Image: Holly Lindem
In Brief
- Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicts that time ends at moments called singularities, such as when matter reaches the center of a black hole or the universe collapses in a “big crunch.” Yet the theory also predicts that singularities are physically impossible.
- A way to resolve this paradox is to consider time’s death as gradual rather than abrupt. Time might lose its many attributes one by one: its directionality, its notion of duration and its role in ordering events causally. Finally, time might give way to deeper, timeless physics.
More In This Article
-
Overview
The End
In our experience, nothing ever really ends. When we die, our bodies decay and the material in them returns to the earth and the air, allowing for the creation of new life. We live on in what comes after. But will that always be the case? Might there come a point sometime in the future when there is no “after”? Depressingly, modern physics suggests the answer is yes. Time itself could end. All activity would cease, and there would be no renewal or recovery. The end of time would be the end of endings.
This grisly prospect was an unanticipated prediction of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which provides our modern understanding of gravity. Before that theory, most physicists and philosophers thought time was a universal drumbeat, a steady rhythm that the cosmos marches to, never varying, wavering or stopping. Einstein showed that the universe is more like a big polyrhythmic jam session. Time can slow down, or stretch out, or let it rip. When we feel the force of gravity, we are feeling time’s rhythmic improvisation; falling objects are drawn to places where time passes more slowly. Time not only affects what matter does but also responds to what matter is doing, like drummers and dancers firing one another up into a rhythmic frenzy. When things get out of hand, though, time can go up in smoke like an overexcited drummer who spontaneously combusts.
Already a Digital subscriber? Sign-in Now
If your institution has site license access, enter here.
See what we're tweeting about
80 Comments
Add CommentQuote: "Time might lose its many attributes one by one: its directionality, its notion of duration and its role in ordering events causally. " Unquote.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSounds very profound.
That's the way Vedanta speaks of the Ultimate Truth - Brahman or Oneness or Consciousness!
When George adds, "Finally, time might give way to deeper, timeless physics", will Physics tell us about Brahman?
As Meat Loaf sang,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI swore I'd love you till the end of time!
So now I'm prayin' for the end of time,
To hurry up and arrive,
'Cause if I gotta spend another minute with you,
I don't think that I can really survive.
It is not universally agreed that singularities mean the end of time. Since the curvature of time is a function of gravity, and gravity increases as a singularity forms, the curvature of time must also increase. Basically, the equations are no different from the ones Hawking used to come up with the theory of imaginary time, which means that in the case of a Black Hole real time would give way to imaginary time and thus not really end at all.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCorrect me if I am wrong. Once all atoms have succumb to their inevitable decay hundreds of billions of years from now, gravity will cease to exist. Therefore, as gravity is so intertwined with the perception of time, one cannot persist without the other.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTime is only a Noun in the minds of men and when those minds stop so does everything in our dream of existence!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExcellent comment BillBerit.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs that a quote ?
imipak - IMO, without regard to Hawking's meaningless mathematics, if real time gives way to imaginary time, time has ended.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTime does not exist, it is definitely not a dimension, it is an illusion created by a circadian rhythms in our mind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn our expirence the real time is imaginary, but the Time must to become as an extremely energetic physical particle, which will be postulated in the future generation theories of physics. Otherwise on the timing sens human expirence will be continued imaginary. In the Nature the time never stop, but can change to fast or slow and take different rhythms, do not matter if it is into or outside to our mind, because it is the innate energy to the undiscovery primordial particle.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The illusion of the passage of time arises from a confusion of the given with the real. We think of occupying different realities, when in fact we only occupy different givens. There is only one reality." - Kurt Godel.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGodel went on in the interview to say that in the one reality, there is no passage of time.
Everything in what we call the universe( which is not a thing but an event) i.e the space time expansion event is moving in one direction forward, up down left right are just illusion of perception .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiseven when we plot a point on a graph all we are saying that something passed through that point in a forward motion in time (not spacetime).
the 3 dimensions x,y,z of movement are absrtacts of the quantum structure of which this event is expanding "in" we could also say that space is in fact an effect just like gravity although bound to time in a structured manner it is still just a property of the object which expands with time or the force of time.
Time is a subject that we really don't understand at all the fact we exsist within it does not help, as outisde observation is impossible.
when we say the fastest an object can move in the universe is (c) the speed of light what we are actualy saying is the speed limit enforced by time on all objects within the space-time event.
we can only travel in time (not space-time) at a set rate i.e 60 seconds a minute, 60 minutes an hour we can alter our positon in the space-time event relative to other object buy the input of energy , but this will not alter our own local time in anyway.
therefore we can only travel in time in one direction forward, we can move faster through this space-time event realtive to other object but still only at 60sec a minute 60 minutes and hour.
