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Ammar Gh

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What is time?

Wasting time makes you think what time is... How everything is connected... After long contemplation you realize that time is everything around you! Gravity, matter, space, energy... All of it cooperate together to make time pass.

Actually, why do we even say time? Everything in the universe orbits a bigger object, the Earth and the rest of the planets orbit the sun at different speeds but they all move around the center of the milky way at the same speed. That galaxy floats around some bigger object etc. at some point we will realize that everything in the universe floats through it at a constant rate, then space = time! We all float through this space-time and each second passed can (theoretically) be measured in kilometers if only we had a point of reference (we can't find it as everything we know moves at the same rate). The theory that we can travel through time when reached over-light speeds seems not so realistic to me after tonight. There is something missing, we just accept that everything is relative. Each object in the universe is influenced by a bigger object, but the universe as a whole is influenced by something even bigger and it floats at a constant rate around it...
What do you think?

Topics: Astrophysics astronomy time
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  • Mark Meijer 100+

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    Jan 12 2013: Yes. We tend to think in terms of forms that move in space and time, as if forms, space, time, and movement were all different things that somehow come together once in a while. But they are all the same phenomenon. Just like heat and light can't be separated from fire, likewise form, space, time, movement can not be separated from eachother. That's why time travel as we think of it is impossible; time IS travel, and travel is form (or rather formless, since no form is stable in movement).

    But that also means there are not really objects influencing other objects. The phenomenal universe is just a continuous reshaping of itself, without beginning or end. To conceive of anything larger than the universe, is just to redefine the concept of universe. Eventually you end up with infinity, both in space and time or any other dimension (none of which really exist as such - so who knows whether that's infinitely large or infinitely small, either way it is boundless). Now the question remains, do you occur as an aspect of that ongoing movement, or does it occur as an aspect of you ;).
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      natasha nikulina 50+

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      Jan 13 2013: Beautifully said , Mark !
      Any attempt to define Time as a ' phenomenon ' that can be distinguished from everything else doomed to fail. Anything that could possibly occur in human mind belongs to Time and to everything, so we can't define anything in this realm. On the other hand, whatever you say what Time is , it may answer :
      Yes, it's me . :)
      Re : Now the question remains, do you occur as an aspect of that ongoing movement, or does it occur as an aspect of you ;).
      I guess both, it's inside out and back or vice versa, no causality here, since no movement ...in usual sense.
      I can't language it, can you ?

      • Mark Meijer 100+

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        Jan 13 2013: No I can't, there's no "it" to be languaged. Like you said, we can't define anything. Which is to say, to attempt to define anything is to abstract things away from other things in order to consider them in stasis and isolation, because that's the best we can do with perception, thought and language. Which is how we come up with notions of time and movement, light and heat, me and you, personal and impersonal, stability and change, existence and non-existence. But that's a limitation of conceptual thought (and of language and perception which are based on it), not a limitation of reality, because in reality nothing is isolated or static, and reality has no inherent limits.

        So what are we talking about :P
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          natasha nikulina 50+

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          Jan 14 2013: We are talking about nothing/everything .... apparently , it's really hard to talk about.
          Actually, not possible at all .

          Thank you for the effort ! :)

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