Does time really exist ?

Lets just ASSUME this is one of the many possible universes where that laws of physics (and ALL the other contradictory ones) dont exist
OK OK
I could just use a photon that doesnt have enough energy to split into an anti particle pair?
Anyway you get my drift. Theres nothing to observe it by therefore no change therefore just imagining it you can see wht i mean by no time ( apart from the photon going at light speed)

Like others have said, time is actually just a measurement of change and is relative to the viewer. Let me explain my current theory.

If there was no change (or time as we call it), then we would logically not exist because we change all the time. Not only physically but we can think (which is of course a kind of change). If there were no time or even if time was but an illusion we could not think, nor could anything be created. Nor could the vast complexity of life that we see exist because much of it exists due to changes that brought it about. Without time everything would exist simultaneously and would exist in that state in a moment of NOW forever.

So time does exist but in a strange sort of way. Let me give an analogy to hopefully give a better understanding of time. This analogy uses distance because as we know, distance and time are directly related to each other in our universe.

Lets say I take the tip of my index finger and the tip of my thumb and press them together. From my point of view there is no distance(time) between my two fingers. However, if I was infinitely small I would perceive the distance(time) between the two fingertips as being infinite. Now then when shamans or people who catch glimpses of 'enlightenment' say there is no time. What they are probably doing is viewing the distance between the two fingertips from the viewpoint of the larger viewer. But the infintely small being is perceiving this with a consciousness that is familiar with the time we experience say on earth. So this being is failing to see that on the other hand 2 feet away is two more fingers pressed together. The larger being though can see the two sets of fingers at the same time however. So therefore what one being may see as no time, is still time for a higher being.

As for the creation of time, here is how I see it:

In the "beginning" (not the best of words but not sure how else to explain it) there was only energy. The energy was not consciously aware so there was no past, because it could not remember what just happened. There was also no future because it could not speculate on what was about to happen. There was only chaos and change. During a change the energy became aware. Time started at this moment. There was now a past because it could remember and there was future because it could speculate on what was to happen. This is why God refers to himself as "I AM". Because he has no way of knowing what existed before him as the energy recorded nothing of its past before him. He must know he was created of this energy but from whence the energy came (if it needed to come from anywhere) he has no way of knowing.

Hope that made sense.
- dusran

It makes sense however i still dont believe in time but im entitled to my opinion and your entitled to yours and i respect that however i just dont believe its natural i think its 100% man made.

Time does not exist, you just feel that it does because we all have broken the barrier which allows us to move to and fro from one place to another.

My question to you is, how fast do you think you move?

answer this one and you got yourself a Einstein Medal of Honor.



[edit on 8/2/2004 by FoxStriker]

Time is just another plane of movement
no different then the other 3 dimensions up,down left,right
And forwards and backwards.Exept we can only move one way ...
forward.

Its said that there are 12 dimensions or planes of movement
but we can only understand 4.

time is my enemy.

Time is one thing only... the measurement of events and the distance between them... nothing more... if you are asking if we can travel between events, that's a different question...
-Josh

Originally posted by quiksilver
Lets just ASSUME this is one of the many possible universes where that laws of physics (and ALL the other contradictory ones) dont exist

OK OK
I could just use a photon that doesnt have enough energy to split into an anti particle pair?
Anyway you get my drift. Theres nothing to observe it by therefore no change therefore just imagining it you can see wht i mean by no time ( apart from the photon going at light speed)

Photons are created in pairs too. A proton and an (anti) proton.

If you wanted a term to use that doesn't contradict the laws of physics-- think "singularity". If you read up on Big Bang theory, this is what existed before the bang and you would be correct, there would be no "time" as there is no "space".

Time could be considered irrelevent i guess but it would make no sence if we didnt have it. How do u think we came up with time? Furthermore why do you think we came up with time?

