[quote]SteelyD wrote:
I don’t know if time just sped up or slowed down, but all I know is that reading this thread, I just lost about 2 minutes I’ll never get back.[/quote]
I’m guessing this kind of stuff doesn’t interest you? [/quote]
Oh, I think the idea is fascinating, it just occurred to me that I spent time reading it that I’ll never get back… In fact, the ‘rock’ thing piqued my interest-- I have an MS in geology/geophysics.
I’m not sure if I misunderstood the first post, but my take on it is opposite-- rocks, let’s say deep crustal, non-mantle rock, is solid instantaneously yet fluid over geologic time. To see it act ‘in motion’ at solid temperature (vs. molten), we’d have to speed up actual time tremendously.
[quote]FlameofOsiris wrote:
Yeah, I remember learning about how gps had to take time delay into account in my physics class. It was never really explained in detail, but it was brought up again by my astronomy professor, Michio Kaku. He knows his stuff. =)[/quote]
Yes but it’s not because of time dilation due to the satellite/body moving so fast we have to take relativity into account, it’s due to the time taken for the transmitting wave to reach the satellite. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
SteelyD, I completely agree. The more you slow down time, the MORE still a rock would appear. Same thing with water and anything else for that matter. It’s like how they say that glass is sort of like a liquid, in that it “melts” over time. To observe this, we would definitely have to increase the speed of time. Btw, I didn’t mean for my original post towards you to sound condescending, and I hope you didn’t take it that way, haha.
JLu, tbh, I really don’t know. I’d rather not try to explain something I’m not 100% certain about. Maybe someone else knows. My understanding, due to the way 2 of my physics professors stressed it, is that the time difference taken into account has to do with the literal slowing down of time as objects move. They stressed how it’s one way we can currently observe time travel. Fascinating stuff, I must say.
[quote]FlameofOsiris wrote:
SteelyD, I completely agree. The more you slow down time, the MORE still a rock would appear. Same thing with water and anything else for that matter. It’s like how they say that glass is sort of like a liquid, in that it “melts” over time. To observe this, we would definitely have to increase the speed of time. Btw, I didn’t mean for my original post towards you to sound condescending, and I hope you didn’t take it that way, haha.
JLu, tbh, I really don’t know. I’d rather not try to explain something I’m not 100% certain about. Maybe someone else knows. My understanding, due to the way 2 of my physics professors stressed it, is that the time difference taken into account has to do with the literal slowing down of time as objects move. They stressed how it’s one way we can currently observe time travel. Fascinating stuff, I must say. [/quote]
So I decided to just look this up lol.
I didn’t think GPS were using light signals which is why I didn’t think relativity had to be taken into account but I was wrong apparently. Some pretty cool shit on that page.
[quote]FlameofOsiris wrote:
SteelyD, I completely agree. The more you slow down time, the MORE still a rock would appear. Same thing with water and anything else for that matter. It’s like how they say that glass is sort of like a liquid, in that it “melts” over time. To observe this, we would definitely have to increase the speed of time. Btw, I didn’t mean for my original post towards you to sound condescending, and I hope you didn’t take it that way, haha.
JLu, tbh, I really don’t know. I’d rather not try to explain something I’m not 100% certain about. Maybe someone else knows. My understanding, due to the way 2 of my physics professors stressed it, is that the time difference taken into account has to do with the literal slowing down of time as objects move. They stressed how it’s one way we can currently observe time travel. Fascinating stuff, I must say. [/quote]
So I decided to just look this up lol.
I didn’t think GPS were using light signals which is why I didn’t think relativity had to be taken into account but I was wrong apparently. Some pretty cool shit on that page.
[/quote]
Lol, I love wiki. Definitely some interesting stuff on that page.
[quote]Ct. Rockula wrote:
until a few centuries ago nobody cared about time.[/quote]
Humans were concerned with time way, way before that: clocks and calendars were used in ancient Greece and Egypt.
Time as we know it is an artificial construct, but you could argue that time includes things like being able to identify the changing of seasons (which is a way of marking the passage of time throughout the year). Many of the earliest religions paid tribute to the various seasons (mainly as a way of ensuring a good harvest but also to honor nature), so you could say that time began to develop alongside religion (in the modern world, time became independent, but it certainly seems to have been born out of religion).
