What is "Time" made of?

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vx220 said:
I highly doubt genuine free will is possible.

...and...

Genuine free will would imply that we sentient beings can come to a decision that completely goes against all physical laws that the decision making mechanism obeys(organs, neurons, cells, electricity, QM).
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Some would suggest that complexity and other emergent properties (such as free thought) may come from simple deterministic processes. Wolfram - I think.

Others say that it could be an effect of chaos, where small chages in initial state result in large scale differences like free thought. ("Signs of Life" - Ricard Sole)

But then again you may be right. They could be looking for a complex solution because (like you and I) they "feel" in control.

If there is no free choice, the big question is: why do we feel control? Is this a natural byproduct of life and increased complexity? An evolutionary outcome? If so, what is the benefit if we can't do anything about it?

Also, if there is no free choice... I'm glad I'm not aware of it. What a horrible trap this life would be to see everything happen and never feel true interaction. Life would be a prison.

So if you ever prove it on paper, I'll believe the formula, but reject it in my everyday life. I may even take up religion.
 
Wormsworth said:
I don't know much about geodesics. So I don't understand the problem. If you are referring to the singularity itself with infinites... then I will say that I can't really imagine what happens there. ie: at t=0, big bang, creation, etc. The big bang theory has this problem as well I believe.

I would like to hear more if you can explain or reference (simply) how this defies non-simultaneous(ness).
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First, I have to apologize and admit that I often use the term 'geodesic' and 'worldline' interchangably. Which would be confusing. My bad.

When a body accelerates according to Einstein's theories, it's frame of reference starts undergoing a lorentz transformation. Basically this means that it's 'time axis' an 'space-axis' starts tilting. This explains all motion as simply heading 'forward' in time for whatever direction your time axis is heading. Want to turn left? tilt the 'time-axis' left (accelerate towards the left)...

This creates a weird phenomenon; since you're tilting your axis, your 'time-distance' and 'space-distance' from objects starts shifting (It's the same thing as taking a graph sheet and tilting the y-axis and x-axis; the x and y co-ordinates of points start shifting.)

This means two things; distance between events and time between events is relative. EVERYONE knows about the distance thing (and the cool contractions and rarifactions :D ) The time thing is a little less popular and understood :p

So this means that you can observe a body at two separate time-locations...

Einstein explained this as the body existing in ALL it's space-time locations simultaneously. Which means when it's plotted on the space-time graph, it forms a line. The worldline.

ANYWAY, the blackhole theory states that the particles travelling through time are simply that; particles heading upward through time like it was a spacial axis. Which means they DON'T simultaneously exist in all past and future states

Wormsworth said:
Long strings: I have limited knowledge of string theory. Fun to read about, but I really couldn't offer any thought on how this may/not apply. I get some of the relativity formulae, but string theory is a practice in faith (for me).
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When I made the comment on long strings I wasn't talking about string theory. I was thinking about an ACTUAL material string :p . It would act as a worldline in the black-hole-universe.
 
Time is only the measure of the movement of things.
So many vibration of a cesium isytope(sp?) That is the afisial standard.
But how about at absolute zero? Why can a fertilized egg or sperm through off the ravages of time.
So time is a variable and your relative speed, temperature, and probably gravity alter time. I wonder how fast time is in the sun, probly very fast.
And I think it stops in a black hole.
 
Time dilation

TREELAW45 said:
Time is only the measure of the movement of things.
So many vibration of a cesium isytope(sp?) That is the afisial standard.
But how about at absolute zero? Why can a fertilized egg or sperm through off the ravages of time.
So time is a variable and your relative speed, temperature, and probably gravity alter time. I wonder how fast time is in the sun, probly very fast.
And I think it stops in a black hole.
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I do not subscribe to the time = motion concept. For example, imagine that the solar system is very very cold. The sun, earth, planets, etc... all near absolute zero. Things may not change much on earth because of the extreme cold. However, the planet would still orbit the sun at the same rate. Assuming the same mass and trajectory... a year would still be a year despite the slow decay due to the temperature.

In my understanding of relativity, speed has little to do with time dilation. It is an observational effect of constant speed/physics in all constant motion reference frames. And therefore, there is a disagreement on the timing at which events occur. It is only during accelleration change that time dilation is realized. At least that is my take.

