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Newsflash: Time May Not Exist

discovermagazine.com — Physicists are confounded about how time actually fits into the universe. One theory is that “time may be an approximate concept that emerges at large scales—a bit like the concept of ‘surface of the water,’ which makes sense macroscopically but which loses a precise sense at the level of the atoms."

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  • Babblin5, on 01/13/2008, -6/+340this is great news for arguing with your boss about how you're not really "late"...
    • praisethelard, on 06/06/2008, -0/+118Though it kinda sucks if you're getting paid hourly.
      • Archaic1, on 01/14/2008, -7/+1Your mum doesn't mind being paid hourly to suck
    • Elliuotatar, on 01/13/2008, -0/+5Yeah, but it would only work if you were late by a few nanoseconds, where the scale of time is so small that quantum effects begin to take over.
      • expatcatalyst, on 01/13/2008, -4/+2or better yet" For a little perspective, 100 attoseconds is to one second as a second is to 300 million years." a few attoseconds! lol
    • MrZaiko, on 01/13/2008, -1/+18this may help you Understand TIME http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvd3kaupZ60
    • Birdk9dog, on 01/13/2008, -0/+8your bosses concept of time may also change come payday
    • bliz, on 01/13/2008, -0/+6“Now I have arrived for work a little after you. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between early, on time, and late is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
      • Zarokima, on 01/13/2008, -0/+5"Johnson, stop being a smartass and get to work before I fire your ass!"
        • ligyron, on 01/13/2008, -0/+2"Why you gotta be calling everyone Johnson?"
    • Frnnkdlxx, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1Good luck finding that new job.
  • h3lx, on 01/13/2008, -3/+52I spent my entire lunch mindlessly following informative leads generated by this article and I'm no closer to grasping a universe without time than I was when I started... I did find this though-
    - "You got your Quantum Physics in my Relative Universe! You got your Relative Universe in my Quantum Physics! Ugh, this taste like *****."
    -I can't say it was a waste of 'Time' since it really does not exist.
    • mulletmusketeer, on 01/13/2008, -0/+16Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
      • PhonicUK, on 01/13/2008, -3/+1Dugg for Pratchet reference :D
        • HUKI365, on 01/14/2008, -0/+4Buried for missing the Douglas Adams reference.
    • 0ceanic, on 01/13/2008, -0/+3ill try to write a simpler explanation:

      time is not a path from past to present.
      time is movement through space.
      if all the matter and all the energy in the universe stopped moving, "time" would stop.
      "time" is really just the orchistration of all the matter and energy in the universe moving

      examples:
      nothing can move faster through space than light.
      if you have an electron zipping around a nucleus thats travelling at the speed of light, the electron will not be able to circle around the nucleus because it would require the electron to move faster than light at some point. thus "time" would stop for the atom.

      if the atom is travelling near the speed of light, the electron would take longer to rotate around the nucleus, therefore it would take longer for "time" to progress. chemical reactions involving said atoms would take longer, brains and computers would think slower, "time" would be slower.
      • 0ceanic, on 01/13/2008, -0/+1edit:
        "time is not a path from past to future"

        (was originaly "past to present to future")
    • djgump35, on 01/13/2008, -1/+1I think it is about TIME someone posted this for everyone, so people can quit wasting their TIME studying whether TIME exists.

      Now we wait for someone to report this inaccurate, and cite a link to the magazine.

      How about a story saying AOL no longer exists.
    • mikes1, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1It's easy to picture a universe without time. Time is just another dimension. Physics equations which describe a timeless universe merely describe the whole universe, past, present and future at once, or they describe the universe as a timeless "now." It doesn't mean time doesn't exist, it means that those equations don't describe time related matters, and are thus incomplete. Any physics equations which describe something which requires time (movement, velocity, etc.) must include time - that's a tautology.

  • RobsaysHello, on 01/13/2008, -1/+152Stop trying to weasel out of your mortgage.
  • Dawnofanewday, on 01/13/2008, -65/+8No time is a Godly concept. People who are wasting their time saying "There is black or black is black to me and white to you" are really just trying to live by their own rules, no judging! lol
    • pateo, on 01/13/2008, -1/+14Yeah, GOD forbid someone didn't live according to social constructs.
    • Jahweh, on 01/13/2008, -1/+12I've never been harsh in a comment before, but.. You Idiot
    • Llance, on 01/13/2008, -6/+6He's right. Time is godly, since apparently it shares the same state of being non-existant. The universe has a beautiful symmetry to it don't you think?
    • Zarokima, on 01/13/2008, -3/+5Relativity is an Einsteinian concept. Since time is relative, Einstein > God. Yay faulty logic!

      Also, I'd rather live by my own rules than those of some jackass in the sky who admits serial killer into heaven simply because they believe, and sends good people to hell just for being atheist or another religion. I'd rather go to hell.
      You really need to closely examine your beliefs with more than a "The Bible says it so it's true" attitude, and realize there is zero proof for what you believe, and your witness is an ignorant waste of time. But I'm not judging! lol
    • Ender008, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1Does anyone know what the ***** he just said?
  • FeargusMcDuff, on 01/13/2008, -5/+5How does this explain relativity?
    • Llance, on 01/13/2008, -2/+9Depends on your point of view....
    • ElAssoWipo, on 01/13/2008, -6/+2Ha!