Like religion, the idea of time is a means of making sense of the world around us.
That’s probably more to do with the fact that they don’t operate to strict deadlines, rather than being totally oblivious to time. Most cultures have ways of identifying time, even if they aren’t as precise as the methods we possess. For example, the organization of days and weeks is a form of marking the passing of time: even the most primitive, isolated tribes use this system. There are exceptions, though: I remember reading about some linguistics expert who was studying how the concept of time influenced the languages of various cultures around the world. This guy lived with an isolated tribe of indians, and discovered that they had no idea of what we would perceive as time. The significant thing was that this was reflected in their language, which used no past present or future tenses.
It’s interesting how we have built this construct of time around us and allowed it to influence and shape all aspects of society (including language and religion, of course). You could say that time dulls our perception of minute events, but we wouldn’t have progressed as far as we have without it. Will it eventually become a limiting factor in our development? Well, only time will tell…
[quote]SteelyD wrote:
I don’t know if time just sped up or slowed down, but all I know is that reading this thread, I just lost about 2 minutes I’ll never get back.[/quote]
I’m guessing this kind of stuff doesn’t interest you? [/quote]
Oh, I think the idea is fascinating, it just occurred to me that I spent time reading it that I’ll never get back… In fact, the ‘rock’ thing piqued my interest-- I have an MS in geology/geophysics.
I’m not sure if I misunderstood the first post, but my take on it is opposite-- rocks, let’s say deep crustal, non-mantle rock, is solid instantaneously yet fluid over geologic time. To see it act ‘in motion’ at solid temperature (vs. molten), we’d have to speed up actual time tremendously.[/quote]
No, SteelyDan’s right in that sense that this kind of discussion is first year University common room talk.
You bring this up in a real philosophy class and it gets 5 minutes tops before the professor tells you to go to the common room that I mentioned before. Epsitemology/Metaphysics stuff is sort of like beginner’s bodybuilding articles about what a push-up and squat are and what muscles they’re for and what protein is…we may have to talk about it in some class, but not for long.
The vibration of molecules in solids occur over such short distances that they are invisible to the naked eye(not to mention the size of the molecules themselves). So even if time were to slow down (or if your speed of perception sped up; same effect) to 10^-6 of what it is now, you still wouldn’t see the rock moving.
The scenario contains a contradiction and is therefore unimaginable. Time is a measurement of motion. If all motion in the universe were to slow down proportionately, the same would apply to our perceptual and mental faculties and therefore our perception of time would remain the same, assuming the change didn’t cause the physical universe to break down and kill us all outright.
[quote]belligerent wrote:
The scenario contains a contradiction and is therefore unimaginable. Time is a measurement of motion. If all motion in the universe were to slow down proportionately, the same would apply to our perceptual and mental faculties and therefore our perception of time would remain the same, assuming the change didn’t cause the physical universe to break down and kill us all outright.[/quote]
Time is not the measurement of motion. Time is the chronological passing of events. If I cool an atom down to absolute zero and there is no motion, time still passes for said atom.
[quote]belligerent wrote:
The scenario contains a contradiction and is therefore unimaginable. Time is a measurement of motion. If all motion in the universe were to slow down proportionately, the same would apply to our perceptual and mental faculties and therefore our perception of time would remain the same, assuming the change didn’t cause the physical universe to break down and kill us all outright.[/quote]
Time is not the measurement of motion. Time is the chronological passing of events. If I cool an atom down to absolute zero and there is no motion, time still passes for said atom.[/quote]
Also something moving at the speed of light does not experience time, yet it is still moving. Which is cool if you think about it. A photon can exist for trillions of years before it slams into something and gets absorbed, yet to the photon, it’s “creation and death” are instantaneous"
This does bug me though because the thing the photon hits is not in the same position when the photon leaves it’s source. Though the photon thinks it is. ???
I slow down time a lot. It helps with premature ejaculation.
