The HOW and WHY of it all

[silent thunder]

Objects appear to move through space and exist in time.  Time and motion are how the fourth dimension is perceived from a three dimensional perspective.

 

time as a three dimensional interpretation of the fourth dimension, through relative displacement relationships of forms and motion through space, relegated through memory and comparison as the passing of time.

[Marblehead]

Time and space:  It takes light only 1 second to move 186,000 miles.  Our mind moves about that fast.

 

[wandelaar]

7 hours ago, Lost in Translation said:

E=mc squared

 

Special relativity posits a relationship between time and space (acceleration) such that at the speed of light there is no time. Without space you cannot have time. Tests have suggested this is true. Obviously we can't 100% prove it.

 

That's not exactly true. The interpretation of Einstein for relativistic phenomena is followed by the majority of physicists, but it still remains logically possible to explain things in a Lorentzian manner and hold on to absolute time (existing independent from space). See:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_ether_theory

 

But things get more difficult in general relativity. I will leave that to the professionals.

[Boundlesscostfairy]

Its like an egg...except the consciousness inside is not especially young..but maybe mature..as a life form..

 

Each thought is born from this egg..and is put in the way closest to it..

 

This is also known as the soul...The micro, macro creator..!

[KuroShiro]

10 hours ago, Lost in Translation said:

 

E=mc squared

 

Special relativity posits a relationship between time and space (acceleration) such that at the speed of light there is no time. Without space you cannot have time. Tests have suggested this is true. Obviously we can't 100% prove it.

 

Thanks.

Can you please link to those tests?

I know next to nothing about theory of relativity but again it's only a theory. I would say time is well beyond such theories and phenomena such as speed of light.

 

[doc benway]

4 hours ago, KuroShiro said:

I would say time is well beyond such theories and phenomena such as speed of light.

 

 

Huw Price wrote a wonderful, but difficult, book about the nature of time called Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point.

Here is a brief interview with him you may find interesting. 

 

 

[Lost in Translation]

5 hours ago, KuroShiro said:

 

Thanks.

Can you please link to those tests?

I know next to nothing about theory of relativity but again it's only a theory. I would say time is well beyond such theories and phenomena such as speed of light.

 

http://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/09/16/hafele-keating-experiment-two-atomic-clocks-flew-twice-around-world-eastward-westward-back-home-showed-different-times/

 

Quote

The Hafele–Keating experiment was a test of the theory of relativity. In October 1971, Joseph C. Hafele, a physicist, and Richard E. Keating, an astronomer, took four cesium-beam atomic clocks aboard commercial airliners. They flew twice around the world, first eastward, then westward, and compared the clocks against others that remained at the United States Naval Observatory. When reunited, the three sets of clocks were found to disagree with one another, and their differences were consistent with the predictions of special and general relativity.

 

“During October 1971, four cesium atomic beam clocks were flown on regularly scheduled commercial jet flights around the world twice, once eastward and once westward, to test Einstein’s theory of relativity with macroscopic clocks. From the actual flight paths of each trip, the theory predicted that the flying clocks, compared with reference clocks at the U.S. Naval Observatory, should have lost 40+/-23 nanoseconds during the eastward trip and should have gained 275+/-21 nanoseconds during the westward trip … Relative to the atomic time scale of the U.S. Naval Observatory, the flying clocks lost 59+/-10 nanoseconds during the eastward trip and gained 273+/-7 nanosecond during the westward trip, where the errors are the corresponding standard deviations. These results provide an unambiguous empirical resolution of the famous clock “paradox” with macroscopic clocks.”

 

[silent thunder]

Another interesting tidbit... the speed of light is not constant.

There is variance in its measurement.  Though practically for use in equations and observable phenomena, this variance is miniscule and seemingly non-impacting, the implication of this often overlooked fact of observation is quite striking to me.

[blackfence]

1 hour ago, steve said:

 

Huw Price wrote a wonderful, but difficult, book about the nature of time called Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point.

Here is a brief interview with him you may find interesting. 

 

 

This just seems like yet another crass materialist philosopher. It seems to me that the pure physics notion of time is far less interesting than the mystery of time subjectively experienced. 

[Lost in Translation]

1 hour ago, silent thunder said:

Another interesting tidbit... the speed of light is not constant.

There is variance in its measurement.  Though practically for use in equations and observable phenomena, this variance is miniscule and seemingly non-impacting, the implication of this often overlooked fact of observation is quite striking to me.

 

I read an article about this recently. It totally blew my mind. Gaaaa! My mind can't take it anymore!!!!

 

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/speed-light-not-so-constant-after-all

[dawei]

As I read this thread...

 

Then a voice in my head asked, "why are you reading this thread?"

 

Then I answered, "That 'why' is more hypothetical in my thinking... so it doesn't really need an answer".

 

Then the voice in my head asked, "why doesn't it need an answer?"

 

Then I answered, "some 'why' questions don't need to be answered, they just need to be questioned".

 

Then the voice in my head asked, "why should we discern questions that need answers from those that don't need answers?"

 

Then I answered, "we discern questions to know if we need to answer or not.  Some questions are just mean to make us understand".

 

Then the voice in my head asked, "why do you need decide if you understand or not ?"

 

Then I answered, "That is why questions are asked".

 

Then the voice in my head asked, "why are you reading this thread?"

 

 

[silent thunder]

1 hour ago, Lost in Translation said:

 

I read an article about this recently. It totally blew my mind. Gaaaa! My mind can't take it anymore!!!!

