Among the psychedelic community there is often this notion that time doesn't really exist, that it's a completely manmade idea. And of course the Gregorian calendar is a human artifact. But our movement along the T axis, that fourth spatial dimension that we discussed earlier, is demonstrated by things that are decidedly natural and not manmade.

It's called thermodynamics, folks, and it's the rate at which matter and energy interact in the universe. Whether it's the swinging of a pendulum, the decay of a radioactive isotope, or a chemical reaction turning a liquid into a solid, these are interactions that are completely predictable and always follow the clock according to the same rules. Here's the relativity part: take that sample of radioactive isotope, put it on a spaceship and accelerate it up to relativistic speeds (same effect as applying a higher gravity field), and although to an observer on that ship the clock would be moving at its normal speed, an observer watching from a frame of reference outside that ship would see the ship clock as running faster than normal.

So: time really is a measurement of actual universal processes and is not simply a manmade construct. But it is by no means universal or absolute.

I couldn't have said it better! There's no doubt that time is a real thing, even if it's true nature is totally counterintuitive.

But I also understand where the "no time" guys are coming from. I think they're just mixing up their experiences that happen OUTSIDE the flow of time (ZeroD), where it's completely non linear and there is only NOW, with the way time exists within our usual 4 axis space-time, where things just couldn't function the way they do without it.

I think the big hang up is the perception of time. As all of us sailors of the psychonautical seas can attest, time can be a bizarre thing. Our perception of time is a direct relation to our brain and the metabolic processes that affect the brain. So the rate we perceive time is made up by us, but not the time itself.

Guyomech, unfortunately you got the time dilation backwards.
Someone in a spaceship traveling almost the speed of light wouldn't notice any time perception change. They would, however, notice a severe visual distortion, though, which would be like seeing everything through a tunnel/fish-eye lens. For someone on Earth, seeing this really fast person, it would appear to them as if they stopped doing things in their ship. They'd move vvvvveeeerrryyy slow, and the people on Earth would be in hyper speed to the ship people. Five minutes ship time would be decades Earth time. Because of this, at near the speed of light, the universe could be explored in about 56 years ship time, but Earth and all the people would be long gone. As Carl Sagan said, "It would be a one way trip."

As it has been said, the time still exists, just goofy things happen to it and to observers at very high relative speeds. Don't confuse the ruler (clock) with that being measured.

You're right, I got the direction of the effect backwards. But you'd only see that kind of visual distortion at ridiculously high speeds. A more practical way of visualizing it would be as such (I think I'm remembering this from Carl Sagan's Cosmos):

You've got a two way runcible on your ship. A runcible is a nonexistent sci fi device that allows for instantaneous communication between points of great distance (in theory this could be done by using entangled Bose-Einstein condensates, but that's for another thread). As the ship accellerates, the ship captain and ground control converse over video link. The person on the ship watches the ground control dude as he speeds up to a blur; the ground control guy watches the ship captain as he slows to an almost halt (this would require great speeds indeed).

At enough acceleration, the ship could circumnavigate the known universe in about 60 years shipboard time. But eons would pass in the outside universe- the Earth would be long gone. By halfway around, you would actually see swirling movement in the spiral galaxies.

The Cosmos was my source, too! Right on brother!

One question that has always been on my mind is this:

Physics generally demonstrates this sort of entropy, a ball falls because you invest energy and place it somewhere high but not only this most energy 'transactions' are stingy, they take the easy route like how current behaves in electrical systems.

Now, if this is the case it leads to two situations

1) If the universe is cyclic and energy is lost, then where does it go? The energy can't flux and move around without spending some energy there must be loss. But if the universe is not cyclic and the big bang -> big crush cycle eventually ends then the question is, where does the energy go if it's contained inside a finite space?

2) Why would the universe exist in the first place? physics / energy wise it's kinda like making a problem solely for the purpose of solving it, the most energy efficient option is that nothing ever exists, perfect entropy from the very start.

I guess the solution to #1 is that there is more than one universe and that energy can exchange between universes, which is kinda like the parallel universe plane collision causing the big bang theory. But #2 is a little bit more all encompassing, it extends beyond the meaning of life and more towards the meaning of everything?

