Challenge: Prove Time Exist

This is like saying, "prove happiness exists without using any happyish words to describe the proof." It's a relative idea.

As such, I'll try to prove time's existence relatively -- with music.

On sheet music, changing the "timing" (number of instances of a beat or whatever in a given number of divisions of the period of experience between earth rotations), changes the outcome of the performance dramatically.

Zip

hey quest

your initial post was at posted
on 20-6-2005 at 06:51 AM Post Number: 1472178 (post id: 1494071)

your next post was posted
on 20-6-2005 at 08:11 AM Post Number: 1472365 (post id: 1494258)

isn't that lapse of time proof ?

speed = distance/time right ?

so without time, there can be no speed or movement ? my brain hurts now.....

For "time" to be "real", wouldn't you expect there to exist an atom or quantum of time? And if such a beast did exist in "reality", shouldn't we be able to observe (measure) it? This "notion" may have been conjectured before, but I'm not aware of such a measurement ever actually taking place.

If you claim that time is real, then, "Where's the beef?" "Time" may be the foundation of many of our beliefs, but that doesn't mean it's "real". What if we've got the model all wrong?


[edit on 6/21/2005 by netbound]

Must something be tangible to be "real"?

re·al1 (rē'əl, rēl)
adj.

Being or occurring in fact or actuality; having verifiable existence: real objects; a real illness.
True and actual; not imaginary, alleged, or ideal: real people, not ghosts; a film based on real life.
Of or founded on practical matters and concerns: a recent graduate experiencing the real world for the first time.
Genuine and authentic; not artificial or spurious: real mink; real humility.
Being no less than what is stated; worthy of the name: a real friend.
Free of pretense, falsehood, or affectation: tourists hoping for a real experience on the guided tour.
Not to be taken lightly; serious: in real trouble.
Philosophy. Existing objectively in the world regardless of subjectivity or conventions of thought or language.
Relating to, being, or having value reckoned by actual purchasing power: real income; real growth.
Physics. Of, relating to, or being an image formed by light rays that converge in space.
Mathematics. Of, relating to, or being a real number.
Law. Of or relating to stationary or fixed property, such as buildings or land.

As you can see, there are many definitions of the word "real." The passage of time is verifiable through relative changes. Clinical depression is verifiable through symptoms. America is a "country" because we collectively agree that America has borders and a government and consider it a country.

Everything in the entire universe is subjective and relative. That's why science has theories - reproducable facts that cannot be called law. When you say "chest of drawers," what appears in your head may be mahogany, while my "chest of drawers" phrase conjures a vision of maple, maybe with a mirror attached. There is no real "chest of drawers."

Of course time exists. You wish to redefine time so that it can be manipulated with your rules? Good luck with that.

Zip

Originally posted by netbound
For "time" to be "real", wouldn't you expect there to exist an atom or quantum of time?

Why? There's no "length" atom or "width" atom. How would observe something like that? It doesn't even begin to make sense.

We have massive atoms that have dimensions - that exist throughout the dimensions. That's how they are all represented.

As for quantum of time, there's good evidence it exists at roughly 10^-44 seconds.

CHICKST3R's link is great.
www.scienceagogo.com...

The point is we all see time, and we tell time, but we can also take '___' and see couches devour people when its not really there.

In the end, you have all given evidence of time with the assuption that what we have in our minds is REAL.

No one has present true proof of time.

The fact that we remember a past does not mean that it was there or that the present and those memories are "down the line" from there.

If at any given instant out minds are set in a way that we remember things, that doesn't mean those things are "past" and gone forever.

What if we are just a series of instances that are always there, but some have knowledge, "past" knowledge of other states.

The fact is, just like we assume our sight is actually seeing REAL light, we assume that time is something real.

The question is, in science, when you rely on time so often, who has ever proven time exist? To prove time exist would require proving the last instant in time was real and not an illusion, but without time travel, you can't do this.

Has anyone ever wondered why you can go up and down, left and right, forward and back, but NEVER move that easily through time?

If time is a dimension, why are we forced to move through it in one direction, non stop, at the same speed (given relativity)?

