Talk:Time

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Discussion

New page, previous talk moved using TW. —Yamara ✉ 09:01, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

user Neverquick deleted my changing, he does not believe our in time machine, but the science is not a religion, so please do not delete if You are not agree, it' s not a reason to delete it a reason to reasearch and try to understand.Ryururu (talk) 06:42, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

If there is research needed such as you indicate, the reports cannot be cited as reporting matters of fact regarding time.

Wikipedia has an explicit policy against publishing original research. It also has high standards regarding the factual content of articles. Statements need to be supported by reputable sources. In the sciences, this typically means that at minimum a statement has been made in a peer-reviewed journal and credible dissenting views are also reported. P0M (talk) 07:00, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok A Brief History of Time is not about time. It's about physics. Not a related book.

Wiki IP policy acknowledged, encyclopedic boundaries vague. Recommend study of time variants applied to physiology of the heart. The heart is governed by two very exact influences known as systole and diastole. These influences are understood as [phases] of cardiac performance.--Lbeben (talk) 04:47, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Dogmatic assertion

Within science, the only definition needed or possible is an operational one, in which a procedure is given for defining the base unit of time (the second).

The above statement is dogmatic. It is also indefensible and unscientific. Even the presumed "fact" that only an operational definition (or, actually, operational definitions) are currently acceptable among scientists is stated dogmatically. Anytime one makes a statement using the word "only" as it is used above, an incredible burden of proof is loaded onto the writer. And, besides, the statement is contradicted by what is well attested in other, competent, writing within Wikipedia (not to mention standard physics books).

An operational definition of time says, basically, "Time" is what we call the measurement or quantity we get when we compare the beginning and end of one operation (or some number of cycles of some regular operation like the swinging of a pendulum under standardized conditions) with the beginning and end of some other operation. But the number associated with "t" in such a case does not even have a direction. Working with devices like clocks, which incorporate an operational definition of time, researchers are puzzled by the direction of time. (I can establish a line from New York to D.C., start laying my meter stick along the line at a point in NYC and stop counting when I get to a point in D.C. Or, I can start in D.C. and end up in NYC. So why can't I start laying out cycles of my stop watch with the birth of a hamster in my lab and stop the clock when the hamster dies of old age, but also start the stopwatch when the hamster dies and lay out cycles of its operation back to the moment of its birth?) Then, around the beginning of the 20th century, people begin to realize that identical clocks do not measure identical numbers of cycles if one of them takes a fast trip to Pluto and back. The measurement of time becomes inextricably implicated in the measure of space and movement in space. Then the question arises, "Why?" There is no answer for that in the operations used. To the contrary, the measurements and the operational definitions of "space" and "time" suggest that something is going on to link the two, and from that point some researchers have asked whether there is some realm of experience (perhaps at quantum measurement range) in which space and time "collapse" into something more basic.

"Space-time" turns out to have more explanatory value than just "space" and just "time." The operational definitions for the measurement of time are profitably brought into cojunction with the operational definitions for the measurement of space, for motion in space, etc. It is not clear whether space is nothing but the relationships among things, or whether space has characteristics of its own. Similarly, it is not clear yet whether considerations of entropy and use of the operational definition of time will be sufficient to exhaustively delineate the nature of time.

If science can discover something about time that is not a function of the operations by which we make what are called "time measurements," then on what grounds can the writer preemptively exclude that knowledge from the definition or the understanding of time in the sciences?

The "Within science" part is clearly argumentative. Why start the article by taking a dogmatic and argumentative stance? P0M (talk) 04:56, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I've had my qualms about the sweeping scope of the phrase "within science": ie geology and palaeontology use relative dating, so a precise chronometric unit may be of less importance than a sequential placement of events. The adjective "only" and the verb "needed" are problematic and presumptive. But I don't find the sentence forwarding an "argument" so much as a rough attempt at categorizing the many perspectives on time in the opening of the article. The opener demands a conciseness and clarity that is also useful to the reader. And it has to be accurate, of course. Can the sentence be replaced with a more perfect description in thirty words or less? Don't forget to preserve a mention of the SI second. —Yamara ✉ 07:11, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it needs anything more than tweaking. I've started to take a look at the whole article, so I may wait until I've gotten a better grasp of the whole and then tweak the top. No use in making a change topside that will mess us something later down. P0M (talk) 04:55, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Hourglass analogy

Trying to take a wikibreak, but we know how that is; as soon as you announce it something you've been wanting to address moves to the fore.

The caption under the hourglass pic describes the analogy—("The flow of sand in an hourglass can be used to keep track of elapsed time. It also concretely represents the present as being between the past and the future.")—and I believe it was placed there by JimWae on January 9.

