BS: Time--is it speeding up?

Subject: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Peace
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 02:38 AM

Little bit of sci-fi here, just for the fun of it. Suppose time is moving faster. That its rate of travel has been going along slowly and has speeded up in the past two hundred years. Really speeded up. Now, suppose that time by its existence 'creates' reality as it moves along. (I guess I am supposing that time is NOT the fourth dimension as we know it, but rather the thing that creates the other dimensions--as we know them.) What then?

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: John O'L
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 03:47 AM

Either it will continue to speed up until the physical universe is no longer able to handle the torque and begins to rupture, or...

Wait a minute - is that what's actually happening? But I digress.

...or whatever caused it to speed up in the first place will run its course and time will once again begin to slow down to its natural rate. Won't that be nice? Hope I'm still around to see it.

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: John O'L
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 03:48 AM

Oh yeah. Nearly forgot.

Time will tell.

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Paul Burke
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 03:52 AM

Do you mean there are only 59 seconds in a minute now? We'll all have to buy new watches.

The obvious question to ask is "speeding up relative to what"?

In a 3-dimesion-plus-time system, an acceleration produces a reactive force due to inertia- you get pressed back in your seat if your SEAT accelerates (they can, honest).

An acceleration in space therefore means we can tell what direction we are coming from. Perhaps the directionality of time (past to future) is an indication of an acceleration in that dimension. Or perhaps it's the opposite- it shows time is DEcelerating, and we get thrown forwards.

So work out what the equivalent would be for an acceleration in time, and devise an experiment to measure it. perhaps find experiments that seem to indicate a breach of causality, measure how big that breach is, and repeat at intervals to see if it gets smaller.

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 04:20 AM

That would explain why I have a 7yr old mind in the body of a 40+yr old.....

Seems like only yesterday I was playing on the swings and kicking up leaves.....









Hang on... it WAS yesterday!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 04:24 AM

But if the unit measurement of time is affected, how will you know?

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: jacqui.c
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 07:23 AM

I think that the speed of time depends on the perception of each individual. It seems that the old saw that time passes faster the older you get could be true, maybe because we become aware that there is a finite amount of time available to us.

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: MBSLynne
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 07:36 AM

Funny you should say that...in the last 4 or 5 years I've thought that time was going faster...I can't fit in nearly as many things in a day as I used to. Now a lot of people will say that that is what happens as you get older, but I've heard teenagers saying the same. Richard, who is 14 has commented on it only recently. Of course there is no way of knowing for sure because there is absolutely nothing with which to compare it. There are still 60 seconds in a minute, but if the seconds are moving faster than they were...? The question is, is it continuing to speed up or has it just got faster and stopped there? If the process is continual, we shall at some point all pass backwards through our own lives........

Bloody hell, this is a bit metaphysical for a Thursday morning!

Love Lynne

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Mr Red
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 07:40 AM

er not wanting to spoil the party but as I get older each unit of time gets to be a smaller percentage of my total.

AND

the faster you go (magnitude only) the slower time is percieved to be as measured by a clock (fact).

However The older I get - the faster the ticking years feel.

So is it me slowing down?

(29 and holding since you ask)

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: robomatic
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 07:57 AM

There is a theory that states: "If anyone finds out what the universe is for it will disappear and be replaced by something more bazaarly inexplicable."
There is another theory that states: "This has already happened ...."

Donald Adams, "Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy"

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 08:09 AM

Some people are always on time, others are always late everywhere they go. I reckon it all depends on how fast time was at the moment they were born.

The reason we all get less done in the day now is because we didn't used to have Mudcat.

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 08:14 AM

Presumably "time going faster" (in a non-subjective sense) would manifest it as an increase in the speed of light.

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: GUEST,DB
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 08:35 AM

The rate at which our species is changing the world is, undeniably, speeding up. I've said it before but I believe that our culture is addicted to change for its own sake - ultimately, though, change only leads to more disorder; a bloody big, man-made, mess is looming up on us very fast!

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 08:36 AM

Time is the measure of duration. Duration is simply how long things last (and that's a definition which, I realize, presupposes measurement but I can't express it in better words, unless you consider something like going to the opera or a violin concert played by your 6 year old nephew or any high school graduation ceremony).

So -- are we talking Time or Duration?

The units of Time can be varied, since they are humanly defined. Duration, on the other hand, simply is.

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Mooh
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 08:50 AM

You might ask William Shatner...Mooh.

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 09:06 AM

Three things about our perception and experience of time:

1) Current time seems to move faster or slower depending upon the intensity of our experience. If you've ever spent an entire day fishing and didn't get a bite, it seemed like the longest day in history. On the other hand, the day when they were biting like crazy seemed to fly by.