      This whole concept is about the fact that an accelerated perception gives the illusion that things move slower. It's like when they talk about quantum physics and the "shortest time unit". It's crap. Usually people don't understand this so they just accept it.

      The only reason there is a shortest time unit is because some idiot decided to measure it. It's like how they say that the speed of light is the fastest speed possible. Well, what if I imagine the speed of light times two? The only reason we say it's the fastest speed possible is because it's the fastest observed speed we know of.

      There's no such thing as a unit of time. That's just what humans came up with to tell how much time is left until the sun goes down. There is no stop to time and there is no beginning to time, but as long as one event is required to produce an other event or matter, there is time. SImply because one thing happened after the other. So quantum physics, basically, is about the fact that things happen real quick at a tiny, minuscule scale. But if you could perceive faster, those things wouldn't seem so quick. Nevertheless, what happens is a reaction. Everything is a reaction. So fast or not, you still have a reaction. If you have a reaction you have time. The reaction implies that something caused it.

      They call it the time problem but I call it the human problem. Time is the fact that things are consequential. It's not a thing, it's not tangible and it's not an idea. It's just the fact that things are consequential. Time existed before humans simply because there was a time without humans.

      So trying to fit this concept into mathematics and everything else is stupid. Why? Because time is inherently part of mathematics. You don't need to add it or find it, it IS mathematics.

      Math would be impossible without time. This is math without time: 1. That would be the entire science of mathematics without time.
      • sgtbutterscotch, on 01/13/2008, -1/+3That didn't make sense, however, since I don't understand it, I will accept it. (Not really, I understand what you are saying, but I don't believe you have the credentials to tell me what the definition of time is)
        • ElAssoWipo, on 01/13/2008, -1/+1Appeal to authority is a fallacy.
      • OneLess, on 01/13/2008, -2/+5Just because you can imagine the speed of light times two, that does not mean it can exist. The Universe has a funny way of not giving a ***** about what you can imagine. I can imagine something having separate inertial and gravitational mass, but that concept is about as unrealistic as speeds exceeding c.
        • ElAssoWipo, on 01/13/2008, -1/+2You mean like talking about the non existence of time in relation to SPEEDS?

      • rationalist, on 01/14/2008, -1/+1You had me at "Ha!"
        .
        .
        .
        .
        .
        Then you lost me when you didn't shut up.
      • Privil3g3, on 01/18/2008, -0/+0but you changed the result by measuring it...
    • kmartshopper, on 01/13/2008, -1/+1The title is somewhat misleading. The article claims time may not exist at a small scale but that it is instead an emergent property that becomes apparent on a macroscopic scale.

      It would be similar to say that life itself does not exist on a micro scale - that at a small scale there are only chemical reactions and state changes. Only at a macroscopic scale can we identify what we commonly perceive as "life".

      This doesn't mean we can't still come up with rules for how we observe life or time in the macroscopic level we observe...
      • ElAssoWipo, on 01/13/2008, -1/+2Not to mention that the micro scale is the cause of the macroscopic scale. The only reason there are levels is because we call them that.
  • sjohnson0881, on 01/13/2008, -10/+3That's deep...
    • benbenbenben, on 01/13/2008, -5/+1Sorry, but some of the things scientists come up with are a LOT more crazy than creationism. Seriously, get rid of time, get rid of everything you know about physics. Velocity is measured in meters per SECOND, acceleration in meters per second squared, force in kilogram-meters per second squared, and so on.
      • Jahweh, on 01/13/2008, -0/+2Just shows the modern world is all based on bull ***** really
        • coviecarbine, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1Yeah but where would we be if we couldn't measure the *****... oh wait.
    • stopbrorape, on 01/13/2008, -2/+1no doubt it was thought up by a pot head.
  • donkeySays, on 01/13/2008, -0/+39So where is yesterday now?
    • kirushik, on 01/13/2008, -0/+1325920000000 (=300000*24*60*60) kilometers away
      • Fordi, on 01/13/2008, -2/+6Earth's orbit is on a curve; actual distance would be a chord. As a result, geometrically speaking, it would be less than that.

        But, like any good high-school-geomtry-eduated human, I don't really feel like doing the math.
    • pateo, on 01/13/2008, -0/+8No where, you're only here. Now. =]
      Or maybe it all happens simultaneously?
      Ouch, maybe it's better not to think about it.
      • Jahweh, on 01/13/2008, -1/+2Don't go into Quantum Physics haha
      • xister, on 01/13/2008, -0/+5"No where, you're only here. Now. =]"

