time

many scientists believe that all "time" is present right now..Past, present,future is all part of space/time. So what causes us to "advance or move" in time? Just because our earth rotates once every 24 hours... why does that cause us to age? What if our earth didn't rotate at all? Would we stand "still" in time? .

Originally posted by @ogb
many scientists believe that all "time" is present right now..Past, present,future is all part of space/time. So what causes us to "advance or move" in time? Just because our earth rotates once every 24 hours... why does that cause us to age? What if our earth didn't rotate at all? Would we stand "still" in time? .

I think you might be confusing the metric by which we account for the passage of time with time itself. The rotation of the Earth was just something periodic. If we evolved on a non rotating Earth we would have found something else that was periodic. Stopping measurements of time don't seem to stop time itself.

Originally posted by @ogb
many scientists believe that all "time" is present right now..Past, present,future is all part of space/time. So what causes us to "advance or move" in time? Just because our earth rotates once every 24 hours... why does that cause us to age? What if our earth didn't rotate at all? Would we stand "still" in time? .

Aging in a biological sense is caused by molecular changes to the organism. These "biological clocks" would continue to occur in the absence of earths rotation.

Originally posted by @ogb
many scientists believe that all "time" is present right now....

If what you mean by "all "time" " is ""all points of time in past present and future", as far as I can judge, I think that is probably false i.e. it isn't true that "many scientists believe that". That is because it just seems too obvious to me that to say any past point in time and any future point in time is "present right now" i.e. exists in the present is to either imply all points in time equate as being the same point in time, which is clearly false else there would be no difference between past present and future, or is to imply each point in time is contained 'in' the present point in time.

But a past point in time or a future point in time isn't 'in' the present point in time because no point in time is 'in' some other point in time. If a point in time has to be 'in' some other point in time to exist, what would that other point in time that holds that point in time within it have itself to be 'in' to exist? -yet another point of time? I see an infinite regress here. Somehow I doubt most scientists would be so confused as to get into that infinite regress.

Past, present,future is all part of space/time.

That is like saying time is part of spacetime. But time isn't the whole of spacetime; you still need space.

What if our earth didn't rotate at all? Would we stand "still" in time?

Really not sure but I think you just might be confusing how we know time is passing with time passing; the two things don't equate.

Originally posted by @humy
If what you mean by "all "time" " is ""all points of time in past present and future", as far as I can judge, I think that is probably false i.e. it isn't true that "many scientists believe that". That is because it just seems too obvious to me that to say any past point in time and any future point in time is "present right now" i.e. exists in the present is ...[text shortened]... be confusing how we know time is passing with time passing; the two things don't equate.

It might be that space and time are quantized, making the whole affair like a movie reel, where one quantum jump away is the next play in the movie and past and future are all compacted together like a movie reel and we are being 'played' by a quantum jump effect, which implies we could perhaps jump from one 'frame' to another. A move, say left and right would put us a million light years away but at the same frame of time or a movement up and down would put us a million years in the past or future but in the same place on Earth or wherever you are when you figured out how to jump.
Makes a nice sci fi plot anyway🙂

Originally posted by @sonhouse
It might be that space and time are ... like a movie reel, where one quantum jump away is the next play in the movie and past and future are all compacted together like a movie reel and we are being 'played' by a quantum jump effect, which implies we could perhaps jump from one 'frame' to another. A move, say left and right would put us a million light years ...[text shortened]... ce on Earth or wherever you are when you figured out how to jump.
Makes a nice sci fi plot anyway🙂

That's called the god's eye view. I like the book analogy. There is the whole book right there, but you have to read it linearly or it doesn't make sense.

In a book or movie, the past and future are set in stone. Not so in reality.

Originally posted by @apathist
That's called the god's eye view. I like the book analogy. There is the whole book right there, but you have to read it linearly or it doesn't make sense.

In a book or movie, the past and future are set in stone. Not so in reality.

You think the past is mutable?