Our time consists of stuff beofre seconds, seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, milleniums, etc. Now a second is one 60th of a minute beucase a minute is one 60th of an hour, beucase there are 24 hrs in a day beucase there are 365 days in a year. Why did i skip months adn weeks? because as far as im conserned months and weeks are the only form of keeping track of time that we made and is therefore irrelivant. Months and weeks are just a way of divideing up a year so it doesnt seem so daughting and for organizational purposes. The fact is time is relevant to organisms on our planet. If you leave our planet, our time would mean nothing because if you go to for example mars the time is different there than it is here. Just beucause time is not consistant throught planet to planet doesnt mean that it doesnt exist, it just means that it is calcualted differently and as far as we are concerned it is perfectly fine hense "earth time". Anyway just thought i would put something out there. If i missed something in the earlier posts, forgive me, im dumb.

Time is the measurement of change

It could have been called anything yet it still does not mean anything less than what it is. We perceive our world to change around us (Sun rises and falls, crops grow and die.) in order to understand the state of our world around us we give it a set of rules to determine its rate of change. We decide that the distance a grain of sand travels in a glass tube within a predefined length is equal to 1 second, 60 grains of sand becomes one minute, etc,etc.

We looked at the state of change and decided it needed uniform measurement so in effect we created time from the moment we determined values to equal the measurement of change. So in one respect yes we did indeed create time.

However, that does not mean that time is a man made concept. What it means is that the state of change happens irregardless from the moment the big bang happened to present day.

Just because we gave change a new name does not mean it never existed before. It means we observed it and defined rules to govern it to make our lives easier so that we could determine that every 3 months we rotate crops. Every 9 months a child is born from the moment of conception. Without giving ourselves these ground rules to determine the rate of change we would not have the luxuries of life we experience now.

So in effect time must exist for change to take place otherwise nothing would change state and no one would die. Change/time may also be considered the rate of decay.

PP

Exactly. IMO time is merely a measurement. The world would still function without it.

Time is a construct used as a calibration of velocity and motion. Conversely, we calibrate motion and velocity to keep time.

Time is a concept invented by humans to help us better understand our environment. Similary, animals have their own concept of "time".

We see time as seconds, minute, hours, days, weeks etc. Animals see day, night, time to mate, time to hibonate...

Maybe time is something all living creatures create in order to help them to live their lives and make sense of the word.

In the bigger picture, only change exists. A sun will burn out, and "change" into ... whatever they change into (supernova?). It doesn't sit there thinking "oh man, That's right, I'm supposed to explode next week."

Time in all living creatures is a measure of this change. Possibly a way for us to simply something we don't understand into something we can understand? Does the fact most people including myself struggle to get their heads around this idea add weight to the "we invent time because we can't grasp the concept of change" argument?

yes i understand what ya saying.

I tend to agree with the main view of this thread. Time is just a measurement of change. Time is just something Mankind created time to better understand why the Sun Sets, why we grow old, why things grow bigger over a period of time.

But here's a question though, about the next dimension. Since we can only go forward in time, does the next dimenision mean it can be revesered? Or does all dimensions adhire to the same Law, only able to go forward, always and ever marching the same straight line? Is every Dimension limited to only being pushed forward in Time?

time isnt ment to be real, it was ment to be how we count life as we go by or somethin. time probally exist but its not how we precieve it. not sure if i know what im talking about either folks.

As many have said,
The dimension of time measures the change in the other three dimensions and it is one-way track!

I think that if you travel back in time and then get back to the forward track, you will have a totally different set of the other three dimensions. I don't know if it makes sense!

its just a word to classify something(time) that needs a word to classify it. do you people get it?

In a way, you can travel back in time in the 3 dimension realm with Time. You can't effect it what so ever but you can watch the events that took place before you was born or even watch yourself grow up as a child.

Theoretically, if you had a strong enough scope, which would have to be very VERY strong and a Teleportation device or a craft quite a bit faster then the speed of light. If you can watch Stars blow up a billion years ago, why can't you get ahead of the speed of light, and watch took place 2000 years ago? Even watch the Pyramids be built and so forth. Of course it is impossible for this to happen but, in Theory it sounds good to me. Of course I work 40 hours a week by myself too.

I know for a fact time exists ...I just lost 25 units of it by reading this thread!