Time

I've been thinking about time. Now this is a real "why is the sky chartreuse" kind of question.

Why is it that we can move freely in the primary three spatial dimensions (x, y and z), but we can only "move" in one direction when it comes to time? We have 24 hours in a day, but what if the Gumbeble from the planet Clarion have a day that is equivalent to 13.9416 of our hours. That's a "day" to them?

Time is, in my opinion, nothing more than an arbitrary measurement used to track events. What if time isn't real? For that matter, the way we measure space (meters, feet, etc) is also an arbitrarty measurement. A bunch of people got together, put some marks on a stick, and agreed it was a measurement of distance. So is space not real, as well? This cannot be true (on a strictly physical sense, not metaphysical or spiritual), as I can touch this keyboard and see what I'm typing on the screen. Time cannot be seen or touched. None of our five senses perceive time--only physical things such as aromatic airborne molecules (smells), colliding photons (sights), etc. All physical things that can be measured in some physical way.

Time is completely different. We can't sense it. We have a biological clock, but is that a "sense," like I can feel how cool the rain is today? And it is the only known dimension we cannot travel through. I'd really like to ask a prominent physicist, how do we know that time is a real thing, like my computer is "real?" What if time is strictly a concept? A creation of our minds? Or just some way to relate to events?

Okay, just for shits and giggles, let's say that time is NOT a real dimension. Wow. Thinking like that made my brain hurt. Anyway. As unscientific as this statement is, there have been cases of people seeing into the "future." But, if we did know the future, we can do things now that would help prevent the foreseen future from happening. Now, if time were a dimension like left, right, up, down, etc, whatever is in the "future" should be fixed, just like things in the past; and just like I know my car is still parked in the same spot outside (I hope). But when we make a change in the now, the future is different. Could this be termed "temporal inertia"? A force was exerted--us doing something different--and something was changed--the future. Just like that guy out there exerting force on the car door, hotwiring the ignition, and driving off with my truck. It ain't there no more, buddy.

Hmm. As I think on this, I just proved that time does have something in common with space, and things that occupy space. It can be moved. I guess that would make it more real. Just because we have an arbitrary measurement for "time" doesn't make time arbitrary. I guess that's where I got mixed up. We have arbitrary measurements for space, and space is pretty real...on the surface, anyway.

But the concept of temporal inertia is interesting. And being able to foresee the future indicates some way of sensing time. And we sense the past using memory.

Now here's another interesting thing. "Memory" is nothing more than a bunch of chemicals in our brain arranged so that we have this thing called a "memory," right? Just like neurons fire when we see a light, or hear music, etc. Do future events register chemically in our brains (for us prophets, anyway) also? So when we die, these chemicals that create memory are gone, and so is the memory.

But the light we saw may still be there. And there will always be a trace of that light in the universe. And the sound waves will continue to travel. And this plasic keyboard sure will be around (maybe in a landfill) for thousands of years. Particles that made these things will always exist. Things we had once sensed with our senses.

But not memory. It's gone. Pfft. And, I guess, our futures once we're dead. But what happens to the memory and futures? Like the light and sound and plasic keyboard, it must remain in some form. It is a known law of physics that nothing is created or destroyed, in the whole mass-energy equation. So the memories MUST still exist somehow.

You say, yes, as chemicals. No, that was what was used to REGISTER the memory, just like the neurons were used when we saw the light and typed on the keyboard. The light and keyboard are real. So must the memory be, right?

Of course, now I see I'm arguing that time is real, and events are like physical objects that can be moved. They cannot be moved in the past though, right? Unlike the truck which is now on I-95 by now, the event of the truck being stolen is still fixed in time. It cannot be moved, unlike future events.

So there are two things. One, you cannot move through time (except forward and at a steady rate, unlike space), and you can only affect one direction of the dimension known as time. Note that I'm ignoring Einstein saying that the faster you move, the more time slows down. Okay... time still moves at a steady rate if you're still moving at half the speed of light.

...

Our movement through space affects our movement forward through time. Dammit. The more I think about this, the more I come to Einstein's conclusions. I need a drink. So, therefore, space and time are bound together. Should x, y and z be considered different dimensions? Is left, right, up, back, etc, simply another arbitrary measurement of space (let alone meters, feet, etc)? If this is so, each infinitessimal piece of space is bound to its own infinitessimal piece of time.

Hence why they call it "space-time."

Something still doesn't quite add up. I'm still stuck on how we can move freely through space but not through time; and yet space and time are bound together. I need to step back and think about this.

Yeah, I'm posting this rambling, anyway. Maybe someone can help me out with this.