What do we think to the recent news article where a chap says he has travelled back in time from 2030 and is now "stuck" in the here and now?
The popular view is that time travel to the past is impossible because of the so called "grandmother paradox" i.e if you could achieve time travel into the past you could in theory murder your own grandmother and so never exist.
Personally I believe in time travel to the past because of the hundreds of so called alien sightings over the years.If even just one of them are true,consider all the diverse life forms on Earth and how they have evolved.If beings had travelled from other planets what is the likelihood of them having 2 arms, 2 legs, 2 eyes etc and looking similar to humans?.I believe it's too much of a coincidence so if the sightings are true the only logical explanation in my opinion is time travel.

Originally posted by @apathist
That's called the god's eye view. I like the book analogy. There is the whole book right there, but you have to read it linearly or it doesn't make sense.

In a book or movie, the past and future are set in stone. Not so in reality.

Yep, in reality, if you indeed had a time machine and suppose you went forward in time say 1 day. Since the solar system as a whole is spiraling through the galaxy about 200 miles per second plus whatever the galaxy is doing, say just ignoring the movement of the galaxy, 200 miles per second times about 85000 seconds would put you about 17 million miles from Earth so if you indeed had a time machine you would also need to know exactly where Earth would be in past or future so you would need to know an awful lot about the movement of Earth, sun, galaxy and galaxy clusters.
If you had a teleport capability it wouldn't take many tries to figure it out, since you could just go say 1 day up or down in time and see where Earth got to. That would additionally give astrophysicists a lot of new data about the movement of Earth, galaxy, galaxy clusters and so forth. THEN you could program a trip to be somewhere near Earth in the new time. Not exactly like the movie 'the time machine', eh.

Originally posted by @deepthought
You think the past is mutable?

No. Do you think the future is immutable?

Reveal Hidden Content

I like the subject.

Originally posted by @apathist
No. Do you think the future is immutable?

[hidden]I spent 30 minutes on that sentence. If I just add 'this is good weed' you maybe wouldn't realize that was thirty deep and interesting minutes. [/hidden]

I like the subject.

The future can be changed and is changed billions of times every second.
Any event by any living creature human or otherwise can affect the future.
We make hundreds of decisions every day. Any of those decisions can alter the future.I decide to go for a drive, I get killed,I cannot then father a child who may have grown up to be the person who starts a nuclear war.

Originally posted by @venda
The future can be changed and is changed billions of times every second.
Any event by any living creature human or otherwise can affect the future.
We make hundreds of decisions every day. Any of those decisions can alter the future.I decide to go for a drive, I get killed,I cannot then father a child who may have grown up to be the person who starts a nuclear war.

Unfortunately you don't know that and there is no way to prove or disprove it.
All the events now may be set in stone, already happened. How would we know?

Originally posted by @wolfgang59
Unfortunately you don't know that and there is no way to prove or disprove it.
All the events [b]now may be set in stone, already happened. How would we know?[/b]

If you are saying that all events are unchangeable(set in stone)how has this been achieved?.
Do you think there is some great force that has predetermined the order of things throughout the universe like shuffling a pack of cards?
Are you saying a crocodile in the Zambezi river for instance cannot alter which buffalo calf it chooses to attack if there is an equal choice?

Originally posted by @wolfgang59
Unfortunately you don't know that and there is no way to prove or disprove it.
All the events now may be set in stone, already happened. How would we know?

By asking better questions. Determinism is a belief system that cannot be proven nor dis-proven. A dead end.

Physical science doeasn't care about this issue. It merely just continues to figure out how things work. Physics tells us about stochastic materials.

I like that reality has a fuzzy future. We all change the world everyday, and nobody really knows what will happen next.

Originally posted by @venda
If you are saying that all events are unchangeable(set in stone)how has this been achieved?.
Do you think there is some great force that has predetermined the order of things throughout the universe like shuffling a pack of cards?
Are you saying a crocodile in the Zambezi river for instance cannot alter which buffalo calf it chooses to attack if there is an equal choice?

I'm saying we don't know.