Time does not exist

[Roberto]

First, I agree with Tormod when he says that you are confusing the psychological sensation of time (or social time) and physical time. Suppose you are in a room with some other person. THe person is getting fun doing something that you don't like and you are bored. The person will feel the time passing faster thatn you, but it's just a psychological sensation. If both have sincronized clocks, both will always agree with what time is it. You can check it by asking... The fact is, two persons in the same reference frame will agree about time and the effects of time dilation due to velocity or gravity may be objectively calculated.

But, anyway, I'm not understanding fully your point. In the beggining I though you were saying that time does not exists, was an illusion. Now you're saying that it exists but it's not a dimension. What exactly is your point?

You say that time is not a dimension because you cannot travel to the past, but it is not the definition of a dimension. (And do not search the dictionary, because, as Tormod said, the definitions they put there are not accurate, they're just for everyone get an idea of it). I already posted a message somewhere where I said that the idea that time is a dimension comes from the fact that general relativity use a metric where time enters together with space.

[Lord Henry Wotton]

Very well said AG. As I said before, you are very intelligent. You are a free thinker. I for one cannot say that at your age (hang on...that was last year...) that I was developing my own theories on time.

Tormod - No intention on my part to oppress anyones opinions. Whilst I agree that it wasn't necessary to point out AG's age, the message seems to have been understood by the person it was intended for.

[AGThePoet]

But, anyway, I'm not understanding fully your point. In the beggining I though you were saying that time does not exists, was an illusion. Now you're saying that it exists but it's not a dimension. What exactly is your point?

I'm learning as I write this so that was my opinion changing... at first I was saying that it doesn't exist at all, but later I changed it to it exists as a psychological phenomenon but as nothing more. Now I may be forced to change yet again as I find new information on the subject. Should be interesting to see what I believe in five or ten years

alex

[Roberto]

Let me congratulate you for your attitude, AG. I'm seeing that you have the spirit of a true scientist. A lot of times in this forum I saw people that stick too much too their theories and that cannot change their mind even in presence of the most obvius counter arguments.

A true scientist cannot be ashamed to change his(or her) mind when exposed to new facts or arguments, and I'm seeing that you're ready to do this anytime. That's the objective of discussions: clear a fact, not just impose your point to others. Continue this way and you'll have a lot of success, not only in science but in everything in your life.

[GAHD]

The best way I can think of to abstractly describe time is as a straight, one dimensional line. Wrapped up inside this one dimension is 3 other dimensions (X, Y, Z). now picture yourself being inside that line moving from one side to the other at a constant speed, though all you can perceive and alter are the X, Y, and Z dimensions.
Though I do disagree with Tormod; the clock on Mt. Everest would not show even a subtle difference from the one at sea level if you placed one at both locations, then brought them together a year later.
From what I know about the theory of relativity the effect of time-dilation is nothing more than a perceived effect because light itself moves at a constant speed.
Ex.1 A man in a spaceship is moving away from the Earth at .5C.
This man perceives everything on earth happening on earth at 1/2 the speed it should be happening because the light had to travel an increasingly long distance to reach the viewer. The effect would be compounded if the viewer were to accelerate, as he would be traveling even more distance as time passed, requiring the light to travel even farther to reach him.
Ex.2 A man is on a spaceship moving away from the earth at .5C, the spaceship accelerates to .75C over the course of 5 seconds. (I Discount the acceleration pasting the man to the back of the ship, acceleration induced forces are mysteriously out of the example for the sake of simplicity)
At the start of that 5 seconds the man perceives everything on earth moving at 1/2 speed. Over the course of the 5 seconds, things on Earth slow even more as the ship begins covering more distance in less time. Eventually at the end of the acceleration things on earth appear to be moving at 1/4 speed.
However in both Ex 1 and 2 time on Earth is actually moving at normal speed, at the exact same speed as our Man is in fact. Any people on Earth would see any activities on the ship happening at 1/2 speed (or 1/4 speed in ex 2) because of the same distance equation. If there were 2 atomic clocks in sync on the ship and on Earth they would both show the same time as each other. Only when viewing the counter point clock would someone perceive a difference as the light from that surface would not have had enough time to reach his or her eyes yet.