It's a truly brilliant analogy, and one that ought to have been seen before. I'd been working on Hourglass before my break, but never got to ask—where did JimWae get that phraseology? It would very sad if it were OR, since "concretely represents the present as being between the past and the future" is very insightful and helpful to readers (IMO).

BTW - It's a philosophical analogy, but is describing the hourglass appropriate for the religion & mythology section? I haven't found references yet suggesting the hourglass is older than the 11th century AD, and would be unknown to the early Greek philosophers. —Yamara ✉ 20:44, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I took out the part in the text about the famous third century hour glass analogy. I thought it would be easy to find by Googling it, if it were indeed a famous analogy. Unfortunately most of what I found were in clones of Wikipedia, and no indication of a real locus classicus.

The hourglass is a very good way of talking about time "flow" or "the arrow of time" as something closely related to entropy and/or probability. First, for the hourglass to work we have to supply energy by lifting the sand above the level of the tiny gap in the middle. Second, when a grain of sand falls it can hit just about anywhere below, and then it will probably bounce a couple of times. So that is at least two or three low probability events and their joint probability is X x Y x Z, i.e., extremely low. The probability that some blow coming from beneath the same grain of sand would launch it in the correct trajectory to drive it back up way it came is almost infinitestimal. Getting a string of luck that would drive all of the grains of sand up the way they came down (and against gravity) is not an event that one should bet the family farm against.

So getting "time" requires an energy source to drive things along, and a universe that has probabilities. Getting a universe that would permit the reverse "flow" of time would demand our getting into a very different kind of universe (or maybe restricting ourselves to considering only individual quantum events in this universe). The next question is whether one could imagine a sequence of events in which the outflow of the hourglass would go through some kind of warp and become the inflow at the top of the hourglass. That's only a rough analogy, but it suggests one idea of time travel (or at least communication backwards in time) in which a signal is sent from one intertial frame to another, and eventually gets bounced back to the first inertial frame before it was sent out. But, if I recall correctly, that scenario would only work if signals could have a velocity greater than c.

But regarding a grain of sand in the hourglass, all one really can say is that its passage from wherever it starts in the upper chamber to where it ends up is a process that occurs in time. "The present" is not at the neck of the hourglass. The nearest we could get to that is to look at the path of the grain of sand in a movie and stop the projector on the frame where the grain of sand is in the neck. The movie film that has already passed through the projector would record the "past" from the point of view of the frame that is currently being paused in the gate of the projector, and the movie film yet to be shown would represent its "future" from that arbitrary definition of what the present is.

In a sense, the person standing outside the "universe" of the hourglass can see the past and future of a grain of sand, at least in general terms. If the grain of sand is near the neck, the observer can be pretty sure that it was originally higher up, and the observer can predict that it will end up somewhere in the bottom chamber. But then the real master experimenter beams the hourglass into outer space, gravity ceases to pull sand from one chamber to the other, and its future is suddenly to stay just where it is. P0M (talk) 02:51, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

By the way, if anybody can supply the warp then we have an inexhaustible energy supply. We just put a little paddle wheel in the outflow and connect it to a generator. P0M (talk) 03:02, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Semi-protection

I think it is about time for this page to be Semi-protected as it is constantly being vandalized by IP's. N.B. This is the first time I am in need of Admin. with the exception of Speedy deletes. Zginder ^{(talk) (Contrib)} 23:19, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

When do we start measuring time?

An open question,"When do we start measuring time?" Some scientists agree that we start measuring time after the "Big Bang". I disagree. Time begins at the point of observation. Everything else is computer model of what our modern concept of time could have been millions of years ago. What do you think?

Who is the "we" of whom you speak? Who was around to measure the time at which life on Earth began?

Without getting into the argument of that time is (relationship or something real in itself), measuring time implies that there are processes of sufficient regularity to make counting their cycles useful to some lifeform, and that there is a lifeform around to do the measurement. Of course that doesn't mean that the moon wasn't circling earth before the first oyster started timing its ovulation to the times and the tides.

We can measure things like how long it takes to lay down an inch of sediment in a lake and then work backwards to date things not according to current observations of clock cycles but according to inches of sediment (and what was caught in it) in existing lake beds. When we go back to the earliest times in the Universe we have the advantage of the natural "time machine" presented to us because it because things that we see that are the farthest away in space are also the farthest away in time. So by panning from near to far we can pan from nearby times to far back times, and we can measure the progress of events that happened long ago. P0M (talk) 14:47, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

"Is time worth measuring if there is no organic life?"