Space-time may one day cease in someway , maybe even seperate one from the other but to say time will end or stop is a statement with no meaning.
Time both exists and doesn't exist,in our conventional world yes it exists but from a transcendental point it's just a mental artefact.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTime can only be an expression relating to some sort of change. Either a change in position or a change in state. Therefore, it relates directly to entropy because entropy expresses change. As a physical entity there, is no such thing as time. One cannot scoop up a bucket of time, so to speak. It is only a mathematically dependent variable. So if there is no change of process, position or state, then "Time" equates to zero.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe know that time is attached to space, any object with mass approaching the the speed of light not only gains mass,but slows in time.This is why nothing with mass can travel faster than light because time reaches 0.The same thing happens at the event horizon,and after the singularity forms all the mass in a black hole is frozen in time.This means that a singularity has a mass limit,and all are the same size .This drag in space-time also happens in light as well in the form of red shifting.Although a photon still travels at the speed of light it gives up energy in a longer wavelength.If we look at the big bang we see that there was was a certain point that was reached where there was no mass,energy,or space-time outside the event horizon and a unknown number of singularities contained within all frozen in time,thus nothing could contain it all and then bang!There must a limit on how many singularities that were in that original event horizon and the big crunch of that collapse,but it will take someone with better math skills than I to figure out how many.But I have a suspicion that c squared times the original mass of a singularity might get close too that number.I know that this flies in the the face of sting theory and colliding branes,but if higgs isn't found,we can get back this theory.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGREAT QUOTE BILL . ONE OF THE BEST I'VE HEARD!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTime is a dimension, to which there is a higher dimension not perceivable. We make space an independent dimension by continuosly jumping into the higher (time) dimension.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the end there is only one dimension to which there is no higher dimension, some say its god, others say its reality.
We occupy coordinates in all these dimensions.
All of the previous few comments contain part of what I intended to say, especially the argument on the relationship between the curvature of time and gravity where the latter increases as a singularity forms. The imaginary time of Hawkins turns out to be an epistemological metaphysical mind creation to deal with change which is the only ontological variable observed to have coordinates of position, vectors of direction ,shape, etc. The only independent variable is change not time, or space for that matter. We invented both to deal with change. Better change gears and deal with change.... Dr.d
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs it possible that time is essentially subjective? 'Now' has no existence independent of the observer. And without 'now' the flux of time becomes meaningless.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs it possible that time is essentially subjective? 'Now' can have no existence independent of the observer. And without 'NOW' the flux of time becomes meaningless. The universe is inescapably indexical.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTime is exactly like the other three dimensions. I don't know why they dwell on it by itself.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFirst: Entropy causes expansion in time, which could be defined as one way time-arrow of the big bang.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSecondly: Loopquantumgravity predicts a unverse before the big bang with negative time.
Thirdly: A very new predicted model, the doubble torus universe (see viXra-papers and website www.darkfieldnavigator.com) predict 3D-time below the quantumlevel.
So, the writer of this article is not fresh provided with the latest insights.
There is no contradiction with time. Time had to be extended.
Late in life Einstein himself doubted that physics could be based on his assumption of a spacetime continuum. In a discontinuous universe atomic matter everywhere is synchronously disappearing into a timeless quantum mode and recurring in a succession of still space frames as in a cosmic holographic movie. Each oscillation defines a Primary Interval of Time. That is why atoms are particles and waves at the same time. Space and time are quantized. The timeless quantum mode is a conjugate energy field orthogonal to the integrated fabric of space and time as we normally know it. Quantum Relativity necessarily follows with a different methodology to understanding gravity, astrophysics and cosmology consistent with the empirical evidence. See articles freely available at www.cosmic-mindreach.com.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe new paradigm of modern science since the discovery of the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics now, there is no consistency, but completeness: rational integration of opposites in a single system. This will do just that in modern science, opposites may not be contradictory but complementary (as Niels Bohr said). For the same reason modern science have become some theoretical science, transcendental (such as Kant said), in which we try first to imagine reality and then to discover it in such experiments. In Kant's transcendental idealism time is "the form of our inner sense", the matrix of our "representation faculty". It is therefore natural that our new relativistic universe models are somewhat subjective and "physical time" to be somewhat flexible, as our "subjective time" (ie to compress or dilate depending on the density of events that happen in "life of our universe"). In fact, both quantum mechanics and relativity are more metaphysics (ontology) than physics (experimental sciences, in the classic sense of the word).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have discussed extensively that "epistemological problem of modern science" in my book (Marcel Chelba: Critical introduction. About the possibility of Metaphysics, as Science, in the critical philosophy of Kant), which unfortunately can not give you only a few excerpts translated into English on Scribd.