2) Past time is experienced in exactly the reverse fashion of current time. When we reflect back upon those two days of fishing, the day we got skunked has mercifully shrunk down to a barely remembered instance while the day we caught the limit has grown in our memories, just like the size of the fish we caught.

3) Our experience of any span of time is not relative to our previous experience of a similar time-span, but to our cumulative experience. At age ten, a year is 1/10 of one's lifetime, which is a pretty big chunk. At age fifty, a year is only 1/50 one's lifetime, which is inconsequential. So, if each year seems like it's shorter than the last one it's because, relative to our lifetimes, it is!

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Amos
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 09:37 AM

This raises an interesting notion. If time dilates experientially, as described above, is it possible that the true unit of time is the consideration that one is experiencing and seeing? If so, then what makes it all look temporal is clearly a subjective filter of the most deep-seated sort, such as the believe in persistance, which informs Rapaire's definition above. Perfectly workable, physical-universe definition; but suppose, just for a different angle, that the only reason we perceive time is because we decide that each point in space and each object of any scale we perceive is the "same as" it "was"; when in truth, the whole camouflage is generated newly, by the instant, by the composite creative powers of the billions of viewpoints occupying this section of space.

That being the case, time would be completely permeable and it would be as easy to be in a summer of 1960 as it is to be in an afternoon of 2005, and just as easy to slide out to the winter of 2020.

I suspect this would be a LOT of work, and we need to keep time around just to keep things sorted out automatically because we don't want all that responsibility!


:D


A

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 10:08 AM

Heck, Amos, the Trafamadorians do that all the time.

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 10:10 AM

"Tralfamadorians" he said as he madly typed in the "l" after hitting the "submit" button...

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Peace
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 10:24 AM

However, combine that crazy notion of time speeding up with the adage that Time is Nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen all at once and another picture emerges.

The idae stems from a talk with a good friend who posited that when we look at history, we see experience sorta like Mig-29 taxiing for a hundred miles then taking off and approaching near verticle--always travelling at the same rate (I call that speed). BUT, if you draw that two dimensionally, with various 'turning points' in the world's experience being the base (or horizontal) and the verticle being our experience of those events, the curve is sharp and it rises rapidly. Think of it three dimensionally and it looks like a glass for drinking real fancy Muscatel--one a those fancy wine glasses that ya throw into the fireplace after the toast. What if time is running out? (The concept was first explored by Blish in his series of four novels collectively called "Cities in Flight". Huh.

Houston, we have a problem.

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 11:19 AM

ER.... it's DOUGLAS Adams, not Donald.

Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 11:40 AM

Nah, it's Donald Adams. Runs the Hi-Ho Bar out on North Main Street. A good place to kill time and yourself as well, considering the quality of his likker.

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Wolfgang
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 11:50 AM

Presumably "time going faster" (in a non-subjective sense) would manifest it as an increase in the speed of light. (McGrath)

Right. Paul Dirac, Nobel Prize winning physicist, has seriously speculated about:

Variable speed of light

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Amos
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 12:15 PM

VLS is an unsettling concept IF you are over-fond of the normalcy of light-based perception and measurement. Which most of us are.

It is an interesting challenge to break out of that rut and tap into other parts of the perceptual spectrum less concetrated on the body's own systems.

As to time itself, if it is not anchored to c, at least it seems to be anchored to space itself, and one approach to jogging the apparent unidirectional arrow of Time is to warp spacetime locally.

I am not at all satisfied that space as such is understood. I keep coming to the conclusuion that it is a spiritual artifact rather than an objective sandbox and container.

But hey, I'm weird and everyone knows it. :D


A

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 01:09 PM

Cogito ergo sum, but at a universal scale.

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: CarolC
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 01:20 PM

Yes it definitely is. The reason I know is because these days, my watch seems to always run slow. I tried replacing the battery, but that didn't help, so I must conclude that it is because time has sped up.

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Peace
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 01:47 PM

Or that time is a very different thing than the measurement of time.

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: GUEST,clogger
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 01:52 PM

What can you measure it against?
If time is speeding up space would have to shrink to fit it!
If you think in terms of Space-time everything would ballance and we would (are) not be aware of it!
One thing is sure however, it dosn't matter how much you have, there just never seems to be enough!

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: dianavan
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 04:18 PM

I, too, have noticed that time is moving faster but in a different sort of way.

Consider the notion of karma or 'you reap what you sow'.

