What is TIME?

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the ground beneith it is moving, i think each slice is a huge time period...

dont forget also, that all things move... if you were to go to the same point in space that was occupued by you 15 years ago, you would burst in the coldness of space....

How rude. I suppose you thought I was being glib.
I wasn't being glib. What you suppose is empty space isn't empty at all. Space itself isn't just nothingness. Even considering Einstein's Space-time, what you'd consider to be nothing has a fabric - Indeed time is an integral part of this fabric. The current picture is more complex than that with ideas of quantum gravity and such. How the very fabric of the Universe ("empty" space and all) is composed is up for grabs.
But all this will lend itself to what time is and how it operates.
Time is not a human construction but where its emergent characteristics come from is unclear at the moment.


So, although I'm not answering your question I am giving you more to think of so as to formulate a more meaningful question.

This is a can of worms.
Remember that movement (and being stationary) are relative concepts.
You can only measure movement relative to another frame of reference.

i never said is wasnt the case... but i am talking about a four dimensional reference point...

even if we stand still, the earth is still moving, and the reference of where we are in relation to everything else, we are not at the place we were five minutes ago... and neither are we there we were exactly one year ago (asuming of course that you were in exactly the same spot), as the earth and solar system have moved on from those exact co-ordinates....

If we were able to map the Universe, we would be able to give co-ordinates...

like -: on 15 June 2006 at 12 Midnight i was located 001 by 083 by 742... the fourth Dimension would be the plot path that all the other three point to...

i hope this made sense...

Astilius wrote:

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I just felt you had picked up on something that had no relevance to the question, I'm sorry if I had sounded glib
I'm a nice person but that is an opinion formed by myself.

of course.... ive never studied Physics or done anything related... but i like to read Scientific Journals and watch Sci-Fi

can you show me where my understanding is flawed?

Nah, don't worry about it. I'm not offended.

I take your point that from many frames of reference we're moving. From the moon we're moving relatively slowly but from the far end of the Universe we're travelling at near light speed.
Everything depends upon your frame of reference. We usually use local conditions as our frame of reference - that is we use the planet itself, so I don't (normally) consider myself as in motion as I sit here.

Everything is relative. Even time is relative - there is no Universal standard time.

Of course a map of the universe would be frozen at one point...but as I've said there is no Universal time so the time would vary from place to place. Look at our current maps of the Universe, everything far away is also back in time.

All of this is something that I'd rail against as an AS kid - I wanted certainty and absolutes in everything. Unfortunately the Universe doesn't care what I want. Quite right too.
(it's still upsetting, though)

i would say that the place for decision would be the Centre Pivot of the Universe.....

No doubt the Smallest ever possible Blackhole (you would think that big is better... but no)

(it is also believed that most galaxies contain a Blackhole at the centre, but that main one would be so much smaller that the other ones would dwarf it)

as it will be the object with the biggest mass, and hense everything is spinning around it even as they are flying away.... eventually to be either pulled back in (if close enough) or left to disipate, or, more than likely to be eaten by a local Blackhole...

Bleak is it not?

but to swing this back to topic...

once you find the central Pivot of the Universe, whatever it is, you will be able to extrapolate a time that can become universal... with Galactic timezones...lol

But there is no centre of the Universe.
Think of it this way:

Reducing all dimensions by one -

Imagine that the Universe is a balloon that is being inflated. The Universe that we percieve is on the surface of the balloon. Where on the surface of the balloon is the centre?
No where. Everywhere is as far from the centre as any other point and the centre is inaccessable.

The balloon being inflated is also a good analogy for the expansion of the Universe and shows how each point is moving away from every other point (actually it shows rather well that each point isnt moving away but rather the spaces in between points is being expanded).

So, there is no universal reference point. Everything is relative.

I thought the baloon analogy took the skin of the baloon as the edge of the universe?

No, the skin is the area that we 'live' on. The analogy helps demonstrate that there is no edge to the Universe.

Assuming that 'empty space' is a vacuum and there exists no such vacuum state known (space itself is an energetic plenum) then it would be correct to assume that space-time is a singular dimension.
Time itself is a weak-decay dependant process which is why it principally affects units with mass. It acts cohesively as a form of entanglement operator ensuring that physical properties retain constants; and these constants are geometrically definite (see group theory).

P.S. If one found a solution to the Poincare conjecture, then one could determine whether the universe has an edge/centre or not.

Time is a magazine I read. It gets sent to me weekly. I like it.

Win

Time is a dimension, associated with the fourth dimension of space

Time is broader however, in that it affects all creation, physical and spiritual.

Only God Himself is not affected by time, being Eternal. Since He created it, He is not governed by it. Therefore, God exists at all Times, in the past, the present and the future. He literally is the Alpha and the Omega, and this is why only God can predict the future, because He merely needs to look at it as it happens up there, in the future. God can see time as it passes very rapidly, or excrutiatingly slowly, since a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as a day to Him.

Therefore, Time not only exists in the universe coupled with space, but it also exists in/affects the spiritual realm of Heaven. Only the Heavens of Heaven, where God alone exists, is outside of time.

That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

Perhaps one day we will encounter an 'alien' species who experience time backwards. Or one that travels through space but never change the time they are in.

Perhaps it's only humans who experience time flowing at all. So isn't the question really how does consciousness produce the appearance of time.

Reminds me a great book I read once (LineLand or FlatWorld or something like that) in which there is a 2d world on which shapes lived (triangles, squares, circles which are alive). When you are born you are a triangle and as you get older you gain sides each year becoming a square then a pentagram ... until you have enough sides to become a circle. One day in this 2d world a 3d visitor arrives (a sphere) but the inhabitants of LineLand can only see in 2 dimensions so as the sphere passes through all they see is a circle appearing, getting larger, then smaller, and then disappearing (as the sphere passes through the plane) ... I believe this is a way to think about perceiving 12 dimensions from within a 4 dimensional framework.