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Does Time really exist?


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Does time really exist though? .. isn't this just an invention of the mind of man to control the masses.. Isn't everything with motion a time piece?, Think about it... If time and space are locked into a single continuum and space is not just expanding but is also accelerating then this must be true, that time must be going faster as well..And maybe the fallacy that people are living longer isn't true, We are living the same life period but because time is accelerating it gives the appearance we are living longer?.. :icon_scratch:

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Yep, agreed, time is only real or even relevent to the mind that percieves it.

As einstein said, the theory of relativity only works if you're prepared to abandon the idea of absolute time -ie. time, and space are relative. Without a mind to percieve them they are meaningless.

Ouch.

:)

Regards

Aenima

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I think time exists. We can measure it with increasing accuracy, and it's key to a lot of the equations we use. If time is changing it's rate, I doubt we;d be able to detect it, as everything else would change, including our perception of it and our measuring instruments. So its sort of indistinguishable from a constant rate.

We live longer because of better health care, nutrition and health and safety.

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I think time exists. We can measure it with increasing accuracy, and it's key to a lot of the equations we use. If time is changing it's rate, I doubt we;d be able to detect it, as everything else would change, including our perception of it and our measuring instruments. So its sort of indistinguishable from a constant rate.

We live longer because of better health care, nutrition and health and safety.

Yes... But time only exists in the minds of man, because man created a measurement of motion and named it "time".. Can you imagine what kind of place earth would be without time?, I personally think it would be a better place, We are all slaves to time, But i guess that's what they call progress right?. lol

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Well, it's a human concept, so it exists in the sense that we created time (well, named and quantified it), but to us at least it makes sense, at least a little.

To me, Time is probably not linear, as it is often thought of, because if it was linear, it would have to have a "start" and an "end", even if they are at the edge of infinity, they are still there. Perhaps time is actually a sphere, with no start or end point, but then the inevitable question now becomes 'how did this sphere start'. It's interesting to speculate, but we might never know.

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Its just like what was said above, a unit of measurement - a minute could just as easily been called something else or been a diiferent length but we need some way to chop it up into bits that are of use to us. 60 bits / 24 chunks...etc. it seems to work with the approx solar/lunar cycle so it stuck.

For scientific purposes it isnt so clear. We say that time has a 'direction' that flows in the favour of disorder and entropy -a one way system, the universe's energy is dissipating and the arrow of time records that process in a particular order. But when we try to reverse the order - Hawking's teacup jumping back into one piece from the floor onto the table again - life would be unworkable in practical terms, so we can only live in a universe where time and space are connected and the 'arrow' points towards chaos, or entropy.

Personally chaos freaks me out, but if it was any other way I wouldn't be here to worry about it.

Regards

Aenima

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I can't see that it's possible to answer the question without first defining what you mean by "time". It's a question as much about our perception of the universe as the "reality" of it. String theorists would, I think, have us believe that there are many dimensions, three of which are the physical ones with which we're familiar and one of which is time, but really they're all just degrees of freedom in describing any given point in their model of the universe. Perhaps time is just another way to think about entropy and causality. If positron/electron pair pops into existence at a given point in space and annihilate each other, what is it that distinguishes those two events? Or are they not distinguishable at all?

James

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Our perception of time is almost certainly incomplete. What we understand of it works for us in daily life. When it comes to understanding non-local things (by which I mean the very large and the very small, Cosmology and Quantum Theory) I'm sure we need a better theory of time.

Do electrons see time? The double slit paradox of electrons interfering with each other when fired one at once suggests (perhaps) that they don't know what 'one at once' means. They don't recognise the idea of being separated by time). The fact that a positron cannot be distinguished from an electron travelling backwards through time surely fuels suspicion that we don't understand time? Time as a conveyor belt cannot be the whole story.

Olly

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I have always had a major issue with the sand castle in that clip when Prof says there is no law of physics to say that the sand cant be deposited into the shape of the castle.

I cant agree with that as all observations contradict that concept.

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If the universe had a beginning - and it appears that it did - then time must exist. The only way time could not exist is if the universe itself is in a timeless state, i.e. has existed forever.

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So, if the big bang actually happened, how is the forming of galaxies and indeed matter, a reduction in entropy? Entropy is explained as the measure of the disorder but surely the very early universe was more disordered than it is now?

It's also a measure of heat, and it was a lot hotter at the big bang than it is now.

As for disorder, when the universe was a hot plasma soon after the big bang, it was in a well known and ordered state. Now we have stars and gas, and black holes everywhere, it is in a much less ordered state.

How hard is it to describe a hot plasma? Reasonably easy, as it's much the same everywhere.

Describing the universe today is a lot harder.There are some good estimates of entropy of the universe here

http://preposterousu...tohere/faq.html

Reckoning an entropy of about 1080 at the big bang, and a single black hole at the centre of the Milky Way has an entropy of ~ 1090.

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So, if the big bang actually happened, how is the forming of galaxies and indeed matter, a reduction in entropy? Entropy is explained as the measure of the disorder but surely the very early universe was more disordered than it is now?

"Entropy is explained as the measure of the disorder" in a thermodynamic system

The early universe had less entropy as it was compact and hotter. As entropy increases the Universe cools, with less difference between the hottest parts and the coldest parts.

The flow of time can also be thought of as the progress of entropy, in that it only goes one way. To reverse time would require entropy to reverse (ie a stirred cup of coffee would separate back into coffee and milk). To do this would require a violation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (which is a no-no. It's often been said that if a theory violates the 2nd law then it is wrong- no further investigation is required)

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I have always had a major issue with the sand castle in that clip when Prof says there is no law of physics to say that the sand cant be deposited into the shape of the castle.

I cant agree with that as all observations contradict that concept.

The probability of that happening is very low, compared to the probability of multitudes of alternative ways that the wind could deposit the sand. Its likely that the you would have to wait many lifetime of the universe over until the wind deposited the grains in that particular order. in other words, the probability of it happening are so low that they approach zero.

The second thing to consider is that to reduce entropy you have to inject energy. The castle required water to make the grains stick. Energy was needed to pack the grains into the bucket and to slam the bucket onto the ground. The kinetic force impacted the grains, making them hold the shape of the bucket. Over time, this energy leaches back out of the ordered system (carried away as heat as the water evaporates, or as kinetic energy as the grains fall from higher parts of the structure). Without an input of energy in the first place, the ordered structure cannot form from the disordered surroundings.

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