Never being interesed in trying to exact revenge, I always believed a version of the above. I also believed that although 'they would eventually have to pay', I may not be around to see it. I thought it might even be possible that they would have to pay in another lifetime. But lately...

When I notice someone being cruel, thoughtless, unkind, selfish or just plain mean, within days or even hours, I see that their actions turn upon them. Is it because the older I get, the more perceptive I become; or is it that effect is moving closer to cause? Could it be that time is moving faster in this way?

I doubt if I am getting smarter so I have to believe that universally, the time between action and reaction is decreasing.

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Mr Red
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 04:35 PM

here we go again

I has been established scientifically that subjective time is variable and for good reason.

A clock when first looked at ticks slowly over the first tick and then looks to be "normal". Because we register a scene as it changes but once it's syntax is "clocked" we predict most of the vista &/or movement and get on and look-out for attackers - or whatever. Evolution gave us a reason to vary time - in our heads.

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Peace
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 05:08 PM

"here we go again"

Strange thing to say on this thread!

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Amos
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 05:11 PM

Why, it's deja vue all over again!! When was that, anyway?


A

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Peace
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 05:18 PM

OK. Stay with me on this. When a blast wave goes through the earth it will bounce back when it hits the face of a cliff.

I<-<-<-<-<= direction of blast wave and X (here) is blast origin.
The capital I is the edge of the cliff.
I->->->-> This is the new direction of the wave.

What if time is happening the same way?

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: GUEST,Ralph
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 05:25 PM

Haven't got time for this !!

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: John O'L
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 05:36 PM

So when time hit the edge of a cliff it comes back to X?

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: John O'L
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 05:37 PM

Nice diagram by the way. I understood it immediately.

At least I think I did.

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Peace
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 05:47 PM

The fellow I was talking with used to work with explosives. If you imagine the blast taking place in the middle of a book, the book is composed os four cliff faces. For the moment, ignore the covers. The wave would continue to go from edge to edge--and keep doing that. It would weaken eventually. I wonder if in the procees of creating reality, time is behaving in that manner.

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Amos
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 05:47 PM

One opinion? If it were behaving that way (which it could be) it would be because of a built in contrariness in the hearts and souls of its subscribers.

No argument that such a quality exists! :)


A

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 06:19 PM

The only activity is this instant and it has no duration.

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 06:33 PM

Speculate all you want....these folks haven't noticed anything yet, that's about all that's really relevant to me!

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: John O'L
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 06:35 PM

Time can't speed up or slow down, time doesn't really move at all. Not forwards anyway, and certainly not backwards. It actually goes in a sort of a sideways direction, but not in a manner that could be acurately thought of as movement. It's kinda like everything that has happened or will happen is actually happening NOW, more or less alongside each other, but then again, not.
Think about it.
You know it's true.

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: bobad
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 06:44 PM

It's all relative.

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Peace
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 06:47 PM

If it's all relative, what's it relative to?

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: bobad
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 06:51 PM

Dinner time.

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Peace
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 06:53 PM

That works for me. Ring the bell!

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding upwards?
From: Severn
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 06:53 PM

I say it all deep-ends on the time of day. A minute is a minute is a minute, mind you, but notice the difference when you're trying to get to a time clock to punch in on time as opposed to how long that last minute goes before you can punch out and go home. The first minute somehow seems more Mine-Yoot than the last, but they both register in at the same sixty sloppy seconds.

"'Splain it to me, Kingfish!...."

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: bobad
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 06:57 PM

I've always had the same question about making something level - level to what ?

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Gray D
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 07:07 PM

Anyone know why scientists in the USA want to abandon the "leap second"?

Yesterday's news claimed that, at the moment, noon is supposed to be when the sun is directly overhead at the Greenwich Meridian. That's what all the really accurate atomic clocks synchronise to. However the earth's rotation is slowing down a little, meaning that the atomic clocks are getting ahead of the moment where the sun is directly overhead at the meridian so, every now and then, the nations get together and agree to have a "leap second" to resynchronise matters. But, the news said, scientists in the USA don't want to do that any more. It didn't say why, though.

Anyone?

Gray D(ecelerating all the time)

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: Gray D
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 07:12 PM

It's here, by the way.

Gray D

Subject: RE: BS: Time--is it speeding up?
From: John O'L
Date: 10 Nov 05 - 07:12 PM

Level to what? - The sea of course.

I don't see how you can discuss time bouncing around in a box. Time is simply not of that kind of construction. It can't be. As Amos says (I think), time can only be a function of those who use it. If it's apparently acting out of character, such deviation must originate with the user.