Time (and existence)

[richhhhhard]

Originally Posted by insanefreddy926

If you don't believe that space can bend, then how do you explain gravity? Our planet is revolving around the sun because it is following a straight line which the mass of the sun has bent. When we look at distant galaxies, their image is physically curved because the mass of a galaxy between them and us bends the space through which their light travels. How else do you explain this?

I explain it simply by gravity?
All matter in the universe is attracted to all other forms. We give this attraction the name gravity. The greater the matters density the greater the force of attraction it applies to other matter. It does not exist just for huge objects though, you can calculate the force that you have on someone you sit next to on a bench for example, it is just not strong enough to be noticeable. So yes, the planet is falling in a straight line toward the strongest force of attraction which is the sun. Just like the moon is falling in a straight line toward the Earth. If the Earth was stationary the moon would crash into it. However the Earth is always moving, just like the sun is always moving.

Also I would say that I explain that an image of a distant galaxy is curved because the force of gravity affects light. That is why it "curves" around planets. The particles within the space are being affected, not the space I think.

[Reach]

Alrighty - It isn't my job to give you a physics lesson. I see insanefreddy has tried. I'm replying one more time to your technical errors, and after that I refuse to continue to correct you.

Okay so what you are saying is that light travels in straight lines that bend around areas that "space bends." OR light bends around things with a strong force of gravity. Why do you think it takes an extraordinary mass? *Space* isn't bending, the particles around the object are just being drawn toward that massive object. The "classic example" of a black hole is just an object that is so dense that its gravitational pull is so strong that light cannot escape. Space doesn't "bend." It is the particles within that space that are being drawn toward something.

No.

Light being unable to escape has little to nothing to do with the 'pull'. This has nothing to do with escape velocities we see here on Earth.

Light can't escape the event horizon of a black hole because space beyond that point actually curves back onto itself. That is, mathematically, every straight line at every point within the event horizon of a black hole leads back into the black hole.

It makes much more sense that the big bang was a point that all of the matter of the universe was condensed to a single point due to a massive black hole. At such a point "space" would have been inconsequential because matter would have only been occupying one point. Then an energy build up could have caused the black hole to explode and the matter that was trapped within to be released throughout space. Thus giving "birth" to space and matter (which were really there all along).

Well, I'm glad you're not a physicist. What makes sense to you or anyone else is so utterly meaningless. You rely on mathematics, theory generating and theory testing through collecting data to come to your conclusions, and some times the truth is counter intuitive. That's the way it is.

I think it is you that does not understand this experiment, you and pretty much everyone else. I am curious, what exactly do you think space is? Is space really a malleable thing that can be distorted? Or is it just a medium which can be occupied by matter?

For space to be distorted it has to be made up of something, meaning it would have to be composed of some type of matter. By traveling do you really think you are distorting space, or just the molecules that exist within it? Clearly it does involve 'forces' per say because the speed which induces the "distortion" is causing a force.

Great, thank you so much for telling me why I don't understand the experiment, and then giving be absolutely no reason as to why I misunderstand the experiment. You didn't address any of my points, all of which are correct to begin with. Stop wasting my time. Address my actual points or there is no point in having this discussion.

[richhhhhard]

Originally Posted by Reach

Alrighty - It isn't my job to give you a physics lesson. I see insanefreddy has tried. I'm replying one more time to your technical errors, and after that I refuse to continue to correct you.



No.

Light being unable to escape has little to nothing to do with the 'pull'. This has nothing to do with escape velocities we see here on Earth.

Light can't escape the event horizon of a black hole because space beyond that point actually curves back onto itself. That is, mathematically, every straight line at every point within the event horizon of a black hole leads back into the black hole.



Well, I'm glad you're not a physicist. What makes sense to you or anyone else is so utterly meaningless. You rely on mathematics, theory generating and theory testing through collecting data to come to your conclusions, and some times the truth is counter intuitive. That's the way it is.



