what is time

[lillug24]

to begin with let me ask that you pardon my bad grammer and spelling

i think that time is an illusion it depends on how you think of it that makes it what it is i think that time moves so indepen dently from us as beings and that in an effort to define our space and our universe we have put these perceptions of time ie: years, months, weeks, days hours, minuets, seconds and so on but time is the one thing that no matter what is the same where ever you are in the universe where you are in the middle or on the edge it is right now its not later its not a little while ago it is right now and in my belief of time being seperated from us i do not think it is possible to travel through time because there is only right now and while the age of things in the universe maybe diffrent and the perception of time through out the universe maybe diffrent it is still right now

on a diffrent note i think the idea of describing the fourth dimension as time is ludacris because how can you start the first 3 dimensions (4 if you count the idea of lack of dimension) as spatial IE: heighth width and depth and then switch all of the sudden to something that has no relation to space what so ever

anyway i hope i have said enough to start a discussion because i would LOVE! one i have considered becoming a physics major just for the dimensional physics i hope i don't have to say this but im new to this forum so please no harsh words
polite and inteligent discusion ^_^
and again i have crappy grammer and spelling ... sorry

[zero]

I don't know what time is -- only that I keep running out of it!

[Nick]

I think that time is split into three parts: past, present, and future. The past does not exist; once it has happened, it is gone. The past is not a section of space hiding in some corner of the universe, nor is it something that mankind can "revisit" with a machine. It is something that is nonexistant. The future does not exist; it has not happened yet. It is not written in a scroll somewhere what will happen, nor can it be predicted with 100% certainty. Only the present exists. Since only the present exists, I have a question: is it infinitesimal, or infinite?

to this forum so please no harsh words
polite and inteligent discusion ^_^

I disagree with your post. You are a stupid person who needs to die. I detest you and everything you stand for.

jk

[cory_cpd]

time is just a clock.

[houserichichi]

I hate this quote but,

"Time is what is measured by clocks. Clocks are what measure time."

[cory_cpd]

time is sort of like the equator. an imaginary line that shows where somthing is.

[3l3ctr0]

First off, there are 12 dimensions (dictated by superstring theory) and now to begin my babbling.

i will start off by asking another question; what is time doing in a 3D universe? it is an arrow constantly moving forward, yet in 3 dimensions we have the capeabilities to move forwards and backwards in space, yet with time it is not possible to move back. (forwards is allowed with einstein's general relativity).

time is sort of like the equator. an imaginary line that shows where somthing is.

i would also interpret this to use time as a reference point... but if thats so, why not use a picture? how it looked before, and how it looks now. The amout of time the has elapsed between the change is irrelevant.

so what is time?
i woudl ahve to agree with lillug24, not fully but mostly.

[stealthtank91]

i think the truth is that there is no such thing as time, only space. Time is an illusion created by our limited perception. the RATE of time is determined by how fast our mind proccesses information ( like for example with phsycodelics people feel like time is slowing down, because thier mind starts proccessing info faster). Time is the 4 dimensional crossections of our 3 dimensional selfs. if you where to see your entire body in the 4th dimension, it would be like seeing your birth, death, and everything in between in a single instance infinitely. But really time is acually space. Its hard to explain but lets say you picked up a pencil and if you moved it, the pencil would leave a trail of itself behind it . The pencil in the fourth dimension (time as we call it) would acually take up more space than in the 3rd dimension because not only would it have: length, width, and height, but it would also have "moved" from one spot to another" which by looking at it from a 4D perspective would take up space from point (A) which was a desk lets say to point (B) which is the other side of the room. So the only way to imagine the pencil taking up 4D space is to imagine the pencil taking up the 3d space in point (A), point (B) and all movements/locations between point (A) and (B). So the pencil would look like a "snake like" entity in the 4th dimension ( or at least thats the only way we can imagine it)

> "|" < - pencil

DESK------------------>>>OTHER SIDE OF ROOM
Point A |||||||||||||||||||||| Point B
[1 sec.] [2 sec.] [3 sec.] [4 sec.] [5 sec.]
------------------------------------------------->>>

unfortunatly i cant show a better illistration but if this line was really a 3d pencil then u could measure its 3 dimensions, and also measure its size in the fourth dimension as "movement". Our bodies and everything else in the universe has more than 3 dimensions. and we only see "frames" if you will, of the fourth dimension which we call the "present" Memories are only info. that we collected as we move through the 4th dimension which we call the "past". Keep in mind that time is only created by our limited perception and the only way we could see the 4th dimension as a whole, is if our minds could hold an infinit amount of information at once, or at least enough info. to see your birth, life, and death as one instance.