The new paradigm of modern science since the discovery of the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics now, there is no consistency, but completeness: rational integration of opposites in a single system. This will do just that in modern science, opposites may not be contradictory but complementary (as Niels Bohr said). For the same reason modern science have become some theoretical science, transcendental (how could Kant says), in which we try first to imagine reality and then to discover it in such experiments. In Kant's transcendental idealism time is the form of our inner sense, the matrix of our representation faculty. It is therefore natural that our new relativistic universe models are somewhat subjective and "physical time" to be somewhat flexible, as our "subjective time" (ie to compress or dilate depending on the density of events that happen in "life of universe"). In fact, both quantum mechanics and relativity are more metaphysics (ontology) than physics (experimental sciences, in the classic sense of the word).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have discussed extensively that "epistemological problem of modern science" in my book – Marcel Chelba: Critical introduction. About the possibility of Metaphysics, as Science, in the critical philosophy of Kant (2004) – which unfortunately can not give you only a few excerpts translated into English on Scribd.
According to Sciam March 2009 Einstein' relativity is wrong.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScince his general relativity theory is a combination of the wrong special relativity and the correct Newton gravitational theory, Genaral Theory of Relativity is wrong, too. So this new article on time is useless.
Hartwig Thim
At the end of the print (and online) articles - it says: "Listen to the author discuss the paradoxes of the end of time at www.ScientificAmerican.com/TheEnd" <--- anyone know where I can find (what I assume is a podcast)?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTime only exists so that everything doesn't happen all at once.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs gravity 'time'? Is time gravity? What happens when one goes beyond the perception of time? there is no thought of time, timeless. One becomes timeless, weightless & massless. One is at the seat of the soul.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTime, universal time. Inside time, outside time. What dimension?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTime is the FOURTH DIMENSION so any and all TIME that we experience observe in the universe that ends is a three dimensional conceptualization. Black Holes are infinite fractal sizes, all including mini-black holes are four dimensional causing quantum field effects like gravity. So what where how is cause and effect, the beginning (stupid big bang theory) or the end, to the ether Universe ? It is utter foolishness for limited 3D humans to believe in a beginning and a end to 4D time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTime is the FOURTH DIMENSION. All Black Holes are fractal hierarchs of infinite scales sizes masses, from known mini-atomic to Eridanus Constellation Void 1 billion LY in diameter. Three dimensional time is what the big-bang standard model is about, because they say the universe is 14.6 billion years old and has a beginning. We observe galaxies mature that are ancient and know that these galaxies are older then the big-bang event. Black holes are FOUR DIMENSIONAL with wormholes and a quantum field vacuum effect that produces Gravity. Hence logically the 4D Universe of Black Holes everywhere is infinitely older then the 3D Big-bang beginning, and TIME will never end by any kind of human analysis involving three dimensions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thissee what is perceiving the 'time". If we imagine ourselves as clusters of subatomic particles or the 'strings" these are as apart as we perceive stars and galaxies! Then where is this process of thinking taking place? In fact time has no beginning or end. It is only our perception to think in this way. One combination of various forces in the 'universe" has resulted in what we perceive today. There must be other combination and application of forces in different ways to give a totally different universe and there may be many such that!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisARUN AGGARWAL
Time is just the measurement of the rate of change. Time will only stop when everything stops.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisToday it seems like many people like to ignore the math that says singularities are impossible. Today many people think truth can be found by accepting contradictions as part of the truth.
They would be better off accepting that truth is all of one cloth and that truth never contradicts itself.
Gravity is the emergent field effect of attractive and repulsive forces. That is why it is the weakest "force" in the universe.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAttractive forces condense. Repulsive forces disperse. It is the geometrical arrangement of particles that destabilizes those equal forces by changing the vectors of those forces. And it is that destabilization that also points time in the direction we call forward.
If you apply Newton's gravitational theory with the understanding that nothing travels faster than the speed of light, then you will see results similar to special relativity without any contradictions in theory. You would see how one grows out of the other.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven if the speed of light was "infinite", other rates of change would be a smaller rate of change when compared to the speed of light.