[Roberto]

GAHD, I´m sorry but your description of time dilation is wrong. Time dilation is not an ilusion caused by the finiteness of light speed. It is indeed caused by the fact that the speed of light measured by both observers, the one on the Earth and the one on the spaceship, will be the same independently of their velocities, but is a real effect and can be measured.

You cannot compare the clocks more than once in Special Relativity at the same point because the theory requires inertial frames, but if you allow accelerations, you can start with the clocks of the Earth and the spaceship sincronized and then you can make the spaceship fly to some distant place and return. When the spaceship returns, you can compare the same clocks and you will see that, not only the clock on the spaceship will show an earlier time than that in the Earth, but even the spaceship crew will be younger than peopla who had the same age of them when they departed.

Time dilation is a real effect, not an optical illusion. It is measured in sattelites.

[GAHD]

You know, I've had many people say the same to me, but no one has ever been able to prove the effect of time dilation. If Satellites have measured it, I'd love to finally have someone who can provide proof, not just a weak semantical argument.
So far every piece of "proof" shown to me can be dismantled to show that any delay would be caused by lithe speed of light itself, not the speed of the object. For instance, plot a graph of EX#2 in AU, you'll quickly see how the perceived dilation would occur between the ship & planet. Though it only really becomes evident when you measure the time the light would take to travel the distance in 1 second snapshots(or ¼ second, 1/8th, it shows up pretty much everywhere mathematically)

[Roberto]

The only real proof of every theory is the expriments. So, read the following paper:

http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc?0103036

[AGThePoet]

wow, this is going to be way over my head for a while, until I take physics (probably next year). Just a hypothetical question: If I was standing still, and Bob was in a ship going the speed of light spinning around me (lets just ignore the g-forces and wind and all that good stuff for the sake of simplicity) for a couple of days, when he stopped would his clock be different then mine?

Alex

[AkiraBakaBaka]

I agree that time does not exist, that it is merely a construct of the mind created by humans. That does not mean that it isn't useful; math is plenty useful, even if its completely abstract and doesn't actually exist except as language and ideas (1 + 2 = 3, but show me a one or a two).

The problem is very similar to the ancient Buddhist idea that there is no such thing as "ego". We are born and we are named, and we forever associate our "identity" with that name, which is merely a designation and has no Real existence. Then we learn language, and the designations (words) for various objects, and thus we fool ourselves that there is such a thing as a "book" or a "chair" when in fact these are just constructs of the human mind. When you search for your ego it appears to exist not in your body and not in your mind, and yet it also appears to exist in both places! This paradox is easily resolved once you realize that ego is imaginary. </long>

The same things can be said for time. Time exists nowhere, in no measurable quantity. It's effects can not be predicted nor can they be measured. Quantum theory has shown us that the only "time" is NOW!

The best we can do is observe a phenomenon at random intervals to see what its state is, and determine the probability of it being in a certain state when we observe it. Thus, we can not predict any event in the "future", no matter how trivial (from making toast to the decay of particles; see Murphy's Law).

This is most dramatically realized in Hawking Radiation. Theoretically, nothing should be able to escape the event horizon of a black hole, but quantumly there is a tiny chance that particles may be 'generated' from this surface. So even though the theory states that all matter *should* be absorbed, we can never say with 100% certainty that it actually *will*, due to quantum effects. At best we can rest assured that more often than not we get our toast...

The same goes for observing the present or quantifying the past. Heisenberg's uncertainly principal states that we can never truly know a specific property of an object (mass, velocity, etc) past a certain amount of precision.

So in the end, we're stuck in the eternal present. All matter and energy is constanty changing, eternally in quantum flux. I like to call this "existence", and we are fortunate as humans to have the capacity to observe it and rationalize it. It almost sounds like a matter of mere semantics, but understanding that time has no effect on Reality can completely shift a person's point of view.