Quantizing Time: Fact or Theory?

[snackster17]

Ive been reading a "theory" posted it on the internet, that claims time occurs at the speed of light, since that's the fastest an event can happen for a subatomic particle. I have also read that light radiates photons because the uncertainty principle makes electrons constantly in motion consequently causing photons to be emitted. Do these have any validity to them?

 

[Phrak]

What sort of experiment would measure the velocity of time?

 

[Pengwuino]

"Time occurs at the speed of light" is like saying... actually I don't even know what that's like saying. Saying something does anything "at the speed of light" means it's something physical moving, covering some distance in a certain amount of time. You can't say time occurs at the speed of light. Time isn't covering any distance. I believe what you're trying to say is that the time interval two events can occur and be causal (that is, one caused the other) is the time light would take to travel between the events. This is true.

Also, light doesn't radiate photons. Light IS photons. Electrons must accelerate to radiate, however. Electrons in constant motion do not radiate. What the uncertainty principle does say, though, is that electrons must always be in motion. They can never be perfectly still. If they were perfectly still, you'd know their exact momentum, which is not compatible with the uncertainty principle.

 

[yanatise]

time can't b wave or light.it is independent of modern physics

 

[yanatise]

What sort of experiment would measure the velocity of time?

how can u say that the time has its own velocity?object can't exist in this universe without time and time can't exist in this universe without mass.

 

[Phrak]

how can u say that the time has its own velocity?object can't exist in this universe without time and time can't exist in this universe without mass.

I didn't say that. And I ask you the same sort of question. This is physics not philosophy. What experiments would you propose that would put substance to your claim that objects cannot exist without time, or that time cannot exist without mass?

 

[snackster17]

thanks that helped alot. It also said that the collapsing wave functions of atoms is time at its most fundamental level and was talking about how that causes free will.
Light expands in a sphere, and its interactions with other particles creating more light is the forward movement of time according to it. i am pretty sure it has an equation too.

 

[Pengwuino]

thanks that helped alot. It also said that the collapsing wave functions of atoms is time at its most fundamental level and was talking about how that causes free will.
Light expands in a sphere, and its interactions with other particles creating more light is the forward movement of time according to it. i am pretty sure it has an equation too.

It sounds like someone read a wikipedia article and decided they were educated enough to throw some random words together and call it a theory.

 

[Superstring]

thanks that helped alot. It also said that the collapsing wave functions of atoms is time at its most fundamental level and was talking about how that causes free will.
Light expands in a sphere, and its interactions with other particles creating more light is the forward movement of time according to it. i am pretty sure it has an equation too.

This makes about as much sense as the following:

I've been further even more decided to use even go need to do look more as anyone can. Can you really be far even as decided half as much to use go wish for that? My guess is that when one really been far even as decided once to use even go want, it is then that he has really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like.

 

[robdean]

The topic header and first post seem a bit of a grab-bag of things - maybe I'm not bright enough to intuit how they are related. But, erm...
Speed is defined in terms of time. In what independent units could the 'speed of time' be expressed? It would all boil down to time moving at 'x seconds per second'. Which cancels to no units, just a ratio - the realm of time-dilation/relativity.
In a sense anything can be quantized, the question being whether it is ultimately fundamentally quantized - this in the case of time being conjectured as the time taken by light to travel the Planck length.
Rather than 'time occurs at the speed of light' one could say, less poetically but more meaningfully, that the faster a clock moves with respect to oneself the slower it will appear to be running. Were it to be moving at light speed with respect to an observer, the observer would see the clock hands as stationary, it's entire vector in spacetime being in the space dimensions. But that's a relativistic effect, not a quantum phenomenon. Real-world example: apparently prolonged half-life of particles moving near the speed of light.
Photons are quanta of light. The uncertainty principle is fundamental to the quantum realm. It asserts the impossibility of knowing precisely, for example, both the vector and position of a quantum particle at a given instant. It doesn't exactly 'cause' motion, but it stipulates that there must be inherent fluctuations to values of position or velocity (amongst other things) on the quantum scale.

 

[Naty1]

Ive been reading a "theory" posted it on the internet, that claims time occurs at the speed of light, since that's the fastest an event can happen for a subatomic particle. I have also read that light radiates photons because the uncertainty principle makes electrons constantly in motion consequently causing photons to be emitted. Do these have any validity to them?

Neither statement is correct as posted.

Time occurs at the speed of light: This is sort of backwards...
The idea could relate to simple representation on a graph with time on the vertical and velocity on the horizontal axis...some here hate that representation...only light, no mass, can move along the horizontal axis at c and no time (vertical axis) passes; any mass moves between the two axis in the first quadrant...If you are stationary, no velocity, at the origin, then you pass entirely through time...

But a much better way to understand passage thru time is special relativity...and later general relativity...it turns out both velocity and gravitational potential effect the apparent passage of time...and different observers see different rates of passage...it turns out space and time are NOT fixedas we might think, but the speed of light IS

Photons are quanta of electromagnetic radiation and those we can observe by eye are called "light"...In genera;, light IS composed of photons, light doesn't emit them...

Can time be quantized...Are you implying that if light is quantized via photons then time must be quantized? That may or may not be true...one does not reflexively folloow from the other...
I'm unsure if anybody has a believable theory...relativity deals with space and time as continuous, but that does NOT mean it actually is in nature...that's simply how Einstein set up his mathematics...there are several long discussions here on quantizing space and time and whether there are maximum wavelengths and frequencies for things...one comes up against the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and Planck size stuff and things are blurred there so nobody knows just what happens...Various quantum theories are the best we can do so far...

Try here for more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time#Relativistic_time_versus_Newtonian_time

 

[snackster17]

I did not say it was true. I just read it lol. Which I'd why I placed it hear to see why it is wrong, which according to you it is