Hey, this is my first post so I’m just checking this stuff out, alright? My first topic is gonna be about time. My question for you is, Does Time Exist? Some people believe that time is something that we humans made up so that we have an idea of how long the day will last and also some other reasons.Some people believe that time is something that we have had forever and will always have. I believe that we made it up because it says that in God’s eyes one of our days on earth is like a thousand years in Heaven. Please tell me what you think about time by responding back to me. Thank-You! 
What follows is something I wrote ages ago about time.
Time is ‘movement’ or ‘state change’. Everything that exists moves, and it moves at different velocities, while this movement might only take the form of changing of states, for example: A tree is first a seed then a sapling, which finally becomes a fully-grown tree. But after many years the tree then wrotes and goes back to being nothing. This is a gradual process and the movement through this process called time. It’s like the problem of ‘Zeno’s Arrow’. Where is the arrow at rest or stationary during its flight?
In Science, time is a variable unit of measurement that has a constant ratio to velocity. So when time is taken in conjunction with an object’s velocity, it will accurately predict the distance moved by an object. Because of this relationship, if the distance and the velocity traveled are known then the time can be calculated. This is why time is directly related to movement and the two are inseparable. Meaning if there were no movement in the universe, it would appear as if time had stopped. Movement also happens on scales infinitely smaller then can be casually observed, on things like atoms and sub-atomic structures. So even when an object looks stationary in space, for example a Ball lying on the ground, the atoms that make up that ball are always moving. Even the ground that the ball is lying on is always hurtling though space in the form of the moving planet Earth.
Where did we get the Scales for Measuring Time?
The notions of time scales come from a variety of factors. But all are related to moving objects that have a perceived fix time, distance, and velocity. Like a Day is the amount of time it takes the earth to completely revolve 360 degrees on its’ axis. The movement of the earth around the Sun is called a Year, which is 365.2424 Days, about 11 minutes less then the 365¼ days. Because this Days to Year scale is not related we get a remainder of about a ¼ of a day each year so an extra day every four years to keep the relationship of Days to a Year fixed. Plus a century is only a leap year if it’s divisible by 400, so 1600 and 2000 are leap years, while 1700, 1800, and 1900 are not. So over all the Gregorian calendar year differs from the solar year by only 26 seconds, which adds up to one day’s difference every 3,323 years.
The notion of a Second is derived from a Day, which is split into 24 Hours; each hour is made up of 60 Minutes, which in turn is made up of 60 Seconds. The division of the hour into minutes and seconds is derived from the sexagesimal system of the Mesopotamians; the division of the day in 24 hours originated with the Egyptians. This of course could easily have been done using a metric system, if they had been popular when the rules of the timing system were specified.
It can be seen there are many different ways to derive a time scale. But all of them are based off the movement of objects, and the perceived constant speed at which that object moves. Hypothetically if the earth suddenly started to revolve on its axes in 22 hours, our idea of a Day would have to change. Meaning we would have to change how we slept, our whole daily life would also have to adapt. An example might be: Get up for work at 06:00, be in work at 08:00. Work till lunch at 13:00, then leave at 17:30 and have dinner. Go to bed at 23:00, but wait, that’s now actually 01:00, as the old end of day which was 23:59 is now 21:59, as we have lost two hours. So if we want to get a good night’s sleep we have to go to bed earlier. Or, if we wanted to keep living by our old 24 hour clock, at times we would be sleeping during the day and working at night. Yet as we our more productive during daylight we have grown accustomed to being awake during this part of the day and sleeping when it’s dark at night. This is not as farfetched as it might sound. During the year 1994 an extra second was added to a single day to keep the number of seconds in a day inline with the planetary movement. This is due to the Earth’s rotation slowing down. It’s also believed that back around the time of the dinosaurs, a day lasted around 22 Hours 45 Minutes.
