2023-08-27 – Uma pequena explicação sobre eu dizer que o Tempo não existe, envolvendo a Relatividade de Einstein, Time Dilation, entre outras coisas (Física)…
Hoje acordei, fui ao email, e vi no Quora terem dúvidas sobre o Tempo existir ou não, e lembrei-me de vários vídeos que fiz há anos dizendo que o Tempo não existia (coloco-o em baixo junto com um sobre realidades virtuais), mas no mais recente, de 2018, eu queria explicar em 20 minutos e levei 90 minutos a falar, e provavelmente ficou complexo.
Por escrito ficou mais simples, mas foi em Inglês (a pergunta estava em Inglês), mas dá para compreender a minha posição, e ainda explico as partes básicas sobre o Tempo ser relativo, etc, e decidi colocar no meu site, para ele não ter apenas o meu vídeo nas apresentações mas também algo escrito.
E também em homenagem à grande mente de Einstein, após ter visto na Quarta-Feira passada o magnífico filme Oppenheimer, um dos meus favoritos agora, e ter adorado ver a representação de Einstein no mesmo, fica em homenagem a ele.
A imagem acima escolhi por ser gira e ficar bem no meu website, e já que nunca tenho tempo para falar destas coisas, queria uma imagem impecável.
Bem, aqui fica o texto que meti no Quora:
«Time doesn’t exist, but for us it exists.
But in reality there is no Time.
There are events, events exist.
I usually try to explain this to friends through several different concepts, let me try some of them here, and I bet you would understand it very well.
Imagine a computer program, the program itself, runs at its own speed, and for it, there is no time, it simply does what needs to be done, one instruction at a time.
But if we humans run it on a very slow machine, it may take 10 minutes to run, and on another, 1 minute, and on another, 10 seconds.
For us, it took a certain amount of time, but in reality, inside the computer, there was no time, it simply ran by its own instructions.
The Universe is like an algorithm, which has its equivalence in our Universe by the laws of Physics, and those laws are its instructions, and it has its constants and variables just like a computer program.
And it runs by its own speed, it simply runs one instruction at a time (just humor me).
But for us, it may take 10 minutes to run, 1 minute, 10 seconds, because we invented our own units to measure its performance.
But for the computer it doesn’t exist, it simply goes in one direction and that’s all, one step at a time.
In our universe, it’s similar, Universe doesn’t have Time, it simply has events and they happen accordingly with its own algorithm, at its own pace, and for someone like me that programs everyday to run my own Physics simulations or to create cool stuff like Game Engines (a lovely way to mix two of my passions: Physics and Programming), etc, it’s great to think about our Universe as a simulation, as a computer program, and if you notice carefully, they are very close in terms of concepts, and if we lived inside a simulation, some stuff like Interference Patterns on Quantum Physics or Quantum Entanglement would make all the sense.
As the Universe is just like a computer program, it has its constants, its variables, its algorithms, its formulas that could be used to create stuff (like the seemly fractal nature of trees, etc), the laws of Physics being applied the same way everywhere, etc, etc, etc.
Now the faster an object travels, the more observable mass there is on that object (we would say this if we didn’t want to complicate this speaking about inertia, to make it simple), and the slower time passes for that object, that’s why people say that if we were a massless object like a photon of light, time wouldn’t exist for us, if we humans could travel from one point to another having no mass, at the speed of light (something impossible according to the laws of Physics and I’m not talking about theoretical ways to work around that problem with tricks like bending space, etc), our travel of trillions of light years, would take trillions of years to happen, but we would simply close our eyes, and open then, and the travel would be made, as time wouldn’t pass for us, it would be instantaneously (impossible for mass objects like us of course).
I mentioned inertia because inertia is important here, but we humans invented the “relativistic mass” concept to make students of Physics understand these things better, so we usually talk about “mass” even when we may be talking about “inertia” also some times, so if I write about “mass” on the following sentences, remember I could be talking about other terms like “relativistic mass”, and I won’t read this twice, I’m just dumping some thoughts here, it’s not that I don’t know the difference.
Anyway, the faster we go, the slower time passes by.
