Why Time Does NOT Exist!

Originally posted by JOINTHERESISTANCE

Originally posted by poet1b
reply to post by JOINTHERESISTANCE

 

Timing is everything, and that proves that time exists. You have to be at the right time and the right place to make anything happen.

lol you have got to be the biggest idiot iv ever come across.

I wanted to make a snarky comment about your post, but for the life of me, I have no idea what poet1b is trying to say either.

EDIT: That was still kind of uncalled for, though. A man has a right to make no sense, Here at ATS especially.

[edit on 11-6-2008 by mdiinican]

Originally posted by poet1b
Timing is everything, and that proves that time exists. You have to be at the right time and the right place to make anything happen.

Everything is a function of time. Everything that exists, has existed, or ever will exist has a time coordinate associated with it.

Therefore, in the sense that "time" is an independent variable for all things, time obviously exists.

Is that what you are saying, Poet1b? (That makes sense to me.)

Edit: Fix links.

[edit on 11-6-2008 by Buck Division]

Originally posted by mdiinican

Originally posted by JOINTHERESISTANCE

Originally posted by poet1b
reply to post by JOINTHERESISTANCE

 

Timing is everything, and that proves that time exists. You have to be at the right time and the right place to make anything happen.

lol you have got to be the biggest idiot iv ever come across.

I wanted to make a snarky comment about your post, but for the life of me, I have no idea what poet1b is trying to say either.

EDIT: That was still kind of uncalled for, though. A man has a right to make no sense, Here at ATS especially.

[edit on 11-6-2008 by mdiinican]

Yes you are right, that was uncalled for and i appoligise.
He means the concept of time exists, it only exists as a measurement, a man made concept to measure and keep things in order.
Time however does not exists in the literal sense if used in time travel. Time travel IF possible would really be called LOCATION or EVENT travel, because you are traveling to a point/coordinate in space in this dimension or another dimension where that event occurred or may accure, there is no time stamp to that location other then the man made concept itself.

reply to post by Buck Division


That's pretty close to the point I am making.

I guess jointheresistance has never played baseball, played a musical instrument, knows anything about car engines, or how to dance.

The point is simple. In order to hit a baseball, you have to swing the bat at the right time, too early or too late and you miss the ball, you score no points. This is a quick and easy way to prove the existence of time.

While in three dimensional space we can move backwards and forwards, left and right, and up and down, we can only move forward in time. To claim that time doesn't exist is to ignore all the laws of physics, and to try and claim that memory is delusion, despite all the proof that the things in the past did occur, and that for the most part, a great deal of the future is predictable. We have pictures and movies that prove the past, books that record the past, and tons of scientific evidence that proves the passage of time, and therefore times existence.

What makes timing everything is that once a moment is past, it is gone forever, as far as we are concerned. You can always return to a physical space, and because the window of possibility in time is often very large, you can go back to a place at a later time, and still do what you have done in the past or wished you had done, but there are many things where opportunity only comes once, and if you missed it the first time, it will never come again. In addition, if you do something that you regret, often you can not take it back. Just as many opportunities cannot be regained, many mistakes can not be corrected.

reply to post by JOINTHERESISTANCE


Time travel IF possible would really be called LOCATION or EVENT travel, because you are traveling to a point/coordinate in space in this dimension or another dimension where that event occurred or may accure, there is no time stamp to that location other then the man made concept itself.

BUT, the same is true of space. Height, width, and depth are man made concepts. There is no location stamp to any physical location. If you go to the South Pole, nothing will indicate that the place is the south pole, except maybe a man made marker.

Heck, all of math is an intellectual concept. 1 does not equal 1 in reality, because no two things are exactly equal. One apple is not the same as another, even if they grew on the same tree next to each other receiving equal amounts of sunshine, measure the total sum in adequate detail, and you would find out that they are different. 1 is only approximately equal to 1, and this is true of all equations.

All is happening at once, there is no past/present/future as you said.
------

I agree that time does not exist (as an independent entity that somehow affects matter, it exists as a coordinate we use to measure the behavior of matter) but motion is another matter.

I'm intrigued by the idea that everything is happening at once (which would lend support to the multiverse theory) but I don't understand it. It doesn't sound credible, to me.

Everybody is making valid points. One fact we need to definitely take into account is that time/perception of time has everything to do with where we are i relation to the object we are viewing. Some stars we see in which are light years away are at different stages in their life than they appear to us. I don't want to elaborate on this point anymore because I would probally begin preaching my personal views...

