Is time continuous or discrete?

[K1Barin]

In writing this topic itself ("Is time continuous or discrete?"), didn't the words come out discretely and in discrete times?

[Greylorn Ell]

In writing this topic itself ("Is time continuous or discrete?"), didn't the words come out discretely and in discrete times?

Good point, and yes. They were written digitally. For the sake of making a point, we can ignore signal latency times, rise/fall times, active digital clock periods, and the brief time required to process a keystroke and translate it into a character image, all combining to a few milliseconds of delay between the depression of a key and its appearance on screen. I like digital arguments, and your observation seems relevant.

But what if the same message was written on paper, with a pen, in cursive script?

So, what's your point?

Greylorn

[petm1]

Perhaps you'll come back after at least six months of research?

Barbour and Smolin, you like one I like the other, does not mean I need more study maybe you just need to open you own mind.

If I think of space as continuous then time must be discrete, but on the other hand if I think of time as continuous then space must be discrete, opposites at all times.

[Greylorn Ell]

Perhaps you'll come back after at least six months of research?

Barbour and Smolin, you like one I like the other, does not mean I need more study maybe you just need to open you own mind.

If I think of space as continuous then time must be discrete, but on the other hand if I think of time as continuous then space must be discrete, opposites at all times.

Smolin is too mystical for my taste, but I don't think that Barbour has it figured right either. Their ideas are interesting nonetheless.

Given the evidence from QM, the electron tunneling effect suggests that electrons (etc.) may not move as discrete particles that cross space as such, but may instead be waves (as supported by electron diffraction experiments) that manifest as particles upon detection. If so, the particle-form does not actually traverse space, but rather manifests at various points in space along its path.

This would easily be interpreted according to either of your options. I believe that it can be interpreted as basis for the notion that particles are the components of an asynchronous state machine, as I've proposed elsewhere.

[K1Barin]

But what if the same message was written on paper, with a pen, in cursive script?

I think before keyboard or paper, even when we talk or think the words are themselves discrete. Especially, words like "discrete" and "continuous" are OPPOSITE to each other. Two opposite things are for sure discrete, thus one can say that the universe is discrete. When the universe is discrete, events happen discretely, and discrete events happen in discrete times.

K1

[Ginkgo]

But what if the same message was written on paper, with a pen, in cursive script?

I think before keyboard or paper, even when we talk or think the words are themselves discrete. Especially, words like "discrete" and "continuous" are OPPOSITE to each other. Two opposite things are for sure discrete, thus one can say that the universe is discrete. When the universe is discrete, events happen discretely, and discrete events happen in discrete times.

K1

It is probably important to consider there may be a difference between our perceptions of time and mathematical constructs of time. We only ever perceive time in terms of past, present and future.

Time in relation to quantum mechanics is very much a philosophical debate at the the moment. Greylorn has presented one possible interpretation, the other side of the coins says that time is discrete at the quantum level because it is more amenable to to a theory of quantum gravity.

[Greylorn Ell]

But what if the same message was written on paper, with a pen, in cursive script?

I think before keyboard or paper, even when we talk or think the words are themselves discrete. Especially, words like "discrete" and "continuous" are OPPOSITE to each other. Two opposite things are for sure discrete, thus one can say that the universe is discrete. When the universe is discrete, events happen discretely, and discrete events happen in discrete times.

K1

Distinctions between discrete and continuous are, I think, better represented by the terms "digital" and "analog," as referring to digital vs. analog computers. Feel free to use whatever terminology you are comfortable with, and I'll do the same, so long as we understand the distinctions to which they refer.

Can you define what you mean by a discrete event? A digital event is, I would say, the change of states in a binary (two-state) device, as an electronic flip-flop changing from 0 volts to 2 volts.

Can you define what you mean by a discrete time? For a digital computer that would be the maximum amount of time required for a digital event to occur; with an 800mhz clock, that would be about 0.3 nanoseconds.

Greylorn

[Greylorn Ell]

But what if the same message was written on paper, with a pen, in cursive script?

I think before keyboard or paper, even when we talk or think the words are themselves discrete. Especially, words like "discrete" and "continuous" are OPPOSITE to each other. Two opposite things are for sure discrete, thus one can say that the universe is discrete. When the universe is discrete, events happen discretely, and discrete events happen in discrete times.

K1

It is probably important to consider there may be a difference between our perceptions of time and mathematical constructs of time. We only ever perceive time in terms of past, present and future.