I'd love someone to shed some light on this for me as it kinda bothers me and has done so for quite some time :/

Also! on the topic of time, I like to think of there being two different types of 'time'

Relative time which is the man-made purely mental "rate at which I'm experiencing myself" and dimensional time, a more spacial and objective extension of x,y,z.

#1) at the moment of the big bang things existed in the lowest entropy state possible... At the very end, provided the "big whimper" happens, it will be in the highest possible entropy state, where all the highly ordered energy of the initial moment has been converted via thermodynamic processes into waste heat, which is spread so thinly across the vastly expanded and empty universe that its net result is effectively nonexistence.

#2) way trickier. One explanation I've heard is that the big bang and all that followed must be the most efficient possible way for nature to deal with whatever inequilibrium that preceeded the big bang. As such, it's the lowest energy solution to the problem. But I know that just sounds like a big nonanswer.

I've heard of the "big freeze" theory, so I guess the more spread out energy becomes the less useful it becomes until its just a whole lot of stuff doing nothing.

There was a really interesting concept I saw in the series "The Universe" (which I HIGHLY recommend) which goes into detail about essentially a bubble appearing in the universe (Caused by a physical collision between two parallel universes which as you would imagine would release a HUGE HUGE HUGE HUGE amount of energy)

But basically, inside the bubble everything has changed, the laws of physics are different, all the elements would be different, mathematics etc etc, so basically what happens is it triggers a nuclear bomb like cascade.
All the calm, quiet, non active particles are suddenly no longer in the most efficient configuration and entropy is invalidated, as the bubble grows all particles are ripped apart and rearranged and entropy starts it's long journey again.

I'm personally a big fan of fractals, so I'd like to think that this cycle of parallel collisions, big bangs, creations and destructions of universes would follow some form of cycle and would demonstrate some form of seemingly random chaotic iterations which would essentially continue forever.

That's a part of "M-theory", the idea that our universe (and all others) are arranged on an infinte series of parallel "Branes" (membranes) within a higher dimensional space, and that the energy released by occasional collisions between these branes could spawn new universes. There's actual science behind this idea, some of the greatest scientific minds of our day are in on it. It's probably unprovable but I like it.

Insane in the M-Brane!

Another possibility that would give the onmiverse a fractal kind of structure is the idea we were talking about earlier of new universes being "born" inside the black holes of older, larger-scale universes. This might also imply that the universe itself is a living thing, driven to grow and reproduce, which could be a "reason" for existence emerging out of entropy in the first place.

It might also be a way of explaining the "fine tuning" of our universe, which has to do with all these really crucial numbers in physics that relate to the possibility of anything existing at all, that seem to be extremely finely tuned to allow us to be here. If some of these numbers were off by even a tiny amount, the physics of our universe just wouldn't work. And nobody can really explain how or why they are "set" exactly the way they are. The anthropic principle is usually called in to explain this (or alternately a "Creator" god), but above and beyond that, what if this tuning were a characteristic inherited from our "parent" universe? Something that has EVOLVED to be compatable with living things (and therefore consciousness).

Crazyhorse:

I think it is a misconception that the universe is so very fine tuned for us or anything, and that it is incorrect that even the slightest deviation from some of the set of parameters or constants of physics would make it impossible for us and life, or even the universe, to exist. In fact, there seems to be great room for variations in these numbers without making life as we know it impossible. Certainly we would have different universes, but many of these would have the conditions necessary to support life as we know it. Besides, there may be other, stranger forms of life possible in universes very different from our own.

In short, from the point of view of science, I think the obvious is that life is "perfectly" suited for the universe, and not the other way around.

I am sorry not to have the time to argue for this thoroughly right now, but what I can do is to refer you to an article written by theoretical physicist Victor J. Stenger, where he outlines some of the key arguments against this fine-tuning issue, most of them based in well known and well understood physics. I suggest you take some time to look at it

http://www.colorado.edu/...nger/Fallacy/FTCosmo.pdf

That's all right, there's nothing saying that everyone has to agree, and in fact it would be a very dull world if they did.

Like I said at the beginning, all I can do is offer my own particular viewpoint, which can only go as far as my own current understanding. And in this case I'm just doing some far-out speculating, not trying to explain something that's pretty much already been accepted as fact by science, like red-shift or relativity.