I also wanted to add that blackholes are proof that time doesn't actually exist..if you don't oppose what we call scientific proof of their nature.

Originally posted by AMANNAMEDQUEST
As for balls-

A thought experiment: Take a ball or whatever and roll it across the floor/ground some 10 feet from wherever you are. You release the ball, it travels, and eventually comes to rest in a different spot than where you are.

When you released the ball, did it appear in its new resting place instantaneously? Why not? You, as humans, created the measurement of seconds - that makes order for your universe, and explains this "phenomenon". But if what we are measuring, Time, is just a concept we created, why did the ball not simply appear in its new resting place the very instant you released it?

Easy. Physics doesn't allow for large physical objects to instantaneously materialize from one location to another. However, it does allow for things to do so on a quantum level. Time is not required for an object to move from point A to point B. What your describing is cause and effect, you pushed the ball from point A towards point B following very simple basic laws of physics. You added time into the equation to explain why it doesn't just appear at point B.

The human construct of time, while a nifty device for explaining linear motion such as the above example, does not exist. It's akin to trying to explain the concept of pure nothingness. A concept that is also just as impossible for the human mind to comprehend. Just as christianity has it's god, science has it's time. Time is the elusive god of science. There is no real explanation for what time is that doesn't involve the measurement of distance and velocity, there is no physical thing science can point at and say that is what time is and comes from. Time is a pure mathematical construct that has never been shown to physically exist.

reply to post by Mysteri


the whole time he was using time to prove his point that there was no time... he just proved himself wrong with his own thread. Thats is over analytical.. to the extreme.. Time for me to move on..

Originally posted by poet1b
reply to post by Buck Division

 

That's pretty close to the point I am making.

I guess jointheresistance has never played baseball, played a musical instrument, knows anything about car engines, or how to dance.

The point is simple. In order to hit a baseball, you have to swing the bat at the right time, too early or too late and you miss the ball, you score no points. This is a quick and easy way to prove the existence of time.

While in three dimensional space we can move backwards and forwards, left and right, and up and down, we can only move forward in time. To claim that time doesn't exist is to ignore all the laws of physics, and to try and claim that memory is delusion, despite all the proof that the things in the past did occur, and that for the most part, a great deal of the future is predictable. We have pictures and movies that prove the past, books that record the past, and tons of scientific evidence that proves the passage of time, and therefore times existence.

What makes timing everything is that once a moment is past, it is gone forever, as far as we are concerned. You can always return to a physical space, and because the window of possibility in time is often very large, you can go back to a place at a later time, and still do what you have done in the past or wished you had done, but there are many things where opportunity only comes once, and if you missed it the first time, it will never come again. In addition, if you do something that you regret, often you can not take it back. Just as many opportunities cannot be regained, many mistakes can not be corrected.

I refute your baseball example. Are you truly measuring time or is your brain/hand/eye coordination just syncing together perfectly to hit the ball at the point that it needs to be hit for the next sequence of events to take place that causes the ball to go flying in the opposite direction?

Your not measuring a precise TIME to hit the ball, your measuring a precise position based upon the distance and velocity of the ball flying towards you. Time is again being brought into the equation as a way to cope with incremental sequences of events that just happen way to quickly for the human brain to process.

The majority of physicists are actually dumbfounded as to why we don't see things moving backwards in time. Do a quick search in google, you might learn a bit. On paper, it is shown (proved mathematically) that there is no physical reason why things should move only forward linearly through time. The physics of time on paper does indeed allow for things to move backwards. I'm not talking time travel backwards, I'm talking breaking the law of entropy backwards. We don't see this happening, have never seen it happen or recorded throughout history. There simply is no explanation for why time should work that way, and there is no way to mathematically take that aspect of time out of the equation without screwing up time on paper. Which is the only place time exists. On paper.

reply to post by sirnex


First, all of physics is based on the the existence of time. E=MC^2, Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. The speed of light is a function of space And time. This theory is part of what predicted the existance of black holes. Obviously black holes do not prove that time does not exist.

Secondly, you are confusing the measurement of time with the actual existance of time. You do not measure time when hitting a ball, your mind estimates it in order hit the ball. You must begin your physical motion before the ball arrives so that at the correct point in time, you bat arrives at the correct location at the very moment that the ball arrives in order to make contact with the ball.