One thing about fast/slow time. And I think I have this right. Time only changes in one way due to gravity. That is you advance more quickly through time while experiencing strong gravity. Whether this is called faster or slower depends on which perspective you take. The end result is you would age less then someone who is outside and not "feeling" this accellerated force.

So, for example you could say that someone near a black hole:
- would experience 1 day while observing 50 earth days and therefore travels faster through time.
- would look very slow from earth and experience only 15 minutes on the craft while we lived a whole day on earth and therefore travels slowly through time.

BTW: I think the gravity experienced at the center of the sun would have a small effect on time dilation. That is matter at the center of the sun may not be as old as the matter in the center of the earth. But only because it's been experiencing slightly more gravity over millions of years. But, I don't think you would live longer by moving to the center of the sun.

My opinion: Time and motion are forced to be related by the very definition of motion. Velocity = distance over time. However, I don't think time or motion are real. I'm speculating here, but I'm trying to define time as a spacial dimension. One in which a strong (black hole like) force is pulling us through in one direction. Trouble is... if time is spacial then what is that force acting on, if not time? That is, how could you define gravity (or any other force) without time? My theory on this would be that there is no time or motion, but instead forces are simply rules for defining the shape of our universe. Our observation of "time" is a result of consciousness only being able to function in one direction along the spacial time dimension due to the limitations of cause/effect only working in a forward direction. ie: intelligent thought doesn't work backwards through time.
 
first off, there's no gravity in the center of the sun or earth :)


imagine two heavenly bodies attracting each other. as their distance decreases their motion increases. at the point of impact, distance is 0, motion is maximum. if they just miss each other, they will continue the other way again, motion will reduce, distance increase until maximum distance where motion will be 0.
it is wavelike
everything seems to work that way. a spring, a swing, gravity, electric and magnetic forces, everything.
everything is wavelike, where motion and distance are sine and cosine of an angle.

the two heavenly bodies motion and distance(sine and cosine) are changed as the angle linearly increases. this angular velocity might be considered "real time" or perhaps "progress". what we consider time is the tangens of that angle - distance/motion - sine/cosine.
"progress" velocity - the angular velocity of that angle corresponds to energy.

this kind of approach may yield interesting results.
 
razz said:
Everything thats something is made of techno science psyco hard ta understand stuff..

yes very scientific of me i know... ok so heres my question..

What is "TIME" made of.
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time is (made of) motion.
as a concept, time depends on the motion of at least one particule in the universe with respect to another particule.
 
azizbey said:
time is (made of) motion.
as a concept, time depends on the motion of at least one particule in the universe with respect to another particule.
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I disagree.

Concept:
Imagine a universe consisting of the earth and moon. Also imagine that the only force is gravity. Both the moon and earth are very cold solid object with no internal motion.

The moon revolves around the earth such that the same face always points towards the earth. The earth also revolves on an axis and rate so that it always faces the moon. The orbit of the moon is perfectly circular.

From an outside perspective (also in orbit about the earth) you would suggest that time does not exist since there is no relative motion and gravity is irrelivent or doesn't exist. However if the outside observer viewed this setup from a non-orbit perspective your concept would suggest that time flows and gravity is keeping the moon in orbit about the earth.

That is: relative motion = time, suggests that this system is either void of time or with time/gravity/orbit depending on how you view it.

I do not believe that time on this system is dependent on some third perspective.

I do not believe that time can be stopped by stopping relative motion.

Crazy talk:
My current world view is that motion doesn't exist, but is a result of awareness/logic only being possible along a spacial dimension called time. As a result we observe relative differences with respect to this dimension and declare that we see motion. But it is really like phrames in a movie that are played consecutively in one direction providing us with an illusion of motion.
 
orbit is motion too. the distance doesn't change, but the angle does, you can't just ignore that.
 
what kind of silly question is this, time is made of thoughts, it's a mental concept we use to measure motions.

clocks are motion, but motion is illusion created by memory of past positions.
 
No time for a motion

vx220 said:
orbit is motion too. the distance doesn't change, but the angle does, you can't just ignore that.
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I agree that an object in orbit is in motion. What I am saying is that if you view this orbital system from a perspective that is also in orbit (say from the surface of the earth), you will not view any motion. You would have no way to determine whether the objects are still in space (in your opinion) or whether they are in orbit and time exists.

Perhaps this isn't the best analogy since it involves orbit. What I am trying to show is that objects undergoing force can move from a state of relative motion to a system of no relative motion. Circular orbits are an example of this in a perpetual state.

