You're going to have to repeat that in a slightly less jumbled way... please.
Does time flow?
- Thread starter dav57
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Rappaccini: Not sure whom you were addressing.
My post can be put more tersely.
My post can be put more tersely.
- The laws of physics can be modeled very well by using 4D geometry. This model describes reality in terms of 4D curves called World Lines. This model does not require the concepts of past, present, future, particle motion, and various other intuitive notions.
- No matter what model is used to describe the laws of physics, our intuitive notions are hard wired by millions of years of evolution. Those notions include concepts of particle motion, past, present, and future.
Rappaccini said:
You know what i think it's just jumbled.
It's probably only going to get worse here, pardon.
I've been on a kick for the last couple of days thinking too hard about dimensions and such and how they relate to one another.
(and I really shouldn't mention this because it sounds insane, but what the hell... i've been thinking too much and have been thinking that time is perpendicular to space (which I think is really only a single dimension depending on how you look at it, you need three items to describe it but it does not require 3 numbers to be), which is perpendicular to the "inner" dimension (which allows the condition of "awareness"... mind you I know this is quackish, but it's honestly what i've been thinking for a few days so.. maybe I'll get over it)
From the 5th dimension, the fourth dimension would appear flat is sort of how I see the relationship, says a prof from college. I thought that made a lot of sense at least as a tool for visualization. So I was just skibopping along thinking about it this afternoon trying to visualize it when I saw this representation of duality that seemed like what it would have to be like if you could fit it in your head. seemed to me that looking at the 4d projection thing you get things that, in your 3rd dimension, appear contradictory because there is simply no place for the extra dimenion to fit. so it's everywhere and nowhere at the same time....
Hehe. I should probably keep that shit to myself, as it's mostly "on the fly" attempts to understand something that I'm not sure I can understand, but sometimes sparks fly from the strangest things so I put it out there for the whacking.
Wes, you have a company, i would join the whacking for a while. 
Can a spacial dimension(s) be realised independant of time. i think NO.
Hypothetically, even a point object ( less than one dimension ) can qualitatively change (color / temperature etc ), hence time cannot be done away within any restricted dimension where change can occur by mere existance of addtional dimensions in action or in inaction.
Can we say a whole object, whatever dimensions it has, can be explored only over a period of time.
say for example,
if an observer has a point view and have to explore a minutely numbered meter scale, then while exploring the scale all we could see is the changing numbers like in counters - that the whole of the one dimensional object can be realised as a function of time in a smaller dimension though the meter scale does not change with time as such.
if the scale is not numbered then there would not be any difference noticed and time seems to freeze in the smaller dimension. In this case, both the smaller dimension in which the observer and the higher dimensional meter scale apperently seems to have lost the notion of time. But in reality the scale is being explored and hence there is flow of time for the observer though he sees no difference in his 'point view' and cannot say at what rate time progresses.
to some up the mess :
Can we say 'time' exists & progresses independant of spacial dimension(s).?
Can a spacial dimension(s) be realised independant of time. i think NO.
Hypothetically, even a point object ( less than one dimension ) can qualitatively change (color / temperature etc ), hence time cannot be done away within any restricted dimension where change can occur by mere existance of addtional dimensions in action or in inaction.
Can we say a whole object, whatever dimensions it has, can be explored only over a period of time.
say for example,
if an observer has a point view and have to explore a minutely numbered meter scale, then while exploring the scale all we could see is the changing numbers like in counters - that the whole of the one dimensional object can be realised as a function of time in a smaller dimension though the meter scale does not change with time as such.
if the scale is not numbered then there would not be any difference noticed and time seems to freeze in the smaller dimension. In this case, both the smaller dimension in which the observer and the higher dimensional meter scale apperently seems to have lost the notion of time. But in reality the scale is being explored and hence there is flow of time for the observer though he sees no difference in his 'point view' and cannot say at what rate time progresses.
to some up the mess :
Can we say 'time' exists & progresses independant of spacial dimension(s).?
Time has another property, it always moves in the same direction.
So it dilates and it only goes one way.
Sounds like it exists to me.
Dee Cee
That statement proves nothing!
Show me a clock that doesn't rely on real mechanical or physical frequency fluctuations!
Prove to me that these clocks aren't being physically slowed by the nature of their surroundings.
How do you know that muons and caesium atoms don't have their processes slowed down due to their motion and realative position to a gravitational field?
Can anybody provide me with proof, or is relativity reliant on speculation that time really exists as a separate dimension?
So it dilates and it only goes one way.
Sounds like it exists to me.
Dee Cee
That statement proves nothing!
Show me a clock that doesn't rely on real mechanical or physical frequency fluctuations!
Prove to me that these clocks aren't being physically slowed by the nature of their surroundings.
