Does Time really exist?

[ollypenrice]

For me it's not that time doesn't exist. It's rather that time as we perceive it is likely to be illusory and part of a wider system of dimensions which we don't understand.

Olly

[Vince1963]

Is it me or am i as thick as a stick in a bucket of pig swill... I don't know about this "Entropy", It sounds like scientist have made this up to explain the unexplained... Its all too easy to make up a new word or formula to explain away something ( i think i'm going to call this "what a load of constant"). I can't see how it as anything to do with time at all... If as i say does time excist and is it a constant?... was there time before the big bang?, What if there was time before the so called big bang what sence of motion did it excist in?. Again, i don't think we'll ever know.. I think i'll call it Enthropy...

[Zakalwe]

You've rumbled them! They do it all the time...if they can't explain something then they just make it up.

If I was you, I'd go into hiding immediately.....there's now an army of white-coated scientists on their way to batter you with a chalk-board duster......

:grin:

What your question does show, is that what appears to be a simple question actually is very, very deep.

The Arrow of Time is a good (if fairly dense in places) read if you are really interested in this subject:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Arrow-Time-Sciences-Mysteries/dp/0006544622/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1350557928&sr=8-1

[Tiki]

Does time really exist though? .. isn't this just an invention of the mind of man to control the masses..

Not at all. eg. The half-life of a radioactive isotope etc.

"The distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion; albeit a persistent one." Albert Einstein

[Zakalwe]

Be careful of looking for common-sense explanations, especially when you start looking into relativity, time, quantum mechanics.

"the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."- JBS Haldane

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen"- Albert Einstein

There is, of course another way of looking at these things, and why we find them weird or unsettling. It is that our brains are just too primitive to understand them. The effects of the quantum world are real. The Universe is real, and yet we struggle to try and comprehend the most simple concepts. Our minds cannot cope with trying to reconcile infinity, the microscopic and the macroscopic. We think in terms of cause-and-effect, we struggle to comprehend concepts that describe in detail the Universe around us (Special Relativity, quantum thermodynamics), we are mystified by the workings of dark matter, gravity and light.

When you look at our closest genetic cousins, the chimpanzees, you find that 95%+ or their genetic makeup is identical to Homo Sapiens. The 2-5% difference in the hundreds of thousands of genetic base-pairs is all that separates them from us. That tiny amount is responsible for everything that Mankind has done and explains why we are the most successful animals on the planet Earth. It allows us to put men on the Moon, robotic landers on Mars, to create art, music and devices to mould our world. It accounts for Einstein, Pol Pot, Hitler, Jimmy Saville, Bach, Mozart, you and me.

The effect of that tiny difference in genetic make-up is truly staggering. What we are capable of, in comparison to a chimp, is vast. Now, imagine another species that shares 90% of our genetic make-up. How much difference would that extra 5% give them? Their schoolchildren might easily toss concepts like quantum entanglement about like our schoolkids toss Lego.

Our brains and intelligence have evolved out of the need to cope with coming out of the trees and existing in the African savannah. For millennia, speed to us was running pace. Computations were required to allow us to only chuck a rock at something to knock it out of a tree to make dinner. Is it any wonder that we find the real physical world so confusing?

The second thing to consider is that our history of science is very short. It could be argued that our scientific base is only 400-500 years old, and that our discoveries only really took off in the last 200 years. We haven't really had the time to fully explore and explain these things.

[Vince1963]

Hi Zakalwe... I love a good debate with a nice bit of reaction thrown in lol... Those egg heads a'll never catch me :grin: :grin:

[Vince1963]

So Tiki... that is an interesting point.. But isn't the decay of radiation just another measurement like say cm, or mm, or maybe kilometre?, What is it really the half life of?, Create another measurement of time and this maybe become the "Quarter life" of radiation.. Do you see what i'm getting at?. You know.. just like when we decided to use metric instead of imperial form of measurements.. It is something which isn't easy to answer.

[ArmyAirForce]

Is time real? Give me 5 minutes to think about it

[Zakalwe]

So Tiki... that is an interesting point.. But isn't the decay of radiation just another measurement like say cm, or mm, or maybe kilometre?, What is it really the half life of?, Create another measurement of time and this maybe become the "Quarter life" of radiation.. Do you see what i'm getting at?. You know.. just like when we decided to use metric instead of imperial form of measurements.. It is something which isn't easy to answer.

