Blog of the Week: Of Time

Link to original post: [drupal=2878]Of Time[/drupal]



Samaster will remember this from AiB, I left it behind because i had doubts that such a mystery could be solved without proving anything. Bu for some reason I've regained confidence in my sense of logic, and I'd like to put my theory about time out there for discussion.

It all starts with what I heard in some religious debate some years ago. I remember the quote "energy is timeless" or something to that effect. Now I don't know where this guy was coming from, or if he's right or wrong, but either way, I'd have probably been led to this same type of pondering by whatever the truth is.

Thinking about energy being timeless just doesn't make sense. Honestly, I'd hope that I could make the statement here, "Energy is not timeless," and everyone would agree, but for those who disagree I'll have to continue my explanation (If you do agree you can skip ahead). One part of the fabric of all that is is time. The other is space of course, which is much more complicated. Nothing can "exist" in this reality without being bound by time. At the core of everything there is energy. Our everyday items are made of atoms, which are composed of energy. Now, it makes sense to me that if energy were "timeless" then energy itself would be capable of random unexplainable, unfathomable occurrences. This makes it impossible to truly know whether or not this attribute of energy is true, however there is much evidence to the contrary which makes me feel so.....contrary.

For one, if energy were timeless, that would put it above the laws of time. Time, understand, is the attempted measure of infinitesimal increments. This is the same as space, but the differences is the conceptual and the physical. For anything to exist in this reality, it must be measurable bu conceptual and physical increments. However, if energy were above time that would make it immeasurable, and thus, non-existent. For if there is anything in the world without a now and then, how can it be? There's a carton of welches Mandarin Mango juice next to me. It's been there for a couple hours. I can describe the length of time it's been there because assumably, it is bound by time. But if energy were timeless, it would be impossible for me to characterize the amount of time it has been there because it is composed of energy. Am I making my point yet? For the simple fact that matter exists, energy must be bound by time, and thus, is not timeless. Understand what this means. All phenomena resulting from energy is bound by time. I'll get to the point for those who are wondering: The Big Bang DID NOT create time, contrary to popular theory.

Now I would like to venture in to the more interesting topic. Another interpretation of that statement would be that "Energy has existed forever." Note, that this keeps energy within the realms of time, but places time as the infinite. This is a problem. In fact, infinity is the craziest problem there it. Can time be timeless? Does time have that power? Well the answer is probably that time ongoingly affects itself. Time cannot be timeless, because then there'd be no time, so time must be in a state of constant existence called "forever". But there it s problem with this too. We know that time is in a forward progression, there is no denial of that. But the concept of time existing forever coupled with the fact that we are in a forward progression of time means that time exists forever backward. Meaning that for any point in time we can find, there is an infinite amount of time behind it. That if we were to go back 999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,99 9,999,999,999,999 years into the past there would still be 999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,99 9,999,999,999,999 years existing before that, and 999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,99 9,999,999,999,999 years existing before those years as well.

I hope someone is seeing the problem now, bear with me because this is a very difficult concept to grasp, I cannot even put it into sensible words. If time extends infinitely backwards, then how is it possible that time progresses forward. We can count 1....2....3 and we know that every moment of the future hasn't happened yet, but in order for us to count, we have to start at 1. Progress is only measured by the original standard before it, but the nature of infinite past if completely contrary to the concept of a progressing time. If you can't grasp what I'm trying to say, do know that I'm trying my hardest. Say, a man is running a marathon, he has yet to finish it, when he looks back he cannot find the starting line. If he turns around, he will run on forever. If he supposedly got as far as he did, how could he have come from infinity? Indeed, if time extended infinitely back, there would be no forward progression of time. Since forward progression is a fact, and infinite past is ambiguous, forward progression must be the truth, and infinite past must be a lie, UNLESS there is an powerful force above and outside outside of time and space that can make this possible. If you accept the "UNLESS" then you would accept the idea that "God" or some similar manner of being exists. If you don't accept the "unless", then I'll continue to further prove my point. Time has not existed forever.