Here's a post I made over a year ago regarding time, and although I called it "proof", it was not really proof because such a thing as absolute PROOF does not exist. You can't even prove to someone that 2+2=4, and no matter how much logic/evidence may support something, someone can always just say "I don't get it" or "I disagree". It doesn't mean that you are wrong per se, just means that each person has to put in their own effort to discern what is objectively true and what is not, and why - knowledge and understanding cannot be given, it must be sought with personal thought and effort. Can't force someone to understand what they simply cannot understand! And of course it's just as possible that your understanding carries a hidden assumption, but your ego and desire to be "right", or simply to hold on to a specific world view due to an attachment to it or fear of letting it go, blinds you, and you fail to see someone else's reasoning as it was meant to be seen as a result. It's very easy to be SURE of something, or to proclaim certainty - even if none objectively exists.

So I'm not really here to "argue", because again, I'm not going to try to violate free will and CONVINCE someone of something they don't want to be convinced of, or try to force someone to see through my perspective, or to understand something they simply cannot understand, if such is the case. Here I offer my theory and my perspective, and it is my current understanding that it is pretty close to objective reality, because the logic/reasoning I used seems pretty, well logical and reasonable - to me! I am interested in constructive comments though, if anyone disagrees or agrees and why

www.abovetopsecret.com...

[edit on 22-6-2005 by lilblam]

Wouldn't this be a self-evident answer? There are things that change with the passing of time independent of human observation.

Stars live, and burn out, if there was no time, they would never lose fuel to burn...they would constantly burn bright, and never die.

Another example,

Food rot/mold.

Mold and rot are an example of what happens to organic material over TIME. If you leave a tomato on the counter for 2 months, it's going to be pretty well aged and rotten when you get back, yes?

Another example, but really similar to the last.

Decay of inorganic material.

IE: Rust, corrosion, crystallization, etc, etc.


The passage of time is all around us, whether we see it or not. Or maybe I'm just not understanding the question?

Originally posted by Loki
The passage of time is all around us, whether we see it or not. Or maybe I'm just not understanding the question?

Well yes, so it seems. But again, who is to say that this is all not just our perspective? I mean, yes all the things you describe they happen, but do they "happen" objectively, or do they "appear" to happen as a result of OUR observation of reality?

Quantum mechanics has this thing where everything remains in a constantly probabilistic state, just a state of pure infinite possibilities, until it is observed by an observer (a human, whatever), who just by his mere observation solidifies a reality and creates a certain outcome, even if that "certainty" is only in his mind because he's the one observing. Someone else who is observing may create a different "outcome" and a different "certainty". But until someone OBSERVES, nothing "happens", everything is infinitely possible, just a big pool of "what if's".

This is talking about microcosmic things like atoms, but I think it is a big clue to the macrocosmic reality of our universe as well, and that we only see what we see because we are the "observer", and our perspective creates the illusion of a solid, working world, when in reality, it may be just infinite possibilities waiting for someone to solidify them into a potential reality just by acting as the observer. So in that case, there would be no time, and the observer creates his own time - kind of like the videotape example I used in my other post, where the entire movie is contained in the tape at the same "time" until u put it in the vcr and press play (observe) and create the illusion of "streaming time" even tho it is just an illusion and the entire movie is already there in potential simultaneously.

Hope that makes sense! But look right above ur post I posted a link to my other post where I presented my theory on why time is an illusion.

I think there have been several "proofs" of time already in this thread, none of which rely on human perception.

quest, are you specifically looking for a mathematical formula as proof ?


simply put, time is just a unit of measurement. miles per hour, feet per second.....speed=distance/time


I would argue any example of movement is proof of time. movement inherently involves speed, and distance, so movement proves time exists



[edit on 22-6-2005 by syrinx high priest]

First off i'm no theoretical physicist, but i get the gist of the question(there's a couple of "What Is Time" type threads around here)

But what if Time is real, but it's not a dimension. What if time is a force?

en.wikipedia.org...

Traditionally, physicists have counted four interactions: gravity, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force and the strong nuclear force. The magnitude and behavior varies greatly as can be seen in the table above. Yet, it is strongly believed that three of them are manifestations of a single, more fundamental, interaction.

So what if Time is not the 4th(or more?) dimension but a force or "Fundamental Interaction"?

But i'm guessing that i didn't just discover the key to the new Grand Unification Theory, but i gave it a shot.



