Time And Existence

[Adrian Hester]

They use complex equations as opposed to empirical evidence to tell us all sorts of crazy things about our world that we do not perceive.

Well, some physicists do, certainly, such as the people who dreamed up string theory. However, in most cases they use complex equations that are then tested against empirical evidence.

So what about the most compelling piece of evidence the atomic clock? It is my understanding that the atomic clock works on the principle of molecular vibrations of atoms. If this is true, then the atomic clock experiment really proves nothing about time. The experiment demonstrates that at high speeds atoms vibrate slower but this does not necessarily translate into "time is passing slower."

It's rather subtler than that. If you move alongside the clock so that it's stationary relative to you, the clock will tick out the same rate for you and for someone on the plane or spaceship carrying it. On the other hand, if you move at a different speed from the clock so that it moves relative to you, you will observe the clock ticking at a different rate than if you observed it while moving alongside it. That will happen for any clock, any device to measure the passage of time; the reason it was tested by atomic clocks is for the necessary precision.

If my characterization of the atomic clock is correct then where is the empirical evidence I have for believing that time can pass slower if you're going really really fast.

Not quite--a person observing the clock as it moves past at a high speed will measure its tick rate as slower than a person at rest relative to the clock will measure it. Similarly, if you have a second clock next to you, a person at rest relative to the fast-moving clock will measure the tick rate of your clock as slower than you do. No matter how fast you yourself are moving, you'll see your own clock ticking away at the same rate, but people you pass will measure it as ticking at a different rate. The difference in the tick rates as measured by the two people is determined by the relative speeds with which the two observers move past each other.

[DavidOdden]

It would seem, as far as I can perceive that there is a passage of time here on earth and that it affects all things in much the same way.

I don't know that that means. While I can think of things that I expect to be correlated with the passage of time, speaking rather loosely, I don't know what you mean by saying that the passage of time "affects things". Obviously, the passage of millions of years of time has much less of an effect on a mountain than on a cup of milk. Even though it's child's play to use a stopwatch to distinguish 60 seconds and 65 seconds, you can't distinguish those two periods of time without some kind of aid, and I assume that you don't doubt the validity of the distinction "65 seconds" vs. "60 seconds". Raw perception isn't the most reliable means for measuring time differences. Your proposal that atoms vibrate slower when moving at high speed can be extended to any kind of clock, including old-fashioned oscillating mass clocks, so what kind of fact would persuade you that time "slows down"? Are you saying that you would only believe it if you could directly perceive that time is slowing down?

[Drew1776]

However, in most cases they use complex equations that are then tested against empirical evidence.

What empirical evidence is there (other than atomic clock experiments) that time can move faster or slower depending upon your speed?

I don't know that that means. While I can think of things that I expect to be correlated with the passage of time, speaking rather loosely, I don't know what you mean by saying that the passage of time "affects things". Obviously, the passage of millions of years of time has much less of an effect on a mountain than on a cup of milk.

Let me clarify (because what I said earlier is wrong)

The passage of time doesn't affect things really. The changing of objects indicates the passage of time. Take a mountain for instance while "time" doesn't directly smooth out ridges the fact that the mountain has changed indicates that time has passed.

Your proposal that atoms vibrate slower when moving at high speed can be extended to any kind of clock, including old-fashioned oscillating mass clocks, so what kind of fact would persuade you that time "slows down"? Are you saying that you would only believe it if you could directly perceive that time is slowing down?

A kind of fact less abstract than the vibrations of atoms. If you loaded a mechanical clock into a spaceship, and could demonstrate that the speeds you traveled did not affect the mechanics of the clock, and then some time later you came back and said look the clock is five minutes behind then I'd belive you.

Any attempt to quantify the passage of time is completely arbitrary and it is relative. If I sit on the earth I see the sun once a day and would have 1 day=1 sunset. Whereas if you were flying around the earth in a very fast spaceship you might see it many more times so you might define day as 5 sunsets. Is time passing any faster for you? Of course not. What we would need to do is find a conversion factor to standardize our observations. We are existing under different environments.

Now for the time/atomic clock issue. I use an atomic clock at earth as my standard. It says it took you 10.0001 seconds to fly around the earth in a spaceship. Your clock says it took you 10.0000 seconds. My question is why is it fair to assume that time has passed slower for you? Is it not possible that due to the differences in environment we merely need a conversion factor to resolve the difference? I just don't understand how one can say with certainty, "Well we got two different readings on our clocks so time was slowed down." Maybe measuing time passage with atomic clocks is not valid at high speeds?

