Is time a constant or does it really 'fly'?

Time.

What time really is is action and reaction.

What we perceive as time is the meaning or measurement our minds assign to action and reaction sequences.

If humans did not exist there would still be action and reaction occuring in the universe but no one to perceive it or assign meaning to it. (save other aware lifeforms for another thread =).

what i was trying to get at is that our perception of time as human beings is governed by the number of samples per unit of time. the more samples the slower time perceives to pass, the fewer samples the faster time percieves to pass.

[edit on 10-6-2004 by spangbr]

Originally posted by spangbr
time does fly imo, in a sense. if you lead your life where you are always on the go go go, you will look up one day and realize 10 years have passed. taking time to decompress and enjoy a day slowly is time well spent...

think about this: when you get old and you see your years winding down, will you want time to fly by or will you try to slow it down? then think about why older people will do things like sit in the back yard in a chair reading a book all afternoon, or just sit and watch the trees....

Not necessarily: In today's paper I read that George Bush Senior at the old age of 80 is going to jump off a plane at 35,000 feet. But he's done it before so its not that much of a big deal.

well,

Time is relative and there is never enough of it.


Variable

Time is a constant, but it changes because of percception, which changes because of the way you feel.

I guess you can look at time as a recording of life. It dosen't really matter what speed it goes at. If you fast forward a dvd or play it in slow motion, the same events will happen either way.
I used to work in a factory where I made toy trains. I could make exactly 100 of them in an hour, I'd got it down to a fine art and that was the maximum possible. sometimes that hour would go really quickly and sometimes it would drag, but no matter what speed it went at, I could still only make 100 trains.
For all we know, there is some supreme being who could watch our universe be created and destroyed in an instant. But within that instant as this entity watches us appear and dissapear, we are experiencing our concept of time at an enormously reduced rate and to us, it seems as if the universe has existed for eons.
I'm not really sure myself exactly what my point is
Time is one of those things that the more you think about it , the more it screws your head up, a bit like trying to figure out what came before the big bang, which is when time began or so we think.

Originally posted by pantha
I used to work in a factory where I made toy trains. I could make exactly 100 of them in an hour, I'd got it down to a fine art and that was the maximum possible. sometimes that hour would go really quickly and sometimes it would drag, but no matter what speed it went at, I could still only make 100 trains.
...
Time is one of those things that the more you think about it , the more it screws your head up, a bit like trying to figure out what came before the big bang, which is when time began or so we think.

Thats what I am talking about. Doing something the same as you would always do, something that is normal for you. But different times it seems to pass by quickly or go slowly. It seems that EVERYONE is in agreeance with the speed at which the hour went by. Everyone thinks it flew by, or everyone seems to agree that it draged on.
It's not just the last hour always drags, sometimes that goes by fast, sometimes slow. in the middle of the day sometimes fast sometimes slow, same with the first hour.

So if I am understanding you, I am not alone in this feeling? It just bugs me more.

TIME IS NOT A CONSTANT!!!, how many times do I have to explain it. It is a scientific fact that time is relative, it may flow faster or slower depending on your situation, which really gives meaning to the phrase "does time fly."

Einstein talked about time and consciousness, and that is well and good for science, for physics, and for chemistry. All those atoms comprising organic molecules that make you what you are, a conscious living being, have a good deal to say about time. You may attempt to split the abstract into the "non living," but you come back to it within those very same atoms placed say in a brain cell for example.

Those brain cells put together in a person for example, have cognition of duration. Something we call time has a great deal to do with our measurement, so one may think of time as a constant in relation to a clock or a sundial. Chronometers were essential for navigation in longitude, so one would do well not to underestimate the clock as having much to do with our cultural impressions of the passage of time.

"Time Flies," or "Tempus fugit," was once a saying on the American penny in the 1800s.

But back to Einstein, it was a quality of mind, consciousness itself that produced through experimental observations the theory of relativity, and it was those contemplations of time within consciousness that said the most.

Originally posted by TACHYON
TIME IS NOT A CONSTANT!!!, how many times do I have to explain it. It is a scientific fact that time is relative, it may flow faster or slower depending on your situation, which really gives meaning to the phrase "does time fly."

It flows faster or slower relative to other observers. Your own perception of time doesn't change if you go near the speed of light relative to other observers. The 'time does fly'-saying refers to the fact that your own perception of time seems to change. This is not the case in relativity. If you construct a local lorentz frame at your own location, in that frame the velocity four-vector is always (1,0,0,0).

BTW, where did you get the formula in your avatar? It seems one of the Einstein equations, but I don't get the covariant T index of the stress-energy tensor. I guess you used a different notation than MTW and other books as well, because usually the Einstein tensor is a rank (0,2) tensor instead of a rank (2,0) tensor. Not that it matters much.

Everything happens NOW, within five minutes, you'll still experience the NOW.
That now just changed from the now five minutes ago, because everything is in motion.

A rock isn't in motion you say? Look at the atoms.

EVERYTHING is in motion.

The past and the future are NOW!

(with 'NOW' I mean THE NOW, with 'now' I mean a moment in man made time)


Doesn't have anything to do with the topic, I know..

[edit on 11-6-2004 by alienaddicted]

Originally posted by TACHYON
Yes according to special relativity, time varies with your velocity. In General relativity time varies according to the strenght of teh gravitational field. The closer you are to earth the slower time will flow, it is not noticable to us, but GPS satellites have to take GR into account. As far as time "flying" it is just really a term that has no significance except in describing the situation, its no big deal if u ask me.

