# The End of Time. NOW what??????? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 4, 2010, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-end-of-time-now-what/523598 "2010-01-04T07:07:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2010, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-end-of-time-now-what/523598/21 "2010-01-04T17:28:06Z")
> [@Eutychus](#): > > Robert Jordan would be out of work. That just proves that every cloud has a silver lining! 😃 > [@beo.thuck](#): > > Does anybody REALLY know what time it is? About 3:34-35. (twenty-five or -six to four) ---
**Author:** ![tacoloco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tacoloco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tacoloco)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2010, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-end-of-time-now-what/523598/22 "2010-01-04T17:29:12Z")
> [@beo.thuck](#): > > Does anybody REALLY know what time it is? Does anyone really care? ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2010, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-end-of-time-now-what/523598/23 "2010-01-04T17:39:37Z")
Are we sure nothing would happen? ISTM, if time is a fundamental part of the universe, then its cessation would be like the cessation of matter. Wouldn’t it result in an instantaneous rending of all matter and energy? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2010, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-end-of-time-now-what/523598/24 "2010-01-04T17:51:53Z")
> [@St.Anger](#): > > What everyday things would happen in real life if time just “stopped”? > > Would my watch stop working? Would I stop aging? Would I have the day off from work? Or would I be frozen in some sort of metaphysical state until it started again? > > Or is time truly unstoppable? Were you listening to “To the Best of Our Knowledge” yesterday? For those who weren’t, they were doing a program on time, and one segment was on a Russian pianist / composer who was afraid of time (since at an early age she realized that each second brought her closer to death.) They played parts of a really noisy piece of hers called, IIRC “After the End of Time.” It was clear that if she had ever taken a physics class it didn’t make an impression. Just goes to show you shouldn’t get science ideas from composers. ---
**Author:** ![Onomatopoeia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onomatopoeia/32/4145_2.png) [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2010, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-end-of-time-now-what/523598/25 "2010-01-04T17:55:41Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > Are we sure nothing would happen? ISTM, if time is a fundamental part of the universe, then its cessation would be like the cessation of matter. Wouldn’t it result in an instantaneous rending of all matter and energy? Because said rending would take time, no, there’d be no rending. Once time stopped, everything would cease to exist, instantaneously, sans rending. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2010, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-end-of-time-now-what/523598/26 "2010-01-04T17:57:44Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > Are we sure nothing would happen? ISTM, if time is a fundamental part of the universe, then its cessation would be like the cessation of matter. Wouldn’t it result in an instantaneous rending of all matter and energy? Matter and energy could not “rend” because there is no time passing for matter to change from one thing to the next. The second law of thermodynamics provides for an arrow of time (to distinguish past from present from future). Rending matter would follow this but with time stopped quite literally nothing happens till the universe is destroyed (assuming there is an “outside” the universe where time passed and could affect this one). ---
**Author:** ![Dallas\_Jones](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dallas_jones/32/3277_2.png) [@Dallas\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dallas_Jones)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2010, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-end-of-time-now-what/523598/27 "2010-01-04T18:51:38Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > Are we sure nothing would happen? ISTM, if time is a fundamental part of the universe, then its cessation would be like the cessation of matter. Wouldn’t it result in an instantaneous rending of all matter and energy? “Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.” John Wheeler The quote continues: “Space is what prevents everything from happening to me.” > **["Time Is What Prevents Everything From Happening At Once.." - John Wheeler...](http://developeronline.blogspot.com/2008/04/time-is-what-keeps-things-happening-all.html)** > > The quote continues: " Space is what prevents everything from happening to me!" John Wheeler , has for a long time, been studying advanced c... ---
**Author:** ![Chessic\_Sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7c8e57/32.png) [@Chessic\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chessic_Sense)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2010, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-end-of-time-now-what/523598/28 "2010-01-04T19:35:03Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Who’s to say that doesn’t happen all the time? What a silly notion. Time-freeze can’t happen \*all \*the time. Time has to at times be time, at least sometimes. ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2010, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-end-of-time-now-what/523598/29 "2010-01-04T19:47:57Z")
> [@Lanzy](#): > > Pretty sure he is. Nah, he’s writing boring novels without finishing the series in hell, now. ---
**Author:** ![beo.thuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7ab992/32.png) [@beo.thuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beo.thuck)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2010, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-end-of-time-now-what/523598/30 "2010-01-05T07:17:16Z")
Originally Posted by beo.thuck View Post Does anybody REALLY know what time it is? > [@mswas](#): > > Yes, it’s the movement of objects through space in relation to one another. It is, not is. Its from a song. “As I was walking down the street one day A man came up to me and asked me what the time was that was on my watch, yeah And I said Does anybody really know what time it is I don’t Does anybody really care care If so I can’t imagine why about time We’ve all got time enough to cry Oh no, no And I was walking down the street one day” ---