[DavidOdden]

What empirical evidence is there (other than atomic clock experiments) that time can move faster or slower depending upon your speed?

A second line of evidence for time dilation is that particles with short lives will "live longer" when accelerated substantially, which has been verified with muons, and a third is the transverse Doppler effect (change in frequency with sourece motion perpendicular to the observer).

If you loaded a mechanical clock into a spaceship, and could demonstrate that the speeds you traveled did not affect the mechanics of the clock, and then some time later you came back and said look the clock is five minutes behind then I'd belive you.

But the point is that you can't demonstrate that the speeds you traveled did not affect the mechanics of the clock. You can say, referring to an abstract physical theory, that there is no known mechanism that would explain the slowing down of the clockworks, but you've rejected that kind of theory-bound reasoning for atomic clocks, so why can't you propose the same kind of effect for oscillating-mass clocks? All you'd need is some kind of general rule like "all physical effects take longer when you're going faster", which basically says "time slows down", except just changes the names of the accused. There is a live by the sword, die by the sword aspect to time dilation, than if it had turned out that particle half-life were unaffected by speed, then all hell would have broken loose in physicsland.

My question is why is it fair to assume that time has passed slower for you? Is it not possible that due to the differences in environment we merely need a conversion factor to resolve the difference?

Yeah, and we have a general explanation for that, namely "time passed slower for me".

[Olex]

Some to think about: http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?i=d6136ef...c92cfca42e8dac6

[miseleigh]

Isn’t an inch an inch everywhere? How is time different than any other sort of measurement?

Actually, an inch changes at near lightspeed in preceisely the same way time does- see this thought experiment. Mass will increase (according to an outside reference frame) as well.

What empirical evidence is there (other than atomic clock experiments) that time can move faster or slower depending upon your speed?

You can continue to say that with any empirical evidence provided. If you're truly interested, and don't mind wading through lots of technical jargon and unintuitive experiments, I found this website that lists experiments concerned with special relativity (although I don't really have the time or patience to go validate everything listed myself.)

So what about the most compelling piece of evidence the atomic clock? It is my understanding that the atomic clock works on the principle of molecular vibrations of atoms. If this is true, then the atomic clock experiment really proves nothing about time. The experiment demonstrates that at high speeds atoms vibrate slower but this does not necessarily translate into "time is passing slower."

Special relativity does not claim that 'time is passing slower.' It says that time passes slower relative to an unaccellerating reference frame (I would use 'stationary', but there's no such thing.) Somebody watching a spaceship from Earth would see that the ship's clock is moving slower; the person on the spaceship would see a clock on earth moving slower; the actual event is that the ship's clock moves slower relative to Earth's due to the accelleration the ship required to get away from Earth.

This article appears to be a very in-depth and comprehensive explantion of special relativity and how/why it works.

Edited June 19, 2006 by miseleigh

[Starcraft2baby!]

Hello y'all!!

I'm new around here.. But occasionally read the board over the years though, whenever I got some question that needed to be answered. Always found some around without posting anything. HA! (WARNING! BAD ENGLISH WRITER HERE, corrections and criticism to word usage and grammars are WELCOME)

Anyway, what a fascinating topic! Time and Existence. I've had this exact discussions with few of my close friends sometimes. One thing has bothered me over the time It's the motion itself, the direction it's going. To state that temporal plane is nothing more than extension of physical laws reactions playing out is paramount to admitting you are not accounting the fact of it's motion. It's the single element itself, motion of time. You cannot say it's illusion from mind, whether you are animal or human. The uniqueness of temporal existence is far beyond anything else you can imagine.

I think special relativity only proves one thing, it is how the Matter behaves inside temporal plane. Not the other way around. I don’t know if it is ridiculous to look at it that way. It just makes sense to me that Physics are just how we see the laws of time plays out in the reality. It just describes how Physical Matter should behaves inside temporal bubble we all are living in.

I think it’s not true to state that the time is just relationship between two entities. Come on! The transformation of matter is all you need to confirm the existence of temporal plane. I’ve always said that there are no measurements in physical world that has no time foundation to it. You must have some kind of time formula inside any kind of measurement you take for any kind of space, be it just numerical or whatever. By this, time can exist without matter, but matter cannot exist without time. For matter to exist you must have time/temporal plane to define its space it is taking. Before you say, “Well, without matter then what is there to define time?” Whether you say that or not we are now in heart of the problem. By this, I think, the original poster meant, how did temporal existence gets its direction and motion in the first place?

I’m going to describe what I think is total nothingness. A total nothingness means there are no space or time at all, it is not like a vacuum in our universe, right? Nothingness means there’s no before, now or after for anything to latches on, nor to exist inside, since there’s no matter sphere of some sort to start with.