        Well, technically I'm *not* here now. As a matter of fact, when you wrote that I was nowhere near *there* (wherever you want to consider there to be) and never will be. I'm not here now either, but you're here now reading this. The internet provides a sort of funhouse mirror of the notion of relativity where time is very subjective.
    • knopf, on 01/13/2008, -2/+2for practical purposes: gone
      • Schneckehaus, on 01/13/2008, -1/+1Haha, physicists don't understand practicality.
    • benbenbenben, on 01/13/2008, -3/+1"Oh I believe in yesterday."
      ~Paul McCartney
      • KingGorilla, on 01/13/2008, -1/+3"FLAVOR FLAAAAAAAV!!!"
        ~Flavor Flav
    • Alex19canteen, on 01/13/2008, -1/+6The Langoliers eated it.
    • nihilite, on 01/13/2008, -0/+4Colonel Sandurz: Now, you're looking at now, sir. Everything that happens now is happening now.
      Dark Helmet: What happend to then?
      Colonel Sandurz: We passed then.
      Dark Helmet: When?
      Colonel Sandurz: Just now. Were at now, now.
    • Scynet, on 01/13/2008, -0/+1The yesterday is right here, evolved/changed into you and me and whatever else it is that makes this day different that it. Just because weekdays in a calendar make it seem like time is a line doesn't mean it really is true. Life is a constantly changing object, the changes are caused by the particles of the life interacting with each others.
    • ScottMitchell, on 01/14/2008, -0/+2Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
      You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way
      Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
      Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
  • Schneckehaus, on 01/13/2008, -21/+225This is like saying inches don't exist.

    Ofcourse inches don't "exist", they're an idea.
    But they're a damn useful one.
    Just like time.
    • worthone, on 01/13/2008, -1/+6Mathematical axioms and numbers all the same.
    • ElbertF, on 01/13/2008, -6/+9And I have many inches to prove it.
      • coviecarbine, on 01/14/2008, -2/+2Stop ***** us, your on digg, we know you won't need to use it.
    • Rheic, on 01/13/2008, -6/+56No it isn't. Inches are just a way of measuring physical properties that do exist. Your example is more like if the article was saying seconds don't exist.
      • Schneckehaus, on 01/13/2008, -2/+25Time is just a graph between two states, nothing more.
        It's an abstract representation of physical change.

        If my hand is 5 inches away fromface, the distance in and of itself is not a THING, but rather a concept defining a state. Inches are a mere aspect of the abstract, jsut how seconds are only an incremental aspect of time. But their status is inseperable when referring to their bearing on physical flux. Tims is just a direction like right or left. But, like all other dimensions, it exists in states.
        Kinetic energy is just math, sir, when you "travel" between two places, all you are doing is completing the algorithm already set in motion by the infintely complex universe we live in.

        Arguably, if all life is a math equation playing itself out like some terrible Rube Goldberg machine we live in, does that mean fate exists? And if fate exists, that supports the argument of every philosophical epiphenominalist ever in history, and the quiet submission to unavoidable conflict. Infact, this is what caused Ablert Camus to write his essay on absurdism in the early 1940s (Le Mythe de Sisyphe), about the fact that life is pointless and absurd, and that ultimate cosmic joke is THE purpose for existence, and one ought to enjoy it, although whether they enjoy it or not might as well be predestined. You are living an illusion, but that is NO reason to think that the illusion can not be enjoyed in lieu of some other absolutist reality propagated by some sort of ancient mythos and metaphysics. Time is nothing. But that doesn't mean that it is not important.
        It's only a contradiction if you try to think of it in familiar terms, you need an alien approach for this one.




        ...sorry, the philosophy buff in escaped for a moment :P
        • DarkSamus, on 01/13/2008, -3/+9/facepalm
        • Fordi, on 01/13/2008, -2/+1Fate is the difference between what you are aware of and all that is.
        • dawgma, on 01/13/2008, -1/+4Schneckehaus... you missed Rheic's point...

          Distance, volume, area... these are physical properties of the universe that exit. Inches, Liters, and meters squared are some ways that we measure these properties.

          Seconds, minutes and hours are the measurements we use for Time. Time, as far as we know right now, is a property of the universe.

          Your mixing up MEASUREMENTS with PROPERTIES.

          P.S. you have a very convoluted way of explaining things.
          • Schneckehaus, on 01/15/2008, -0/+1Yeah, my mind is all over the place.
            I'm a pretty well educated college student, but sometimes my ability to let all that out is.. uhh.. messy.
            My brain moves much faster than my typing :/

            Anywho, I did actually understand his poinmt, I just feel differently about it. I think that an increment is inseperable from its dimension, and if one does not exist, neither does the other. They exist symbiotically. (this is a bit relativistic of me, but Einstein was that way too).
        • karel747, on 01/13/2008, -0/+3@dawgma - But isn't "time" just the concept we use to quantify the difference between phase changes in the "time" dimension, just like "length" is the concept we use to quantify the difference between objects in a spatial dimension? Distance, etc, are all properties of the spatial dimensions, but they don't account for the time element because, for example, a cube is just a cube. If you have the cube move or morph in some way, then obligatory phase changes have to occur, and the distance between the occurrence of these phase changes is time.

