psychology. of course time would continue to flow if we ceased to exist, and if every living thing that is currently in existance did so also. dont worry, i'm not about to enter the immature theory of 'if a tree falls in a forest, and nothing is around to hear it, does it make a noise?'. time, the true force that is, has always been here and everywhere, and always will be. our own creation of physical time would of course cease, along with our psychological time.

lets over simplify this: a child beleives in Saint Nicholas. when the child finds presents etc, it assumes someone put them there, seeing as this would be the most logical explanation and is what the child understands, 'the presents are there and exist, so the person who put them there must also exist', thus refers to the long dead Saint. the child continues to believe its theory is true until proven wrong, and even then will still partially beleive it until its proven wrong to the point of it being impossible for the original concept to still be 'true'.

Science is a lot like this, therefore it is possible that the time Humans use is wrong (which i beleive), and that the true force that is time itself has not yet been expanded upon or even perceived yet, making the assumption that 'time must be real, because it helps calculate other things that are real', void.

this is not the case, there are 3 sets of 'time', the smallest being the psychological time of each and every Human being, and most probably animal too. like the body clock. then there's 'time', the one Humans have created to try and grapple the much bigger force that is time, and is almost mathematical, therfore is more likely not to be true to time itself. then we have TIME. this IS time, but is simply unfathomable to Humans. therefore, it would never amount to the statement of 'time is time' etc, because in my veiw, there is only one true time, and it is not the one we know most commonly.

no, your correct. Humans only have an operational estimated definition of time itself, not time itself. and temeperature doesn't even come into it, as its obvious it exists due to the sensation of heat, which also blurs vision and could be classed as 'seeing' heat. unless you want to go into the whole 'language philosophies' debate. i certainly don't.

unless there is a greater force than time itself, absolutely nothing that exists at this very moment in time and in the future would know what would happen if time ceased to exist. you made a good point earlier about time being conceived as like 'pausing a video', because we would be the observer still subject to time. but just now you've stated that if time stopped or ceased to exist (whether their the same is unknown), we would be 'locked in one state'. no we wouldn't, because it is beyond anything, therefore you could say that pink elephants would fill the skies and Timmy Mallet would become an idol. in other words, we simply dont know.

touché, nothing can be said on this really until intelligent lifeforms make contact and tell us their situation. if their time is differnt to ours, if related at all, then it proves my theory that time is secondary and less specific to TIME. but on the other hand, if their time is exactly the same as our own, maybe even the same measurements and identicle to the last minute, then i've fucked up, and i'll eat my hat, with a side order of my own words. but if it turns out to be a parallel universe to our own (somehow), both of our theories are dismissed by default. parallel universe's dont count.

Do you have anything to base this on? All you've said is "no, that is not time, this other thing that we cannot ever observe is time." Cannot ever observe? Completely incomprehensible to the human mind? This is just another metaphor for God, and if it isn't then it is its twin. Bloody hell, I thought I'd only come across this sort of tactic in theological debates, not temporal ones. Christ. What time have we created? Are you trying to disassociate the measurement from the objective again? Clocks do not display falsified data.

I can solve Zeno's paradox: the state of any object is defined by position and momentum. Easy.

I disagree. We should question everything, but we don't nearly enough, so it is clearly not an imperative. However, a vital part of asking questions is recognising the answer when it comes by.

Well duh. In other words "our experience of time stops when we die". Along with our experience of everything else, I should imagine.

Science is a lot like this, therefore it is possible that the time Humans use is wrong (which i beleive), and that the true force that is time itself has not yet been expanded upon or even perceived yet, making the assumption that 'time must be real, because it helps calculate other things that are real', void.[/quote]
Did you just compare fundamental, tried and tested physical laws with the belief in Santa Claus? I believe you did.

It is quite possible, even probable, that we are wrong about many things in science, fundamentally or semantically. It is, however, a colossal mistake to take that stance before evidence that has disproved, and so far your arguments have fallen flat by you assumption that there is some ineffable "force" (what?) of time. It is all right to preach to this here choir about the nature of science, but you have gone and proposed an unscientific hypothesis, because it can be neither disproved nor supported by evidence.

There is no such thing! There is time and our unique experience of it. By measuring it with well define units and accurate tools, we produce an objective record of time. "Objective" being the operative word.

This is irrelevant. Nothing but the evolutionary response to the advantages of being able to respond behaviourally to regular changes in the environment.

Whoa, whoa! Are you now disassociating mathematics from the universe too? And what's this "almost"?

Finally.

What, by decree?

This is getting abstract. I'll be repeating myself if I address this again.

I see. So if we quantify something with numbers, it is no longer real? You really don't like maths, do you? The universe follows laws that can be expressed perfectly in mathematics, the only inaccuracies we experience are due to unaccounted variables and the accuracy of our instruments from which we obtain our raw data.

Oh, so you can accept our intuitive sensation of heat to make its existence "obvious," but not our intuitive sensation of time? Let's have some consistency here.

No, that is the movement of air due to convection current that distorts light.

I was here comparing the operational definitions of temperature and time, that enable us to make use of them. Poincaré and Einstein's Special Relativity defines perceived time and space as components of the four-dimensional manifold of "spacetime". Weird, right? Time must be completely unknowable! However, the thermodynamic definition of temperature is just as abstract, all about heat "flowing" between "infinite reservoirs". Weird, right? Temperature must be completely unknowable!

I'm sorry? This is irrelevant.

I say we do know (see? I can make an assertion too) We could not experience time being stopped, since there is no motion occuring nor information transference, again, among other things. But that it is beyond anything? No, of course not. Space still exists for everything to continue to exist in. Actually, one model for the Big Bang depicted the early, singularity universe as having four ordinary spacial dimensions, which kept it locked unchanging in that state, but when one became a temporal dimension for reasons I could not even tell were being proposed at this point (possibly the quantum fluctuations in the multiversal foam?) that then allowed inflation to proceed. The universe does not have to have a time dimension. It just would not have gotten anywhere is it didn't.

You need to work on that theory some more. You have not proposed any definition of "TIME" besides it being undefinable. That is not a theory, that is evading the issue and making it unscientific. As I have said before, it is a tactic frequented by Creationists.

With different instruments, units and numerical system, that is doubtful. It is also irrelevant, we expect this anyway.

I- this... what?

I'm loving this, really I am, partly because it goes to show that not everyone that joins a forum is an illiterate moron (and that is the highest praise I could possibly muster), and also because, you know, arguments are fun.

Still, its maybe gone a bit far- I can hardly read the first 20 words of MAs post because he apparently doesn't know how to use the Shift button on his keyboard, and the first 25 words on BMs pst because I have no idea what the shit he's talking about.

As BM has said, I do think that you have fallen into that massive pithole of mixing science with philosophy- never a good idea. I get the feeling from MA that he is trying to be open minded and have a differant veiw for the sake of being open minded and having a differant veiw. Then again, same thing with BM, really, expect he just wants to use long words :)

Right-ho, some posts have been delelted simply because it's stupid ass-bickering.

If it starts up again infractions will be handed out.

Get ontopic.

- Rexy