Not really.

Your point about metric and imperial. Just because the unit of measurement changes it doesnt mean that measured item changes! The wavelength of light stays the same regardless if you measure it in nanometres or in fractions of an inch.

[Vince1963]

Wow! Zakalwe, That speach was one of the best i've ever heard...I salute you

[ollypenrice]

Is it me or am i as thick as a stick in a bucket of pig swill... I don't know about this "Entropy", It sounds like scientist have made this up to explain the unexplained... Its all too easy to make up a new word or formula to explain away something ( i think i'm going to call this "what a load of constant"). I can't see how it as anything to do with time at all... If as i say does time excist and is it a constant?... was there time before the big bang?, What if there was time before the so called big bang what sence of motion did it excist in?. Again, i don't think we'll ever know.. I think i'll call it Enthropy...

Entropy. Knock a wine glass off a table and watch it smash into smithereens. (You could use a Takahashi Epsilon but the wine glass is cheaper.) Now take the smithereens and reassemble the wine glass and make it fly up and back onto the table.

Which is harder, knocking it off or putting it back together? Putting it back together requires far more energy - which you could call organizational energy or you could call it the energy your body will expend in doing it. Whatever you call it, running time backwards and forwards is not symmetrical. You would need an input of energy to run it backwards which is why the second law is seen as related to time. In a sense time seems to be sliding downhill (down the energy slope) so maybe that's why it seems to have only one direction. It can't freewheel up the energy hill.

Time certainly isn't a constant. Relativity tells us that and experiments (by the hundred) confirm it.

But I think there will be other ways to conceive of time. Perhaps, in some more general model of reality (or even in reality itself, whatever that might be) the one way flow of time is simply generated by our perspective, by our way of looking at it. Perhaps there is some kind of timeless lump out there, a mulitidimensional lump in which 'all that there is' is to be found. Creatures which form a part of the lump have a way of looking at it which creates the illusion of a flow of time. In this reality all that there 'was, is and will be' is really a single entity.

Only time will tell - or will it??

Olly

Edit. I've just thought of an analogy. You can make a board of dozens of lightbulbs. By lighting them in a controlled way you can create images like rotating wheels or passing waves. The observer is convinced he or she sees movement but that is not the reality. All of the bulbs are there all of the time and never move. (In the analogy take the illusory movement to represent time. I know that we need time in which to do the demo. But my point is to compare the illusion of movement with what may be an illusion of passing time. Yes, something is still happening when the lights go on and off but it is not what it seems to be, not a moving wave or turning wheel. I suspect time will turn out to be like that. Not quite what it seems.)

[Vince1963]

Not really.

Your point about metric and imperial. Just because the unit of measurement changes it doesnt mean that measured item changes! The wavelength of light stays the same regardless if you measure it in nanometres or in fractions of an inch.

Good point... I can see that, But.. I still have a problem with time... To me i can only explain it as a rhyme of things... To my simple mind i can only explain things in rhythms and patterns, Because i only see that way.. I know we need time, it as great mathematical importance to us humans and without it there would be many things we wouldn't be able to explain.. But i just don't understand it... did it exist before the big bang? what is this "space/time" ?.. if before the big bag there was nothing, then where was time?...

[Vince1963]

Olly... I've been trying to think of something to say to that but i cant think of a single thing...Are you saying time is an illusion?

[ollypenrice]

Good point... I can see that, But.. I still have a problem with time... To me i can only explain it as a rhyme of things... To my simple mind i can only explain things in rhythms and patterns, Because i only see that way.. I know we need time, it as great mathematical importance to us humans and without it there would be many things we wouldn't be able to explain.. But i just don't understand it... did it exist before the big bang? what is this "space/time" ?.. if before the big bag there was nothing, then where was time?...

To be rigorous, if there was a 'before' then there wasn't a BB and if there was a BB there wasn't a 'before.' The BB is a theory in which time began at some point maybe 13.7 billion years ago. Saying 'before the big bang' is like saying 'when dragons existed, which they never did...'

But don't despair! Who says time and our three other dimensions are the only ones that exist? If others exist then who cares that time didn't? Why can't there be realities 'outside' (rather than before) the BB?

Don't get hung up on time. I'm sure there's more 'out there' than forwards, upwards, sideways and tomorrow.