Time in relation to quantum mechanics is very much a philosophical debate at the the moment. Greylorn has presented one possible interpretation, the other side of the coins says that time is discrete at the quantum level because it is more amenable to to a theory of quantum gravity.

I think that we do not experience time at all. We experience rapidly changing physical states that operate according to a fairly standard and extremely fast clock rate, probably 2/Planck_length, so fast that we interpret the changing states as motion. No better example of this can be found than in a movie theater, where we observe a sequence of static frames, unchanging rectangles of film projected sequentially onto a screen, which our brains mistake for motion.

Quantized time can be demonstrated by varying the frame frequency between camera and projector, producing "slow motion" or "time-lapse" films, and amusing effects on some old Benny Hill skits.

The mathematical descriptions of time are what give us our sense of past and future time, but we do not experience time. Our memories are simply recollections of event sequences that usually appear in snippets. I've experienced a few precognitive events and find them to be of the same form as memories, simply brief snippets of surreal event sequences.

I expect that when a valid theory of QM is finally formalized, it will utilize a form of digital mathematics that leaves time out of the equations, except to explain our notion of it. This will require a better mind than mine, as I've realized after taking a few stabs at it. Whatever, he subject is interesting, and tightly integrated with metaphysics.

Anyone genuinely interested in our perceptions of both space and time, and how those perceptions have changed over recent centuries, will appreciate the book, "The Twin Dimensions: Inventing Time and Space," by Geza Szamosi. This is a clearly written and non-technical book, written for the philosophically curious. I believe that you will appreciate it.

[SpheresOfBalance]

I was right. You've not passed a high school physics course, and seem not to have scored three digits on an IQ test either. You should not be speaking out in public on even the smallest aspect of physics.

Everything about you is a measure of duration, even the duration of the photons are how we measure the distance to another part of space/time. If emission only happens in the present then as receivers we only see the past, as a processor our consciousness may be co-moving with the photons but it is our mass that is always relative in the past. Please be nice I had high school physics in the 60's and there is no need to remind me that I have forgotten more than I can remember.

I'd have been nicer earlier had you mentioned that you were not coming from absolute ignorance.

I recall my high school physics class from 1959-60. It set me on a path I might not have chosen otherwise, that of getting a serious physics education, because I realized that HS physics was complete bullshit. But I figured that it actually represented real physics, and knew that I could correct the errors after obtaining suitable credentials.

In Physics 301a I realized that HS physics was indeed bullshit, because it was taught only to give kids with rudimentary math skills a rudimentary understanding of a few basic principles. So I settled in to learn "real" physics, and enjoyed the subject until my QM course, where I once again realized that physicists had, IMO, made a different but more serious error than I'd previously figured.
By this time one would expect you'd finally understand that it's all bullshit. But some people just never learn, as they parrot, the pied pipers of bullshit! Then actually getting nasty about it, an outlet for their chest beating, and self stroking, no less!

It took me many years to devise a solution to the problem, which revolves around how "time" is handled in differential calculus. I explain both the problem and my solution in the later chapters of "Digital Universe -- Analog Soul." The book includes some fundamental physics, simplified of course because the book was written for non-scientists. One of the later chapters offers an entirely different view of time than that which you and I were both taught.

You might find those and other ideas interesting, or not. If you care to examine them, or to pursue any of the other time-concepts being kicked around (e.g: Julian Barbour http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Barbour) I'd be able to have a coherent conversation on the subject with you.

However your current approach has been to state beliefs, bare boned. This suggests that you've not pursued alternative ideas like Barbour's or mine. No basis for discussion with you until you take the trouble to establish such a base. I'd have better luck trying to explain why the sky is blue to a child who's not studied the physics of light.

If you are interested in the subject of time, and have a curious mind, it's time for you to engage that mind with a subject of interest. If you do, you will be rewarded with new insights. Otherwise, you'll be no fun. Perhaps you'll come back after at least six months of research? (If you don't want to read my ideas on the subject, study state machines. In such machines, time is arbitrary, and logically meaningless. The computer you are using to read this is a mostly synchronous state-machine.)

Greylorn

Edit: Missing character

[SpheresOfBalance]

I have been pondering this question lately after considering how we perceive time, and how the smaller you divide time into the less you can fit into it.

This lead me to wonder if time actually is divided into discrete moments, similar to a planck length but for time, or if it is indivisible and continuous, and you could slow time down as much as you wanted and couldn't see the "frames".

