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time as an illusion to measure rate of change. the past, future and present are all now.

2006-06-14 01:00:29 · 15 answers · asked by u2rgod 1 in Science & Mathematics Physics

15 answers

Time "IN A SENSE" does not exist and is an illusion.
For example: Suppose there are two syncronized clocks on two infinately seperated walls (one behind you and one in front of you) and the clocks are illuminated at exactly 2pm by light from your flashlight that shoots to the front and the back at the same time. And lets pretend that you are in a spaceship ---with that flashlight --accelerating (speeding up trying to reach light speed) away from one clock towards the other.just as you receive the reflection of light (showing 2 pm) within your eye from the clock behind you. And lets pretend that you reach light speed the instant the light from the clock reaches your eye. At the instant you reach light speed then any light from your flash light reflected from the clock cannot reach you because both you and the light are moving in the same direction away from the clock at the same speed. At that instant, time relative to that clock would no longer exist for you in your frame of referance. Because the only image of time that you have processed in your mind is the image of the clock at 2pm.
If you instantly slow down below light speed by a fraction of the speed of light, then, the light from your flashlight that is in transit behind you will begin to catch you again. Depending on the speed that you are moving time will again appear to move on the clock. But each instant of time will be defined by the speed you are moving relative to the speed of the light reflected from the clock. Your flashlight is also important in that light leaving the flashlight must first travel back to the clock and then be reflected back to the spaceship where you will see it. Therefore you will see not only time changes due to the speed you are moving, you will also see funny changes in time from the fact that your flashligh is moving with you.
At the same instant you are moving away from one clock you will be moving towards the other clock. The time you experience relative to this other clock will be compressed in relation to the fraction of the speed of light you are moving.
For these reasons, time can be said to be an illusion. However, one must keep in mind that by theory, no human or any solid matter can move at the speed of light.
And it must be admitted that though time is an illusion, it is an actual unchanging property of reality.

2006-06-25 07:08:37 · answer #1 · answered by Give me Liberty 5 · 1 0

The statement that the past, present and future are "now" is correct. The basis for saying this is that everything that has been built and accomplished in the past is existent as some sort of physical material in the present "now". It just has been changed. This includes animals, and mankind. It is also true that everything in the future comes from the present, it just hasn't been put together yet. So, a person may say that the future comes directly from the past.

It may also be said that, physically, time does not exist. This would be true if a person reduces all creation to its lowest form - electromagnetic energy. If this were done, everything would exist in one dimension only. There would be no other dimensions, and all concepts of time would be zero.

2006-06-14 16:54:35 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0 0

In order to understand time you have to let go of your precepts. That is, the ideas you already have about time.

You said:
"time as an illusion to measure rate of change. the past, future and present are all now."

There is a problem in that. These times are not 'now', because 'now' as a concept does not exist. Let'stry lookin at time a different way.

Picture a number line. 0 is in the middle, and to the right the numbers tic off 1, 2, 3, etc... To the left they go -1, -2, -3, etc...
When you look at this line you see all the numbers stretching out in both directions. You can see 'all' the numbers. Now if you were living on the number line, let's say at the number 0, you would look around you and you could see the numbers 1 & -1, but you couldn't see all the way down the line to like 10 or 20.

So time is sort of like that. You live on the timeline so it is difficult to picture it. You are actually travelling down the line at a certain speed. It just so happens that you are traveling down the line at the same speed as everything else around you. If you were accelerating you would see time differently. If you weren't in the 'timeline' you might see that time doesn't 'go by' it (supposedly) just exists like our number line we were talking about before. The fact is that we are living on the timeline and we can only see just ahead and just behind.

I hope that helps...

2006-06-14 10:02:12 · answer #3 · answered by iank 2 · 0 0

Time as distance is not in anyways an illusion. It is a reality based on the fact that there is an observer, a point of reference and an event. If anyone of these 3 goes missing the reality is gone. A real and imaginary space and time co-ordinate exist in the mind of mathematicians and physicists but has not yet been proven.
Time implies an interval between two events. Hence it is no more absolute. But what never changes is the interval of time. At low speed, any clock on whatever (Newtonian) frame would indicate the same spatial interval for 1 sec. But this is valid when the speed or motion of observer and source is very small.
When the speed is comparable to that of the speed of light, the time interval is more dependent on the frame (of proper reference) is chosen. Time dilation is evident in reality and have been proven in many experiements. (Einstein's Relativity)
The real and imaginary co-ordinate of time is just a myth of Poincare and Minkowski definition of Four-Vectors in Newtonian Relativity.

2006-06-28 03:57:13 · answer #4 · answered by StreetX 2 · 0 0

Who said that time does not exist? It is one of the main concepts in modern Physics.

2006-06-28 03:06:45 · answer #5 · answered by sa 7 · 0 0

Time .well what is the definition of it ? In the circle of life time is in the blink of an eye 1,000,000,000 yrs or is it only the blink of your eye? Are Dinasaurs really millions of yrs old or only as old as the Bible says (about 5000 yrs old) that the world and universe is? The only thing about time is that we can't reverse 1 second of it. Why? That is the real question if time is irrelevant why can't we reverse one second of it. I guess GOD said it all as he is the only one who can and I repeat "I AM ALPHA AND OMEGA . He alone theoretically is infinate and knows beginning and end

2006-06-27 23:01:46 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0 0

It is all based on theory so your question is to broad by staying modern physics...however I do know that many physicists believe that there is a real time and an imaginary time.

2006-06-22 01:43:38 · answer #7 · answered by amp_ 2 · 0 0

i do not know your standard of education but i shall make you understand. actually there are 4 dimensions in the universe as far as relativity is concerned.the three dimensions are space coordinates like length, breadth, and height. there is also another dimension called time you must visualize that as a point in space has three coordinates in space in our 3_d view . similar to this every point in space is defined by another coordinate called the time coordinate every point in space corresponds to a point of time .if a point in space time corresponds to 3.85th of a second the next adjacent point belongs to 3.95 neglecting the presence of infinite number of points in between any two points.as such there an infinite * infinite matrix in which each element corresponds to an unique cooridnate in space so time is the third dimension in the space. but take care that the space and time are mingled together to form a space-time coordinate

2006-06-28 06:06:28 · answer #8 · answered by riki2po 2 · 0 0

LOL....Time is a measurement implimented by us to be used as a reference point or factor,nothing more.
Time has no meaning to a particle. We are the one's who use time as a factor to help place and study, by measurment, a particular cohesion, element, compound,composite, etc.....

2006-06-28 03:35:55 · answer #9 · answered by John F 1 · 0 0

Time does exist in modern physics.

Your question does not.

2006-06-14 08:06:06 · answer #10 · answered by Epidavros 4 · 0 0

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