Speed of Time?

Question

Supposing that all time is one point. All future and past is here and now. When an action in past or future occurs, it sends out 'ripples' of energy in the 'moment' that can be felt. How fast does that energy travel before it is felt in that 'moment'? Remember time is relegated to gravity and of course speed.

Answer 1

This question itself is flawed, and not in the plane v. point aspect. You dont "feel" time. It's more an abstract thought than anything, a tool to better understand and seperate two events. Event A, and event B. In your example A would be the action, and B would be you "feeling" it. The only real mesure of time is typically considered to be the time it takes light to travel one "Planke length". But that is also affected by gravity, so you also have to look at the curvature of space-time. (Won't go into that). So really your question as is, is unanswerable. though you could just simply say its determined by the speed of light. or the speed of what ever it is that your messuring. Sadly this is a complex question with no real, good, answer.

Answer 2

I'm having trouble understanding exactly what you're trying to say. If all of time is one point, then there is no distance between any past and future, thus all of time happens simultaneously, and there is no time--ergo, time (in which there is a past, present and future) can NOT be a point.

Here's an interesting related website I found that will stretch your brain. Turn your speakers on and click on "Imagining the Ten Dimensions" on the left side:
http://www.tenthdimension.com/flash2.php

Answer 3

Time is a continuum, not a point. But if it were a point, when one thing changed in the past, the "ripples" of energy would result in severe irreversible seizure activity in the subject, resulting in death which would immediately nullify any future. Poof! It would all be over very quickly.

Answer 4

In my opinion. Time is an invention of man. There is no past or future. All there is, is the current state of existence (the present). What ever occurs in the universe happens within that.

Answer 5

Imaginary Infinite

Answer 6

If you are imagining all time as a point then don't conflict your thinking by jumping straight to an assumed form of motion within it before defining some parameters that make sense of envisioning it as a point.

To answer your question I am going to squeegie your time point out into a vast unit. It's still a point, relative to a much larger imaginary space, but it helps to macro-ise its inner workings if that is what we are talking about.

Now if all time is that unit. Then past and future are discrete units within the point (angels on the pinhead so to speak),

Now we add your proposition that one of those angels can talk to the other angel, and first we consider a method by which they can connect. Lets grab something from our empirical experience in time, one that fits our percieved reality and see if we can plug it in. I suggest causality might be a good candidate, in our objective universe causality appears to be able to traverse a bridge between two separate points in time.

Then lets assume the angels communicate via causality. One could assume that the higher the correspondence in causality the greater the communication, and therefore the greater the reality of one point in time 'feeling' the other point in time.

How fast does that energy travel?

Well, first, velocity is a product of time.. so that makes it a little complicated... lets instead at the start abstract fast in the terms of time we do have... and say:
how fast (how many units of time) does the communication (crossing units of time via causality) get to its destination.

The answer, since we are dealing with a plane of discrete units of time is: the shortest distance is a straight line.

Now to relate that to velocity, we need a value for these units, which means we need an idea of the number of angels on the head of the pin .... this raises some problems... . basically, there are infinite times that can mathematically fit on any size plane an if we don't know their number AND the size of the plane then for all we know they are products of infinite divisibility of 1 and each of them are very close to zero in value.. so even when you add the value of all your chain of angels together you're still close to zero and that gives you a virtual zero on the denominator of your velocity equation which makes velocity indefinable.


Now lets abandon the square plane analysis and it's limitations and assume that one of those times is the centre of a circular plane sliced out of a larger 'time shape'. the plane has a radius equal to the distance in a straight line between the two times.

Our bridge of communication (causality) has a definable direction, therefore, we can say our line of communication has a direction approximated by the vector between the origin of causality, and the result.

The number of discrete time units between those two points is the radial distance of causality over time.

Having a defined section of infinite divisibility can give us a relative speed in the section, using the area of time units in the sphere since we know the radius in those units, this should be easy. However, the result of that can really be no more than an approximation of the value of individual time units in the whole shape, as the ultimate shape of time may not be a sphere and that would bend values within the circle away from uniformity.

So we need another method for evaluating the the velocity that avoids the near 0 divisor, and allows our dimensionless pinhead to pull its units however it wants to.

Lets redefine our centre as zero zero. No cause, no effect.

From no cause no effect then lets draw two lines in our sphere, one to the origin of cause, and one to its effect. These lines are the radius of our new relative plane in the time shape.

Our displacement (original radius/distance) is the chord made by the cutting of the new plane from cause point to effect point. 1/2 the chord is the sin of the created angle between these two lines.

Now the velocity in radians of the causality over units of time on this plane, is given by the vector of angular velocity d(theta)/dt

d(theta) is the created angle.

This equation doesn't care what your units of time are, you will get your velocity per arbitrary unit, they are the derivative of time.

So divide the angle by the units (your original radius/distance) and you have the relative velocity of two angels talking across the head of a pin.

Answer 7

All time would have to be a plane, not a point or there is nothing to ripple.

Answer 8

Time is neither relegated to gravity, nor speed. Time is money, money buys the whiskey, good whiskey begets good talk, and talk is cheap.

It then stands to reason that cheap talk begets nothing and cost time and money.

Answer 9

The speed of time?

Isn't that like trying to measure the blueness found in royal blue?

Isn't that like trying to measure the wetness of water?

You can't define something in terms of itself!

Answer 10

If all time is one point, time must need no speed, since a point has zero space.