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

ok. seeing as the short 'brawl' has thankfully been deleted, i say that we should agree to disagree. you won cattle origins debate, but we can either bring this one to a draw, or continue...possibly veering off the edge of sanity along the way (this stuff is very 'heavyweight').

oh, and sincere apologies for my childish behaviour (referring to deleted posts).

*offers handshake*

*shakes back*

I would be keen to continue, but the ball's in your court right now ;)



On another note, this (the original topic) has come up in the latest New Scientist. The energies involved in each particle collision are about the same as that of a mosquito in flight, but when compressed down into the scale of subatomic particles, the energy levels may, according to one theory (the one widely and inaccurately reported) be enough to warp the fabric of what General Relativity describes as "spacetime" into tiny wormholes large enough for subatomic particles to enter. Or possibly black holes of a similar size, the physics here are very similar. I'm going to have to buy it to elaborate further, but it does solve a lot of the issues with time travel that people here have voiced, such as the one about no time travellers having (noticeably) come back to visit us. All wormhole models of time travelling methods do not allow one to travel back further than the moment that the wormhole was first created, many several years after (as it takes that long to achieve the desired time dilation, by attaching one end to a spacecraft travelling close to the speed of light).

However, if it were possible to bend time specifically to each end of the wormhole, rather than just space, travel might be enabled immediately. You could arrive at your destination before you even leave.

If in the future we have... well, survived, but also become technologically advanced enough to enlarge and maintain wormholes and bend spacetime when creating them, it might be possible to link them to any wormholes created in their past, the first of which may be produced in the Large Hadron Collider.

Though I don't imagine that stepping out into the midst of an active particle accelerator is the wisest thing t do. Not least because it would ruin the experiment and the equipment, and such future wormhole technology that allowed this transportation in the first place might be built upon the results from this very research.

Whoah...
I actually believe we can travel in time if we move fast enough.
But think of the disaster... We shouldn't fuck with that...
RUSSIAN MAFIA!

well if your willing to continue BM, i'm happy to oblige.

your theory is a very common one, and is true to the original theory;

but your implication of 'changing the future' whilst in the past, i beleive is not necessarily true, as described in this quote.

but it does make you wonder if we will receive a visit from a future inhabitant of Earth using the 'speed' technique, at any moment, as there would no longer be the problem of being unable to travel back in time before the 'time machine' was built. but this technique would most probably lead to the inability to return to the future time that the traveller was originally from.

I think that if indeed time travel is possible, changing the past would either:

Make the future (the time you are from) the way you remember it. You actions in the past were responsible for the outcome you remember.

Or, set the timeline onto a new track in the quantum multiverse. Your time still exists, but you will no longer be able to get there travelling through time alone.

Although the latter has complications with causality that I don't like, and may make it impossible.

Stephen Hawking postulated that going back in time would create something of a temporal feedback loop that would eventually result in the time machine never having been built, thus acting as a sort of space-time immune system.

Haha! I bet they'll actually make this time machine, go back to the time of dinosaurs, and make them become extinct!

I think that she was referring to Professor Branestawm's theory that if you can travel from point A to B in ten minutes by going at 50kph, then going 100kph will get you there in five minutes. Eventually, if you speed up enough, you'll get there more or less the same time as you left and if you go any faster than that you'll get there earlier. Of course, that would involve going faster than the speed of light, so you'd be a body of inifinite mass. Just like your mum

I used to believe that theory myself for an embarrassingly long time. I always figured that Einstein was just making it up as he went along and clearly hadn't read the Branestawm books.

yes, that's what i meant (i've just looked at my quote and realised it contrasts with my statement, very embarrassing). i personally dont beleive this theory myself, or have really even considered it, but travelling backwards in time using speed as the main element may make it possible for a 'time traveller' to come to our time, now, thus no time travel 'barriers' linked to the date that the machine was created (going by the crude theory of a ship that can withstand speeds that send the vessel back through time, and dont obliterate organic matter contained inside).

call me ignorant but i personally found this a potential possibility. seems to make basic sense.

this does not contradict my previous post, because if you move onto the neccessary branch of the multiverse after attempting to change 'history', it flows, therfore you never changed anything, because your now living in the 'new' present. but what makes me wonder is, would the new multiverse branch decided by the time traveller's objective begin the instant they arrived back in time, once the objective was completed/in the process of, or before they even reached their past destination? (did they even travel back in time?).

Well we're going to die, and before Smash Bros. Brawl is released in Europe too. Thanks alot, scientists.

Does anyone else ever get the impression that their efforts make zero impact on the people around them?

Anyway, I saved this response to MA ages ago before it was finished, and I just found it again.

^That's where I have problems with it. If you imagine the quantum timeline like a tree, where the timeline splits into two or more to play out every outcome of a quantum event (and human decisions, if they are quantum in nature) then you have an effect in which you have "pruned" a timeline from the tree, and thus should be inaccessible anyway.

If I may explain (and this is original thought, so it's probably bollocks anyway) going back in time is like taking a branch from a tree, curving it back on itself and expecting it to seamlessly fuse with the preceded branches. This would be your personal timeline within the timestream as a whole.

1: Hawking's feedback loop. Essentially you have created a loop in which effects have been taken back in time (via you, your memories etc) to a point preceding their cause. This then changes the cause, and therefore the effect. Which changes the cause. And the effect. And you can see where this is going. So you can imagine that each time the events between arriving in the past and leaving the present play out, they do so differently. This might even create even more loops if the effect causes you to go back to a different time. Eventually the effect will occur that causes the time machine to either never be built or never be used, thus breaking the cycle, and we all continue on none the wiser.

Or so I understand it. It is a paradox, and I might have missed something here, but the result is that paradoxes prevent themselves from occuring, thus rendering this time travel impossible.

2: The other one (I haven't a name). This is the one in which what you did when you went back in time caused you to go back in time in the first place, thus there is no feedback nor changing history. The simplest way to explain the problem is that there is nothing that causes the loop in the first place, it just always existed. But this is (so far as we know) an unnatural state for a timeline to be in, there is no reason to suggest that it would just appear to be that way. Maybe the existence of a time machine would distort the timeline in such a way, but it could not exist if the timeline were not there to begin with. Imagine time as a tree again, branching at each event with multiple outcomes. Tree branches do not spout from the ether and fuse into the nearby tree, which is what this would be like. Branches split as they grow, only this particular split cannot occur without prior and improbable input from another branch which already resulted from this very split. Trees cannot grow this way, and I don't think history can either. Although the loop, once it exists, is stable, there seems to be no way to create it in the first place.


Come to think of it, these are all just reiterations of old paradoxes and proofs against the possibility of time travel. Damn.

Isn't science fun?

*Has AB-SO-LUTE-LY nothing else to add to the thread, since he quit his Physics study over a year ago*

many a time.

you have absolutely annihilated me, sir. i, for once, agree with your statement 100%. there is nothing for me to argue against, bloody good show!

i think BM 'owns' this thread, unless anyone objects...

I object.

I think a more accurate statement would be that BM owns your arse.

"alright alright, calm down calm down!" Scousers, Harry Enfield.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=W7VspOs3Qt0

the heat in Jerusalem must be sending your head funny.

Then I guess there's nothing more to say, but...

heh heh, thats gonna' get some +rep.
most definitely.

And a average person traveling at that speed would create quite an air resistance....

Not if it happened in a vacuum.

Jeeze, I don't think it would even be possible in any medium. Certainly nothing would be left after mere moments.