 

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/speed-light-not-so-constant-after-all

I love it when that happens!

Some long held assumption associated with a degree of certainty being blown apart in an instant...

It's pure bliss!

[Marblehead]

1 minute ago, silent thunder said:

I love it when that happens!

Some long held assumption associated with a degree of certainty being blown apart in an instant...

It's pure bliss!

Wait a minute!

 

Is it that the speed of light has slowed or is it that because of gravitational lensing it is taking a longer path than the path of a direct line?

 

The speed hasn't changed; it's the distance that has changed and therefore the time as well.

 

[KuroShiro]

 

5 hours ago, Lost in Translation said:

The Hafele–Keating experiment was a test of the theory of relativity. In October 1971, Joseph C. Hafele, a physicist, and Richard E. Keating, an astronomer, took four cesium-beam atomic clocks aboard commercial airliners. They flew twice around the world, first eastward, then westward, and compared the clocks against others that remained at the United States Naval Observatory. When reunited, the three sets of clocks were found to disagree with one another, and their differences were consistent with the predictions of special and general relativity.

 

“During October 1971, four cesium atomic beam clocks were flown on regularly scheduled commercial jet flights around the world twice, once eastward and once westward, to test Einstein’s theory of relativity with macroscopic clocks. From the actual flight paths of each trip, the theory predicted that the flying clocks, compared with reference clocks at the U.S. Naval Observatory, should have lost 40+/-23 nanoseconds during the eastward trip and should have gained 275+/-21 nanoseconds during the westward trip … Relative to the atomic time scale of the U.S. Naval Observatory, the flying clocks lost 59+/-10 nanoseconds during the eastward trip and gained 273+/-7 nanosecond during the westward trip, where the errors are the corresponding standard deviations. These results provide an unambiguous empirical resolution of the famous clock “paradox” with macroscopic clocks.”

 

 

I fail to see how this proves anything about time it seems to be more about timekeeping.

[Lost in Translation]

I am not a physicist, nor even a mathematician. I am sure there are bums who can explain it better than me. The gist of it is as follows: Imagine movement as a quantifiable number. For example: 0.05. Now image the subjective experience of time as a number. For example: 0.95. According to relativity, space-time is a combination of both space and time such that if you add up these numbers they will always equal 1.0. In this case 0.05 + 0.95 = 1.0. Now, let's imagine you get in a rocket ship and you go very, very fast. In this case your movement increases to 0.08. OK, according to our calculus the subjective experience of time will now equal 0.92, since we need both numbers to add up to 1.0. And if we go even faster, say 0.35, the the experience of time becomes 0.65. This is the layman's way of understanding it. To get more details you can read "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking, or you can study math at a PHD level.

[doc benway]

 

5 hours ago, blackfence said:

It seems to me that the pure physics notion of time is far less interesting than the mystery of time subjectively experienced. 

 

I agree

[Fa Xin]

3 hours ago, Marblehead said:

Wait a minute!

 

Is it that the speed of light has slowed or is it that because of gravitational lensing it is taking a longer path than the path of a direct line?

 

The speed hasn't changed; it's the distance that has changed and therefore the time as well.

 

What I can’t wrap my head around is that light will always be 186000miles away from us. 

 

Even if if I am running 186,000mph, you’d think I would see light right next to me?

 

nope. It’s still 186k away. 

[wandelaar]

13 minutes ago, Fa Xin said:

Even if if I am running 186,000mph (...)

 

You cannot, it would take an infinite amount of energy to reach that speed.

[Fa Xin]

38 minutes ago, wandelaar said:

 

You cannot, it would take an infinite amount of energy to reach that speed.

Or lots of coffee 😅

[wandelaar]

6 hours ago, Fa Xin said:

Or lots of coffee 😅

 

The problem in reaching the speed of light isn't human limitations here, but the relativistic mass that grows without bounds as you approach the speed of light. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_in_special_relativity#Relativistic_mass

 

 

[Marblehead]

Just for consideration:  we cannot travel at the speed of light.  Our body would not hold up to such great force.  I can't remember the exact numbers but our body will take only around ten G's of force before it dies.  Even in a contained environment (spaceship) the force is still there.  Our body has evolved to live on Earth at 1 G.

 

 

[wandelaar]

@ Marblehead

 

That is not the problem. One could conceivably build a spaceship that accelerates with just 1 G. When the world were such a place that there were no such things as relativistic effects one would then after some time reach the speed of light and after that go even faster.

[Marblehead]

Isn't imagination great?!?

 

 

[wandelaar]

13 minutes ago, Marblehead said:

Isn't imagination great?!?

 

Great or small? What's the difference?

 

By the way - when you do take relativistic effects into account one could still accelerated with 1G according to the guy in the spaceship but the folks at home would see the spaceship approaching the speed of light but never quite reaching it.

Edited April 26, 2018 by wandelaar

[Marblehead]

5 minutes ago, wandelaar said:

By the way - when you do take relativistic effects into account one could still accelerated with 1G according to the guy in the spaceship but the folks at home would see the spaceship approaching the speed of light but never quite reaching it.

I'm still not sure about that.  I've heard talk about it but it just hasn't settled in my brain yet.

 

They say the same thing about approaching a Black Hole but that hasn't fit into my brain yet either.

 

But then, I never have had a good imagination.  I can't even imagine an imaginary number.