While vacationing in Disney World a few years ago, I saw a guy wearing a shirt that said, "Time is an invention."

The quote, probably written in only capital letters, really impacted me, and I often think of why it offered for such contemplation. That's why I throw around such quick phrases like "measurements of time" here and there in certain posts.

What is your take on this idea ?

If you are interested in "Time" I'd suggest you read Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time

I won't say that I can explain "time' but I did read Hawking's book when it first came out and found it fascinating. I think it is time to read it again.

A review:

"...A Brief History of Time attempts to explain a range of subjects in cosmology, including the Big Bang, black holes, light cones and superstring theory, to the nonspecialist reader. Its main goal is to give an overview of the subject but, unusual for a popular science book, it also attempts to explain some complex mathematics. The author notes that an editor warned him that for every equation in the book the readership would be halved, hence it includes only a single equation: E = mc2. In addition to Hawking's abstinence from equations, the book also simplifies matters by means of illustrations throughout the text, depicting complex models and diagrams.


* 1988. Edition. This edition included an Introduction by Carl Sagan that tells the following story: Sagan was in London for a scientific conference in 1974, and between sessions he wandered into a different room, where a larger meeting was taking place. "I realized that I was watching an ancient ceremony: the investiture of new fellows into the Royal Society, one of the most ancient scholarly organizations on the planet. In the front row, a young man in a wheelchair was, very slowly, signing his name in a book that bore on its earliest pages the signature of Isaac Newton... Stephen Hawking was a legend even then." In his Introduction, Sagan goes on to add that Hawking is the "worthy successor" to Newton and P. A. M. Dirac, both former Lucasian Professors of Mathematics..."

http://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Time-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553380168

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DESIDERATA
"Never argue with an idiot, they drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience"

This will be easier with a glass of wine. So go get one and I will see if I can explain how I understand this. Some physicist out there can rip me to shreads.

I think this comes from two views of time. One being a flow view--there is the past, present and future. It is often analogized to a river. The other view is a more static view. That past, present and future all exist as a landscape and we are just is one part of the landscape. I am not sure, but I think the genesis was at the point in the 20's when scientists started thinking about time as the fourth dimension (Einsteinian). If it is just a dimension, and our three dimensional world is moving through it, then many of our thoughts about time need to change. As an introduction to a fourth dimension read the book FlatLand. It was written about 1885 and talks of a person in a two dimensional world and eventually work up to a four dimensional world. His thoughts are all physical, which makes it easy to understand. Drawing an analogy between a 3D sphere going through a 2D world, Flatlanders would see a circle starting as a dot, growing as a circle, shrinking and disappearing. (Of course it would need to spin for the 2D person to see it as a circle). In a 3D world, a 4D "sphere" passing through our world would be a 3D dot, then a growing sphere that shrinks and disappears. Now if you replace the physical fourth dimension with a non-physical dimension of time, we are only moving in a continuum of time. Theoretically, we could be moving in a line, circle, random pattern or some other 4D pattern.

Our language, lives and everything we do is based on time as a linear thing, since we have no concept of this other dimension. However, if it were another dimension then it would be possible to speed it up, slow it down and make it go backwards... if we were in that fourth dimension. In our 3D world we would really not know if it was speeding up or slowing down, since that would only be referenced in the fourth dimension. Again thinking about the 3D object going through the 2D world. The difference between a perfect sphere and an egg is the consistency of the speed of it transversing the 2D world--the speed only known in the thrid dimention.

So, I think that is where the t-shirt phrase comes from--people not understanding the "landscape" view of time.

Flatland is a very short and fun book. Read it and see what you think.

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As you interpret the title you are correct but, the title is not meant to be taken literally. One of Albert Einstein's greatest insights was realizing that time is relative and Hawking tries to explain that concept in chapter two of his book. The title should probably be A Brief History of the Concept of Time but who am I to tell the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics anything?

BTW, Hawking was appointed in 1979, and intends to retire in September 2009; thereafter he will hold the position of Emeritus Lucasian Professor of Mathematics.