**Author:** ![beo.thuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7ab992/32.png) [@beo.thuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beo.thuck)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2010, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-end-of-time-now-what/523598/31 "2010-01-05T07:58:59Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > No, nothing would happen, because time is the measurement of things happening. If things are happening then time is moving. Time is a dimension just like horizontal and vertical, and depth. Time doesn’t ‘move’ it doesn’t ‘stop’, bodies move through the various dimensions in relationship to one another, and we call this movement, ‘time’. What I was (badly) trying to say is that time can’t stop. We agree. (I think) ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2010, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-end-of-time-now-what/523598/32 "2010-01-05T08:27:27Z")
It can’t stop (as far as we know), but a more interesting discussion is can it begin, and how? Can there be a ‘time before time’? Stephen Hawking seems to think so: > [@](#): > > Rather, the universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago. [http://www.hawking.org.uk/index.php/lectures/62](http://www.hawking.org.uk/index.php/lectures/62) This also stems from the notion that literally nothing was before the Big Bang, a question Hawking compared to asking what was “north of the North Pole”. Perhaps the ‘end of time’ will be the singularity that occurs with the Big Crunch, a singularity (like the Big Bang itself) theorised to be the ultimate fate of the universe. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2010, 9:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-end-of-time-now-what/523598/33 "2010-01-05T09:12:47Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > They played parts of a really noisy piece of hers called, IIRC “After the End of Time.” It was clear that if she had ever taken a physics class it didn’t make an impression. Just goes to show you shouldn’t get science ideas from composers. There are things that could be meant, philosophically and meta-physically by “after the end of time”. e.g. If our universe collapses into a Big Crunch, some theorists have hypothesized that another Big Bang could result. (Although this second Big Bang should probably be considered to be a completely separate timeline to ours…but I think it’s inevitable when speaking English that events are ordered and there’s an implied cause-effect sequence, because that’s how the language is structured. It’s hard to express other ways of thinking of time within our language.) ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2010, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-end-of-time-now-what/523598/34 "2010-01-06T03:24:57Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > > [@beo.thuck](#): > > > > Does anybody REALLY know what time it is? > > Yes, it’s the movement of objects through space in relation to one another. What, already? Man, I gotta go! I’ve got a date at half past the movement of objects through space in relation to one another! ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2010, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-end-of-time-now-what/523598/35 "2010-01-07T00:09:11Z")
> [@beo.thuck](#): > > What I was (badly) trying to say is that time can’t stop. We agree. (I think) Where would you have to be standing to observe time stopping? There are, conceptually speaking, three ways time could stop. 1. Time could cease passing and never restart. Optomistically, everything would freeze in position ‘forever’, unable to move and unaware of that fact. Alternatively, space would ‘cease’ too when time ceased passing and that would be that. 2. Time could stop passing, and then start up again. Those of us would be blissfully unaware, though, because for any points in time that time wasn’t running at normal speed, our perception of it would be effected in a complimentary manner and it would all look the same to us. In fact the entire flow of time could be passing at an irregular and intermittent rate, like a record being played on a player with a dying battery, and while to an outside observer the result would be distorted to the record itself things are unchanged. 3. Most of time could freeze leaving one or more things unfrozen. This happens all the time on TV, and typically they’re very cavalier about the effects of a (comparatively) high- or infinite-velocity person imparting staggering forces and impacts to everything they touched while time was “frozen”, including air. Alternatively, there could be another universe external to our own with its own separate timeline, inhabited by beings with the ability to observe our universe in the manner that we might observe that slowly-playing record. Such an individual might be God, and whatever other properties it might have it clearly isn’t all that interested in improving things on the record, since it doesn’t. It’s probably too busy scratching the record - wikiwikiwow! ---
**Author:** ![Nancarrow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c37758/32.png) [@Nancarrow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nancarrow)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2010, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-end-of-time-now-what/523598/36 "2010-01-07T12:42:52Z")
No links to Casey and Andy yet? Y’all nerds are slipping. [http://www.galactanet.com/comic/view.php?strip=47](http://www.galactanet.com/comic/view.php?strip=47) [http://www.galactanet.com/comic/view.php?strip=62](http://www.galactanet.com/comic/view.php?strip=62) ---
**Author:** ![toadspittle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c0e974/32.png) [@toadspittle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/toadspittle)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2010, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-end-of-time-now-what/523598/37 "2010-01-07T20:30:31Z")
Some physicists think time IS [grinding to a halt](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/large-hadron-collider/3319218/Time-is-running-out---literally-says-scientist.html): > [@](#): > > Scientists have come up with the radical suggestion that the universe’s end may come not with a bang but a standstill - that time could be literally running out and could, one day, stop altogether. > > … The motivation for this radical end to time itself is to provide an alternative explanation for “dark energy” - the mysterious antigravitational force that has been suggested to explain a cosmic phenomenon that has baffled scientists. > > … The problem is that no-one has any idea what dark energy is or where it comes from, and theoreticians around the world have been scrambling to find out what it is, or get rid of it. > > The team’s proposal, which will be published in the journal Physical Review D, does away altogether with dark energy. Instead, Prof Senovilla says, the appearance of acceleration is caused by time itself gradually slowing down, like a clock that needs winding. > > “We do not say that the expansion of the universe itself is an illusion,” he explains. “What we say it may be an illusion is the acceleration of this expansion - that is, the possibility that the expansion is, and has been, increasing its rate.” > > … In some number of billions of years, time would cease to be time altogether - and everything will stop. > > “Then everything will be frozen, like a snapshot of one instant, forever,” Prof Senovilla tells New Scientist magazine. “Our planet will be long gone by then.” > > … While the theory is outlandish, it is not without support. Prof Gary Gibbons, a cosmologist at Cambridge University, believes the idea has merit. “We believe that time emerged during the Big Bang, and if time can emerge, it can also disappear - that’s just the reverse effect,” he says. ---
**Author:** ![kingbighair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/13edae/32.png) [@kingbighair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kingbighair)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2010, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-end-of-time-now-what/523598/38 "2010-01-07T20:36:30Z")
Insufficient data for meaningful answer ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2010, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-end-of-time-now-what/523598/39 "2010-01-07T20:55:40Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > There are things that could be meant, philosophically and meta-physically by “after the end of time”. e.g. If our universe collapses into a Big Crunch, some theorists have hypothesized that another Big Bang could result. The reason she wanted time to stop was because she feared death, so I don’t think she’d see the Big Crunch as a plus. Also, she seemed to be planning on hanging around to enjoy time ending. Nice try, though. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-end-of-time-now-what/523598.md?page=1)