Has anyone ever wondered what the smallest unit of time is? Is there even a unit of time that cannot be broken into more units of time? Time progresses or appears to progress at an even rate however we know now that when you speed up it starts slowing down. And I believe some experiments were carried out by Einstein proving that time progresses at different rates for different people. Conclusion, time is not constant. Well, we often here from 80 year olds and such that their lives just went by in a flash. Sure they can remember some of the events of their lives (assuming they aren't suffering from some mental disease.) Well.. If there is no smallest unit of time and if time is most definately not a constant then what is the progression through space that we're experiencing? Why is that defined? (Like if time is not constant and if we're progressing through space at different rates then why do we have a defineable progression of time?) If there is no smallest unit of time couldn't time be progressing at any rate? What if we do fly through our lives in a flash but our brains make us believe it took "time"? Is time in actuality a perfect circle, where the rate of change is infinite? (The gradient)

How we measure time evolves from the amount of "time" it takes for our planet earth to circle the sun once. What if the apparant progression of time is due to how our star system is set up? Like, if we were in a region of space where there was nothing in our immediate vacinity (1 000 000 light years) except empty space will the progression of time be different? Anyone got any ideas?

First off, it is not easy to say what units time is measured in: seconds per ___?

As for the smallest unit of time, it seems like asking for the smallest unit of distance. I don't think it's really easy to say what it is because of what I said above about the units of time. Same thing goes for distance. Distance is meters per ___? I may be thinking about this the same way so bear with me if I am wrong.

As for the last part, if there was nothing in our immediate range, then it would be hard to measure time. The time we measure here on earth is all relative with respect to the sun or with respect to stars. At that point, I would say that we would basically have to "invent" time.

before we know whats the smallest unit of distance then we should know first what is the smallest matter then its measure is the smallest distance
now it talked about the dimension of space
but i guess its related to the dimension of time

The smallest unit of time measured so far has been the attosecond, one billionth of one billionth of one second.

There is something called the "planck time" that is defined as the amount of time it would take a photon in a vacuum to cross one "planck length." Interestingly, this doesn't take into account the idea of quantized distance, whereby there would be some amount of space between one end of a planck length and the other. I used to think quantum foam may have something to do with this, but there hasn't been much speculation on that front of late. I imagined that all motion occurs as individual particles "tunnel" across very short distances through quantum wormholes. The energy required to momentarily hold the quantum wormholes open long enough for a particle to tunnel across one quantum of space might be what we observe as inertia. If I knew better math I would work out the resistance in question, and perhaps see how it matches with the predictions of general relativity (acceleration = increasing resistance to the passing particles; relativistic travel causes an observed increase in mass; etc.)

Time is just a measure of change (a second hand going from one spot to the next, measuring either changes in a mechanism or vibrations in a quartz crystal or a mass of cesium atoms.) I'm interested in what the least amount of change is. What is the smallest transfer of energy (information) that can occur across the shortest distance possible such that some change takes place?


Or we could all just be sprites moving one pixel at a time one CPU cycle at a time inside God's computer.

OS

Einstein never carried out any experiments regarding relativity (which is what you're refering to). He was a mathematician really, but a brilliant one. A key your missing about relativity is that time is always a constant to the observer. It's relative to the observer. Time isn't experienced any faster by anyone in any discernable physical sense. To experience the time distortions you speak of you would have to reach relativistic speeds which are way beyond human capability and even given this scenario the observer would still experience time as a constant relative to them.

Quick question. WHen they refer to time before the "big bang" was there any known relation to our galaxy and time?

Your saying that time defines "space" aswell? Without time there cannot be "space" and/or "distance." Or does "space" and/or "distance" define time. If you change the space/distance/velocity do you change the time? How does time relate to any of these?



It seems that everything is able to be related back to time. But the question still remains, which is limited to which? How does changing one change the other? Where is the equilibrium?



Time is indeed a matter of change. But if we do not specifically know the smallest unit of time then how can we possibly define its rate of change? Why is there even a rate of change? For something to change you have to be able to discern a difference between two points where the change that occurs is constant. If there is no smallest unit of change for time then how can the change we and anyone else experience be constant? There has to be something that defines at what rate time progresses... Because we are clearly experiencing its change.



Ohp.. sorry yeah, Einstein was a theoratical mathematician/physicist, I was implying that him and some other fellow (I think) derived at some point that time progressed at different rates for different people. (I might have mis-interpreted this, I read this a couple of years ago :|) Not sure if I correctly emphasized that point.