Since, logically, time cannot have existed forever, we must consider what there is that created it. It could not be any force within the realms of time. What powers there are beyond time are unfathomable concepts, but it is obvious that there is some power above time, which has the power to create time itself. Now whether this power contains all powers is the big question, but that is a question which cannot be answered and I will not begin to try to characterize that which exists outside all notions of logic. However, the knowledge that a power above time exists is enough for some to consider it a conscious god, which I think is explorable if we look into the nature of purpose, which is something I've tampered with but is far more complicated than everything I've written here. And with that, I've reached the end, for now.

Food for thought:I've told this interesting conditional to a couple people and they found it conclusive as well. If time existed infinitely backwards and energy the same, all things and all variations of all things would have happened an infinite amount of times already. Confused? Let me explain. IT's said that energy is what caused the Big Bang, and that the BB is a reoccurring phenomena which happens some amount of years which aren't really important because time is supposedly infinite. The BB is supposedly the origin of all that is (which I'm sure is also a bunch of stupidity) meaning that if the big bang happens repetitively, and time extends infinitely backwards, then the BB would've happened an infinite amount of times. This would also mean that every single possible thing that could've happened after the big bang has happened an infinite number of times. If it is possible that the big bang could occur and a planet called earth would develop with organisms called humans existing on it, it has happened already an infinite number of times. If it is possible that the earth could be developed with crab people, it has happened already an infinite number of times. If the earth could develop with people, the world wide web, and a website called Facebook, where some person who thinks and acts exactly as I do wrote this and a person who has the same identity as you, my reader, is reading it, it has happened an infinite number of times. Similarly, an alternate possibility in which I choose not to write any of this, or change around a word, delete a paragraph, sentence, letter, or if I choose to go and play smashbros instead of any of this has already happened an infinite number of times. This means that no matter what we do, think, or say, it has already been done in the infinite past.

Needless to say, I don't believe any of that is true. Discuss any observations about this. Fell free to tell me where I'm wrong, because I've yet to consider this the absolute truth.

As far as I'm concerned, energy seems timeless, but in actuality, it had to have been created and therefore is not timeless. Mind you, I didn't read your whole post and I'm Christian.

Time, like any dimension, is relative. When I say I am 19 years old, and born in the year 1990, both of those numbers are referencing a past event. Just because time extends infinitely backwards and forwards doesn't mean we can't measure it.

That being said, there's a general consensus that the universe is something like 13 billion years old. "Time" may not have started there (our universe coming from a sort of external pool of higher dimensions), but it's possible.

CA5H said:

As far as I'm concerned, energy seems timeless, but in actuality, it had to have been created and therefore is not timeless. Mind you, I didn't read your whole post and I'm Christian.

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I'm Christian too dude.

Time is relative is not a stated fact. Non of these things are. I do see, however, why you like debating about this subject.

That everything is bound by time is not 100% certaint to be true. I remember that there where multi cellular creatures (as small as bacteria) that got created by nuclear tests that did not live the same way as us (moving linear through time) or at least where not seen doing so. They skipped randomly through it.

Wow, I did not expect (or want) this to be BotW. I guess it's too late now though.

Wingz35 said:

That everything is bound by time is not 100% certaint to be true. I remember that there where multi cellular creatures (as small as bacteria) that got created by nuclear tests that did not live the same way as us (moving linear through time) or at least where not seen doing so. They skipped randomly through it.

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That is quite interesting, got a link?

Let's not forget that the macroscopic and the submicroscopic worlds are not necessarily bound by the same set of laws. Quantum mechanics are a very strange ruleset.

Also, I'm pretty sure that this is still all theory and conjecture, but entering the 4th dimension allows a being to bridge time by treating the existence of one exact moment and the existence of another moment in time as two points, and then traveling along the line that connects those two points.

Ugh. Hate you. I just signed on to write this same thing.