TIME. An Open Question for Discussion. "Is time worth measuring if there is no organic life?" After all it is organic life which came up with the concept of time and how it relates to the beginning, size and evolution of what we call, "The Universe". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.231.14.90 (talk) 23:47, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Does time exist if nobody is there to experience it? Does a tree that falls generate noise if no-one listens? Does a comment exist if no-one reacts? Can anyone tell me why the heck I rendered above comment existent..? ;) JocK (talk) 07:53, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Firstly, the universe in its common definition is not capitalised or in quotation marks. It is possible that non-organic life-forms could, at some point, measure time and record its passage but the question you asked was "is time worth measuring". If the non-organic life-forms have sentience then it becomes of equal value for them to measure time as for us or any other intelligent organic life-form. --F Notebook (talk) 05:00, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

'Time as a measure of resistance'

One thing I wonder is if it possible to think of time in terms of resistance to force. That if A has no resistance in reaching state, or location, B then the dimension of time is not present, yet there is still space dimensional change. Also, what would that type of a change be defined as? I know this is a metaphysics question, just curious as to what people think. It would be a singularity would it not? --99.225.10.18 (talk) 09:39, 11 March 2008 (UTC) Now that I think about it, I doubt there could be space without time. XD --99.225.10.18 (talk) 11:23, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

There is a long history of working out such logical connections, etc. Is space a thing (does it exist?), or is it only something that appears within a context of the relations that exist among things? Is Euclid's geometry the only geometry?

Suppose that all actions occurred instantaneously, or that light traveled instantaneously. If things traveled instantaneously they would be everywhere at once -- whatever that means. If light traveled instantaneously that would mean that inter-atomic events would occur in a radically different way. (Just look at how many fundamental formulas contain a c or a c squared factor.) (fixed omission P0M (talk) 10:42, 15 March 2008 (UTC))

If you want to start on the ground floor, look for a library that has a copy of Gottfried Martin's Kant's Metaphysics and Theory of Science. It's a very useful book because, while it centers on Kant, it covers the history of the concepts of space and time from the early Greeks, through Leibniz, into Kant, and beyond to Einstein. P0M (talk) 15:23, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

That sounds like something I'd enjoy reading. Thanks for suggesting it. I'll look for it this weekend. --99.225.10.18 (talk) 07:39, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Time as an observable set of wave-function collapses.

It seems to me that the fact that we humans can only observe one history of the universe needs some mention. Theories of the history of the universe that do not necessarily agree with that we can observe and/or experience abound. That we cannot observe those histories is a point that seems to be omitted when those theories are discussed. This is an important omission. I could repeat similar criticisms about many physics-related topics. A stress toward exactness seems to be overwhelming encyclopedic-style writing.Wildspell (talk) 08:14, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean. First, you imply that there is some "history of the universe" that we cannot observe. How can we do other than imagine or speculate about something that nobody can observe? Second, you imply that there is one account of the "history of the universe" when in fact one of the problems is that accounts of what are going on can so easily differ if stringent controls are not maintained and differences in perspective, e.g., people in different inertial frames, are not taken into account.

Different models to account for the development of the universe exist. One of the frontiers of our knowledge is the very earliest time after the big bang. As scientists recover evidence of earlier and earlier periods by detecting radiation from farther and farther away, the models we have that will fit with the evidence will change.

The difference between what we can observe and what we theorize is always in play. We take whatever we do see and whatever remains in the natural black box is something that we have to make up our own models to explain. Then maybe we make one more observation and see something that strongly suggests that our model is the wrong one. Two things tend to happen at these points: (1) We have trouble giving up on something that has been enormously helpful, e.g., Newtonian mechanics. So the first thing that people are likely to do is to explain away the difficulty, or, if that doesn't work we can just paper over the defect and continue to use the model -- just keeping away from the places that it doesn't work. Sometimes we have discovered that a theory such as classical physics is a special case of a more general theory, and that if we apply the more general theory we get the same answers except in special ranges of experience (speeds that are substantial fractions of the speed of light, for instance). At other times people may be forced to admit that the old model just was not right, and they have to be abandoned.

Are you possibly referring to subjects like the search for previously undocumented animals, or subjects like ball lighting that seem hard to make jibe with physics?

What does your topic have to do with what your wrote below? One group of people who theorize in the area of quantum physics speak in terms of the collapse of wave functions, but nobody actually observes the phenomenon. What we observe is the appearance of a photon or other particle at some specific time and place. Or, to avoid circularity, we might say that we observe events that some postulate are due to the collapse of wave functions, and we are somehow convinced that they are serially related and that the series is not reversible.