The 4th dimension also creates "faith", which is the unescapable destiny everything has in the universe. Whatever you're going to do in the 3rd dimension, already happened, will happen and is happening in the 4th dimension. Except your can only see 1 moment of the 4th dimension at a time so it kind of creates a false sense of "choice". If you choose to kill some one, or take a nice shower instead, it doesnt matter in the 4th dimension, because whatever your picked, is already there in the 4th dimension. The thing is in 4D space, it seems like objects or point particles would collide and fold onto themselves, for example: if you stayed in your chair for 2 minuts lets call this - ( Point A), then got up, walked into another room, came back and sat down for another 2 minuts -(Point B), your body in the fourth dimension would collide your (Point A) self, with the your ( Point B) self. So its like your would be sitting inside yourself but in a diffrent point in "time", or "space" should i say.

SORRY FOR LONG EXPLANATION AND CONFUSION I HOPE THIS HELPS YOU VISUALIZE THE 4TH DIMENSION

[Alex S]

Humans move freely in three dimensions: height, width, depth. We move in a straight line in the axis of time, and remain fixed to a point on the axis of probability. Our perception of time may be an illusion, and lunchtime doubly so, but time exists. If time didn't exist, nothing would be able to happen. Our knowledge of time extends to the fact that we cannot freely move through it without future technology, which may be based of the movement of tachyons, the hypothetical 'units' if time.

[stealthtank91]

Humans move freely in three dimensions: height, width, depth. We move in a straight line in the axis of time, and remain fixed to a point on the axis of probability. Our perception of time may be an illusion, and lunchtime doubly so, but time exists. If time didn't exist, nothing would be able to happen. Our knowledge of time extends to the fact that we cannot freely move through it without future technology, which may be based of the movement of tachyons, the hypothetical 'units' if time.

yes i agree with you that time DOES exist, but its not really somthing you would call time if you where fully aware of the 4th dimension. like i said in my previous post, the rate of time wouldnt exist in the 4th dimension, but time itself would be there because its time that determines location/size of an object in the 4th dimension. a clock is a tool to measure passing time, just as a ruler measures space, but we technicly could measure time with a ruler, but only if we were fully in the 4th dimension.

i also think the higher dimension of the one(s) your in like in our case the 4th, acts as time. i think that if you where in the 4th dimension, the 5th dimension would work as time/ or movement, because you would be seeing crossections of your 5th dimensional self.

[Alex S]

Technically, the fourth dimension is another "spatial" dimension. Time is the fourth dimension that directly affects us. After time and probability, the fourth and fifth dimensions, respectively, the fourth spacial dimension, which would probably be the sixth dimension, would not have objects whose coordinates in 4-space are determined by the passage of time.

[stealthtank91]

yes i completly agree with you on that. i also made another speculation about the multi-dimensional construct. lets say an object in the third dimension takes up an infinit amount of infinitly big 2-D crosssections or "flat surfaces", because you can divide that object infinitly into 2-D slices (each slice being diffrent than the last). It seems like you can do the same with the dimensions above. In the 4th dimension you can take an object like a pen, and in the 4th dimension it would fill up "time" or 4-D space (tetraspace if you will) So that object in the 4th dimension would take up an infinit amount of 3D crossections just like a 3D object would take up infinit 2D crossections. Like a cube being cut up horizontally would be always a square in the 2nd dimension. So it seems like time to us is only crossections of ourselfs viewed individually (but not completly individually because you can devide time up infinitly just liek space becasue time is space in the 4th dimension. and we would look really strange in the 4th dimension as one object. It also seems like the 3rd dimension is the perfect home for life. Everything is perfectly designed to sustain life here in the 3D Realm, and with the 4D space acting as time, it seems perfect. You gatta sometimes marvel at the beauty of existance. (Sry for my wording :/)

[wehavemoreltd]

we only know what we are taught , nobody question the real question , anyways , school is a place we learn how to learn. so as we get older and leave to be independent, we remember or get use to the basics how do we do something, ? by applying how we learned and using it to apply in a different way to different subjects or anythoing thats new , we are being trained how to learn, plus alittle bit of common sense too.

