Would a subatomic particle with no frame of reference have motion?

[lajoswinkler]

Time does not exist either way. Time is simply a human idea for measurement of changes within/between matter and energy.

Just because you've heard this doesn't mean it's true. This is a disinformation, a faulty meme that everyone keeps repeating like parrots. Time exists.

[Camacha]

Just because you've heard this doesn't mean it's true. This is a disinformation, a faulty meme that everyone keeps repeating like parrots. Time exists.

If you keep these absolute statements up we can slash our science budgets. We should just ask you.

For as far as I know we just are not too sure yet of the nature of time. Some go as far as saying it has no place in physics and that all formulae can and should be rewritten as to exclude it, some say it is an emergent phenomena due to how our brains work and some say that it is an intrinsic part of the universe and nature that cannot be separated from the rest of it.

What is certain is that our brain manipulates time in all kinds of major and minor ways to build a coherent and useful picture of the world around us, but unfortunately that yields few answers about the physical nature of it.

[lajoswinkler]

If you keep these absolute statements up we can slash our science budgets. We should just ask you.

For as far as I know we just are not too sure yet of the nature of time. Some go as far as saying it has no place in physics and that all formulae can and should be rewritten as to exclude it, some say it is an emergent phenomena due to how our brains work and some say that it is an intrinsic part of the universe and nature that cannot be separated from the rest of it.

What is certain is that our brain manipulates time in all kinds of major and minor ways to build a coherent and useful picture of the world around us, but unfortunately that yields few answers about the physical nature of it.

It's called spacetime. It's very realistic as it's stretchable and compressible. The very nature of how GPS works proves it and I've heard this meme from wannabe philosophers and hippie chicks only. Time is much more than a clock ticking.

[Mr Shifty]

It's called spacetime. It's very realistic as it's stretchable and compressible. The very nature of how GPS works proves it and I've heard this meme from wannabe philosophers and hippie chicks only. Time is much more than a clock ticking.

Julian Barbour, who is a respected theoretical physicist, champions the idea that time is illusory. He wrote a book about it for a popular audience, and Neal Stephenson used his ideas when he wrote his speculative novel Anathem. Barbour's ideas certainly aren't mainstream, but neither is he considered a crackpot.

[AC656]

Well my grain of salt is that time is an emergent phenomena like temperature. We can argue whether temperature is real or not and temperature is definitely not real when talking about the microstate you can't ask what is the temperature of that atom that wouldn't make sense, only when you have a large system and are discussing the properties of the macrostate then temperature becomes a very useful characteristic of the system.

Time to me seems to be kind of similar, an emergent phenomena, but in reality what we perceive as time just comes from the fact that entropy is increasing. In a universe in equilibrium like the one you are describing there is no time since you have reached maximum entropy.

Now in a regular system in equilibrium there is still some fluctuations that could lead to bubbles with lower entropy but I am not sure how those would translate to the universe you describe since things are too far away from each other to interact.

[trekkie_]

It's called spacetime. It's very realistic as it's stretchable and compressible. The very nature of how GPS works proves it and I've heard this meme from wannabe philosophers and hippie chicks only. Time is much more than a clock ticking.

What you think is stretched and compressed time, is gravity (and possibly space by proxy) acting upon the interactions of energy and matter. Time doesn't necessarily have to be tangible for actions to occur in the universe. Rather, time is just a concept derived from observing those actions.

Edited December 12, 2014 by trekkie_

[Camacha]

What you think is stretched and compressed time, is gravity (and possibly space by proxy) acting upon the interactions of energy and matter. Time doesn't necessarily have to be tangible for actions to occur in the universe. Rather, time is just a concept derived from observing those actions.

I think the Kraken ate my post, but that was what I was going to post: time might very well turn out to be an emergent phenomena. It will probably be a while (no pun intended) before we can say anything definitive about that.

[theend3r]

Well my grain of salt is that time is an emergent phenomena like temperature. We can argue whether temperature is real or not and temperature is definitely not real when talking about the microstate you can't ask what is the temperature of that atom that wouldn't make sense, only when you have a large system and are discussing the properties of the macrostate then temperature becomes a very useful characteristic of the system.

You can easily ask what is the temperature of an atom as temperature is just a measure of kinetic energy. I'd say that is definitely real.

[lajoswinkler]

You can easily ask what is the temperature of an atom as temperature is just a measure of kinetic energy. I'd say that is definitely real.

Exactly. We could use such logic for basically all fenomena. Space. Charge. Spin. We could always twist the logic so that it goes along our "it's imaginary in our frame of reference". It's very real and measurable and it can be changed.