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Topic: Time (Read 1799 times) |
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robman_rob
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Hi, I'm new to this forum. In general I like riddles, so I was very happy to stumble across this forum.
I have a riddle that may tickle you funny. I did some basic searches and did not find anything like this riddle being asked already.
How would you know if time went by twice as fast?
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towr
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Re: Time
« Reply #1 on: Feb 21st, 2008, 11:51am » |
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In the same way you'd notice the universe was half the size.
not
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JiNbOtAk
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Re: Time
« Reply #2 on: Feb 21st, 2008, 7:35pm » |
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Driving your mum to buy groceries for half an hour is far too long, driving your girlfriend back to her home for two hours is far too short.
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Grimbal
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Re: Time
« Reply #3 on: Feb 24th, 2008, 8:48am » |
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Anyway, time doesn't pass. Time stays. We pass.
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Three Hands
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Re: Time
« Reply #4 on: Feb 25th, 2008, 2:21pm » |
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Depends on your model of time. Equally, depends on if you consider time to exist in the first place...
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rmsgrey
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Re: Time
« Reply #5 on: Feb 25th, 2008, 4:27pm » |
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How are you defining the rate at which time passes?
I regard time as passing at 1 second per second - anything else sounds logically problematic, at best...
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towr
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Re: Time
« Reply #6 on: Feb 26th, 2008, 1:05am » |
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on Feb 25th, 2008, 4:27pm, rmsgrey wrote:How are you defining the rate at which time passes?
I regard time as passing at 1 second per second - anything else sounds logically problematic, at best... |
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I would assume he's considering an outside perspective. A God's eye view, so to speak. So then, if in this view everything in the universe starts happening in double speed, how would anyone inside the universe notice.
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Grimbal
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Re: Time
« Reply #7 on: Feb 26th, 2008, 1:30am » |
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I don't see how we could. Just as we wouldn't notice if God made backups of the world and restored it from time to time to make up for His/Her mistakes.
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rmsgrey
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Re: Time
« Reply #8 on: Feb 26th, 2008, 11:39am » |
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But is that a question of time in the universe changing, or of the interface between "God-space" and the universe changing?
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towr
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Re: Time
« Reply #9 on: Feb 26th, 2008, 12:09pm » |
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on Feb 26th, 2008, 11:39am, rmsgrey wrote:| But is that a question of time in the universe changing, or of the interface between "God-space" and the universe changing? |
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You could compare it to doubling the clock-speed of your CPU (or allocating twice the CPU cycles to a program).
Now assuming the program has no access to the clockspeed itself, nor to external sources of temporal information, but only to changes of it's own data. Then how can it tell whether the clockspeed has changed?
Even though it really is running twice as fast, it can't tell. As far as the program is concerned it's running one clock-cycle per clock-cycle, same as before; whereas for the programmer it's running twice as many clock-cycles per second.
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Random Lack of Squiggily Lines
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Re: Time
« Reply #10 on: Feb 26th, 2008, 1:20pm » |
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ah, but your CPU would go twice as fast, like time
and if time went twice as fast, that would be the new time, so .........
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You can only believe i what you can prove, and since you have nothing proven to cmpare to, you can believe in nothing.
I have ~50 posts to hack a "R" into a "D". Which one?
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towr
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Re: Time
« Reply #11 on: Feb 26th, 2008, 1:51pm » |
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on Feb 26th, 2008, 1:20pm, tiber13 wrote:ah, but your CPU would go twice as fast, like time
and if time went twice as fast, that would be the new time, so ......... |
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?!
You realize that was an analogy, right? And not a suggestion that to determine whether your universe was sped up you should look at your computer's CPU..
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| « Last Edit: Feb 26th, 2008, 1:51pm by towr » |
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Grimbal
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Re: Time
« Reply #12 on: Feb 27th, 2008, 5:43am » |
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Of course, if one day you measure the speed of light at 150'000 km/s, you might think something fishy is going on...
Or is God above Relativity? 
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towr
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Re: Time
« Reply #13 on: Feb 27th, 2008, 6:02am » |
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on Feb 27th, 2008, 5:43am, Grimbal wrote:| Of course, if one day you measure the speed of light at 150'000 km/s, you might think something fishy is going on... |
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How could such a measurement come about?
Quote:| Or is God above Relativity? |
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He's omnipresent, so I'd assume so.
He's everywhere, so in particular above relativity
And changing such fundamental things as the rate of passage of time must inevitably have consequences for the fundamental "constants" in physics as well.
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Benny
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Re: Time
« Reply #14 on: Mar 4th, 2008, 1:27pm » |
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So, we can post physics questions !?
If I take any two real clocks, synchronise them, and let them run, after some time, they will always disagree about what time it is. So which of them measures the real time?
Is there such a thing as absolute time -- a time measured imperfectly by any actual clock?
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Sir Col
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Re: Time
« Reply #15 on: Mar 4th, 2008, 3:01pm » |
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On a superficial level we could use the time it takes for our planet to rotate once on its axis as the definition of twenty-four hours, but it is not constant. We could measure time based on dividing the time it takes for Earth to orbit the sun, but that is not constant.
In reality there is no such thing as "real time", as nothing moves uniformly or with constant frequency; every system requires resynchronisation. Even if we had such a mechanism that counted units of time with perfect regularity, it would cease to be useful in our irregular universe. But the existence of such a device is a contradiction in terms...
The very presence of matter, including the "clock" itself, causes the "currents" of space-time as it flows to disturb the behaviour of the system.
The only way to have a perfect clock would be to have no matter, in which case you have no clock.
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onlyme722
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Re: Time
« Reply #16 on: Mar 4th, 2008, 3:30pm » |
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Well I'm wondering if this is asking "if right now time were to suddenly start going twice as fast, how would we notice?"
