I’ve been meaning to make a post like this for awhile, I can sense it might be long, and some of the parts may be obvious or otherwise, but please bear with me as I try to come to the conclusion.
Time:
What is time? Well, we have several ‘options’.
The universe can either have many timelines, infinite timelines, or only one timeline(and imo that would mean no timeline at all).
Presuming we have an infinite amount of timelines, if I were to travel back in time, and talk to my younger self, I would in effect change how my younger persons timeline would think.
To put it another way, I would explore one timeline, and one growth of myself.
However this is not the point of my discussion.
If we presume there is only one timeline.
I believe, there exists only one universe, when I look at my hand, I can’t imagine that exact hand doing something else, somewhere else.
What that tells me is there exists only one timeline.
To define a timeline; The conscious recollection of a series of events, or, an observers/or several observers memory of things that happens in the universe, and in our case, on Earth.
If time is a property of space, that tells particles WHEN to do something, and /how fast/, or it gives sub-atomic particles a set of boundaries for how and when they can “do something”, then time can only move forward.
You can stretch it, drag it out, making particles go slower, or faster, and therefore making time slow down, but the time fabric can’t “move” particles to a former state, or in our case, move billions of particles back an original state, and in doing so creating a state that is equal to somewhere in the past.
But if by some amazing coincidence it did, would it be IN the past or a CLONE of the past?
An observer would certainly think “whoa, I did this yesterday” or his brain particles states would go back and in doing so erasing his memories of “tomorrow”.
If we attempt to draw this; Let’s say these lines represent time “save points”, where 1 is one week ago, 2 is 6 days ago, 3 is 5 days ago, and so on.
1_2_3_4_5_6_7.
Now let’s say I would go back in time to tuesday, which is ‘2’ in the illustration, it would go either like this:
1_2
Now the particles have gone back in time, thus “deleting” everything that has happened. Or:
1_2_3_4_5_6_7_2.
Now it’s gone from the 7 to the 2, which means I didn’t go back in time, I just recreated how the universe was when 1 existed before.
To an observer, it might be experienced exactly the same, but on an objective level, it wouldn’t really have happened.
What does this mean?
Well, I think that the latter example is how it works.
It means time can only go forward, however it doesn’t have to go forward at a constant speed, it can stretch and so forth. Which explains General Realtivity’s influence on time.
However, I can hear people thinking "well, that only explains how time ‘acts’, it doesn’t explain what time IS.
And that’s a tough one.
I’ve been thinking about it for a long time…
Is time a self controlled “force” independant of particles? Is it an observation by a sentient being? Is it controlled by the particles themselves?
What is it exactly?
I don’t think time holds a record of what has happened. I don’t think it’s like a magnetic vhs tape where you can rewind or forward.
I think only observers can see time, but that time is also something that makes particles able to move. But the representation of time in particles can only be observed, even though it exists independent of observers.
Time warps and tricks happen all the time.
Now they’re making 4 gyroscopes to see how spacetime warps around earth, because time always changes around large masses.
An extraordinary phenomenon if you ask me.
Read about that here: http://www.azom.com/news.asp?newsID=1230
And now for those who bother, the second part of my thread:
For many years I’ve been trying to make some sense into what I am, where I am, what it all means.
And although this is an impossible question to answer completely, I can’t stop thinking about it.
I like to think about it in terms of complexity and patterns.
The universe isn’t created by many unique parts, considering the complexity of our universe.
At the quantum level you have only so many particles.
When these particles are combined(more complexity), they make up ‘patterns’, and these patterns interact thus giving an extremely large set of new options and complexity. Suddenly we have chemistry, physics, biology and all the other sciences you can think of.
It’s a brilliant system no doubt.
Then, against all chances, we are created. Humans.
We get something we like to call ‘consciousness’.
Suddenly we can think and reflect on ourselves and the world around us.
We start to think, "what am I? “what is consciousness?”.
Well, the problem is it HAS to be a product of complexity and patterns.
Which means we are bounded by the patterns that created us.
Which leads me to this thought: Do we control our particles, as in, does chemistry, electricity, biology etc control quantum mechanics?
Or is it vice versa? And how does this affect us, if it is?
It seems like all these sciences are a product of quantum mechanics, or they were created, like a game engine, to give the illusion that is our world today.
If we were in a game, we would be hard pressed to find out we were only polygons, and even harder pressed to find out we were software running on a computer.
The problem is… I feel lost in this world. I can’t think clearly knowing that I’m not here fully.
I am not ‘me’, I’m just a biproduct of some particles that follow basic electrical charges.
We’re all just negatively charged electrons pushing eachother away, and somehow this amazingly creates us.
We are bounded by many things, but feel that we are bounded by nothing.
We are ignorant, we do not know what this universe is, or where it is.