One of the problems with that kind of account would be that in quantum entanglement versions of double-slit experiments, a photon that is detected at t=3 can determine how a photon is detected at t=2, so the idea of sequence mentioned above no longer holds. P0M (talk) 19:27, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure that there is only one history that we can observe. I have had many instances where I remember specific events that those who were involved will later tell me happened in a completely different way. I would chalk this up to faulty memory except that a rare few remember things the same way I do which indicates that some of us are changing parallel universes where the flow of history is not as it seems to those around us who did not come from our universe (^_^)Jiohdi (talk) 19:16, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

One of the consequences of Special Relativity is that events that observers in one inertial frame identify as simultaneous will be observed to occur at different times by observers in another inertial frame. So even if one uses the most complete recording devices, there are problems with the "one history" idea.

Then there is the problem that may occur if two or more observers have very complete recordings. If it really happened that my neighbor and I recorded a view of the street from our security cameras and when we compared tapes one showed that there had been a mugging and the other showed there was not even a single person on the street at the same time, then maybe the multiple universe idea would have merit. But we'd also have to ask why somebody with no history of interest in burrs and stick-tight out of nowhere invented Velcro. I.e., there are generally antecedents to discoveries like that which make sense, so if there were many cases of such "spontaneous attacks of genius" we'd probably have noticed by now.

One of the things that psychologists have determined about witness reports in crime cases is that people's memories are very selective and not very reliable. One of the most glaring problems with memory is that if someone is led somehow to visualize an event as if s/he had perceived it in person and in fact, then it becomes a memory that "replays" in no way distinguishable from the "replay" of an event the person really saw. A similar thing can happen when someone reviews an old memory over and over again. There may well be an active component, a sort of mental editing, involved, and each time the memory is reviewed it gets changed a little more.

I'll let you know if the wife I never had meets me at the doorway of my spick-and-span cottage. It will be too bad for the me in whatever universe she comes from. But, wait... How will I recognize her? And then there is the loutish teenager who demands to know where his heavy metal posters, etc., have gone to. But I'll be sure to let you know... P0M (talk) 20:51, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Time as a World Standard

Since time is essential to history and chronology, a short section might address when the present seconds, minutes, and hours became universal. Perhaps it's unknowable but I suspect that most of Asia and Africa must have adopted the Western standard c. the 18th century.

B Tillman 15 April 2008 (Tax Time!)

Good question. There were interactions between Egypt and the Middle East (particularly Judea) very early on. Their ideas on time have determined many of our ideas on time, particularly the division of the day into 24 periods, the idea that each of the planet-gods had charge for a time period in regular rotation, and the resulting way that the days of the week got their names.

At least the major outlines of these ideas were known in China around 50 a.d. The Chinese divided the day into twelve watches, i.e., into two-hour periods. I suspect that as a practical matter the division of the day into hours must have coincided with mechanical clocks, and they may have been imported by Catholic missionaries around the time of Leibniz.

When the further division of the hour into 60 minutes came about must be recorded somewhere. There is apparently a practical connection between the number of days in a year and the division of the circle into a rounded version of that number, 360 degrees. All over the world at the dawn of civilization people were aware of the five planets. (Astrologers are still fascinated with some of the ideas that drove lots of early interest in the planets, so it's an enduring idea.) There are 12 months, which is an idea we get from lunar cycles, 12 * 5 = 60, human heart rates average out to something close to 60/minute (particularly for shepherds and other people in good physical condition), and 60 * 60 gives the number of seconds in an hour and the 360 degrees in the circle and approximates to the 365.25 days/year. So all of these numbers hang together. Also, we see traces of numeration base 12 in things like our idea of the dozen (12) and the gross (12*12).

So my guess is that time to the base 12 must have been a common idea throughout Eurasia very early on. I have no idea about pre-Muslim Africa or the pre-Columbian Americas.

Probably the best one could do would be to find the earliest mentions of "24 hours in the day," "60 minutes in the hour," and "60 seconds in the minute." Linguistic traces suggest to me that the Chinese, before missionary-led calendar studies, divided the hour into quarters. Books on technology might tell us when the first mechanical clock was made. It's pretty hard to imagine dividing the hour into standard units with tools like the water clock or the hour glass. On the other hand, a big enough sun dial would have probably encouraged people to divided the dial into degrees, so maybe that could have led to the definition of a minute.

Joseph Needham's Science and Civilization in China might have the information somewhere in one of its many volumes. If you are around a library that has the whole set you might give that source a try. There are also encyclopedias of technology. P0M (talk) 01:29, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Archaic systems of time measurement

This article is lacking discussion of systems of time measurement other than the current international one, for units smaller than a day. There are many different units listed in the particular articles linked from Systems of measurement, such as Chinese units of measurement. History of measurement could potentially be expanded to provide an overview of this topic, with a very short summary in this article. -- Beland (talk) 17:45, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Ideally, archaic systems of time measurement would be collected in an article demonstrating their creation, period of use, and obsolescence. A chronology of chronometry, as it were. History of calendars and History of timekeeping devices both have useful information, but how the clock and the calendar interact across history is little explored.

