Philander Seabury 29,682 Posted Thursday at 08:59 AM Share #1 Posted Thursday at 08:59 AM Link to post Share on other sites
maddmaxx 27,957 Posted Thursday at 09:39 AM Share #2 Posted Thursday at 09:39 AM Time is almost an artificial definition. Humans use "time" to schedule their lives and order things but what is "time" really? We define time as what the clock says. Is that time or is it "now, before now and after now? Our normal concept of time is a scalar quantity, flowing past us from past to future. The moment you read this is already in the past. The next sentence is in the future. That's all mysticism. Physics however has difficulty defining time other than as part of the equations in the second law of thermodynamics or the growth of entropy. I'm not even going to attempt to go there as it hurts my head. Suffice it to say that time is not the same everywhere. Link to post Share on other sites
MickinMD 5,186 Posted Thursday at 11:28 AM Share #3 Posted Thursday at 11:28 AM The best book about time is the late Stephen Hawking's, A Brief History of Time. I only contains one equation, and it's Area = pi x r squared - used just as an example. Yet Hawking goes deep into the concept of time, explaining it as clearly as the multivariable-calculus based Modern Physics (Relativity) classes I took in college. Yes, time is limited in terms of how we perceive it and the current math indicates it may be that we can possibly "time travel" forward at accelerated rates but that going backward is not possible. Nature and natural phenomena are symmetrical - so much so that non-symmetrical occurrences are what led Einstein to the Theory of Relativity. For a left there's a right, up and down, backward and forward, positive and negative electricity, north and south magnetic poles, etc. etc. But our experience with time only goes forward and, from a physicist's viewpoint, that's extremely strange. If you walk to your left then realize you left your keys on a table, you can go reverse and walk to your right and get your keys. But if you knock a glass of that table and it hits the floor and breaks, you can NOT go back in time and stop the glass from being knocked over. The late Stephen Hawking in his book, A Brief History of Time, spends many pages discussing the limitations we see in time. He concludes that Entropy is "The Arrow of Time" and since time is tied to it, that is the reason we only see it going forward. Entropy is a measure of disorder and is the natural course of things: a sand castle on a beach is an ordered thing and, over time, it will decay into randomly distributed grains of sand - a disordered state. We'd be astonished if grains of sand on a beach blew or were washed into the shape of a sand castle. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is: The Entropy of the Universe always increases. Since Entropy always increases, we can only see time as going forward. The universe is expanding - becoming less ordered - and may be part of the reason that entropy "naturally" increases. But what will happen if there's enough matter in the universe to cause enough gravity that the universe eventually stops expanding and starts contracting? Will time constantly backward? Will the universe become compacted into a tiny ball from which the next "Big Bang" occurs? Will time have reversed so that the next Big Bang happens at the same time and date the last Big Bang occurred? Has the universe been going through a Big Bang, Expansion, Contraction cycle over and over so that there have been an many, many. many Big Bangs? Do they all happen in the same date range? If time goes backward, will we all go through all of the posts on Square Wheels 50 billion years from now? And will that time be in a parallel universe that occurs at the same time as right now? Of course, one constant is that a kiss is just a kiss as time goes by. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
donkpow 6,746 Posted Thursday at 12:05 PM Share #4 Posted Thursday at 12:05 PM It's all very scientific. I could explain it to you but you wouldn't understand. Technically, it's statistical. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
Kirby 17,646 Posted Thursday at 02:43 PM Share #5 Posted Thursday at 02:43 PM Does anyone really know what time it is? 1 2 1 Link to post Share on other sites
Taylor 1,308 Posted Thursday at 02:45 PM Share #6 Posted Thursday at 02:45 PM When I die, time and the universe will cease to exist. Link to post Share on other sites
Philander Seabury 29,682 Posted Thursday at 03:10 PM Author Share #7 Posted Thursday at 03:10 PM Time is like a river. Link to post Share on other sites
Philander Seabury 29,682 Posted Thursday at 03:11 PM Author Share #8 Posted Thursday at 03:11 PM 27 minutes ago, Kirby said: Does anyone really know what time it is? A man with one watch does. A man with two or more is never sure. Link to post Share on other sites
bikeman564™ 13,909 Posted Thursday at 03:14 PM Share #9 Posted Thursday at 03:14 PM 30 minutes ago, Kirby said: Does anyone really know what time it is? 25 or 6 to 4 Link to post Share on other sites
Philander Seabury 29,682 Posted Thursday at 03:15 PM Author Share #10 Posted Thursday at 03:15 PM So is time really on our side? Link to post Share on other sites
Philander Seabury 29,682 Posted Thursday at 03:16 PM Author Share #11 Posted Thursday at 03:16 PM Just now, bikeman564™ said: 25 or 6 to 4 do do do do doot. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
Philander Seabury 29,682 Posted Thursday at 03:17 PM Author Share #12 Posted Thursday at 03:17 PM Time waits for no man. Link to post Share on other sites
bikeman564™ 13,909 Posted Thursday at 03:23 PM Share #13 Posted Thursday at 03:23 PM 5 minutes ago, Philander Seabury said: Time waits for no man. but Tom Waits 1 Link to post Share on other sites
jsharr 43,228 Posted Thursday at 03:28 PM Share #14 Posted Thursday at 03:28 PM Depends on which side of the Styx you are on. Link to post Share on other sites
Thaddeus Kosciuszko 10,651 Posted Thursday at 05:48 PM Share #15 Posted Thursday at 05:48 PM So if we do come to the conclusion that time is indeed infinite, isn't it curious we rarely seem to have enough of it? Link to post Share on other sites
Zealot 4,428 Posted Thursday at 07:16 PM Share #16 Posted Thursday at 07:16 PM From everlasting to everlasting... Link to post Share on other sites
12string 3,443 Posted Thursday at 07:25 PM Share #17 Posted Thursday at 07:25 PM I'll tell you in a few million years. Or I won't. Link to post Share on other sites
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