Great, thank you so much for telling me why I don't understand the experiment, and then giving be absolutely no reason as to why I misunderstand the experiment. You didn't address any of my points, all of which are correct to begin with. Stop wasting my time. Address my actual points or there is no point in having this discussion.

I really am not a physicist. I took four science classes last semester, I do fine with Biology and Chemistry, but something about Physics just bothers me. It seemed to me the whole time that they were going out of their way to make simple things complicated. Is the universe really so complicated?

Neither of you will give me a definition of space though. If it is curving and bending and warping it has to be made out of something. What about a massive object is causing space to bend?
Also, what do you think light is? It has to in some way be a form of energy or matter.

Sorry if I am wasting your time, but if you will just answer these questions than I will be satisfied.

[SM0K3D_0UT]

Originally Posted by richhhhhard

I really am not a physicist. I took four science classes last semester, I do fine with Biology and Chemistry, but something about Physics just bothers me. It seemed to me the whole time that they were going out of their way to make simple things complicated. Is the universe really so complicated?

Neither of you will give me a definition of space though. If it is curving and bending and warping it has to be made out of something. What about a massive object is causing space to bend?
Also, what do you think light is? It has to in some way be a form of energy or matter.

Sorry if I am wasting your time, but if you will just answer these questions than I will be satisfied.

Space, and the universe, is full of the Cosmic Background Microwave Radiation from the Big-Bang. In addition to this, space would also seem to be full of a lot of other wavelengths of EM radiation, from low RF to gamma. This can be shown by the fact that we are able to observe this radiation across the gaps between galaxies and even across the 'voids' that have been identified.

In fact, and because the universe is regarded as being the same everywhere, it follows that any point in space will have radiation passing through it from every direction, bearing in mind Olber's paradox about infinite quantities etc. Mass is just a form of Energy. Hence E = mc^2..A black hole is a lot of Mass (or Energy). Therefore it bends space a lot....In fact a black hole doesn't have anthing else except mass, angular momentum and charge. That's all it is.

Light continues to circle around the black hole in what is called the Schwartchild radius before disappearing into the event horizon. This is how that scientists are said to find the black holes; they find the bright circles with a black hole in it. light cannot escape a black hole because the velocity needed to escape the gravitation pull of a celestial body of a black hole exceeds the speed of light.

[insanefreddy926]

I really am not a physicist. I took four science classes last semester, I do fine with Biology and Chemistry, but something about Physics just bothers me. It seemed to me the whole time that they were going out of their way to make simple things complicated. Is the universe really so complicated?

Neither of you will give me a definition of space though. If it is curving and bending and warping it has to be made out of something. What about a massive object is causing space to bend?
Also, what do you think light is? It has to in some way be a form of energy or matter.

Sorry if I am wasting your time, but if you will just answer these questions than I will be satisfied.

When we talk about space, we actually are talking about space-time. All it is, is the four-dimensional (3 spatial, 1 temporal) manifold in which everything resides and occurs. It isn't really "made out" of anything. It is a property of the universe, and the presence of matter affects that property.

[richhhhhard]

Sigh.
Well I suppose this is just not something I will ever be able to understand.
I know it doesn't matter cause it really doesn't affect you guys, but there is a reason I have been thinking so much about stuff like this.
A few months ago I was at my friends apartment and I stood up and walked into the kitchen and everything just got kind of hazy. You know the feeling you get when you stand up too fast? I thought that is what it was but I started shaking and when my vision came back I couldn't remember who I was or where I was or why I was there for a few minutes. I thought maybe it was just my diet or sleeping habits (I am in college so both are pretty bad) but it kept happening no matter how I ate or how much sleep I got. Finally one time that it happened I woke up in the hospital. My mom says that I collapsed on the staircase, but I don't remember.

How are you supposed to make sense of something like this when you still feel like a little kid? They don't even know what the problem is. They think something is causing my brain to swell. It's not cancer, it's not a tumor, my brain is just swelling bigger than there is room for in my skull.

