In Need Of A Job

[Gosling1]

Cool, good arguments all, but night on the dark side of the moon is, and always will be, eternal. There is no 'time' on the dark side of the moon......nothing to measure and thereby construct a convenient method of measuring 'time' as we understand it. Nothing can change this, and if you could imagine an Earth with constant sunlight on one side, then the whole concept of 'time' falls on its arse.

8 minutes for light to travel from the sun to the earth - it could be 25 zoobots for all its relevance. It is simply the expression of a unit that we have conveniently used since 'time' imemorial because of the physical properties of the planet we live on. No more no less. The light from the sun does not rely on the passage of time to reach Earth, it gets here regardless of whatever unit we choose to measure......due to its physical and chemical properties only.

The whole concept of a timeless universe is anathema to current theoretical scientists, who fear the consequences of such a beast.

Perhaps its 'time' to let this philosophical discussion rest on its merits ?

[Nanna10r]

Now I Definitly Want Out Have a good TIME GoodDay

I'm with you Billy, These clowns are Making my Head hurt.

We could have a mass EXODUS but that may start a fuggen high brow discussion about the physics involved to Part sea Water.

I've ridden with my good mate Barrabob more then all ya's & theres NO WAY he's ever gunna trouble the sound of light. Even with him & the Barra Strapped to F1 11.

[the kid]

Cool, good arguments all, but night on the dark side of the moon is, and always will be, eternal. There is no 'time' on the dark side of the moon......nothing to measure and thereby construct a convenient method of measuring 'time' as we understand it. Nothing can change this, and if you could imagine an Earth with constant sunlight on one side, then the whole concept of 'time' falls on its arse.

8 minutes for light to travel from the sun to the earth - it could be 25 zoobots for all its relevance. It is simply the expression of a unit that we have conveniently used since 'time' imemorial because of the physical properties of the planet we live on. No more no less. The light from the sun does not rely on the passage of time to reach Earth, it gets here regardless of whatever unit we choose to measure......due to its physical and chemical properties only.

The whole concept of a timeless universe is anathema to current theoretical scientists, who fear the consequences of such a beast.

Perhaps its 'time' to let this philosophical discussion rest on its merits ?

Gos , take a considered look at the Email I have just sent you and you may get a better grasp on how space can be streached and altered by all things things organic or inorganic dependant on the time you can devote to time/space modification .
I am no expert if these matters , despite wanting to be , but there are a lot greater forces at work in the universe .
Don,t you ever wonder at simple things in life ? like how do ... what ever ... where do pumpkins come from ???????

Don't go too deep Mate

[Gosling1]

....you may get a better grasp on how space can be stretched and altered by all things things organic or inorganic dependant on the time you can devote to time/space modification.......Don't go too deep Mate

WOW I didn't know they made 'em THAT big !!!!! No more deepness, at least for a short time.....

[I-K]

Cool, good arguments all,

So good that you don't rebut any of them directly...

but night on the dark side of the moon is, and always will be, eternal.

No, it isn't. The moon, including its dark side, has a 28-(Earth)-day diurnal cycle. Think it through.

Your previous example of a tide-locked Earth is better, in this instance.

There is no 'time' on the dark side of the moon... nothing to measure and thereby construct a convenient method of measuring 'time' as we understand it.

What about the movement of stars?

Could a primitive civilisation without experience of daylight not construct an hourglass, or invent the toothed gear

Nothing can change this, and if you could imagine an Earth with constant sunlight on one side, then the whole concept of 'time' falls on its arse.

You still haven't explained *why* the passage of night into day and back again should be the only way intelligent creatures should perceive time.

Why shouldn't awareness of the passage of time follow simply from the perception that things change? How, without moving through time, did I come to move from typing the word "change" followed by a question mark to typing a second question mark at the end of this sentence?

Answer that.

8 minutes for light to travel from the sun to the earth - it could be 25 zoobots for all its relevance.

Or x oscillations of a caesium maser. You're making the same point I made in my previous post and you're continuing to use the arbitrary nature of a unit chosen to measure a quantity as an argument for the quantity itself being arbitrary.

