The measurement of time

[de-rwd;de-stop;de-fwd]

Was wondering how time is measured and how it works on a scale within our reality.

Also, can mathematics account for the measurement of time? without being intwined into space?

Also exclude any chronometry or chronology...

What im looking for is the mathematics for explaining time as done with nature, can it be done?

 

[vodkafan]

Was wondering how time is measured and how it works on a scale within our reality.

Also, can mathematics account for the measurement of time? without being intwined into space?

Also exclude any chronometry or chronology...

What im looking for is the mathematics for explaining time as done with nature, can it be done?

Time as we measure it (seconds, minutes, hours etc) is an artificial, arbitrary human construct. Don't really know what question you are asking?

 

[GLaDOS]

A real question for you is whether there is something which can be measured which has no location associated with it. That would be the only thing not intwined with space. Even with time travel you want time for the space around your body to be different than the space everywhere else. Mathematics of time travel probably isn't around yet, because people are still thinking in 3-4 dimensions. Humans live in 3D which has unique properties, like the cross product. You have to go up to 7D to get another cross product. Maybe that is where you'll find time.

The learning sequence should be: scalars, vectors, quaternions, octonions, sedenions

 

[Darby]

Was wondering how time is measured and how it works on a scale within our reality.

Also, can mathematics account for the measurement of time? without being intwined into space?

Also exclude any chronometry or chronology...

What im looking for is the mathematics for explaining time as done with nature, can it be done?

I'm with vodkafan. I don't know what you're asking here.

If you exclude space (the basis of spacetime which is central to Special and General Relativity), chronology (temporal ordering of events) and chronometry (the science of measuring time) there's not much left to work with. In the real world, as described by Minkowski, space and time aren't simply intertwined - they are inseperable components of a single continuum usually expressed as a 4-vector x,y,z,t in basic relativistic physics.

And remember, mathematics is not physics. Mathematics is the means used by physicists (and scientists in all fields) to express physical concepts in concise short-hand terms using a well defined language. Pure math is meaningless without context, at least in terms of science.

Can you measure time in a way that is not subject to arbitrary terms? Not really. You have to put some sort of scale on the measurement and give it a label. Can you measure time in such a way that anyone in the universe with sufficient knowledge of physics and math (language independent) can understand and agree with you on the outcome? Yes. As far as we know, after 95 years of experimental verification the speed of light in a vacuum is fixed (invariant) in all frames of reference everywhere in the universe. Traveling at the speed of light a certain fixed distance (as measured by the person traveling at the speed of light) yields a fixed interval of time that is universally invariant. By substitution one can express time as units of distance and distance as units of time. (This is actually a gedankenexperiment because the geometry of spacetime would be so warped for the light-speed traveler that the entire universe would appear as a single point...it would be somewhat difficult to make any measurements. This is how a photon "views" the world. But the concept holds and expressing it in those terms still yields a consistent result that is frame independent.)

 

[Syzygy]

Hi, Darby.

[...]Humans live in 3D [...]

"Einstein called the fourth dimension time, but noted that time is inseparable from space."

Welcome, Vodkafan. Did you know, in Russian, vodka means water?

Was wondering how time is measured and how it works on a scale within our reality.

Also, can mathematics account for the measurement of time? without being intwined into space?

Also exclude any chronometry or chronology...

What im looking for is the mathematics for explaining time as done with nature, can it be done?

Greetings to de-rwd;de-stop;de-fwd--
to de jus be dude?

My response to GLaDOS applies to your second question.

What I found most surprising in “Time in Physics” is that “both Galileo and Newton and most people up until the 20th century thought that time was the same for everyone everywhere.” Because as many volumes have been writ on time in poetry as prose, I figured peoples’ experience of it varied more than by zone. To the exclusion of chronometers/time pieces, see "Markers of time" in the above article; to be more precise about how you'd like to measure time naturally, see "Regularities of nature" therein.

Btw, the section on quantum mechanics leaves off where “Quantum Experiment Shows How Time ‘Emerges’ from Entanglement” takes up: time is an emergent phenomenon that is a side effect of quantum entanglement, say physicists. And they have the first experimental results to prove it.

 

[Jcpo]

Since 1967 we define 1s as 9 192 631 770 radiations of an atom of Cesium. (at 0 Kelvin and without motion since 1997)

That's the base for atomic clocks. It works with microwaves.

Now there are optical clocks with Ytterbium and Strontium atoms.
More precise, with higher frequency.

They must send an Atomic clock to Mir in 2016, read more : Request Rejected

Before the second was defined as 1/86400 of a day or the second division of an hour (1/60 x 1/60 x 1/24= 1/86400).

It's approximately the normal heartbeat.

And to finish, that is the most precisely defined unit of International System.

 

[vodkafan]

Thank you for the welcome Syzygy. No I didn't know that about vodka!
I like all these answers. This is the sort of theoretical time travel I want to talk about. I think I may be happy here.
I spent a while on Paranormalis. 'nuff said.