It’s so difficult to put it in words, but if you are saying that the time is not eternal or uniform, you are opening a hole for creationists and believers alike all over to take pot shot at you. You are saying that this particular temporal plane got it’s direction and motion from a chain event that might have started in distant past, perhaps trillions upon trillions years ago, something incomprehensible has nudged or bubbled into existence of some kind realities and there went it in some direction, then it created reaction inside that bubble, an unbelievable thing happened, a temporal existence has popped into! Just barely comprehensible to us is this image of matter being formed somehow from some kind of reactions from something beyond our imagination, but definitely not supernatural source. I don’t know.

What I’m trying to say is what Carl Sagan said was full of Bullcrap. “If you can believe in god that has always been, why it is so hard to believe that universe has always been?” Sure, I saw your point before, Carl, but with temporal plane in picture now, it’s now quite harder to see universe as always been. I’m a believer in Multiverse. I can imagine that kind of reality, but the question of temporal plane’s motion hasn’t been really answered yet. Or perhaps you can enlighten me, and get me back on my way to bliss bubble of knowing that everything is nothing and nothing is everything.

[DarkWaters]

What I’m trying to say is what Carl Sagan said was full of Bullcrap. “If you can believe in god that has always been, why it is so hard to believe that universe has always been?” Sure, I saw your point before, Carl, but with temporal plane in picture now, it’s now quite harder to see universe as always been. I’m a believer in Multiverse. I can imagine that kind of reality, but the question of temporal plane’s motion hasn’t been really answered yet. Or perhaps you can enlighten me, and get me back on my way to bliss bubble of knowing that everything is nothing and nothing is everything.

I regret to inform you that your post is difficult to address as you started speaking of a "temporal plane" without qualifying the concept. Anyway, at present there is no evidence of a "Multiverse". Reality is independent of consciousness. This means that the universe is what it is no matter how cool it would be if it were some other way. Carl Sagan's cosmogonical claim adheres better to present knowledge than any other.

[Moebius]

Isn’t an inch an inch everywhere? How is time different than any other sort of measurement?

Actually an inch is a measurement of space, similar to how seconds and minutes are a measure of time. As the speed of the object approaches the speed of light, to a stationary observer the inch will have stretched longer and longer, similar to the way time "slows down".

[Robert J. Kolker]

Actually an inch is a measurement of space, similar to how seconds and minutes are a measure of time. As the speed of the object approaches the speed of light, to a stationary observer the inch will have stretched longer and longer, similar to the way time "slows down".

The length of a fast moving rod appears to shorten to a stationary observer. Lengths contract, time intervals stretch out. A moving clock appears tick more slowly to a fixed observer. See -Special Relativity- by A.P.French for a very clear explanation.

The so-called contraction is really a kind of rotation in a Minkowski 4-space.

Bob Kolker

[Greg M]

The length of a fast moving rod appears to shorten to a stationary observer. Lengths contract, time intervals stretch out. A moving clock appears tick more slowly to a fixed observer. See -Special Relativity- by A.P.French for a very clear explanation.

The so-called contraction is really a kind of rotation in a Minkowski 4-space.

Bob Kolker

Yes it appears but not really. Like a pencile appears bent in that water but isnt.

To say time can speed up or slow down is to steal the concept of "time". Otherwise what unit is used to measure the change in time?

[brian0918]

Yes it appears but not really.

Uhh, no. I would like to know how you propose to make such an observation that would determine that it is only an illusion and not really occurring. Do you exist outside of time?

To say time can speed up or slow down is to steal the concept of "time". Otherwise what unit is used to measure the change in time?

In practice: a guy moves away from you at 0.9999c. He has a big pendulum clock hanging outside his ship (in space). You have an identical clock and you're sitting still. You get your telescope out and look at his pendulum clock. His pendulum is moving much slower than yours. He gets out his telescope and looks at your pendulum. According to him, your pendulum is moving really slow compared to his. If you both had atomic clocks instead, you would get the same result. If you two were jogging on treadmills instead both set to 6 mph, you would see him jog much slower than you, and he would see you jog much slower than him. Any method you propose of measuring motion or time would give the same result.

The important thing, which makes this more than an illusion, is that if you two had synchronized atomic clocks, and he raced away from you at 0.99999c for one month (according to him), turned around and came back racing at the same speed, when you two met up again, your two clocks would be different by over 36 years; you would have aged 36 years while he would have aged 2 months. To you, he was gone for 36 years.

Edited March 1, 2008 by brian0918