The concept of time was something Babylonians "invented". It was then, aready, directional, linear and universal. It still is today. It feels intuitively and logically as the right thing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut what if the consept is wrong, what if it works properly only in the limited area it once was developed? Einstein did not answer that question but he made it possible to think further. Time is not "strange", our view of time is. Mostly when we think of time as an existence of it�s own.
Sounds grisly, but i must be dead when the end is coming!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYoy surele got a point hereticoftruth. But what about Niels Borhs solution to the paradox of light (being a particle and also being a wave = contradiction). We assume a perfect world in the meaning without paradoxes. But we are served a world full of paradoxes... Bohr certainly found a way to handle these kind of things, when to theories tells us the opposite in the same time both theoiries are proven. What you are talkning about is the situation when two non-proven theories are contradictional?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, I think so.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTime is a mere human attribute and A.Einstein is a superb story-teller.
Michael Kerjman
I do like BillBeritt comment: time is fiction created by humans and Eistein is a superb story-teller.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMichael Kerjamn
Jarmo, of course deciding whether light is a wave or a particle may not be decided in many people's minds.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile I initially preferred the particle position, someone quoting a proof of that actually accomplished just the opposite with me.
In taking the wave approach to understanding our universe, many problems come up that needed to be resolved. How likely was it that one photon would exactly react with an atom in the exact time and place? Also, many "photons" are a lot larger than atoms. Also , how do night vision goggles really work? Does light really carry that quantum of energy unabated no matter how far the receiving atom is? Or are the orbital perturbations of electrons transmitted all the time with the big jumps just more noticeable? Maybe all that quanta are is the average stabler jumps in orbit around an atom and nothing more. Maybe our universe is more analog than discrete?
Just because we cannot observe an event occurring does not mean it is not occurring. We may have to predict with pure math what is happening below the level of observable quantum energy to explain the observable emergent field effects that we can detect. It just may be that ongoing attractive and repulsive forces may be understood enough to understand all the other emergent field effects we observe as "forces". Then we could see that grand unified theory and understand it well.
But that final theory of everything will not be propped up by contradictions that "make it true". It will be all of one cloth and not contradict itself.
hereticoftruth - And the rate of change is determined by the energy applied? Interesting.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm just an old imaginary mechanic and don't do any math, but it seems to me that a singularity is merely a focal point for radially directed energy, not really a container of material.
IMO, as matter is ingested by a black hole, it is accelerated to velocities that produce its atomic disintegration: now massless component fundamental particles are ejected along the axis of rotation, while its mass energy is accumulated withing the black hole, directed to its singularity.
In this way the gravitational force of the 'black hole' accumulates the mass of 'ingested' matter, but its singularity does not contain any dimensional matter.
Photons are discrete quanta of energy. The continuous EM spectrum is sliced across its entire breadth in such a way that light comes to us in a series of discrete pulses that we call photons. This is well established. Plancks constant h is known with great accuracy and it indicates a fundamental discontinuity to electromagnetic radiation such that light appears to radiate as photon energy bundles according to the simple formula E=hf where f is the frequency.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis discontinuity of light is also associated with a discontinuity of atomic matter. An electron jumps from orbit to orbit without traversing the distance between. It disappears in one orbit and reappears in another whenever an atom emits or absorbs a discrete amount of photon energy. This is essential to explain the spectral lines of hydrogen from which atomic theory and Quantum Mechanics derives. Louis de Broglie provided the wave equation for a moving particle which is also essential to the foundations of QM.
The ionization limit defines the maximum spherical dimension of an atomic photon energy shell with respect to the linear distance that light can travel in a single space frame. That is why the speed of light is universal. Linear external space is defined with respect to the internal spherical space of an atom in each frame sequence. This defines time and space. There are no other universal measuring rods out there.
The evidence thus strongly indicates that not just electrons but whole atoms everywhere in the universe synchronously disappear and recur very rapidly in a series of still atomic space frames linked up by light in a cosmic movie. This is not consistent with the spacetime continuum assumption of General Relativity. Space and time are not determining conditions of physical reality. They do not exist as things in themselves. They derive from creation after the fact.
Current theories are predominantly behavioural in character. They are based on epistemological knowledge derived from the objective observation of physical behaviour seen from the outside. This approach has accumulated an immense fund of knowledge but it allows of any number diverse subjective interpretations of the same evidence all of which constitute blind belief systems.
