Naked Science Forum

Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: Blaine Barkey on 29/01/2012 11:35:57

Title: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: Blaine Barkey on 29/01/2012 11:35:57
Blaine Barkey  asked the Naked Scientists:
   Hi Chris,

Love the shows - please keep up the great work (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/podcasts/)!

I was wondering what would happen if you could actually stop time? Would you be able to actually see anything? In other words, if our ability to see things relies on light waves bouncing off of objects, and the light waves stop when time stops, would you still be able to see everything around you?

Curiously yours,

Blaine Barkey
Los Angeles, CA USA
What do you think?
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: David Cooper on 29/01/2012 19:33:28
Nothing would happen - literally. Everything would be frozen and nothing would be functioning. Having said that, many (or maybe even most) physicists appear to believe that time doesn't flow and therefore cannot be stopped in any meaningful way, but I'll leave it to one of them to try to explain that.
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: MikeS on 30/01/2012 10:23:50
'Time' is an integral part of the fabric of the universe.  Therefore the concept of stopping time becomes meaningless within the constraints of the universe.  As a mind exercise it is possible, as David points out "nothing would happen".  Nothing happening includes your thought process so you would not even be aware of it and a clock could not register or record it.  Your thought processes being frozen in time would not be accessible (non-awareness), everything would be a timeless blank.
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: yor_on on 30/01/2012 10:48:40
It depends on what you think the 'arrow of time' consists of? Is it local 'changes' or is there a 'ocean of time' with 'local stream(s)' becoming the arrow we see?

It may 'stop' and 'start' the whole 'time' for all we know :)
We would never notice that.
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: Don_1 on 30/01/2012 11:37:31
While I'm sure the above posters are correct, I think, if I understand you correctly, if time were to stand still but you retain your consciousness, then the answer would be no, you would still not be able to perceive anything. In such a hypothetical situation, as you rightly surmise, light would stand still, so it would not enter your eye, thus you could not see.

However, you would be able to catch that train you are late for, if you could only see it.
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: dropoutscience on 30/01/2012 18:03:46
you also wouldnt be able to breathe or hear and it is possible that because atoms have stopped moving you might shift through solid matter. good news you cant be burned :)
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: Bored chemist on 30/01/2012 19:09:33
If you stopped time the pink unicorns would come and take you away.
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: Geezer on 30/01/2012 23:11:09
If time stopped, you would not know. How would you be able to tell that it had?
 
I have it from a very good authority that time actually does stop every other Tuesday in months with an R in them.
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: Don_1 on 31/01/2012 08:09:50

I have it from a very good authority that time actually does stop every other Tuesday in months with an R in them.


I knew something was going on (or not, as the case may be). Only last Tuesday, when 'er indoors left orders for me to clean the oven (a task I find particularly irksome), I did not do it. It can only be because time stood still just when I was going to carry out this most hideous of tasks. I'm sure she will understand when I explain this phenomenonmenonmenonmenon* to her.

*I always have trouble knowing when to stop with that word, it was always the same with that fine English actor, Edward Woodwardwoodwardwoodward. See what I mean!
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: imatfaal on 31/01/2012 09:39:58
If time stopped, you would not know. How would you be able to tell that it had?
 
I have it from a very good authority that time actually does stop every other Tuesday in months with an R in them.
And the fact that you broadcast our regular time stops is why you never made it to the inner circle - call yourself an illuminatus and you cannot even keep a secret!  Brother Biggles bring me the tome of transgression....


A local stoppage of time, or a local bubble which avoids an otherwise universal stoppage of time would be interesting - but almost certainly impossible in so many ways.  The boundary/horizon between normal and stopped time would be an interesting and I think fairly hot and horrible place.
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: Don_1 on 31/01/2012 10:18:54
........  The boundary/horizon between normal and stopped time would be an interesting and I think fairly hot and horrible place.

So our oven has got something to do with it!
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: MikeS on 31/01/2012 14:32:07
If time stopped, you would not know. How would you be able to tell that it had?
 
