How the univers came to be

It is not an opinion. If you disagree, show me how anything can change/move/whatever without time. You have NOT done so already..

 

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IN post 21 I did show how two important changes are made:

"One form of change, which you mention, would be the object's location in space. That is caued by the object having kinetic energy and/or some force applied to it, not by time or by unicorns, (which also do not exist) pulling it.

Another form of change is oxidation, which is also not caused by time. Oxidation is caused by the fact the "ash" is in a lower chemical energy state than the initial fuel. If there is no "chemical barrier to over come" a chemical process will proceed in the direction forming the lower energy compound. Time has nothing to do with chemical change either."

You want to refuse this POV and state that time is some how required to act (permit, allow?) in the process.

As you strongly believe this, you reject this description of how changes are made. You even reject a matematical demonstration that time is not require to even be mentioned in the equations describing changes. This rejection is based only on the fact that I did not need to even mention time, which without evidence you BELIEVE to be a fundamental part of the process. You state that my explainations is not done, complete etc as I have negelected time's role - but that too is just unfounded opinion. No mathematic proof, nothing observabe of "times permison" (allowance) or times "roll" etc have you ever presented. - You only present frequent re-assertions of your belief that time does play a roll, at least to allow physics and chemistry processes to operate. - No math, no logic, no observables, no argument - only belief assertions.

 

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Yes they are changes but they need time to happen.
Jesus.. it's is so obvious I don't know where to begin. What don't you understand about it ?

 

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It will only proceed if it has the time to proceed.

The very word 'process' implies a series of actions over a period of time.

Not act, just exist. Again the word process.

The '+' and the '=' signs in a chemical equation represent the time between these processes.

Oxidation takes time.

How much time have you wasted trying to convince us that time doesn't exist?

 

I understand completely. For many years I thought the same, but then math and logic overcame my firm beliefs - My earlier tthought pattern (AND YOUR CURRENT ONE) is sort of a cart before the horse suituation. You see change and not only that but as I discussed earlier your clearly recognize which is the "intitial state" and which is the "final state" of the change. This give "time an "arrow" so it seems to be absolutely necessarty that something which clearly has an "arrow" or a direction of "flow" must be real.

Putting this another way, if I were to show you a movie once starting from film end "a" and once starting from the other end "b" you would have no trouble telling which showing was "backwards." Again time appears to have an arrow, be real with a definite flow direction.

This is all illusion. False. It is just the stastical law of large numbers in action. Consider a movie of the "break" of the 10 balls that starts a pool game - even here, if that filmed were shown to you both ways, you would be very confident which way the the film is being played backwards. 10 is a "large number" in this case.

Cut the number of balls down to only 2 that collide. Now when I show the movie both ways, you will not be able to tell which way is backwards. I discussed this before with a 10 marbles in a box, half black and half white. While in more than 99% of the case the some "mixed state" of the marbles will be observed after shaking the closed box and then opening it that is not a law of physics. IT CAN BE VIOLATED and the white marbles will occasionally be found separate from the black ones. In every reaction of interest to a chemist the law of large numbers does apply. - Entropy of the total inter-acting system will be observed to increase. - This is just a near certain stastical result, not a necessity of physics or chemistry.

Once you got to only binary inteactions, the distinction beween "initial" and "final" state is often impossible to determine. You only need one of millions of results to violate the rule to know that the rule is not a law, only highly probable. Time does not have an "arrow" except the one give to it by the law of large numbers. Every individual atomic binary even is reversible. (It is a little more technical than that. Once was really CPT that is conserved, but I do not want to go into that, and that is not strictly true with the "P." - Two Chinese got the Nobel Prize for showing this modification requirted in the old "if CPT is conserved, then that physics is invariant." rule.)

I know exactly where you are coming from, why you strongly believe as you do. - Been there -did that, (for years) but I now have a deeper understanding.

Time is a man made artifact of change observed - not the cause nor the "permitter" ("allowed" was your term) of change. It is no more real than "blue" is - that too is a man made artifact. no more real than "interest" (on money) is - these things are creations of man, artifacts, not things in or of nature.

 

I have to say, this meaning of ''change'' is terribly mixed up with the notion of time.

 

but humans are also part of nature, aren't they? so how can our creations not be a part of nature... are we some supernatural beings?

everything is a part of nature, otherwise it does not exist.

everything is a part of mind, otherwise it does not exist. mind and matter (observer and observed) can't be separate, even if they appear to be.

 

We are supernatural, without some Anthropic vice versa.

 

But i agree, witn the last part.