That being said, the main Time article needs to remain a broad and relevant overview, and has little room for more than a summary of any approach to understanding Time; indeed, I think it would be useful to have most of the detailed information on the history of clocks moved off to be handled by History of timekeeping devices. The timekeeping methods (and reasons) of other major cultures should certainly be mentioned in the main Time article, but even notable details belong in other articles. The subject is simply too vast, and finding the balance between the extremes of too much detail and being a glorified List page is where the article will achieve its goal of being informative. --Yamara ✉ 20:42, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

As I've indicated above, the subject is universal (as far as I know) in the ancient past (days, moons, years being obvious, but dividing the day into shorter periods -- except the variable units day and night -- has no natural unit. Providentially (or maybe due to cultural transmissions) the two ends of Eurasia settled on 12 watches and 24 hours. Anybody know what the Muslim world worked on? India? But as soon as mechanical clocks came into existence they had a pervasive influence. Technology drove language, for instance. The Chinese "hour" is "little time unit" (xiao shi) because it is half a "normal" time unit. Nobody figures time in the old 12 unit system anymore. As far as I know, there are no base-16 time systems, base-10 time systems... Maybe the Mayans had a different system. Those brief determinations ought to do it for this article. P0M (talk) 21:07, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I did a preliminary survey of Mayan time ideas. They divide the day into four periods, according to some sources. But then if you look farther you will find indications that they divided the daytime hours into four periods, and the nighttime is not divided. Anyway, they do not seem to have ever divided the day into small units. The Muslim societies were quite well aware of Greek philosophy during the dark ages when that stuff had been forgotten in Europe. So they probably took over the 24 hour day from them if not more directly back to Middle Eastern sources. P0M (talk) 23:22, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Boldness strikes: Shake up in religion & mythology

I've removed the following from the "Time in religion and mythology" section, following a sentence about Greek philosophers:

One analogy compared the time of life to the passing of sand through an hourglass (a common measuring device for time in the past). The sand at the top is associated with the future, and, one tiny grain at a time, the future flows through the present into the past (associated with the sandpile at the bottom of hourglass). The past: ever expanding, the future: ever decreasing, but the future grains become amassed into the past through the present.

My work on Hourglass suggests ancient Greeks didn't have hourglasses. Also, looking in the history, this statement was tagged "citation needed" in February 2007, but never got one. I've said before that I like the image, a lot, but there's simply no cite for it.

Finally, I've moved the opening of this section down to "Time in philosophy", since it's, well, philosophers talking philosophy. There are plenty of gods one might mention under the "religion & mythology" header, but these ain't it. --Yamara ✉ 22:25, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

New image

Would you please comment on the new "light cone" image we have prepared. The intention was to imply the correct scale of space-time relative to the observer. Interstellar light-years vs years scales seemed appropriate. Thoughts? Dhatfield (talk) 11:55, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

The function of an illustration is to communicate meaningful information to the intended audience of an article. The image looks fine, technically, but the reader has to reason backwards from the word "cone" in the caption to understand the part about what the straight lines represent. What the dots represent is not indicated at all. Are they stars? Are they events? It's up to the reader to guess. And what is the snake that has consumed stars or events and keeps slitering forever toward the bottom of the screen? I think I know enough about the subject, and have seen similar diagrams in enough books on the subject, that I might guess correctly. But if I relabeled the drawing then whoever put it up might revert me on the grounds that I had gotten it totally wrong. P0M (talk) 16:23, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not into reverting - we're not a very militant lot at the Graphics Lab :) Can you please post specific comments / suggestions for improvement at Wikipedia:Graphic_Lab/Images_to_improve#Light Cone. I'm not sure wht you mean about the "snake". We are working specifically on the "World cone" image. Dhatfield (talk) 11:33, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

The graphic is probably o.k. It is the caption that is inadequate because it does not say what the undulating line represents. The diagonal lines could be labeled, at least with letters, so that the caption could say something like, "Line AB represents..." The lines that I am guessing represents the world-line of some observer would be hard to label on the diagram itself because the only place where it doesn't move from side to side is at the center.P0M (talk) 15:17, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