          For example, if a cube is centered on the Cartesian plane at (0,0,0) and it's moved to (1,1,1) ... that's to say, at phase 0 the cube exists at (0,0,0), and then at phase 1 it exists at (1,1,1), not at (0,0,0) ... the spatial dimensions can't account for this phase change by themselves without contradicting the preceding event - a fourth dimension has to exists to make the phase change have sense ... so the actual coordinates would be (0,0,0,0) and (1,1,1,1) ... where the 4th dimension is the distance between the changes themselves, not the movement of the cubes ... indicating that the distance between phase state 0 and 1 is 1 unit of some dimension, which we call time.

          Of course, that's just my interpretation, and it apparently contradicts the article, which is very interesting. *time to do some research*
        • Scynet, on 01/13/2008, -0/+1It's true that from a purely traditional scientific viewpoint, fate DOES exist, it is an inevitable result of the particles in life interacting with each others in a definite way. It's just that we don't know this fate unless we build a machine that is able to record the positions, directions etc of each and every particle in the universe and then calculated it all faster than the universe actually happens. Of course, that would need more calculating power than the universe can offer, so that's a dilemma, no? We can't really calculate the future with 100% accuracy.

          Of course, quantum world brings some twists into the soup...
          • Rheic, on 01/13/2008, -0/+1Quantum mechanics does more than bring some twists into the soup, it makes you wrong! One of the fundamental points of quantum physics is that particles DON'T interact with eachother in a definite way. You can know everything about a subatomic particle and still not know what it will do because it's based on probabilities. For example, if you fire a photon at a 50% reflective mirror, there's no way of knowing whether it will pass through or not (see schrodinger's cat). Actually according to quantum physics it does both until you measure it and collapse its superposition.
        • dawgma, on 01/14/2008, -0/+2This whole thread has turned into a half dozen strawman arguments. holy *****. no one gets what Rheic said.

          his original comment was simply reply to a simple question. yet everyone has just ran away with their own, overblown explanations about how time could just be a human abstraction and not a real property of the universe.

          i really hope the bunch of you aren't seriously studying the sciences...
          • Schneckehaus, on 01/15/2008, -0/+1I'm taking engineering physics next semester...
            I really doubt we will go over theoretical abstracts of the time model though...
    • fultonla, on 01/13/2008, -4/+34I prefer the metric system.
      • FinnG, on 01/14/2008, -0/+3Yep, the whole world is going metric, inch by inch.
    • JakeDeathless, on 01/13/2008, -3/+15I'll stick with the metric system.
    • CannibalTom, on 01/14/2008, -0/+5Inches don't exist outside of the US and some undeveloped countries.
  • Graemebru, on 01/13/2008, -9/+2duh?
  • slimZX, on 01/13/2008, -9/+2This is why time travel to the past isn't possible
    • Schneckehaus, on 01/13/2008, -1/+3More importantly, there is no past.
      Time is a mere abstract, as it explains on page 2.
    • ElbertF, on 01/13/2008, -1/+2But we're constantly traveling to the future..
      • Schneckehaus, on 01/13/2008, -0/+4Traveling is sort of an incorrect word to use.
        We don't actually travel to the future, we pass through the present.
        I know it's pedantic *****, but in theoretical physics that sort of nit picking is a bit of crucial.
  • Ramble, on 01/13/2008, -4/+24If time doesn't exist, what are we measuring?
    • Schneckehaus, on 01/13/2008, -2/+19We are measuring comparisons.

      Relativity, duh?
    • ElbertF, on 01/13/2008, -2/+2Nothingness.
    • ProducedRaw, on 01/13/2008, -1/+7Seriously, RTFA. On page 2 it says;

      "“We never really see time,” he says. “We see only clocks. If you say this object moves, what you really mean is that this object is here when the hand of your clock is here, and so on. We say we measure time with clocks, but we see only the hands of the clocks, not time itself. And the hands of a clock are a physical variable like any other. So in a sense we cheat because what we really observe are physical variables as a function of other physical variables, but we represent that as if everything is evolving in time."
    • Jahweh, on 01/13/2008, -4/+1I learnt this in astronomy. A day is defined by the Sun at it's highest point in the sky, and how long it takes till it reaches the highest point again.
      Not 1 complete rotation of the earth as many people innately believe.
      For all intensive purposes in Astonomy, the Earth is the centre of the universe.
      • Fordi, on 01/13/2008, -0/+5'intents and purposes'

        and the center of the universe is not what the earth is. it's the origin of our perspective.
      • Kyan, on 01/13/2008, -1/+3What about non-intense times?

        Interesting bit of linguistics going on here. "For all intents and purposes", the "-nts and" often gets reduced to just "-nts+n" and so people who hear the phrase more than they read it, put a labial "v" in palce of the "n", which is close to labial...Then they write intensive.

        I'm just an armchair linguist, is there someone who can shed more educated light on this?
    • drkroman9, on 01/13/2008, -0/+3Time is our observed measurement of change.
      • loki49152, on 01/14/2008, -0/+0Exactly. It's so frustrating that even these supposedly advanced physicists don't know that one, simple fact.

        Things change. That is what happens in reality. Time is not a "dimension" we can travel along, it's not a "force", it's not something that exists "out there". Things in the universe change. That's it.
    • cruzlee, on 01/13/2008, -1/+2We are measuring Chuck Norris.
  • LeeSoong, on 01/13/2008, -17/+68"And lunch time, doubly so..."

    - Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
    • FueledByWilfred, on 01/14/2008, -0/+4at the time of my post this comment had 42 diggs
    • Vanadis, on 01/14/2008, -0/+5I only Dugg you down so we could hopefully get the diggs back to 42. :(
  • kpaphysicist, on 01/13/2008, -5/+75and that's why physics is such a mind *****.
  • hmunkey, on 01/13/2008, -6/+6Time exists, it just depends on how you define it. Look: you just spent 10 seconds reading this. 10 seconds is time to us, so it exists.
    • Jahweh, on 01/13/2008, -0/+2about 5 mush, maybe time isnt constant! or I just read faster than you do
    • Zaneris, on 01/13/2008, -0/+5The article is talking about time in terms of physics, whether or not it even applies, just because you think something exists, doesn't mean that it really does, it only appears to exist. That's what they're talking about with the surface of water.

      Keep an open mind.
    • LeeSoong, on 01/13/2008, -0/+4or is Time only a perceptual illusion created by your sense organs?

      An earthworm would tell you no such things as ''colors'' exist - because they have no eyes.
      • Zaneris, on 01/13/2008, -0/+2Or on that same premise, I could say the colour pink exists because I can see it, when in fact, the colour pink is just being fabricated in my own mind. Since we don't actually have pink photorecptors...

        Now in this case pink actually does exist, since we have facts to back that up, but it's a good example.
      • Fordi, on 01/13/2008, -0/+3Interesting thing to note: colors do not technically exist, at least not as we perceive them. For example, while the RGB representation of, say, orange looks to us as orange, there is a frequency of light that isn't actually present in that representation that is, in fact, orange. We, for the most part, can't tell the difference (there are those, mostly women, with a mutation that allows them to tell the difference, but they can still be fooled in other ways).

        So, in short, 'color' is an emergent property that represents a quantized relational intensity of a filtered spectrum. It doesn't, technically, exist.
    • tim710, on 01/13/2008, -0/+0anyone who took ten seconds to read that shouldn't be trying to understand concepts like this
      • LUElinks, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1It depends on if you're reading it out loud, though I don't know why anyone would do that.
  • JasonCox, on 01/13/2008, -0/+12Ah-ha! Take that 8-5 job!
  • smek2, on 01/13/2008, -12/+5Newsflash: this is old and has been posted numerous times before.
    • UrinalPooper, on 01/13/2008, -1/+17How can something be old if there is no time?
      • Scynet, on 01/13/2008, -0/+1Because the information of the previous versions of life was recorded and stored in our brains, and now we compare that old version of life with the current version. It makes us realize that this is something that life used to be like, but is no longer. Then we come up with a word to descripe this weird phenomena: time. The order of actions and consequences doesn't require some sort of "time" explanation.
    • 0zymandias, on 01/13/2008, -1/+11I'll say - first saw this on digg a year from now.
  • kristopherw, on 01/13/2008, -27/+3Wow, just go with it dude. Why do we need to figure stuff like this out? Shouldn't we be giving research grants and money to research that can actually help humanity? Like, I don't know, cancer research? AIDS? Or whatever that new "ZOMG, It's going to kill us all!" virus is going to be this year?
    • Schneckehaus, on 01/13/2008, -2/+15You realize that physics is the fundamental science that gives us the most basic understanding of our other sciences?
      Do you think that the molecular processes of the body could be proerply comprehended with physics?

      You sir, are an idiot.
      • Elliuotatar, on 01/13/2008, -1/+17I wonder if he realises that the transistors and things on computer chips are now so small now that we need to know how quantum mechanics works to continue to make them smaller, and that making the connections smaller is how you make PC's faster, and that faster PC's are deperately needed for that medical research he wants scientists to do so badly?
        • Schneckehaus, on 01/13/2008, -1/+6More than likely he does not, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt if he reneges on his comment.

          ***** philistines.
    • sk11, on 01/13/2008, -1/+10Much of the technology employed to detect cancer was founded by physicists figuring "stuff like this out!" Do you think microbiologists invented CAT/PET/MRI scanners, was it they who discovered and worked to understand radiation?
    • UrinalPooper, on 01/13/2008, -1/+8Every time I think I've seen the dumbest comment I'll ever see on Digg, someone like this guy comes along.
    • LeeSoong, on 01/13/2008, -1/+1Nice troll - on message and directly opposed to the parent story.
      I like the complete lack of vulgar words.

      The Art of Troll is to pose as a supporter or opponent, and post an absurdly radical viewpoint.

      Good Job!
    • shadowmoose, on 01/13/2008, -1/+1I want to hurt you.
  • codyman, on 01/13/2008, -1/+11sweet... can we please now change each day to 30 hours then? I still feel like I don't have enough free time / sleep each day and that extra six hours would rock
    • Hayaemsay, on 01/13/2008, -0/+1http://www.xkcd.com/320/

      It hasn't stopped me, I'm actually trying what this suggests at the moment. I woke up at 1:30am today.
    • Zaneris, on 01/13/2008, -0/+3Unfortunately for you, they'd just be measuring how much the clock moved in smaller intervals, and you would not be able to move any more in a given day than you would with there being 24 hours in a day.

