http://www.whytze.net/time/

disagree or agree

mathamatically it makes sence

can't install flash on this machine. what does it say?

__________________
I have many of 'em mental powers

I had to run it in IE instaed of Firefox

Basically it shows a line and says 1D=Length
Then a square and 2D=Length*Height
Then a Cube and 3D= Length*Height*Depth
Finally a set of cubed scrolls across the screen and it reads 4D=Length*Height*Depth*each instance it existed

As for agree or disagree, I'm not sure it's the best way to explain it, but it gets the point across.

__________________
I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

Is it really against the mainstream? Dont scientists agree with that?

__________________
And so it was, however late . . .

[Scottish accent] "That's it? That's your theory?" [/Scottish accent] *

3 numbers to fix the point in space + 1 number to fix the point in time = 4 numbers for an event (something happens somewhere sometime).
Just as "mainstream" Physics.

Of course, I could not see the site, so I do not know whether there is more.




* Quote from a film.

__________________
papageno


"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)

"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)

"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)

not exactly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_dimension . wikipedia says 4th dimension of a cube is a hypercube. well if you look at my diagram it would make the same picture if i moved the cube in circles instead of left to right. so am i right or wrong?

the picture im refering to is

Shouldn't it be 'a hypercube is a representation of a 4-dimensional cube'? (not quite teh same thing)

I'm not sure that cosmology or physics consider time as a dimension any more... I should look into that.

Of course time is a factor in mathematical formulas. But to represent it geometrically all depends on one's frame of reference. If zero is your refernce point then simple + and - intergers will do mathematically. Geometrically a pad of sticky notes could do. each page represents your unit of time. Also if describing an expanding 3-d object, first you draw object, then you draw with dotted lines the expanded object, then you define the difference in time intervals with either a simple regular expansion rate or an accelerated rate.
Of course you the observer and the notepad can not be expanding too or else you find yourself in the quagmire that our present day cosmologists are in, and you don't want to go there.

heh - I don't mean to imply that time is not a consideration - the question is, is time a dimension, or is it merely the measurement of a process?

...or does time even exist? A number of years ago I tried to read a book by Julian Barbour which seemed to state he didn't think time actually existed. That it was an illusion. I believe the book was "The End of Time". I didn't get to finish it due to other events.

Has anyone else read it and what do you think? I got the impression that it was an interesting idea but testing for it would be impossible.

(oblig.) Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

In not taking the time to finish the book, I think you proved time does exist.

But seriously, my perspective is that time, in the everday practical sense that we usually think of, is a human construct devised to measure intervals between events.

In the sense of it being a naturally occuring phenomena, it IS the interval between events. No events = no time. (Even the slightest amount of particle activity counts as an event). As long as the Universe has not yet succombed to a heat death (the cessation of all activity) then we still have events and we still have time. When all events cease, so does time.

I've never bought into it as a 4th dimension, and maybe that is just a matter of semantics; but I see time as having very different qualities than the other 3.

don b - dispensing wisdom wherever the truth, and hyperdimensionality, are not suppressed.

It's been at least seven years since I tried reading it. If I remember correctly, the author stated that there is no movement. There is an infinite number of static "Nows". In one Now a single photon is at point A, in another Now that photon is at point B instead. Everything else is the same except that one photon's position in its Now. This continues for every possible combination of energy and matter. Moving up in scale our memories are only the configuration of that particular Now. We perceive the passage of time because of our memories. Sort of like sci-fi alternate universes, except here each alternate is a specific static configuration of matter.

I thought the book, what I read of it, was interesting. The author seemed to be a real physicist but I wasn't sure if he had gone over to the woowoo side.

Sounds like they are saying there is no such thing as movement, just a whole lot (maybe infinite number) of static states separated by . . . what?

Time?

If some past increment of now is different than the current increment of now, what describes their difference seems to me to be the photon (or photons) that moved and the number of increments that lapsed between then and now.

I don't think you can say the only difference is that things are in a different place because it takes a certain interval for them to get from one place to another. They might say that all the states always exist and that the order of my memory of each state only presents the illusion of an interval. That to me though crosses into woo-woo land because it leads to the necessity that all states that ever existed, or ever will exist (which in their view are one and the same thing), are always here there and everywhere for the entire life of the Universe.

We would have an infinite number (for all practical purposes) of states of physical being coexisting. Take one creature - say an elephant - and imagine all the states it could possibly be in over the course of it's life - down to the atomic level. Then extrapolate that too all the energy & matter in the Universe. Makes my brain go ACK!

Sounds like they are playing semantics a bit - but a fascinating topic nonetheless.

__________________
Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

__________________
`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...

I think this is exactly what he is saying. For that elephant every possible state, or lack of, exists side-by-side kind of like slides in a slide show. The elephant exists and doesn't exist now. There is no past, no future, just an infinite set of nows.

He gets into quantum stuff and that just goes over my head. He also states that removing the concept of time helps various physics problems. Those go way over my head too. I don't know how it helps with these various physics problems so I don't know how his solution is more probable than the simpler solution that time does exist.

However, I don't recall if the author stated there was a genesis moment. A moment when nothing existed and a moment with the infinite set of Nows. I guess I have to start the book again. If there was a moment before the Nows then there must be at least two moments, a before and a lot of nows.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure I have time to read the book. I finally got Civ4 working on my PC and that is a time sucker. Tonight is Sci-Fi Friday and the wife is going scrapbooking...

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/davidbowie/time.html Good one DA