A more appent example is imagining two solid sheres in space. Both objects are close and moving away from each other. However, they are captured by each others gravity. ie: their speed is less then the escape velocity at their current location. So the relative motion between them is continually decreasing. At some point, both objects stop (relative to one another). And since there are no other object in this universe, there is no relative motion at all. Only the force of gravity between them. Does time stop at this point? Immediately after, I would suggest that they begin to approach one another. So I guess time starts again?

So in your opinion, does time stop at the momement that their speeds match? Or does the fact that both objects are undergoing accelleration due to a force matter? Does time stop and then restart at the momement between relative motion... no relative motion... and then relative motion? If time does stop, how can the force continued to be applied at the momement of matching inertia since there is no time for the force to be applied? Or does the force become infinite at this momement? Or does the force become zero and since time has stopped they remain at their distant locations? Or does the universe cease to exist in a meaningful way?
 
first off, when you see a car move 100m in 5 seconds, those 5 seconds are 5 movements of the clock mechanism. those 5 seconds are 100000 neuron interactions which happen in your brain. all of this is motion.
obviously, we measure time using a reference repetitive motion. we calculate other motion by measuring distance and timing with our reference repetitive motion. or, in other words, how many iterations/movements of the clock mechanism happen while the car changes position for 100m.

we can also define gravity as space-motion deformation rather than space-time deformation.

time is a concept that is intuitive to human minds, but aside from that there is no other reason why it should be considered as a fundamental dimension. it is chosen as such purely for convenience and scientific heritage. unfortunately this intuitive concept of time in our minds begins to cause trouble as it breaks down in relativistic physics.
so, i think time being considered a dimension is a reason for a lot of confusion, paradoxes and problems with current physical theories.
 
for these reasons your examples are invalid.
two solid 0K temperature objects are hardly conscious of anything.
if there's an observer in this universe, in order for him to be conscious he must not be at 0K temperature. he must sustain repetitive motion of neurons or another processing mechanism to actually notice and be conscious of anything to be "happening". if he satisfies these conditions then he also has an internal "clock" and can observe the two solid bodies continue to attract each other after they reach 0 relative motion.

obviously, the two solids would not "stop in time" when reaching 0 relative motion even without the observer observing them. the fact that the two solids, if they were somehow conscious, couldnt use any other reference motion to time their own wouldnt stop physical laws from happening.
the gravity between them is not a force anyway, but space-time or better yet space-motion curvature. this makes their movement inertial in relativity which does not recognize gravity as a force. which means they never really reached 0 relative motion, they had the same motion all the time, but it only seemed that they are deccelerating through the curved space-time "lense".
the concept of time or motion in such a universe of two solid bodies is kinda hard to contemplate anyway.
 
vx220 said:
for these reasons your examples are invalid.
two solid 0K temperature objects are hardly conscious of anything.
if there's an observer in this universe, in order for him to be conscious he must not be at 0K temperature. he must sustain repetitive motion of neurons or another processing mechanism to actually notice and be conscious of anything to be "happening". if he satisfies these conditions then he also has an internal "clock" and can observe the two solid bodies continue to attract each other after they reach 0 relative motion.
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I can't argue with that. If you believe that time requires an internal observer (and you might be correct on that), then there would always be motion within this setup... as I would assume that consciousness requires (neural) motion. I was proposing observing this system/universe from the outside.

If you can imagine the setup I suggest and agree that an internal observer changes the result, then you see my point. Time for the two bodies exists or doesn't exist based on the presence or absence of some 3rd parties (like an observer... or some other 3rd body moving at a different velocity). To me this doesn't make sense as I don't believe the existence of time can be turned on/off by the presence of something else in the system.

Also, I have a problem believing that time didn't exist before consciousness. It's like suggesting that the majority of time from the big bang until life occurred was free of any time, even though astronomical observations appear to show otherwise. Of course I can't back this up, perhaps the whole universe was "alive" from the beginning of time.

However, I do suspect that forward "motion" through time is related to consciousness. So my general belief is "consciousness requires time" but not "time requires consciousness".

vx220 said:
the gravity between them is not a force anyway, but space-time or better yet space-motion curvature. this makes their movement inertial in relativity which does not recognize gravity as a force. which means they never really reached 0 relative motion, they had the same motion all the time, but it only seemed that they are deccelerating through the curved space-time "lense".
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I disagree. But I'd like to call in a referee on this. In my call: the two objects at the apex of their seperation are have 0 relative motion. Even though they are experiencing opposite and equal gravitional warping, they are in the same inertial phrame at that moment.