 

[Syzygy]

Jcpo,
I think measuring seconds in heartbeats
is just the thing for de 'jus be' dude.

Vodkafan,
Being that Jcpo is French, the emoticon
might have to say it all. You're welcome,
though "I think I may be happy here"
sounds tentative. (The last guy who
claimed to have found a new home here
must've been a wanderer).

 

[vodkafan]

Happiness, like time, is all relative, of course.....

 

[Darby]

Hi, Darby.


"Einstein called the fourth dimension time, but noted that time is inseparable from space."

Hermann Minkowski was one of Einstein's professors and they worked together on relativity theory. He was a mathematical physicist. Einstein originally expressed Special Relativity in terms of algebra. Minkowski reformulated it in terms of geometry. This is what Minkowski said on the subject of spacetime:

The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They are radical. Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality. (He said this during a speech he gave in September, 1908 for the Assembly of German Natural Scientists and Physicians in Cologne, Germany)

 

[Darby]

Since 1967 we define 1s as 9 192 631 770 radiations of an atom of Cesium. (at 0 Kelvin and without motion since 1997)

That's the base for atomic clocks. It works with microwaves.

Now there are optical clocks with Ytterbium and Strontium atoms.
More precise, with higher frequency.

If we read his post correctly he was looking for a definition that was frame invariant and not so arbitrary. The "1997" definition that you added tries to take away the frame dependent problem by expressing the temperature as 0 Kelvin
(which makes it unnecessary to add "without motion"). It just means taking the count in a rest frame thus avoiding the effects introduced by any relative motions or energetic field effects present. In the real world those effects are always present. A temperature of 0 Kelvin isn't possible because it implies the absolute absence of all motion, energetic fields, subatomic particles, mass and energy. There wouldn't be any Cs-133 present to measure.

 

[vodkafan]

Hermann Minkowski was one of Einstein's professors and they worked together on relativity theory. He was a mathematical physicist. Einstein originally expressed Special Relativity in terms of algebra. Minkowski reformulated it in terms of geometry. This is what Minkowski said on the subject of spacetime:

Much more importantly he had such a cool scientist name too. Did you look over my other post about my theoretical time machine Darby? I would really like to get your opinion on it if possible.

 

[Jcpo]

If we read his post correctly he was looking for a definition that was frame invariant and not so arbitrary. The "1997" definition that you added tries to take away the frame dependent problem by expressing the temperature as 0 Kelvin
(which makes it unnecessary to add "without motion"). It just means taking the count in a rest frame thus avoiding the effects introduced by any relative motions or energetic field effects present. In the real world those effects are always present. A temperature of 0 Kelvin isn't possible because it implies the absolute absence of all motion, energetic fields, subatomic particles, mass and energy. There wouldn't be any Cs-133 present to measure.

You're right !

But can't we achieve to have a T° of 0K with an isolated system ? Or 0k is the T° when electrons stop to orbit ?
(Anyway, relatively to us they don't move so this is our time no ?)

 

[Darby]

You're right !

But can't we achieve to have a T° of 0K with an isolated system ? Or 0k is the T° when electrons stop to orbit ?
(Anyway, relatively to us they don't move so this is our time no ?)

That's a problem, isn't it? How does one both "isolate" a system and simultaneously take measurements of the system?

Strictly speaking, temperature is a measurement of the (kinetic) energy transferred by subatomic particles, atoms or molecules colliding with each other. 0 Kelvin is accomplished by having particles at absolute rest. That means both internal and external motion of atoms. Atoms cannot have zero internal motion even if they are completely ionized and have no electrons. At a minimum there must be internal force exchange particles constantly exchanged between neutrons and protons (the Strong Force). That's what binds the nucleus together. If the Strong Force suddenly disappeared the protons would repel each other and fly away at a good portion of the speed of light. In fact the quarks making up both the neutrons and protons would no longer be bound into particles as they too are bound by the Strong Force. The particles would end up as a quark soup.

Beyond that there you still have two problems that we cannot overcome. They are the (Heisenberg) Uncertainty Principle of quantum mechanics and the Observer (Measurement) Effect. The two are similar but not the same thing.

The Uncertainty Principle states that the more you know about one aspect of a subatomic particle the less that you can know about some other aspect of the particle's description. An example is position and momentum. The more precisely you attempt to measure the position the less you can determine about the momentum (mass x velocity). This has nothing to do with better instruments to make measurements. It is part of the overall description of our universe and the laws of physics that forms it.

The Observer Effect states that in order to measure a system (or particle) you have to physically interact with the system. You touch the system with a ruler, scale or photons of light. That changes the system and there's no getting around this fact. Measuring a system requires an energy transfer.

Thus, in the first case 0 Kelvin is prevented by the fundamental laws of quantum physics and in the second case 0 Kelvin is prevented from being measured because you end up adding energy to the system in order to observe it.