Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:
On Wed, 01 Nov 2006 10:33:51 -0500, Harry Krause
wrote:
On 11/1/2006 10:24 AM, Clams Canino wrote:
And Harry's feral clock postings leave the bottom of the list. 
You mean, it isn't February 31, 2007?
You know, in a sense, it could be.
There is a school of thought that considers all time to be a function
of perception and not reality.
In fact, if one....
Um...
Never mind. I'd only be accused of being weird. :)
--
You might enjoy this item:
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Was Time Created During the Big Bang?
Scott Teresi
www.teresi.us/writing
Right now the Einstein description of gravity (general relativity)
doesn't make sense when it starts to intersect with the minute
particles of quantum mechanics. Gravity is normally extremely weak on
the quantum mechanical scale, but it becomes a major factor when matter
gets compressed by a black hole... or in the Big Bang at the beginning
of the universe. String theory is the best candidate at the moment for
a "theory of everything" that includes both gravity and quantum
mechanics.
Here's an interesting perspective (from a N.Y. Times article) on what
time might become in our eventual "theory of everything."
Quantum mechanics has, at its core, the uncertainty principle, which
establishes a limit on how precisely particular features of the
microworld can be simultaneously measured. The more precise the
measurement of one feature (a particle's position for example), the
more wildly uncertain a complementary feature (its velocity) becomes.
Quantum uncertainty thus ensures that the finer the examination of the
microworld, the more frantically its physical features fluctuate, and
the more turbulent it appears to be.
For subatomic particles, these fluctuations are well understood
mathematically and have been precisely documented experimentally. But
when it comes to time and space, the fluctuations speak to the very
limits of these familiar concepts. On extremely short time intervals
(about a tenth of a millionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a
trillionth of a second) and distance scales (about a billionth of a
trillionth of a trillionth of a centimeter), quantum fluctuations so
mangle space and time that the conventional ideas of left/right,
backward/forward, up/down, and before/after become meaningless.
Scientists are still struggling to understand these implications, but
many agree that just as the percentages in political polls are average,
approximate measures that become meaningful only when a large
respondent pool is canvassed, so conventional notions of time and space
are also average, approximate concepts that become meaningful only when
considered over sufficiently large scales. Whereas relativity
established the subjectivity of time's passage, quantum mechanics
challenges the conceptual primacy of time itself.
Here's the important part:
Today's scientists seeking to combine quantum mechanics with Einstein's
theory of gravity (the general theory of relativity) are convinced that
we are on the verge of another major upheaval, one that will pinpoint
the more elemental concepts from which time and space emerge. Many
believe this will involve a radically new formulation of natural law in
which scientists will be compelled to trade the space-time matrix
within which they have worked for centuries for a more basic "realm"
that is itself devoid of time and space.
This is such a perplexing idea that grasping it poses a substantial
challenge, even for leading researchers. Broadly speaking, scientists
envision that there will be no mention of time and space in the basic
equations of the sought-for framework. And yet - just as clear,
liquid water emerges from particular combinations of an enormous number
of H20 molecules - time and space as we know them would emerge from
particular combinations of some more basic, though still unidentified,
entities. Time and space themselves, though, would be rendered
secondary, derivative features, that emerge only in suitable conditions
(in the aftermath of the Big Bang, for example). As outrageous as it
sounds, to many researchers, including me, such a departure of time and
space from the ultimate laws of the universe seems inevitable.
(From The Time We Thought We Knew, by Brian Greene, N.Y. Times.)
I think what this means is, our theory of everything may end up
describing variables which are actually more fundamental than time,
space, gravity, and electromagnetism (the basic forces and dimensions
in today's theories). What we experience as "time" may actually have
been created during the Big Bang. Time could be a macroscopic
manifestation of the more intrinsic components of the
universe/multiverse.
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Somehow, even when time is finally discovered to be subjective, it will
still take a lot of it to get anywhere in my trawler at 8 knots. :-)