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Time Stops . . . . . . . . . Or Not

Skwim

Veteran Member


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father time is dead.png

If absolutely everything in the universe, from supernovae to subatomic particles, stopped moving for a minute (and no, don't ask how it could happen or be measured) would time have stopped for that minute?
Would it continue if one singular subatomic particle kept moving? If so, could time then be said to be dependent on the movement of such a tiny, unexceptional object?

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Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
I'm no physicist, but isn't time a measure of change? So, if nothing at all changed, then time would stop.
 

McBell

Resident Sourpuss
I'm no physicist, but isn't time a measure of change? So, if nothing at all changed, then time would stop.
I am also no physicist.
However, my understanding of time seems to be in agreement with your understanding of time.
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
I'm inclined to say time would stop.
Subatomic particles? Do they "move," in the commonly understood sense?
 

Heyo

Veteran Member
If absolutely everything in the universe, from supernovae to subatomic particles, stopped moving for a minute (and no, don't ask how it could happen or be measured) would time have stopped for that minute?
I do ask how it could be measured. Because that is the question that has to be asked. You need some frame of reference, an "outside".
Suppose you could travel in a spaceship at lightspeed. You wouldn't feel time. Only the "outside" would. Your watch tells you, no times has elapsed but now it is 4.3 years later and you are in an orbit around Proxima b. Did time stop? In your spaceship?
 

Twilight Hue

Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
If absolutely everything in the universe, from supernovae to subatomic particles, stopped moving for a minute (and no, don't ask how it could happen or be measured) would time have stopped for that minute?
Would it continue if one singular subatomic particle kept moving? If so, could time then be said to be dependent on the movement of such an tiny, unexceptional object?

.
Technically time is eternal. A sliding scale would be more accurate. That has a stop and start. When you think about it, the time line is infinite. At what point does infinity have a beginning and an end? Even if things were frozen solid and nothing moved whatsoever, one could say there's still a duration of time although you probably wouldn't be able to tell if you were not around at the start of the duration nor the end of the duration. It's probably why we have so much difficulty.
 

Nimos

Well-Known Member
If absolutely everything in the universe, from supernovae to subatomic particles, stopped moving for a minute (and no, don't ask how it could happen or be measured) would time have stopped for that minute?
Would it continue if one singular subatomic particle kept moving? If so, could time then be said to be dependent on the movement of such an tiny, unexceptional object?

.
I don't think it would matter since time is relative and always move forward. If you stop moving and stand here on Earth, you are experiencing time differently than me, if I were moving near the speed of light. But that doesn't mean that im experiencing a time stop, but rather its going much slower for me relative to you. So while you have aged 60 years, I might only have aged 5 years once I come back to Earth, depending on the speed and amount of time I have been travelling.

So if you should experience a complete time stop, I think it would have to be the exact opposite, that everything would have to move at the speed of light. But then again might be wrong :D
 

Twilight Hue

Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
I don't think it would matter since time is relative and always move forward. If you stop moving and stand here on Earth, you are experiencing time differently than me, if I were moving near the speed of light. But that doesn't mean that im experiencing a time stop, but rather its going much slower for me relative to you. So while you have aged 60 years, I might only have aged 5 years once I come back to Earth, depending on the speed and amount of time I have been travelling.

So if you should experience a complete time stop, I think it would have to be the exact opposite, that everything would have to move at the speed of light. But then again might be wrong :D
I don't think the age thing means anything.

No matter how fast or slow you go, you will always be the same age as that person on Earth is when you return.
 

Twilight Hue

Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
I tend to think the scientific definition of time is vastly different from the popular chronological definition of time.
 

Maximus

the Confessor
If absolutely everything in the universe, from supernovae to subatomic particles, stopped moving for a minute (and no, don't ask how it could happen or be measured) would time have stopped for that minute?
Would it continue if one singular subatomic particle kept moving? If so, could time then be said to be dependent on the movement of such an tiny, unexceptional object?

.


Define time.
 

ratiocinator

Lightly seared on the reality grill.
If absolutely everything in the universe, from supernovae to subatomic particles, stopped moving for a minute (and no, don't ask how it could happen or be measured) would time have stopped for that minute?

As has already been pointed out, subatomic particles don't really move in the sense of following classical trajectories and the condition of everything being exactly "stopped" is forbidden by the uncertainty principle.

What's perhaps more interesting (Roger Penrose has speculated about this) is if everything eventually decays to massless particles that always travel at light speed, and therefore experience no time, and there is nothing left that would count as a "clock".
 

Howard Is

Lucky Mud
There is no such thing as time. So there is nothing to stop or start.
There is motion, vibration, change. Time is an abstraction which helps us manage and analyse events. It is not an objective phenomenon.
 

ratiocinator

Lightly seared on the reality grill.
No matter how fast or slow you go, you will always be the same age as that person on Earth is when you return.

Well, in the classic twins "paradox" that certainly isn't the case in that the travelling twin will have lived through less time. It's actually as much to do with the relativity of simultaneity as it has to time dilation - which is actually symmetrical, the travelling twin sees time run slower on Earth and well as vice versa.

Of course the relativity of simultaneity is another reason why you couldn't stop everything for a minute - there is no universal concept of a single moment in time for every observer, so you couldn't stop everything in such a way as all observers see everything stopping at the same time...
 

ratiocinator

Lightly seared on the reality grill.
Time is an abstraction which helps us manage and analyse events. It is not an objective phenomenon.

Our best tested theories say that it is exactly as objective and real as space, because they cannot be separated and are, so some extent, interchangeable from the perspectives of different observers.
 

Howard Is

Lucky Mud
Our best tested theories say that it is exactly as objective and real as space, because they cannot be separated and are, so some extent, interchangeable from the perspectives of different observers.

Fair enough.
You could replace ‘time’ with ‘space’ in my post. I don’t think space exists either.
 

Nimos

Well-Known Member
I don't think the age thing means anything.

No matter how fast or slow you go, you will always be the same age as that person on Earth is when you return.
Not sure, I understand what you mean with that?

I mean if the scenario is as explained in the last post, that one stands here on Earth and the other travelling near the speed of light. Then physically one would appear as a 60 years old person and have a body of one of that age as well etc. while the other one would appear as a 5 year old child, if we assume they were born as twins. (Maybe not that extreme in age different)

Time is not just a human invention, that is actually how time works. Which at least to me, makes it the absolute most weirdest thing in the Universe.

 
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Nimos

Well-Known Member
Just got a weird thought, thinking a bit about this :D

We know that the Universe is accelerating in its expansion, due to whatever, lets say dark matter. So what would happen if this keep accelerating closer and closer to the speed light, because as it is accelerating and speed increases, would that not also increase the amount of energy required? But if the expansion is caused by dark energy or whatever, which might be infinite could that then create so much mass and energy in our Universe that it would eventually collapse into a new big bang?

Obviously a whole lot of assumptions and probably wrong statements here. But if one just play with the thought?
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
If absolutely everything in the universe, from supernovae to subatomic particles, stopped moving for a minute (and no, don't ask how it could happen or be measured) would time have stopped for that minute?
Would it continue if one singular subatomic particle kept moving? If so, could time then be said to be dependent on the movement of such an tiny, unexceptional object?

.
Time is something that exists for us because we measure its relationship
with the material world, eg, energy with mass & velocity. If time halted such
that this relationship disappeared (eg, all motion of all things ceased) then
the question of time stopping wouldn't even apply. This is because upon
restarting, we'd never be able to detect that it had ever stopped.
It's akin to asking....
What would we think about our existence if we didn't exist?
 
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