Well.. If time is relative to the observer ie. If your travelling at light speed in a circle around the planet and you were able to observe reality as it was for the inhabitants of the planet however everything appeared sped up of what you were observing and time progressed at its normal rate relative to you. (If the inhabitants of the planet were able to observe you on the light beam they would see your movements slowed down considerably.) Then doesn't this mean that the brain has some sort of filter/mechanism/device of detecting rate of change of time and/or physical matter itself? There is some sort of energy/mass/space whatever that defines the rate at which time progresses. When you reach incredibly high speeds time slows down for you, why? What's going missing? Distance itself in "space" ? Does this mean that distance defines time? What is distance? Energy required to go from one point to another, energy expenditure.. Does the use of large amounts of energy slow time down? Let's contemplate. It takes light from the centre of the sun many millions? of years to reach the surface and beam out to earth/everywhere. The energy expenditure at the centre of the sun is extremely vast and thus causing time to slow down relatively? If so, from the light beam's point of view how long does it take it to reach Earth if the time for it is constant? (Could a light beam/wave be defined as energy without/very little mass?) What lol... Light is equal to the square root of energy times mass? Where the mass is very very little/non-existance So is the constant rate of time everything experiences relatively equal to some formula like.. T=MV^2/E (Time equals mass times velocity squared devided by energy where time is the extra "change" of time observed from a perfectly stationary position in the 4th dimension?) By the way not saying that formula is right at all lol.. Just trying to put the idea of what I'm trying to say out there.




Well.. If you consider what I said about time in the section before this and you assume that there was infinite/near infinite potential energy before the "big bang" then "time" would have been progressing at an incredibly fast rate relative to us observing it from a near energyless position in space where we are now. Obviously there couldn't have been an infinite rate of potential (somehow kinetic?) energy before the big bang because an infinite amount of time would produce an infinite distance travelled through time in either direction instantly. There wouldn't be room for us would there? :S Besides, even if we somehow did manage to "big bang" the energy at that point would have then had to be infinite and therefore the "big bang" itself would have been infinite producing a universe expanding at an infinite rate.. Then again (ffs.. I'm rambling quite a lot sorry bare with me) if the big bang DID initially explode at an infinite rate it could have been slowed down at an infinite rate too due to a drop in its energy because "Distance" was introduced into the equation. (Distance is equal to work done (energy expenditure) over time) So the energy consumption is equal to distance by the amount of time it took. As we know E=MC^2 and therefore M=E/C^2 so the apparant loss of energy would have been converted into matter and fwala... You have our universe in the making.


Note: I apologise to all if I made little sense.. I notice I ramble quite a lot sometimes.. Eh..

I agree that without space, there would no time since space and time co-exist (at least in reality). But I wasn't really saying that. I was just saying that the units of rate of time is not known. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the original question but I thought I'd bring it up.

Eh... Just to quickly break it down for those of you who don't really feel like reading it all... I'm basically saying that the amount of time that passes is in some way proportional to the amount of energy that is being spent in travelling from one point in space to the next.



Omfg.. Just had an insane thought.. If the universe has no shape and distance is defined as energy expenditure over a period of time and therefore the theoratical "shape" of the universe is overally defined as distance over time then wouldn't it mean that there would indeed be an infinite/near infinite probability rate of an infinite/near infinite number of other universes existing where progression of each universe's time is relative to whoever is observing if there as an infinite potential energy rate existing parallel to or in some way perpindicular to or in super position in a different dimension that doesn't have any noticeable effect on this dimension's reality where there is a constant for time at our energy level (standard tempareture 25 degrees Celcius I believe)? :S. (ROFL at self... Yeah.. I had to read that one through a few times to make sure I even worded it right lmao...)

Hangon... Its theoratically impossible to reach 0K (-273 degrees C) because time would be completely stationery where there is absolutely no energy expenditure. Wtf... Does this mean that time will slow down from our point of view if we super cooled something close to 0K :| Mhmm.. But time would also slow down from our point of view of we observed something at exceptionally large energy levels, like at the centre of a sun. Maybe this picture will help with what I'm trying (I'm not even sure if I drew it correctly btw doesn't look right to me lol)

Click to view attachment

Just a quick question, PsiSeeker. When you say that distance is energy is energy expenditure over time, is that from Lagrangian mechanics? I have only learned a little bit of it but I think that is where I heard it from. Just wanted to make sure.

Yeah lol.. I kind of drifted off my own original topic *shifty eyes.* Maybe the unit for rate of change of time is undefined and is what I'm busily trying to determine (Where 0 rate of change of time relative to other energy levels is taken at standard tempareture (Not sure that pressure would have an effect, but an increased pressure usually means increase energy which relates back to tempareture so it won't really matter anyway)

Err not really sure I learned this in my physics class.. Actually might have been my chemistry class :| or maths C class I can't really remember, was near the beginning of this year anyways it was simply stated that Distance = Work x Time (Which is Distance is equal to work done over time where "work" is energy expenditure)

That graph doesn't look right. I think its the axises that are contradicting each other.