 

Enmos,

And you are both wrong. The official SI definition of a second is based on frequency transitions in a Cesium clock, an electromagnetic process. It works well when duration of some other local actions are compared, such as the durations in atomic decay. But the statement "but without time, as we define it, motion would not be possible" is not true. When a cesium clock is lowered deeper into a gravitational field, it will 'beat' slower than an identical clock higher in the same field. Do you think 'time flows' slower in extreme gravity? For some processes, such as atomic decay rates, it would seem to be true because the two clocks would measure the same durations for local decays. But not for motion. The rotation rate of the gravitating object, neutron star or whatever, will continue at the same rate as measured by the clock that did not descend into the gravitational field. The descending clock will 'count off' an ever decreasing amount of 'time' for one rotation to occur as it descends deeper into the gravitational potential. Another example would be an atomic clock in the accretion disk of a supermassive black hole, moving closer to the event horizon. The atomic clock will count time at a slower and slower rate until it eventually stops counting time at the event horizon. But we know motion does not also stop at the event horizon, in fact things move faster and faster around the black hole as they move closer to the event horizon. Most people don't realize there are two methods of 'counting time' and they are not compatible. The atomic method works well with Relativity Theory, but not well with macroscopic motion. We can, and some scientific experiments do, use distant pulsars as a clock. They have a very consistent 'blink' rate, some of which are from hundreds to thousands of times per second. When a clock is synchronized to the pulsars, it does not measure time as 'flowing slower' as it descends into a gravitational field. We can, and do, synchronize external clocks to beat the same as Earth-surface clocks. GPS clocks are synchronized to count time at the same rate as Earth clocks. If the GPS clocks were not synchronized with Earth-surface clocks, they would measure a different duration for one Earth rotation. The Earth does not change its rotation rate just because the clock is higher in the gravitational field, so we have to alter the atomic clock itself. "Time" is much more complicated than most people realize. And, yes, Billy T has been essentially correct in his posts.

 

Not quite...

I don't know billy's notions, however, according to relativity, all of time would happen in one swift go without someone to rationalize it into fragmantations. Yorda however says:

''everything is a part of nature, otherwise it does not exist.

everything is a part of mind, otherwise it does not exist. mind and matter (observer and observed) can't be separate, even if they appear to be.''

And yet i say...
He is right. Everything is part of the mind, for if there was NO MIND, there would be no reality at large as we know it.

 

Yes, that is true, but I was refering to aspects of nature which are universal and permanent - things that appear to be governed by the physical laws. Once "blue" did not exist even as an experience of humans. Blue has never existed as a part of the universal nature I have been speaking about. (The sky is not blue. Atmospheres do have stastical density fluctuations which scatter light as the inverse fourth power of the wave length everywhere that there are atmospheres in the universe. On Earth now that there are humans, those with normal vision probably have a quite similar experience that they call "blue." Those missing one of the three color sensitive photo cells in their retina surely have a different color experence, which they also call "blue." Blue is not part of the invariant universals of nature. In fact, it is not even the same thing for all humans.)

Likewise, the human experice, we call the passing of time, is not a universal part of nature, nor even the same experience for all humans, or even the same human at different periods. I like the joke illustrating the relative nature of time: The duration of "one minute" depends upon which side of the bathroom door you are on. as this well illustrates that the passing of time experience is not at all related to the "t" that appears in equations.

In nature, there are invarient universal processes that make changes. These change are considered by humans as evidence for the existence of what we call "time." As we are always dealing in direct human experience with "large numbers" we can easily recognize the "before state" (egg unboken,for example) from the "after state", but this does not mean the the fundamental processes of nature "Flow in the direction of the future" - they as individual events of binary nature are reversible - there is no way to tell which state is "initial" and which is "final" - it takes stastic's "law of large numbers" to make that distinction and thus even in the macro world, it is not an absolute -only extremely probable. The concept man has of time as "flowing from the past thru the present into the future is based on the law of large numbers, not an absolute of nature. Time is an unconsciously constructed concept of man, not an absolute part of the unversal nature I was speaking of. That is why it is possible, as I illustrated in outline, to mathematically eliminate all reference to time in describtions of all processes in the universe, which are part that universal Nature.

Time is like "blue," an experience of humans, not a part of nature with ontological status like mass, energy or space.
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A comment on 2inqusitive's post 50:
His point is well taken, but a more complex example than needed to make it. For example the time for many chemical processes to proceed to X% of their completion is roughtly doubled (in the region of temps around "room temperature") with a 10C lowering of the temperature. In this sense, "time" depends upon temperature of the reacting agents. He showed that time depends upon gravity intensity. That is a known exact function but this "slow by factor of 2 /10degree C drop of temperature" rule of thumb dependance of time is only approximately true. It is however something more easily demonstrated than moving to a significantly different gravity field. Both facts do show that time is not some absolute "invisible stream flowing from past to the future" which carries changes along with it, essential for change, etc. as most humans tend to think of time, at least sub-consciously (but perhaps would not state that as true because they know it is silly). For most it is just too much violence with their experience to state or believe that time does not actually exist in the same way mass, energy, and space exist - universal of the natural law / nature, which have obsevables and effects on processes. Most also believe that the sky is blue. Even universally held beliefs can be wrong. Truth is established (to the extent it can be) by evidece and testing.

 

Just a comment or two...

If you can say this, can I say "without movement, how can there be time"?

How does time make "transition of states" possible? Is it OK to say: "transition of states is what makes time possible"?

Yes, but how does time come about, if not through change?

We can predict the sun will rise at a certain time, but a sunrise doesn't happen because we can predict it.

I guess it depends which way you put the horse and cart together.

