What is time?

[yenom]

What is time?
Can someoe define it for me?

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

 

[Athenian200]

I believe that time, at least as we experience it, is a form of movement.

You see, we're always moving forwards one second at a time, but we're aware of how far we've moved, and how fast we're moving, even though we have no control over it.

Time doesn't end when we die, we just no longer have an awareness of it or ability to measure it at that point. If we have a soul, then I think at the point of death that soul is on a different plane from the material world we experience, and gains the ability to move through time the way we move through space.

 

[wren]

here's my sensory perspective:

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

 

[SuperServal]

here's my sensory perspective:

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

I'm finding that to be true as I fly ever forward into adulthood. And I don't like it!


I don't think that we really know what time is. Though it seems necessary for things to exist. Describing time as the fourth dimension really makes sense to me. I mean....for matter and energy to actually exist they need some sort of playing field to move. Everything needs movement because at the molecular level atoms and electrons and quarks and who knows what else are buzzing around. They need space and they also need time. One molecule is here one millisecond (an atom over there) and then here the next millisecond. Time allows things to move through space in some sort of sequential order. If time didn't exist would everything be everywhere at once or nowhere at all?

And at absolute zero when molecules stop moving, does time stop? Probably not because there are most likely little sub-sub-atomic particles still moving around.

So I think time is a vehicle for the universe to exist coherently. (But that still really doesn't define it..........I'm not so sure we really can).

 

[laughingebony]

Time is an abstraction. In reality, only a sequence of events exists. Theoretically, something is always happening, some event. The idea of time comes from placing these events in succession. We then divide this sequence of events into segments based on some observable standard, which is also an event. (In the SI system, it is the period of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom, whatever the heck that is. One second is equivalent to 9,192,631,770 of these.) One "segment" consists of whatever events occur within one iteration of whatever we define as our standard.

 

[Sniffles]

"Wise men say time is a river. I say time is a river of shit. And as you paddle down it, in your little canoe, your paddle gets smaller and smaller."
-Lewis Black

 

[run]

Time is the fourth dimension.

 

[/DG/]

Someone needs to shoot time in the face for me when they get a chance.

 

[Athenian200]

Someone needs to shoot time in the face for me when they get a chance.

Salvador Dali did one better... he melted it's face:

And I just did so again.

Feel better now?

 

[Mayflow]

Time is but a single simultaneous infinitely unfolding moment in which you [we] are always dying, growing, and being reborn again in multitudinous forms.

"It is said" that there is a Spirit Mountain. It is said that at the base of the Mountain, there gather many seekers day and night. They each have unique paths to travel and each spirals in it's own unique way towards the top. In the beginning one sees only one's one path and even at then, quite dimly and has little or no recognition of all the other paths that exist on the mountain. BTW, this "Spirit Mountain" is vastly larger than the known Universe much less Earthly mountains or Even Earth or her Solar system or her Galaxy or her own known Universe.

Then, it is said that the higher you climb upon the mountain, the wider the range of your vision and you can see more and more paths as you climb. It is further stated that the air at the higher altitudes gains more and more rarities of effects. Things that may have made you or others sad or angry at one time now seem to cause excitement in you.

I have also heard it said that when seekers from different paths look from the higher perspectives that they are startled that their paths have so many parallels.

I have been speaking forever about this and will do so forever. < Er, by "It is said" I am pretty much saying I make stuff like this up continuously.

 

[Moiety]

What is infinity?

 

[Mayflow]

What is infinity?

Same as love and time. They are the Holy Trinity.

They are you and you are they.

 

[Moiety]

Same as love and time. They are the Holy Trinity.

They are you and you are they.

My point being, that the answer to the topic's question, is in my opinion closely tied to the answer to the question "What is infinity?".

 

[Halla74]

here's my sensory perspective:

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

Yes, this is interesting.

I think of the phenomena above as follows:
As your life gets busier, time seems to be passing faster.
So, as busy-ness increases, perception of time passing more quickly increases. For example:

(1) As a kid you are not that busy (time is long, or seems to be passing slowly)

(2) As an adult you are busy, once a parent super busy, and once a parent with older parents extremely super busy (time seems to be flying by at an ever increasing rate).

(3) Once you are old, I am hoping time slows down again, for the final laps of the race, so you can enjoy a bit before giving up the ghost.

Thoughts?

 

[Mayflow]

My point being, that the answer to the topic's question, is in my opinion closely tied to the answer to the question "What is infinity?".

They are made of essentially the same essence, which is to say infinity. Time, like space, is something that infinity makes up to entertain itself.

 

[thisGuy]

one of the few things in life that is independent of perception

is time the cause or is it the effect? does life go on because of time or does passing life gives the perception of time?

 

[entropie]

I have got no time !!

 

[nozflubber]

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.

 

[Snoopy22]

here's my sensory perspective:

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

I always comprehended this as, when I was one day old, by the time the next day ended I lived half my life. When I am 50 years old, I will have to live to 100 to live half my life, and time is not making adjustments for my changing perceptions. If this makes any sense, I’m confusing myself.

 

[r.a]

They are made of essentially the same essence, which is to say infinity. Time, like space, is something that infinity makes up to entertain itself.

and so it goes