Excuse me for reviving this thread, but it's not been too long ago. I like this topic. It makes sensible points.
The only flaw with your logic to me is that infinity doesn't exist. It's what I have always believed and will always keep onto. I do believe time has an end, or rather, it starts over again. My god, I wouldn't know when, where and how, but it must happen.

I can't say whether or not infinity exists, but all I know is that the concept is completely illogical. In order for anything to happen there absolutely has to be a beginning. The concept of infinity is scientifically and logically impossible, because it contradicts the Law of Causality and it just plain doesn't make sense. Time would logically be unable to progress because the infinity of things before it would result in nothing ever having happened. I, personally, regard all phenomena that include an infinity as illogical, particularly infinitely small sizes and infinitely small increments of time.

I don't know what to say about the notion of time starting over. Perhaps, if you could back it up with something we could discuss it better. At this point, I don't know where you're coming from.

If energy has always been tied to time from the beginning then since there are more people on the Earth than before, the energy is being thinned out making us weaker?

@MuraRengan: Let me start off by saying that I have no clear answer to you. This is mostly because I think that either a) there isn't one, or b) I can't comprehend it.

The concepts of time and the infinite and whether or not either has any correlation to the other has always been of genuine interest to me. A book called "The End of Time" actually tackles similar problems that you have with the existence of time. The author's general theory is that "time" is a series of instances that we experience. However, the matter and energy in each of these instances is not the same as that of each other instance. The connections are described as either a series of random chance or constantly occurring. I never got to the end of the book, but it's an interesting study on the theory of time.

Also, have you ever heard of Zeno's Paradoxes? The one I am thinking of is his dichotomy paradox. Concerning movement (quoted from Wikipedia):

"Suppose Homer wants to catch a stationary bus. Before he can get there, he must get halfway there. Before he can get halfway there, he must get a quarter of the way there. Before traveling a fourth, he must travel one-eighth; before an eighth, one-sixteenth; and so on.
His description requires one to complete an infinite number of tasks, which Zeno maintains is an impossibility.
This sequence also presents a second problem in that it contains no first distance to run, for any possible (finite) first distance could be divided in half, and hence would not be first after all. Hence, the trip cannot even begin. The paradoxical conclusion then would be that travel over any finite distance can neither be completed nor begun, and so all motion must be an illusion."

The dichotomy paradox remained an ever-present mathematical and psychological problem until the "solution" arrived with the usage of limits of sequences in Calculus. The sequence can be treated as geometric, which can be viewed with a formula to solve for the total distance traveled.

I believe that you may find some sort of answer in the realm of Calculus. Of course, mathematical reasoning is often philosophically questionable, as it treats infinity almost as if it were a large number used as a boundary to multiple number sets.

As far as "time starting over" is concerned, doesn't that just entail a greater amount of "time" that encompasses all other "times" that may have started over? It's like talking about concentric circles in geometry. Because of the existence of fractions and irrational numbers, all circles and/or lines are made up of an infinite number of points. Thus, if one circle is bigger than another circle (keeping in mind that both are made of infinitely many points), are there infinitely many more points in the bigger circle than there are on the already-infinite smaller circle?

I realize that I may have just given you a ton more to think about, but I'm a Math major with a Philosophy minor. It's what I do.

As a final note to you, try not to obsess over it. It's a burning question, and you don't seem to be losing your mind over it, but obsessing over anything tends to obscure any path towards a solution. Keep a clear head and do some research. Good luck!

BurningCrusader777 said:

Also, I'm pretty sure that this is still all theory and conjecture, but entering the 4th dimension allows a being to bridge time by treating the existence of one exact moment and the existence of another moment in time as two points, and then traveling along the line that connects those two points.

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Think about this: you mentioned "traveling" between these two points; however, if you are aware of "traveling" or if "traveling" lasts any longer than no time at all, doesn't this entail some amount of time that exists outside of "our" time? 4-dimensional sentience blows my mind.

Brilliant. If time extended infinitely backwards, we never would've reached the present. This is what you were trying to say.