The metre was defined, completely arbitrarily, by the French as being 1/10,000 of the distance between the Equator and one of the Earth's poles. Does that mean that distances don't really exist?

Don't forget, creatures on the dark side of your tide-locked planet, living in perpetual near-darkness, probably wouldn't evolve eyes. They couldn't see; if so, how would they perceive distance, and if they couldn't, wouldn't that, by your own logic, mean that distances don't exist?

It is simply the expression of a unit that we have conveniently used since 'time' imemorial because of the physical properties of the planet we live on. No more no less. The light from the sun does not rely on the passage of time to reach Earth, it gets here regardless of whatever unit we choose to measure......due to its physical and chemical properties only.

Light is electromagnetic radiation. It does not have chemical properties.

The whole concept of a timeless universe is anathema to current theoretical scientists, who fear the consequences of such a beast.

OK, so how would a timeless universe begin function?
How do you account for the fact that objects and systems pass from one state into another (ie. change) without invoking the presence of time, a property of the universe as fundamental as length, width and height?

[Ratmick]

The metre was defined, completely arbitrarily, by the French as being 1/10,000 of the distance between the Equator and one of the Earth's poles. Does that mean that distances don't really exist?

Mate, you're out by a factor of 1000 unless you meant kilometre:

The metre, or meter (US), is a measure of length. It is the basic unit of length in the metric system and in the International System of Units (SI), used around the world for general and scientific purposes. Historically, the metre was defined by the French Academy of Sciences as 1/10,000,000 of the distance from the equator to the north pole through Paris. Now, it is defined by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures as the distance travelled by light in absolute vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second. This is approximately the distance from floor to hip bone on the average barefoot man.

...no more arbitrary by the way that it's current definition:

1/299,792,458 of the distance light travels in a vacuum in one second

[Barrabob]

I've ridden with my good mate Barrabob more then all ya's & theres NO WAY he's ever gunna trouble the sound of light. Even with him & the Barra Strapped to F1 11.

Watch out you cheeky little bugger that barra gets better with age and a bit of cash chucked at it.

Back to the off topic discussion would the light flowing backwards pool in the headlight reflecter and melt the sucker.

[I-K]

The metre was defined, completely arbitrarily, by the French as being 1/10,000 of the distance between the Equator and one of the Earth's poles. Does that mean that distances don't really exist?

Mate, you're out by a factor of 1000 unless you meant kilometre

Gah! Well, shave my nutsack and call me a porn star... yes, I did leave out an order of magnitude or three.

...no more arbitrary by the way that it's current definition:

1/299,792,458 of the distance light travels in a vacuum in one second

Well, the second is defined as the length of time in which a caesium-137 maser completes a given number (of the order of 12 billion or so) of oscillations.

Units can be as arbitrary as you like, so long as they're precisey defined and what they measure is something physically relevant.

[Gosling1]

...So good that you don't rebut any of them directly...

well actually I have, but you may have missed the point a bit. Its not about beating your chest and vociferously declaring that you have the only correct opinion, it is about considering the possibility that there may be an alternative answer .....

but night on the dark side of the moon is, and always will be, eternal.

No, it isn't. The moon, including its dark side, has a 28-(Earth)-day diurnal cycle. Think it through.

It has a dark side that is eternally dark, regardless of any rotation around the Earth. This is the point. The 28-*day* cycle (there is that concept again ) is somewhat irrelevant , however it does provide a pointless diversion from the topic at hand

..Your previous example of a tide-locked Earth is better, in this instance.

. Huh ? a tide-locked earth ?? when did I use that as an example ? You've lost me there mate ..

There is no 'time' on the dark side of the moon... nothing to measure and thereby construct a convenient method of measuring 'time' as we understand it.

what about the movement of stars?

what about it ? To suggest that the almost infinitesimal movement of the stars to an observer on the dark side of the moon could be used to fashion a relevant unit of measurement for that observer is laughable " Did you see that shooting star last millenia ?? It was grouse !! "

...Could a primitive civilisation without experience of daylight not construct an hourglass, or invent the toothed gear ?