I think we are talking about different images. I assume you are talking about the animation. We have not done any work on the animation. If it needs improvement, please place a request at Wikipedia:Graphic_Lab/Images_to_improve. Dhatfield (talk) 22:01, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

time does not exist

time in itself does not exist . it is merely an instrument for measuring change.if there is no change then time does not exist..for example before god made his first creation , and god was the only thing in existence there was no change ...which is why it can be said that god has always existed...time as a unit of measure however gives order to everything . simply stated in cause and effect...an effect cannot precede the cause..but the cause has an effect which is in itself a unit of measure.....thereby giving a very subjective viewpoint of the passing of time as to the individual that is observing the change.....it is therefore impossible to see the present or the future as anything that is seen has already happened and therefore is actually the past....for example lets say light takes 8 minutes to travel from sun to earth..then it takes time to reflect to the observers eye and be proccessed by the brain...after all that has happened it is the past , and cannot be changed . Timedoesnotexist (talk) 06:00, 21 July 2008 (UTC)timedoesnotexist

Philosophers have been arguing about what time is for a very long time. So an opinion on the subject is not going to help us directly.

When you say, "[time] is an instrument," you confuse something that is purportedly measured with something that measures, and (at least in a figurative way) something that measures something. We have difficulty in determining the ontological status of both space and time. Augustine taught that God created space and time. Mach questioned whether space was purely relational and physicists are still trying to work out what space is and what its characteristics are. Einstein fused space and time together in his account, so it may be that the ontological status of time cannot be disentangled from the ontological status of time.

One way to put one's toe into the freezing water of the time discussion is to state an operational definition. We have to ask, "When we say that two events are separated in time by x amount of time, what does that statement imply that we have done?" In a typical situation, we are timing a horse race. The bell rings, the gates fly open, the horses run to a line a mile away, a photoelectric device is tripped, and one or more horses are declared the winner. At the time a switch is thrown to ring the bell and open the gates a third signal is sent to an electric stopwatch that is set in motion and continues in motion until a signal from the finish line turns it off. An accurate clock operates by counting pulses from a vibrating crystal. Older, less accurate, clocks may count cycles of a moving pendulum. The principle is the same.

So what do we have here? We have an observer who notices changes. So the observer has the capability to observe external states, record them in some sense, and stack the records in sequence. Each mental photograph goes "on top of" the pile of photographs that have already been taken. Now we have events being mirrored by events, sequences being mapped onto other sequences. And in the interests of greater accuracy and reliability (in doing things like time-and-temperature calculations in baking bread) we like to have a clock that is more reliable than our internal clocks and a single clock that can be observed by multiple witnesses.

A change in space is not necessary for there to be a perceived change in time. We may be watching a blinking light that does not change position. Experience has taught humans that there are causes for changes, so even in that case we would look for movements if only at the atomic level to explain the blinking light. The most radical case I can think of would be a single atom of a radioactive substance. Radioactive decay is a matter of quantum probability, so it would be impossible to determine any mechanisms involved in the decay. It either occurs, or it doesn't.

So we are left with "looking for a change" and "counting a regular cyclical event."

"if there is no change then time does not exist" This statement is dogmatic, and possibly involves solipsism. If the universe were to cool to absolute zero, maximum entropy, then possibly there would be no motion. How does one know that the universe has reached this state? Only by moving around to inspect all parts of it.

Suppose that God created two universes. Each is created with a Big Bang event. Each has its own time and space, and time begins with each of them at the instant of creation. Time in one universe exists regardless of what becomes of time in the other universe.

What are the implications for changelessness in the case of a single entity? A proton is believed to be changeless for billions of years. Its halflife is extremely long. But we do not say for that reason that change disappears from the rest of the universe. How about Han Solo in stasis? If his body temperature is reduced to absolute zero, then nothing changes. Even at somewhat higher temperatures nothing significant would happen to him. When he is returned to normal life after a thousand minutes or a thousand years it would, for him, be as though no time had passed. His biological clock has been stopped. He has not aged. He has not experienced everything. But the world around him will have changed greatly.

"god has always existed." As somebody pointed out a long time ago, God does not exist in the sense that humans or electrons exist. We say that Mr. X exists if we can go to x, y, z, t and observe Mr. X sitting at his office desk. God is not to be found in space or time. He is eternal. So all that we can legitimately say is that in all of the time of this universe we could find to time at which God could not be contacted by whatever means one has.

"time as a unit of measure however gives order to everything." No. Humans or other functioning parts of the universe record orders of events. Clocks or other recording devices (slowly settling grains of sand that embed grains of charcoal, arrowheads, etc. of the same times in the same layers)leave something in relatively permanent form that is a mapping of more fleeting events. And the fleeting events, above the quantum scale at least, do not undo themselves for reasons of probability. (Humpty Dumpty does not self-assemble from his scattered parts.)