[Max88831]

Well to start we can safetly say that time is what we use everyday to record past events.

Everyone Agree?

Ok now scientists like Stephen Hawkings theorized that time started at the moment of the big bang. THIs means that time literally starts when there is something for it to record and "time" for. It was theorized that before the Big Bang there was nothing in the universe only a single condensed point of matter.
Now right after that explosion (that happened in a fraction of a second) time supposively started.

Okay now the thing with the fourth dimension is that there are different theories. There are 2 different ones your getting confused with.
-4D spacetime (i think thats what it was called) is when they use 3 spacial dimensions and 1 time dimension.
-4D spacial dimension is when all 4 is spacial dimensions
Both are incredibly confusing and I still cant wrap my head around it. But with time we can all understand.

P.S your english isnt all that bad, keep going at it

[cbrescobar]

I Suggest that time is moving at the speed of light. Then if that is so if you go faster than the speed of light then you will go into the future? No, you just traveled faster than time did. Inside a black hole theory suggest that time is torn apart through the singularity and the extreme force of gravity. I am not so sure gravity even affects time at all, (or maybe it is the only thing that does affect it) because if you are outside the black hole and not in it, then the time on your watch would work as normally it would. Humans know time in this way: the minutes, the hours, it takes the earth to spin on its axis one complete revolution. However time is more like a limit or a prison even. So, the "time" it takes sunlight to reach the earth is exactly the same speed of light, then time must be going the exact same speed? So if that is true and the universe is the age that scientists believe it to be 13.7 billion lights years old, then if you travel 13.7 billion light years in the exact direction the big bang started from you will have reached the beginning of time. (but will you have had to start traveling that direction the speed of light from here 13.7 billion years ago? probably so) Go 13.7 billion light years in exact opposite direction or any direction other than back to the starting point then you should be to the edge of the universe supposedly right? Now say if you went just a tad further than precisely 13.7 billion light years say 14 billion, then you have outran the inflation rate of the universe and who knows where you will be if you can even go that far. Does time even have a limit, like past 13.7 billion years? So then the past is the beginning of time, the present is right now as you are reading this and the future is every moment after this one, and this one, and this one and so on.. So using Hubble you are looking in to the past, we see the present all around us, .. and the future you cannot see as it is constantly being created or is maybe just the measurement of time from the beginning of everything to right now. Is time then just a measurement of how fast something moves? So if we are in the present and we are every second that passes one second out of the past and moving into the future then are we not also going the speed of light? No, we can't be and if time is going that fast then all you have to do is speed up, way up, i mean way way up and then say turn around get back to earth as fast as you can (you left earth to travel very fast for this experiment) and see that you aged a week and everyone else aged 100 years or so. That's time travel? You didnt travel into the future at all, you just sped up while everything else stayed the same. So it seems time travel is not possible at all, but didn't Einstein say it was possible? imagine time is a rock and that gravity is a slingshot and space is well space. Now put time into a black hole (the only thing strong enough to contain it) and then imagine that the black hole is pulling back on the slingshot and pulling harder and harder and it can hold it as long as it wants to, but if it were to release its grip, then time would fly out going the rate of the speed of light and move through space as it normally does.
The only way to time travel is to go faster than light or something else. Probably in my opinion would be to not do whats impossible like going that rate of speed but rather find a way around it, but then the only person who has is God right?
Anybody out there have an idea of time other than a measurement or the 4th dimension? Thanks

[Arnielike]

That's a pretty wicked post cbrescobar, I never really thought light had much relevance to the matter. The only thing is, I believe that we may have expanded faster then the speed of light. I'm assuming we use that measurement because it's the fastest thing we have been able to record.

Pretty weird how the speed of lights slowing down, does that mean times slowing down? In my opinion no way. I also have a question regarding this, if someone could answer that would be awesome. I'm not sure how long we have accurately recorded the speed of light but I'm assuming not for to long 100 years, 200, 500 or 1000 it's really irrelivent. We have found a decrease of speed in light in let's just say maximum 1000 years of a small amount let's just say 0.001 of a km per hour. Does that mean in the approximate 13.7 billion years of existence of matter light was traveling a hole lot faster? I think it has only been recent that we have found out light is slowing down. Should some scientist sit down and carry out some kind of sequential eqasion to get an accurate answer on how long we have been here? Since we have been measuring in light years our distances will be all off also. Lol what will we do.

