jenn

WOW!!!!
What a great topic..haha
The way I see it is this. Time really does not exist. Time is only a perception in my view. And supposedly people have already incountered crossing into other dimensions.I believe that it is only a matter of "time" before we can all make the transition into other dimensions.It will happen and I hope I am alive to see it!!

Liquidrage

Semantically time doesn't exist.
Much like the other dimensions don't exist.

However, as a statement of entropy or complexity it is very real.

It can be said that time flows in one direction only (from our viewpoint) because the flow is the result of the increase in complexity of quantum possibilties.

fando

The way I visualize movement in spacetime is as follows: Consider yourself a pilot of a rocket that's moving in one direction and pretend that there's a camera on your ship that's taking periodic snapshots of an asteroid that you're zooming by. If you lay these snapshots next to each other in progression perpendicular to the direction of motion such that the asteroid moves north when the photos are laid out E to W, you'll get a sense of the asteroid moving through time (E to W)from your perspective in the ship.

Let's start by visualizing the simplest case: when the relative speed between your rocket and the asteroid is zero. In this case, the progression of photos would seem unchanging. The asteroid would just sit there in the same spot on every photo. In essence, you see that the asteroid is travelling straight along the time direction (E to W) without any movement into the space directions (N or S). You are witnessing the asteroid travelling full speed along the time direction.

Now if the relative speed were near the speed of light, the progressive photos will show the asteroid quickly leaving the field of view of the ship camera. If you lay out the progression as before, you can see that the asteroid is moving away from the time direction (E to W) and towards the space direction (N to S). Doing this over again at a speed even closer to the speed of light will result in fewer photos that contain the asteroid, as the asteroid will be moving N to S faster than it does E to W according to your photo layout. Eventually, you'll reach a point where you're going so fast that only one photo has the asteroid in it. What you are witnessing is travel along the time direction (E to W) being sacrificed for travel along the space direction (N or S).

So how does that demonstrate time dilation? Well, consider the interval between the photos. Lets say that the rocket camera takes a snapshot at every interval x seconds, which is tracked by a special clock. x must be a very very small number to take photos of an asteroid going by really fast, but let's just pretend we have such a camera. As a human, you would experience exactly x seconds every x seconds while on the ship according to your clock. But if you look at the same clock on the asteroid, you'll see something different. Suppose you're going fast enought such that the asteroid appears in a few photos. Draw a line connecting them:

[code]
Space
|
| 0 Asteroid moving right along
| 0
| 0\\ - Ticks (light pulses)
| 0 \\
+-----++----- Time (you're sitting on this line)
</pre>[/quote]

Hmm... the height of the film (space direction) is much longer than the width (time directon).

Since you feel like you're not moving, you pretty much sit on the time axis moving full speed ahead in time. Whenever the asteroid clock ticks, it sends out visual signal that you can detect. Now just draw lines from each tick event on the asteroid towards the rocket on that diagram. The speed of light is finite, so the line will have some slope (more towards the space direction than the asteroid). Because the interval between ticks on the asteroid is x according to the asteroid, it will be that long along the asteroid line (space and time have equivalent units, use the speed of light as a conversion factor). When the ticks reach you (the +es on the diagram), you can jot down when it happened relative to your onboard clock. . If the asteroid were not moving, the ticks projected onto your ship (the time axis) will be exactly x seconds. But if the asteroid were moving very very fast, the ticks projected onto your ship will have an interval shorter than x. Time seems to be moving slower on the asteroid according to you! That is time dilation. It is sort of an optical illusion, but the illusion is reality. Or something like that.

The key concept here is to treat time just like another space direction. To visualize it, all you have to do is invoke the movie reel analogy.

[ June 07, 2002: Message edited by: fando ]

[ June 07, 2002: Message edited by: fando ]</p>

jenn

I disagree....

jenn

my reply fell short.....That was a great concept Fando....

fando

heh, had to add a time dilation explanation. ASCII art skills++

jenn

Ya'll are way to smart for me.....Fando..that was cool!! <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

fando

It took me many, many agonizing days to understand these things deeply. Don't feel to left out.

Chew on all the various explanations and eventually you'll grok relativity.

Veil of Fire

So if I just sit still, time will go faster than when I'm moving?

So why does work seem to drag by so slowly?

Liquidrage

The difference between standing still and going 500 MPH in an airplane is so small that the effects can not be detected at this time.

If you consider normal time to be X and time at C to be 0 then you can estimate the amount of time dialtion.

At 1/2 C you could be at 1/2 X

C = 186,000 miles per second in a vacuum
or 669600000 MPH.

So you can see that even 10,000 MPH is a drop in the bucket.

Also, in relativity all things are allowed to claim they are at rest.
Even if you were going at 99% C, you wold still feel as if time was moving normal for you.

And don't forget that we are all on a planet, going around a sun, that is orbiting inside a galaxy that is it self moving. We are moving really really fast all the time. Though this has nothing to do with how we feel time.