Is there any good scientific evidence that the future and past exist in any concrete fashion?

Question

We can assume that 'now' exists, but it is 'always' now.
We can no more easily interact with one second from now than we can with one year from now.
This dimension - or thing - we call Time, is thought of as Past, Present and Future. Some people even hold on to the hope that the future and past can some day be accessable. But do they even exist?

Answer 1

If the past and future do not exist, then time has no extent to it. Equations of relativity seem to be pretty successful treating space-time as a manifold which can be warped by the presence of mass/energy. It seems to me the success of the equations is a good indication there is a temporal length involved.

Physicists have long been bothered by the fact a particle's existence can be represented by a "world line" which shows position as a function of time. There seems to be no info in this graph to define a "now", and since every moment is a "now" when it happens, the concept of "now" would seem to be an artifact of our own conscience rather than a fundamental character of the universe. However, as P. Dirac and others have suggested, something still seems to be missing from all this.

Answer 2

There is concrete evidence that both the past and future exists along with the present. Have you ever made an arrangement to do something with someone or a group of people at some point in tim in the future. On most occassions, don't you make good on those "future" plans. Have you not gotten a meaningful gift at sometime in your past? Do you not still have it (I hope you do).

There is an ability to travel forward in time into the future, but for our technology right now, it won't be that far and will be very costly. You would have to get on the shuttle and get tranferred to some, as yet unbuilt, very fast spacecraft. Take off and fly around the sun, or more safely Jupiter at high speed and return 2 years after departure. When you arrive back on Earth 2 years older, everyone else will have aged more than 2 years.

Oops, forgot about the Scientific evidence. Radioactive decay is a scientific means of not only determining a past, but of how old something ancient is. It's called Carbon dating. As to the future, that proof is purely Mathematical but is no less valid. The passage of time is well documentedin many formulae in the laws of Physics and Chemistry. On Earth, the acceleration due to gravity is about 9.8 meter per second squared. If an interval of time called a second did not exist, formulae such as this would be inconsistant and invalid.

Answer 3

No. The past only exists in a person's memory and the future only in their imagination.

At the same time, it's interesting to note that things like cars, airplanes, space ships, and laser guns only existed in someone's imagination at first.

Answer 4

Time is not a NATURAL feature of the universe. Time is nothing more than a concept invented by our species to separate events into "past," "present," and "future." There is no Cosmic Master Clock.

Answer 5

that is solid to have a penitent heart. soliciting for forgiveness keeps us organic, clears our judgment of high-quality and incorrect. sure, each and each and every time we sin adverse to someone or sin adverse to God, certainly he forgives us immediately away, besides the undeniable fact that he desires to understand after we've sinned. this does not provide us licence to proceed to do an similar sin yet again - this potential carelessness and / or creates a rebellious heart. best to save the slate sparkling. To proceed to envision ourselves by questioning formerly we communicate and picture formerly we do something it really is inaccurate. If a baby pours juice on the carpet and realizes it replaced right into a huge opps, says 'Sorry mom' the youngster is forgiven. this doesn't recommend he could do it again. If the youngster does it again, willingly understanding that is inaccurate, then what replaced into the point of soliciting for forgiveness? It potential the youngster has not realized from the first oops. for this reason, the functional continuation of pouring juice on the carpet creates an attitude of disrespect for his/her mom. desire it really is sensible. advantages, ok

Answer 6

'time' does not exist except in our own minds. we created the whole notion of a clock.

if we take a look at light shining from a star 5 billion light years away, that is not up-to-date information. the star is really 5 billion years older than what it appears to be.

so time travel might be possible if we can exceed the speed of light, but its not really going back in time. its all relative to the place you started from.

Answer 7

Einstien told us that time is relative, and I believe him.

The Special Theory of Relativity

The validity of the classical concepts of absolute and independent time and space was challenged by H. A. Lorentz and others. Since absolute motion cannot be confirmed by objective measurement, Einstein suggested that it be discarded from physical reasoning; he explained the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment by means of the special relativity theory, which he enunciated in 1905. This theory accepts the hypothesis that the laws of nature are the same in different moving systems applies also to the propagation of light, so that the measured speed of light is constant for all observers regardless of the motion of the observer or of the source of the light. Einstein deduced from these hypotheses the full logical consequences and reformulated the mathematical equations of physics, basing them in part on equations of H. A. Lorentz (see Lorentz contraction) by which measurements made in one uniformly moving system can be correlated with measurements in another system if the velocity of one relative to the other is known.

The theory resolves the conflict between Newton's mechanics and Maxwell's electrodynamics by introducing fundamental changes in Newton's theory. In most phenomena of ordinary experience the results obtained from the application of the special theory approximate those based on Newtonian dynamics, but the results deviate greatly for phenomena occurring at velocities approaching the speed of light. In innumerable cases where the results predicted by these theories are incompatible, experimental evidence supports the Einstein theory. Among its assertions and consequences are the propositions that the maximum velocity attainable in the universe is that of light; that mass and energy are equivalent and interchangeable properties (this is spectacularly confirmed by nuclear fission, on which the atomic bomb is based); that objects appear to contract in the direction of motion; that the rate of a moving clock seems to decrease as its velocity increases; that events that appear simultaneous to an observer in one system may not appear simultaneous to an observer in another system; and that, since absolute time is excluded from physical reasoning because it cannot be measured, the results of observers in different systems are equally correct.

The General Theory of Relativity

Einstein expanded the special theory of relativity into a general theory (completed c.1916) that applies to systems in nonuniform (accelerated) motion as well as to systems in uniform motion. The general theory is principally concerned with the large-scale effects of gravitation and therefore is an essential ingredient in theories of the universe as a whole, or cosmology. The theory recognizes the equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass. It asserts that material bodies produce curvatures in space-time that form a gravitational field and that the path of a body in the field is determined by this curvature. The geometry of a given region of space and the motion in the field can be predicted from the equations of the general theory.

Details of the motions of the planet Mercury had long puzzled astronomers; Einstein's computations explained them. He stated that the path of a ray of light is deflected by a gravitational field; observations of starlight passing near the sun, first made by A. S. Eddington during an eclipse of the sun in 1919, confirmed this. He predicted that in a gravitational field spectral lines of substances would be shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. This has been confirmed by observation of light from white dwarf stars. Further confirmation has been obtained in recent years from precision measurements using artificial satellites and the Viking lander on Mars, and from detailed observations of pulsars.

Answer 8

Well, practically they do. Hence the old adage- a stitch in time, saves nine. I dunno about time-travel but, yes, time does have a definite value for practical life purposes.