Time and the Universe

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I'm doing my own research on the concept of Time. I'm curious to see what other peoples' ideas are in regard to Time and the Universe.

Since time is accepted as one of the dimensions of the universe and it behaves as one I am very curious why we perceive ourselves as a point moving through time. In space we can perceive ourselves as existing on a point in space but there is no motion through space necessary. Why is time perception as one of motion and what is the present?

Sand, are you 100% sure we do perceive our selves as moving through time in a linear direction?

If we only experience the present, one infinitely small moment of time at a time, then how do we infer movement from that in one direction?

If there is nothing special about the direction time appears to go, then it would be necessary for our brains to give us the illusion of a single direction of time, just to explain causal chains.

As someone who has barely studied physics, perhaps I should resist the temptation to try to look more knowledgeable than I really am about such an esoteric subject.

But I won't ... so here is what I think ...

I think Julian Barbour and David Deutsch are right, i.e., I think that "time is an illusion. The phenomena from which we deduce its existence are real, but we interpret them wrongly" and that "other times are special cases of other universes".

i'd like to see the results of your research given you can present them in a nonmathematical and nontechnical way somewhat comprehensible to a layman. i'm not sure you wanted this kind of a response to the OP. oh well...

i don't believe time is a dimension. dimensions do exist. time does not.

at least not in a linear way.

space/time is a mentally formulated construct. apparently linear type thinking can't function without it. cause-effect doesn't exist the way we think it does.

even asking the question - which came first - may be the wrong question based upon the wrong assumptions. it's like trying to find where a circle starts and you arbitrarily assign a starting point just so you can work your way clockwise or counterclockwise back to the same point. the reality being that there IS no starting point. or ending point. in that all points are just as much starting or ending and it really makes no sense trying to determine which is which.

this is totally weird and something i believe. events which appear to happen in our future may form the foundation for what takes place today. in other words, if the future event never happens, then today's event which is connected to it, can't happen either.

example... in the future i buy a million dollar house. today i win the lottery. you might say i can't buy the million dollar house unless i win the lottery. but i say until the million dollar house is a done deal in the future, it is nonsense to even consider winning the lottery today. it just won't happen because it isn't tethered to the purpose for which it exists. the future predetermines the past just as much as the past predetermines the future. neither past nor future exist and it makes no sense trying to determine which is which - just like trying to determine the starting or ending point on a circle.

furthermore there is either very little or no free-will as everthing is so tightly interconnected that everything determines everything else. there may be some circumstances in which our so-called decisions carry slightly more weight and influence, but not a whole lot more.

i also believe it is possible to time travel and that the paradoxes do happen. for instance, if i go back in time and kill my grandfather before he sires my father, then i [appear to] die or disappear right then and there. simple as that. no matter what i've left hanging in the future, that's it, the end. if i have children that's the end for them too. however since i believe birth and death are illusions, being transferred from one dimension to another [or being translated into a parallel universe] hardly constitutes death from the one or birth into the other...and except for some minor details everything continues on as before..

i recently had a dream about a word. it was hard to remember the word, but i kept repeating it like a mantra. later when i was able to google the word, it turned out to be the name of the hero in a short story about time travel posted on a website with the author's other stories.

The thing to remember when you're philosophising about time is that it's a 'local' phenomenon. Two events can only occur at definitely the same time if they are in the same place. If the events are seperated by a distance, then different observers moving at different speeds will perceive the events in a different order, with different intervals between them.

A one dimensional object s a line. A two dimensional object is a plane. A three dimensional object is a cube. A four dimensional object is a tesseract. Each increase of one dimension requires an infinite number of the previous objects to be placed along that extra dimensional line to create the next dimension. Motion is an illusion created by viewing multiple succeeding objects in train. Thus the illusion of motion is created in a movie film by successively viewing two dimensional views along time. Without time as a dimension there would be no motion and the universe would be completely static. Time itself cannot be an illusion. Whether or not we each travel in consciousness the same direction in time I cannot say as there is no way to compare our experiences which may not be common.