That’s why some say that at a certain speed, if we aged 1 year, outside on our world, people would have aged 10 years, or more, etc.
The same happens near massive objects.
I’m not sure if I mentioned term “Time Dilation” yet but doesn’t matter (I’m not gonna read this so forgive me for some typing errors or if I repeat myself which is one of my two major problems, writing too much and repeating myself).
GPS satellites have Time Dilation incorporated on their systems, because, there are two factors that changes how they perceive time:
1 – Their clocks are slowed down due to their huge orbital speeds (they need to travel at very high speeds to be kept in orbit, as the nearer to Earth they are, the faster their required orbital velocity need to be, to be able to defeat the downward pull of gravity, that’s Orbital Mechanics 1+1);
2 – Their perception of time is accelerated by their distance out of Earth’s gravitational “well”.
Now they do the calculations, how much time is slowed down due to their orbital speeds, together with the time “running faster” to them due to being more far from our planet’s gravitational pull (there will always be a pull no mather how distant you are, but it can be negligeble at huge distances but it always exists, that’s the way our Universe’s algorithm was made to work and that’s what I need to do with stars on my Galaxy Collision Simulations), and that variable gets a value that is added to its calculations all the time.
That’s why GPS systems work well, because without those calculations, they wouldn’t be as precise as they are (it was tested and proven already), and a software engineer developing those systems would need to know that or everything would fail.
But the Universe doesn’t care about “Time”, those units that we humans invented, it simply runs its algorithm, Time is our own attempt to measure the speed at which is runs.
But we can say it exists, because we invented it, but for the Universe itself, it doesn’t exist (I’m trying to explain this in an easy way because I had too many problems in the past explaining this, I even made a video 7 years ago trying to explain but wasn’t understood back then, another 5 years ago, etc).
Now if we travelled very fast, near the speed of light (that “near” is relative as it would be impossible to reach it as we have mass, that’s the way our universe “was designed” whether by “God” or by chance among an infinitude of universes or whatever you believe in), we would feel time to be just like if we were on Earth, we would throw an apple into the air, and catch it, it would fall (for us) at the regular speed we always knew and were used to, we would see the clock’s pointers moving at the same speed, etc, while in reality time would pass like x times faster back on Earth (or should I say 10 times slower to us 😉 ?), and this because Time itself doesn’t exist, and we try to measure something that doesn’t really exist and that measuring attempt is affected by factors like mass gravitational fields and other stuff.
That’s why there is all this confusion about time being relative, it’s not that the Universe made it relative, or some “bug” in our Universe’s algorithm, it’s just that Time can’t be apllied universally the same way everywhere, as it wasn’t supposed to be.
It’s just a failed attempt of us humans to find a way to measure the speed of events in the Universe, which can’t be the same everywhere, to it would always be a relative and prone to failure measurement unit system.
Now, imagine time for you is going 10 times slower than to someone on Earth, you wouldn’t obviously feel you would be living 10 times slower, to you it would feel and be the same.
It’s the same as a computer game, it won’t matter if you ran it on a 30 Mhz machine or on a 133 Mhz machine, the simulation would run what it needed to run, and for characters of A.I. inside that game, those characters (if being intelligent), would think they would live at the same speed, whether they would be running on very fast machines or not.
The same way, if we lived inside a virtual reality, inside a computer simulation, it wouldn’t matter if 1 year inside our reality would take 1 second on the reality in which our simulation would be running, or 1 year, or 10 million years, it would be the same for us, as inside our reality, we would feel time at our own pace, as we would be unaware of time outside our reality.
This is a basic knowledge for someone that creates artificial realities, universes, games, etc, inside those universes, entities have their own speed, independent from our reality’s speed.
Now imagine someone on a spaceship that would be going so fast that time would pass 10 times slower inside it, that person would be unaware of how time would pass outside its own ship, as everything for that person would run as that person was used to, like someone inside a computer simulation unaware that was living in a computer simulation with a different time speed.
Now the Unviverse has the real “speed” of events, and imagine people living on Earth would be A.I. beings living inside a 10 times faster computer and someone on that spaceship would be living on a computer 10 times slower than the other.