There is a complementary structural approach that is possible that has never been explored before. It is ontological in character since it exhausts all possible structural varieties of phenomenal behaviour. It concerns the structural nature of being as distinct from empirical knowledge of behaviour and yet it must find confirmation in the empirical evidence. There are only these two possible approaches to understanding phenomena. The structural approach includes the behavioural approach but not vice versa. This does not mean that a Theory of Everything is possible. It means that a universal methodology is possible that can expand the horizons of science. This is outlined in the article Unified Theories, Fantasy & Cosmic Order at www.cosmic-mindreach.com. It was published in the ANPA (philosophy of physics) proceeding held in Cambridge UK in 2008.
In defense of Einstein, we should assume the strong spacetime view which is a frozen milieu in which the future is as completely fixed as is the past. In this view both probability and consciousness are viewed as artifacts of our minds and all paradoxes and contradictdions are cleared up. Probability theory and distribution tables simply reflect a pattern with which the frozen universe is designed--no point in time actually leads to a real choice or a branching universe.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow we see the frozen milieu depends on our relative motion to what we are trying to observe. Depending on our motion, we can even get causality screwed up. As noted in many posts, the strong gravity around massive objects and high velocity are equivalent in the apparent slowing of time, but the only clock we have concerning this is the metabolic rate of our carbon-based brains.
Similarly, the Big Bang is ridiculous to think of as an "expansion" of the conventional dimensions because there was by theory nothing outside the events as spacetime was being created contemporaneously with the events. Therefore the proper way to look at things is that 3-D volume was not changing, only the physical rules of the events were changing as they continue to change for the last 13,7 billion of our subjective years.
mike cook - If I understand, I agree that the product of the gravitational effect is velocity, and that the effects produced by material velocity are consistent.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIMO however, while singularities may not be material containers but rather the directional focal point of gravitational velocity, the mass energy of a singularly directed system could become dispersed, converting velocity to localized mass energy. In this case it seems to me that this dispersal would naturally produce deceleration, space and time.
Regarding article : could time end by GEORGE MUSSER
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe author does not take in account Einsteins fundamental idea that time and space cannot be considered separately& according to Einstein space-time is actually (in reality) one entity!
George Musser writes (page 90):
Quote: Two events that are adjacent within timewhen I type on my keyboard, letters appear on my screen-are inextricably linked. But two objects that are adjacent within space-a keyboard and a Post-It-note-might have nothing to do with each other.
Spatial relations simply do not have the same inevitability that temporal ones do. End quote.
First the example is confusing as the author doesnt consider the same events in time and in space. George Musser considers only one object (the keyboard) and 2 letters in time, yet 2 objects (keyboard and post-it-pad) and no letters in space!
Then the fact is that when the author types 2 letters (allegedly connected in time because they are typed successively) the letters appear in two different places on the screen, showing there is a relation in space as well.
The flaw can be seen the other way around; consider 2 independent objects in space (keyboard and post-it-note) which have each their own space in space, these 2 objects are as independent in time as they are in space (besides the fact that both exist in both time and space)!
In other words if there is no connection between 2 objects in space there is no connection either between the 2 in time.
The case that would apparently prove the author right would be to type one letter twice (successively in time) in the same place (in space).
But then I would argue that the person who types is always moving from a position in space to another position in space (first along the spin of earth, then along the motion of earth around the sun, then again along the motion of the sun in the milky way, and then along the milky way galaxy own motion and finally along the expansion of the universe). And as such even if one considers two identical letters typed (successively in time) on the same page of paper, the two letters have been typed into two nevertheless vastly differing places in space!
So there is as much connectivity (should there be any) in space as there is in time!
I think that the easiest way to interpret Einstein teachings is to consider the reality of motion!