I gave up on religion a long time ago, so that is why I have been thinking about stuff like this so much. I am supposed to be getting married at this age, starting a family, finishing school. My parents are supposed to be picking out toys for their grandchildren not trying to figure out how to pay for my funeral. This is s*** I should be seeing on a TV show, not experiencing in real life.

It made it easier to simplify everything. To think that everything was easier to understand than I had always thought. I guess nothing is easy, or simple, in this world though. There will always be things more complex than I am able to understand. This is probably the last time I will be on here because it is making me really sad.

Thanks everyone though, for explaining things and sharing your thoughts. Oh, and I don't want your sympathy. Just don't take time for granted.

[insanefreddy926]

Originally Posted by richhhhhard

Sigh.
Well I suppose this is just not something I will ever be able to understand.
I know it doesn't matter cause it really doesn't affect you guys, but there is a reason I have been thinking so much about stuff like this.
A few months ago I was at my friends apartment and I stood up and walked into the kitchen and everything just got kind of hazy. You know the feeling you get when you stand up too fast? I thought that is what it was but I started shaking and when my vision came back I couldn't remember who I was or where I was or why I was there for a few minutes. I thought maybe it was just my diet or sleeping habits (I am in college so both are pretty bad) but it kept happening no matter how I ate or how much sleep I got. Finally one time that it happened I woke up in the hospital. My mom says that I collapsed on the staircase, but I don't remember.

How are you supposed to make sense of something like this when you still feel like a little kid? They don't even know what the problem is. They think something is causing my brain to swell. It's not cancer, it's not a tumor, my brain is just swelling bigger than there is room for in my skull.

I gave up on religion a long time ago, so that is why I have been thinking about stuff like this so much. I am supposed to be getting married at this age, starting a family, finishing school. My parents are supposed to be picking out toys for their grandchildren not trying to figure out how to pay for my funeral. This is s*** I should be seeing on a TV show, not experiencing in real life.

It made it easier to simplify everything. To think that everything was easier to understand than I had always thought. I guess nothing is easy, or simple, in this world though. There will always be things more complex than I am able to understand. This is probably the last time I will be on here because it is making me really sad.

Thanks everyone though, for explaining things and sharing your thoughts. Oh, and I don't want your sympathy. Just don't take time for granted.

Well, here's a response, if you ever go back on:

Since you don't want any sympathy, I won't show it (thought it's there). But you can't go on with that outlook. It's true, there will always be more complex things, and nobody, ever, will truly understand everything there is. But that's the beauty of it isn't it? That no matter how much you know, there's always more out there, waiting to be discovered. But what we're doing here, trying to understand the universe, the laws which govern it and it's physics.... It's absolutely nothing compared to the human nature and the greater, more meaningful truths out there, which transcend understanding, and which are really simple yet infinitely complex at the same time. Those kind of things are the real truths, and the ones we should really be trying to figure out.

So don't let this stop you from pursuing your interests and doing what you like. And please don't let it stop you from coming to the FFR community.

[richhhhhard]

Words, words, words.
You fools. Don't you see?
I am dead.
All I ever wanted was to receive my letter from Hogwarts. I know I got one, my mom just probably hid it, that b****.
Who does that?
But did Hagrid come knock down my F****ING door>?? NO.
Did they send ME 10,000 more?
NO.
All because I didnt kill the 'he who must not be named' and send the magical world into a period of peace?
that is F****ING BULL S***.
Discrimination if you ask me, but what do you care?
No,
forget about me,
for this is the way that it must be.
If it must be so, then let it be so.

[dsliscoo]

Originally Posted by Reach

Light being unable to escape has little to nothing to do with the 'pull'. This has nothing to do with escape velocities we see here on Earth.

Light can't escape the event horizon of a black hole because space beyond that point actually curves back onto itself. That is, mathematically, every straight line at every point within the event horizon of a black hole leads back into the black hole.
1

I had a question on this idea. Blackholes have X-ray/Gamma Waves coming off of them. Does that theory you support say these are reflection off the black hole, generated by the black hole or something else?

