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Time To Pause And Ask A Question Of Relativity

Xanatic,

If the Planck length is the smallest we can measude than the only way we can go smaller is by assuming fractional Planks i.e Plank/(x)

The Planck length is the scale at which classical ideas about gravity and space-time cease to be valid, and quantum effects dominate. This is the 'quantum of length', the smallest measurement of length with any meaning. And roughly equal to 1.6 x 10-35 m or about 10-20 times the size of a proton.

Note,

That reads as ' times ten to the minus 25 times' the size of a proton.

Which I take to be twenty five orders of magnitude smaller than a proton.
 
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This thread makes me feel like I'm in one of those trains of thoughts I used to have when I was younger, where I'd start to think about how long a second takes and even by the time I say "now" it's no longer now because of the time that has passed since I started to say it etc.

Was is this type of "now"? (see below)

 
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Was is this type of "now"? (see below)


Haha I've never seen that film before! That about sums it up, though, yeah :D



Odd little synchronicity, I was just looking up to see if there was an anniversary edition of Spaceballs, not 5 minutes ago (disclaimer: I'm not on this site nearly often enough).

But this whole thread brought to mind this:
I still haven't wrapped my mind around it.

Nice synchronicity :)

Hmmm... I can't wrap my head around that either (but I shall probably end up pondering it all day when I'm supposed to be working).
Something to do with relativity I think... :atom: On the one hand it makes sense, but then it doesn't... gaaaah! Definitely the sort of train of thought I was talking about!
 
So would it be fair to say that each individual has a sort of codex which processes information (the perception of time) in various ways.
["Spacetime" is a mathematically modeled abstraction rather than a literal description of our universe's most essential fabric.]
I think that sentence covers the imaginary "realness" in the realm of actual realness - must be something to do with when we ask ourselves what's out there beyond that... and beyond that infinitum.
 
Interesting conversation. I took physics throughout high school and managed to get 70-75%, so some of this I kind of understand, but I'm reading slowly to see if I follow. I read "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" and if my high school physics teachers could have explained some of the stuff the way Gary Zukav did I would have understood things a lot better.

Time is a relative measurement. Our personal perceptions of time are always based on how we've chosen to measure it. We can use a calendar to break it into years/months/days or use a clock to break it into hours/minutes/seconds. The scientific community has physical means to measure time in nanoseconds. Our society (I think that I'm using the correct term) has also chosen to view time in a linear fashion, so we view events as past, present and future.
 
This thread makes me feel like I'm in one of those trains of thoughts I used to have when I was younger, where I'd start to think about how long a second takes and even by the time I say "now" it's no longer now because of the time that has passed since I started to say it etc. ...
(Emphasis added)

This last bit illustrates another quirky aspect of the difference between time-as-whatever-it-may-be versus time-as-we-perceive-it.

You don't consciously experience an event (e.g., a discernible new state of the environment) at the instant it occurs. There's a delay between the point when a novel light arrangement strikes your retina and the point when this new state of affairs registers in your state of awareness. This delay is unavoidable, because it reflects the course of your internal physical and relational changes entailed in processing the novel light input into a recognized phenomenal event.

In other words ... What you are accustomed to treating as your view of the world "now" is actually and inescapably whatever's visible in your rear view mirror.
 
Time is a relative measurement. Our personal perceptions of time are always based on how we've chosen to measure it. We can use a calendar to break it into years/months/days or use a clock to break it into hours/minutes/seconds. The scientific community has physical means to measure time in nanoseconds. Our society (I think that I'm using the correct term) has also chosen to view time in a linear fashion, so we view events as past, present and future.


Yes. And of course, and although we've chosen to measure it as 24 hours in a day, we could have just as easily (or perhaps not, because there are reasons why we've chosen the system we have) could have ended up with, for example, 12 'doolywats' in a day, instead.

There's a good explanation of why we have the system we have, here:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/11/15/3364432.htm


It is also worth mentioning - as I think it's relevant here - that (aside from time dilation, where the closer to the speed of light one goes, the slower time seems to pass), one's perception of time can also change here on Earth - e.g. when people have reported time seeming to slow down in times of great peril such as car accidents. I have had this happen to me (although it wasn't in a particularly perilous situation) and I have never really forgotten the feeling.
 
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