Regards, arnie.

[wendy]

The thing that worries me about time is that one might suppose that time moves at different speeds for different media.

The essence here is that the speed of light is a property of electromagnetism, eg E/B Gv/ft. // Gv.s / ft² = ft/s. Maxwell showed that EM radiation moves at this speed. What happens when one has a refractive index > 1. The speed of light moves slower, eg in water, at 3/4 of space. Since we see no sensible compression in space, does time move slower in water? Of course, we immerse things in air, even under water, so we're actually measuring an air environment under water, not a water environment.

Or are these things real objects, with a proper frame of reference?

I suspect the latter, but it's a mystery to me.

[suddenhalt]

4d space is limited in quantum mechanics by plank units, so several previous posts are simply not true.
There is a limit to ultra small and you cannot keep slicing any dimension in half. The real question then
becomes, if time is spacial and it does have plank unit limits, do other dimensions (have plank units) and how does that effect us?
If probability is a 5th dimension as proposed earlier then our future is limited by lank units also.
If all 12 dimensions of string theory are plank unit limited then we do live in a holographic or matrix universe.
All possibilities can be worked out, but the plank units are really small.

"Sometimes I don't want to see the puppeteers,sometimes I just want to see the magic therein,
and sometimes I just want to pry open the atomsand know why they spin.“

[rr6]

Time = frequency of events/existence ergo and associated motion as comings and goings if not also comings and goings between here and there as a space i.e. a distance that can have variously associated mathematic units of measure.

Anticipation--and that was the beginning of me

Present--- in the womb with ideas to conquer the Universe

Recall--- the good life when all my nutrients were pumped into through my navel

R6

[raindog]

If there was no life in the universe to perceive it, would time exist? Why would it even need to exist? I think time and dimensions are a construct of consciousness...a functional illusion. In my opinion, dimensions are just different perspectives, within different manifestations, of the same thing. And time is what makes this 3rd dimension work. What we perceive as time in this dimension, may manifest itself differently in other dimensions and be unrecognizable to us. Our dimensional perspective here obscures the truth as we try to conceive and explain everything to fit within the laws of our reality. If string theory and the theory of entanglement are real, the holographic universe doesn't seem so far fetched to me. Maybe we're just an amazing MMO with artificial intelligence and free will...the ultimate reality show for someone.

[ICN5D]

Hmm, well, the way I perceive it, is time is what allows movement in 3D. If our reality was only 3D, we be stuck in place without change. No way to move, evolve, grow, or live for that matter. Time can be considered a 4th spatial extension, that records what happened, and is loosely guided by our actions and choices. We are still stuck in the 3D slice, but we are perceiving this " now moment " slice to be in motion. It moves along the 4th spatial axis of what can be called time. And, the strange thing about this analogy, is it helps explain what we feel with straight line acceleration.

- In one scenario, we are going down the highway at 60 mph ( 100 kph ). Maintaining a constant speed, we turn the steering wheel hard to go around a tight corner. And, while we maintain a constant speed, we feel a strong pulling force to the side.

-Now, imagine another scenario: we are sitting still at a traffic light. The light turns green, and we punch the gas pedal, in a 400 hp car. We again, feel a strong pulling force, but in a 90 degree direction to the rear of the car. But, wait a minute!? Weren't we just going straight? There were no corners involved here, just an increase in speed.

So, in one test, we went around a curve at 60mph. In another test, we went straight from 0 to 60 mph. Both cases produced a strong acceleration pulling force, but in perpendicular directions. If we maintain that time may be a real 4th spatial extension, then going from 0 to 60 in a straight line ( in 3D ) will still be taking a curve, but in 4D, a curve in time. Motion can be explained as a slanted line, where sitting idle is a vertical line. In order to transition from still to moving, we have to bend a vertical line into a slanted line, therefore tracing out the mysterious curve we feel in the 0 to 60.

[ICN5D]

Another thing about time, is it's really weird. Like, take ten years, for instance. It takes forever to get there, but goes by quick....

[anderscolingustafson]

The thing that distinguishes time from the other three dimensions is that the amount of energy stays constant through time but it varies through the other three dimensions. If you go from one place to another you will find that there are different amounts of energy in different places but if you go from one time to another you will find that there is the same amount of energy in different times.