Anyways, about the 0K thing, there would still be time because there is still little motion but just not enough motion to lose energy.

But at 0k there is NO energy. If you need energy to lose energy then its impossible to reach a state of no energy lol.

Over a given volume that is cooled to near 0K, the average would be nearly 0 energy. There is still energy there, though. Odd as it sounds, there will be points with slightly more than 0 energy and slightly less than 0 energy (yes, negative energy!) You could reach absolute zero if you could create an absolute vacuum, but there is no such thing. There is always something there, specifically vacuum energy. Plus, as soon as you attempt to measure said vacuum, you would destroy it because you would have to put something in to get information out, eg., by shining a beam through it and measuring the beam as it emerges.

What I didn't convey very well was from an idea I described in another thread, that the smallest amount of time (a quantum of time, or a "chronon,") would be the smallest amount of change involved in transferring the least amount of information required to constitute a change. We need to better understand what change is, and if it can be quantized. After that, we will need to better understand what information is, since change is the difference between information describing a system and a different configuration of the same system. Perhaps the system itself and all systems are fundamentally information? I don't have answers to those questions.

I'm thinking that it may not be an accurate way to think of time, though. The change itself is what makes us perceive the passage of time. The reason we see the passage of time and can measure it is that all of these tiny changes add up to our real world, and our instruments and minds are products of these changes. The need to define an "instant" may be superfluous, and possibly counter to how the universe works. Peter Lynds described an interesting solution to this here.

OS

If you knew the energy level of the light beam couldn't you simply subtract the final result from the emerging light beam to that of the preceeding light beam?



Change occurs at different levels though.. It would have to be the smallest amount of information to constitute a change that we are theoratically or directly/experimentally aware of. If there are different dimension co-existing in super position then a change could be occuring in one of these.



Is information taken to be energy? Or more specifically a specific arrangement of energy. Does an idea which exist within your head potential information? Since it does not knowably directly effect anything.. (Debates on the books "Think and grow rich" and more recently "The Secret" might start at that assumption.)



If we can't determine what the change is though then how can we possibly be certain that there IS a change? If time is relative to the observer and the person observing is viewing reality from a light beam then wouldn't everyone's lives literally end in a flash relative to that observer? Which brings me back to the main question I'm basically really asking, what IS time if its change is undefineable?



Okay thanx man, reading up on those links, its very interesting thanks for the contributions.

(Just a bit off topic.. Time travel) Don't read this unless you are seriously bored ay.. :| Its really really random rambling about stuff which doesn't really make sense anyways lol.

Mhmm, while reading Peter Lynds paper he said that you can't "indicate a precise static instant in time underlying a dynamical physical process." (I'm taking this to mean that because all forces would instantly completely cease existing at a point like this it would be impossible to progress forthwith because everything would have ceased (assuming ofcourse that no outside force can reanimate the dead universe.)) If this is so then the events that have occured in time cannot be changed in anycase. If we somehow one day figured out how to travel "back" in time we wouldn't in actual fact be travelling back at all. We would be travelling forward in time to an instant of the same information as that of what has already occured and our presence would subsequently change the time from there on on. It would however be separate in some unimagineable space to that of the past that has already been experienced. How can two of exactly the same thing exist? Well information surrounding the space in question will be different. Doesn't this indicate that there are different states of existing other than our own? The change to the cosmological constant of your existence ceising in one universe wouldn't be large enough to effect the actual constant I wouldn't think, if you somehow managed to produce a negative extra of yourself to every possible probability at the instant of creation of your negative self then you could interchange between different possibilities of yourself assuming that the change doesn't take longer than one planck time and therefore not changing the cosmological constant, assuming that the negative of yourself is aging at the same rate of your probable existances (since there would be a near infinite number of possible universes then you would have all the time you need until ofcourse you die..), and in anycase the existance of the universe you left would ceise to exist relative to you, it would become probability relative to yourself. (This is problamatic however because it eliminates the chance of existing over an infinite/near infinite amount of time relative to yourself because you would still be ageing at the same rate relative to yourself . ) Eh... I'm confusing myself now.. :\

For practical purposes, we could get a good enough idea of the state of the vacuum, but there are some problems that get in the way when we start talking about these smallest, last domains:

1. The energy difference in the beam is what was added to the vacuum, so it's not a vacuum anymore!

2. When the energy is transferred to the vacuum, without further measurement, we can't tell what effect it had on the vacuum, and the new measurements will add more entropy to the vacuum.

3. Measuring just the energy of the emerging beam is a very broad category of information. To get specific, we'd need to evaluate the quantum states that compose the beam, and then Heisenberg's principle will rear its head and prevent us from knowing everything about the beam, and even less about the vacuum since it would be once removed from what we're measuring.