The unit of time that is most used for measurements of time is Seconds. But this length of time is derived from a Day, which is the movement of the revolving earth. So when comparing times all we are doing is using a base unit divided into a period of time, to break this period up into a meaningful representation. It’s the same as saying there’s 12 inches in 1 foot, as it’s only the size of the inch that is meaningful and fixed. In turn this has led to the length of time that a second represents, becoming detached from its origin in planetary movement, and is now a fixed unit that a machine can keep track of to incredible accuracy.
It can be seen that time is just a scale based off the constant speed of movement of an object. Even when movement is detached from planets into a machine, there’s still movement involved (the machines mechanisms. Since 1967, the definitive second has been internationally accepted as exactly 9,192,631,771 oscillations of a caesium atom). Therefore if we want to understand time we need to know more about movement.
What is Movement?
The interesting thing about movement is in the way that it works. Objects don’t just go from A to B in an instance, but go from A to B gradually. It’s this gradual movement that is amazing. But why don’t things just move instantly? But things do move instantly it’s just that they have an order, meaning that one thing goes before and after another, it’s this flow that is time. It’s because of this gradual movement that we have time.
If an object can only have a single state it will never change, and Never changing is the important point here. Because it only has a single state and cannot be in any other state it will exist for “infinityâ€, as it can’t become none-existent, because this would imply a change in its’ state has occurred. By its very definition it can’t change, so doesn’t move and is therefore timeless.
If objects where not able to experience different states we would not have movement or time. As it’s this changing of states that is called movement, and the measuring of this movement is calculated with the relationship of velocity to time. So mathematically speaking if the distance of the change is zero, as it’s the object that is changing (its like flipping a switch its either on or off, it can’t be in between). So the velocity of this change must be instant and therefore the time it takes the change to occur is infinitely fast (of course it’s a common belief that nothing can travel faster then light, so in that case there is a finite limit on all speed and infinitely fast is equal to that limit, the speed of light). But because an objects state cannot be both on and off simultaneously only one after another we get succession and it’s because of this succession of state changes we get movement through time.
A single object on its own changing states is useless, as it’s impossible for it to have a meaningful function. It’s only when objects are grouped together and each objects state change is seen in relation to another’s, that we start to find meaning. By comparing the changes of one object’s state to another’s. It should be noted though; it’s only the fastest changing object that can see the real state of the other objects changes, but it can never know for certain that its the fastest changing object, but could only assume it. For a slower object looking at a faster one, the faster object will appear random or unintelligible. This is why Quantum theory or its successor(s) will always have problems viewing the world at first and things will seem inconsistent. It’s only when we learn to control and trust the state changes of a faster object (by being able to predict its state when we view it with a slower object) then we come to know this new object’s real state changes and start to use it for measuring time. (i.e. Over time we build on the succession of faster and faster state change viewing devices that allow the building of more accurate, because faster, state change viewers)
So to sum it all up. Only objects that can have more then one state can experience time. Because once a state change occurs you can relate to that object by, before it changed state, and after it changed state. Before and After are words that only have meaning when there in relation to the flow of time.
i was thinkin about this kinda thing in a drunken stupor a couple nights ago and went to write a post but couldnt get my thoughts down to say waht i wanted to say. but i wonder why is it that we experience time at the rate we do? sure there are situations where time does seem to take longer or shorter to pass (a watched pot never boils kinda thing) but still in general an hour one day seems to take an hour on any other day so we experience it at more or less the same rate. why is this tho? why isnt our perception infinatly more slowed down or speeded up to the point where years would be like they are passing only moments. although to the person perceiving this it wouldnt make any difference, because their thoughts, and actions would all be accordingly speeded up or slowed down. im not sure if ya’ll understand what im saying here cause i have a hard time discribing what i mean. couldnt god experience the whole evolution and collapse (if that is the case at the “end” of the universe) in nothing more then an instant to him? i ment to start a thread on this but couldnt think of how to start it, but i think this is a good enough place for it. id like to hear others thoughts on this.