Originally posted by TACHYON
TIME IS NOT A CONSTANT!!!, how many times do I have to explain it. It is a scientific fact that time is relative, it may flow faster or slower depending on your situation, which really gives meaning to the phrase "does time fly."

I am noy talking about space flight or anything. I am talking about staying on earth, doing the things I always do. I guess I could ask does the velocity of EVERYTHING speed up and slow down.

"Since 1967, the International System of Units (SI) has defined the second as the period equal to 9,192,631,770 cycles of the radiation which corresponds to the transition between two energy levels of the ground state of the Cesium-133 atom."
www.boulder.nist.gov...

If the cycles speed up and the rate of motion in EVERYTHING speeds up at the same rate, It should be unoticeable shouldn't it?
or
For example, the pendulum in a grandfather clock swings back and forth at the same rate, over and over. If it were to swing twice as fast and we moved twice as fast, etc It'd be unoticable right?

Well, in a manner of speaking, no, we wouldn't notice.

But, and this has been said here before, time as humans choose to see it, doesn't exactly exist. There is only now. Everything always happens now. How we choose to measure the passage of time varies dramatically depending on your frame of reference. A primary example would be two people seeing the same movie. One thinks, "Wow, this movie was really long." and the other, in the same theater at the same time, thinks "Wow, that movie was really short!" The actual time that it took to view the movie, from our frame of reference was 95 minutes. Yet, it was a long time for one person and a short time for another. This is not a temporal anomaly. It's a perceptual anomaly. Temporal anomalies exist, but what I think you're referring to is perception. Since the only constant (time wise) that we have is now, how we perceive and, indeed, how we measure the passage of time is absolutely irrelevant. The perception of passing time can have meaning only if we place arbitrary value upon it, since it has no intrinsic value. The point is, we need to grasp each now, and experience it to it's fullest. That is known as living! And it is to be celebrated.

Sorry if I veered a little off topic. I tend to wax eloquent at times.

Well put Ouizel.

Variable

Originally posted by Gislebertus
if normally we see at 30 fps, do we start seeing more frames per second in extreme situations, perhaps? our perception of time doesn't change physical time.

Actually the 30 fps refers to the frame rate of standard NTSC Video. Actually the true number is 29.97 frames per second with two fields per frame which are interlaced. Film rate is actually 24 FPS... most cartoons use 16 FPS.
Eyes don't see frames, they percieve a constant flow of input.

i know. those frame rates were chosen to match human perception, though.
the frame rate is an analogy to understand human perception of the passage of time. we do have frequencies of perception. the alpha, beta, theta, delta whatnot. there are events that happen 'quicker than the eye'.

i see now the original intent of this thread. what if a GROUP of people share the same perception of time passage? i would guess that they are in a similiar situation. i once spent a week in a cabin in the woods with four other guys, and we were only there for a two days. every minute was an hour to us. i'm pretty sure it was just cause we were bored silly, and not because of anything physical.

that said, i also think there is a good possibility that consciousness creates reality. our perception of time IS time, if so.

Originally posted by amantine

Originally posted by TACHYON
TIME IS NOT A CONSTANT!!!, how many times do I have to explain it. It is a scientific fact that time is relative, it may flow faster or slower depending on your situation, which really gives meaning to the phrase "does time fly."

It flows faster or slower relative to other observers. Your own perception of time doesn't change if you go near the speed of light relative to other observers. The 'time does fly'-saying refers to the fact that your own perception of time seems to change. This is not the case in relativity. If you construct a local lorentz frame at your own location, in that frame the velocity four-vector is always (1,0,0,0).

BTW, where did you get the formula in your avatar? It seems one of the Einstein equations, but I don't get the covariant T index of the stress-energy tensor. I guess you used a different notation than MTW and other books as well, because usually the Einstein tensor is a rank (0,2) tensor instead of a rank (2,0) tensor. Not that it matters much.

LOL are you a physicist or a mathematician? The link is now broken but here it is:

www.liberal.org.il/physics/
mach2.htm

[edit on 15-6-2004 by TACHYON]

Time is going by fast. I've actually been waiting for years for scientist to tell us whats going on. After reading Einsteins Theory of Relativity I think he has unveiled a few clues. Time is in the perception of the beholder, it appears different to everyone. But like nightwalker says "man invented time", ever notice how the rotation of the planets on our solar system are in earth days?
Einstein said the faster a mass moves, the slower the time and therefore the slower the age. Its a fact that the earth rotation has slowed down very slightly, but would this cause time to speed up? If i lived on a larger planet like jupiter that rotated slower, would I age alot faster? Does the earth's rotation allow time for cell metabolism and the creation of life? Does Jupiter move too slow for the time needed for metabolism?
Another clue is that the Theory of relativity is not on the earth but the relative motion of the whole universe. Refering to the "in sync discussion", if something in the universe would cause time to speed up, say a very slight compression or expansion of our solar system, the clocks on earth would not be affected by this and continue run as normal, just as our age would too. Einstein says that clocks run relative to their relative gravitational feild. What this could mean is that astronaunts are not telling us what happens to thier clocks when they leave the earth's gravitational field. Either its secret for panic prevention purposes, or its seen as routine to adjust the clocks according the gravitational strength, or the adjustments are not noticed unless really far from the earth, or the lunar moon landings were actually faked because there was no mention of the clocks not working properly while on the moon(again, this would be secret if they did discover this phenomena).