Re: Time is an illusion

In sci.physics, macromitch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<macromitch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote
on 31 May 2005 15:43:45 -0700
<1117579425.895241.123540@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> Time is a measurable physical quantity.

What, precisely, are we measuring when we measure time?

Granted, it's clear that SR makes some definitive predictions
here, regarding time slowing down at high speed (relative to
something else). GR has similar predictions in a high gravitational
field. However, one could make the case that what we are measuring
is not time, but some vibrational artifact dependent thereon
(e.g., an atom wiggling at a certain frequency, or a photon
of a certain energy level emanating from a transition.

I don't quite know what to make of it, and it's consistent either
way anyway so my philosophizing makes little difference. But I
don't think we're measuring time directly.

> It has substance. It's not an illusion.
> It can be slowed down.

I'm not sure what it means to "slow down" time other than the
elementary observation that we can observe others' time to
be slowed down, if the others are moving with respect to,
or gravitationally more stressed than, us.

>
> Show differently.
>

Not sure I can beyond the metaphysics above -- and the math
works either way.

As for lunchtime...well, that depends on one's schedule. :-)

--
#191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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