A question about making theories of time

Votorx said:
So if that reference frame is distrupted then so would time.
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What do you mean "disrupted"? If you die, them time is irrelevant. The universe dictates what happens to you in your reference frame, and that you are the thing that establishes it. I'm sort of misnomering here, as I'm more philosopher than phsyicist.. so what I mean by "you" establishing a reference frame is that it is your observation that makes it meaningful. If a ray of light from zeti alpha 29349 passes earth without ever striking it, its reference frame is utterly meaningless, until we bring it to our mind.

More physicistically, a reference frame is established with a location (space-time coordinates) and a velocity.
 
We look into the past everytime we look into the sky, so why could we not look into the future?

From my understanding there are a group of physicists who would argue that time travel may actually be possible, but only into the future, never into the past. That makes my head hurt.
 
15ofthe19 said:
Just for the sake of argument, let's suppose that we all agree that humans possess a spirit or soul. How do we calculate the amount of energy contained within the soul?
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What do u mean by "soul"? if ur talking about a spiritual soul then it will no be of our universe and thus can't be measured.

(on a lighter note) U could only measure it in heaven :D
 
Votorx said:
If this was true then doesn't everyone have the ability to manipulate time as they would want?
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Yes, but not very significantly at present. We are all pretty much in the same reference frame here on earth!

Some could slow it down if they wanted or quicken it, each doing what they wanted to time.
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Yep!

This would throw everything out of whack, I don't think natural law is that chaotic.
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No this is the way nature, in fact, operates.
 
John Connellan said:
Nope. Time will relentlessly move on. U will stop however :D
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Yeah yeah but to you time won't move on.

I explained what I meant:

your observation makes it meaningful.
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IOW, if you aren't around to observe it, time is wholly irrelevant. Your reference frame gets squashed, so time stops - as far as you know.

if ur talking about a spiritual soul then it will no be of our universe and thus can't be measured.
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I'd say it can't exist if it's not part of our universe, so what do you mean by "our universe"? If a soul exists, it's a part of the universe right? Where else is it gonna exist? I'd say that "heaven" is part of the universe too, if it exists. What's interesting to me, is that heaven obvoiusly does exist, at least as an abstract form, which indeed makes it part of our universe, even though it's purely imaginary. I find that fascinating.
 
I don't think that's enough to define it, given that there is no such thing as universal time. you need to define a reference frame to fully define time.

that's a pretty good definition though, but it doesn't acount for the rate at which events flow, which gets complicated with the einstein and the reference frames and such.
 
John Connellan said:
That is not time my friend. That is ones perception of time :)
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Yeah but without one's perception, time is exactly meaningless.
 
No its not a bad definition at all. A better one would be just that time is 'a dimension through which things change such that the total entropy of the universe is always increasing'.

A bit of a mouthful there but it should be comprehensive enough!
 
that's a pretty good definition though, but it doesn't acount for the rate at which events flow, which gets complicated with the einstein and the reference frames and such.
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There cannot be a constant rate if it it changes depending on your frame of referance, can it? It could only be constant in relation to your frame of referance.
 
Enigma'07 said:
Isn't time considered the fourth dimension?
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No it isn't. I thought so until I was recently informed that it's not. "imaginary time" is considered the fourth dimension in some schools of thought.

the main reason i heard that seemed to make sense about time not being a dimension, was something about negative values and such. you should be able to freely move in the negative direction if it were a dimension.
 
imaginary time is at a right angle to ordinary time.

i posted a link to a good explanation somewhere in this thread: What time is.
 
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