What is time?

[McCulloch]

What is time?

Is it finite or infinite? Does it flow or is it a path? Is there a minimum possible time interval or is it continuous? What is now? Did time begin? If so, what came before time?

Does religion aid at all in answering these questions?

[tickitytak]

Haha so what about half a planck?

[Abraxas]

Time is an infinite number of infinitesimal moments.

Quantum theory suggests otherwise.

Since moments are contingent upon interaction, time is contingent upon interaction. Strangely enough, existence is contingent upon interaction as well (with another or oneself), so the notion of a conscious God outside of time is illogical.

The rest of this is good. When pressed, most theists who argue that God exists outside of spacetime, are forced to admit some kind of timelike dimension in God's realm.

Perhaps so, but in honesty I do not see why that is a problem for them. It just requires one time frame to encompass the other with time flowing normally to the being in outer time but the time we are familiar with holding no sway over it, just like the flow of a story in a book. It has a flow of time specific to it that is entirely independent of the flow of time outside it. We can make changes, skip around, and know the whole of the book existing at once even though from the inside of that timeframe such would be impossible.

God can exist completely outside of our spacetime but still within a different one, and, quite honestly, most religious doctrines virtually require some kind of timelike continuity for the big guy. Those who claim God exists independently of all timelike structures don't read their Bible very closely.

[sickles]

*cough*

[Flail]

Time is a measurement of change...if nothing changes, time stops.

[sickles]

Time is a measurement of change...if nothing changes, time stops.

there is no way that a state of "nothing changes" can exist. a static universe simply cannot exist.

[Flail]

Time is a measurement of change...if nothing changes, time stops.

there is no way that a state of "nothing changes" can exist. a static universe simply cannot exist.

...which is why time doesn't stop...marching on and on and on.

...but was there was pre-history...before change...before time?

[sickles]

likely not, unless there is absolutely nothing. even the point of infinite density and mass right before the big bang was changing inside. If there is truly nothing changing, then time is non consequential.

[fredonly]

What is time?

Is it finite or infinite? Does it flow or is it a path? Is there a minimum possible time interval or is it continuous? What is now? Did time begin? If so, what came before time?

Does religion aid at all in answering these questions?

If the big bang is all there is, then time is clearly finite - it has a known beginning. There is no "before" the big bang, because that is when time started. This is tied into the notion of the big bang singularity and the time dliation associated with the mass and radius of the universe. Looking backward in time, the radius of the universe (i.e. the distance from the center of gravity) approaches zero. As the radius shrinks, time slows down; as the radius approaches zero, time approaches a standstill. This is a consequence of general relativity.

Unfortunately, general relativity stops working at time 10^-43 seconds after the big bang singularity. This is one of the reasons it's called a singularity, plus the fact that various equations would ending have a zero in their denominators (e.g. the equation to compute time dilation due to gravity).

This 10^-43 second wall opens to door to speculating about possibilities of things occurring prior to the big bang. For example, perhaps the time 10^-43 seconds was the point at which a contraction of the universe reversed into an expansion. In the case of an oscillating, expansion/contraction universe, there is no discernable beginning to time. (a major problem with this simplistic oscillation theory is that cosmologists believe the velocity of the current expansion of the universe is beyond the escape velocity - it's too fast to have any hope of slowing down to the point that contraction would occur. If the universe has been oscillating, what's different this time?)

One can also speculate that there are other dimensions of time. In this case, I'd simply submit that this requires a redefinition of time, so that our time can be thought of a finite, 2 dimensional manifestation of this mulitidimensional meta-time. The 2-dimensional time we deal with, ie that which provides the orderly, cause-effect, sequence of the universe, can (IMO) still be said to have a beginning at the big bang.

Does religion provide answers? Certainly! Are these true answers? Highly doubtful.

[LiamOS]

What is time?

If time is a dimension as most of us would accept, then it is merely a dimension which is unlike a spatial dimension.

Is it finite or infinite?

That depends:
If the universe has enough mass to eventually collapse the universe(Big Crunch), then time is finite. This could be represented by this graph:

Where f(x) is 3D-space and x is time.

However, the critical mass seems to bee much more than what is in the universe, so the following graph is much more likely to be the case:

Here the universe continues to expand.
I had a discussion with Chaosborders on this subject, actually.
In such a universe, time is not infinite; it is merely tending towards infinity. Were something(God, perhaps) to view time from outside, as we view the graph, they would see an infinite amount of time, but to one in time, it is merely tending to infinity.

Does it flow or is it a path?

What?

Is there a minimum possible time interval or is it continuous?

Time, like space, is continuous, but there is a minimum interval that can be measured: Planck Time, which is roughly 5.4 x 10^-44 seconds.

What is now?

A point on the graph.

Did time begin? If so, what came before time?

Depends on which theory you want me to talk about, but in most cases, this question is completely redundant.

Does religion aid at all in answering these questions?

No. It does the opposite.
In fact, the Pope asked many physicists, including Stephen Hawking, in the '80s not to inquire into the Big Bang, as it was "God's Moment".
It's a good thing Hawking can't use his computer to laugh at people.

[sickles]

It's a good thing Hawking can't use his computer to laugh at people.

ROFL