I personally believe that time is simply a numerical representation of our location in relation to the sun. Think about it. Time in the sense of hours, minutes, and seconds is a way of stating how far we have progressed in that day. A day consists of 24 hours because it takes 24 hours for the earth to complete one rotation. Other measures of time such as days, weeks, and months are generally used to represent how far we have progressed in our revolution around the sun. Time could be restated using miles. We could say that we have spun 10,000 miles around the earth’s axis today and moved 20,000 miles further in our orbit around the sun thus far this year. Time is much easier to understand than using miles (or another unit of measure) and much quicker to say.
Wow, excellent post Pax Vitae, thanks for putting it in a way I could understand, as with everything else it seems to me that what your saying is it’s all relative lol.
I’ve thought a bit about time and lifespans, take for example a fly, who has a relatively short lifespan, a few days I think. But a fly seems to me to be an incredibly quick thing. The way it flits about making seemingly 90 degree turns in it’s direction over and over again, it seems to me it’s heart rate must be incredibly quick, and the way it must see us, moving in slowmotion. It brings to mind the ShaoLin Zen Bhuddist idea of catching the fly between the chopsticks.
On the otherhand you have creatures like tortoises who outlive humans on many occasions but live their lives incredibly slowly. We must seem a bit of a blur to them, maybe the way we view flies. Prusumably their heart rates are slower aswell.
I don’t know if this can be said across all life on this planet, the relationship between lifespan, speed and quickness of heartbeat?
But then what of the other lifeforms like plants? How does that idea relate to them?
Another thing I’ve thought about is that time seems to be related to focus.
For example when we are kids time seems to pass very slowly becuase we are not very focused, as we grow older our minds become more focused and time seems to pass alot quicker. Also when we daydream it sometimes seems that alot of time has passed when in fact very little has passed, as opposed to working on a project when we allways seem to be running out of time or that time has flown by, due maybe to the fact we were very focused?
Oh yes, and this all relates to the speed at which our (or the flies or tortoises) minds work!
MentulZen.
Time used to exist, but doesn’t any more, although it may start up again in the future.
uhh… when did this happen? nobody told me!
Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once.
To me I will have to agree with Pax.
Frighter: You are on the right track. I feeel as all things are Time is relative to physics and conciousness.
Pax is good. but Yashaskaram is way wrong if time didnt exist Yashaskaram is saying that nature would have no way of keeping everything from happening at once? how would everything happen at once? I mean stuff of the future lets say that 10 years from now a Nuclear bomb will be detinated 1 mile from my house. Lets also say nature says its not going to have time anymore as in getting rid of it. That would mean that the Nuclear bomb would go off 10 years early and the next infinite presidential elections would happen at the same time i dont think so. i believe time is a scale or measurement like superstrongsteve said. Is time just a simple easy way of understanding a complex set of dimensions? i mean this all comes down to what we all think. Shoot for all we know this could be “The Sims” and we are but mear puppets and f we find the answer of time we do.
“Does time exist?”
Those happy times, where did they disappear? Ow, ow, ow. Will they ever come back?
They disappeared, right? So they must have existed, or how could they disappear?
By the way we measure time in short durations, and these durations don’t last for ever, so yes in that sense time existed or exists. But if I take time as an eternity, then since I will not be there for eternity so I won’t see time pass and so I won’t be able to say in that case that time existed, but time can say that I existed 
Are you saying time exists because of movement, and if nothing moved, then time would not exist? Well how about if all of universe is held constant, even at the atomic level - would time not exist? But there is a potential for movement, so there’s still time so we can measure this future change that may occur.
Are you staying time flows external to the universe? So the universe might be frozen but what’s out side of it is still moving? Time can only be judged when at least two things move.
Not to be nit picky… but time can only be judged when the judger moves and when the judger has memory of his last position(s).
However, and this is the major point general was making (HAH!), time still exists independent of movement. Time could stand still for what would be centuries between each moment we as humans percieve. Remember, man is a discrete being that works on discrete principles, so technically, it is possible to condense one day into one second and stretch one second into one year.