Visit:
http://www.doestimeexist.info/tour/tour-en/tour.html
Henri Salles
The Penrose-Hawking singularity theorem has a positivity hypothesis which is violated in the Einstein-Maxwell-Dirac system of non-linear PDEs. This system is the super-classical limit of the (not mathematically well-defined) quantum electrodynamics in a curved spacetime. It has all the properties Einstein sought for in his unified field theories except for total empirical adequacy. In particular, Yau et al have shown that it has complete solutions without singularities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Penrose-Hawking singularity theorem has a positivity hypothesis which is violated in the Einstein-Maxwell-Dirac system of non-linear PDE’s. This system is the super-classical limit of the (not mathematically well-defined) quantum electrodynamics in a curved spacetime. It has all the properties Einstein sought for in his unified field theories except for total empirical adequacy. In particular, Yau et al have shown that it has complete solutions without singularities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistime varies at various places -relativity says ,but it will not stop due to simple fact that the universe is not bound by the outside of the universe.So time flows there .do not bother about dimensions time and distance never mingle and they give only a ratio not a dimension
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe important point is that timelike ordering of events is invariant whereas spacelike ordering is frame-dependent.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI find a growing concern that articles about the nature of the universe, more and more delving into what years ago would have been categorized as science fiction being portrayed as actuality. In See Saw by A. E. Van Vogt, a man in a special suit see saws back and forth through time, building up energy with each swing, till finally far into the past, he explodes causing the Big Bang. While George Musser's article is an interesting suggestion as to what might be, to portray it as anything but a loose theory would be inadvisable. It is unicentric of us to think that we exist in that one moment of time that is all that is possible; that our bubble of existence is the only one that ever was or will be. More than likely, the universe is self-renewing. It came from somewhere and it exists, not because it should exist, but because is apparently is impossible for it not to. Does time exist as a dimension? We do not know. Do other dimensional planes of existence stand next to ours? We do not know. How strange that we can conceive of God in some quantum reality eternal Heaven, but not a universe that can exist forever.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi think that several(many) of the posters are closer to the truth than the current paths pursued by many who are in the field....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiseverything that every was and everything that ever will be, exists at the same point...its only time that lets the other dimensions exist.....and the rich universe we perceive around us.....just my two cents....
Time is just a convenient word we use to indicate change in position either by a pendulum or an atom in motion. No motion. No time. However, since energy is conserved, even the dissolution of matter into energy radiated from a dissolving black hole while random, still shows change of position from the perspective of another photon in space and therefore time aka motion never ceases. A new arrow of time might even develop if random interactions between photons eventually creates electrons, ad infinitum.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRegarding the article could time end? (September 2010 issue)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wonder if the following understanding of points in space and infinity will help in regards to the problems associated with singularities.
When one subdivides a dimensioned morsel of space one obtains smaller morsels of space that also have dimensions. The property of having a dimension persists throughout all such subdivisions in the finite realm. The subdivision process can be imagined to continue into and within a dimensional realm that is below our best measuring capabilities. In that realm, the process could be repeated a number of times equal to the largest finite number one can imagine. When no time-related restriction is placed on the process, such a large number is indeterminately large and we have the prerequisites of infinitely large numbers. Throughout all of this subdivision activity, dimension as a property still exists; it is merely immeasurable and indeterminate. The process produces points of space that are always dimensioned, never dimensionless mathematical numbers: there is no precedent that allows us to have dimension disappear. One can assign numbers to such points, but the points are not numbers. (Numbers and mathematical equations are tools for exploring realities but those tools are not the realities themselves.) Singularities arise because points in space are being considered as having dimension equal to zero, but dimension equal to zero requires points to have no dimension -- an impossible requirement since, as shown above, points are always dimensioned.
Terry Mandzy,
Were it not for the subjective there would be no awareness of the objective. Were it not for the objective, the subjective would remain featureless (bored?) The objective (and so novelty) arises only by/as the imposition of limits (space, time). The subjective (subject?) seems fundamental, the objective the derivative (means?)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a lifelong student of physics and a half-century SciAm reader, I've long held several fundamental questions about "time".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQ.1: Why did not the author and editors of The Paradox of Time somewhere define "time"? I've never found a meaningful definition in any dictionary.
Q.2: Is our concept of time an artifact of our Euro-American languages? Arising only from our memories that sequence events, without any definite time scale?
Q.3; What do cosmologists use as a time scale in describing the birth and evolution of our universe, when they describe events as occurring milliseconds, days, years... from the beginning? When they were no human clocks, or an earth circling our sun?
Q.4: Why are all the cited thinkers male? My wife and other women I've known don't care about this subject because they see no relevance to daily life.
if true, explain why time is effected by gravity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTime is only motion, the fourth dimension. Quantic-scale motion and galactic-scale motion are only different in terms of our perception of their rates of change. Time is defined as distance/speed at all scales.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf time is only an illusion, seems more likely that it is an artifact of our memories of which circadian cycles are only an (important) part.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStrange, I thought time was already imaginary. Take the equation for the distance travelled by a photon x^2+y^2+z^2=(ct)^2 and rearrange it to x^2+y^2+z^2-(ct)^2 = 0 and take the square root and you end up with a fourth time dimension of ict.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTime is an illusion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLunchtime, doubly so.
