What is Time? Or what do we mean by Time? I don't know about anyone else but I think I know what I mean by Time. Time for me is "now", an activity of the mind that recalls events within a succession of "nows" or flowing moments. Now is absolute time and contrary to Prof. Stephen Hawking, Time and Space are both absolute.

Time is the vibrant rhythm of excitement that runs through the whole of life and the Universe. It is conveyed instinctively to our consciousness, i.e. awareness, perception, comprehension, sensitivity, cognition, imagination, in fact to everything connected with the thought processes and the brain's mental registering of continuous change. Time is a phenomenon without which we could not be conscious of anything, which in effect means we would not be alive.

The receptor for one's sense of time is the brain via the psyche and the whole nervous system. The Cosmos is a unique and absolute accurate timepiece that controls the rhythm and flow of life, our train of thoughts, our train of ideas and our memory train. Time is an instinct that is inherent in all of life and provides all living creatures with an absolute true sense of time whether they know it or not.

Time in the mathematical sense is defined as a numerical successional reckoning of motion involved in a constant continuously changing Universe or a sequential numerical continuum, which only enables us to calculate, assess and predict possible future and past events or effects. "Now" is "now" everywhere in the universe, a unique moment of which only a consciousness can be aware. There can be no going backward or forward in time, only mathematically or in our imagination can we do this, in reality it is always "now".

Time is an intangible integral entity within everything. It is a concept of the brain that provides away of perceiving change and the exciting rhythm of life. Mathematical time helps one to co-ordinate, synchronise and calculate relative activity but it is certainly nothing one can travel in. The infinite colossal energy involved in the changing activity of the Universe can neither be reversed nor accelerated. The dead could not be brought back to life or those not yet born be brought into existence. To travel forward or backward in time is purely a figment of the imagination in fact the idea is a nonsense.

What we need to realise is that the memory, our memory is fundamental to our sense of time. Without our memory we would have no sense of time or self. Our awareness and consciousness depends on our memory faculty. So little credit is given to this amazing aspect of our being, which without it, we would not even know that we existed. 

I would be only too pleased to hear from anyone who could shed further light on the subject or wishes to comment on or ask a question regarding what I have said.

DM 

Hi David,

Your mystical concepts of time as it relates to conciousness are quite cool.

Your physical concept is dated.  You blew off Einstein

DavidMawer:

Now is absolute time and contrary to Prof. Stephen Hawking, Time and Space are both absolute.

And Embraced Newton:

DavidMawer:

Time in the mathematical sense is defined as a numerical successional reckoning of motion involved in a constant continuously changing Universe or a sequential numerical continuum, which only enables us to calculate, assess and predict possible future and past events or effects. "Now" is "now" everywhere in the universe, a unique moment of which only a consciousness can be aware. There can be no going backward or forward in time, only mathematically or in our imagination can we do this, in reality it is always "now".

So that puts you 103 years out of date.  As far as meaningful discussions of cosmology thats a real handicap....But what a poet!.....

Regards

PH

Since every information takes time to propagate and since every perceptual processes take time, then all perceptions of the now are about the past. 

 If you try to get to the the present time, since everything is a construction of atomic processes that also take time, the present time is a picture of absolute nothingness.  Everything happen over different intervals of time, nothing can happen, nor exist at a given point in time.  As a conclusion, the NOW as defined as what exist at this very point in time, does not exist.

LouisB: To me, present, is the integration of all interacting nows, to yield the whole event of time.

Primordial,

Nows are difficult to define universally so defining them subjectively is wise. 

Given special and general relativity how are "nows" reconciled between beings separated spatially?  How about beings in defferent states of motion?  How about beings in different gravitational fields? 

Objective time is hard to define .A photon emitted in the fog 300,000years after the big bang as part of the cosmic background radiation strikes a detector on the COBE Satalite in 1992.  In the photon frame  no time has passed since it was emitted.  In the photon frame the universe was 300,000 years old at the detector striking event in 1992.  The universe was 14 billion years old in the frame of the Earth.(and the milky way and the local cluster etc)

According to Brian Green, the jury is out on arrow of time.   There are lots of pieces of the puzzle that are understood but why time goes in only one direction while the other three dimensions are symetrical  is still a fundamental quandry.

Perhaps time (and therefore 4 dimensional spacetime) is not fundamental.  Maybe it is made from a more fundamental geometry just as atoms were found to have more fundamental constituents. Perhaps we see only one side of a coin. 