 

Time as we know it in everyday life life is certainly a human construct. The second is invented by man, and so what..?
The mile is invented by man as well, does that mean length doesn't exist ? There are different methods of measuring time, just like there are different methods of measuring length.
The fact that time is relative doesn't prove is doesn't exists either. Something 'stuck' at event horizon is not stuck at all, it merely appears stuck to us. And that has got NOTHING to do with time, it has to do with the properties of light.

 

Not this again..

Ok, fine.
So does that actually mean anything more than that we can only perceive the world from our perspective ? Kinda obvious, isn't it ?
No humans -> no human perspective..
What remains is just reality.

I hope you don't actually want to say that if every human in the universe was to magically disappear tomorrow at noon that that would mean that the universe would disappear with it.
You are just saying that the universe as-we-know-it 'disappears' because there is no longer any human to see it, right ?
The actual absolute universe would still be there, right ?

 

No, that's not it. It's just that you haven't shown any evidence for it at all.. or do I have to take your word for it ?

 

Hmm.. I guess it's like light. You can't see light unless it's reflected by something.
Imagine a flashlight. Imagine you're outside, and are pointing the flashlight at a tree. Now, the only thing that is lit is the tree.
But what if it was foggy ? You'd then see the whole beam of light, the light gets reflected off the water droplets.
Now imagine infinite space, empty. Turn on your flashlight, point it anywhere you want. You wont see anything get lit.

So does light exist because there are things that reflect it ? Of course not.
Does time exist because change happens ? Of course not.

 

No. Space would exist, be stressed by nearby objects and bend the path of light even if man never existed to define a mile, etc. Space is real. It exist (after the big bang). Time is not. Space has observable properties*, time does not.

Time is more like "blue" than space. It does not really exist as a part of this universal nature, which we try to describe with "natural laws." Time, like "blue," is just a nearly universal concept unconsciously constructed by man (and probably most conscious animals to some extent).

The second can and is defined by some physical processes (originally I think by Babilonians as 1/24 of the day divided by 360, then by the period of a certain pendulum etc til now by X oscillation of a atomic clock. We can define many things about processes, but that does not make them real in the sence that they are a fundamental part of the nature we try to describe with "natural laws." - They are just arbitary constructs of man. There is no sense to this argument of yours being aplied to the question of what is real, an essential part of the universals of nature.
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*In addition to this mass induced refraction, there is the "vaccuum polarization" (pair production) and closely related "space force" you can measure between two uncharged parallel conductor plates in a vaccum chamber. (Not easy to do as it is weak. - I forget the name of this demonstration of another observable effect of space. The force comes from the "virtual wave pressure" on the outside of the plates being greater than in the gap between the plates because the longer wavelength virtual waves do not exist in the gap.) There is nothing you can observe of time as it does not exist as a part of nature.

 

My position is that if something conceived (like time or unicorns or witch's spell, etc) has no observable property, then there is no reason to think that it actually exist. It is very difficult to prove that something does not exist - for example I am sure you can not prove tha unicorns do not exist as they may be at this moment pulling plows on some very distant farm near another star. It would be possible to at least make some supporting arguments that "witches spells" (or other miracles) do not exist along the lines that if they did then physics is not true all the time. For time, the argument against it existing is even stronger as one can show mathematically that there is no need for time in a description of all processes that do exist.*

I am not claiming anything, except that there is no evidence for time having any observable property or any causal power. I am just being consistent and applying a general rule that states that it best to reguard as "non-existing" anything which has neither causal power and nor any observable property.

You are claim, in contrast, that time does exist, despite total lack of evidence, observables, or causal powers. While I can not proove you wrong (nothing can be proved to not exist) I see much less support for your claim than for the claim that unicorns exist. - That is a real possiblility in this vast universe. You offer nothing except your firm belief to support your claimed existance for time.
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I did this by solving for the "t" in all the equations and then eliminating the "t" variable from these equations. Some formualtions of physics (called "action principles") do not have any "t" variable in them even in the initial formulations.

 

Not just H. sapiens, but all lifeforms "invent" time.

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That depends on how you interpret "exist". We only see light (reflected off a tree, or off water droplets), because of retinal cells. We cannot see it "travel" (as I've said elsewhere, we can't know about its travel plans, until it "arrives"). You could argue that light exists because we see it: if we don't, it doesn't exist - but that's the whole subjective/objective reality issue all over again. Shining a torch is "knowing" about the travel plans of the light from the torch, though.

You can't really extend the above argument about light to something non-material like time. Time is very much an aspect of change.

When you change position, either by walking, driving, or riding a bike (or a horse), it "takes" time. Time is orthogonal to change in position. Without space (distance) to change your position in, no time would "emerge". Staying "still" is an illusion (a relative perspective): you're in constant motion, so is everything else.

It's kind of wrong (disingenuous) to say "time doesn't exist"; what it should say is "time isn't a real physical thing, like mass and energy". Time certainly appears, but it's a statistical phenomenon, as Billy T has pointed out, it's a property of "many-body" systems and interactions, and the fact that energy "finds" a lowest state, in any system.