Kevin's Watch

Clearly 'relativity' concerns itself with 'time' in that it [time] is bound up with the three spatial dimensions into the new [post Newtonian] idea of 'space time' but what has quantum theory to say on this most important of..... [whatever time is]. If the three spatial dimensions have continous 'existance' through the 'passage of time' and time itself is tied to them, then will not time also have this continuous existance. If not, what of the past and future [in terms of 'existance' of the spatial dimensions]; ie where does the one go to and the other come from. Do we not have an either/or situation of these dimensions having to i) exist for all time at all times, or ii) have a continous destuction of the past/creation of the future [again in terms of the experiential 'stuff' of the three dimensions that surround us - matter and space].

And while we are here can I just put Newtonian, Relativity and string/m theories into the context of their relationship to each other [or not]. If we were to place each in a 'set', would the Newtonian 'set' lie inside the relativity 'set' or not. [I think not. If I understand correctly, relativity is completely independant of newtonian mechanics even to the point where one should abandon the idea of gravity existing at all]. But what of relativity, quantum, string and m-theory. Do each of these represent a completely independant theory of 'how things are' in a manner that the set of 'relativity' is completely outside that of string, and similarly with string and m [and should quantum have been included in the previous sentance at all?] Feel free guys i) to dismiss all this as the ramblings of a lunatic or ii) repond cooly with " I refer the gentleman to the answers I gave in THE LAST 30 THREADS HE POSTED THAT RAISED THE SAME BLOODY QUESTIONS!"

Relativity is famously irreconcilable with quantum physics, so those at least are distinct. M theory and string theory are variations of quantum physics.

Time is just another direction.

--A

In the film K-Pax, Prot says to his psychiatrist that Einsteins theory only says it is impossible for a body to accelerate to the speed of light - it says nothing [he says] about objects *already* travelling at speeds higher than that of light and certainly does not rule out the possibility that such objects exist. Is he correct?

[And this thing about time - I'm not getting it. Hashi I think said that at the quantum level time is not taken to exist {I'm in the edit page and can't see his exact wording so apologies if I'm getting this wrong Hashi} yet at the relativity level it most certainly is. Av's point implies [again this may be just my reading of it] that as just an extra dimension to add to our normal three, we can consider all of time to be existant at all of the times that we experience [italicised because what we experience is by no means actually the way things really are - the passage of time may be for example just an illusion that our brains have 'worked up' to stop us experiencing the confusion of having 'every thing happening together'] Can anyone sort this mess out for me - I have a need to at least know what it is that I can't understand even if I can't understand it [the beginning's of 'wisdom' perhaps?]

peter wrote:[And this thing about time - I'm not getting it. Hashi I think said that at the quantum level time is not taken to exist {I'm in the edit page and can't see his exact wording so apologies if I'm getting this wrong Hashi} yet at the relativity level it most certainly is. Av's point implies [again this may be just my reading of it] that as just an extra dimension to add to our normal three, we can consider all of time to be existant at all of the times that we experience [italicised because what we experience is by no means actually the way things really are - the passage of time may be for example just an illusion that our brains have 'worked up' to stop us experiencing the confusion of having 'every thing happening together'] Can anyone sort this mess out for me - I have a need to at least know what it is that I can't understand even if I can't understand it [the beginning's of 'wisdom' perhaps?]

I think you are definitely on to something there. Gravity exists at the macro level but not the micro level while the weak and strong forces exist only at the micro level but not the macro. Only magnetism exists at both levels even though at the macro level its effect has limited range. As Avatar notes, time is merely another spatial dimension that exists alongside the other three and this particular dimension may be "too large" for quantum-level particles to use for travel, which could explain why to us they sometimes appear to move backwards in time or faster than the speed of light--they aren't moving through time the way we do.

Hashi Lebwohl wrote:

peter wrote:[And this thing about time - I'm not getting it. Hashi I think said that at the quantum level time is not taken to exist {I'm in the edit page and can't see his exact wording so apologies if I'm getting this wrong Hashi} yet at the relativity level it most certainly is. Av's point implies [again this may be just my reading of it] that as just an extra dimension to add to our normal three, we can consider all of time to be existant at all of the times that we experience [italicised because what we experience is by no means actually the way things really are - the passage of time may be for example just an illusion that our brains have 'worked up' to stop us experiencing the confusion of having 'every thing happening together'] Can anyone sort this mess out for me - I have a need to at least know what it is that I can't understand even if I can't understand it [the beginning's of 'wisdom' perhaps?]

I think you are definitely on to something there. Gravity exists at the macro level but not the micro level while the weak and strong forces exist only at the micro level but not the macro. Only magnetism exists at both levels even though at the macro level its effect has limited range. As Avatar notes, time is merely another spatial dimension that exists alongside the other three and this particular dimension may be "too large" for quantum-level particles to use for travel, which could explain why to us they sometimes appear to move backwards in time or faster than the speed of light--they aren't moving through time the way we do.

I don't think that's true, H.
Certainly at the micro level the other forces are far stronger than gravity so in the vast majority of cases it is completely overwhelmed by them...but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
It's definitely true that we don't have a consistent way to integrate it yet, though.

