Scientifict thoughts: Time and gravity

Fly on airplane, time slows down.

Whoa!
 
Jens_Cats said:
I think this is a quantum question: We observe time, so it does exist. The question, though, is what are we observing (movement of heavenly bodies) that makes us call it and experience it as "time?"

Jen M.
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Do not confuse the human linear concept of time with movement. Time doesn't exist, because we can't go back and repeat the event that occurred. We can recreate the event that occurred, but that's not the same as repeating it, with the same actors, same "time frame," and the same consequences. Time also doesn't exist in the future any more than the child you have yet to bring to conception. And there is a reason for it. If the past did exist in a very real sense, we would be fighting for access to it to wrest control from each other over the fates of others, and we could be fighting each other for control over the future. The point is, we would not be living for today, for this precious moment of being alive. We would not be living in a very "present" manner. This world was constructed to be this way. Otherwise, why bother, if you cannot rely on consequences of actions to be concrete, predictable?

This is similar to my comment some where out there in the Internet in which you cannot have a world without consequences. How would you ride a bike in confidence if the laws of physics arbitrarily said that sometimes, when you put the crank pedal gear in second gear, and the rear wheel in fifth gear, it's going to be hard to pedal (as it is in our reality), but SOMETIMES, and you don't know when it happens, you can pedal away easily, but your maximum speed would only be about 5 MPH, and SOMETIMES, doing exactly the same thing, you reach 80 MPH in two seconds, and you die in a crash with a tree? Or, you stand up out of your chair sometimes, and you fly up to hit your head on the 25-ft-high vaulted ceiling, and sometimes you don't fly at all, or maybe only 12 feet a yet another time. If you couldn't predict the consequences of your actions (cycling, balancing, swimming, anything physical), how would you have any degree of confidence in doing ANYTHING?

I digress, but I believe that we observe time from within. Another thing you might observe is material's movement tendencies - you might notice that it's easier to break a piece of tape if you jerk on it fast rather than pull on it just as hard, but slowly. I believe that has to do with the cohesive properties of the materials involved, how it reacts to faster or slower movement. These properties might have to do with how atoms and their parts interact with each other to maintain bonds in spite of movement that tears them apart. The faster you do it, the easier it is to break those bonds. Sometimes. Perhaps if you attempt to break the tape when the atoms' parts are aligned just right, it still won't break, but stretch even if you jerk on it just as fast. You probably need to catch it at a moment when the bonds are the weakest, and you have a better chance of catching it at that phase the faster you do it. If you do it slowly, the atoms will have passed through several cycles of phases by the time the bonds stretch far enough apart to lose their effectiveness. At that point, you're struggling against the natural bond strength of the atoms rather than breaking it while in a lower cohesiveness state. Musicians, see if you can figure out what I mean; imagine a timer on a circuit that turns it on and off in sixteen notes, like 1 e and uh 2 e and uh, and so on. Imagine stripping the naked wire with your bare hand off the alligator clips in between any one of these sixteen notes when the circuit is off. Miss it, and you get shocked, but "time" it right, you can disconnect the circuit that way without getting shocked. You broke the circuit at a time when it wasn't active or strong (as in plastic tape). The more cohesive the materials (think of some sort of metal) the higher the forces required to break it. Even temperature plays a role in the brittleness of a material in cold temperatures.

Still, what you are observing is movement, and how different factors affect what you observe. Take the gravities of Earth and the Moon. They affect how things move. It's easier to move things and throw things on the moon as far as forces are concerned. And you could move your limbs faster, too, because there is less inertia involved. Think about being a musician. Remember when you thought it was impossible to play as fast as you have seen someone play, and yet you found yourself doing so after a few months' or years' practice? Did you notice your perception of time change, like you can literally "see" or feel every little note you're playing?

It leads me to this next thing. Have you ever noticed sometimes that when you look at a clock with a second hand, when you first look at it to see what time it is, that hand seems to stay still for well over a second, and then it moves again in its predictable manner? I see this every day that I look at a clock like this. What happened? Why did my perception of time change?

Also, my perception of time is different than other people because of how I see things. I have a sister in her 70s who has the view of being shocked at how fast her life has passed, like yesterday she was just a child and yet here she is. I don't see it that way at all. I feel like at 45, I have been alive forever. That a year from now is forever. There is SO MUCH to do before I can say, "Happy New Year" again. I have to wake up and get ready 353 more times. I have to go to bed just as many times. I have to go to work roughly half the number of days. I turn on the computer and read nearly just as often. May I make a suggestion? Just to see how much "movement passes," take a week off from work and do nothing but this:

Get up and get ready for 30 minutes
Go outside and walk for 10 minutes
Come back inside and read for 20 minutes
Do something fun for 10 minutes
Get ready for bed in 15 minutes
Lie in bed for 10 minutes

See if you can repeat this all day long until it's really time to go to bed. You'll see just how much activity that really is. Because it usually is boring, or something you do every day, you gloss over this and forget about it, and you lose sight of your own view of "time." Some of you think it passes by the faster you get older, and yet I think a week from now is forever. Hell, even a full day at work is forever!

