The Paranormal, UFO's, and Mysteries of the Unknown

Void said:

God does not physically exist in any tangible way that you can prove, not even to the level that we can "prove" light and time behaves the way we say it does, so how can you state so certainly that God exists, but time does not?

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Well, the concept of time exists so in that regard it exists obviously. When I say time doesn't exist I'm speaking in terms of tangibility. You can't plug into a machine "take me to the year 1776!" or any year for that matter. The only state of time that anyone or anything can ever exist in, is the present. You can't reach out and grab a minute. You can't stop your watch and have time itself stop.

God on the other hand, is like seeing a wake in the ocean and a boat in the distance. We can logically deduce that the wake was caused by the boat. Even if we had really bad eye sight and couldn't see the boat, we could still draw the same logical conclusion. We all play video games and visit virtual worlds that we don't doubt for even a second to be the creation of intelligent beings. So to me, I don't doubt for even a second that the real world is also the work of creation of an intelligent being.

Shyv said:

Not really sure what your point is. My point however is that the definition and measurement of time is completely man made. You can only even visualize time when you have a man made device to do so.

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I think atomic clocks accurately prove that time exists in so far as it's a tangible property of the universe. It's not "made up" or "in our heads".

so we're coming to the realization that time and distance are inextractibly linked?

We're making progress. It's close to devolving into a semantic argument of timecube levels, but it's not there yet.

There is an aspect of reality which can be measured which behaves, in conjunction with other aspects, in a regulatory fashion. We have agreed to call this "Time".

Unlike Croche I can not actually put time in a bottle. It is however an integral part of things i -can- put in bottles. That means, among other things, I cannot put something in a bottle WITHOUT it. So in a way... I can put time in a bottle.

Smolin is the only physicist I know of (i'm sure there's plenty, he's the one I know), who is exploring that issue. Because it can't get more foundational than that, and the way you conceptualize things matters an awful lot.

ShakyJake said:

I think atomic clocks accurately prove that time exists in so far as it's a tangible property of the universe. It's not "made up" or "in our heads".

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Then you simply think wrong.

"An atomic clock is a clock device that uses an electron transition frequency in the microwave, optical, or ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum of atoms as a frequency standard for its timekeeping element. "

All it is, is a more accurate clock. Literally the same shit as any other clock, only it's more accurate to the pre-determined arbitrary man made definition of measurement of time. So no, it's still made up and still in our heads. Literally changes nothing.

You couldn't even be bothered to provide an example of how it proves anything lol. So either you're really lazy or you don't actually know how to back up your claim.

Void said:

So now you admit that time does actually exist. Good. Now explain why, since you admit that the concept exists, it doesn't work the way people like Einstein said it does, like with traveling to a distant galaxy and having different perceptions of time for the traveler and the observer.

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“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity.”

― Albert Einstein

Can't really explain it better than that. The passage of time is always the same for all things at all moments. It only seems to behave differently from different perspectives relative to the observer but in reality is always remaining constant.

Shyv said:

You couldn't even be bothered to provide an example of how it proves anything lol. So either you're really lazy or you don't actually know how to back up your claim.

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If you have an atomic clock in orbit (like on a satellite) and one on the surface of Earth they will, over time, become out of sync.

ShakyJake said:

If you have an atomic clock in orbit (like on a satellite) and one on the surface of Earth they will, over time, become out of sync.

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I know but this doesn't actually prove anything in regards to time being a tangible object.

"An atomic clock is a clock that uses the resonance frequencies of atoms as its resonator. ... If you take any atom of cesium and ask it to resonate, it will resonate at exactly the same frequency as any otheratom of cesium. Cesium-133 oscillates at 9,192,631,770 cycles per second."

Could the clocks being out of sync not be caused by some sort of faultiness of the clock itself when being accelerated to certain speeds? The clock loses 1 second every 15 billion years. While sure that isn't much, it does in fact prove that it isn't infallible and is indeed prone to error. Also, they only become out of sync to the degree of something like .0001 seconds. This is hardly a convincing argument that proves your case.

this was the most active i've seen this thread ever, no idea we had this many lurkers. good stuff.

In fairness, I am not at all sure that what Lumi is arguing is contrary to Eintein's concept of relativity.

Does time actually move at different rates for two different observers or does it just appear to from the perspective of those observers? I'm not sure thats a crazy question to ask. If it is, the answer lies beyond my understanding of physics.

I'm pretty sure I've linked this before. But it's a pretty good rundown on the topic of space and time.

pharmakos said:

the words used to describe time are man made, but time definitely exists. or clocks wouldn't work.

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if time exists and clocks wouldnt work without it, why are broken clocks right two times a day?