Creation vs. Evolution

[H2Andy]

we're not talking about "the meaning" of time

we're talking about what time is

it is one of four dimentions that are inherent in space-time (one is time, three are physical)

it is an inherent attribute of the universe (though it is relative, not constant)

by the way, the view that time is "part of the mental measuring system" pretty much died off with Einstein. its main proponents are 17 and 18 century philosophers.

that's fine for a philosophical discussion of time, but it's not current science

 

[Soggy]

"Two distinct views exist on the meaning of time".
This was the first sentence in your link regarding "time"...not spacetime. Not real definitive. I asked the question because I read an article (Nat Geo I believe) a few years back that said exactly that, "define time". The purpose of the article was to show how difficult it is. My question was then, since it's so hard to define, how can we be sure if it even existed or not?

Please define the word "the."

I specifically linked to a section within that Wiki article that discusses time in the concept of the physical sciences.

 

[Midnight Star]

if you expand the space, then it takes "some" lag for a particle to travel from point A to point B

that "lag" is time

This almost makes one think that as the universe expands, time would slow.

-----

Mike.

 

[Soggy]

This almost makes one think that as the universe expands, time would slow.

It does, but it is relative to the observer. So, for us, it does not appear to slow, but were someone outside able to view us from a stationary, non expanding perspective (an impossibility, since they would exist outside of the universe), we would seem to move slower to them.

EDIT: Hmm...I may have that backwards. Time may actual be speeding up as we expand since time slows at high energy densities.

Now I've confused myself.

 

[Midnight Star]

It does, but it is relative to the observer.

Your absolutely right, I hadn't thought of that. But now that you've mentioned it, it would open up another possibility:

We could, in actuality, be ourselves thousands of years old, even millions, to time relative to an outside observer, yet only years old to us.

-----

Mike.

 

[Soggy]

We could, in actuality, be ourselves thousands of years old, even millions, to time relative to an outside observer, yet only years old to us.

Not quite, but an observer thousands of light years away would see us as we were thousands of years ago. Astronomical events that we witness today happened millions and billions of years ago. This is why we can directly observe the very early universe.

 

[H2Andy]

Now I've confused myself.

i don't belive time will slow as the universe expands

it just takes longer to get from point A to point B because they are getting further apart all the time

time is relative to speed precisely for that reason... the faster you go, the "slower" time goes to you


remember Einsteins "twins" experiment: one leaves Earth on a light-speed ship and returns two hours later.

to his horror, his twin and everybody in Earth has aged 50 years.

to put it another way:

the closer you can get to the speed of light, the less effect time has on you

-or-

the closer you can get to pure energy (photons), the less effect time has on you

 

[Midnight Star]

Not quite, but an observer thousands of light years away would see us as we were thousands of years ago. Astronomical events that we witness today happened millions and billions of years ago. This is why we can directly observe the very early universe.

I understand that concept ... man the magnification it would take to pick out details from those particles, provided they're even that complete (not deflected or acted upon during their long and arduos travel). However, timewise (time against time) it would - time would be relative in two different forms; time wouldn't be relative to oberservation (the observer), since two different zones would exist; even though we say that the light from a distance star is millions of years old (maybe it's no longer there, doppler help us here!), it's relative to us. Given the distance it would take to travel, they could use their outside "time mechinisms" to determine that the "change in light frequency" is beginning to gradually speed up instead of staying constant or slowing down: outstanding light in relation to gravity, but then gravity is in relation to distance and mass, which brings us back to a relationship of time.

Inside a computer for example (over simplified I know), time would be relative to the laws of electricity (and all it's variants), and resistance, in and of itself. To us, the "time inverval" is relative only within the constructs of the system in which is functions; everything inside that system is bound by it: it runs fast - a second to us, is like an enternity to a microprocessor ... in the literal "blink of an eye".

-----

Mike.

 

[Soggy]

Are you sure your name isn't Maurice (the Midnight Toker)?

You are waaaay overcomplexifying things.

Brian Greene does a good job explaining this in The Elegant Universe, using Jack and Jill, both with jet packs and clocks on them. He goes through a bunch of different scenarios that makes the concept of relativity fairly understandable.

 

[Midnight Star]

Are you sure your name isn't Maurice (the Midnight Toker)?

- nope, that must be someone else. Now ... what's your excuse?

-----

Mike.