      Think about it :p
  • daxsymbiont, on 01/13/2008, -7/+12What a retarded notion. Of course it doesn't *literally* exist.

    It's like saying "fast" doesn't exist. Of course it doesn't exist literally.
    • enunna, on 01/13/2008, -0/+1You'd of done better with a noun instead of an adjective in your analogy. As it stands it's broken.
      • anononon, on 01/14/2008, -0/+2Grammar nazi checking in:

        You'd HAVE
    • evilpoptart, on 01/14/2008, -0/+2that large cube of quickness i have in my fridge says otherwise.
  • cplusplus, on 01/13/2008, -2/+63So now we can ask the presidential candidates if they believe in time.
    • LeeSoong, on 01/13/2008, -0/+4Obviously Time was Intelligently Designed...
  • segiterrus, on 01/13/2008, -7/+1so black is the new white?
  • Cwicseolfor, on 01/13/2008, -1/+24I don't have time to think about this.
  • imightbewrong, on 01/13/2008, -2/+10is anyone is confused this clip from spaceballs might clear up some issues http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvd3kaupZ60
  • sedek89, on 01/13/2008, -8/+2man now ill nvr get paid....
  • itsgotyou, on 01/13/2008, -7/+2pardon me, does anybody have the time?
  • vervalsing, on 01/13/2008, -7/+4Thinking about time and the universe makes my brain hurt. I think the idea that time doesn't exist makes sense...I mean, time itself has no effect on anything; your body ages and dies because of use, disease, injury, etc., it rots in the ground because of bacteria, grass grows because of photosynthesis. Even how we measure time has nothing to do with how it passes (there's no such thing as the "speed of time", I don't think) but with the movements of the earth and moon in relation to the sun.
  • banido, on 01/13/2008, -2/+2Tell that to "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" !
  • ToastyMallows, on 01/13/2008, -16/+8NEWSFLASH: SEARCH AN ARTICLE BEFORE YOU SUBMIT IT

    http://digg.com/general_sciences/time_may_not_exis ...
    http://digg.com/general_sciences/Newsflash_Time_Ma ...
    http://digg.com/general_sciences/NEWSFLASH_Time_Ma ...

    Buried cause you're a dumbass.
    • Hayaemsay, on 01/13/2008, -1/+4Doesn't matter, they were all posted at the same time.
    • xister, on 01/13/2008, -1/+3Soon digg will tear a hole in the space-time continuum when all articles on everything have been posted in infinite numbers. Time will cease to exist and all articles that ever were will be available all in the same instance. Sadly, when that happens all idiots will post; "ZOMG! This ***** haz been posted a million timez!!!" all at once and the universe will then collapse in on itself.
  • tbenathan, on 01/13/2008, -3/+2Time may not exist, but Newsweek definitely does.
    • xister, on 01/13/2008, -1/+1Ahh, but you forgot to address the issue if Life and how that fits into the equation...
  • TittySprinkles, on 01/13/2008, -4/+2Does that mean I don't have to got to work on time?
  • anarchytv, on 01/13/2008, -11/+2Can anybody here prove that tomarrow exists? If it doesn't exist, then there will never be a tomarrow. Tomarrow is always today, so there is no tomarrow. So if a date goes wrong and the girl asks if she sees you again, and you say "I'll see you tomarrorw", is that like really saying you'll never see her again?
    • mukestar, on 01/13/2008, -0/+9who the hell is tom arrow?
      • Bamborzled, on 01/13/2008, -0/+1He's Tom Morrow's brother.
        • itsthebrod, on 01/13/2008, -0/+4If they're brothers wouldn't they have the same last name?
    • JakeDeathless, on 01/13/2008, -1/+2Of course there's a tomorrow....relative to today. The problem is trying to prove that tomorrow is somehow different than today.
    • Schneckehaus, on 01/13/2008, -0/+2I see what you're trying to do there, but you're not understanding science very well at all if you are even remotely serious about your joke.
    • itsthebrod, on 01/13/2008, -1/+5Maybe you should at least learn to spell "tomorrow" before attempting to post a clever comment about it. Seriously, that's like one of the most basic words in the English language.
      • SysstemLord, on 01/13/2008, -0/+1Don't hate don't hate!
        At least we laughed a little.
    • laszlostudio79, on 01/13/2008, -0/+2Marrow boy: Do not try to squash the marrow; that's impossible. Instead only try to realize the truth: There is no marrow. Then you'll see, that it is not the marrow that squashes, it is only yourself.
    • metapop, on 01/13/2008, -0/+2world record for spelling the same word wrong multiple times in the same post.
  • Haecceity, on 01/13/2008, -0/+140Time doesn't exist. More at 11:00.
  • CloseTheCode, on 01/13/2008, -8/+15NEWSFLASH: Digg users don't care about old news being resubmitted over and over again!
    • wilhoitm, on 01/13/2008, -1/+4That is because different people see different posts at different "Times" of the day!
    • p0tent1al, on 01/13/2008, -0/+3AFAIK, diggers voted this to the front page.
    • Trav3133, on 01/13/2008, -0/+3Unfortunately diggers are retards, myself the only exclusion.
      • SonicRush, on 01/14/2008, -0/+2As demonstrated by the comments on this page, where diggers try to discuss quantum physics and the space time continuum.
        • emjaymj, on 01/14/2008, -0/+2"try" being the operative word here.
  • ElAssoWipo, on 01/13/2008, -8/+2Completely useless. The premise is a fallacy, the rest is a series of fallacies and assumptions.