Robert Heinlein, author of "stranger in a strange land" also wrote an interesting short story called "and he built a crooked house" in which he describes the building of a tesseract and at the end is a diagram of a tesseract. through that diagram you can almost envision what the 4th dimension must be like.

if you make a paper cube, unfolded it will look like a central square with four squares attached to each side and with an extra square hanging off one side. then you fold the attached squares up around the central square and the extra square folds down to become the top of the cube. the cube bottom is the central square. that's how you get from 2 to 3 dimensions.

now you get from 3 to 4 dimensions in a similar way...except there is some squishing involved when doing it in the 3rd dimension or visualizing it in your mind.

what you do is take the unfolded cube you created previously and replace every square with a cube, then you fold it up into a tesseract, approximately the same way you made your cube...except that your central cube rather than becoming the bottom of the tesseract becomes the container for the side cubes and top cube. very hard to describe. not even that easy to visualize.

what happens is the four side cubes more or less fold up inside the central cube except toward the middle they become kind of squished in order to fit, and you have to leave space in the very middle for the topmost cube. the topmost cube [which corresponds to the roof or top of the cube you previously constructed] goes between the four folded side cubes in the very center of the tesseract, which makes a bit of a mess in the 3rd dimension. and that is what the story is about. it apparently isn't that hard to construct the tesseract but living in it is full of unpleasant surprises.

that probably didn't make any sense.

Last edited by alba on 09 Jan 2009, 7:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Because the organizations of matter which give rise to consciousness are functions of time.

Peronally I think dark matter is very far fetch'd.

I think there are flaws in the equations which lead to the theory it has to exist.

Actually, it can be said that a state of motionless doesn't actually exist, that as well as time are relative depending on the frame of reference. The earth, the sun, the milkyway are always in constant motion.

The present would be something that in one hand can be considered to be nonexistent, because one nanosecond from the future, quickly becomes, one nanosecond from the past. On the other hand, it's used as a frame of reference for convenient purposes.

I think when it comes to defining time, and wether it is an illusion or real to be more related to metaphysics rather than actual physics and mathematics, I see the importance of the use of what is called 'time' in science and math, when it comes to predictions of natural events such as solar eclipses and the positions and distance of stars and planets for example.

"Time" is just the distance between events. We break a day down into 24 hours because that's the time it takes for the earth to make a full rotation. A year is 365 days because that's how long it takes for the earth to make a full revolution around the sun. Actually, it isn't EXACTLY 365 days. That's why we have leap years. The point is that "time" does not really exist in a sense. It is just the distance between events. Although some have said that time is the fourth dimension..

I am not so sure about that or I do not think that is the full story.

To make it simple, lets imagine we are viewing a slide-show of a ball bouncing. Each slide represents a moment in time in or from which we view the other dimensions (the ball, etc.).
When the slides are played at full speed we see a ball bouncing up and down as time goes in one direction.

However, if we had no memory whatsoever, all we would see is one slide of a ball in mid air. We have seen other slides, but we can't remember them. There is no phenomena of the movement of time here. right?

Perhaps "Thus the illusion of motion is created in a movie film by successively viewing two dimensional views along time."
Should be adjusted to: "Thus the illusion of motion is created in a movie film by successively viewing two dimensional views along time and remembering the two dimensional views that came previously.".

Memory is a very human factor; very subjective. That something so subjective is required to view time as a progression in a single direction makes me a little skeptical.

Dimensions are a system for locating things. Essentially the word "dimension" means to measure. In one dimension you need only one number to locate a point from the beginning of a line. To locate a point on a plane you need two measurements. The distances along the X and Y axes from the point of origin. In a three dimensional situation you need three numbers to locate a point from the origin along X,Y,and Z axes. In a four dimensional situation you need an extra number to locate that point also in time. You need four measurements . Therefore time is very, very real.

If you need to meet someone at a specific place you need to know what street to meet on. One measurement. You need to know what point on that street to meet. The second measurement. If the meeting is in a building you need to know what floor the meeting will take place. The third measurement. And finally, you will need to know what time the meeting will take place. The fourth measurement. Time is a dimension just like the three spacial measurements.

I wasn't saying time isn't real. Of course it is.

I am just no so sure that we are constantly traveling alone it in one direction from one moment to the next.

I agree, doctor.