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What is Time?

Circlenaut

Circlenaut

Platinum Member
Well today I thought to myself what time really is and then asked my close friend what he thinks. He said that he thinks time is a form of energy and that energy is temp. But I don't agree with that totally. Since even a piece of rock at Kelvin 0 still moves in space. I think time is an energy but the energy is the spin of electrons around the protons. Well the problem is that time only happens around matter. But time also happans in the vacuum of space. Can any of you explain what time is or is that part of a bigger thing.
On the anti matter thred started what is the product of the whole explosion. Would it be a big grid of + and - electrons and protons. Making a very dense partical. ex
- + - + - + - + - + - +
+ - + - + - + - + - + -
- + - + - + - + - + - +
+ - + - + - + - + - + -
 
Very little is actually known about antimatter since only very small amounts have been produced and at the fear of an explosion. Theoretically, yes I would assume the antimatter and matter convert to energy leaving a vacuum
 
So Theoretically its possiable to destroy the universe. What about the bomb issue with this. It's way more powerful then an atomic bomb!
 
Time must be thought of as another dimension in real space. A dimension with many, many special and unforeseen properties.. which makes it especially difficult for simple human beings to try and integrate time with the other dimensions, trying to formulate a mathematical or physics explanation for it. I've always thought of time as the one dimension in which all the other 3 (that we know of) travel through at a constant rate.
 
No, the reaction does not produce nothing. If that was true, there would be no purpose in particle accelerators. When a proton collides with an antiproton, quarks are produced.
 
time is a figment of the human imagination. we lead ourselves to beleive it is impossible to have more, always getting less.
other than humans, are there any other orginisms that care "what time it is".
its like barbie, unatainable......
show me time, physically. looking at your watch and saying that you are seeing time is just fooling yourself.
saying that time exists is like saying everything is the same to everybody. do we all see the ssame thing, do we all experience the same thing, while looking at the exact same thing?
gnight all,
Craig Y Nos
 


<< other than humans, are there any other orginisms that care "what time it is". >>


There are actually a bunch. Chickens are the first that come to mind for some reason 🙂

If you want to mess with your head even more, time is broken into finite chunks called "Plank units" If you don't know what that is, trust me, you do not want to go there. I am still frying to figure out where the actual # for plank units came from. It seems arbitary to me. ( Its like 1^-38 seconds or something like that. It has been a while 🙂 )
 
Hi

Didn't really come here to talk about theoretical physics but since the topics are open...

CStroman, quarks aren't produced in such a reaction to the best of my knowledge anyway. Quarks are the building blocks of protons and neutrons and haven't AFAIAA ever been detected singularly. This is due to the nature of the strong force which binds them - do a search for Quantum Chromodynamics or QCD and hopefully there will be some basic information around. Matter-antimatter collisions simply convert mass to energy and produce a mass of photons (electromagnetic radiation). It can't destroy the Universe, in fact, for those of you who worry overly much about the future, there's a good chance the Universe's final state will be the heat death, whereby all matter has been converted to a background radiation of uniform temperature. Life won't be able to survive, but the Universe will still exist.

About time, there's plenty of good books on the subject - A Brief History of Time is excellent if you're interested, as is About Time, by Paul Davies. Time seems to be a dimension similar to the three conventional ones (which are also broken up into finite chunks the same as time is) which for whatever reason has an arrow determined by the second law of thermodynamics. I think the idea of counting time as a dimension came from Einsteins Theory of Relativity, in which the idea of spacetime appeared. The very name suggests that space and time are very closely interwoven and that they can't be fully separated into time and space. Just for a quick example of why time is a dimension - to define a position on a map, you need the x and y coordinates (the positions in the x and y dimensions). To arrange to meet someone, you need a location (x, y, z coordinates in 3D space) and a time (a 4th coordinate in a 4th dimension).

Therefore time doesn't exactly 'happen' in the vacuum of space, it's just another dimension in which we seem to occupy a specific point.
 
