Thoughts

[nadriel]

Yesterday afternoon went very quickly, despite not being very interesting. Now I'm familiar with time passing fast when I'm having fun, but this one is new on me.

So it got me thinking about time. Is time a constant? I mean, we have all these devices that measure it as such, and yet we can still lose track of it.

Again, it comes down to one of my favourite things, the perception of reality. So, if we percieve time as relative, then we make it effectively so, as far as we're concerned. The question arises, is it possible to do this deliberately, and if so, how?

The pragmatist in me also thinks that marketing a device that allowed people control over relative time, at least to a limited degree, would make me a small fortune...

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Go to the Exeter Uni department of engineering. Find Dr Mike Belmont and ask him to explain to you the graininess of time. Be prepared to pay for his time.
I had it explained to me once, and in-between the thoughts of 'huh?' I got the distinct impression that it was a profound theory.
Do not mention that I sent you. I still want to graduate.

-Seth-Ra the Everliving.

[nadriel.livejournal.com]

Well, if I ever get some spare time, I might just do that...

[brindy.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of an episode of Star Trek where Data is interested in the perception of time. He watches a kettle boiling and measures the time, but nothing unusual happens. Will Ryker tells him to turn off his internal chronometer since humans don't have one (but not be late for his shift), makes me smile everytime. :)

[davidnm.livejournal.com]

Okay ... suddenly we're into one of the fun bits of modern physics here ... He he.

Quite simply, neither time nor space are absolutes. This is a false idea for which Isaac Newton should be roundly castigated with apples. Well, actually, to be fair, he did about as well in the Principia Mathmatica as anyone with the instruments then available in the 17th Century could have done, but it was still wrong.
This is where Relativity comes in. Relativity postulates that the only absolute is the speed of light. For instance, I measure the speed of a beam of light. I get 299,792,458 metres per second (if I do it right - okay, knowing me I get 121.9i, but anyway). A spacecraft doing, say, 0.99c measures a beam of light going past. Yo'd think it would find it travelling 0.1c faster. It doesn't. It measures it travelling *the speed of light* faster. But, at the 'same' time, someone stationary with regard to the ship would measure the same beam of light moving at 1c, not 1.99c.
This sounds self-inconsistent. In fact, it isn't, due to one very subtle catch - space and time are actually relative quantities, not absolutes. My time does not have to be yours, and vice versa. Or, in the jargon of the science, "the only absolute frame of reference is that of light itself".
If this sounds unlikely ... experimental tests involving atomic clocks on supersonic planes do seem to bear it out. We don't notice it in our day-to-day lives simply because few human beings have the opportunity to travel at velocities approaching that of light (no, don't get me going on cosmic expansion and how fast our galaxy would appear to be going from the other side of the Universe...).

...
On a different note, this is why I've always scratched my head over the whole Technocracy-doesn't-like-the-Ether thing from Mage. The luminaeferous ether was so much less scary and subjective a theory then General Relativity.

[nadriel.livejournal.com]

Excellent. So my random musings do have some actual basis...

[davidnm.livejournal.com]

Or, thinking about it, quantum mechanics. From that we get the Planck Time (on the smallest intervals, time is quantised - there is no physically meaningful interval shorter then about 10^-43 seconds - not too sure about the number, will have to look it up at some point).
Yes, there is a big question mark over how this fits in with General Relativity; is my Planck Timne your's? This is what we mean when we talk about the problems in formulating a Grand Unified Theory of physics - some bits of it flat-out contradict others.
...
This is the kind of physics I enjoy. Sadly we don't get to play with the quantum vacuum in Labs...

[(Anonymous)]

How do you castigate a man with an apple? It hasn't got any sharp edges, so it'd take ages and all you'd succeed in doing is maybe bruising him in a sensetive area.
Use a knife, sideshow Bob.

-Seth-Ra the Everliving.

[davidnm.livejournal.com]

Simple; I'd pelt him with apples until he understood the error of his ways.