I believe he is the longest living ALS victim in medical history.

You will enjoy the book.

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DESIDERATA
"Never argue with an idiot, they drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience"

But also to inanimate objects. The short explanation: fast-moving objects age less relative to slow-moving objects, because time passes more slowly for them. That's because the speed of light never changes for any object, no matter how fast it goes, and so the speed of time is forced to change instead. That's time dilation, one of the most surprising predictions of relativity, and it's a measurable phenomenon.

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Currently Reading: Various Discworld Novels
Currently Watching: Code Geass

Is That true LeadPal...measurable or theoretical? I only ask I do not know

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I will morn his passing. He is an amazing man.

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DESIDERATA
"Never argue with an idiot, they drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience"

This is the theory ...yes? Untestable of course. No TB I was not basing my expression on emotions...just as I see it in the narrow lines I expressed it.

In any event the nature of time is not changing ...just perception of it, it appears to me. Time still goes forward past present and future, whatever the speed. Light seems to travel at a near constant speed. Even if we travel to the nearest star four light years away, we would not have aged any more than the people we left behind.

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That is the nature of facts, they are redundant.

Gotta fly,

Bye

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DESIDERATA
"Never argue with an idiot, they drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience"

NASA has done numerous experiments with time in the relatively slow speeds of earth orbit and, yes, time is relative to the speed of the object. Therefore you can slow down time. It is all theory, as well as the electromagnetic theory and the theory of gravity. Both these latter two theories are still working this morning--at least in the Portland, Oregon area. If they were to change, I think it would start here.

More importantly, challenging the accepted norm is what makse some pretty cool discoveries. One of the more recent Nobel prize winners in Chemistry (2002), was a Japanese researcher (Koichi Tanaka) schooled in Electrical Engineering. He made his break throughs because he lacked the education in chemistry. He did not know what was "impossible" from a chemical background. So he had no reason not to try the things that eventually worked. He did have a few "that's odd" moments (the real sign of a discovery), but he was unhindered by a traditional chemists knowledge.

I do not know if time is linear, but I sincerely doubt it. There is too much evidence of the landscape theory. If I only had the time to explore it more. :-)

Probably my favorite illustration of time dilation is the galactic sportster. If I had a galactic sportster and jumped in, and zipped away at the speed of light and made a large loop, timing it so one year would pass on the ships clock before I landed on my groovy personal spacepad in the back yard. I would have noticed nothing strange about time at all. The ships clock would have worked just as it always did, and my beard would have grown exactly one years length. Things would get very different once I opened my airlock though, because on Earth, eighteen years would have passed. Eighteen normal 365, 24 hour days.
There are some experiments involving proton decay that I'm going to have to look up that are another verification of Einstein's theory. These involving shooting protons down 3 mile linear accelerators, at relativistic speeds, and them not having aged enough, indicating time for the proton passed at a different rate as time in the tunnel outside the accelerator.

EinsteinLight this looks like a fairly good explanation of Special Relativity,
I recall from college physics that special, is much less of a headache to grasp than general relativity.

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I watched an excellent show on the History Channel about Einstein and his life. They managed to make Special Relativity understandable, and showed that space and time are two different cases of the same thing, and gravity is a result of interaction with mass/energy. That is what I got from the show: space/time and mass/energy. Next I will have the glass of wine Williamstdd recommended and read through EinsteinLight, which is also linked from this Wiki article.

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The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.
- Paul Valery

Time was around long before we were able to percieve it...or experience it for that matter.

Um, nope, that kind of "Time" is relative too, depending on the editor's agenda.

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DESIDERATA
"Never argue with an idiot, they drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience"

Is this the book that has the caption "From Big Bang to Black Holes ?"

And, "Time is an Invention ?" May be, it figuratively refers to a "Sand Clock."

I would bet that people were tracing the motion of shadows before they learned to make glass and blow it into shapes.

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The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.
- Paul Valery