Just because science hasn't figured out the nature of time does not mean that time does not exist. Essentially, every law of physics is based on a function of time. While you think that you can go backwards and forwards in space, the truth is that you can never return to any point in space, because that point has changed during the time you were gone, and you yourself have changed. Heck, the hole concept of a point is nothing but a concpetualization of something that in reality does not exist. Being that the whole universe is in constant motion, there really is no way to exactly measure any specific point in space, because all reference points that can be used have moved sine the time of the first measurement.

It would make more sense to claim that space itself is an illusion of time, all objects, and space itself, are only temporary constructs within the vortex of time.

The non-existence of time could be the solution to many impossible to answer questions, such as the eternal universe and time-travel paradoxes. However it is very difficult for my mind to conceive motion without time; after all, it is a variable in all movement-related physical equations.

If we could just revamp all current physics with a new model that does not involve time, then science will be able to answer many current mysteries in the universe. Someday we will discover that time is not needed to define motion, and thus will fall to Occam's razor, just like aether was discarded from electromagnetic theory.

I overslept this morning and got to work late. No problem though, when my boss asked me why I didn't get to work on time, I explained that "Time" does not exist, and that it was merely a device for explaining linear motion.
HE was not amused and suggested that I get my alarm clock fixed or I would find my “linear motion” looking for a new job.

So I have reached the conclusion that for all practical purposes Time does exist and will always be an unavoidable reality.

All hail common sense!!!!!

No, all of physics is based mainly upon motion, velocity, and distance as well as a bunch of other things, like energy, momentum, etc. E=MC^2 isn't bringing time into the equation at all. Time is the scapegoat being used here to explain the vast distance traveled by light, which coincidently is based upon our measure of th earths rotation around the sun. What that all boils down to, we just measured a distance, not a "moment of time".

Your example of the baseball scenario is still filled with a gapping hole, it is assuming that time does exist without showing that there is a physical sense of time that doesn't involve the measurement of velocity and distance. The brain isn't measuring time at all, time isn't needed to calculate angle, speed, and distance, so explain why the brain would magically need to incorporate time to hit the ball.

As well, just because god hasn't been proven to exist doesn't mean god doesn't exist. We can play with circular logical all we want, but that generally gets us no where.

Show me a physical law that requires time to be part of the equation in order for it to work. How about Newtons three laws of motion, or try explaining adequately why entropy is considered the "arrow of time". The example provided of positional refrence changing isn't thoroughly explaining why time needs to be a part of the equation. In your example, you are again using it as a scapegoat. Using newton's three laws of motion, it comes to no surprise that in the vacuum of space, with nothing much out there to slow or stop an object, that an object in motion will remain in motion. So yes, objects in the vacuum of space do change position constantly, but when inside a larger objects gravitational pull, you can indeed meet back up with that object at the first point of encounter. All one needs to do is measure (not time), but distance, velocity, degree of orbit, and a few other variables.

The example of "you have changed" is a moot point and also a scapegoat being used to "prove" time's existence. Objects decay, not because of time, but because of molecular and chemical bonds break down, they aren't permanent. In order to explain this to ourselves more simply, we say thing's decay over time.

Halicarnassus: Time is used as a variable only as a scapegoat. Our brain, just as it can't handle the concept of true nothingness, also can't cope with linear motion to a certain degree. We literally can't handle and process the vast distance covered by a photon, but when we use the motions of things we can comprehend more readily, like the rotation of the earth around the sun and we develop a system of measurement based off that, then the distance a photon travels can become more readily processed as we are breaking it down into conceivable bits of information that we understand.

Sparky63: Agreed, some concept of time will always exist, but in retrospect time isn't needed for the earth to rotate around the sun which is where our whole so called understanding of time is based off of.

I do agree with what the OP said, but I don't think it is scientists/physicists/whoevers' fault that we think of it that way, it is just easier to understand for most people. They aren't trying to hide the fact that the future is a creation of the human mind, they simply don't go it and talk about it constantly because a lot of people couldn't grasp it right away, they have think about it and figure it out first. I don't think that every scientist is working for the government and trying to cover things up, especially the non existence of time. But in the end, a minute is like an inch, and I don't believe in time travel being possible because we connot manipulate something that is not real, and I always wondered how if time travel existed wouldn't somebody have come back and told us by now? Like the episode of Family Guy when Stewie sees himself on TV as an adult because the adult version of him is taking a vacation into the past.

reply to post by sirnex


Um, physics is based on the concepts of time and space. Velocity is a function of time, a typical unit of measure of velocity being an inch per second per second. Time is considered from two different dimensions when measuring velocity.

