Time

[All Seeing Eye]

Planets are all falling in towards their stars due to gravity but it's their orbital speed that prevents this occurring at a fast speed but eventually all planets around their stars will fall in unless the star goes supernova before hand.
But my point remains, everything falls towards gravity. It is the unifying force.

What if Time works the same way as Gravity does because it's fundamentally the same thing.

Imagine it. We are orbiting Time like a Planet orbits Gravity. As we orbit time we are gradually moving closer and closer, falling into it like a spiral. As you approach the speed of light time slows down and the universe around you seems to speed up.

I'll explain why I think this occurs.

Imagine there are two asteroids orbiting a star, they're orbiting at the same speed and they are gradually spiralling closer and closer to the star.
Now speed one of those asteroids up and it wont spiral towards the star as quickly and in fact the asteroid that was not sped up is closer to the star than the one you did speed up due to this.

So if you translated that into Time rather than Gravity it means that the rest of the universe continues to spiral closer to the source but because you sped yourself up you did not fall towards the source as quickly and so the rest of the universe is further forward in time than you are.

IMO It's not time travel, there is no past or future only the present, but objects that exist in time can spiral slower or faster to the source than others.

So everything exists at the same moment just as easily as the two asteroids exist in the same solar system but depending on the speed of the orbit depends on how quickly it spirals towards the end of time.

Does anyone not understand what I'm saying?

Any thoughts or comments?

 

[Silvercrest]

I can kind of visualize it, but I don't know how to relate it to the real world. I think I'm only following the analogy so far.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

A lot of people these days say that time seems to be moving more quickly, the years seem to just fly by as opposed to when they were younger, of course that's their perception of time, but then again everything is only our perception of it.
Just as a planet or asteroid will speed up the closer it gets to the Suns gravity well perhaps as we spiral closer to what I like to call 'Time Gravity' time seems to speed up and move faster.

 

[Mysterion]

"Time is an illusion. Lunch time, doubly so." - Woody Allen

 

[sojourner]

"Time is the fire in which we burn", - Soren, Star Trek: Generations

 

[CorporalClegg]

Great song!


Oh, wait.

 

[scotpens]

Time may be an illusion -- but don't try telling that to the boss when you're late for work.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Doesn't the notion of speed though require time?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

"Time, flowing like a river..." - The Alan Parsons Project

 

[RedShirt]

"Time is an illusion. Lunch time, doubly so." - Woody Allen

I thought that was Douglas Adams...

 

[Canadave]

"Time is an illusion. Lunch time, doubly so." - Woody Allen

I thought that was Douglas Adams...

It is Adams. Ford Prefect says it early-on in the first H2G2 book.

 

[STR]

Planets aren't spiraling into stars. They're orbiting, a relationship that will remain forever so long as there is no outside interference. If there is outside interference, a planet is just as likely to be flung away from a star than it is to spiral in.

Time is also not spiraling. It is for all practical purposes (quantum mechanics aside) a spatial dimension. Meaning it has a starting point (origin) amd no end point. It goes straight from the origin out to infinity. It doesn't move, or spiral, or change direction. If it did, you're looking at something other than time, just as something that is going straight up (Z axis, in other words) makes a 90* turn. It is now moving in a completely separate, perpendicular dimension called X,Y, left, right, sideways, or any other word than up (or down).

Gravity is, again for all practical purposes, just the mutual attraction of all matter to all other matter. It is not a dimension, though it can distort dimensions in sufficient quantity. A black hole, for example, warps the space around it, accelerating it to such a speed that light can't keep up, as well as dialating time so that if you were to fall into a black hole, no outside observer would ever see you smashed onto the event horizon within their lifetime, or several lifetimes.

Doesn't the notion of speed though require time?

Speed is merely our measurement of an object moving through one or more spatial dimensions and the fourth dimension of time. You can't have motion without time, just as you can cannot have motion without space for it to move in.

Take away time, any you don't really have motion. You have an object existing simultaneously in two or more locations at once, or even an infinite number of locations, even overlapping locations, yet all of these "instances" (borrowing terminology from computer science) are the same object. Try wrapping your head around that.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

And while time cannot be forced to move backward, it can be warped by gravity/acceleration the same way space is. Objects moving through warped time end up moving through the temporal dimension more slowly than they would in an area that is less warped. In other words, an object moving very fast (near c) would age very slowly, but only from the perspective of outside observers (those not moving anywhere near c velocity). Your own perception of time is never affected by relativistic forces.

 

[Brandonv]

As you approach the speed of light time slows down and the universe around you seems to speed up.

A ship approaching the speed of light would actually see the outside universe's clock as running slower. Just as someone observing the ship fly by would see the ships clock as running slower. It sounds paradoxical, but it is true because each reference frame is equally valid - in one the ship is stationary and the outside universe is moving, in the other the universe is stationary and the ship is moving. The reason this does not create a paradox, is because the Lorentz contraction of the external universe causes the ship to travel a shorter distance inside it's reference frame.

 

[Mysterion]

"Time is an illusion. Lunch time, doubly so." - Woody Allen

I thought that was Douglas Adams...

It is Adams. Ford Prefect says it early-on in the first H2G2 book.

I stand corrected, Sir. Mea culpa.

 

[STR]

As you approach the speed of light time slows down and the universe around you seems to speed up.

A ship approaching the speed of light would actually see the outside universe's clock as running slower. Just as someone observing the ship fly by would see the ships clock as running slower. It sounds paradoxical, but it is true because each reference frame is equally valid - in one the ship is stationary and the outside universe is moving, in the other the universe is stationary and the ship is moving. The reason this does not create a paradox, is because the Lorentz contraction of the external universe causes the ship to travel a shorter distance inside it's reference frame.