[Cavernio]

Rich, I suggest that if you don't understand the concept of einstein's theory of relativity go somewhere to learn about it. Scientific experiments have given us a wholly different view of 'time' than what the original thread talks about. The first few chapters of Faster than the Speed of Light by Joao Magueijo, I found are excellent in the basic understanding of currect physics which highschool just doesn't teach you. Time and space are perceptions, yes, but they follow laws which we figure out through observation and mass. Having non-physicists who aren't teachers who are trying to explain stuff to you is clearly not working, because they aren't physics teachers.

[Lamoc]

I got bored with the first post of reading and i'm just going to give my input on time.

Time isn't real. Sure we look at time and see its 11:00PM or so, but that's something we created. If we said no and the clock will never move from 11:00PM, the world will still rotate and the sun will still burn. Time was made by man to keep an accurate location in where they are perceiving to the day. We aren't moving in time. Time is moving around us, like the sundial.

Going into more basic things; if the sundial/watch/clock was never created, we would still go about our average day and be stationary. Plants wouldn't stop growing and the sun wouldn't stop burning.

[devonin]

Time was made by man to keep an accurate location in where they are perceiving to the day.

While we certainly invented the system of measurement (determining the length of a second, a minute, an hour etc) what is it measuring?

We invented the system for describing the length of objects, and arbitrarily created what a foot is, a meter, an inch, a mile, but you can't deny that length IS A THING THAT EXISTS even if we subjectively decided how to describe it.

Isn't the same thing occuring just as clearly with time? We devised, on our own, what the system of measurement is and how it works, but what is it measuring?

[Reach]

Originally Posted by devonin

While we certainly invented the system of measurement (determining the length of a second, a minute, an hour etc) what is it measuring?

We invented the system for describing the length of objects, and arbitrarily created what a foot is, a meter, an inch, a mile, but you can't deny that length IS A THING THAT EXISTS even if we subjectively decided how to describe it.

Isn't the same thing occuring just as clearly with time? We devised, on our own, what the system of measurement is and how it works, but what is it measuring?

Excellent points. I keep hearing this lately - that time doesn't exist - but nobody is ever willing to provide me with a framework of a universe that could possibly function without some variable time to account for the differentiation we see between one event that occurs, and another. People just think of time as what is measured by a clock, but you're absolutely right, that's not really what it is.

We just assume that this is the natural state of the universe by consequence of the fact that we are here, but we could take away time and see quite easily that the universe wouldn't exist...likewise the same with length, width etc.

Lamoc, if you'd care and still believe that time isn't real, describe how the universe could function in the absence of any physical way of differentiating between one quantum event and another - in layman's terms every event that can occur does occur, all simultaneously. This is essentially what happens to space and time right before the Big Bang...as space collapses into something resembling a singularity, time is also broken down (Because time is a component of space, as I described to Rich earlier), and as such events at that point cannot be differentiated. They occur on the quantum level without reason simultaneously.

This is part of the reason why physicists have no idea what happened prior to the big bang - none of our equations are capable of describing what happens at this point. Einsteins equations give non real answers, and other equations simply don't work at all because the components of space and time, normally present, disappear entirely.

You'll see you cannot describe the universe without time. It won't make any sense at all. Likewise you wouldn't be able to describe a universe where objects had no measurable size. It's a ridiculous proposition. Things obviously have measurable size, and this is a consequence of space. The same thing applies to time. All things have measurable time. If you want to argue otherwise, well, you're going against the grain in physics and any scientist would suggest you provide some research to back up your ideas :P

[richy:]

Originally Posted by devonin

but you can't deny that length IS A THING THAT EXISTS

Okay, let me begin this by saying that I completely disagree with this statement. Length is not a "thing" at all. It is a measurement of a "thing."

Like I said somewhere in one of these threads, a mile doesn't "exist" without land to measure and an ounce doesn't "exist" without matter to measure. If you think of time like that, time doesn't "exist" either without something to measure. To me it seems like just a way to tell a change from one configuration of all the matter in the universe at a given point in "time" from previous and future states.