What was that great quote from deep blue sea, I think it was something like ' time is releative, it can make an hour with a beautiful woman seem like a second or touching an hot stove seem like eternity'. Time is a very difficult thing to explain as it is different for every living thing.
 
Sighj, We need a "deep thoughts about the fundamental questions of our exisitance and a whole bunch of theoretical physics" forums 🙂

Anyway, matter + antimatter produce photons (gamma rays) and only photons. Particle accelerators dont accelerate antimatter, only matter.

As for planck time, it is defined as the plank length (the smallest possible meaningful distance) divided by the speed of light (the largest possible speed (according to current theory)) so it is sort of like the smallest unit of time in which anything can happen.

As for time being the 4th dimension. It is not just any dimension, it has very unique properties one being that we can move through it at will.
 


<< Since even a piece of rock at Kelvin 0 still moves in space. >>



I think the problem here is that the rock isn't at 0 kelvin, but rather 1E-10000 kelvin or so 😉 it still does have energy.
 


<< So Theoretically its possiable to destroy the universe. What about the bomb issue with this. It's way more powerful then an atomic bomb! >>



I think that if it was possible to destroy the universe with a matter/antimatter explosion, then the universe would have already been destroyed. Matter and antimatter spontaneously appear in a vacuum, i.e., space, and they typically destoy each other immediately. The only exception, as theorized by Stephen Hawking, is when a matter/antimatter pair appear at the edge of a black hole and the matter particle gets sucked in. So, AFAIK, there are small amounts of antimatter floating around in space, so if there was the potential to create a catastrophic event with a matter/antimatter collision, it probably would have already happened.

As for the question about time, I think that since it is a dimension, not a force, it is erroneous to think of it as having energy. The qualities of depth or length, the third and second dimensions, do not have "energies," per se, so I don't think that it would be accurate to describe time as a form of energy.
 
Actually, certain scientists have theorised that parts of the universe may only me anti-matter and has never come into contact with matter.

Other "scietists" have claimed that the big mysterious explosion out in siberia (forgot its name, started with t I think) was caused by a chunk of antimatter slamming into the earth which isnt as far fetched as you think.
 


<< CStroman, quarks aren't produced in such a reaction to the best of my knowledge anyway. Quarks are the building blocks of protons and neutrons and haven't AFAIAA ever been detected singularly. >>



If you're ever in the Chicago area, visit Fermi-lab. They watch the collisions and observe quarks there.
 


<< Other "scietists" have claimed that the big mysterious explosion out in siberia (forgot its name, started with t I think) was caused by a chunk of antimatter slamming into the earth which isnt as far fetched as you think. >>



I thought that was attributed to a meteorite. Anyway, I don't see how that's possible. A chunk of antimatter would encounter matter long before it reached ground level. It would have been annihilated in the upper atmosphere.
 
time is a mearsure of another dimension which can fluctuate like measuring the width of a paper while it can be flat or bend.
 
Time is yet another dimention for matter/energy to move through. It is a change in the state of matter/energy as it travels through this dimention. For our purposes, we (humans) witness time as a rather constant and one-directional thing. And we believe it to be one-directional. It is, in itself, not an entity. Time is a discription of change in the state of matter/energy, without matter/energy, there'd be no meaning to time.

P.S. As far as the antimatter thingy, a particle and antiparticle, when collided, will form 2 photons and vice versa.
 
"f you're ever in the Chicago area, visit Fermi-lab. They watch the collisions and observe quarks there.
"

What fun is that? Everyone goes to Fermilab to see the Buffalo in the center of the collider!
 
I still think they can only observe the effects of quarks, rather than actually seeing individual quarks. They have to exist in a neutral colour state, and I think it is theoretically impossible to get one on it's own. Various quarks were discovered at different times, which does suggest that the effects of individual quarks can be detected separately, but the particle itself hasn't been seen.
 
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