What is time

[Athena]

Zhavric's posts on logic are great. Now can we define time? There is a suggestion that our perception of time is a delusion? What do you think?

The is this idea that time is another dimension? So we have the three dimensions of height, width, deepth or thickness, plus time. Whatever time is?

[SoylentGreen]

Time is definrd as the measurement of distance between any two events.
Time though is not constant, the faster you travel the slower time becomes so that speed and time are two different things, the more you have of of one the less you have of the other. Its a trade off
Time is also effected by mass, the more mass there is the faster time moves.
That suggests to me that the dimension of time is just as real as the other three dimensions.
Time exists regardless of whether anyone is there to percieve it.

[Milton Bradley]

Quote by: Athena The is this idea that time is another dimension? So we have the three dimensions of height, width, deepth or thickness, plus time. Whatever time is?

The universe is in constant motion, and the path travelled ( through time, and space ) is considered that fourth dimension.

[Clarence]

..time is lying in the sunshine or staying home to watch for rain

[Jack]

There's a phrase you may have seen on a bumper-sticker that actually conveys a truth;
"Time is nature's way of making sure everything doesn't happen at once."

[Athena]

Those were some pretty awesome answers.

I have heard that we never step in the same river twice, because of the flow of water. If the entire universe is constantly moving would this be like the river ever changing?

I won't even attempt to appear like I grasp this subject. It is mind boggling.

[ZNFYRH]

I think, somewhere deep in math formulas, there is a constant that represents the rate of time's passage.

That constant establishes why a second takes a second, instead of 2 seconds (so to speak).

That would mean that "time" is the rate at which "everything happens".

[SoylentGreen]

Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana

[improvident]

its my personal opinion that man isnt supposed understand the baffling concept of time..because anytime man discovers something new.. or learns some new concept.. we eventually try and master that concept.. and make our own short cuts around it.. or try and fabricate our own.. and like the bumper sticker isherwood was talking about.. time is natures way of making sure everything doesnt happen at once... do we really want to mess around with something like that?

[nose]

Time is definrd as the measurement of distance between any two events. Time though is not constant, the faster you travel the slower time becomes so that speed and time are two different things, the more you have of of one the less you have of the other. Its a trade off Time is also effected by mass, the more mass there is the faster time moves. That suggests to me that the dimension of time is just as real as the other three dimensions. Time exists regardless of whether anyone is there to percieve it.

i dont like the use of the word "distance" in your first sentence, how about "separation".

Speed and time are not two different things. When two frames move at different (but constant) velocities there is a relation between the observed velocity of the first frame relative to the second and the time interval observed in the first frame relative to the second, and this relation comes from the Lorentz transforms. I'm not educated enough to tell you exactly, but i do believe your sentence ambiguous or incorrect.

thirdly, the "mass dilation" view is debated and possibly outdated, i believe it is mostly considered as "momentum dilation" nowadays.

Time is real, that's, as said, why everything doesn't happen at once, and as suggested by relativity is very much related to the three spatial dimensions.

There are a few physical postulations as to what time is, and these are known as "the arrow of time". One is entropy. So time is the thing that points from order to chaos in the thermodynamic sense.

i believe there is also a quantum one... something like time is the direction in which it is most probable that a particle which exists will continue to exist.

nevertheless i'm sure wikipedia would have an article called "the arrow of time"

[Athena]

Quote by: improvident its my personal opinion that man isnt supposed understand the baffling concept of time..because anytime man discovers something new.. or learns some new concept.. we eventually try and master that concept.. and make our own short cuts around it.. or try and fabricate our own.. and like the bumper sticker isherwood was talking about.. time is natures way of making sure everything doesnt happen at once... do we really want to mess around with something like that?

But everything could be happening at once, and only our perspection of past, present and future makes time appear linear.

[Athena]

This site talks about time travel. It is scientific. A not so scienitific point of view, questions how people precieve future events if time in linear.

The Space Place :: Is time travel possible? Special Relativity also says that a surprising thing happens when you move through space-time, especially when your speed relative to other objects is close to the speed of light. Time goes slower for you than for the people you left behind. You won't notice this effect until you return to those stationary people. Say you were 15 years old when you left Earth in a spacecraft traveling at about 99.5% of the speed of light (which is much faster than we can achieve now), and celebrated only five birthdays during your space voyage. When you get home at the age of 20, you would find that all your classmates were 65 years old, retired, and enjoying their grandchildren! Because time passed more slowly for you, you will have experienced only five years of life, while your classmates will have experienced a full 50 years So, if your journey began in 2003, it would have taken you only 5 years to travel to the year 2053, whereas it would have taken all of your friends 50 years. In a sense, this means you have been time traveling. This is a way of going to the future at a rate faster than 1 hour per hour. Time travel of a sort also occurs for objects in gravitational fields. Einstein had another remarkable theory called General Relativity, which predicts that time passes more slowly for objects in gravitational fields (like here on Earth) than for objects far from such fields. So there are all kinds of space and time distortions near black holes, where the gravity can be very intense.