The issue now (now that relativity has been established) is if such plateaus of time are to be considered or disregarded…
However, they DO make a difference, on the true universal landscape of things. The issue is R5, which exists in conjunction with but independent of time/space (think “a plane is to a cube as time is to causality”). If you consider that these various “causal planes” can pivot at any point in time, then what these temporal plateaus are NOT simply dead zones of causality, just dead zones of interaction. As a result, causality still spider-webs its way around while time itself halts.
Think of it this way, while we’re stopped here, an invading group of alien pink elephants from a parrellel causal plane can come in, try to communicate with us, and leave thinking the universe is dead of motion. If they moved anything and someone percieved this object prior to their arrival, we’d notice its sudden movement. However, it’s entirely possible that we just dont notice such things and hang it under our hat rack of apparent randomness.
Time is an entity unto itself, independent of motion, in other words.
Pax, you confuse time with the perception of time. I can cease your perception of time right now with the right weapon and good aim… does that mean time stops?
General and Rafajafar,
Yesterday I was one day younger and today one day older. It’s this change or movement that defines time. If we did not have today then the Dinosaur age would not be bygone days. So you see time in itself is nothing. It’s change or movement that defines time and potential for change cannot define time because time measures ACTUAL change. “If all the universe is held constant,” and even if there was “potential for change,” but because no one could observe the change or potential so time could not exist. Time in that case would be static, a mere constant, or it just would not exist. Now if I’m the observer of this static universe, then because I’m changing but the universe is static, so I can say the universe is static in time but time exists for me because my world is changing.
Sagenonions about your time seeming to pass faster when you are an adult i don’t believe it has much to do about focus. Consider this. What is the longest day of your life? The second day of your life. Because you have lived your entire life over again. This is why i believe time seems to pass by faster as you get older. I believe time is only a perception. Have you ever fallen asleep for only a minute but had a dream the you percieved to last hours. what’s that about?
You say time is change and movement, i seriously don’t think it is. I think ‘Time’ is just something that we perceive. I understand that objects move, grass grows and we get older but that is not time, that’s just existence and evens taking place.
When you start thinking about ‘Time’, you run into a muddle of contrdictories. How long can an event happening right now exist in the present before it crawls into the past? And if this event is now in the past, and if the past is made up of things that don’t exist, then how can you say that the past even exists? How about the future, if the future does exist then my every movement that i make right now is happening in the future right? But as soon as it happens, it also becomes the past…which of course can’t exist? The present too would also happen at the exact same ‘time’ as the past and future so can you even say that it exists?
And if this ‘Time’ did exist then it was intially kicked started at the big bang right? Because it is believed that there was no ‘Time’ before the bang, now if there was no ‘movent’, no change before the big bang then what exactly happend? Anything that requires movement or change couldn’t have happened becase there was simply no ‘time’ before the big bang. So it seems, if you obviously believe time actually exists.
Here is what i think, i think ‘existence’ and ‘distance’ allows for change and movement, and most definatley, there was ‘distance’ and ‘existence’ before the big bang, otherwise where else could the big bang have happened?
If time is measured in movement then how can there be no time in the spirit world unless the spirit world is a state of consciousness.
According to Einstein Space and Time are interrelated and interdependent. Where one is present the other is present and where one is absent the other is absent. So in any physical reality where objects exist apart from one another, Time exists independent of motion or state change.
An interesting problem related to Time that has yet to be mentioned is that of continuity. Time appears to flow seamlessly but in order to deal with Time in physics it must be broken up into blocks of Time. We pass from block to block like a movie projector moves through frames of film creating the illusion of seemliness. I have read theories of Time as a wave where reality exists as a fluid potentiality until becoming actualized at the peaks or troughs of Time Waves. So this potential (or subjective) reality passes seamlessly and actualizes physical (or objective) reality from instant to instant. If this were true it would explain why time passes at the rate it does and I think also explain a related question which is “why is the speed of light the speed of light”?