I think this would make a great debate topic as well, but also a great topic to start up in this section of the board, Lets all share our ideas on if time is actually a dimension or something the human mind has created, now i must say that i once felt that time was a man made thing, but now realise that time is not man made, the only thing man made about time is the way we use it, time is an actual dimension, it is actually all around us, time is needed in order for things to progress time in its rawest form is what i believe is the 4th dimension, what say you about the notion on time?



edit: i feel this thread has great potential, i would greatly like to hear from whoa, stellar, burnside, richdog, insight and aquatus on this one, (but just because i didnt name you doesnt mean i dont want to hear from all of you as well )

I believe time is an actual dimention. Time has been going way before humans have been around. We are just a blink of an eye to the age of the universe (Multiverse in my opinion). Actually, we are just a blink of an eye to our own planet. We travel through time at a pretty constant pace. Its funny when catholics say 'at the end of time' bla bla bla. I dont see how time could end.

I'll post something in the Morning when I get up lol. its 5am here =/

This is a very deep thing to think about this late at night...but I think of time as a constant. It might have nothing to do with the main question of the topic, but I don't think time travel would ever be possible...too many variables, too many things that won't make sense...
All the movies I have seen dealing with time travel always has flaws when going to the past or future...I think time is something that can't ever change or be manipulated.
Whether or not time has its own dimension...I have no idea how to perceive that...or to even begin on how this could be. I think of the possibility of multi dimensions and multi universi and I get warped into a dizziness of my mind....like a spiral without end.

i myself dont believe actual time travel is possible just percieved time travel, one would think that he has traveled in time or felt as if he did but infact did not, just has moved through the time at a faster or slower pace then "average"

Ya thats what I was thinking. But if you think about it we all time travel, all at the same speed. If someone does accelerate or decrease their time speed, then that would be like time travel to me. The only way to say how fast we move in time would be 1 hour an hour, or 1 second per second. But then if someone finds a way to travel 2 hours an hour, they would be 'traveling' to the future, actually just ariving faster than all of us slow pokes. Well at first I thought this would prohibit us from traveling to the past, but actually we would be able to. but the past would still be our future...lemme explain. So the person affects the speed of time they travel, to like 1 second per hour. So every hour they only experience 1 second of 'their' time. The rest of us would speed ahead, and they would be experiencing the past that us fast people are creating. Well.....now I just thought again, would the world he percieves be us oving the same speed as him?? No I dont think so, we would see us flying by real fast. Ahh too much to think of right now, off to work, maybe I can meditate on this tonight.

I believe that time is a dimension, and the measurement of time is human made

Since a moving object uses time in its calculations and since you need time to specify the location of a moving object, I'd say time is not a human creation. The measure ment of time is a human creation though.

Yeah. what he said

I would say that time is an actual dimension, but the measurement of time just a human invension, despite the invention of clocks and months and years, the earth would still travel around the sun, we would all still age, moments would still pass by. heres my question on time, when did it begin?

I believe that time is more of a dimension the an invention. The earth would still make it's yearly cycles, and everything would happen just the same without years.

This is a totally cool experiment for understanding time, it's from one of my favorite books - Linda Goodmans 'Star Signs'...

"Sit down somewhere so that a wall is behind you, and a clock is in front of you.
Now lets make the the phrase "behind you" synonymous with the past.
Lets make the phrase "in front of you" synonymous with the future. Now someone walks up to you where you are seated and asks you: "Where is the wall?",
you will of course answer behind me. Then that person asks you, "where is the clock. Staring straight ahead at the clock, you will of course answer, "the clock is in front of me". Now pretend (pretend intensely) that you have a pair of eyes in the back of your head, performing exactly the same functions as the pair of eyes on your face. Do you have the picture set in your mind firmly?
Someone in the room who is seated so that they are facing the opposite direction ...therefore , the past and the future are the same, to two people facing opposite directions. Its all relative."
There is no time, there simply IS (wow, I know that sounds totally hippiesh )
Physical immortality, a thought transformation, leading to the achievement of cell regeneration

i get what your saying with that excercize(wow i messed that word up)

this is a puzzeling question i have for myself does time have a set distance (ie time from big bang to big crunch) if time is a dimension that would mean as the big crunch occurs and the 3 spacial dimensions get smaller, does the time dimension just get smaller also is it uneffected, or does it reverse?

I would vote uneffected, possible reverse and begin, again and again and again - well you get the point But don't quote me, I'm no genius

Time would be affected, I think, since the stronger the gravity, the slower the time passes. When we're close to a big crunch, the universal gravitation is stronger (assuming the dimensions of matter dont shrink for some reason), theres more mass gathered together, and the black holes are closer together. Heres a question though... what happens when 2 black holes collide?

I would say it is unaffeced because time is not a physical dimention. We can see length width and depth and we can control the size of all three, but we don't know how to change the size (or speed?) or time. And I'm not even sure if the other 3 dimentions get smaller either, all the matter in the universe get together, but I dont think that that would affect the idea of length width or heigth. If every piece of matter crunches into one inch cube, than you could say "that is a one inch cube", the size of an inch would not be changed at all.

i think that if two black holes were to come together they would act like the opposite poles of a magnet, they would attract each other and then become one black hole

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how can you say time is not a physical dimension, it very well may be, and i feel that if the big crunch was to occure the 3 spacial dimensions would shrink, an inch would still be an inch but the space that inch is in would be smaller just how if you take a ruler and throw it into an emtpy room its 12" but take that same ruler and throw it in a shoe box its still 12", think of the room and the shoe box as the 3 spacial dimensions (the shoe box of course being the big crunch dimensions)

In your example, an inch stays an inch right? I'm not seeing what you are proving.

But wouldnt, if everything shrunk, the ruler shrink too, therefor indicating a smaller distance than before, but the ratio would stay the same?

you know what that is something i didnt completly think through, but its hard to say actually now after i think about it deeper

if the ruler was to shrink when the dimensions shrink that would mean the ruler would also have to grow if the dimension grew, and with the current idea that the universe is expanding, does that mean we are all getting bigger by the second as well but because everything is getting bigger at the same rate and ratio we do not notice? that seems to me to be the only logical explanation, that we must all be growing every second, this must be because in order for everything to come back to a singularity at the end of the big crunch wouldnt everything have to shrink enough to actually get there or would there be another way?