Does time exist in space?

years, days, weeks, months, fortnights etc are all societal constructs, based on our own planet's rotational mechanics, and none of them are really fixed in any sense, otherwise there would be no need for leap years etc, which themselves prevent the need for us to start (for e.g.) 2011@ midnight, 2012 just past 6am, 2013 midday and so on.

Seconds on the other hand are defined by a function of the velocity of light through a vacuum, which we are getting ever closer to knowing the true value of, although we never will, as there is no *absolutely* true value, because a true vacuum can't possibly exist anywhere in the universe :p

also, as velocity itself is defined in terms of displacement (distance), and time.......Catch22 time!

so basically, time is an entirely human concept, but seconds are far more dependable and applicable for use in physics, because the way we defined them has no relation to our own planetary behavior, and as far as we currently know, should be fairly linear for a far larger set of conditions (up to 99.99% of lightspeed, not inside a black hole) than those based on our planet.

in writing this I have only confused myself more....yay science!
 
craptakular said:
If like you are on the ISS, does time exist?

There is no day, no evening, do they even use earth time and seasons?
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The ISS uses GMT (UTC). The time aboard is synchronised to GMT + 0.

They are five hours ahead of Houston and four hours behind Moscow mission control.

Aboard the ISS they do not experience an earth day but they do see a sunrise/sunset 16 times a day:


Their artificial working day is 12 hours long.

Q&A from Chris Hadfield on living on the station:

http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/astronauts/qa.asp
 
DAnDan said:
Relativity. Basically, as you travel faster, time slows down. So if you were to hop on a ship doing nearly the speed of light (as travelling at, or faster than the speed of light is impossible for any object with mass), then after you had spent one week on the ship, the rest of the universe would have aged much more than one week.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation#Relative_velocity_time_dilation
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My head is exploding thinking about this. :(

Edit: oh never mind, I understand now
 
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DAnDan said:
Relativity. Basically, as you travel faster, time slows down. So if you were to hop on a ship doing nearly the speed of light (as travelling at, or faster than the speed of light is impossible for any object with mass), then after you had spent one week on the ship, the rest of the universe would have aged much more than one week.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation#Relative_velocity_time_dilation
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Still wrong. As you travel faster relative to some reference frame then relative to that reference frame time slows down.

It's absolutely incorrect to say 'as I go faster time speeds up everywhere else'.
 
Anyway the earth does spin around the sun because it is flat. I know because I went to the ends of the earth and fell off. If I had not been following a strict health and safety protocol and not been wearing a full body harness then I might have gone where no man has gone before.
 
Amleto said:
Still wrong. As you travel faster relative to some reference frame then relative to that reference frame time slows down.

It's absolutely incorrect to say 'as I go faster time speeds up everywhere else'.
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I think you've interpreted me wrong. I didn't say that time speeds up everywhere, not at all. I was specifically referring to the person travelling at speed.

So for you, when travelling at speeds approaching that of the speed of light, time slows down. I could have given more specifics and information, but in a post like this on a general forum, that would just confuse things more than necessary.
 
A[L]C;26788208 said:
But what happens when it doesn't matter?
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Nothing ever really mattered:

Heat death occurs when the universe finally uses up all its energy, with all motion stopping and all the atoms in creation grinding to a halt. And, based on new calculations from a team of Australian physicists, it looks like heat death is far closer than previously thought.

Heat death is based on the concept of entropy, which holds that disordered states are more stable than ordered states. We experience entropy in real world examples like a glass window being easier to break than to reassemble or create anew. On the scale of the universe, complex systems like stars, planets and galaxies are the glass window, and the Australian physicists have found that supermassive black holes are breaking them faster than we could have imagined.

Physicists have always known that black holes contribute to entropy in the universe by breaking down matter and energy in their gravitational maelstroms, but the calculations always measured the rate of this disorder using the destructive power of the smaller, more common black holes.

However, this new calculation takes into account the galaxy-consuming hunger of super massive black holes. And in this new calculation, the physicists discovered that the old theory vastly underestimated how much of the universe has already been eaten.
 
Haggisman said:
No, that would be a light year :p

A parsec is also a measure of distance.

The Star Wars reference is due to to Han Solo's claim that he did the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs, thus implying that it's a unit of time (so not quite velocity, but still a misuse of the term).
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It’s not a misuse of the term if it means he has amazing navigation skills and did the Kessel Run in a little as 12 parsecs (distance). I think the reference has he took a risky route via some blackholes.
 
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