Can you go back to a period in your life when you did not know what a clock was for nor what day it was? You didn't naturally seek out "what time it is," did you? You just watched the sun rise, travel across the sky, and set, all the while playing all day or doing something you had to do. It wasn't until I was 9 before I understood time and how to read a clock. I can remember it clearly. I was in this shop you see here in the photo. At the time in the 70s, it was a tire/mechanic shop, and I remember standing in the front room and asking Dad, "What is that? What is it for?" And that's when Dad taught me time and how to read the clock. And it would be some time before I began to understand the days of the week and the months and how to read a calendar. Why today was Friday and not Sunday.

The idea that I'm getting across is, what if we were to step away from Einstein's theory for a moment and experience here and now? Notice the absence of the past and the future. Notice that all there is, is right now and your memories. Things are just what they are... That simple. I wonder what we are capable of once we come back to this spot. It seems to be that this science is a block to our abilities in some ways, our NATURAL abilities. In other words, we're going down blind alleys, and when we do, we come across limitations, like "We can't go further with this. This is all we can do." How about we backtrack completely and see what else we can see? What new science can we create?

I leave it to you to discover what the Ancient Egyptians may have discovered. The questions are, why did they loose those abilities, and what is buried out there in the millions of tons of sand that is the Sahara Desert today?
 

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Cheetah said:
If time is created by gravity creating a dip in space, Wouldn't a magnet do something similar since they attract metal in much the same way gravity attracts, well, everything?

Thus you could use some really powerful magnets to bend space time?

Ok science buffs, stand by while I put some finishing touches on my first attempt at building a time machine. If you don't hear back from me for at least an hour, feel free to assume it worked!!! :D
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This thread bought back memories...

I used to love theoretical physics and spent hours thinking about subjects discussed above. Reading this thread made me realise how rusty I am now. Responding to the OP, I don't think "time is created by gravity". My recollection is that it's all to do with the speed of light being fixed. All speculations and calculations were to be based on this bedrock. We can play around with relative timelines to each other (the fast-travelling astronaut aging more slowly in relation to the earthbound person), but neither of them are capable of travelling backwards in time. Though I am aware that scientists have claimed to discover particles that appear to travel faster than light.

I had written another paragraph but realised that my knowledge is a little out-of-date so I'd better shut up for now and read furiously...
 
Time is not "created" by gravity. It can be slowed and warped by gravity, but it is not created by it. There are theories about black holes being wormholes that lead to different times and universes, but all of that is speculation at the moment.

In theory, if you wanted to influence time to such a degree as being able to actually shift time epochs--as opposed to creating your garden variety time dilation--you'd have to create the gravitational power equivalent to a black hole and then have an apparatus or traveling method that could withstand the crushing effect of that gravity. Humanity is far far from achieving anything even remotely close to this.
 
Here's a sincere question. Everything in the universe is essentially a form of energy, right? Light, gravity, magnetism, plasma (the sun), gasses, matter, plants, people, animals, life, etc. It's all energy in some form or another. The form of energy changes, but energy doesn't actually get destroyed.

So assuming all these forms of energy just keep cycling into other forms for ever, what is the "origin" of gravity and magnetism?

We understand them to be phenomena of mass. The more mass collects together, the stronger these phenomena are. But where is it coming from? How does it exist? Or rather, from what form of energy is the energy of gravity and magnetism coming from?

And is there more energy where that came from?

(Disclaimer: I am not a physicist, and I don't play one on TV.)
 
I have a box full of super magnets. Let me set it up so that it surrounds me and see if it can shoot me into the future by a couple minutes. I'll post my result when I arrive.
 
DeafBadger said:
Here's a sincere question. Everything in the universe is essentially a form of energy, right? Light, gravity, magnetism, plasma (the sun), gasses, matter, plants, people, animals, life, etc. It's all energy in some form or another. The form of energy changes, but energy doesn't actually get destroyed.

So assuming all these forms of energy just keep cycling into other forms for ever, what is the "origin" of gravity and magnetism?

We understand them to be phenomena of mass. The more mass collects together, the stronger these phenomena are. But where is it coming from? How does it exist? Or rather, from what form of energy is the energy of gravity and magnetism coming from?

And is there more energy where that came from?

(Disclaimer: I am not a physicist, and I don't play one on TV.)
Click to expand...

My recollection was that the explanation for this was that the energy burst immediately after the big bang was ever so slightly "uneven" and these minor variations snowballed over time to create the different building blocks of matter we now have. I have a vague memory of a physicist describing a theory of "strings" which apparently exist in 11 dimensional and they have something to do with this process (oscillate?). It's all mind-blowing stuff (how do you get your head around 11-dimensions?!!!) even if I've forgotten most of it.
 
Truthfully, in the short term, I don't get my head around a lot of it, but I absorb it, and I find the knowledge comes to the surface at the weirdest--but most opportune--times!

String theory, I have not explored. I'm pretty fascinated by wormholes, though.

Jen M.
 
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