Your view of the present

[Lord Garth]

Do you live "in the now" and look at the present a moment at a time? Do you look at the present in the context of how it's leading into the future? Do you look at the present in the context of being a culmination of the past? Some combinaton of the above? Do you lean more one way than another?

Do you think the past still exists even though we don't live in that point in time? Do you think the future exists even though we haven't reached it yet? Or do you think the present is the only time that exists?

If speed effects time, then what if the different orbits/rotations from one planet to the next or even one system to the next or one galaxy to the next are out of synch and you have different points in space experiencing different points in time however slight?

Different times might exist at different points in space but would those space/time coordinates also still exist one someone living in a certain space moved beyond that particular time?

 

[trevanian]

My first thought was to wonder if you were smoking the same stuff that Donald Sutherland gave the kids in ANIMAL HOUSE ... going beyond that ...

I tend to see the present filtered through the future I expected as a kid, and as a result I find it largely wanting. Probably why I'd love to believe in an alternate timeline where everything is very Major Matt Mason-looking.

I've always figured you can't change the past, only the future ... even if you timetravelled, what you did in the past couldn't change what had already happened, only what happened in the future (after the point you went back.) Kinda limiting, but avoiding paradoxes is what I like about time travel (so I don't like much time travel, outside of TWELVE MONKEYS.)

 

[Shaw]

If speed effects time, then what if the different orbits/rotations from one planet to the next or even one system to the next or one galaxy to the next are out of synch and you have different points in space experiencing different points in time however slight?

Different times might exist at different points in space but would those space/time coordinates also still exist one someone living in a certain space moved beyond that particular time?

The experiencing of different times in this context is sort of like the experiencing of different distances. Time passes at different speeds depending on your distance from a gravitational mass, so (for example) time is moving at a different rate for the astronauts on ISS than for us on Earth, but when our frame of reference are brought back together the effect is not all that much different than two people traveling from one point to another taking different paths. One might have taken a longer path than the other, but in the end you both end up at the same point.

So while the clocks are running at a different rate on ISS than here on Earth, the difference is so small that there is no effect in how we communicate nor in our general experiences of the passage of time.

But yeah, in the large scale of things, we can only see backwards in time. If there is another world at the same technological level as us at this point in time but some 300 light years away, and they send us a message, we wouldn't get it for 300 years. By that time both worlds would have progressed (and changed) quite a lot.

What if we receive such message today from such a world? It would mean that they were where we are today some 300 years ago.

Indeed, the further away things get from us in the universe, the less we know of what might be happening in the now. Even in our neighborhood this becomes noticeable. If the Sun disappeared right now, we wouldn't notice for more than 8 minutes. For more than 8 minutes we would be completely oblivious to the fact that the Sun was gone (which is what makes ST:GEN one of the hardest movies for me to watch ).

 

[Verteron]

I live in the present, or possibly a continuous march towards the future or possibly jumping from instant to instant each of them separated by planck time (which may be the smallest measurable unit of time according to Quantum Mechanics, but there is actual contradictory evidence against this that's come to light).

My mind (brain state) allows me to make somewhat accurate predictions about the future state of the universe based on its previous state (which in turn has influence my mind state up to this point, giving me a record of it), given my instinctual knowledge of macroscopic physical laws. These predictions allow me to take actions which direct, to an extent, the state of the universe around me, by, for example, mixing hot water with a nearby teabag and some milk.

Images of the past never really disappear, they radiate out in to the cosmos, escaping at a light speed we can never catch, and in a very real way, whatever a distant observer can see (whether they be 1ly or 1Mly distant) is the maximum extent of the information they can ever have about us.

If speed effects time, then what if the different orbits/rotations from one planet to the next or even one system to the next or one galaxy to the next are out of synch and you have different points in space experiencing different points in time however slight?

Different times might exist at different points in space but would those space/time coordinates also still exist one someone living in a certain space moved beyond that particular time?

Well, you're veering in to the philosophical :-)

But from a relativistic point of view, it's not different periods in time, but different rates. When I measure the passage of time through observation of someone in a different reference frame, whether that frame be accelerating (which also includes those of us in gravitational fields) or at constant velocity relative to my own, it will be different.

So, if a spacecraft is travelling away from Earth at 99.9% of the speed of light, his time will appear to be passing at a slower rate than time is passing for us. However (and here's the mindfuck) we will also symmetrically be seen to be experiencing a slower passage of time from his point of view.

(This only holds in the case where the spacecraft isn't accelerating -- if he is, the situation is not symmetric)

But the point is -- there is no time in the Newtonian sense of proper, universal coordinated time. All we can do is measure it relative to eachother.

 

[Jadzia]

Time almost a sensation flowing through me, so there is for me a definite continuum and flow which I feel; something which others find hard to understand. But in terms of perspective: I look equally to the past with sentimentality, and to the future with curiosity, while the present receives by far the least acknowledgment of the three. Maybe I don't care much for the present?

 

[Lookingglassman]

I think only the present exists.