I have it from a very good authority that time actually does stop every other Tuesday in months with an R in them.
And the fact that you broadcast our regular time stops is why you never made it to the inner circle - call yourself an illuminatus and you cannot even keep a secret!  Brother Biggles bring me the tome of transgression....


A local stoppage of time, or a local bubble which avoids an otherwise universal stoppage of time would be interesting - but almost certainly impossible in so many ways.  The boundary/horizon between normal and stopped time would be an interesting and I think fairly hot and horrible place.

Uh, that sounds like the EH of a black hole.  Horrible yes!  Hot, thats debatable, if feeding yes, if not then no.
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: imatfaal on 31/01/2012 16:15:06
Uh, that sounds like the EH of a black hole.  Horrible yes!  Hot, thats debatable, if feeding yes, if not then no.

You might want to read up on possible outcomes of lowering a thermometer from a safe orbit towards an Event Horizon.  It's Hot.  It's also very complicated and possibly contradictory - but it is hot without matter falling in from outside.
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: dropoutscience on 31/01/2012 18:33:40
yeah but the inside might be impossibly cold if it can get matter to stop moving inside it
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: MikeS on 01/02/2012 08:04:32
Uh, that sounds like the EH of a black hole.  Horrible yes!  Hot, thats debatable, if feeding yes, if not then no.

You might want to read up on possible outcomes of lowering a thermometer from a safe orbit towards an Event Horizon.  It's Hot.  It's also very complicated and possibly contradictory - but it is hot without matter falling in from outside.

Imatfaal
Can you give any references please?

The way I understand it is
" If one only considers black holes classically, then they have zero temperature and, by the no hair theorem, zero entropy,"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_thermodynamics
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: neilep on 01/02/2012 09:59:14
If time stopped, you would not know. How would you be able to tell that it had?
 
I have it from a very good authority that time actually does stop every other Tuesday in months with an R in them.

Hang on !...I get deliveries on a Tuesday !
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: imatfaal on 01/02/2012 10:41:09
Uh, that sounds like the EH of a black hole.  Horrible yes!  Hot, thats debatable, if feeding yes, if not then no.

You might want to read up on possible outcomes of lowering a thermometer from a safe orbit towards an Event Horizon.  It's Hot.  It's also very complicated and possibly contradictory - but it is hot without matter falling in from outside.

Imatfaal
Can you give any references please?

The way I understand it is
" If one only considers black holes classically, then they have zero temperature and, by the no hair theorem, zero entropy,"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_thermodynamics

This is very much a non-classical treatment - we have already through work of hawking and bekenstein discovered that blackholes have a temperature etc. so a classical constraint is a little too much.   the qm behaviour of "empty space" at any horizon is very odd.
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: Don_1 on 01/02/2012 10:42:18
If time stopped, you would not know. How would you be able to tell that it had?
 
I have it from a very good authority that time actually does stop every other Tuesday in months with an R in them.

Hang on !...I get deliveries on a Tuesday !

Are they late every other week? If so, I think Geezer must be on to something.
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: dropoutscience on 06/02/2012 15:31:25
how did they discover black holes have temp?  ???
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: simplified on 06/02/2012 16:46:03
If time stopped, you would not know. How would you be able to tell that it had?
 
I have it from a very good authority that time actually does stop every other Tuesday in months with an R in them.
Then radiated photons destroy all,because they will have gammashift.
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: Geezer on 08/02/2012 07:59:43
Punctuation may not have been a strong point either.
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: artpiecemalpasso on 08/02/2012 15:01:49
Thank you, I'll work on that. Great, topic.
Artpiecemalpasso
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: yor_on on 08/02/2012 19:12:49
"Time all time is centered around matter and all moments of time are in the present since the future and past perceptions of time are a human traits outside the realm of reality."

No, probability builds on the concept of a past, without a past to look at probability wouldn't be computable as there would be no data. And as it works very well, the past must be inside the realm of 'reality'. Any book you read is written in the 'past' defining the future on good and bad.
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: Bill S on 08/02/2012 22:31:20
I’m not at all sure that I understand artpiecemalpasso.  Apart from that, though, I’m OK with the general ideas.  However, it does seem that what we are talking about is change, rather than time. 