Heh...on the next thing: by time being "too big"...do you mean that maybe the things at the smallest level are kind of slipping through the cracks between instants of time?

peter, I'm pretty sure your guy IS correct in at least one way: Einstein's theories are silent/not applicable on that. Somewhere not too long ago I spotted someone trying to grapple with those superluminal travelers. Don't remember much about it, but one thing was that there would be an inversion compared to "our" side. On our side velocity increases mass/energy. On the other side, SLOWING towards the speed of light increases energy...and nothing can slow all the way down to it.

Speaking of relativity and time dilation ... I think that there is some sense in which "multiple times" have to exist "simultaneously." Because objects that travel at different speeds experience time differently, they can't be said to be in the same reference frame. In fact, there is no "universal reference frame" when it comes to time. There is no single NOW. There are as many as there are reference frames, and these are dependent upon an object's speed relative to other objects.

So does that mean all times "always" exists? I'm not sure, but this line of thought at least stretches our minds and concepts in that direction. It has actually been confirmed experimentally, that objects experience time differently (one clock in orbit, one on earth, etc.).

A thought: Supposing that travelling faster than the speed of light would be equivalent to travelling backward in time, then everything that was travelling in that superliminal reference frame would also be travelling backward in time, and experiencing time in reverse. To exceed the speed of light would be to reverse along the timeline that had already been experienced in a way indistinguishable from its forward movement observed from outside.

Therefore, travel faster than the speed of light would not be possible, as it is exactly equivalent to travel slower than the speed of light, and could only be experienced as accelaration up to c but no higher.

peter wrote:...the passage of time may be for example just an illusion that our brains have 'worked up' to stop us experiencing the confusion of having 'every thing happening together'

Well, it's more like an illusion that the universe has worked up to stop everything from happening all at once. The universe has no concept of time. Things just happen one after the other.

The time that we experience is wildly subjective. It's fluid, plastic, and like all reality, subject to the pressures of our consciousness.

--A

But is this a place where logic breaks down. I can concieve of an either/or situation. Either all time exists simultaneously or it doesn't. If it doesn't, does it make sense to ask where did yesterdays matter go to, and where will tomorrows come from. [I think not - It's really always 'now' and it's 'now' that is continuous; therefor it makes no sense to talk of tomorrow or yesterday as being existant - they never were; it was only ever now.]

Avatar wrote:Time is just another direction.

--A

you're one of my superheroes.

*Bows*

peter wrote:But is this a place where logic breaks down. I can concieve of an either/or situation. Either all time exists simultaneously or it doesn't. If it doesn't, does it make sense to ask where did yesterdays matter go to, and where will tomorrows come from. [I think not - It's really always 'now' and it's 'now' that is continuous; therefor it makes no sense to talk of tomorrow or yesterday as being existant - they never were; it was only ever now.]

Well, it is always now. And we're always here. The value of now and here might change, even though they are conceptually constant.

But where did yesterday go? If it didn't go somewhere, then isn't time travel impossible?

Clive Barker wrote: Memory, prophecy and fantasy,
the past, the future and the dreaming
moment between are all one country,
living one immortal day.

To know this, is wisdom.
To use it, is the Art.

The real question is whether time is linear or not. But all that really matters is how we perceive it.

--A

Perceive here, can have two meanings - as in 'experience' [ie how we experience it], or 'understand' [ie how we understand it]. I'm not clear which one you mean Av, but if we can not even nail down it's existential status I'm guessing we are going to have a devil's own job understanding it. It's 'lineality' seems apparent to us in the unidirectional experience we have of it - but we all know that it can expand or contract [in our experience of it] in a manner entierly dependant on what we are doing at any given point. We all naturally assume this expansion and contraction to be an illusion [and no doubt it is], but our complete and total inability to actually measure the rate at which time passes [one second per second?] would make it almost impossible to prove it so. [I don't think this helps other than to illustrate that our perception of time is based on pretty nebulous ground as well.]

peter wrote:but our complete and total inability to actually measure the rate at which time passes

Except we do/can measure exactly the rate at which it passes...at least as precisely as we can measure anything else.
It's not the rate that causes the problem...it's all the other stuff that has to be true BECAUSE of what we know about the rate [like that it varies] that causes the troubles.

I was just thinking the other day...cuz of something that popped up...about peeps fascination with things.

We're struggling here with time...and as several have pointed out, it's "just another direction." And that's part of the problem. It is and it isn't. On top of that we assume we understand things we don't so time seems more difficult.
spacetime isn't just the sum of the directions. AND we don't understand the "simpler" spacial directions much more than we do the time one. We just think we do.
In many ways you [royal you] don't comprehend much more of how we get from point A to point B than from today to tomorrow. Where does point A go when we leave it behind? Is it still there?
I could ramble a bit on this, but I'll just leave it at that, cuz I'm not sure the rambling from a to b would be all that interesting.

I think I heard Stephen Hawking once describe the world down at the quantum level as 'grainy' - by this I think he meant that at ever smaller and smaller measurements of time, distance whatever, a point is reached where it is no longer *possible* to talk of smaller units - that distance and time have 'quanta' in just the same way as energy does, minimum 'packet sizes' below which you cannot go. Is this a) correct and b) what you are referring to above in the comments on distance V?

Read a thing recently that mentioned the Planck length, and basically put it as this: If you tried to measure below a certain size, the only way to do so would be to concentrate energy into such a small space that it collapses into a singularity, thus making it impossible to measure. The smallest possible unit of distance is the smallest possible space anything can occupy without collapsing spacetime due to quantum gravitational effects.

It's still only theoretical, I think. And I'm am far from an expert, so I may have got this wrong.