PH 

G'day from the land of ozzzzzzzz

Time is a measure of motion. It is not matter and therefore cannot be changed. When we communicate by light ,we have relative time, to allow for the light to be communicated from A to B. You cannot go in the past or into the future.

Space is the infinite. Without matter it cannot be changed,contracted or expanded.

So what does the changing?

Matter does the changes from varies phases and interactions.

Mathematical modeling uses cartesian geometry.  Variables in equations are dimensions in multi-dimentional spaces.   A particule that is moving can be modeled by a 3D coordinate that is function of time: ( x(t), y(t), z(t) ) .    The particule can move in any directions of space.  If we now says that we will model the particule movement with  a trajectory in a 4D space-time  (x,y,z,t).  We by default mathematically uses t as any other spatial

coordinates, which it is not.  We should not be surprised that the possible trajectories

in this 4D space, the trajectory moves only in one direction of the variable t.    Why should we be surprised. The arrow of time! Common sense tells us that time is not like another spatial coordinate.   I know common sense cannot always be trusted, but here we can.

The variables x,y,z are fundamental but t is based on a clock system output moving with the particule.   A clock system by definition is a function that only increase.  We know for fact that clock systems can be synchronized only if they do not accelerate with respect to each other.   We can only measure (x,y,z) over an interval of the variable t that are in the past of the measurement.

For a lot of phenomena the human scale of time and space, it is OK to use the simplification of assimilating time as a variable as the other variable in the equations.  

The simplification is possible because all the clock systems associate with the different components of the phenomena are synchronized.  But it is not the case at the extreme scales of the elementary particles or at the cosmological scale and the simplification does not work.  Using a variable t for many of these situations will not work.  The arrow of time problem is a false problem.  The problem is in the modeling of time itself. 

porcupinehill : I have in the past thought alone the same concepts, however as time past, I was stuck with this idea. I think space is relativistic 3 dimensional time. To me, the present, is the integration of all interacting nows, to yield the whole event of time.

G'day

 Time is not complicated, it is quite simple.

Why do people want to make it complicated?

Hi primordial, 

Absolutely agree...interacting nows form events.  Events mark locations in spacetime.  The spacetime interval between events does not vary for different observers  However some (massive) observers see the interval as a mixture of space and time...some as all time...some as all space.

 Massless particals always see the spacetime interval as all space since they follow null paths.

We are massive beings.  We are faced with a universe with dimensions (-t, x, y, z) which includes the non-symetrical lorentzian 4th dimension time.  Massless beings if there are such (spirits?) face no such non symmetry.  time between events is always 0, always trivially absent for massless entities. 

There is no time without mass  So is time fundamental?  if billions of particles experience no time what does that say about the underlying fundamental reality? 

PH

Hi Louis B..

As you say Mathematically time works just as well backwards as forwards.  there are no contradictions in Newton's or Einstein's equations if you run time backwards.  so you are absolutely right...why should we be surprised ...because backwards is as good as forwards mathematically.

Is the flow of time just a biological illusion?

PH

PS.  we live approximately in a Lorentzian geometry not a Cartesian geometry.  If you include  gravitational curvature the Lorentzian metric in imposed on a Reiman (curved ) manifold but the Lorentzian metric (-t,x,y,z) is always the model over small regions of spacetime. The fact that Euclid is taught in public school as THE geometry makes it very difficult for us to grasp that we really live in a Lorentzian world.  Euclid (x,y,z,t)is  hard to shake after doing 5000 homework problems with nary a hint of special relativity!...

The time(s) of physics and the time of our consciousness and of our perceptual experience are not the same. 

I argued that the perceptual time and the time of consciousness are similar and  that they correspond to the hierarchical organization of the experience. 

Archeologists, geologists, biologists,  all inferred evolution based on the hierarchical organization of artifacts, rock structures and bone structures.  Hierarchy is history.   I argue that the perceptual processes inferred time in the same manner.  It is a hierarchy of evolving forms of the experience.  The perceptual apparatus has a hierarchy that reflected the hierarchy of these structure.  

When you look with your eyes to the moving environment, you perceived the trajectory of the moving objects at different temporal scales and from that the visual apparatus infers the movement.  When you look at the static human body, you perceive its structure as a hierarchy of structures at different spatial scales and those correspond to the sequence of fetal development during morphogenesis and it  also corresponds to the evolution of the human body during biological evolution.  The idea of biological evolution is built-in in the visual system. 