Change requires activity.  Activity brings about change.  If all activity stopped, there would be no change, and nothing for time to measure, so time would have no meaning. 

It would not be meaningful to talk of time having stopped, any more than it is really meaningful to talk of time as moving under normal conditions.
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: Geezer on 09/02/2012 04:01:26
Art,
 
Try the "three sentence rule". Basically, it says that if a paragraph has more that three sentences, the audience is likely to depart.
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: artpiecemalpasso on 09/02/2012 04:37:34
lol, I appreciate your criticism, but it is a learning disability, I have been dealing with it my whole life, and Im not real sure about your intent to keep bringing it up, it might be an area that never improves but does it take away from my soul in my mind, no, The mind is a limited, limitless, possiblity of imagination and bueaty, sometimes things go wrong like the car wreck I was in as a child, I apologize for not being able to spell great or punctuate properly, I might never be able to, Good day.
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: simplified on 09/02/2012 14:18:12
lol, I appreciate your criticism, but it is a learning disability, I have been dealing with it my whole life, and Im not real sure about your intent to keep bringing it up, it might be an area that never improves but does it take away from my soul in my mind, no, The mind is a limited, limitless, possiblity of imagination and bueaty, sometimes things go wrong like the car wreck I was in as a child, I apologize for not being able to spell great or punctuate properly, I might never be able to, Good day.
We have time to not study time.I don't know what is time.I can not understand time without experiment with synchronization of clocks on a satellite.
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: simplified on 10/02/2012 03:25:38
Very helps to be confused.I will make law of time in New Theories.
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: Bill S on 10/02/2012 14:30:01
No man liveth more than that infinitessimal point of time that is the present.
Marcus Aurelius.

He got there ahead of us!
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: simplified on 10/02/2012 14:56:44
No man liveth more than that infinitessimal point of time that is the present.
Marcus Aurelius.

He got there ahead of us!
Add math to this.
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: artpiecemalpasso on 10/02/2012 16:36:22
" A Nobel man compares and estimates himself by an Idea which is higher than himself, a mean man by one lower than himself, the one produces aspiration; the other ambition; which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires."
    Marcus Aurelius
Title: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: artpiecemalpasso on 11/02/2012 01:02:07
Im asking for help from any one who is able to help me post my findings in a journal, I would greatly appreciate any help in this matter, I do have internet publication I have Intellectual rights over my theory since my Blog publication dates, but I would really be interested in working with a professor, to get to the bottom of its truth, and then a possible journal. Please if anyone could help me with this matter. Im tired of defending my Ideas with banter. I would love to get serious about the theory with whom ever would like to help me with this. My theory is base on the absence of the past and future time realms. We can exchange emails if anyone is interested, I dont care if I post my email, Its my business email.  Im not sure if we can send personal messages, if so thats a good way of do this. I also have other theories but I dont want to even attempt to go any further with out getting a consensus on this first thank you agian. Artpiecemalpasso
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: artpiecemalpasso on 11/02/2012 02:32:19
Did you add the math to my theory????
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: artpiecemalpasso on 11/02/2012 02:34:53
Im not sure if simplified work out a formula for my Theory but it looks like a law of time, do you know him????? Is this pertaining to my theory a little confused.
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: artpiecemalpasso on 11/02/2012 02:38:06
Do you know simplified, it looks like he worked out a law of time, does that pertain to my theory???, Im not sure... Maybe he did this before my first post??? Anyways just need your advice on that. thanks. Artpiecemalpasso
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: simplified on 11/02/2012 10:25:44
Did you add the math to my theory????
Maybe.
Title: Re: What would happen if you stopped time?
Post by: budd3 on 19/02/2012 05:49:17
Time is energy and energy is time. Particles are always moving like atoms and if you stop time you would have to stop movement or any other kind of energy in the entire universe. The whole universe would have to transform to nothing. Almost like reverse Big Bang. But thats just my theory.