[edit on 22-6-2005 by Rren]

Originally posted by syrinx high priest
I would argue any example of movement is proof of time. movement inherently involves speed, and distance, so movement proves time exists

As per my earlier example, just because you press play and see "movement" on a video tape, does not mean the movement is really there objectively. What I mean is, in reality the entire movie is already there simultaneously, but you create the illusion that the movie lasts "2 hours" because you play it at a particular SPEED. Someone else can fast forward and the movie will last 10 minutes. Someone else can rewind. And finally, someone can just lay out the entire tape in front of them and look at all the frames of the movie simultaneously, and ignore the whole "play" thing altogether.

So yup, we perceive movement in our world, but it still doesn't mean that it's not just our illusory perception, and that it's not possible to just "lay out the tape" and look at any frame we want at any time, if we had the technology (or natural ability) to do so.

time exists because here's the equation


www.storm.ca...

time is a unit of measurement

mph
fps

speed=distance/time


so if time doesn't exist, movement doesn't exist.

Challenge - prove movement doesn't exist.......here's an experiment.

make a fist. hold your fist one foot away from your face. punch yourself in the face. repeat.
if movement doesn't exist, you're safe. If it does, hold ice to your nose and keep your head up

Originally posted by Quest
If at any given instant out minds are set in a way that we remember things, that doesn't mean those things are "past" and gone forever.

What if we are just a series of instances that are always there, but some have knowledge, "past" knowledge of other states.

Your theory is flawed as it's directly relating to/dependant on what it's trying to disprove. As an 'instance' is defined as a measurement of time.

Before you ask people on a message board to prove it - I would suggest that you google the question. You'll see alot of Einstein stuff and many webpages will give you very good explanations (with math and equations).

It's like I always said, if you know the math, then you know the concept.

Things change.

QED.

This subject can get confusing because Time can refer to many different concepts:

Time (timekeeping): The measurement of motion and occurance, such as by clocks.
Time (things happening): The actual motion and occurance. Cause and effect.
Time (the medium): The dimension or background thing within which things can happen.

Now then:

The first Time obviously exists. That is, it exists as a measurement system, the same as Imperial and Metric weight and distance systems exist as measurement systems.
The second Time also obviously exists, in that things happen, change, move, interact, etc.
The third Time, however, is different.

Since we know that things happen, and we can measure that things happen and can refer back to things that have already happened, it might make some sort of sense to speculate that perhaps there is some kind of medium on which History is charted. Since "two o'clock" has come and gone, but the mark still remains on the clock and the memory still remains in our minds, it's tempting to think that perhaps "two o'clock" itself still exists somewhere. But all the atoms that were in a certain pattern at "two o'clock" have literally moved on. It makes no sense to think that they would somehow constantly create new versions of themselves and leave them behind in some kind of "Time Record".
Besides, if Time is a dimension - the same as the 3 space dimensions - why can we not travel back and forth at will? We don't constantly move up or down or in any particular spacial direction all the time, so why do we do so in Time?

The thing is, Past is actually Memory of the past, and Future is actually Imagination/ Anticipation/ Prediction of the future. There is only the Present, in other words Things Happening Now. Past and Future only exist in the mind.

Things happen, we observe it. Everything else is an abstraction.

Lets see........prove time exists..........not much of a problem here.....

Einstein has shown that time (cause and effect) can be altered depending on the speed and/or gravitational field one experiences relative to another frame of reference.

Since creating an experiment to show the variance of cause and effort or time from a relative standpoint is unobtainable with marcoscopic objects such as humans at this point in our technological development..........Let's prove that variance utilizing sub atomic objects........

It is well documented that in many of the larger particle accelerators Worldwid that when certain subatomic particles are accelerated to near the speed of light that their mass increases propotionally as well as the time (or cause and effect) of their existance slows dramatically. The accelerator must be adjusted to compensate for these variances or changes in time (and mass). Now if time didn't exist then there would be no variance in the cause and effort or in the case of the subatomic particle in question its length of existence would not change........which by the way when accelerated to near light speed is 10 times longer in duration than when at rest.

A variance of duration or lifespan of the particle proves that time (or the duration of cause and effect) does in fact exist but is relative to your positioning, state and frame of reference.

The real challenge in not proving of time's existance but what it actually is and how it came into existence....................and our current theories have good reason to presume that time is a higher dimension that has manifested itself as cause and effect in our three dimensional reality.........much like matter and force particles that may all be higher dimensional nothingness that manifests itself in our three dimensional reality as matter and force fields....and of course cause and effect or time................a very profound but mathmetically convincing super string theory is heading in this direction as to the explaination of not only time but all reality..........

Hope this helps............