    Time is just the fact that things happen one after the other and that things are caused by other things. If it didn't exist, neither would we. As long as something caused something else, you have time.
    • Schneckehaus, on 01/13/2008, -1/+5Wow, arrogant much?
      You shame every single philosopher and physicist ever to live with this kind of *****.

      Let me guess, real literal thinker, right?
      Bot a big talent for abstraction and "out-of-the-box" thinking?
      It's okay, we can't all be Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci.
      But let me tell you, I would bi irritated as hell if there weren't grunts to bring scientists visions to life for them.
      • ElAssoWipo, on 01/13/2008, -3/+1So you're angry that I don't buy idiotic thinking or that I point out that the thinking is idiotic?
        • xister, on 01/13/2008, -0/+1No, I think the point is that you're idiotic.
    • MasterOrange, on 01/13/2008, -1/+2The premise is not a fallacy unless you can prove that it is a fallacy. You have not done this. All you did was write up a bunch of circular reasoning.

      Existence and time is not necessarily connected. In physics all formulas do work with negative time. This being so, there is undoubtedly curiosity with why we follow one direction rather than the other. Also planck time is similar to planck constant of energy in concept, it does question the existence of time on the microscale.

      I am with Schneckehaus.

      And then replying with a false dichotomy? Awesome.
      • ElAssoWipo, on 01/13/2008, -3/+1That's not a false dilemma.

        A false dilemma would be: do you want to eat burgers tonight or do you want your head to asplode?

        A false dilemma opposes the speaker's intention to a non existant consequence of not picking his intention.

        Schneckehaus's entire comment is an ad hominem mixed with an appeal to authority, mixed with a strawman. He forgot to include an argument and so did you. You just replied with a statement of ideology.

        The only reason there is curiosity is because people are dumb. Consequences go forward and the reason negative time still works is because math is time and math can go both ways.

        2+1=1+2. With or without any of all of the concepts listed in this article, the order of events is always constant. If there is an order of events, there is time.

        Fast or slow, my parents had to exist and grow before I could be born.
        • xister, on 01/13/2008, -0/+1"The only reason there is curiosity is because people are dumb."

          Boy, you must be a riot at parties...
        • Schneckehaus, on 01/15/2008, -0/+1If my comment were attempted to be non fallacious or contribute to your worldview, I would be in a position of being an idiot. But I was not debating you, I was ridiculing you, explaining why you are wrong would take more time than I have to offer. /irony
          empiricism != absolute.
          Thats all I'm going with, I can't possibly try to fix you.
  • one111one1one11, on 01/13/2008, -0/+8So does this change 'time = money'?
    • has2k1, on 01/13/2008, -0/+3Provided the final step, Women = Evil doesn't change.
    • braudio, on 01/13/2008, -1/+0Money is for the poor.
    • Zaneris, on 01/13/2008, -0/+3If anything it becomes more accurate since our money was imaginary in the first place.
    • metapop, on 01/13/2008, -1/+2maybe this is why the dollar is falling... people are losing faith in time itself.
    • tybris, on 01/13/2008, -0/+1Ever heard of legal tender?
    • MSstar, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1Money isn't real ?
  • shakajumbo, on 01/13/2008, -3/+0Newsflash: This article is 6 months and 1 day old. Although if time doesn't exist, the dateline is irrelevant regardless i suppose..