That's a good point. I love that m-brane theory that describes gravity and other force carriers as being only loosely bound to our brane, and the more loosely bound, the less they interact with us and our stuff. When LHC comes online at CERN, they hope to detect some of this slippage, which will look like violations of the conservation law.


That's something I'm still struggling with. Is information a side-effect of energy transfer, or energy itself, or is all of the universe fundamentally information, and reality is what we perceive as changes in the information? In other words, does a process change information, or does changing information result in processes? Hmmm... Perhaps "exchanging information" would be a better term. Information, like energy, is never lost, even now according to Dr. Hawking. It is just re-located.

Re: ideas in the head. That, also, is another area where much more data is needed. Is an idea a result of real-world processes that are made of these quantum building blocks, or do we perceive quantum and classical reality because of how our conscious minds process informaiton? Is an "idea" something tangible at some deep, fundamental level?


"Time is something that keeps everything from happening at once!"

I think it's time that we seriously consider the idea that time may not exist, as per your statement: It can't be readily, satisfactorily defined. By "satisfactorily," I mean in the Viennese sense, "without invoking infinities and absurdities."



Always glad to point out interesting thinks!

Think of this: If the entire universe were configured as Julian Barbour describes, then try to imagine what one "instant" of time would look like: nothing. Because in one single instant, you only have a static information state that predicts the probability of what the next instant will look like (albeit, there are a near-infinite number of choices, only a small subset are probable,) but YOU, the thing that says, "I think, therefore I am," cannot exist because YOU are result of a process across configuration changes! You are the result of changes.

I made a post a couple of weeks ago about the effects of travelling back through time in a universe like this that reflects what you're describing. If it were possible, then you would have all of these other paths your reality could follow, and it would be highly unlikely that you would get on the same path you started out on.

Or, it may just be impossible to travel through time since a person (that YOU above) might not be able to exist outside of a configuration. You'd have to snip out a life-support (existence-support?) bubble from your original continuum and take it with you (or let it take you with it!) But that bubble may require the rest of its continuum to exist... Oh, my head....

Is your mind a part of your body? Is your body a result of your mind or is your mind a result of your body? Is your mind made up of knowledge (could not exist without in otherwise) and in its original state could not exist? Who is the "you" that you'd be taking with you if you were able to transfer between alternate realities? Your mind? You'd be detaching it from your body.. If the mind is limited to the brain then after your done travelling you wouldn't even be aware of it because you'd lack to knowledge. Unless you were able to somehow transfer information across aswell.

From:

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,...i212105,00.html


"femtosecond"


(This definition follows U.S. usage in which a billion is a thousand million and a trillion is a 1 followed by 12 zeros.)

A femtosecond is one millionth of a nanosecond or 10-15 of a second and is a measurement sometimes used in laser technology.

For comparison, a millisecond (ms or msec) is one thousandth of a second and is commonly used in measuring the time to read to or write from a hard disk or a CD-ROM player or to measure packet travel time on the Internet.

A microsecond (µs) is one millionth (10-6) of a second.

A nanosecond (ns or nsec) is one billionth (10-9) of a second and is a common measurement of read or write access time to random access memory (RAM).

A picosecond is one trillionth (10-12) of a second, or one millionth of a microsecond.

An attosecond is one quintillionth (10-18) of a second and is a term used in photon research."


Hope this inspires you !

You just made me think of something: What if you transferred to another "timeline," "universe," whatchamacallit, but by doing so, you became the parallel you that exists there? If memories are physiological, then you'd have all of the memories of that other you and none of your own that you had in the other timeline. As far as you know, you would have always existed in that timeline! Perhaps we travel between timelines constantly, but are never aware of it? That really stretches the concept of identity, though. What am I but my accumulated experiences and how I react based on those? Would my will change, or is my will also a result of my experiences filtered by my physiology? Oh, no, there went free will out the window again.

I have often wondered if we exist simultaneously in all the parallel universes that will support us, and that it is this aggregate existence that makes us self-aware, the physical result of the "self-observing quantum system" that some, such as Henry P. Stapp have written on.

Yeah, its always had me wondering. I started considering this when I was thinking of ways to figure out what is beyond death. I concluded that you can't kill someone and bring them back to life 2 years down the track because they would lack the knowledge in their own brain. Which leads me to think that if there is a "heaven" where is the information you gather about it stored?

Wow, its amazing how small we can go but we can't ever reach 0 for some reason. There's always something smaller. Unless we get to something "pure" that only exists of itself and fills up every point in space that it occupies.

Mhmm.. Wouldn't the smallest time unit be the time taken for the largest amount of energy to move the smallest possible distance? Infinities suck lol.