Nope. Robery Maxwell got it right. If you're on a ship at .9c and look at your watch, it will run normally. Look at a clock outside the ship and it will appear to run fast. A person floating next to the outside clock will see it running normally (again, anything in the same reference is unaffected by relativity), and your watch as running slow.

 

[Brandonv]

As you approach the speed of light time slows down and the universe around you seems to speed up.

A ship approaching the speed of light would actually see the outside universe's clock as running slower. Just as someone observing the ship fly by would see the ships clock as running slower. It sounds paradoxical, but it is true because each reference frame is equally valid - in one the ship is stationary and the outside universe is moving, in the other the universe is stationary and the ship is moving. The reason this does not create a paradox, is because the Lorentz contraction of the external universe causes the ship to travel a shorter distance inside it's reference frame.

Nope. Robery Maxwell got it right. If you're on a ship at .9c and look at your watch, it will run normally. Look at a clock outside the ship and it will appear to run fast. A person floating next to the outside clock will see it running normally (again, anything in the same reference is unaffected by relativity), and your watch as running slow.

Time dilation means that moving clocks run slow, and every reference frame is equally valid. From the point of view of the ship, it is the outside universe that is moving. This means that the outside universes clock will run slow, and lorentz contraction will shorten the universe in the direction of motion. From the "stationary" reference frame the ships clock will appear to run slower, and the ships length will contract in the direction of motion.

(1) In the case that the observers are in relative uniform motion, and far away from any gravitational mass, the point of view of each will be that the other's (moving) clock is ticking at a slower rate than the local clock.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation

Also, see: http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/relatvty.htm

edit: It should be mentioned that if we where talking about gravitational time dilation, you would be correct - it is the reason that gps satellites have to constantly have their clocks re-syncronized with Earth.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Time is also not spiraling. It is for all practical purposes (quantum mechanics aside) a spatial dimension. Meaning it has a starting point (origin) amd no end point. It goes straight from the origin out to infinity. It doesn't move, or spiral, or change direction. If it did, you're looking at something other than time, just as something that is going straight up (Z axis, in other words) makes a 90* turn. It is now moving in a completely separate, perpendicular dimension called X,Y, left, right, sideways, or any other word than up (or down).

Well I don't think enough is known about time for you to claim what you say in your post is fact. Place an object near to the Sun and it will fall into the Sun because of Gravity, give it movement (fast enough movement) and it will Spiral around it. Look at how water falls down a plug hole, it spirals into the plug hole towards gravity.
Time, something we don't really know anything about could work a similar way but is difficult to mentally picture.

Time appears to be linear, we move forward through time or at least it moves in one single direction. If time stood still nothing would move, everything would be stuck because the time bubble the universe exists in would have fallen straight into the source of time and stopped orbiting.

This is really hard for me to explain, it really is.

Imagine the Universe is in a bubble of time and because it moves and orbits like a planet orbits a Star (due to gravity) we see time as being linear and moving.
If time is indeed orbiting something, let's call it the source, we are able to move ourselves because it takes time to move and do things. Now if our time bubble is spiralling towards the source of time or perhaps an even bigger time bubble then time will become faster from an outside observer.

Also as I said previously, if you speed up you do not spiral as close to the source as you would had you not sped yourself up which can explain why time slows down as you approach the speed of light and the universe around you progresses through time much faster.

Also I believe that if you actually travelled at the speed of light or managed to minutely surpass it you would literally break free from the time bubble you exist in. This IMO would be against the rules of time and this is why light speed for anything with mass is impossible and would require infinite energy.
Hit light speed in something with mass and you break free of time, since it's impossible to break free of time and we are continually spiralling towards the end of time this is why mass increases with speed and requires infinite energy.

Gravity is, again for all practical purposes, just the mutual attraction of all matter to all other matter. It is not a dimension, though it can distort dimensions in sufficient quantity. A black hole, for example, warps the space around it, accelerating it to such a speed that light can't keep up, as well as dialating time so that if you were to fall into a black hole, no outside observer would ever see you smashed onto the event horizon within their lifetime, or several lifetimes.

Gravity is caused by the distortion of the fabric of space, the larger the mass the larger the distortion. What if time also distorts some kind of fabric and works in the same fashion as Gravity does but on a Dimensional level that we as mere Humans cannot comprehend.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

 

[STR]

No need to draw a diagram, I actually understood what you're saying. It just doesn't make any sense. You keep insisting that orbiting is the same as "spiraling." It's not. An orbit is the equilibrium of momentum of a planet balanced by gravity's constant acceleration towards a star (though you were right in that gravity is really curved space-time, I oversimplified the relationship). Gravity doesn't make the planet orbit, and despite popular perception, it doesn't speed a planet up. Gravity only accelerates objects that aren't in orbit. It just takes the planets existing trajectory and curves it into a loop.

As for the question of what is the nature of time, that's more in the area of philosophy than science at this point. However, for all physical intents, time is a dimension. Gravity is something that acts on a dimension, or objects within a dimension. It doesn't change the dimension fundamentally. X is still perpendicular to Y, which is perpendicular to Z.

If you want to ask what the fundamental nature of time is, you're getting into esoteric ideas like the following (which by no means do I assert is a complete list):

*Time moves in one direction because all dimensions are expanding in one direction, away from the big bang.
*Time is just an abstraction of entropy. The Universe is constantly going towards a less organized, less concentrated form. This entropy "pushes" time.
*Time is an illusion made up by our brains so that we can understand causality.

All of those ideas don't require an external object and things like "time bubbles." You could just as easily simply your theory to say that the universe is accelerating along the time dimension at the speed of light. Since you can't break the speed of light, you cannot go into the past. Something like that. Boil your theory down to its essence, only add extra dimensions or universes if your really have to. Occam's Razor rules even cosmology.