understanding time

[jackman]

i'm watching nova - fabric of the cosmos and they're talking about time. i have a question for anyone who can answer, perhaps it's hypothetical.

does the study of time more evaluate more definitively what happened in the past as it can the future? the reason i ask is they said something that intrigued me. basically that 200 years in the future could have us teleporting to different locations (just as an example they used).

with the arrow of time going one way (forward) as it would seem to us, does that mean that technology moves us forward faster as we gain knowlege, than it did in the past? or maybe more clearly, will the progress from 200yrs ago until today seem much less than it will from now until 200yrs into the future?

[Erinome]

We might be a lot more technologically advanced than we are now had it not been for certain... factors. I don't have to tell you what those factors are. I'm thinking you're smart enough to know.

Time itself is relative to the observer. Advancement in technology is moving so fast because it's like opening doors to find more doors on the other side. Once the first door is opened, there's no stopping it.

[Reforged]

Well, discovery has slowed down its pace considerably. Aside from nuclear power The Higgs boson is one of the only really big discoveries we've made in quite sometime. You could argue this is because we're now concentrating on finding answers to much more difficult questions and you'd be right. The Higgs Boson is in a whole different league from almost any discovery we've ever made let alone any from before the 1950s.
That being said there is correlation that can't be ignored. Based on that correlation the rate of discovery will continue to decrease but the significance of each discovery will increase. 200 years might not cut it.

[Paul the Human]

Imagine what's possible if we reverse the polarity of the neutron flow!

Sorry. Couldn't resist.

[jackman]

We might be a lot more technologically advanced than we are now had it not been for certain... factors. I don't have to tell you what those factors are. I'm thinking you're smart enough to know.

Time itself is relative to the observer. Advancement in technology is moving so fast because it's like opening doors to find more doors on the other side. Once the first door is opened, there's no stopping it.

yeah, i realize those "factors". but i'm wondering if we went from riding horses in the past as a main method of transportation to now flying jets. it's almost like our ancestors would see jets as a very slow version of teleporting (days to cross a continent versus hours). so will a few generations into the future then have us likely using modes like teleporting as a norm? or anything on that magnitude of understanding.

granted, the funding ...

---

Well, discovery has slowed down its pace considerably. Aside from nuclear power The Higgs boson is one of the only really big discoveries we've made in quite sometime. You could argue this is because we're now concentrating on finding answers to much more difficult questions and you'd be right. The Higgs Boson is in a whole different league from almost any discovery we've ever made let alone any from before the 1950s.
That being said there is correlation that can't be ignored. Based on that correlation the rate of discovery will continue to decrease but the significance of each discovery will increase. 200 years might not cut it.

good point (in bold). 200yrs was just the example they used, i'm not banking on that being the uom.

[Rayaan]

Time is a very intriguing thing to me also. I can't explain what it really is, but there are many different theories as to how time behaves, whether or not it exists, and/or what it's nature is. Some people say that it's only an illusion created in our minds, some say that we are living in a timeless universe, some say that time flows, some say that we are only observing slices of the whole of time, and there are a multitude of other ideas that can't remember right now. Time is also considered to be the 4th dimension (and there may be even more dimensions).

To answer the OP, I don't think that our technological advancement and our knowledge has anything to do with time itself. Rather, these are just something that we have been getting better at as time goes on. The reason is because it's also possible for our knowledge and our level of technological advancement to go the other way (i.e. decline as time goes on). So, there is no direct and physical connection between time and human progress, in my opinion.

I think that time and space are defined by the entities themselves and sometimes within the entities they are located in. Essentially, time is relative.

[Minimalist]

When you get right down to it, human beings are nothing more than ordinary jungle beasts. Savages. No different from the Cro Magnon people who lived twenty five thousand years ago. No different. Our DNA hasn't changed substantially in a hundred thousand years. We're still operating out of the lower brain. The reptilian brain. Fight or flight. Kill or be killed. We like to think we've evolved and advanced because we can build a computer, fly an airplane, travel underwater, we can write a sonnet, paint a painting, compose an opera. But you know something? We're barely out of the jungle on this planet. Barely out of the fucking jungle. What we are, is semi-civilized beasts, with baseball caps and automatic weapons.

-- George Carlin

[Nemo]

Time is also considered to be the 4th dimension (and there may be even more dimensions).

wrong...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9sbdrPVfOQ&feature=plcp

watch

[Felasco]

i'm watching nova - fabric of the cosmos

I saw it last night too, interesting show! It's an excellent series
all in all. Sorry, I can't address your question.

They seemed to be saying that past, present and future all exist
together, and are equally real. If true, there is no death?

[Godscreated]

We might be a lot more technologically advanced than we are now had it not been for certain... factors. I don't have to tell you what those factors are. I'm thinking you're smart enough to know.

Time itself is relative to the observer. Advancement in technology is moving so fast because it's like opening doors to find more doors on the other side. Once the first door is opened, there's no stopping it.

I agree that technology is moving at a fast pace, however that pace will slow if new inventions do not come along, and at this time they are not. So the advancements are more or less an illusion, at some point the knowledge we have now will cease to produce new technology because all knowledge has it's limitation. If we do not find new knowledge for truly new inventions, we could become stagnate.