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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (65686)	5/15/2006 5:44:15 PM
From: jttmab	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

The idea of linear time that goes on forever has some problems. First there is no way to have a direct experience with history. We have books and other ways to recollect the past but we are always in the present moment when doing so. Similarly, there is no way to have a direct experience with the future. We can have hopes, dreams, plans and expectations of the future but they are constantly being worked out in the present. So, as a rational issue we can refer to things we call 'past' as past-present, since we experience them only as present. And, future-present for our ideas of the future. Is time linear or is our practical application of time linear? Suppose one can travel close to the speed of light. You get on a spacecraft and travel some distance approaching the speed of light. Your time is then slower than the time of the place from whence you came. By the time you reach your destination, your time says it was 10 years, while the time kept at the place you came from indicates it has been 100 years. Time relatively has been confirmed with orbiting. Whose time is correct? They are both correct. Carl Sagan had some thoughts on time travel. NOVA: Do you think that backwards time travel will ever be possible? "Sagan: Such questions are purely a matter of evidence, and if the evidence is inconsistent or insufficient, then we withhold judgment until there is better evidence. Right now we're in one of those classic, wonderfully evocative moments in science when we don't know, when there are those on both sides of the debate, and when what is at stake is very mystifying and very profound. If we could travel into the past, it's mind-boggling what would be possible. For one thing, history would become an experimental science, which it certainly isn't today. The possible insights into our own past and nature and origins would be dazzling. For another, we would be facing the deep paradoxes of interfering with the scheme of causality that has led to our own time and ourselves. I have no idea whether it's possible, but it's certainly worth exploring." pbs.org So all we can say at this point in time is that we cannot have direct experience with the past. In the future, who knows? In fact, we might be visited this very moment by time travellers of the future who have decided that it is best to not interfere with their past, our present. Isn't it the theory of the space-time continuum that we live in a four dimensional universe. The past, present and future all co-exist in a single space-time continuum. jttmab