What is time?

[onemoretime]

It's the dimension which defines movement. It's a measurement of place as compared to movement or change. If place did not change, nor movement did not occur, there would be no need for time. However, even a stationary object has movement on a quantum scale, therefore time exists.

We experience time in a linear fashion because it is most cohesive toward reproductive success. That statement is hypothetical, as I believe it is very difficult for a human mind to comprehend such a thing for entirely that purpose. Therefore, it's also completely unscientific, but fits all other teleological explanations of the human condition. That being said, it also makes sense in the context of the adaptation of intensive child-rearing in humans - parents that saw time in the same way as they saw length, width and height may not raise their children in a progressive fashion. There is no inherent reason for this other than evolutionary impulse.

 

[durentu]

Time is a concept developed by NTs and hijacked by SJs. At least that how it feels.

 

[Athenian200]

Time is a concept developed by NTs and hijacked by SJs. At least that how it feels.

That description would apply to government and democracy as well. It seems to be slowly happening with the Internet, too.

 

[durentu]

That description would apply to government and democracy as well. It seems to be slowly happening with the Internet, too.

Viva la Revolucion!

 

[Annyong]

It's the dimension which defines movement. It's a measurement of place as compared to movement or change. If place did not change, nor movement did not occur, there would be no need for time. However, even a stationary object has movement on a quantum scale, therefore time exists.

I completely agree.

 

[phoenity]

best question i've ever heard in this section..

Time is separation. That's it. No magic, no mystery, time is just separation of events in our universe. Time is a measurement of CHANGES, nothing more.


and if you don't believe me, there's this guy Einstein that let us know time and space are LINKED because they are both physical separations of things, and those physical separations of things have an important relationship.

if you want better evidence, consider this: just about EVERY physics equation that's worth a damn has time as a variable in the denominator. the only equations that have the variable time in the numerator is to balance an exponent of time in the denominator. Time is merely separation of REAL things - it has no reality itself.

I like this.

I think of time as nothing more than a way to observe or measure change.

I also think of time and infinity as very closely related.

Time being a measurement of change. We measure passing events in spatial relationship. We measure distance to things in space in terms of the time it takes for light to travel to us, our spatial relationship to that object. In a sense, our perception of time is the source of our perception of our separateness from everything.

Infinity is the endlessness of passing events. Infinity describes the nature of time as having no beginning and no end. As humans, we cannot perceive time in this sense, because we see life as having a beginning and an end everyday. We ourselves have a beginning and an end. However, life itself, existence of matter, to our knowledge has no beginning or end that we can prove. It is an infinite cycle of creation and destruction.

Time describes the separateness that our mind perceives. The separateness between you and I, the separateness from myself to the moon. Infinity describes the inseparateness, oneness, endlessness, in that all matter and life is the same, without beginning or end.

 

[Giggly]

It's 3:17 pm. Why?

 

[onemoretime]

It's 3:17 pm. Why?

You're in the Pacific time zone.

More seriously, because this place relative to that represented by the moon being perceived as perpendicular to the tangent line extending horizontally from the observer relative to the curvature of the earth is correspondent to that of the rotational distance represented by 1.2736(pi) radians when a rotation of 2(pi) radians occurs at a frequency of 1/86400 seconds, or .000015741 Hz. Or it would be if there were no daylight saving time.

 

[INTJ123]

here's my sensory perspective:

As a child time is long and as an adult it is too short.

I read an interesting theory about this, as almost everyone seems to percieve it this way. In a nutshell, it's all perception, for a 5 year old, 1 year equals 1/5th of their entire life, which seems pretty long, but when you are 30years old 1 year equals 1/30th of your life. Thus the same amount of time that passes seems much shorter when we are older.

 

[yenom]

best question i've ever heard in this section..

Time is separation. That's it. No magic, no mystery, time is just separation of events in our universe. Time is a measurement of CHANGES, nothing more.


and if you don't believe me, there's this guy Einstein that let us know time and space are LINKED because they are both physical separations of things, and those physical separations of things have an important relationship.

if you want better evidence, consider this: just about EVERY physics equation that's worth a damn has time as a variable in the denominator. the only equations that have the variable time in the numerator is to balance an exponent of time in the denominator. Time is merely separation of REAL things - it has no reality itself.