"anything that is seen has already happened and therefore is actually the past." That statement is true, at least in regard to events that pass through space by mediation of processes that occur at or below the speed of light. However, in physics there is the anomaly that Einstein thought would kill quantum mechanics, entanglement, and it not only gives the surprising result that events can be link instantaneously even over great distances, and, in experiments that have already been performed, the surprising and counterintuitive experiments that indicate that events that occur later in time have determined events that occur earlier in time. Not only that, but from the standpoint of theological explanations that began with the Medieval scholastics, things or events can be linked by transcendental relationships, i.e. "causal" events that occur because of the action of God. For instance, presumably if someone prayed for an intercession in the year 2009, God could change something that had "already" (to the human observer, anyway) occurred in 2000. (The philosophy of Leibniz held that all relationships, causal relationships included, were in fact transcendental relationships, not real relationships.)

Space can be changed by great masses, and so can time. The rate of flow of time, the cycle rate of atomic clocks for instance, changes in proximity to massive objects like stars. Can something that does not exist be changed? P0M (talk) 22:45, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be better stated that time would be an intangible vehicle for multiple systems of measurement , events can be measured in seconds , minutes , years , ticks of a clock , how many times the sun rises and sets , the speed of light , half the speed of light or double or triple the speed of light . The system of measurement used does not matter it is still just a measurement . Timedoesnotexist (talk) 05:54, 26 August 2008 (UTC)timedoesnotexist Timedoesnotexist (talk) 05:54, 26 August 2008 (UTC)august 26 , 2008

Things that have standards of measurement can be measured. Time can be measured. Things that can be measured exist. Hence time exists, like the spaces before your commas. (Did someone tell you to hit space twice for each period?) Potatoswatter (talk) 22:22, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[edit] Editing comments

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What time really is

Time is the maintenance of an identity - what something is - across a change. For example, the inhabitants of an island have different words for different stages of the development of certain yams. Each word conveys no relation between the different stages. It is as if the identities of these stages are separate. The result is the inhabitants do not perceive time with respect to the growth of the yams. Only when identity is maintained across a change is there time. No change, no time; No identity, no time. Reference: Psychology of Time Perception, Edmund Bergler, M.D. and Géza Róheim, Ph.D. http://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=PAQ.015.0190A

What allows a clock to tell time is that it remains a clock while having undergone a change - in this case, the position of its hands. The subjective experience of time for a human is like that. A human maintains his or her identity - who he or she is - while undergoing physiological changes (metabolism). When people lose their identities, they lose the subjective experience of time altogether. 74.195.25.78 (talk) 23:30, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Salaam,

I think you're on to something if you have came up with this all yourself. I figured it out as well--- :-). I got a lot of hep from reading the Maya and Inca references to time, though. I never laid my hands on an Einstein book yet I figured out some of his theories. Anyway, I haven't read the essay but I'm sure your enthusiasm would be good for this article. Cheers. InternetHero (talk) 19:10, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

"Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once"

"Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once". This quote, attributed variously to Einstein, John Archibald Wheeler, and Woody Allen [...]

I saw than sentence within a quotation from Le possible et le reél by Henri Bergson. Can anybody who has read that book confirm that? --A r m y 1 9 8 7 ! !  16:12, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Without time everything would not happen at once. Without time nothing would happen at all. Its space not time that keeps everything from happening at once. Space is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once. Time is nature's way that anything can happen at all. Tomas Real Tomas Real (talk) 23:40, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Beginning of Time

Just what it means to suggest Time "began" with the Big Bang needs elucidation. "Time began with the Big Bang" is a position often repeated and correctly sourced to Hawking. Personality issues about Adler & Hawking are not relevant & can be found elsewhere. I propose the following replacement - which is not a revert. --JimWae (talk) 03:12, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Stephen Hawking in particular has addressed a connection between time and the Big Bang. In A Brief History of Time and elsewhere, Hawking says that even if time did not begin with the Big Bang and there were another time frame before the Big Bang, no information from events then would be accessible to us, and nothing that happened then would have any effect upon the present time-frame. Upon occasion, Hawking has stated that time actually began with the Big Bang, and that questions about what happened before the Big Bang are meaningless. This less-nuanced, but commonly repeated formulation has received criticisms from philosophers such as Aristotelian philosopher Mortimer J. Adler,

• Hawking never said time began with the big bang. In trying to make complex issues easily understood by people other than physicists, he has unintentionally muddled his own point. Adler was an idiot, had a degree in psychology, taught philosophy even though he knew nothing about it, and is being used to discredit the world's foremost authority on physics and mathematics. This is precisely why nobody takes Wikipedia seriously. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.107.60.166 (talk) 04:10, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