But in case it didn't come across that way, sure there are plenty of very well informed opinions on both sides of fine-tuning to say it's still up in the air and totally debatable. If Mr. Stenger's paper had decidedly put the problem of the Cosmological Constant to rest, I wouldn't even have mentioned it. In fact it's only one opinion among many, and I don't claim to know with any real certainty who's right, only how it appears to me (FWIW). But in the interest of balance and trying to understand all this from as many angles as possible, I'm glad you brought it up.

I love this thread!!

I just wanted to add, part of the first law of thermodynamics is the fact that energy has quality (in addition to conservation of energy). Quality is really an engineering term for useability. So water in a dam has high quality, as it is very useable. It spins a turbine which converts the kinetic (moving of mass) energy to electrical, which is almost always turned into heat (sometimes light). Every bit of fuel you put into your car is turned to heat, except the light from the headlights (which still ultimately turns to heat). That's all the brakes are is energy converters. They turn the kinetic energy of the moving car into heat, which is expelled into the air. Once energy is converted into heat, it is generally considered lost, but not gone. It has only changed quality to a less useable form. Now, if someone could figure out a way to make low heat useable, we'd be on to something! (I'm trying. I have a new Stirling engine design I'm going to build)

As far as that fine tuning thing goes: if you take all possible combinations of values in the basic universal variables, mostly you get junk. Our universe is (unsurprisingly) right in the middle of a large "island of usability" of different combinations, where many of the closest variations are also capable of meaningful interactions of matter and energy (an overwhelming majority of all combinations lead to universes where matter does not clump or form any kind of structure, and energy simply expands and cools... It's a slim minority of all combinations that could house physical life as we know it).

There are a number of these islands- variable clusters that contain a range of usable universes. Of course we are in one of these islands, or else we wouldn't exist to be having this discussion (that's the anthropic principle).

As far as CH's assertion about universes evolving to be able to house life: probably unprovable, but very poetic. I like.

I don't think I'd go so far as to call it an assertion, more like a conjecture.

Thanks for weighing in!

One of the main principles of string or M-theory (I think M is the latest version of string, right?) is the idea of the multi-verse. There are and infinite number of universes which incorporate the infinite number of possibilities. This means there are an infinite number of universes without life, and infinite number with life, and probably an infinite number with something more bizarre than life. Who knows? I talked a great deal with my brother about this, and the idea got him down. He didn't like the idea that we exist merely because given the infinite possibilities, we must exist by defacto. The idea that this universe is essentially made for life can still fit into that idea, maybe.

What do you think? For some reason the multi-verse idea never really bothered me, though I can see why it would bother others.

I had another idea I have been mulling over... There's no reason for this to be the way it really is, since it is impossible to truly understand zero or infinity. Zero and infinity are two sides of the same coin. n/infinity is zero. n/0 is infinity (n equals any finite number). Some in certain religions or quests for knowledge people seek to understand nothingness, but generally it is as out of our reach as infinity. How could one truly know nothingness?

I say this to set the premise for my idea. There was (maybe) nothing before the universe. There was zero. There is something now. Maybe, the nothingness was somehow divided into two somethings which together still equal nothing. Matter and antimatter. The original duality of a positive and negative. The implications for this are vast! The sum total of the universe is zero! This would directly support the idea of Karma. All badness is out weighed by equal amounts good. Everything works itself out since ultimately everything sums to zero. (we engineers love when problems sum to zero, easy math)

Just remember, in an infinitely large universe we would be infinitely small. Perhaps we are? Perhaps not!

This reminds me of something from the Hitchhikers Guide regarding infinity and the universe:

Area: Infinite.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy offers this definition of the word "infinite".

Infinite: Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some. Much bigger than that in fact, really amazingly immense, a totally stunning size, real "wow, that's big," time. Infinity is just so big that, by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy. Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by staggeringly huge is the sort of concept we're trying to get across here.

Population: None

It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there most be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any person you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.

Art: None

The function of art is to hold a mirror up to nature, and there simply isn't a mirror big enough- see point one.

Sex: None.

Well, in fact there is an awful lot of this, largely because of the total lack of money, trade, banks, art or anything else that might keep all the nonexistent people of the Universe occupied.

That's so funny! I'd forgotten about that. I love that movie/show/books because they say things that sound so silly on the surface, but seem just as plausible as any explanation.