-Douglas Adams
Nice job slipping in the Spinal Tap joke. I wonder how many people caught that?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo a 9/8 comment defines "time" as "distance divided by speed", which is circular, since "speed " is defined as "distance divided by time", and neither "distance" nor "speed" is defined independently in a dictionary.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGodel published an explanation of why it is impossible to devise a system of mathematics that is both consistent and complete (without something from outside that system of mathematics), which us also true of any language. No dictionary can be complete without something from outside (a real object or at least a picture of one). If you sent a words-only dictionary to a distant planet, the inhabitants might decode it as each word being defined by another, but could make no real sense of it. Try explaining "right" and "left", or "clockwise", without a picture or object.
I must disagree. It seems to me that time is merely a human creation to measure the length of occurences between events. If this is indeed the case, surely time itself does not in a physical sense exist. In fact it is just a mental fixation in the human mind we are unable to overcome. It is a concept so engrained in human culture we are unable to overthrow it. But more to the point, if time does not truely exist, then can we not simply state when it begins and ends?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRiddle me this.
This is a very interesting discussion board. On the topic of time, I agree with many contributors. I feel that time is itself a human invention to measure the rate of change between a series of events. That being said, time has no definite beginning or end as it began when we attributed it a beginning, and surely it will end the same way. This is a tough concept to grasp, as the theory of time has become so engrained in society and humanity that our very lives revolve around it. Without time we cannot exist, however time cannot exist without us. In that is the answer to the paradox. Time will cease to exist when the human race is extinct.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn my own humble opinion, time does end , and then it begins anew. Time itself is a byproduct of the universe expanding that we each experience differently, for time is relative. For the idea that time is a constant is a delusion that was created through the mechanization of time, and the development of the first mechanical clock, which is a lot different than a sundial. For a clock ticks away at an arbitrary unit devised to represent time totally unrelated to the universe.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere-as a sundial merely reflects the path of the sun and is directly related to the events of the universe.
The first moments after the Big Bang, time passed at incredible speeds, and with the passing of each moment time slows as the universe expands. The more the universe expands the cooler it becomes and the slower it is.
The universe, like dear old mother nature has a way of dealing with things if something gets out of control. In this case the universe has these massive recycling machines affectionately called black holes. As the universe expands more and more black holes will be created, these smaller singularities start exerting more and more gravitational pull on the universe until it reaches a point of entropy, in which the energy that pushes expansion can longer push against the gravitational forces pulling it back. The universe can longer expand and begins to fall back in on itself. As it does, all the black holes that have proliferated start consuming each other and grow exponentially until another Big Bang Event is created. Defining a new universe with a new set of physical laws , and a whole new chemistry to existence.
Thanks
Frederick Thornton
Time can too exist without us observing it. To suggest that we need to observe it for it to exist is in my mind ego-centric.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd whether it is physics or philosophy I have found that truth only exists with in contradictions and paradoxes. For it is only where polar extremes meet does one find equilibrium. And the universe always seeks balance. For without it entropy and chaos ensues.
F.T.
In the beginning of our Universe, as it was with countless predecessors, an enormous Black Hole was rotated by in-falling matter so fast that gravity could no longer hold it together. The Big Bang produced close to 50% Matter, and 50% anti Matter, resulting in rapid conversions to Photon Radiation. The remaining Matter is condensed into stars and galaxies. The radiated energy, accounting for the vast majority of the total initial mass has traveled outward for about 15 Trillion years, and is much farther from the Big Bang than the expanding mass could be located. The radiated Photons have come to rest and absorbed by the shell of mass from countless previous Universes that surround the Universe, and account for the dark energy, or gravity, that is now accelerating the mass of the Universe into expansion. Eventually, the mass of the Universe will reach the shell as it squeezes into a smaller and smaller sphere until it becomes the next Big Bang.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTime will end as soon as the universe stops expanding. What gave Matter and time its existence is the expansion of the universe through a dark medium, aether, we call dark energy. What will ultimately destroy time will be when the universe stops expanding which will quickly destroy matter because there is no Dark medium for matter to flow through.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn other words time will end in a sudden collapse of the universe through an inverse inflationary collapse destroying all matter...
