Originally posted by zazzafrazz

Simple theory being most likely right, just means:
'It makes my head hurt...I don't want to think about it too much!!'

Cmon IRM!

LOL! I like your view of Occam's Razor. I nearly spat my OJ all over my monitor. However, I succeeded in holding back the deluge but my white T-Shirt now has orange streaks . I guess I was only half successful!

I do still hold the opinion however that some 'science' may be over-thought and the possibility remains of a simpler answer.

IRM

its about an hour in duration but worth the watch if you can stand to wait a lil for the streaming It is quite fascinating. Physics makes me salivate lol i could talk about things like this all day

Good thread IRM.

I agree with some other posters that time is a construct of the human mind.

I would also elaborate and say that not only is it a human construct, but we can control it; albeit subconsciously.

We switch time off every night when we go to sleep. It doesn't exist for us when we are asleep. We don't have any recollection (aside from lucid dreams, but that's food for another thread) of our journey through the night, so in effect time has stopped.

Another example is when we are doing something excruciatingly boring, like filling out a tax return; time drags out, and it takes forever. Yet, when we experience a sublime moment in our life, such as reading a fantastic book, whilst suspended in a hammock by the sea; time seems to become irrelevant!

I think because time is so malleable for us, it shows that it is an artificial experience created by our consciousness.

But, then again, I could be full of it!

where to start lol. . . . It really all depends on which model of physics you subsribe to. If einstein had it right then all of space exists right now which means all of time also exsists now and we merely see a 3 dimensional cross section of our four dimensional life. In other words you exisist at this moment at the moment of your birth, the moment of your death and at every single point inbetween.

I find this interpritation troubling because it takes us back to the newtonian world where everything is pre-determined. . . no free will we just coast along a pre set path through time and space.

This is where it gets interesting. . . in quantum physics depending on which theory turns out to be correct time could be interperated in a couple of ways. . . one way is the branching river where decisions made by you chance and the actions of others causes time to branch every quantum fluctuation creates an entirely new timeline so you can exsist in multiple states on multiple time lines simultaneously.

Again this is troubling to me because doesnt that mean i may not be the whole of me which timeline is me is your essence the same in each timeline. . . what if the timelines cross what if i die in one do i live on in another?

Which brings us to my favorite theory on how time works. . . Which is the one described in the video and is popular amongst the string/m-theory camp. It says that time grows out from the past into the future. . . Time and space are granular and as new time and space piles up on top of the new we experience the progression of time. . . To me this is the most comforting theory as it places our future back into our hands no preset path no branching of time to muddle your brain and make you crazy thinking about it (lol).

Anyways we need a more complete theory of gravity before we can try and truly define what time is. Super massive objects distort space and so necissarily time is also warped it slows down near the massive object. Why? well we dont know why because we dont what it is that gives mass therefor we have no real idea of why it effects time. The two are inextricably linked. We just need the rest of the gravity puzzle

lets cross our fingers for the boys at cern

Originally posted by constantwonder
If einstein had it right then all of space exists right now which means all of time also exsists now and we merely see a 3 dimensional cross section of our four dimensional life. In other words you exisist at this moment at the moment of your birth, the moment of your death and at every single point inbetween.

in quantum physics . . . one way is the branching river where decisions made by you chance and the actions of others causes time to branch every quantum fluctuation creates an entirely new timeline so you can exsist in multiple states on multiple time lines simultaneously.

Again this is troubling to me because doesnt that mean i may not be the whole of me

I see it as a combination of these two.

Take the first part you mention - all we see is a 3 dimensional cross-section of our 4th dimensional life. Now take that 4th dimension life and plop it down in the river of branching time. That 4th dimension lifeline is just a cross-section of our 5th dimension existence. Here, there are branches all along the length that 4th dimension lifeline which represent choices, chance, etc. Taken in total they represent our lifeline branching into every possible outcome and then branching again and again and again.

To me, it returns free will and doesn't leave us in a pre-determined world. Every possible scenario exists in potential, but only our choices here in the 3rd dimension determine what becomes our experienced reality.

Or, you know, something like that.

Time is a perception time is not consistent we all ready know its not the same every where. Time can be altered we've proven it slows faster you go. So in truth time is you moving through possibilities.

Originally posted by constantwonder

This is where it gets interesting. . . in quantum physics depending on which theory turns out to be correct time could be interperated in a couple of ways. . . one way is the branching river where decisions made by you chance and the actions of others causes time to branch every quantum fluctuation creates an entirely new timeline so you can exsist in multiple states on multiple time lines simultaneously.

Again this is troubling to me because doesnt that mean i may not be the whole of me which timeline is me is your essence the same in each timeline. . . what if the timelines cross what if i die in one do i live on in another?

The quantum theory has always flabbergasted me too. I'd like to think that multiple me's only exist in potential - and that they cancel out when a choice is made.

I couldn't fathom a universe/multiverse where each time all of us have to make some type of decision, millions of alternate universes are created... and then each time the billions of other me's and you's make a decision they create billions more alternate universes ad infinitum. Makes me dizzy and I start to wonder where all the mass would come from to maintain such ongoing creation. I'm sure it doesn't actually happen that way though. Or am I? I'm sure one of me doesn't...

IRM

Originally posted by dragonridr

So in truth time is you moving through possibilities.

I like that... simple and sweet. Very poetic dragonridr!

IRM

Well, Wouldnt "Now" truly be considered the past? You really dont ever see the present, just things as they were. Light takes time to travel from one point to another. We may think it is the present, but simply something that was milliseconds ago, or minutes, depending...

Other than that, I would have to say time is a relative term, seeing as it can be affected by gravity by being slowed down and sped up, never being constant. If you think about it, time should fly by a bit quicker, if you go by the older stuff, the faster you go, the slower time gets and all. We are traveling through space pretty quickly.

And Other than those, For every choice that can possibly be made, there is an alternate reality for. Thats saying that we have a pre-determined future, but is it really?

rekar

You might want to check out Peter Lynds.

I find that his observation , basically that "Time" is merely a convenient fallacy created as the result of of an imperfect perceptual apperatus, to be the closest description to my experience.


Time does not actually exist in descrete units, it cannot be divided up into smaller and smaler "bits" as we try to describe the universe we are able to perceive with our senses and tools. (especially since our tools themselves are merely products and extentions of our senses!).

Time comes from nowhere and goes nowhere, except in as much as we are currently able to relate to it. Time does not Flow: if anything, Time simply Is.


Disturbing? Concerned that this might somehow violate "free will" by imposing "Pre-Destiny"?

Not really.


If you must in some way visualize "Time", try this:


Imagine the smallest division of Time possible as a discrete bubble (Sorry Mr. Lynds!).

Now, instead of "stringing" these "moments" together as you would imagine a string of pearls, or beads on a chain, lump them all together in one big globular mass.

This next part is the most difficult to imagine.

In this mass, this globular lump of Time, every discrete "moment" is caple of being in immediate contact with every other "moment".

Our experience of time's "linearity", the flow of "time" from past through present (Now) to future, is realized as the "path" we preceive as we pick a route from moment to moment.