What is TIME?

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'Calling all science buffs' What is Time?


Many people describe time as entropy and the disoder of physical properties on a small and large scale driving the arrow of time forward. Yet how can entropy exist in empty space with the dimension of space/time still evident.


What is your view on Time?

Big topic. The first thing I'd say is that you should re-avaluate your idea of "empty" space.

"Time is an Illusion - Lunchtime doubly so" - Ford Prefect (The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy)

Not sure giving my layman thoughts on this The end of the universe in my mind happens when all matter is spread thin enough and in the last moments converts to energy. So in that since time becomes meaningless as no change is possible. So time in
my opinion is related to low entropy in matter and energy(matter and energy being the same thing only in different forms).

C. S. Lewis:
The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

Oorrr. I got a man-u clock with hands on it , when it reaches 8:00 it is time to go to work. Time is the time that passes by between to different times.

I am thinking time between A time and B time is infinate regardless of how close together A time and B time are. But I regard this as an assumption as I have not studdied phyics.

Ask Einstein.

Time is a man-made tool.

time is just something that stops everything happening at once, all matter experiences time differently.

time doesnt exist....

follow me here...........

the past doesnt exist, cos its gone - not there anymore...
the Future doesnt exist cos it hasnt happened yet...
the Present doesnt exist, cos as soon as you think aboout it it is in the Past....

like this moment........and that one....... and this one......and....

seriously though....

Time is effected by Gravity and Speed.....

things at the faster than the speed of light exist at null-time, the slower you go, the faster time goes... like in that Atomic Clock experiment....

Gravity effects it as Gravity pull on everything and even effects light..... its what makes black holes black...LOL, at a point of density (i dont know) the object under the effects of gravity also reach Null-time.

maybe this explains why work takes ages and resting on a sunbed makes time go fast....

Astilius wrote

Yes your right in some way, but what percentage of the Universe is visible/invisible matter and the remaining empty space?
The universe is becoming less dense as we speak due to dark energy accelerating and inflating our universe. A denser universe would slow the rate of expansion and reach critical density and receed back the singularity. Answer my question as intended or don't answer at all!

Aspie_Chav wrote

Time does pass between two points but what exactly is it measuring?
Your perception and all humans perception of time created by our brains is experienced in a linear fashion remembering>experiencing>imagining.
If we experienced time in a constant fashion unable to remember or imagine then we would experience time as it is intended in physics, ie entropy.
It is soley due to our human and biological nature of recording that we can interpret time as past present and future, but really PPF is a human conception and forms an illusion of what time is.

dgd1788 wrote [/quote][quote]

ah ha, I was waiting for an answer like this.
This is time dilation and one that explains the relativity of time perceived by two observors.
Time dilation is governed by two or more rules of einsteinernhoffs special theory of relativity.
1) light is constant through space (exempting different meduims). light can neither gain velocity nor lose it, ie shining a torch from a car travelling at 100mph won't increase the speed of light from the torch by +100mph (if we were to measure light speed in mph). Just as shining the torch behind the car won't loose velocity by -100.

2)Light has a restricted velocity of 299 792 458 m/s and everything and anything including light itself within the universe cannot exceed light speed. This is the heart of einsteins famous equation relating mass with energy e=mc2, exceeding light speed would be impossible becuase it would need infinite mass.

3) The effect of time dilation can also be expained by lorentz transformation.

We have two astronauts who want to demonstrate this experiment, one astronaut is flying the spaceship and the other astronaut is acting as a second observor.
If the astronaut accelerated his spaceship to near light speed and near complete time dilation everything in the spceship would appear to slow down, this is becuase light is constant and the matter and everything within the spaceship is travelling in the direction of this light speed. Anything moving ahead of the spaceship would therefore exceed light speed. The astronaut would then observe that time in his environment had slowed down and the moving clock would have demonstrated this.
HOWEVER....

The second observor would state that time for the astronaut would have measured normaly and his moving clock would have demonstrated this.

This therefore evidently explains that time can be perceived RELATIVE to another observor, the fact that the astronaut experienced his time slowing down conflicts with the second observors statement who said time had passed normally.
Time therefore is not constant within the Universe, time can be perceived to 'run' differently from another observor, time is variable but is perceived to run at different imes relative to another observor.

If everything in the Uiniverse zipped through space at light speed and experienced total time dilation. Then we would assume that entropy has stopped and the hands on our clocks measuring 12:00 am. So would you assume that time has stopped?
No, becuase everything is still moving and anything moving through a reference of a space/time dimension requires time to measure speed.
So we still have time!! !

Time is a Dimension....

i heard that in higher Mathematics they use 12 Dimensions?

can anyone elaborate on this?

I'm not sure about 12 dimensions, trying to visualise it is impossible.

We perceive the universe as 3 dimensions, Time being the 4th dimension.
Just as Lorentz equation states, length contracts as speed increases while time expands while speed increases.

It still doesn't explain time, it just includes it as another dimension.


If time from a non-humans perception of time was experiencing and not remembering/imagining then how much of the change in entropy experienced would it take for the non-human to extend towards remembering or imagining? What rate of change in entropy would it take for the non-human to experience time witout resorting to remembering?

Try to imagine what I mean, we remember things constantly but what if everything we observed was new and new and new, without being able to compare it to the previous.
Time therefore has to be measured from the smallest possible measurement from a change in rate of entropy, we can only measure time though entropy but we know that entropy doesn't explain time.

In order to measure the smallest measurment in the rate of entropy we would have to use light becuase the rate of entropy or change is the quickest.

found an interesting Model for explaining time here -:



the Dot is a Stationary Boulder....

Aspie_for_the_Lord, it seems to be travelling Northeast so how is it stationary?