Oxymoron

A whole page discussing the existence of time, and not one instance of the word...'entropy'? Some mistake surely?

Defiant Heretic

Not only does time exist, but it appears to be <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=56&t=000309&p=" target="_blank">repeating itself</a>.

Sidian

As for Julian's consecutive "nows", there's a problem with infinity. Just like there are infinite points on a line between two other points (between 1.0 and 1.1 there is 1.11, 1.111, etc) there would be infinite "nows" between each now.

as long as there is movement, there is always a place where an object is located between where it was and where it is.

think in terms of slow motion film capture...each frame is a now...if you get more and more frames per second you have more and more nows...there's no limit exept maybe lack of light emission at the high end, but that doesn't technically stop the divisibility of the "nows" sequence line.

i personally think time is so built into out way of knowing things that forgoing it now would be too difficult...like getting rid of time zones all together and everyone using the metric system and everyone re-learning to count and do math in a base 2,4,8, or 16 number system (wtf is 10?)

maybe it would work better, but good luck switching over.

Liquidrage

Sidian,

I think your use of infinity is plausible.
However, Julian's arguement is that time is discrete.
He is not alone is this viewpoint, but it is not known either way for sure if time is discrete.

So while it is possible that it is not discrete, there is no evidence either way and possibility is not evidence against.

Though there is a slight evidence for the discrete measure of time. Or at least the time can be thought about discretely.
The Planck time is the time it would take a photon travelling at the speed of light to across a distance equal to the Planck length.

Stephen T-B

Sidian raises a paradox of “Infinity” lying between two fixed points. (The pen dropped on to a desk top halves the distances to be travelled as it falls and can never, therefore, hit the desk top. But the “clunk” it makes when the two appear to meet suggests that they actually do.)
If infinity stretches in both directions – to the infinitely small and to the infinitely vast – where are we?
I have a totally unfounded, non-scientific notion in my head that Time and Scale are linked: that Time at the quantum scale is different from Time at the human scale, and that Time at the human scale is different from Time at the intergalactic scale (whatever that might be.)
Perhaps the infinitely small meets the infinitely vast, forming a circle of infinite length? The implications of that for Time would be interesting if it were not for the fact that before I could begin to consider them, I would have disappeared up my own bottom.
(Please forgive this post. Sometimes, quite often in fact, I”m not in total control of my own thought processes.)

tronvillain

peeramid, I am not sure it would be accurate to say that the solution proposed is "time does not exist" but rather "there is no unique moving present." It is the position that I take.

Ramen

Sorry I haven't communicated this very well. I'm only marginally exposed to science (majored in accounting). The notion of time not existing that I'd like to address is more from a metaphysical standpoint. So, if there is an afterlife and time doesn't exist, have we existed forever? If we exist in an afterlife, does motion exist for the need of time to exist?

Mr. Sammi

TronVillain may be correct in saying TIME does not exist because the time we use is an ancient structure imposed by humans.

What Tronvillain lacks is insight. What we call time, which is an immaterial, fits an underlying phenomena which has not been explained. So the insight Tron lacks, is in the investigation of the underlying phenomena upon which this thing we call time rests.

* * *

The past is not concurrent with the present in the strictist sense of physics NEITHER is it accessible in the way Barbour envisions.

Whatever supports the advancing of our clocks sec by sec IS also implicated in our worldly time.

* * *

Time is like the mind. The mind exists because of the brain. The mind may be a phenomena of the brain. Some say we have no minds. When the brain sturgeons open our heads they see no mind only something we call the brain.

I guess the question is WHAT IS THE BRAIN OF TIME?


Sammi Na Boodie (in time for forever)

Kharakov

Consciousness?

atrahasis

I also have a problem with beleiving that Time really does exist but i think that the almost unfathomable scenario of a universe without Time in turn calls into question the very connection between cause and effect.If time can break down,how can one event be placed clearly "before" or "after" another?

Hypothetically, if there is no clear difference between now and the instant after, how can we say whether the gunshot caused the death...or the death caused the gunshot?

Best
BlackMoses

Confucious