I always thought about it as something just ticking away or a chronological plane but now that I thought about it I think it's something more, literaly, physical.
I've thought about that too, there could be none and everything just decays but now I think of it more as its dimensional self
(damn, i just wrote a response and I think it got deleted!) Okay, well I'll paraphrase from the book "Imagining the Tenth Dimension". Time is known as the 4th dimension, above our three dimensions of space. It can simply be explained as two points. The first point represents one point in a system, any given point in time. The second point represents the future, what is to be. The line between these two points is known as duration or time. Humans cannot percieve the 4th dimension directly though. We, as beings on the 4th dimension would look like long, undulating snakes. At one end is our fetal selves, at birth. At the end is ourselves at death. Humans only see one cross-section of this entity at a time though, not being able to percieve time. This is what we call the present. This is what you get when you look into a mirror or at another human. You see the three-dimension representation of an entity in one slice of it's temporal being. Don't you love quantum indeterminancy and string theory?
Nice way of putting it. Is the string theory just looking as things as 'string's amoungst time, or snakes like you said, rather than looking at everything threw a partical perspective which I guess would be 0 demension? Would you view time the same way in Dimension 5-24? What other planes are taken into account? Doesn't that make time a paradox? Not in the sense that it's the measurment from one place to another, but what it is to us? It's something always 'ticking' away or is it an inevitable quantom force we simply follow? Theoreticaly if you have a twin and you travel the speed of light when you come back he should be older than you. Also with worm holes time is nothing really more than distance or just another place is it? Also with this string theory or snake time line which we only see a part of, with dimensions, lightspeed, and worm holes and all those other things would these variables distort the line or would it just be incorporated in it. It just seems contradicting that even in the string theory time is constant 'string' that always flows and exists as a whole, but in its mathimatical sense it's two point although with the ST thats all it really is a contuious point. So with the string theory is our everyday perception of time wrong? This is the kind of shit I think about all day, sorry I got myself all confused and wrote in circles.
Vicious, man, you definatley need to read the book "imagining the tenth dimension". you would love it.
question: What is Time? Answer: Something John Bonham keeps with his drums. That's all you need to know about time.
Okay, for my own sake, weither it be right or wrong I don't know or care but this is my current understanding of time. The time is not 4 because time is something that connot be represented by a clock since time is it's own entity that would be better of being measured rather than put into a system of replication. Since we're in a world of multipul dimensions and can't be viewed as one whole but is made up of each of the lesser dimensions with their own parts. So even with the string theory time cannot be view as one contiuem but also must be viewed as points without this humanly view with decaying thoughts. Although we have 'free choice' it's destined what i'll call our 'time line' or 'snake' but we only can see fractions of it but it is for ever existent and since it's a line that shows both our birth and death it is for ever part of this world so theoretical it can be revisited which I assume would be done through a worm hole which brings my point that it's not only continues but also points, different from the birth-death spectrum. These points should be able to be visited as any place can but would be within our own line still which to me explains 'time's' dimensional and mathmatical properties which are two different distinct points completely alien to 'snake' 'time'. What about space time though? If we are forever connected to our string of past, present, and future which are all existant at the same time. What about a force that is still and forever expanding. (Now i'm incorporating the Big Bang theory) Since the total universe is forever growing and at increasingly steady rates is it limited to physics of time? What about the cosmics? Our, sun, earch, and galaxy are also changing, growing, and slowly (eventually) dieing. Do they follow this same string boundries? Is there an overall nexus for these time lines or is it perpetual chaos? And what if the string theory is completely wrong, what other explanations for time may there be? All this also bring a much larger question, are we in our own dimention or are we in an dimension of infinate perpotion and we just can't comprehend it as you can have no insight on something that unworldly and uncomprehensable to the mind? Just like a cell cannot see beyond it's barriers. (although it doesn't have concious thought) Although it seems more practical for larger dimensions to be inhabited by pure being or energy
Space and time are not separate but actually connected to one another as spacetime. Something even more trippy to think about involving time is that it's not constant. Time near extremely large gravitational fields becomes distorted Iit slows down the bigger the gravity) and also does at very high speeds. For example, if a guy got on a spaceship traveling at 10 mph slower than the speed of light for 1 year, he would come back to earth and it would have been 5 years. These numbers aren't correct but to give an idea. As far as I understand the Big Bang Theory and the Universe from my Physics classes, the big bang doesnt say the universe will forever expand, but that eventually it will reach a maximum extent and then start to collapse back in onto itself (due to gravity if I remember right). What's beyond the edge of the big bang seems to be a big mystery. The best telescopes can get close to seeing before the big bang but not beyond it yet. Its weird to think that these telescopes are looking deep into space but at the same time backwards into time (since light takes time to travel). I think you should read some books on Quantum Physics too.