[ZNFYRH]

Athena

The time dilation effect is due to the fact that you are going so fast and have an increased mass dilation that space stretches around you.

You don't perceive the time dilation or mass dilation because they are relative and "not real" but with stretched space comes stretched time.

[Gargoyle]

Aint no such thing as time, why do you think that sometimes people say "this week has gone by fast" even though time is supposedly consistent??? time is something invented, duh! get your head out your athena, man!

[Nono]

Time is just one damn thing after another.

[Athena]

Quote by: ZNFYRH Athena The time dilation effect is due to the fact that you are going so fast and have an increased mass dilation that space stretches around you. You don't perceive the time dilation or mass dilation because they are relative and "not real" but with stretched space comes stretched time.

The best I can get is time is synomous with motion. But what is moving?
Movement requires energy. What is the source of energy?

[ZNFYRH]

Without any outside forces, movement doesn't require energy... movement is stored energy.

Take something with mass that is motionless and accelerate it to a speed. The energy you exerted to accelerate the mass is, essentially stored in the mass. In order to return the mass to zero, you need to exert the same amount of energy that went into it.

Time isn't really synonymous with motion. Time is, for lack of a better word, linked to the speed of light.

The closer you get to that speed, the slower time passes for you... and the faster it seems to be moving around you.

At the speed of light, time is essentially "stopped" for you but infinite for everyone else.

Then again, there is a whole branch of science that deals with exceeding the speed of light and what that means for the traveler and the observers from all reference frames.

The more apt observation is to wonder what time would be like of the speed of light were faster or slower.

[nose]

ZNFYRH,

i don't know where you learnt physics... in fact i doubt you learnt it at all. Most of what you have said about relativity is plain wrong.

first,

The time dilation effect is due to the fact that you are going so fast and have an increased mass dilation that space stretches around you. You don't perceive the time dilation or mass dilation because they are relative and "not real" but with stretched space comes stretched time.

Stringing a whole bunch of scientific words together is a tool used by science fiction writers. The first sentence above makes no sense - I don't even know what to correct. Secondly, time dilation is a real phenomenon, not a trick of perception. Thirdly, it is no longer accepted that mass dilates, it is now considered that momentum dilates.

Athena, do a google search on the "twin paradox" and that quote about "time travel" won't seem so strange.

[ZNFYRH]

nose

Welcome to VC.

Allow me to correct you. The dilated effect of mass creates a paradoxical stretching of space centered on the moving object. More accurately, space is stretched towards the object, a puckering effect.

As such, the object can travel the same velocity over less distance than "actual" space. That is the cause for the dilation of time and the length dilation effect of relativistic speeds.

It's a simple effect that you can illustrate with two rubber bands. But it's a current a relevant hypothesis for the cause of time and length dilation.

So to your first... your inability to understand what I wrote is explained above. Any further lacking on your part is not my problem.

To your second, time dilation is a relative phenomenon, and is at trick of perception. What you're forgetting is that frames of reference of perception are also relative.

To your third, that't not news. Einstein himself went back and corrected his own theories about mass dilation, specifically stating that it is observed for the "stationary" observer but non-existent for the moving object.

Basically, there are three dilations with relativistic travel: length, mass, and time. All three are observed by the stationary, and not perceived by the mover.

All three have direct correlation to the distortion of the fabric of space which is caused by the mass dilation effect.

[Athena]

Quote by: ZNFYRH Without any outside forces, movement doesn't require energy... movement is stored energy. Take something with mass that is motionless and accelerate it to a speed. The energy you exerted to accelerate the mass is, essentially stored in the mass. In order to return the mass to zero, you need to exert the same amount of energy that went into it. Time isn't really synonymous with motion. Time is, for lack of a better word, linked to the speed of light. The closer you get to that speed, the slower time passes for you... and the faster it seems to be moving around you. At the speed of light, time is essentially "stopped" for you but infinite for everyone else. Then again, there is a whole branch of science that deals with exceeding the speed of light and what that means for the traveler and the observers from all reference frames. The more apt observation is to wonder what time would be like of the speed of light were faster or slower.

I am having as trouble thinking like you do, as I have trouble thinking like Kuldeep does.

Nothing with mass can be excellerated without energy from some source doing so. May be the energy is absorbed by the mass, but first it has to come from something. Like it can't be stored if there is no outside source of energy in the first place.

Doesn't the term speed of light, mean light is moving? If light stopped moving would anything exist?