And I disagree with "they had the same motion all the time". They truly are decelerating. I think you are referring to objects in orbit which follow a "straight path" when considering the gravitational pull that occurs on space and time.

But forget all this then. Here is a much more simple example:

1. An object is in the universe with no accellerating or conscious parts to it. Does this body exist in time?

2. Now add a second body in some other region of this universe moving at a relatively seperate velocity. Now does time exist on the first body?

There is the problem. Time exists/doesn't in 1 depending on whether you consider or leave out 2.

The simplest solution is to assume that time requires consciousness and consciousness requires motion and disallow 1 and 2 without an internal observer.

But for me... the tree does emit sound waves as it falls in the forest, whether your there to hear it or not.
 
razz said:
Everything thats something is made of techno science psyco hard ta understand stuff..

yes very scientific of me i know... ok so heres my question..

What is "TIME" made of.
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Energy, like everything else. Time is energy as it goes from one state into another. Example, the sun will eventually burn out and die with time, as the energy never dies, it only changes states forever, that change of state is calculated as time.

Consciousness is the controller of time. Thus I have the name timetraveler. Does it make sense?
 
Wormsworth said:
I can't argue with that. If you believe that time requires an internal observer (and you might be correct on that), then there would always be motion within this setup... as I would assume that consciousness requires (neural) motion. I was proposing observing this system/universe from the outside.

If you can imagine the setup I suggest and agree that an internal observer changes the result, then you see my point. Time for the two bodies exists or doesn't exist based on the presence or absence of some 3rd parties (like an observer... or some other 3rd body moving at a different velocity). To me this doesn't make sense as I don't believe the existence of time can be turned on/off by the presence of something else in the system.

Also, I have a problem believing that time didn't exist before consciousness. It's like suggesting that the majority of time from the big bang until life occurred was free of any time, even though astronomical observations appear to show otherwise. Of course I can't back this up, perhaps the whole universe was "alive" from the beginning of time.

However, I do suspect that forward "motion" through time is related to consciousness. So my general belief is "consciousness requires time" but not "time requires consciousness".



I disagree. But I'd like to call in a referee on this. In my call: the two objects at the apex of their seperation are have 0 relative motion. Even though they are experiencing opposite and equal gravitional warping, they are in the same inertial phrame at that moment.

And I disagree with "they had the same motion all the time". They truly are decelerating. I think you are referring to objects in orbit which follow a "straight path" when considering the gravitational pull that occurs on space and time.

But forget all this then. Here is a much more simple example:

1. An object is in the universe with no accellerating or conscious parts to it. Does this body exist in time?

2. Now add a second body in some other region of this universe moving at a relatively seperate velocity. Now does time exist on the first body?

There is the problem. Time exists/doesn't in 1 depending on whether you consider or leave out 2.

The simplest solution is to assume that time requires consciousness and consciousness requires motion and disallow 1 and 2 without an internal observer.

But for me... the tree does emit sound waves as it falls in the forest, whether your there to hear it or not.
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I disagree with you. No consciousness, no universe, is my opinion. If there are no ears, there is no sound, if there are no eyes, there is no color, if there are no sensations, there is no pain. The entire universe is simply energy, unless there is perception. That energy is conciousness.

This basically means that the universe is conscious, and it only exists because it is self aware, before it was self aware it did not exist materially, it was the idea that brought the material universe into existance, it was the explosion of self awareness.

What I'm saying is, we are the universe, the universe is us, the universe is inside of us, and inside because of that it's inside of itself, and it does not exist outside of itself, outside of us.


If you can imagine the setup I suggest and agree that an internal observer changes the result, then you see my point. Time for the two bodies exists or doesn't exist based on the presence or absence of some 3rd parties (like an observer... or some other 3rd body moving at a different velocity). To me this doesn't make sense as I don't believe the existence of time can be turned on/off by the presence of something else in the system.

Time is consciousness and consciousness is energy. Energy is matter. Energy therefore controls consciousness, which controls time, and matter, which is energy.

