🚀 go-pugleaf

On 24 Mar 1997, John Stein wrote:

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> --=20
> John Stein <jstein@tfs.net>
>=20
> Haplo <pjjwever@euronet.nl> wrote in article
> <3336d1f3.2150423@news.euro.net>...
> > >Time as having no beginning and no end? Isn't this the description of
> > >eternity? Timelessness?=20
> > As Dries van Oosten pointed out this doesn=B4t mean that time is
> > infinte. It should be seen as a sort of ball, where you keep running
> > around on the surface.=20
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> So I just go in circles and keep coming back to the same place? I don't
> quite follow this one.


Hawking uses this analogy when people ask him what caused the big bang, or
what was before the big bang. His opinion is (according to a Brief History
of Time) that time started at the big bang so asking what is before the
big bang is like asking what is more to the north then the north pole.=20

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> > >If we understand time as something which measures
> > >or expresses a relationship between motion, distance, and objects then=
 a
> > >temporal plane such as the one in which we live is separate from an
> eternal
> > >one by the nature of the two.=20
> > I don=B4t exactly get what you mean here, but when do you think "time"
> > ends?
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> Oh, man. What a question. Maybe instead of objects, we should say points.=
 I
> want to go from point A to point B. It's a distance of one mile. I move
> there and it takes me one minute because I'm going 60 mph. Time, one
> minute, is a way to describe measure the relationship of the distance, th=
e
> motion (velocity?), and the beginning and ending points of A and B. Perha=
ps
> time begins as motion begins and ends when the motion ends. But is still =
is
> part of a greater time continuum. Perhaps time begins when the universe
> begins (Big Bang?) and ends when the universe ends.
> =20
> > >I confess to vast unfamiliarity with
> > >Hawking's theories, but my imagination tells me that to travel the
> > >distances of space (as we measure distance), we not only must overcome
> the
> > >distance involved but time.=20
> > Agreed. It takes time to overcome the distance. So the distance isn=B4t
> > the real problem, but time is.
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> Except that if things weren't so far away, we wouldn't need so much time =
to
> get there. I think they both have to be considered.
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Actually the lesson Einstein learned us is that you should talk about time
and space as separate things.

> > >This doesn't mean time as in going faster to do
> > >it in less, but to travel in some way as to make our current
> understanding
> > >of time irrelevant. Perhaps this means, then, that we find some manner
> of
> > >entering eternity as a method of overcoming both distance and time.
> > >
> > You mean something like:=20
> > - Now I=B4m here.
> > - Blink to eternity
> > - Blink, now I=B4m there (say 1 sec. later, and 3000000 lightyears
> > further)
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> Yes, I suppose so. Leave a temporal dimension, enter another where time a=
nd
> distance are irrelevant, and pop out at your destination 3000000 light
> years away. It's profoundly speculative. Is there anything scientifically
> substantial to hint at such a concept?
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Excuse me but what are we tlaking about here. How can you leave our
dimensions. If there are more dimension (say ten) we're allready in them,
we just don't move in them. So you cannot "enter" or "leave" a dimension.=
=20
This and the sometimes irritating property of time that makes us unable
to choose whether we move or not in that dimension makes it impossible to
move instantaniously in the way you guys describe.


>=20
> > >This, by the way, is beginning to sound like a crossing point of
> scientific
> > >and theological constructs.
> > >
> > Hawking might have meant a God by his "higher" dimension.=20
> >=20
> > Ivo
> >=20
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Dries van Oosten

Eat any good books lately?
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