How do you know that muons and caesium atoms don't have their processes slowed down due to their motion and realative position to a gravitational field?
Can anybody provide me with proof, or is relativity reliant on speculation that time really exists as a separate dimension?
Actually I wouldn't suggest that time flows in just one direction.
I would say that time is Relativistic in the sense that it doesn't go one direction it can go in any direction, it's just from the perspective of those that view it, it goes in one, a bit like a Labyrinth.
There are also experiments that have been done that involve FTL communication, where no mass is manipulated FTL just energy and electromagnetic fields. Such experiments are a starting point to understanding what the new faster supercomputers have got to do with their parallel processing capacities, and how things will eventually be seen differently once a few doctors actually get to the point of writing things that laymen can understand.
There are other apects to, for instance if people begin to generate parallels through the use of FTL paradoxes, time is no longer set to one universal path, it's split into multiple paths based on the number of parallels.
As it's been said before, time is just a measurement and that measurement is of distance, the whole universe works to that through the spinning of planets and orbits around their stars etc.
A regular planetary ballad.
I would say that time is Relativistic in the sense that it doesn't go one direction it can go in any direction, it's just from the perspective of those that view it, it goes in one, a bit like a Labyrinth.
There are also experiments that have been done that involve FTL communication, where no mass is manipulated FTL just energy and electromagnetic fields. Such experiments are a starting point to understanding what the new faster supercomputers have got to do with their parallel processing capacities, and how things will eventually be seen differently once a few doctors actually get to the point of writing things that laymen can understand.
There are other apects to, for instance if people begin to generate parallels through the use of FTL paradoxes, time is no longer set to one universal path, it's split into multiple paths based on the number of parallels.
As it's been said before, time is just a measurement and that measurement is of distance, the whole universe works to that through the spinning of planets and orbits around their stars etc.
A regular planetary ballad.
You know, it is exactly the point that you cannot define time without the physical dimensions. Time is a dimension of the unvierse. If it were totally seperate from the other three, how could it be? The analogy of the vase was spot on I think. For that 2-dimensional system, the changing diameter over the third dimension is the "time" for that system. It is the way change is recorded across the third dimension. the same is true of our time. In the (x,y,z,t) coordinates we can easily represent the change of a three dimensional system according to where it is along the "time" axis.
So, if time is a physical property of our universe, then it obviously could not have existed before and will not exist after our universe is gone.
Also, "flow" is a commonly misused word and is convieniently thrown in when a phenomenon is not properly understood. For a long time electricity was thought to "flow" in an electrical fluid in a continuous motion.
So, I suppose what I am getting at is I agree that time is a dimension which measures change in three dimensions just as the third dimension measures change in the second.
So, if time is a physical property of our universe, then it obviously could not have existed before and will not exist after our universe is gone.
Also, "flow" is a commonly misused word and is convieniently thrown in when a phenomenon is not properly understood. For a long time electricity was thought to "flow" in an electrical fluid in a continuous motion.
So, I suppose what I am getting at is I agree that time is a dimension which measures change in three dimensions just as the third dimension measures change in the second.
Upquark said:
For some reason the "flow" of time reminds me of the relationship of the second derivative of a function to the original function, but I can't remember the details.
Man that is right on it except that a dimension "allows change" rather that "measures it". Looking at if from perspective of "measures it" though makes me think that awareness, "measures changes" in time, exactly the same way that time "measures changes" in space except that since this dimension of awareness is "accessed" (via a brain) through space-time, the dimension awareness (or whatever you'd call it) allows "awareness" in the context of space-time that accesses it. Something like that.
I think that this "access" to that dimension allows more than one time to come into play at any one time, subjectively. Sort of like time gets queued up outside of time (via the brain), reflected back onto itself via the "awareness" which when you consider all five dimensions you get the effect of consciousness.
I'm working on clearing up that explanation, pardon.
inside of a point could be hidden any number of spacial dimensions.
extrude the point and you get a line.
extrude the line and you get a plane.
extrude the plane you get cube
extrude the cube you get space-time
extrude space-time and you get some other dimension with no name. (that I'm aware of)
but in that dimension, you could have more time than one time at a time, the same as you can have more than one plane at a time within three dimensions, (note that in two dimensions, everythign would lie in the same plane) or the same as you can have more than one cube (or any number of the dimensions below it) at a time inside of four dimensions. It seems to me that something is this thinking sets up the arrow of time.
say you devise a means to subjectively store a record of space-time from a perspective inside of a perspective, if you evaluate it at the present, don't you effectively get more time than the one time at any that time?
Hmm.
Meh. There's something to this but I can't quite put my finger on it. I get it every once in a while and it fades away. Seems like I can only see a piece at a time.. it seems to me like I get glimpses of the big picture but they get fade quickly.