If 1 year passed on that Universe’s “speed”, inside the 10 times faster computer their beings would have aged 10 years, and inside the 10 times slower computer (in relation to the faster one), they would have lived just 1, because its machine was a lot slower, so events inside it ran 10 times slower than in the other.
Then we would join those Artificial Intelligence beings from both realities, and they would be on the same machine (like if the spaceship returned to Earth), and they would notice that the beings inside the spaceship would have aged 10 times less, just one, year while the others would have aged 10.
This is in the most simple way to explain (I think this is an easy to understand explanation), on how Universe works in relation to “Time”.
You don’t need to live at huge speeds to live slower, there are other ways… I remember that on Battlestar Galactica 2003 TV Series (one of my all time favorites although not entirely realistic), some Cylon lived near a black hole, so that time would pass slower for them (in fact I don’t remember the reason why they lived there as I saw it like more than 15 years ago).
Now nothing can go faster than the speed of light (through our Space medium), so the Universe “thought” about a way to make things always go perfectly, which is Time Dilation.
I wrote “thought” but in reality this wouldn’t have to be thought because simply applying all the rules of Physics would make this happen anyway, it’s just a consequence of the underlying rules.
If you are near the speed of light, you won’t notice anything (unless you have any contact of what is happening outside, or look outside), because time will pass slower to you, and this way you’ll never violate the laws of Physics.
So if you threw a ball inside the spaceship at the regular speed, on a spaceship travelling at 99.9% of the speed of ligh (if we could travel at this speed, humor me), you would see the ball travelling at the same speed if you were inside the spaceship as if it was done on Earth, as time would go slower for you, but in reality the ball would be moving a lot slower in relation to someone on Earth.
Someone on Earth would see the ball comming out of your hands 10 times slower like it you were on slow motion. But as even your thinking would me 10 times slower, for you it would be the same…
The Universe would never allow the universally constant speed of light to be surpassed (like in a computer simulation there are constants, that can’t be changed like variables do).
Speeds wouldn’t seem to us to be added the same way as if you threw a ball on a car at Earth.
I must create a computer simulation to make that example be visually understood one day, it might be an enjoyable thing to do.
And it’s not Time that passes slower, it’s the speed at which the Universe runs inside that spaceship, like if you were on a simulation, and as Time is measured through mechanisms that run respecting the Laws of Physics, “Time” will run slower to you, as the events will run slower to you, like if you were inside a very slow computer running the same simulation, unaware of how slow that computer was.
And to people on Earth, time would run faster.
On every simulation, imagine artificial intelligent beings would live at 60 FPS (Frames Per Second), for them, every second would be the sum of 60 Frames, and it doesn’t matter if those 60 frames would spend 1 hour on the computer to be renderer, or 1 year, or 1 second, for those beings, one second would always be one second, they wouldn’t notice it ever.
That’s why I usually say that if we lived in a computer simulation, 10 million of our years could have taken 1 year, 1 month, 1 week, or even just 1 minute to run in the computer that runs it, and that the entire History of our Universe could have ran in just one minute, the time someone would take to turn our simulation on and off, who knows?
But back to the ball, Time doesn’t exist, what runs faster is the execution of the Laws of Physics, or as I call them “the Events”.
We just try to measure the speed of those events, but that speed is always the same for the Universe, it is simply understood at different speeds by us due to certain factors.
That’s why I use the term “Space” and not “Space-Time”, because for me, Time doesn’t exist at all, so for me our measurement system may go slower, and in fact we could see a “Light Clock” (a cool way to explain all this, search for “Light Clock Time Dilation” to find some simulations), making seconds go slower, I mean, making our clock mechanism in fact going slower, but in reality, the Universe’s “Time”, I mean, the events’ speed at which the Laws of Physics were applied, would move exactly at the same velocity as ever, but the photon of light wouldn’t just be moving up and down as fast as it would be moving horizontally also, so, adding both, it would be moving diagonally but never surpassing the speed of light, so everything is processed slower than in Earth, and time would seem to go slower to us.