Ron Bennett
Time must be precisely defined if we are to understand the concept. Time is commonly spoken of in expressing several concepts such as, having the 'time' of one's life or asking what 'time' it is. The latter actually means, 'what is the earth's position in the 360 degree cyclical rotation on its axis'? If we ask how old something is, what we are asking is how many Earth rotations have there been since it materialized. Note that this question refers to a change of position of the earth which is our reference in the concept of time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDiscussing 'Time' as an independent and material entity, unrelated to some measurable phenomena in the material universe, is problematic. How can "time" be considered as an independent variable or in any sense a material entity? One cannot scoop up a bucket of time or in any way make it material. Time is a mathematically derived expression; a variable which is dependent on change in state or change of position. If all matter were at absolute zero, "time" would cease to exist because there would be no motion, even of quanta. Therefore, what is called 'time' will end because entropy is observably increasing. That is the inevitable fate of the universe we inhabit.
If time curves back on itself, it must be circular not a straight line, which would have infinite length. If the X, Y & Z axis were curved to allow this, spacetime could wrap back on itself, so the known universe would be finite. But curved space axes need not be circular, but could adopt random trajectories, meaning dimensions would be hard to define, and geometry horrendous.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't know if this discussion is still alive or aready dead so no time anymore , but as I just saw the article and all the reactions that I liked very much, wonder why the Planck time is not at all mentioned (10^43sec) this is the ultimate length of a "moment", if we want to divide this timelenght in littler peieces it won't work, so after this there is no more time as we "know" it, we enter in a dimension where time is no longer causal or deterministic, there is no longer a before and a after, we enter in a place where timme is not dead but where all the possible "moments" are available, it is our consciousnes that is able to draw lines in this dimension and so the arrow of time is formed, I wrote an essay for the contest of FQXi, where this subject is also treated, REALITIES out of TOTAL SIMUTANEITY, see http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/913
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWilhelmus
It is really not quite accurate to say that nothing ever ends. Matter may be indestructible;but patterns and arrangements are not. And the only world we know, or can know,is made up of an infinite number of permutations and combinations of the basic particles for ever in flux. You can't burn the Mona Lisa and still claim that it has not gone out of existence because all its material constituents are still in existence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTime, like the rainbow,perhaps exists only when there is an observer. Can we be sure that it exists independently?
Nothing never ends : what is nothing ? does nothing exist ? if it exists it no longer nothing. we think a lot about nothing so it is becoming more and more something in our minds, if this something never ends it means that other nothings also have the possibility of never ending are infinite... so nothing is infinite...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs matter indestructable ? Isn't matter just a form of information on a scale after the length of Planck ? I don't know; e=mc^2 in our four-dimensional causal world, so on our scale matter should be a constant with energie.
Patterns and arrangements are virtual lines that are formed in our consciuousness by alligning points in the total simultaneity of the fifth dimension the quintessence where time is no longer deterministic.
So the Mona Lisa is an eternal entity in this Total Simultaneity, where also the time/place quanta of paralel worlds exist, so we are also eternal ...
Wilhelmus
What about to lend times in alternate universes, and expending them in other?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnly one time, only one way to time fluxion... Sorry the reality could be so boring. I mean a transreality beyond the ours one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSometime in the future a mind with the math skills will come along that puts it all together.First that time is nothing more than mass or energy passing through space.The reason time moves forward is because you can't make a negitive move through space.The greater the pressure placed against space the slower things happen,and the more mass an object gains.Sounds like gravity ey?Space,and mass energy can't be in the same place.So is gravity is nothing more than the displacement of space?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTime is perpetual , infinite , it not a dimension which had a beginning or will have an end. If there was the Big Bang 14 billion years ago , then there was some thing before year 14 billion +1 second , what was it . Time is a canvas on which the events wither happen or nothing happens .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhich ever way one looks at the Universe , space , time there has to be a perpetuity to one or all of them .
The time scale we give is beyond measurement .
The concept of Big Bang could be explained by the Black Holes .
The black holes hold the key to the big bang . The Universe will after billions of years will become a mega black hole which will end into the singularity by gobbling the entire Universe and there will come a time when the singularity will not be able to sustain itself and will then explode as another big bang and the cycle will begin all over again , perpetually .
Time is our way of measuring events throughout our life...Time is only relevant to the observer .....Therefor if there is no observer there is no time
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUmmm you don't need to 'quote' and 'unquote', especially when you are using "these". Quote and unquote are parenthetical expression SPOKEN before a word or short phrase indicating that the word or phrase would be in quotation marks if used in writing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this