You keep trying to switch the measurement of time with the existence of time. You don't need to measure the time it takes to swing the bat to hit the ball, you need to anticipate the speed of the ball as well as the speed of the bat, taking time into consideration as every bit as important as putting the bat into the physical space where the ball will be at the right moment. Both time and space must be taken into consideration, and that is true of all things.

Decay is a function of time. Your very existence is a function of time. Energy, Frequency, vibration, all functions of time. It is more reasonable to believe that space itself does not exist, that everything is a function of time.

Sorry OP but your thinking may be flawed by thinking that the human expression of time i.e. clocks your watch the day the month arent the same as time in a physics sence

linear time according to newton time as a parameter which serves as an index to the behavior of the physical system under consideration. Because Newton's fluents treat a linear flow of time (what he called mathematical time), time could be considered to be a linearly varying parameter, an abstraction of the march of the hours on the face of a clock. Calendars and ship's logs could then be mapped to the march of the hours, days, months, years and centuries.

Now time according to thermodynamics the total amount of energy in a system will entropy over time..... if time didnot exist the entropy of energy in the universe would not be measurable because everything would happen at once or wouldnt have happened to begin with so time in a physics sence is very real and vital to our understanding of the physical universe

reply to post by Mysteri


You only know that time has happened, by seeing something accumulate particles or make it's way from one point to another. That is how I see it. Time is a concept. You only know it took place because a change happened, a change that amassed something, or got from one place to another. Time can only take place, if you see that something has taken place.

reply to post by Halicarnassus


hate to burst your bubble but most physicists neither belive that time travel would be impossible or paradoxical or that the physical universe is eternal..... we know that through the laws of thermodynamics the universe will eventually run out of energy and essentially "die" here is a "run down" description of thermodynamics

en.wikipedia.org...

and as far as time travel goes id suggest you look into the work of Dr. Ron Mallet

Originally posted by Mysteri
One of these days hopefully physics will actually catch up to what is really going on around us, maybe in that future day physicist will actually be trying to solve the mysteries of nature (and not just trying to sound smart)
time, i repeat, time does not exist. time is the equivalent of using god to explain how the universe came to be. He just created it and it was there (where the heck did HE come from), physicists , the preachers of the scientific world whose every word we swallow up like the solid truth including their irrational flaws in physics, created time to explain...actually i dont know what they were trying to explain, perhaps someting along the lines of the linear definition and movement of the past present and future. but in my defence as Antiphon the Sophist once said... "time is not a reality but a concept or measure", and Ralph Waldo Emerson follows up with "past and future are only present projections of memeory and hope" couldn't have said it better myself.


There is...
-rate
-speed
-the measurement of acceleration via the illusion cast by the definition of seconds, hours, years etc...
-memory, prediction and hope (emotions and perceptions cast by mental awareness)

There is not...
-a linear, circular or otherwise movement of "flow" affecting physical matter, space and energy of the univese or universes thereof

reciprocating the sentiments of John McTaggert Ellis McTaggert, time demands change and everything does not change, allow me to digress into an exemplary instance to demonstrate...

Lets say that one day an astronaut in the year 2000 dropped a small red ball into deep space (interplanetary to avoid all those gravity dilemnas) this ball floats about in spcae for millions of years perhaps hit by the occasional dust particle or small rock but it will survive, now our little astronaut buddy has been in cryo-storage all this time and hasn't aged a tad, imagine his surprise when upon his next venture into space he finds the same ball totally unchanged.

yeah, i know im good. so lets see what yall have to say now eh?

Well OP, I think " Time " is not a fictional creation. It is a concept that can be seen to exist, and therefore needed a name. But how do you know time has taken place? Because you saw a change. The baby grows to be an adult, we know that time took place, the sun rose and the sun set, how do we know it came and went? Because it's position in the sky changed and not only that, another accumulation of particles took place. The earth soaked in the UV rays, the vegetation grew a millimeter taller, but this is no fictional idea. Humanoids operate by the laws of a physical world, in this universe, accumulation of particles is proof that time has taken place. To get what one wants, they must accumulate particles, which culminate into the object of our energies. You want something, you work toward it, the ultimate object is the fruits of your channeled energies. I think this rule will be seen to be true in both the spiritual world and the physical.

Hey, if

[edit on 31-7-2008 by Pocky]