After considering it for a short time I thought that there probably isn't discrete moments, because if there were, there would probably be some kind of universal minimum speed limit for all matter. If a particle is moving at say, 1 planck length per "planck moment" this would restrict it to such a minimum speed, which seems slightly absurd. This is my reasoning for rejecting the possibility of the discreteness of time.

I would be interested in other peoples opinions on this topic,

Thanks
Dimebag.

Dime,

Constructive pondering.
Here, I'll translate: "Good boy, you believe what I believe!"

You're going in a useful general direction, for one who has adopted the conventional opinion that "time" actually exists, except as a useful mathematical construct used by Galileo to evaluate his experiments into gravity, then by Newton who incorporated time formally into the mathematical structure of differential calculus, using Descartes' newly invented analytic geometry to (mistakenly) treat time as a dimension in its own right.

You'll get a better handle on time if you assume that it does not actually exist, that the universe is an asynchronous state machine. wherein events occur only when the conditions for their occurrence are synchronized. ("Digital Universe -- Analog Soul," Chapter XVII which explains why Quantum Mechanics is effectively an observational artifact of Differential Calculus.)

Keep thinking. We need more of it.

Greylorn

Edit: missing end quote

[Greylorn Ell]

SOB,

Thank you for your thoughtful comments, so brilliantly conducive to intelligent discourse.

Greylorn

[SpheresOfBalance]

SOB,

Thank you for your thoughtful comments, so brilliantly conducive to intelligent discourse.

Greylorn

Not at all. Just potentially philosophy, if you're capable of wrapping your head around it as possibility, as to the man animal, rather, probability. Yes/No?

[petm1]

I have been pondering this question lately after considering how we perceive time, and how the smaller you divide time into the less you can fit into it.

Space and time are how we describe the present moment, opposites yet the same, imme the smaller you divide time the larger part of space you need. It is energy that is analog back through time to big bang and it is energy that is digital in space/time. The co moving frame we all share is the Earth, dilating outward at an accelerated rate that we do not see in space yet can be measured in time. Dilation is the motion of time and outward from a point is the motion of energy, putting these together is how I think of the present moment. Riding this matter wave into the future knowing I exist just a little past the present being the receiver and possessor that I am.

[Ginkgo]

I have been pondering this question lately after considering how we perceive time, and how the smaller you divide time into the less you can fit into it.

Space and time are how we describe the present moment, opposites yet the same, imme the smaller you divide time the larger part of space you need. It is energy that is analog back through time to big bang and it is energy that is digital in space/time. The co moving frame we all share is the Earth, dilating outward at an accelerated rate that we do not see in space yet can be measured in time. Dilation is the motion of time and outward from a point is the motion of energy, putting these together is how I think of the present moment. Riding this matter wave into the future knowing I exist just a little past the present being the receiver and possessor that I am.

The development of quantum mechanics gave rise for a need to better understand space and time, especially at the Planck length. In other words, to explain how the micro impacts on the macro. This also raises the issue in terms of how is space, time and gravity interconnected. At the Planck scale gravity becomes and insignificant force when compared to the forces that hold the atom together.

If we backtrack a bit we will discover that classical physics for a long time treated space and time as discrete entities. Space was regarded as the backdrop upon which events were played out. Things like gravitational attraction happened in that space. Time was also regarded as separate from space; time is the same for every observer. Obviously with the advent of relativity space and time were looked at quite differently, observers no longer could agree on the timing of an event. Space, time and gravity can now be regarded as part of the same theory; a structure we can actually feel acting upon us.

I guess the important question from a quantum mechanical point of view is the nature of space/time at the smallest levels. The other big question is whether a linear past, present and future is relevant at this scale. With an incomplete theory of gravity is is difficult to know what is happening at these tiny scales. Time and space are so tightly wound up that time as we normally understand probably makes no sense, except in terms of mathematics. Apparently quantum fluctuations can also allow for the possibility of a space/time resembling our four dimensions. This also leaves open the possibility for the micro to have observable implications at the macro level.

Without actually reading the wiki article this micro/macro idea is important for the Big Bang theory as well. Overall, I guess how we treat time mathematically depends on our purpose and what we are trying to demonstrate.

[attofishpi]

What is TIME?

Time is simply the occurrence of an event.

If there is not an event. Then there is not time. Not an electron spinning, a photon emitting...etc

TIME...reversed...EMIT

http://www.androcies.com/brd_matter1.html