It is still relevant to discuss common misunderstandings about what it means to say "time began with the big bang" - which Hawking HAS said upon occasion, and has been oft-repeated because of him. If H muddled it, it is important that we do not. Adler became a professor of philosophy - his credentials are well established. And yes, Adler did attack Hawking's weaker position rather than his stronger one - but my proposed wording does not get into discredting anyone - and anyone, even Hawking, can make a mistaken statement. In this case, looking at the misstatement makes the correct formulation clearer --JimWae (talk) 04:30, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

• Hawking never said that. Hawking stated very clearly that whether or not time existed before the big bang is irrelevant to physicists because there is no way to observe anything outside our universe. I know that's easy to misunderstand, but a Ph.D. in psychology trying to make a name for himself by intentionally misquoting scientists is not useful to anyone. Adler's credentials were doubted by his own peers. His credentials as an asshat are well established. If he gets a voice here, we better put in something about the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

He HAS said that ("one may as well cut them out of the theory, and say that time began at the Big Bang") and also that "questions about what happenede before the big bang are MEANINGLESS". THe refs are already in the article. Adler is used here only because opposition to the oft-repeated version of "time began with the big bang" needs a source. Find another one, then --JimWae (talk) 04:52, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

• You language comprehension is questionable. One "may as well cut" what out of the theory? "Questions about what happened before the big bang" is what he's cutting out, because they ARE meaningless. What am I wearing on my feet right now? It doesn't matter and there is no way for you to find out. I guess you better put in something about the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Nobody worth citing believes that Hawking ever said time actually began with the big bang--he said it was a meaningless question. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.107.60.166 (talk) 05:02, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Here are 2 quotes already referenced

1. "Since events before the Big Bang have no observational consequences, one may as well cut them out of the theory, and say that time began at the Big Bang. Events before the Big Bang, are simply not defined, because there's no way one could measure what happened at them. This kind of beginning to the universe, and of time itself, is very different to the beginnings that had been considered earlier."
2. from "The Beginning of Time": "The conclusion of this lecture is that the universe has not existed forever. Rather, the universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago."

You yourself have said he muddled his explanation. Clarifying that oft-repeated mud is part of the job of the article. Irrelevant & not measurable are not the same as meaningless & undefined -- and that is Adler's point --JimWae (talk) 09:10, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

• Space and time are the same thing. If the Big Bang was the beginning of our universe, it was necessarily also the beginning of time in our universe. If you can't measure outside of our universe, speculation about what does or does not, did or did not go on outside our universe and our time frame is irrelevant, not measurable, meaningless and undefined. Until we have a unified theory of quantum gravity, the question is philosophical and has nothing whatsoever to do with the big bang or any other physical theory. Knit a new sweater and then ask, "What was this sweater doing before I knitted it?" Hawking has never stated that the big bang theory denies the possibility of space-time outside our own universe, and his own quotes clarify his position as well or better than Adler ever could. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.107.60.166 (talk) 18:22, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

This section is about "time" - the biographies of H & Adler are not relevant. You yourself have admitted that H has been a bit overly hyperbolic/simplistic in his explanation. Whom you or I think is correct in this is not a matter for the encyclopedia to present. H has stated that "before the big bang" is meaningless. If it were truly "meaningless" it would convey no meaning at all, would be nonsense (such as what color is a square?). H does not get to determine what "meaningless" means. He has been challenged on this - and the reader is better informed if the article covers the fact that the oversimplified position has been challenged in academia & that there is still something worthwhile in H's position if the over-simplification is removed. Just because Adler is a theist does not mean that he cannot made a valid point. Even IF H had never said the oversimplified position, that position is commonly repeated & attributed to H. The reader is better informed if he is warned away from the hyperbole. --JimWae (talk) 03:57, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

This article is not about the big bang theory, but about time. It would be speculation to make any statements about what happened before the big bang, but it is not speculation to raise the question of whether time really began with the big bang, and whether anything at all could have happened before it. Indeed, H appears to have backed off somewhat on his position, himself. Futhermore, this article deals with whether or not it is even proper to say that time "exists" or EVER "started" at all. The article also can deal with whether time should be counted as an entity, substance, particle, property, or none of the above. Saying that time "began" at all is a position that needs to be balanced --JimWae (talk) 04:24, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

• Well I guess I can be glad that physics classes aren't taught by anyone that has an internet browser. You have no understanding of the subject at hand and it is clear. Asking what happened before the big bang IS THE SAME AS ASKING ABOUT THE COLOR OF A SQUARE. Many people have tried to get this erroneous section dealt with, but it appears that the masses cannot understand plain English. Good luck convincing anyone to take wikipedia seriously while this sort of editing is allowed. I hope editing an online "encyclopedia" makes you feel smart. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.107.60.166 (talk) 13:12, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

It's just one thing after another

Really. Lycurgus (talk) 18:32, 11 December 2008 (UTC)