This isn’t anything new, btw. My friends and I used to slow down time in HS by drinking beer, listening to Yes and turning on a strobe light and moving about the room in the dark. Idle minds can come up with all kinds of stupid shit. You guys are just coming at it a different way.
[quote]belligerent wrote:
The scenario contains a contradiction and is therefore unimaginable. Time is a measurement of motion. If all motion in the universe were to slow down proportionately, the same would apply to our perceptual and mental faculties and therefore our perception of time would remain the same, assuming the change didn’t cause the physical universe to break down and kill us all outright.[/quote]
Oh yeah? Well, fire hydrants are a measure of lettuce! If all fire hydrants were to rebel, then lettuce would apply mental faculties to the platypus who would change the perception of how bananas see fish, assuming of course that the change didn’t cause global earwax to break down and melt the Moon.
[quote]belligerent wrote:
The scenario contains a contradiction and is therefore unimaginable. Time is a measurement of motion. If all motion in the universe were to slow down proportionately, the same would apply to our perceptual and mental faculties and therefore our perception of time would remain the same, assuming the change didn’t cause the physical universe to break down and kill us all outright.[/quote]
Time is not the measurement of motion. Time is the chronological passing of events. If I cool an atom down to absolute zero and there is no motion, time still passes for said atom.[/quote]
Also something moving at the speed of light does not experience time, yet it is still moving. Which is cool if you think about it. A photon can exist for trillions of years before it slams into something and gets absorbed, yet to the photon, it’s “creation and death” are instantaneous"
This does bug me though because the thing the photon hits is not in the same position when the photon leaves it’s source. Though the photon thinks it is. ???
V[/quote]
Even light traveling through space experiences aging because space isn’t a perfect vacuum. Still, it is fast enough to have relativistic consequences which can be pretty odd to think about.
[quote]belligerent wrote:
The scenario contains a contradiction and is therefore unimaginable. Time is a measurement of motion. If all motion in the universe were to slow down proportionately, the same would apply to our perceptual and mental faculties and therefore our perception of time would remain the same, assuming the change didn’t cause the physical universe to break down and kill us all outright.[/quote]
Time is not the measurement of motion. Time is the chronological passing of events. If I cool an atom down to absolute zero and there is no motion, time still passes for said atom.[/quote]
There is still motion of atomic particles even at absolute zero. Absolute zero just signifies the lowest possible state of energy any matter can have (zero point energy). Due to quantum mechanics, namely the Heisenberg uncerntainy principle, if the motion of a particle were zero, then its momentum would then be equivalent to 0 (p = mv), which thens signifies that we know EXACTLY what its momentum is (there is no uncertainty), which means that we would have no idea where the particle is.
[quote]SteelyD wrote:
Oh yeah? Well, fire hydrants are a measure of lettuce! If all fire hydrants were to rebel, then lettuce would apply mental faculties to the platypus who would change the perception of how bananas see fish, assuming of course that the change didn’t cause global earwax to break down and melt the Moon.
[quote]belligerent wrote:
The scenario contains a contradiction and is therefore unimaginable. Time is a measurement of motion. If all motion in the universe were to slow down proportionately, the same would apply to our perceptual and mental faculties and therefore our perception of time would remain the same, assuming the change didn’t cause the physical universe to break down and kill us all outright.[/quote]
Time is not the measurement of motion. Time is the chronological passing of events. If I cool an atom down to absolute zero and there is no motion, time still passes for said atom.[/quote]
Also something moving at the speed of light does not experience time, yet it is still moving. Which is cool if you think about it. A photon can exist for trillions of years before it slams into something and gets absorbed, yet to the photon, it’s “creation and death” are instantaneous"
This does bug me though because the thing the photon hits is not in the same position when the photon leaves it’s source. Though the photon thinks it is. ???
V[/quote]
You have to remember that space and time are intertwined. A photon has the highest possible velocity in the three spacial dimensions, and thus has none in time dimension…if that makes any sense. Basically, anything travelling at the speed of light will not experience time due to relativity. Time is slowed down by an infinite amount at that velocity. So, technically, a photon is the same age today as it was when the universe was created.