.

Of course not !! They would have, as you say, no experience of daylight, and would not be able to *see* in order to construct a dayglass, or a yearglass, or a whatever-you-want-to-call-it glass, or invent a toothed gear ( How is this in any way relevant to a discussion about the concept of time ?)

Nothing can change this, and if you could imagine an Earth with constant sunlight on one side, then the whole concept of 'time' falls on its arse.

...You still haven't explained *why* the passage of night into day and back again should be the only way intelligent creatures should perceive time.

Yes I have. Its the *only* way that intelligent creatures can perceive 'time'. If you have another look at the earlier explanation, the whole concept of 'time' is rooted in the day-follows-night transition and this has given rise to the subsequent convenient 'packaging' of time into little pieces that carbon-based life forms like us can understand, like hours and minutes.

...Why shouldn't awareness of the passage of time follow simply from the perception that things change? How, without moving through time, did I come to move from typing the word "change" followed by a question mark to typing a second question mark at the end of this sentence?

Answer that.

Easy. You haven't moved anywhere. You haven't done anything other than had some minute changes occur to your life-form, which *you* measure in minutes and seconds.......your life-form has transformed by a minute amount, and is closer to death than it was a few beats of your heart ago. Thats all.

8 minutes for light to travel from the sun to the earth - it could be 25 zoobots for all its relevance.

..... You're making the same point I made in my previous post and you're continuing to use the arbitrary nature of a unit chosen to measure a quantity as an argument for the quantity itself being arbitrary.

So you agree then that the nature of the unit of time is arbitrary ? Good, I am glad you have come to your senses.......

....The metre was defined, completely arbitrarily, by the French as being 1/10,000 of the distance between the Equator and one of the Earth's poles. Does that mean that distances don't really exist?

This unit is not arbitrary at all !!! It is a defined unit of length measured in exactly the manner you have described !! How is is that a distance of 1/10,000,000 the distance between the equator and the pole be an *arbitrary* measurement ????

don't forget, creatures on the dark side of your tide-locked planet, living in perpetual near-darkness, probably wouldn't evolve eyes. They couldn't see; if so, how would they perceive distance, and if they couldn't, wouldn't that, by your own logic, mean that distances don't exist?

- now that is just silly. Even a blind trog can walk back to his cave from the closest river, and the concept of 'distance' would be apparent and real to him....

It is simply the expression of a unit that we have conveniently used since 'time' imemorial because of the physical properties of the planet we live on. No more no less. The light from the sun does not rely on the passage of time to reach Earth, it gets here regardless of whatever unit we choose to measure......due to its physical and chemical properties only.

...Light is electromagnetic radiation. It does not have chemical properties.

It does, the fact that you may not be aware of them does not mean that they don't exist.

The whole concept of a timeless universe is anathema to current theoretical scientists, who fear the consequences of such a beast.

..OK, so how would a timeless universe begin function?
How do you account for the fact that objects and systems pass from one state into another (ie. change) without invoking the presence of time, a property of the universe as fundamental as length, width and height?

A timeless universe has *NO* beginning or ending - that is the whole point . It does not 'begin' to function, any more than it 'ceases' to function. Accounting for objects passing from one state to another has already been addressed, however I will re-state that the physical composition of carbon-based life forms (like us) is the reason for change, it has *nothing* to do with some abstract concept called *time*.

The only reason that *time* is considered a fundamental property of the Universe is because the alternative is too horrendous for most free-thinking carbon-based life forms to contemplate.

BTW thanks for the brain-food - Its always good to get the cerebellum out of first gear !!

[HemiDuty]

May as well keep this off topic, as I don't think the Sweet F.A. (pun most certainly intended) is coming back to drag it kicking and screaming back into a bike mechanical discussion. So Quantum Mechanics it is, mixed with Classical Physics of course.

Son-of-Goose, I hate to say it, but you are wrong on this one.

I don't really have time to get right into all of it (coz I need to crap), but some of what you consider opinion is actually fact, and the facts are time is a physical part of the universe, no matter if this is desired by certain indivdiuals or not.