Originally Posted by Reach

Excellent points. I keep hearing this lately - that time doesn't exist - but nobody is ever willing to provide me with a framework of a universe that could possibly function without some variable time to account for the differentiation we see between one event that occurs, and another. People just think of time as what is measured by a clock, but you're absolutely right, that's not really what it is.

We just assume that this is the natural state of the universe by consequence of the fact that we are here, but we could take away time and see quite easily that the universe wouldn't exist...likewise the same with length, width etc.

Lamoc, if you'd care and still believe that time isn't real, describe how the universe could function in the absence of any physical way of differentiating between one quantum event and another - in layman's terms every event that can occur does occur, all simultaneously. This is essentially what happens to space and time right before the Big Bang...as space collapses into something resembling a singularity, time is also broken down (Because time is a component of space, as I described to Rich earlier), and as such events at that point cannot be differentiated. They occur on the quantum level without reason simultaneously.

This is part of the reason why physicists have no idea what happened prior to the big bang - none of our equations are capable of describing what happens at this point. Einsteins equations give non real answers, and other equations simply don't work at all because the components of space and time, normally present, disappear entirely.

You'll see you cannot describe the universe without time. It won't make any sense at all. Likewise you wouldn't be able to describe a universe where objects had no measurable size. It's a ridiculous proposition. Things obviously have measurable size, and this is a consequence of space. The same thing applies to time. All things have measurable time. If you want to argue otherwise, well, you're going against the grain in physics and any scientist would suggest you provide some research to back up your ideas :P

Reach, you have shown that you know a lot more about physics than I do, but I hate physics. After I finish physics 2 this coming semester I will be done with physics for good and I am really happy about that. Anyway, I know this argument is seemingly one based on physics principles, but the more I have thought about it the more I think it is kind of a ridiculous thread. Either the answer is "we don't know the answer" or a complex theory in physics that may or may not be true, which is a better answer in my opinion because even though it is most likely wrong (in my opinion), it is still definitely more likely to be the answer than "we don't know the answer."

All I know though is that the big bang sure as hell was not the *beginning*, even if things happened simultaneously before the big bang or whatever you were saying (which would sort of make sense if there was only energy and no matter) I think that everything we can see or touch in this universe has *always* existed. If that is true it will *always* exist. There was no beginning. There will be no end. Trying to find out all the details to something of that nature seems foolish. That being said, I know we will always seek the answers, or the "truth," and I am sure we will find out a *lot* more than we know now. I don't know, I think this is the end of the argument for me though.

Good luck finding the answers, if you ever do send me a pm or something.

[devonin]

Length is not a "thing" at all. It is a measurement of a "thing."

that exists.

[richy:]

Originally Posted by devonin

that exists.

What is your point?
Time is a measurement of change of something that exists, just like length is a measurement of something that exists. Independently length or time do not exist. That is the way I see it. Take away the existing "things" and suddenly length and time are meaningless. All I am saying is that I do not think that time is something that is independently a malleable thing that exists on its own. It is just a measurement.

[devonin]

But it is a measurement OF SOMETHING. That something does exist. So you say "Time" is just the system of measurement we invented to measure ....what? What is the thing called that 'time' measures? Is that not, perhaps, also "time" ?

[StyleKrong]

Existence and time go hand in hand... time is basically the river and existence is a leaf being forced constantly down that river. Time is what forces change, and existence is all about things changing.

[VulcanRevenge]

I think Richy is just trying to say simply that the measurement of time is something we human beings created, and it is! If we found another sentient species somewhere in the universe they probably define time completely differently. I think that's what Devonin is trying to say, is that even though we define it however we want, it's still something that exists (it's something that other species would have to acknowledge). I completely agree with that because time is a measurement of change, but it can be warped and altered to create a different effect (i.e. effects on objects going the speed of light).

[Cavernio]

"Independently length or time do not exist."
Matter doesn't exist without energy, so that independent of energy, matter does not exist. Your logic concludes that matter doesn't exist.