Sorry it's taken so long to answer this, but I'm kind of scattershot when it somes to looking at threads. I'm assuming that you mean if the sun stops shining and the earth stops rotating on it's axis. I believe that we'd all fall off of the earth's surface and freeze our collective butts off. Seriously, the thermonuclear reactions that drive the sun's energy outflows have been estimated by astronomers and physicists who study such arcana to be good for another 5 billion years or so before THE lights go out. The earth spins because it's core of molten iron is spinning rapidly and is pulling the rest of earth's mass along with it. I believe that I've read that the earth's spinning is slowing down however. Scientists believe that this will never be noticeable to us to any real extent. They do say that our successors may have 25 hour days in 100 million years or so. Now, as Einstein proved some time ago, time is inexorably bound up with space into a sort of fabric and this combination forms the basis of our relative physical realities of speed, distance, and sense of time passage. Even after we had fallen off of the earth's surface and had frozen our butts off, time would still be here imbedded in the space-time fabric reality. But without us being there to observe and measure it, it wouldn't be real to any sentient beings. Kind of like the old saw about a tree falling in the forest making noise if no one was there to hear it. The acoustic waves would be present, but without our ears to hear it, does the event even exist, except, of course in the sensory consciousness of squirrels ? flow....
My take: Lineal time does not exist. It is a creation of the ego through the illusion of memory. Cyclical (seasonal, orbital, etc.) time does exist.
But what is time "of itself", Flow? I'm trying to wrap my brain around this question. Surely Einstein isn't referring to time in the sense of a subjective measuring device, so what does it mean that time is an indespensible component of the space-time continuum? What is time in that sense? Chris
Time is the ordering of change, in our case, it's based upon effect-following-cause, as opposed to everything happening all at once. Time is relative to motion, which demonstrates its relationship to space. The universe is supposedly expanding. One might speculate that the one-way effect-follows-cause flow of time might be tied to this, but that is only speculation.
And to further confuse things ( excellent post Seattle ! ) there is linear time as described in the preceeding cause and effect system scenario, and also non-linear time. Every once in a while singularity events take place. These are events that usually start something in the way of physical systems or effects that continue on into the linear time domain. A star will be born, a rogue wave 100 feet tall will appear out of the darkness and overturn a ship, events of spontaneous combustion occur. Many cosmologists view black holes as the ultimate singularities. Most scientists deny that such things are possible, but they occur, and they are not obviously a result of a cause-effect system. They may be a result of a non-obvious chain of events, but often cannot be proven as such using known methods. But science is beginning to look deeply into the nature of such occurences. So I guess you could classify the magical appearance of singularity events as other and different sorts of time systems that are also part of the Einsteinian space-time fabric, but different. flow....
Good answer, a little wordy for me, but good all the same. Well beyond freezing, the issue still remains that how we measure time is, in large part, controled by the earth's rotation. In other words, like in one of the superman moives, he flew around the earth and made it rotate backward there by reversing "time". Is time actually Linear in nature or does it have a different pattern of flow other than forward and backwards?
Eleven11 I cannot answer your question as it is posed. Seattle's answer and my second to that post tells you that there are two ways that time appears to exist for us. Both as a linear flowing cause-follows-effect phenomenon, and as non-linear singularities that designate new entities which exist in our reality. Keep in mind that the thing which is time does not exist until it is observed and measured by our senses. I suggest that you begin to look into Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. That is where the basics of our understandings of time are first addressed in a modern sense. Have fun. flow....
Can we, travel with time? Yes? We have no choice in thar matter, if you believe to some extent be it complex or be it simple, whichever if you have some grasp of time, you realise you are within a time period... Hence you have to follow it till you die.... And pass the torch to the left hand side, It's not like you can say... Ah screw the 21st century, I'm going back to the 17th.... Erm, no... You will travel now where time is taking you..... If you are speaking of going forward and back in time like Mcfly....... Then one day I believe it will be possible to go forward in time.... To go back in time? That ain't gonna happen. But, whatever... Go hide in a closet.... Get in with the crowd... Do whatever you want but you cannot stop time... You are like a person out cold in the middle of the ocean.... You have no control and just go with the flow and curant. It don't stop for noooooo one.
