There's something about time that physicists can't explain | Avshalom Elitzur

#physics #quantumphysics #timetravel #spacetime

[johnbabb_]

As a historian, time is a topic of great significance to me. Michel de Certeau’s description of train travel may well be as good a description of time passing as any, though it’s not his intention:

“A travelling incarceration. Immobile inside the train, seeing immobile things slip by. What is happening? Nothing is moving inside or outside the train.”

We are incarcerated in the present.

[aesops-ghost]

Most people can't even conceive the difficulty of the question we are trying to ask

[tutini]

1977 Nobel price Awardee Ilya Prigogine dedicated all his life to develop the concept of the arrow of time. The asymmetrical nature of time is the basis of chaos theory and nonequilibrium thermodynamics.

[danieljarvis]

"Time flies... except when you're doing it."
~My jailbird dad.

[jornantrillsark]

Time is an invention to grasp the nature of change in existence. We get old… time is not passing, we are passing.

[marcusbrown]

You can also study time through DNA. It’s possible to see the progression of time through world migration and mutation of human genetics. You can also see this in human telomeres with how people age.

[creeperkinght]

The reason why is that it is easier to measure more static moments in time than it is to look at from a more dynamic perspective. The math is insanely complicated, and even then, mathematically speaking it is impossible to have a pure continuous flow of the conditions of time, as we have to insert that into a integral process that would be consistent, along with defining the many layers of factors influencing that dynamic flow. Having the ability to have a integral process measure the past, present, and future is unfeasible and currently impossible with the current structure we have in math and science. We can get more and more accurate toward that direction with more concise technologies, sure, but until then we are going to mainly focus on the present as that is what is most significant to us. This is also why we make proper predication procedures. and calculate off of those results as well. Would it be amazing? Absolutely, but we must not fantasize without considering the implications and the current limitations and seeing how we can properly proceed with that with brevity and cohesive processes to our own current systems as well. We can determine how the future will appear to us, such as red shifting positioning in astrophysics, electrochemical patterns in biophysics or neurophysics, or gravitational conditions on spacetime in theoretical physics but that doesn't change that we need a process in the present to predict outcomes of varying accuracy.

[sgrant]

Thank you for your honesty. Physics doesn’t begin to have all the answers.

[BlahBlahBlah-xh]

"that's all well and good sir but this is an AA meeting"

[stevenjames]

Time is not passing because it does not exist. It is a measurement. It is a measurement we use to describe how the spaces around us and other objects have or will change.

[majordanger]

Time flows in waves, tingly and spread wide,
Mysteries of the past and future collide.
Feel the warmth as moments intertwine and slide,
Let the passion build as time’s secrets unwind.

[PK-lkej]

Thank you very much for your insightful dialogue sir, however, this is an AA meeting.

[meows_and_woof]

Time is a concept in our brain and we made it up in order to have references and plan our day. Time doesn’t exists actually, even the clocks measure distance by going around the dial. I feel time is just another physical dimension and the universe can stretch and expand into that dimension and we perceive it as time.

[jjaapp]

If you believe time is something, you are wrong. Time doesn't exist. It's only a measurement we use to denote how long between now and then. It is not something that can be affected, changed, or traversed. What has happened has already happened, you cannot go back. What will happen is going to happen, just wait until it does. Time doesn't exist, it's just a measurement.

[victoriabaker]

I agree, and it's wonderful to hear it said. Note how the multitudes scuttle to defend the othodoxy.

[marksevel]

Time is a by-product of movement. If nothing moves/lives, there is no time. Then again, there is an over-arching time as existence turns on and off. Then again, time is timeless as it's always on.

[mishie]

It’s really wonderful to read so many fantastic interpretations of what time is, does, doesn’t do, how it affects us, doesn’t affect us, and the infinite amount of things time is/isn’t, how it moves and doesn’t move, and the literal infinite ways to describe time make this post all the better

[situational.analysis]

Time is the distance between change. It’s not moving. We are.

[buckholz]

I was going to comment but, I don't have the time.

[gregmellott]

Time is in reality an artifact of energy interacting with itself in space. Where there is intense energy levels time appears to pass slower to an observer in a less energy intense environment. Thus the effect noted that has gravity expressed. What is closer to the a mass's intense energy field has it energy bent in its propagation as it must travel slower than what is even a bit farther away. If it is happening inside another mass the whole of it appears to fall toward the other mass. Light just has its path bent.
Maxwell noted this effect when studying the propagation of radio waves a long time ago now. He put a small factor in his equations for this effect. It doesn't amount to much in that environment. Yet should one note the energy intensities inside of an atom. It may well fully explain how energy could get knotted up in such a small area of space and make particles. and then atoms. To make all this work one may wish to consider that energy may actually be able to travel at twice the speed of light. But when it runs into a an environment of conflicting fields flowing in apposing directions then it appears to be what we measure for 'empty space".