Basically all a mind or brain does, is change the state of energy, your brain changes the state of universal energy, like a CPU in a computer, it recieves energy and channels it. The mind is outside of the brain because you can write, you can store information on paper, or even inside DNA. Life is a container for the mind, for conciousness, for self awareness, and time does not exist outside of that. In fact, nothing exists outside of that.

So the entire universe only exists in your mind. There is no universe outside of it, there is just energy in different forms, and that energy is what you truly are, it never dies, it never grows old, we can call it ether, we can call it the quantum singularity, we can call it the big bang, we can call it God, we can call it non locality, the fact is, we have proven with science that it exists, it's a fact proven. You can look it up here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlocality

Nonlocality basically says, there is no seperate, seperate is an illusion of distance, distance only exists in the mind, because linear time does not exist for energy.
http://www.npl.washington.edu/npl/int_rep/qm_nl.html

This is why the quantum world can break the light barrier, because light is simply an energy wave, you can call it a shape for energy, a shape and direction. Energy itself however on the quantum level, is everywhere in the universe, which means there is no distance, there is no seperate, there is no independent, all is one basically, if you touch something here, you are also touching something over there.

Therefore we have quantum teleportation, we have no time in the quantum world, at least not linear time, based on distance of travel. If everything is one thing, and everything is everywhere at once, time represents the state that energy is in, at a specific moment, but according to quantum theory, there is no distance and there is no seperate, so if the tree falls and there is nothing to percieve it, it does not exist, it's just energy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-entangle/


Also, I have a problem believing that time didn't exist before consciousness. It's like suggesting that the majority of time from the big bang until life occurred was free of any time, even though astronomical observations appear to show otherwise. Of course I can't back this up, perhaps the whole universe was "alive" from the beginning of time.

There was no beginning of time. Time is not linear, period, it has no beginning or end, it simply calculates the changing states of energy. The universe went from a point, a singularity, into what we now consider the material universe. It exploded in dimensions. It's still exploding in dimensions all the time.

The energy is essentially everywhere in the universe, the material universe, matter, is like a projection, a hologram, it does not exist outside of perception, and perception is life capable of percieving it. If you believe that the universe exists outside of our perception, then please explain why we are capable of observing? The act of observing is what makes something real, as it does not exist before it's observed. To think otherwise is as irrational as believing that pigs will fly even if you've never observed it.

If pigs CAN fly, obviously something in the universe observed it, and either we discovered it from something else, or it was we who observed it first.
 
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Wormsworth said:
Answer 1) I'm not a huge fan of wormholes. So I can't answer that question. I do not believe the observable universe is closed. I believe there is a much bigger container which holds our universe. So in my opinion, matter captured by a blackhole does not need to appear somewhere else in the universe. This may bother space travel fans and conservation of energyist, but not me.

Answer 2 (3)) No it doesn't violate relativity. First particles entering a black hole do have a worldline. We just can't observe them when observed from outside the event horizon.

The other interesting fact about this idea is that any attempt to stop moving (accelleration in any direction) toward the singularity (center) actually increases the rate at which you reach it. In other words, acceleration = slowed time or forward time travel. Special relativity suggests the same type of effect. I wouldn't know how to calculate if these effects match in scale.

My bloated theory involves a thought game of falling all the way into the black hole. The entire universe is crushed down to the singularity. This point is the begging of time as we know it (big bangish). Then reverse everything to move forward in time. Since we are still under the event horizon, we would not experience the barrier of the event horizon. Instead all light reaching us would have originated from the singularity.

In this backwards world, our future is already written and therefore I can not explain free will. Or the reason we seem to be aware of states of this universe pulling away from the singularity instead of towards it.

Expanding Universe: They say that not only is the universe expanding, but it is accellerating. What the? This thought experiment explains it by showing that the surface area of the universe will expand at an accelerated rate based on a constant increase in the radial distance from the orgin (singularity). For example: I mean that if you continue to increase the radius of a baloon at a constant rate, the surface of the balloon will increase at an accellerated rate.

PS: I wouldn't base my reputation on this theory.
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What if we ARE the singularity? What if time and the material universe is the illusion? have you ever considered that?
 
TimeTraveler said:
What if we ARE the singularity? What if time and the material universe is the illusion? have you ever considered that?
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Physicists can't consider ideas that challenge the very foundations of their philosophy/science, otherwise they wouldn't be physicists anymore..
 
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