What is Time and Space

So you are saying that an object existing prior may experience time in a different manner, of course, "experience" suggests consciousness I suppose, but for sake of argument, the object's experience of time if it could measure at that point would be different and thus measure the age of the universe differently assuming that was possible?Just trying to get that right?Sort of ties back into the OP. If a creature was essentially a sentient photon, would it still be at all points of it's trajectory without any time passing, but superpositional in it's presence at all points?Maybe that's not relevant to the age of the universe, but it is hard to get the mind around. If that was the case, from a photon's perspective, what we call time does not exist.is that right, or am I misreading something?

I read your posts this morning and I have been mulling over the idea the concept of superpositional. I had been able to get as far as the idea that light functions outside of distance and time but I hadn't made that additional step that a photon could be anywhere and everywhere at any time. Curiouser and curiouser!!I don't understand the concept of more than 4 dimensions. It seems to me that if light is outside of time and location then it isn't functioning in the 4 dimensions that we function in. Is light an additional dimension?

Light exists in spacetime, it's just that from its point of view spacetime wouldn't be divided into space and time and would appear as static spacetime.*

It seems to me that if static spacetime means that time flow is zero then it has become space. If distance, (which is really space) is zero it seems to put us right back where we started, which is something outside of our 4 dimensions. If there is no space and no time, how can it be static spacetime?In the same vain I got to thinking about gravity. Gravity acts instantly over time as it is a field. (I hope I got his right.) As gravity acts instantly over time and space is it possible again that this is another dimension, and what time is to space, light is to gravity?I realize that I have very little idea of what I'm talking about, as I only have a minimal grasp of very basic concepts, and no knowledge of the math behind it. I'm just trying to piece together the information that I'm gleaning from this forum and the books I'm reading. I apologise to those of you who do actually know what you're talking about, but this is a great way to learn. This message has been edited by GDR, 08-03-2005 04:26 PM

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

That's a pretty heavy thought there all on it's own, but seems correct.So when a photon passes through spot in the universe, the photon, from it's perspective, is still at that spot, but since time is static, that spot is also seen as not having the photon since we can observe that, meaning the past, present, and future are all "now" from the photon's perspective, and space can sort of be layered out instead of arranged by time, from that perspective?Intreresting.I think I am getting it. Sort of reminds me of the non-linear beings in the worm-hole on Deep Space Nine a few years back

Well, quantum properties do suggest a deeper structure of the universe than 4D (3D and time).There is something called entanglement, which Einstein for example thought had to be but dismissed it as spooky action at a distance. What occurs is that particles can become entangled, such as a pair of photons and even some larger objects have been shown to become entangled, and when this occurs affecting one will automatically affect the other, regardless of the distance.There is work and speculation that this process can be used to develop quantum computers, which we won't get into now, but since the action is instantaneous, there is either superluminal transference of information, or the objects are somehow non-separable by a structure within the universe not yet observed.So light and perhaps all things do exist, it seems, in states or dimensions not normally considered classical space-time.But maybe someone else can say it better here?

I was thinking of entanglement as well when I was reading about gravity affecting things instantly over space. In the case of gravity science has figured its a field but it doesn't seem to be suggest that entanglement involves a field.One thing I don't understand about the theories on gravity is this. Science says that in a magnetic field information passes at the speed of light. Why in a gravity field does information pass instantly?The thing that has me puzzled though is that although they haven't found them it is thought that there is a gravitational particle called gravitons. Wouldn't this mean then that a graviton would have to move at infinite speed?

Sorry, haven't got time to stop for a long post... but gravity does not pass information instanteously (or superluminally as we would say.) The graviton is massless and thus moves at the speed of light, as does the photon. There are cranks out there that would claim that gravity "acts" "instantaneously" or at some very high multiple of c. Neither of these concepts actually have any sensible meaning and just reveal the crank nature of their proponents

In "The Fabric of the Cosmos" Greene says that if the moon were to disappear we would see the gravitational affects on the Earth immediately whereas we would have to wait for a second and a half to see the light disappear. (Pg 63) Is this wrong or am I misinterpretting it?

GDR, cavediver is correct from what I have read. Gravity is not thought to act instanteneously. It is true that for a long time I don't think gravitons had really been observed or detected, and that this may still be the case.Truthfully, I have never found all of the explanations for gravity fully satisfactory, but you'd have to ask cavediver or soku about it to get more understanding.

My problem is I know that both Greene and cavediver know what they're talking about, so I'm wondering what it is that I'm not getting as it looks to me as if their positions are contradictory.

There still isn't any evidence for the graviton, so I wouldn't really rely on it as an explanation of gravity for now.
(In fact the graviton might be just us attempting to give everything a particle, which mightn't apply to gravity.)The best way to think of gravity is still as curved spacetime.
Although most of the effect of gravity come from the curvature of time rather than space.This message has been edited by Son Goku, 08-04-2005 02:27 PM

GDR, as Son Goku points out, the jury is still out on gravity. In a debate here, someone told me I was out of date and that in the past few years, gravitons were discovered. I had my doubts, but didn't delve enough into the claims. I suspect soku is correct and that gravitons have not been discovered.it is odd that often people will talk about basic realities like gravity as a given, prefectly understood, when really all we have is the effect of gravity to measure. I don't think we know what it really is yet.This message has been edited by randman, 08-04-2005 05:24 PMThis message has been edited by randman, 08-04-2005 05:25 PM

I posted a comment to cavediver that maybe you'd like to take a stab at. If objects should really be viewed as streaks through space-time, then could something affect the object as a whole, say, cause a vibration or wobble?What that would mean is that there would be causal effects backwards in time?I think that's reasonable and that we see some evidence for this. It may be small, very small, even, but regardless the longer an object is (the more time elapses), such changes would increase in size.I beleive science will discover this as a well-established fact.Superluminal action via entanglement already, imo, deals with this, and as Brukner and Vidral showed fairly recently, particles can become entangled even over segments of time.But the data is still in the early stages or maybe not even that is verifiable, but still believe this is what we will discover.thoughts?
from someone more educated in this than I am?

Vanilla (as Einstein formulated it) General Relativity wouldn't allow it.
Extended General Relativity may allow for a bit of it, due to the possible existence of time machines.However, Quantum Physics may allow for all of it.
John G. Cramer, a professor at the university of Washington, has similar idea of communication between the future and past, resulting in a non-static past.
Or at least a more "involved" past. In a sense, the past doesn't sit there twiddling its thumbs.You can read about it here:
Alternate View Column AV-16