Is Time Slowing Down?

[Typist]

Senovilla proposes that we have been fooled into thinking the expansion of the universe is accelerating, when in reality, time itself is slowing down.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/20 ... s-yes.html

[Notvacka]

The idea that time could be slowing down implies that time has a speed to begin with. How would that speed be defined? To what could it be related? The usual definition of speed is distance related to time. If time is to have "speed" it must be related to something else.

[Typist]

Good questions! I can't wrap my mind around it yet. Did the article satisfy any of your concerns?

[Wootah]

Honestly we don't know the age of universe. So many variables. Why can't people be honest about this.

[Mike Strand]

Hey, Typist, interesting topic!

Here's a quote from the article:

If time is slowing down, according to this new theory, our solitary time dimension is slowly turning into a new space dimension. Therefore the far-distant, ancient stars seen by cosmologists would from our perspective, look as though they were accelerating.

It's as if the scientists proposing this idea of time slowing down are claiming that our local space-time manifold (jargon from general theory that I don't pretend to grasp) has a time dimension along which time travels at a different "pace", relative to the time that is "way out there". Notvacka, does that address your concern about what the time is related to? I'm guessing that the scientists say there are two time lines that differ from each other. How this explains the rest of their claims, I don't know - something to do with string theory.

Wootah -- yes, too many variables for me, personally, to keep track of! Can't speak for the knowledgable scientists.

This time thing is yet another physics puzzle that mystifies me, along with quantum and relativity theory, from which to escape -- for example, by throwing and trying to catch a boomerang to get an intuitive experience of Newtonian dynamics.

[Izzywizzy]

Typist asked

Is Time Slowing Down?

considering TIME is a manmade invention and terminology..to suit us all..in our everyday world..then the answer is no..it just IS as in you are a human that just IS here at present ..there is no such dissection of time..times seems to slow down and speed up..but that is human subjectivity..there is such a thing as times ago (yestur years we recall ) r timing (now on right on time ie the present) or future time (as in premonitions) IOW we humans use the word time for our experiences and history and even or insights and progress..but you are making time a thing outside of man..and this can`t be true and is why i debate the theory of evolution..for no man to witness the beginning of this of universe..how can so called sensible scienitists now suggest man can explain the beginning of this universe..talk about fairytales

[Typist]

Hey, Typist, interesting topic!

I thought you might like it.

...our solitary time dimension is slowly turning into a new space dimension.

Solitary time dimension? Space dimension? Anybody get these concepts?

Therefore the far-distant, ancient stars seen by cosmologists would from our perspective, look as though they were accelerating.

Is this something like the Earth looks flat when you're standing on it, but is seen to be round when you can step back and look at it from a distance? Is that the gist of what they're saying, our point of view presents a distorted image of reality?

[Typist]

considering TIME is a manmade invention and terminology..to suit us all..in our everyday world..then the answer is no..

Yes, interesting. Does time exist? It seems that by our normal use of the word "exist" the answer would be no. Time has no mass, no weight, takes up no space etc, as far as we know. If I've got that right.

To take a wild speculative leap from there....

Perhaps Mike will appreciate an investigation of the tools we are using here.

It seems any scientist would want to be carefully aware of how the tool they are using may influence the data they are gathering, so they can account for that influence. This examination of tools is a thoroughly uncontroversial and a fully legitimate scientific and philosophic process, is it not? Agreed so far?

And what is the core tool we are using?

Thought.

Do you see how quickly and seamlessly we move from the category "science" and the category "philosophy" to the category "psychology"? I propose that this is because in reality all these apparently different topics are really one big topic, and that the division between them is a useful but imaginary separation created by the inherently divisive nature of thought.

The inherently divisive nature of this tool is reflected in all human languages, where reality is divided up conceptually by use of nouns. Thus, "tree", "soil", "water" and "sun" are given different names, creating the illusion of separation, when in fact they function as a single unified system.

Point being, we can speculate that thought creates this same illusion of separation in regards to time. Our mind sees past, present and future. And these are surely useful concepts. But perhaps reality is more accurately described as an eternal now.

After all, if we were to ask where the past is, or where the future is, we are unable to point to anything concrete, other than the images in our mind.

If we view the world wearing pink tinted sunglasses, everything looks very realistically pink.

[Izzywizzy]

exactomondo Typist you are on the ball here..wow what a refreshing change

[Notvacka]

Did the article satisfy any of your concerns?

No. I actually read the article before posting my reply.

[Notvacka]

It's as if the scientists proposing this idea of time slowing down are claiming that our local space-time manifold (jargon from general theory that I don't pretend to grasp) has a time dimension along which time travels at a different "pace", relative to the time that is "way out there". Notvacka, does that address your concern about what the time is related to?

This is exactly why it doesn't make sense. What other "time" is supposed to be "way out there"?

[Typist]

What other "time" is supposed to be "way out there"?

Ok, good news, I found the answer to that one. Now we're making some progress.

[Mike Strand]

Hey, Typist, that's a time we can enjoy "right in here"!

Regarding the existence (or not) of time: The physicist Julian Barbour wrote a book called "The End of Time", in which he claims the universe is a collection of "Nows", and he deals with fundamental physics without the time parameter. Not an easy read, but intriguing. Typist, your reference to an "eternal now" reminded me of this book.

Here's Barbour's website: http://www.platonia.com/

[converge]

I'll add that I don't understand what the article is trying to say either. Space and time are relative to your velocity and gravity/acceleration; there's not one "true" flow of time to compare everything else's flow of time to. I also don't see what he means that just time itself can get slower. You can see someone else's flow of time relative to yours get slower or faster, but it seems that if the fundamental units of time were somehow changing, there would be no way to detect it. It's like characters in a movie that you're playing at different speeds; everything relative to them happens exactly the same and their clocks run at the exact same speeds relative to them, it's only the outside observer watching the movie who can say that it's all running faster or slower. So I don't see why he thinks that distant stars would appear to accelerate if someone is slowing down the movie... the behavior of distant stars should look exactly the same to people within the movie, and should be exactly the same relative to other things within the movie even for someone watching from outside and slowing it down.

The only thing I can think of that would cause the illusion of acceleration is where they say that time is "turning into" a new spatial dimension somehow, but that doesn't really make any sense. How is it "turning into" something? I think that might be the key to what their talking about but the article doesn't really mention it much. Maybe he's trying to say it's like a geometric transform of a manifold like Mike suggested... like if the universe was shaped like a bowl on a table that is gradually deflating and becoming flat. Time would be the vertical axis, and as the bowl melts, time becomes smaller but the bowl becomes flattened. Still, that's not the way the manifolds are supposed to work, I think.

[Dimebag]

I like this idea of time slowing down and have actually wondered it myself, but instead my thoughts drifted towards a variable speed of light. I wonder, would this aparrent slowing of time explain cosmic expansion? I imagine the speed of time would be proportional to the density of the universe and space, as space expands, the time it takes for say a photon to travel one light year increases, as it has more "space" to travel, or rather the size of the space is spreading out, like smearing butter over a smaller and smaller area. I imagine the slow down of time is proportional to the expansion of space, which would lead to a rapid speed during the early universe, but I reject the idea that time would cease altogether, it would just become infinitessimly slow. Imagine the speed of time is not 'subtracted', but rather divided by two every time the density of space doubles, there will always be time. I'm not saying this must be how it is, just how I explain it to myself. The interesting thing about this idea is that time would still seem to pass as normal, but when we observed the speed of time in the distant past, it would seem almost instantaneous.