But we, inside the spaceship, wouldn’t feel time going slower, for us it would be the same, as all our think processes, every process inside our body, even our thoughts, would process slower and we wouldn’t notice anything, that’s why we would age x times less.
That’s why I say (and lots of others for sure), that we can’t travel in time, at least for the Past, that we can only “kind of” travel to the Future, by travelling in such a way that time passes slower to us, and by ageing less than others, it would be a way to “travel into the Future”, but anyway, to the Past it would always be impossible.
So the “Time” for the Universe itself, never changes, as it would not “know” that you would be using a “Light Clock” to measure time inside the spaceship, and it wouldn’t even care about if it it did, it does what it is supposed to do (make Laws of Physics work on each time), and if the time goes slower for you, who cares.
That’s why I say and it seems that many others nowadays, that Time doesn’t exist.
We have the concept of time, it exists for us, but Universe doesn’t care about our concept at all.
I’m curious, because I think this is the most complete and easy way I’ve ever written to explain this, if someone doesn’t understand it, please tell me, just for me to know if this is a good answer, thanks. :)»
Atenção, não pensem que perceberam alguma coisa sobre a Relatividade de Einstein, pois envolve muita, MUITA coisa mais além disto, não subestimem o que ele fez, a obra dele é bastante mais complexa, eu apenas dei umas luzes pequenitas sobre algumas coisas para que as compreendam melhor quando as virem nos filmes, e também tentei explicar o meu ponto de vista sobre o “Tempo” não existir.
O vídeo que meti há uns anos na Internet:
E sobre o podermos viver numa realidade virtual, deixo um pequeno vídeo de uma apresentação que fiz há uns anos, e que ficou gira. 🙂
2023-08-27.
Link para outro post no Quora, de 2024-04-06, onde explico algo sobre a Relatividade e viagens ao Futuro:
Links onde partilhei a explicação no Quora, que depois meti noutros 2, num total de 3 respostas:
https://www.quora.com/Does-time-only-exist-in-the-human-mind/answer/Goncalo-Ferreira-7
https://www.quora.com/Does-time-exist-5/answer/Goncalo-Ferreira-7
Update de 2024-02-07:
Deixo um pequeno update aqui, já que é a única coisa neste site em que falo de viajar no Tempo.
Comecei a ver o filme Flash e reparei que falavam lá que se viajassem acima da velocidade da luz, viajariam para o Passado.
Queria deixar aqui claro que isso é impossível, se viajassem à velocidade da luz, o que é algo impossível pois violaria as fórmulas que regem o nosso Universo e é impossível que aconteça, o Tempo permaneceria inalterado, e o sentir do tempo para nós seria como se estivéssemos à velocidade da luz, ou seja, senti-lo como estagnado, ele não andaria para trás, porque é a nossa percepção do Tempo que muda consoante esse aumento de massa ou velocidade, e não o próprio Tempo em si.
Mas na realidade algo de muito terrível aconteceria se passássemos da velocidade da luz, mas na realidade isso é 100% impossível e nunca poderia acontecer anyway.
Acima da velocidade da Luz, teoricamente, os eventos a essa velocidade no máximo permaneceriam estáticos, e não se viajaria para o Passado, isso é absurdo.
Fica bonito no filme mas não seria possível nunca, o Tempo só tem mesmo um sentido, e não há forma de alterar isso, mas nem vou referir o que aconteceria aos bebés se fossem movidos àquela velocidade como aconteceu no filme (e como no dos X-Men com o Mercúrio), pois existe uma coisa chamada Inércia (entre outras), e não há ali nenhum tipo de “estabilizador inercial” (que existe em certas séries futurísticas de Ficção Científica), pelo que nenhum dos bebés sobreviveria nem preservariam as suas formas infelizmente, mas como é um filme, vamos ignorar isso tudo e apreciar. 🙂
Mas já que estamos a falar de ficção, fica aqui outro (impossível onde as pessoas não sobreviveriam graças à Inércia, etc, mas que acho bem mais espectacular:
Hasta!
2024-01-07.
Post seguinte associado ao tema da Física:
Post anterior associado ao tema da Fìsica, neste caso sobre colisões de Galáxias:
