Talk:Time
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[edit] Time
This is one of those controversial subjects that seems to spark heated debates among people, and I know that the third talk page will have a whole bunch of arguments. For those new to the subject but very interested I've written a wikidiary about time. For those who know a little more (than I might), you'll gain an objective perspective. I'm always open to criticism, but please try to be gentle. Dessydes 00:18, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
- The page that you created is quite interesting. I don't have objections to it. --Gray Porpoise 17:34, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
- There is a third view about time that is interesting and fits the Oxford English definition. It can be described as the understanding that the universe or existance we experience is a process we describe as life. This process iterates without repeating (see the Mandelbrot set etc for the mathmatics of the practicality of an infinite progression of non repeating procession to increasing complexity). This living process progresses towards inceasing complexity creating the illusion we experience and seek to label time. In the West Quantum Elecrodynamics shows that there is no material, its all made of waves or as Buddha said material is an illusion, in the East Buddha said everyone is Buddha, ie its all made out of the same waves and so self is the illusion, its all one living system. This is not easy to understand as it removes god and self at the same logical conclusion, or vishu and self if you wish. There is an interesting side benefit to this outcome that without self there is no death. Buddha would say that the scientists should be taken seriously about climate change, Krishna might add something about peak oil. How much time does our species or life form have before it makes itself extinct or becomes extinct, i.e. runs out of time due to ignorance. Bob Smith, Cilgerran, West Wales.
[edit] a very different view
being brought up in the west, the US to be specific, I think I learned to see time inside out. after learning some eastern thought, I suddenly found myself seeing time in a very different way... think of a pool table with 9 balls all in motion... three of these balls are bouncing off the table in a way very different from the others, they make a very easy to see and trace dimond path on the table, over and over again.... but all the rest of the balls are moving so differently from them that you cannot predict with any great ease where they are going next... the balls never grow nor shrink in number, there are always nine of them...yet the pattern they all make in total is never the same... every time you observe the table you see a NOVEL pattern ...if you take a movie of the table, no two images ever look identicle and no current patterns resembles any prior ones...but when you wish to see how far say the black ball has moved in relation to the table as a whole you can very easily count the cycles of the three stable balls whos pattern always remains the same... you can use them as your clock...you have brought time into existance in your pool table universe... yet the key thing to understand is that it is always NOW...the balls ONLY exist NOW, they dont exist in the past the have no existance in the future, they are solid objects only now...which is where my western view I believe now {pun intended} had lead me astray.... the western view, with its sci fi adventures of time travel, had CONviNcED me to see the universe, not as I do...a set of elements in constant motion, being measured by repeating elements..which I can count... but as a series of images on a film, which, I the observer could, perhaps one day, magically travel about and not be stuck on the one that SEEMS to be the present. the biggest problem with the western view of time, is if all times exist from some higher view of geometry, then there is no moment that anyone of that higher plain could point to and say, that one is the present... there would be no means of distinguishing one moment from the next and there would be nothing moving...which violates our very obvious experiences. to say that all times exist and that we are passing through them would imply that we are somehow not in them but something beyond them and passing through them like an observer picking up a film strip and just scanning each frame... but my new view, as indicated above, does not require that I be outside time looking in, but I can be part of the every changing patterns and just able to notice these patterns and gauge their changes by comparison to repeating cycleing countable events.Jiohdi 00:33, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
the simplest definition of time which is not self referential is-- a man made system of cataloguing experiences by means of comparisons to countable cycling patterns.Jiohdi 21:50, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
"Time and space are modes by which we think and not conditions in which we live", regarding these modes as derivable from a proper theory of reality as idealized functions of an idealized continuum: "We will not feed time into any deep-reaching account of existance. We must derive time-and time only in the continuum idealization-out of it. Likewise with space." Wheeler,"information, Physics, Quantum"Jiohdi 00:33, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] New Intro Proposal
-- acknowledges disagreement, is less one-sided, and has sources ==
Two distinct views exist on the meaning of time.
- One view is that time is part of the fundamental structure of the universe, a dimension in which events occur in sequence. This is the realist view, to which Isaac Newton subscribed, in which time itself is something that can be measured.
- A contrasting view is that time is part of the fundamental intellectual structure (together with space and number) within which we sequence events, quantify the duration of events and the intervals between them, and compare the motions of objects. In this view, time does not refer to any kind of entity that "flows", that objects "move through", or that is a "container" for events. This view is in the tradition of Gottfried Leibniz and Immanuel Kant, in which time, rather than a thing to be measured, is part of the measuring system.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines time as "the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future, regarded as a whole." [1] The American Heritage Dictionary defines time as "a nonspatial linear continuum in which events occur in an apparently irreversible succession." Encarta, Microsoft's Digital Multimedia Encyclopedia, gives the definition of time as "System of distinguishing events: a dimension that enables two identical events occurring at the same point in space to be distinguished, measured by the interval between the events."
Many fields avoid the problem of defining time itself by using operational definitions that specify the units of measurement that quantify time. Regularly recurring events and objects with apparent periodic motion have long served as standards for units of time. Examples are the apparent motion of the sun across the sky, the phases of the moon, and the swing of a pendulum.
Time has historically been closely related with space, most obviously with spacetime in Einstein's general relativity. According to the scientific theory of special relativity, the concept of time depends on the spatial context, and the human perception is only a local observed quantity which has meaning only in a relative sense —ie. between object and observer.
Time has long been a major subject of science, philosophy and art. The measurement of time has also occupied scientists and technologists, and was a prime motivation in astronomy. Time is also a matter of significant social importance, having economic value ("time is money") as well as personal value, due to an awareness of the limited time in each day and in our lives. This article looks at some of the main philosophical and scientific issues relating to time.
--JimWae 17:36, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
- The existing first paragraph of the intro was inserted with the comment Lede is unacceptable. Write something, anything, then write all the caveats people like. Enough avoiding disclaimers for a separate article. That paragraph takes a specific point of view &, imho anyway, is extremely convoluted language. Absent any disagreement, I intend to insert the above proposed intro, which does not present a one-sided view of time, has sources which indicate it is not purely original research, & uses language more accessible (imho), within 2 days. Then we can work from there --JimWae 20:51, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
I have made the changes to Time that I proposed here on its talk page. Perhaps we can incorporate some of the recent additions too. I found the existing intro very convoluted, did not attempt to reference any disagreement over its meaning, and did not identify any elements of itself with the literature on the subject. --JimWae 01:40, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Other Recent addition
- Time refers to the universal means of locating a personal or collective experience relative to other experiences.
While this is not untrue, it is not very specific. How is this different from other kinds of location, such as locations in space? How does the word universal help us? What about events that nobody alive has "experienced"? --JimWae 01:47, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
what I intended was--universal, anyone can and does use this system, based primarily on sun, moon and seasons. and location refers to the acknowledgement of conscious awareness of relative position in the shared realm of mindspace, without which, time, space and just about any other measure becomes meaningless, often overlooked by some scientists who try to create the myth of objectivity.Jiohdi 13:48, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
This morning I changed "Two distinct views exist on the meaning of time" to "Two distinct views exist on the nature of time." JimWae changed it back suggesting that my change entails that there is a nature to time. Whether this entails that there is such a nature is up for debate. it is going to depend what you think about definite descriptions and perhaps about empty names. I don't think we need to debate that here. The reason for the change is that there is a use-mention error in the sentence: "Two distinct views exist on the meaning of time." There is a second reason; the two views discussed are not theories about what the word 'time' means. They are theories about the nature of time (if there is such a thing). It seems painfully clear that both Newton (with his substantivalism) and Leibinz (with his relationalism) entail that there is time; the difference is in what they think time is. Another problem that I have with this sentence is that it's false. There are more than two theories of time. There is the McTaggart theory (which is mentioned later on) according to which both substantivalism and relationalsim are false. (Again, whether McTaggart's view is internally consistent is another thing, but inconsistent or not, the theory exists.) I think that there are lots of other ways to make this article better, but I figure it's best to start with the beginning first. --Markgraeme 17:42, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Other Recent change to standards
I corrected a glaring omission... there was no reference to the coordinating system from which the si second arose, namely the tropical year and solar day... a second did not come into existance first, it was derived from a division from the solar day by 24 and then each hour by 60 and each minute by another 60 due to a babylonian bias towards all things 60 Jiohdi 14:12, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] New lede and the regressions of excess cookery
Someone once said "there is nothing so absurd that is has not been said before by a philosopher." The new lede is in good keeping with that tradition, as it wanders (again) into the domain of an exclusively philosophical realm, for which the next natural step ( not unlike the economic cycle of capitalism > tyranny > revolution > socialism > tyranny > reformation, etc.) is naturally going to regress into a disclamer intoduction such as "there are lots of debates about the nature of time." (This one basically qualifies as a disclaimer intro anyway.)
So, please (!) lets put back a lede which doesnt start with a disclaimer - such as the one I wrote last month, which actually goes out on a limb and states something. This on the other hand is (again) another... experiment to see how few legs a table needs. -Ste|vertigo 18:45, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
- PS: Besides theres no need to pepper this fish as a philosophical dish from the get go: A solid intro - one which states the "realist" concept (ie. "Euclidian", or better yet "absolute") of time was deprecated by special relativity (in science anyway) and the older is therefore only a local perception - is just going to kick it into the philosophical domain anyway. Hense calmeth down thy horse. The philosophy will make a great section 2. -Ste|vertigo 18:55, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
- Wikipedia policies are to present controversies in intro & avoid original research (going out on a limb with a definition). Are you expecting even an introductory account of time that avoids philosophy? The current one, byw, does not, as you persist in complaining, start with a disclaimer. --JimWae 19:20, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
Time is a "controversy?" Its not as bad as it was when I found it, this much is true. However I understand that a long journey that uses the slippery slope editing method - one that ultimately reduces something useful to something less so - begins with a first step. Note that flowery language peppered with references to particular philosophers neither equates to "more neutral", nor to "more sourced" writing. -Ste|vertigo 20:34, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
- How is time Euclidian? Euclid dealt with spatial geometry - not motion & not physics. It is only by analogy that it is considered a "dimension" similar to (but different from) spatial dimensions - due in large part to Newton. And, yes, there are disputes about what time means - look in the archives. Btw, which part do you consider "flowery"? --JimWae 21:47, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
- Of course I refer to the concept of absolute space and time which was dominant until Einstein. Euclidian was perhaps overstated as that domain is limited to physics, though not exclusively to space (due to the assumption of absolute time.) But then so is a reference to Newton overstated, unless you want to make this about physics. -Ste|vertigo 00:10, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Time quanta?
Is there really such thing? AFAIK time is only quantized in very exotic theories like LQG. Planck time is simply a unit (as the Planck Time article correctly states). 206.169.169.1 18:37, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
Chronons were once proposed as a particle of time and some sci fi shows such as star trek use Chroniton particles, etc. Jiohdi 21:55, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
So why not remove the Planck Time reference from the Time Quanta section and move it to Standards or Measurements, and state that time quanta is only a proposed (and a sci-fi) concept? My point is that referencing Planck Time as "main article" on the Time Quanta subject is spreading the misconception. 206.169.169.1 18:37, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Measurement & Time dilation need clarification
Time is not directly measured. In the sense that a unit of length can be assigned to an object in the real world as a standard, such as “one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the pole measured on a meridian from the North Pole through Paris”, and compared to other objects to determine their three dimensions, no such “object” of time is available in the real world with which to compare an interval of time.
This is not a trivial distinction. Misstatements regarding the measurement of time are countless as a consequence, wherein various “clocks” are said to measure time, when in fact they do no such thing. All clocks of whatever form are devices that perform regular movements, at more or less regular intervals depending on the accuracy of the movement, and are linked to some sort of counting mechanism or readout which records the number of movements. Whether a clock counts a quantity of water, clicks of a gear activated by a spring, movements of a pendulum, or resonant frequencies of a cesium atom, it is not directly measuring time.
What Einstein actually said about time was, “Every reference-body (co-ordinate system) has its own particular time ; unless we are told the reference-body to which the statement of time refers, there is no meaning in a statement of the time of an event. RELATIVITY: THE SPECIAL AND GENERAL THEORY, BY ALBERT EINSTEIN, 1916”. This was a derivation from the postulates of the SRT. This theoretical concept, despite the “minuteness” of differences at small velocities as compared to the speed of light, implies that time is a function of velocity and any difference in relative velocities is accompanied by a different rate of time, i.e. minute or not the time on your hand where you wear your watch is running at a different rate with respect to the time where your torso is when you are walking along and swinging your arms, time for torso, time for arms, and time for the sidewalk all move at different rates. Time with respect to a corpuscle of blood in circulation is running at a different rate than the rest of your body. Anything moving relative to something in an inertial frame at rest with respect to it has a different rate of time. Time in this theoretical system is in continual differential flux with respect to every existent object. Imprecise terms such as “showed” being substituted for theoretical consequences and/or explanations of observed phenomena is not helpful.
No people have traveled at different speeds and “measured”, in the sense of directly measuring, different times. No known direct measurement of an interval has been performed, and no confirmed observation of any physical component of time has occurred. This is fundamental to the explanation of time, and is not found in the article. DasV 20:04, 27 September 2006 (UTC) Time is not the thing measured, but the system used to measure...it is wholely subjective and always with reference to some local repeating phenomenon.Jiohdi 21:58, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
Exactly the point. Why suggest what "clocks" do time must do? DasV 23:19, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] An US inventor wrote on the issue of time
There was an US inventor who published a book on the issue of time, 4th dimension etc. Anybody remembers the name? IIRC, he used to work on medical tools or something like that.--Klimov 11:14, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] absolute motion??
The section on special relativity seems confused. I fixed one thing - the nonsensical idea that a particle moves through its own rest-frame. That's where it is stationary! Also I fixed the concept of the lifetime of a muon to be the mean - a muon has no definite lifetime but suffers exponential decay (in vacuum). But there is still some mess. This part "Relative to a frame of reference at rest, time seems to "slow down" for the particle. " seems confused. Who is to say what it meant by "a frame of reference at rest."? This flies in the face of Einstein's concept that all motion is relative. The same was known to Galileo - see Galilean_relativity. Einstein incorporated in 1905 time changes keyed to the spatial changes well known to Galileo in 1632. I'll try to fix that part about time "seeming to slow down" maybe when I get time (sic).Carrionluggage 04:23, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Tesseract?
Does that illustration really help the reader visualize spacetime? The accepted visualization of spacetime is a 2D plane with world lines on it. Also, "...adhering to defined finite bounds, all possibilities for this configuration are conceptually representable." Is that a quote from Heidegger or Husserl? It is so much incomrehensible that it must be from German philosophy. Thanks, --68.7.88.78 04:24, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
- I think the illustration is potentially useful, but I agree that the caption is opaque. It should point out that the two 3-d cubes illustrated are two time-snapshots of a cube in 3-space. It is somewhat confusing that they appear to be of different size. The reason is that the illustrator declined to show them displaced laterally, but wanted them embedded. There is an illustration which seems to have equal-size cubes in [1]. That link leads to others that might be considered OK. It could be said in words thusly: "What appears to be a three dimensional cube existing for some period of time is actually four dimensional because it is extended in the time coordinate. An actual 3-dimensional cube would exist only for an infinitesimal time period in its rest frame." The 2-d diagram you refer to is sort of OK, but in some ways it's too simplified. Carrionluggage 07:05, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Religous views on time
Where would be the appropriate place to write about religous views on the concept of time for example those discussed at http://www.chabad.org/article.asp?AID=74335? Would a new section here be best or a new article on the religous aspects of time be better? Would including a link to this site[2] be inappropriate for this article? --PinchasC | £€åV€ m€ å m€§§åg€ 22:49, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
- This reference seems confused (perhaps just out of date). The Twin paradox for example is discussed ad nauseum in Wikipedia, or more succintly in the book Spacetime Physics by Edwin Taylor and John Wheeler (W. H. Freeman 1992). It seems interesting that relativity can be difficult for many people to understand. Indeed, one reason Einstein got the Nobel Prize for the photoelectric effect, not for relativity, was that at least one member of the Nobel committee did not believe relativity. See: [3]. The Nobel committee member was wrong. But it is an interesting psychological question as to why it is so hard for so many people to progress in this part of physics, even today. Perhaps your link belongs somewhere in the area of psychology (??) or the relationship of psychology and religion. The great speed with which light travels no doubt makes it seem as though time is universal. We know it takes about 8 minutes for the Sun's light to reach Earth, but naively, one thinks he/she could compensate for such delays and find a way to set clocks "all over" the solar system so that they'd agree (you set the one at the Sun's surface to read so that an image of it seen at Earth reads 8 minutes behind an earthbound clock). This does not work, however, as, if made the same way (ignoring the heat!) the clocks run at different speeds and cannot be kept in synch. This gets into General Relativity but the point is that such problems actually force specialists who calculate the movements of the planets (e.g. [4]) to include terms from general relativity. Better to accept relativity. Carrionluggage 05:48, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Official time
Does anyone know if there is a U.S. law that requires people to keep time-of-day according to the time disseminated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology or the United States Naval Observatory?
UNITED STATES CODE
TITLE 15 - COMMERCE AND TRADE
CHAPTER 6 - WEIGHTS AND MEASURES AND STANDARD TIME
SUBCHAPTER IX - STANDARD TIME
defines legal time. [5] The Department of Transportation is in charge. I believe that they can authorize changes (such as time zone boundaries) without new legislation - you can always ask them.
There is a note on the URL: "Note: Contrary to the exact wording of the above statute, Standard Time does not change with time of year. In practice, the time in effect (the Civil Time) is either Standard Time or Daylight-Saving Time."
I would also note that this section does not seem to set any international definitions. Thus, if a lawsuit in the U.S. dealt with, for example, international trade, the inception or expiration of insurance policies applying outside the U.S., etc., there might be adjudicable issues. Worldwide, the ITU is the recognized authority. Carrionluggage 01:45, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Past present and future...
Ok, from my understanding, which is totally an opinion unadultered by any science or religion, time is an uptmost illusion. Time is something we have created and quantified to measure a rate in change. It has been created relative to the time an event takes from start to finish, and relative to what we have percieved as this length in time. e/g a day is 24 hours, but really an hour is 1/24th of a day... The universe is one super-massive event, and we feature in it, for now.. Time as we recognise it in our minds, is like a book. There are parts of the book which we have read (the past) and parts of it we have yet to read (future). Now, think of there being no 'now' (I know, irony :P). There is never a 'now', atleast from an objective point of view, since 'now' would be the infinitely divisible segment between experience and anticipation. Infinitely divisible, meaning divide by infinite, which = 0, hence no such thing.
Fluidity of time-consciousness: If time were to be aboslute infinite, then our minds would need to process information at an infinitely fast rate. I believe that time-consciousness (the way the human mind percieves time) is set at a frequency, just like a clock has a quartz crystal that resonates at a particular frequency, the mind has neural pathways in which pulses of information are sent to be stored in the memory (hence make transition from anticipation to experience) which pulse at a frequency unique to the human mind. This rate of pulses can be sped-up, by way of reducing length of intervals between pulses, when say the body is in an adrenaline rush. The reverse is also true, when there isnt so much stimulation, lets say like when sleeping.
I dont think you can refute this concept, as we know the signals the brain uses are electrical impulses, and we know that these signals dont work at an infinite rate.
Relativity: The frequency of our time-conception must be relative to that of other animals, which have more basic minds, and smaller animals with a shorter CNS(central nervous system). If we created a relative scale, and said humans have a relative time conception of 1, then an animal which has a higher information pulse rate, lets say by a factor of 2 (twice as fast, hence half the length of intervals between signals) would percieve time at half the rate we would. This is because it is the relative rate of converting change into memory, and at a faster rate, change would seem less frequent or slowed. Scientifically we could test an animals relative time conception by measuring the amperage from their CNS. (I dunno if itd be directly proportional, there are probably many other variables..I dont even know if itd work, little alone how to do that.)
Time-speed: How can time have speed? Isnt time a factor in speed itself, not vica-versa? True. But there must be a standard unit of time, and there must be an absolute minimum in which time can be observed through change. Lets say, since the metric system is already so neat and tidy, dealing with factors of 10, as opposed to yards and what not in imperical, that a standard unit of time is time measured whilst travelling at the speed of light, the time taken to pass a metre. (in seconds/metre). As time becomes less of a mystery, i believe this is what will be used, as time has a tendancy to slow down/speed up when measured in motion. An aboslute minimum division of time must also exist, that of the smallest noticeable change in a particle travelling at the speed of light.
Creation of time: It was Einstein who proposed that time will speed up or slow down under different circumstances. When travelling at speeds near that of light, time noticabley dilates, so I assume the reverse is true. When the entropy of the universe was at an infinitely ordered state, (i.e could not be ordered any more, no motion existed at this point) time did not exist. Why? Because what change was there for it to be relative to? There was no earth spinning on its axis to give us the length of a day, nor anything for that matter. Going above and beyond the reaches of time, I cannot give even an educated guess as to how the universe was set into motion... There is the big bang theory, the steady state theory, and then ofcourse religion. None of which have been ultimately proven, and none of which explain why there is a universe at all...Im not a big fan of the big bang, because it doesnt answer the question, why? Everyone can believe what they wish, thats their own right..Perhaps no one has come up with the right theory yet? Or Perhaps we are only a few cosmic piece away from understaning the entire universe xD hope you like my theory HeroInTraining 08:35, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
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