Could be...

Here are the possible definitions of time:

Time=energy
Time=infinity
Time=death (as of the present)
Time=light
Time=information

Time cannot be everything and anything, so it must be something definable.

What is infinity

infinity is life without death.

 

[Thessaly]

Among prominent philosophers, there are two distinct viewpoints on time. One view is that time is part of the fundamental structure of the universe, a dimension in which events occur in sequence. Time travel, in this view, becomes a possibility as other "times" persist like frames of a film strip, spread out across the time line. Sir Isaac Newton subscribed to this realist view, and hence it is sometimes referred to as Newtonian time.[4][5] The opposing view is that time does not refer to any kind of "container" that events and objects "move through", nor to any entity that "flows", but that it is instead part of a fundamental intellectual structure (together with space and number) within which humans sequence and compare events. This second view, in the tradition of Gottfried Leibniz[6] and Immanuel Kant,[7][8] holds that time is neither an event nor a thing, and thus is not itself measurable nor can it be travelled.

-wiki

 

[Fluffywolf]

-wiki

That's not entirely true. Or well, not quite sufficient so to speak.

In the second view, relative time travel into the future is still possible. By slowing time down in a certain area in space, compared to other area's in space, for example by means of high speeds. Theoretically.

But it is correct that in the second view, traveling back in time is physically impossible.

Whereas the first view, albeit it lacks sufficient theory to do so. Does not refute the possibility of traveling back in time. However, it also does not hypothesise that it is. It's a mere assumption as a result from the hypothesis, The hypothesis itself has nothing to do with time travel.

That should sufficiently explain the views on those two principles. I felt that the wiki part was highly inadequate in its reasoning!

 

[wildcat]

What is time?
Can someoe define it for me?

Does time really end when we die? I don't believe time is undefinable.

A measure is an artifact.
You are not.

 

[chasingAJ]

I took my daughter to class once and we were analyzing Alice in Wonderland. They started talking about the Mad Hatter's watch being repaired by butter and she blurted out "time just keeps going." The professor loved it and asked her to explain and she said that his watch doesn't matter and clocks don't matter because people get older and the sun goes down so you can't play and time just keeps going.

Time is the life of a human chopped into tiny fractions for the purpose of maximizing it. Our ancestors saw how precious and short it is by the time their lives were over. We have seconds and minutes to express how very quickly it slips away from us. A second is simply 1/2,366,820,000th of the average human life. Nothing else is relevant, one life is all anyone here will get.

 

[Fluffywolf]

The clock keeps ticking, ticking.. ticking away. Tic, Tac, says the clock, Tic, Tac, your time is running out. At each passing moment, the present dies.. and the future lives... Keep up, keep up now, you hear.. Keep up... or fade away.

 

[Thessaly]

something tells me fluffy makes people anxious IRL...

 

[Fluffywolf]

Only when it is my intention. But that does happen, sometimes.

 

[527468]

Time is actually the first dimension accelerated, and ever since the big bang, there was time, and everything in this universe was moving at a rapid rate in one direction, just forward in time. If time were of the fourth dimension, it would be possible to stop time and move objects around while stopping time. Since time is of the first dimension, everything dies once time ceases.

 

[onemoretime]

Time is actually the first dimension accelerated, and ever since the big bang, there was time, and everything in this universe was moving at a rapid rate in one direction, just forward in time. If time were of the fourth dimension, it would be possible to stop time and move objects around while stopping time. Since time is of the first dimension, everything dies once time ceases.

Why isn't it a fourth dimension, bounded by the Big Bang and heat death of the universe? Why doesn't everything that will exist already exist along this plane, and we only perceive time linearly because of our particular evolution? This would square with special relativity and quantum time.

 

[Trope]

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect but actually- from a nonlinear, nonsubjective viewpoint- it's more like a big ball.. oh whoops.

So time can be measured in light years? Light is sort of tangible and isnt. It's amazing how you can see the light of a star three million light years away. So that light has spent a long time travelling and is, you could say, 'very old'. But does time actually affect light other than how 'fast' it travels or, given its presence or absence, day and night? I dunno.