This was the central topic of my Ph.D.  :  The perception of the image world

G'day from the land of ozzzzzzzz

I said before that time is a measure of motion.

To add to that, time exists with or without matter.

In one area of the universe you can have a void billions of light years across, that does not mean that there is no time.

In another area you can have matter travelling at the sped of light, this does not alter time.

THis is interesting reading 

Is faster-than-light propagation allowed by the laws of physics?

http://metaresearch.org/cosmology/gravity/LR.asp

In summary, Table 1 shows the major features of and differences between the two competing theories for the relativity of motion, Einstein special relativity and Lorentzian relativity. Experiments have now decided in favor of the interpretations in the last column.

Absolute time and space do not exist within the framework of Einstein's relativity.  But they exist within the alternative physical framework of Lorentz's relativity.    See:  

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

 http://www.glafreniere.com/sa_relativity.htm

Hi Harry,

Lorentz's insights pre-dated Einstein's paper, they  have been thoroughly incorporated into special relativity and Lorentz has been given credit for the fundamental equation of SR.  The Lorentz equation defines the Lorenzian metric (-1, 1,1,1) that in turn defines Minkowski space.  However Lorentzian relativity as depicted in the links is not compatible with General relativity.  Einstein's geometrical theory is compatible with more experimental data than Lorentzian relativity(such as aberation of starlight) and oh by the way gravity.  Lorentzian relativity does not have a working theory of gravity built upon it and most physicists would agree that it is not possible.  SR is integral in GR (over small regions of spacetime SR rules even in curved space)

 And multiple observations have been made that are very hard to explain with the existence of an aether such as the aforementioned aberation of starlight with earths orbital motion. 

I would not put my money on Lorentzian relativity.  Its advocates are a bit like creationists...cherry picking data...to support the commen sense notions of a fixed coordinate system and a universal clock. 

 Lorentz's equations on the other hand in the geometrical framework of Einstein are really cool.  Its basically Pathagoras' distance equation in 4 dimensions with a minus sign thrown onto t^2.  that one minus sign leads to all that non-intuitive behavior of matter in relative motion....

PH

Harry Costas:

To add to that, time exists with or without matter.

In one area of the universe you can have a void billions of light years across, that does not mean that there is no time.

Hi again Harry,

This is an unprovable statement.  There are no clocks known that are not massive.  Anything you put there to answer the question contaminates the experiment.

Lee Smolin and many physicists believe that in order to find a theory of quantum gravity that spacetime must be interpreted as the relationship between events, not as a background on which events are written.  This background  independence requres interactions that create events to give spacetime meaning.  This stems from the simple idea that theere is nothing outside the universe and therefore there is no meaning to the idea of being outside the universe looking in.   If this concept of spacetime is correct it is not clear that there is time in your empty space without some matter to mark its passing.

PH

 Here is a quote from Wikipedia:

What is now called Lorentz Ether theory ("LET") has its roots in Hendrik Lorentz's "Theory of electrons", which was the final point in the development of the classical aether theories at the end of the 19^th and at the beginning of the 20^th century. An extension of the theory was developed in particular by Henri Poincaré, who coined the name "The New Mechanics". One of its features was to explain why no experiments had been able to detect any motion relative to an immobile aether, which was done by introducing the Lorentz transformation. Many aspects of Lorentz's theory were incorporated into special relativity (SR) with the works of Albert Einstein and Hermann Minkowski.

Today LET is often treated as some sort of "Lorentzian" or "neo-Lorentzian" interpretation of special relativity. Introducing the effects of length contraction and time dilation in a "preferred" frame of reference leads to the Lorentz transformation and therefore it is not possible to distinguish between LET and SR by experiment. However, in LET the existence of an undetectable ether is assumed and the validity of the relativity principle seems to be only coincidental, which is one reason why SR is commonly preferred over LET.

 "

Hi Louis B,

 Do you prefer Lorentz's material transitions over Einstein's geometrical interpretation?  If so why?

PH

G'day

Time can be used to measure an event or motion.

A billion light year void will take time for light to go through it.

Man wants to time an event.

Time keeps going whether we do or not.

 Man complicates time ever since Man has tried to measure time.

Golden rule: Time cannot be changed.