Yes, I think that time is part illusion. It is locally meaningful to us but because we cannot grasp the whole picture our incomplete view of time upsets us.

Olly

[JulianO]

In some ways time before the big bang is like looking for somewhere north of the north pole. You can't go there.

You could redefine north in some way to say go to the north pole, and then go upwards into space, that's sort of more north than north. I think that's what we are talking about when we consider time before the big bang. It would be a different sort of time.

[Zakalwe]

Good point... I can see that, But.. I still have a problem with time... To me i can only explain it as a rhyme of things... To my simple mind i can only explain things in rhythms and patterns, Because i only see that way.. I know we need time, it as great mathematical importance to us humans and without it there would be many things we wouldn't be able to explain.. But i just don't understand it

You will, of course, agree that whether you (or I or anyone) understands it or not has absolutley no impact on whether it exists or not. I am sure that the Universe cares not one jot about our individual ability to understand how it works.

In effect, what you are doing is trying to build an argument from ignorance. When you say (and I paraphrase) "I don't understand something, therefore it must be..." you should really stop at this point ""I don't understand something" and then take a couple of steps back to the point where you do understand it (and that understanding should be backed up with verifiable evidence). From there, you can push on. Otherwise it's all too easy to end up in fantasy land.

Lots of people make the logical fallacy of argument from evidence. how many times have you heard something along the lines of "I don't believe that can happen, therefore it isn't real"?

if before the big bag there was nothing, then where was time?...

We may not know the answer to that yet. In Relativity, time is the 4th dimension (along with the three spatial dimensions) it may be that as space was compressed into a zero dimension point that time was not running. At this point, no-one knows for sure what happened at the point of the Universe's initial expansion. We have good, solid theories on the time after 10^–43 seconds after the Big Bang, but our understanding of the time before that (the Planck epoch) is rudimentary or non-existent.

This is a very good site for info on the BB theory, if you are interested.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/astronomy/bigbang.html#introduction

[Earl]

Ollys example of the wine glass is good but does bring up a issue.

Cause and effect

The universe according to BB theory is all effect with no Cause if you go by the Universe from nothing concept.

Cause and effect also show time in action.

Its really worth watching the before the big bag horizon program as it covers many differing viewpoints regard this concept.

[Andymac79]

Ollys example of the wine glass is good but does bring up a issue.

Cause and effect

The universe according to BB theory is all effect with no Cause if you go by the Universe from nothing concept.

Cause and effect also show time in action.

Its really worth watching the before the big bag horizon program as it covers many differing viewpoints regard this concept.

We could get onto shaky ground with cause and effect, what caused the first cause.....?

I like the block time thing that came out of Einsteins maths that all time events, just like places in space, exist, the we just meander through them.

[ollypenrice]

In some ways time before the big bang is like looking for somewhere north of the north pole. You can't go there.

You could redefine north in some way to say go to the north pole, and then go upwards into space, that's sort of more north than north. I think that's what we are talking about when we consider time before the big bang. It would be a different sort of time.

Precisely so and very well put.

Olly

[ollypenrice]

Cause and effect are already in a bit of bother. There's a concept called retrocausality...

Olly

[ArmyAirForce]

There's a concept called retrocausality...

Olly

Would that be 'Anti-time'?

[Andymac79]

Im not sure we need worry about retrocausality too much, possibilites that exist in equations dont always have to mean anything to our human experience of them.

[Earl]

We could get onto shaky ground with cause and effect, what caused the first cause.....?

That pretty much sums up the whole dilemma. Will we ever know or be able to work it out?

[KenG]

I'm not a scientist, but as a retired designer I know that if things can break down they will, and the more complex they are, the more certain they are to break down, therefore I always worked on the KISS principle - keep it simple, stupid. For the universe to have lasted this long and to be as stable as it appears to be, it too must work to very simple rules. Some of the theories being expounded by cosmologists are just too complicated. It seems to me that if there was a big bang, it didn't appear out of nowhere, something was there to create it, perhaps a timeless environment, and time began with the bang, and since time has a beginning, it must also have an ending.

[ollypenrice]

Im not sure we need worry about retrocausality too much, possibilites that exist in equations dont always have to mean anything to our human experience of them.

True, but there are observations which strike me as potentially explicable if we allow some quantum events to be standing outside the time that we see. Double slit, entangled photons, etc.

Olly