    It's too early for me to think about the possibility of this "earliness" I'm feeling being a figment. I'm grabbing a beer and turning on Sports Center.
  • monkeyswitch, on 01/13/2008, -7/+2Time is relative to our earth and its relationship with the sun. Travel to another planet or galaxy, and our measurements of days and years are no longer valid.
    • ElAssoWipo, on 01/13/2008, -2/+4That's the human conception of time, not time.
    • tybris, on 01/13/2008, -1/+3Hooray for pseudo-science.
    • telapan, on 01/13/2008, -1/+3Thats days, hours, seconds, etc. Not Time.
  • defektiv, on 01/13/2008, -4/+1i think time was invented by humans as an institution of control. how would we get anything done otherwise?
  • dansvan, on 01/13/2008, -0/+1We experience what we think is time. Time changes things, like movements, seasons, and age. If you go to sleep at night, and wake up in the morning, and it's sunny, you know that something changed. So "time" must have moved somehow.
    • Roberib, on 01/13/2008, -0/+2Things change. The earth rotates and we sleep for some fraction of a rotation.
      What we call time is a count of repetitions of some periodic event.
      • LBobRife, on 01/13/2008, -0/+1Ah but for that event to happen, some form of time must exist. How you count it matters not.
        • emjaymj, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1For all we know these events never "happen", the events just "are" but are given a sequence by our minds for the sake of perception. If time did not exist, it is impossible to perceive anything at all without experiencing the world in terms of time because we'd experience everything at once but also nothing at all, and our existence would be erased while simultaneously just having been formed. In such a "reality", the only way for us to so much as acknowledge our own existence and the existence of the universe, as well as understand it, is to ascribe an artificial sequence to the world around us.
  • theghoul, on 01/13/2008, -2/+1*****, my watch stopped..Uh oh.
  • shaherazad, on 01/13/2008, -0/+5Newsflash: Time and space are created by perception and do not necessarily reflect the rules of the universe at all!
    • ElAssoWipo, on 01/13/2008, -1/+2Time and space had to exist in order for a perceptive being to appear.
  • Vodd9, on 01/13/2008, -3/+1Saying that time doesn't exist is pretty much the same to say that objects are in 2 dimensions rather than 3.
    • starkruzr, on 01/13/2008, -0/+2I was going to ask, what happened to the concept of time as the 4th dimension?
  • bVmDHhhX, on 01/13/2008, -4/+1useless, sensationalist, misleading headline.
  • zanzzz, on 01/13/2008, -1/+40Buried as dupe. This was posted already many weeks from now.
    • ElAssoWipo, on 01/13/2008, -7/+3weeks from now: future.
      • booshack, on 01/13/2008, -0/+12face: palm
      • evildeadguy, on 01/14/2008, -0/+5it actually boggles my mind that you took the time to type that out.
  • kurkpeterman, on 01/13/2008, -1/+3wow. that article was very well written and interesting.
  • kodax, on 01/13/2008, -1/+5Its difficult to discuss time without using the word time but I dont think the article was contending time, as an instrument of measurement, does not exist. It was stating that past present and future do not exist. Its like a video I have in my desk of the 1995 superbowl where the forty niners trounced the chargers. There is no past present or future for that video though there is a time indicator on the bottom of VLC. These are limited human concepts to try and discuss something that we have no language for.

    Its interesting to see science aligning itself with Christianity on this as the implication is predestination. We are "always" old, young and middle aged.
    • Andrew84, on 01/14/2008, -0/+0I think that's how I interpreted it. Its like in the movie waking life when the guy is talking about time and says "There's only one instant, and it's right now. And it's eternity. "
    • duality, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1It doesn't help that the English language doesn't handle the concept of time very well either. The word "time" actually has two related but separate meanings. In any case, to be rigorous in any explanation of time, you must specify whether you are referring to an "instant of time" or a "duration of time".
  • olbap, on 01/13/2008, -6/+2Time does not exist. But, that still won't stop most of you people from waking up in the morning and heading off to jobs you hate and wasting most of the life that has been given to you.
    • Kyan, on 01/13/2008, -0/+1Now you have to explain the word "most" as you use it (apparently, correct me if I am mistaken) to describe a part of life.

      Most of your burden is say 15 kilos, leaving something left over. Apparently there is "most" of life being wasted? What, exactly, minutes? Hours" Days? What are those?

      Anyway, I love my job.

      :)
    • tybris, on 01/13/2008, -0/+2Just like you will when you grow up.
    • thatsmyaibo, on 01/13/2008, -0/+1Do you live in a treehouse and carve wood all day?
      • xkingADROCKx, on 01/13/2008, -0/+1Do you sit in a treehouse and get wood all day?
    • Calcularius, on 01/14/2008, -0/+1Or we could be like you, changing the world one buried post at a time...
  • JakeDeathless, on 01/13/2008, -4/+14Does that mean we're never getting out of Iraq?
    • Jahweh, on 01/13/2008, -4/+1Bush needs not exist for that to happen
    • thatsmyaibo, on 01/13/2008, -2/+3Do we REALLY need to incorporate Bush and/or Iraq into every story? I try to avoid the politics section on digg for a reason and now I have to deal with it when looking up science?
      • JakeDeathless, on 01/28/2008, -0/+0Hence the reason why idiots like him are in power.
    • DerangedPenguin, on 01/13/2008, -0/+0Actually we aren't in Iraq in my time reference, only in your weird liberal time reference. In my time reference the WTC's are still standing and Reagan is still President and Jimmy Carter is serving 50 years for mishandling the duties of the Office of the President of The United States. Oddly enough Jimmy Carter is still building homes for Habitat For Humanity only he is wearing an orange jumpsuit.
      • dandonia, on 01/15/2008, -0/+1and your on a pc, surfing the internet - here on digg
  • DeadlyBrad42, on 01/13/2008, -0/+2Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
  • slayergoddess, on 01/13/2008, -2/+1I've heard that life is an illusion, that we are in dream, and we only THINK it's real. This article got me thinking about that. Time, in a dream, isn't real...but it feels like it is. Dreams can seem to last a long time, we can life a day, a moment, or a lifetime in a dream...and find out when we wake up that we were sleeping just 20 minutes! So if we apply that same phenomena to our lives, if we were IN a dream, then yeah, time is a figment but maybe someday, we'll all wake up....
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