It has a dark side that is eternally dark, regardless of any rotation around the Earth.

Actually what it has is a side that always faces us, due to it's Axial spin being synchronus with it's orbit around Earth. So what that means is it doesn't really have a dark side, but a 'far' side. When you see a thin crescent moon, most of the far side is actually in sunlight, and you are looking at the night side. Picture it this way - When the moon is between Earth and the sun, we still see the same side of it, but which side is facing the sun, and therefore in the sunlight?

the whole concept of 'time' is rooted in the day-follows-night transition

More to the point, the our primary concept of time comes from this cycle, but it is not the only one available to us, and if it were not present we would have simply used other ways to measure the passage of time. Without a fundamental, rudimentary understanding of time not much in the way of intelligence would be possible.

How is is that a distance of 1/10,000,000 the distance between the equator and the pole be an *arbitrary* measurement ????

It is still arbitrary, despite being a pleasant and 'clean' number. It is still just something that someone decided to 'pick' as a measurement of distance. Just like someone decided to 'pick' 1/24th of a day-night cycle to be a good length of time for an hour.
There is no absolute unit of distance or time, but they both absolutely exist, each as much as the other. So we have to pick something as a 'yardstick', hence the metre, the lightyear, the second and the century.

It (light) does (have chemical properties), the fact that you may not be aware of them does not mean that they don't exist.

Well, it certainly has both wave and particle properties anyway.

The only reason that *time* is considered a fundamental property of the Universe is because the alternative is too horrendous for most free-thinking carbon-based life forms to contemplate

This is the part that needs to be addressed. It is simply not true. There is no conspiracy. There simply is time as a dimension of this Universe. You can argue for or against the possibility of more than 4 dimensions, but not less. There is no alternative. The above argument is no different than saying there is no existance. Yet here we are typing on the internet, proving that there must be existance. To even question the existance of existance actually proves existance exists. And time is in the same boat. The fact that even just something, somewhere, changed once no matter how long it took proves the existance of time. And we prove it all the time by changing our universe, and observing change.


Anyway, enough of this. On to more important questions. Which is your favourite MM movie, 1 or 2? I used to always like 2 more, but now I am not sure. Of course 3 doesn't even rate a mention, it's like favouring Return of the Jedi Ewok Care Bears over The Empire Strikes Back or something........

[tape]

I'm not getting involved in the measurement argument cos that's work.

But I just think this thread and it's sister thread is piss funny.

Thankyou and Good DAY

[Gosling1]

... On to more important questions. Which is your favourite MM movie, 1 or 2? I used to always like 2 more, but now I am not sure. Of course 3 doesn't even rate a mention, it's like favouring Return of the Jedi Ewok Care Bears over The Empire Strikes Back or something........

MM1 is the favourite, MM2 is OK in a kinda bogus way, and I am very proud to state that I have *never* watched one nano-second of MM3.

Had a great ride with TeamCrim this afternoon. Met him about 4.30pm, went for a ride for a good 20 minutes, and then got home about 6.00pm. It was a really nice time out riding, and I can't wait until next time.

[aardvark]

I like Golden North Rum and Raisin ice cream.

[Gosling1]

I like Golden North Rum and Raisin ice cream.

as a snack between Krispy Kremes eh ?

[aardvark]

Oh, that's it. I did have something to on topic to post in relation to this off topic stuff.

I also have to disagree with you Gos.

If I were to be locked in a dark room for the rest of my life, I would still be able to understand the concept of time. I wouldn't be able to measure it accuratley, but I'd have an understanding of it.

What about people that are born blind? They don't see daylight. They live on a world of eternal darkness, yet they still understand that what happens between now and now is time.

I think you're confusing being able to measure time with the actual existence of time itself.

Besides, at the end of the day, we really have no fucken idea. Maybe Mr Adams was right and we are swanning around the universe on the back of a turtle. Some might say we don't really know what is going on, but we can make an educated guess. I say it's hardly an educated guess when those that don't know what is going on are the ones doing the educating.

And I still like this icecream!!!