Any means of human devices to record time would be moot because they are still programmed mechanisms. I'm assuming that our world wouldn't suddenly seem as though it were in fast forward mode, but the question is posed in an obscure manner.
Logically I would suggest that we would measure time as it was done before man had even dreamed of creating a clock. We measured time by the passing of the sun. The problem is when would we begin to notice this change? But it would happen somewhere along the line.
The best would be a means of comparison. A man-made clock and a sun-dial. The man made clock would take 12 hours for the hour hand to make a full cycle, and the sundial would only be a 6 o'clock at that point. But once again, how would we know to look for this comparison?
I'm guessing the answer is to be more clever than this, but it's a perfectly legitimate answer.
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Icarus
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Re: Time
« Reply #17 on: Mar 4th, 2008, 4:33pm » |
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The question is meaningless. "fast" is a reference to the rate of change of a quantity with respect to time. The rate of change of time with respect to time can only be 1. In order for time to run "faster", we need a different timescale to compare it to. Thus we can talk about time passing faster for someone standing still than for someone traveling at a high rate of speed, because we are comparing one time scale to the other. But in this question, there is no alternative time scale to which we may compare our own. Without such a comparison, "twice as fast" has no meaning.
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Concerning the measurement of time, I cannot completely agree with Sir Col. Just because there are limits to our ability to measure a value does not mean the value does not really exist. And it may even be possible to build a mechanism that exactly measures time (if certain ideas about time floating about now should prove to be true). Of course, such a device can only measure time in its own locality, effected by its own existence. But within that locality, its measurement would be perfect. Its existence is not a contradiction.
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Benny
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Re: Time
« Reply #18 on: Mar 4th, 2008, 5:17pm » |
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The existence of absolute time is hard to prove. But, then again, we don't have to be too concerned with it. We learn in physics how motion and time are interconnected. We cannot conceive motion without time. The simplest law of motion, which was invented by Galileo and Descartes, and formalised by Isaac Newton.
If we start to believe in some absolute flow of time, then we will face a dilemma: Would time flow if there were nothing in the universe? If everything stopped, if nothing happened, would time continue?
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If we want to understand our world — or how to change it — we must first understand the rational choices that shape it.
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Icarus
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Re: Time
« Reply #19 on: Mar 4th, 2008, 6:05pm » |
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The existence of "absolute time" is not just hard to prove, it is impossible, like all other theoretical constructs. The best we can do is gather empirical evidence in support of the idea (and the empirical evidence in this case is extremely strong). But empirical evidence always falls short of actually proving that something must be true. You just may not have come across the exceptions yet.
We cannot conceive of motion without time for the same reason we cannot conceive of 2 without 1. Motion is, by definition, change with respect to time. Without time, motion is not defined.
If everything stopped in the universe, I would not care if time continued or not, as I would no longer exist. Whether time would stop under such a situation or not has no effect on the behavior of time and motion in the reality we see, so I fail to understand why this is any sort of dilemma.
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Benny
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Re: Time
« Reply #20 on: Mar 4th, 2008, 6:31pm » |
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I argue that it becomes a dilemma or paradox for those who choose to believe in some absolute flow of time.
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Icarus
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Re: Time
« Reply #21 on: Mar 4th, 2008, 6:39pm » |
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Why? I believe in such a flow (I think - I am not completely sure what you mean by this phrase), and I find nothing bothersome about it.
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Benny
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Re: Time
« Reply #22 on: Mar 4th, 2008, 9:46pm » |
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You believe in absolute time, and yet we cannot observe it. The physics of time/motion is an attractive point of view since it doesn't lead us to believe in some absolute flow of time that we cannot observe.
My question to you is what could it mean to say that something like an absolute time exists if it can never be precisely measured?
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Sir Col
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Re: Time
« Reply #23 on: Mar 5th, 2008, 12:44am » |
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We must be careful here as we are using time in two different senses. We can talk about time as an integral part of the essence of matter; that is, the very existence of matter demands the existence of space, which inevitably leads to a temporal separation of its extremes.
But we can also talk about time in the distinctions we make between two observable events; for example, the "time" it takes for a sprinter to run 100m or the "time" it takes for an ice cube to melt.
Unfortunately any attempt to quantify and measure this time is also based on observed events. As everything is in a constant state of change and the very existence of matter in the universe has an effect of the rest of matter, there are no absolutes.
My point before was that even if the universe was made up of the smallest unit of matter then it will have an effect on itself. If it moves (a necessary condition to measure time) then it distorts spacetime in such a way to alter its own "rhythm".
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towr
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Re: Time
« Reply #24 on: Mar 5th, 2008, 1:41am » |
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on Mar 4th, 2008, 4:33pm, Icarus wrote:| The question is meaningless. "fast" is a reference to the rate of change of a quantity with respect to time. The rate of change of time with respect to time can only be 1. In order for time to run "faster", we need a different timescale to compare it to. Thus we can talk about time passing faster for someone standing still than for someone traveling at a high rate of speed, because we are comparing one time scale to the other. But in this question, there is no alternative time scale to which we may compare our own. Without such a comparison, "twice as fast" has no meaning. |
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Well, perhaps it means nothing to you; but I find it unproblematic to assume there is some assumed external, absolute, standard of time with respect to which our passage of time doubles.
A lot goes unsaid in language usage; it's a matter of filling in the blanks based on (supposed) shared beliefs.
If you have a statement like "John is twice as tall as last I saw him", then that also implies there is some unmentioned standard of length with respect to which his height increased. He's not twice as tall as himself, unless he has no dimensions.
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| « Last Edit: Mar 5th, 2008, 1:42am by towr » |
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