Quote:
Originally Posted by beyondthedivine
Ok, so I've heard 2 different theories on time. My own, which is time is just one long moment that can never be stopped; and another that says time is actually many instants which are recorded as time goes on and this theory also says time can be stopped, fastforwarded, and sped up. I would like to hear someone elses opinion to better explain my own theory to myself. Any help?
|
Apparenly I am not supposed to support an idea, but I am not known as someone who follows all the rules, so here goes.
There are so many uses of the word "time" that it is difficult to address one usage and not be confused with another. Planck found that energy comes in little packets as defined by the Planck constant. If this is so, then all of space and all of time would seem to be made up of these little chuncks. Call these little chuncks a "Quanta". Unfortunately things never seem to be simple. The uncertainty principle says that although space and time might be made up of "quantas" you never know where and when they appear. Thus time and space would seem to be discrete, but unpredictable.
This would seem to address your idea that time is continuous. It also seems to address your idea that time comes in many instants.
The idea that time can be stopped, fastforwarded, and sped up seems to be a question about clocks. The Theory of Relativity says that clocks slow down in a gravitational field. If this is true, it would seem that clocks can be slowed or "fastforwared" depending on the gravitational field surrounding the clocks. My interpretation of time dilation and Black Holes is that clocks would not move at the event horizon of a black hole. Since black holes are the result of gravity, if clocks can stop as the result of gravity, it seems reasonable to think that they might move at an infinite speed in the total absense of gravity.
I suspect that your second view of time is the one often used in science fiction where time travel, warp drives, etc take place. I doubt that time acts like this. Time, as in the rate of clocks, might be controlled by the use
of gravity, but I doubt that time can be controlled through the use of time machines, warp drives, and the like.