Friday, May 05, 2006
?
Time.......hmmn.
I found this while reading through blogs. It made me think... well, I tried to think anyway.
"I have this great coffee table book, The Mystery of Time, that I pick up and thumb through every so often. It's a gorgeous, over-sized book that examines time itself, which people often measure with watches and clocks, but on a more fundamental level is something that may not even exist.
All of this fascinates me to no end.
Think about time. We can't see it, hear it or touch it, but we all believe it's there. This invisible force that allows us to perceive the past, present and future. But how the hell do you define time? It is not a constant. It's relative, according to Einstein. Picture two people born at the same time. One person travels faster than the speed of light and the other doesn't. Theoretically, the person who travels faster than light will age less than a person who doesn't. Significantly less. As in, one person could remain young while the other grows old.
We can see this theory in effect, even if only barely. Place two accurate clocks on two separate aircrafts flying in opposite directtions around the world and they will return showing very slightly different times. Which time is right? Both. So how can you ever really measure it?
Also, time does not pass -- things change. The sun rises and sets and we set our watches to it. That is our definition of time. But imagine you existed in a void. You and nothing else. Would there be any way to measure time? I think not.
People refer to time as the fourth dimension. I don't claim to know even half of what I should on the subject, but it intrigues me. Can someone more versed here fill me in? What is the general theory by physicists about the way in which time flows? Does time bend, as some have suggested? Light moves. It travels. The star light we see today has travelled through space for millions of years before reaching us. But does time move? Or is it just there? And if it's just there, how can we ever hope to travel through or to it?"
I found this while reading through blogs. It made me think... well, I tried to think anyway.
"I have this great coffee table book, The Mystery of Time, that I pick up and thumb through every so often. It's a gorgeous, over-sized book that examines time itself, which people often measure with watches and clocks, but on a more fundamental level is something that may not even exist.
All of this fascinates me to no end.
Think about time. We can't see it, hear it or touch it, but we all believe it's there. This invisible force that allows us to perceive the past, present and future. But how the hell do you define time? It is not a constant. It's relative, according to Einstein. Picture two people born at the same time. One person travels faster than the speed of light and the other doesn't. Theoretically, the person who travels faster than light will age less than a person who doesn't. Significantly less. As in, one person could remain young while the other grows old.
We can see this theory in effect, even if only barely. Place two accurate clocks on two separate aircrafts flying in opposite directtions around the world and they will return showing very slightly different times. Which time is right? Both. So how can you ever really measure it?
Also, time does not pass -- things change. The sun rises and sets and we set our watches to it. That is our definition of time. But imagine you existed in a void. You and nothing else. Would there be any way to measure time? I think not.
People refer to time as the fourth dimension. I don't claim to know even half of what I should on the subject, but it intrigues me. Can someone more versed here fill me in? What is the general theory by physicists about the way in which time flows? Does time bend, as some have suggested? Light moves. It travels. The star light we see today has travelled through space for millions of years before reaching us. But does time move? Or is it just there? And if it's just there, how can we ever hope to travel through or to it?"
# posted by TommyDB @ 8:34 a.m. 
