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What I just realised - imagine we are living in the future and have colonized distant planets. We might need a new tense that indicates that an event has alread

What I just realised - imagine we are living in the future and have colonized distant planets. We might need a new tense that indicates that an event has already happened on that distant planet, but due to speed of light limitations, this information has not yet arrived at the observer.

ThalesX 5y ago
We have this in my native language; adapted to English, it would sound like <It will have happened>. Three black holes will have merged in a nearby galaxy.
diegoperini 5y ago
Turkish has such flavors of past tenses. They are called "observed past" and "learned past" tenses. As the names imply, one is used when you witness the event. The other is used when you forget that you witnessed or you heard it from someone else.
- system2 5y ago
  Did anyone say anything about Turkish?
  - moab 5y ago
    The comment is about turkish tenses that are "similar" to the kind of knowledge conveyed in the tenses OP points out. It seems relevant to me.
  - ehnto 5y ago
    The relevancy is obvious. Someone wondered if we will need new words for different nuances of tense, and this comment described that Turkish has some of those already.
shsbdncudx 5y ago
We wouldn’t know about such events until light reached us anyway - light is the speed of causality, so we’d never apply this tense you propose.
- CuriousSkeptic 5y ago
  Was just going to say that we should perhaps start with using the term “speed of time” instead of “speed of light” to get in the right frame of mind. But then I started to think about it and it doesn’t seem exactly right either. Causality kind of implies interaction, and interaction implies mass (no?), so causality as such must necessarily be strictly slower than C. That is, the speed of the propagation of the wave function between causally connects to events is C but causality as such are the interesting things happening at those events.
  - dnadler 5y ago
    > interaction implies mass (no?) Not necessarily. Photons, for example, are massless. But you're still pretty much correct. Information cannot travel faster than C. Though there may be some special cases that I'm not too familiar with. One I'm a little curious about is entangled quantum particles, though I'd have to do a little reading to be able to say anything further.
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      Entangled quantum particles cannot transfer information, regardless of your interpretation.
- Razengan 5y ago
  We have words for infinity and shit that would never be “applied” but are useful logically.
- ben_w 5y ago
  We might, but Relatively makes it counterintuitive. In the past/future you find all the stuff within the corresponding light cone. The stuff outside the cones can flip between being what seems (non-Relativistically) like it should be past and future, can be either depending on your motion relative to it, so an extra tense for spacelike separation is something I can imagine a sufficiently advanced civilisation using.
- foota 5y ago
glandium 5y ago
Wasn't there a paragraph or two about making up a tense for that in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Edit: found it: https://sites.google.com/site/h2g2theguide/Index/t/956236 https://sites.google.com/site/h2g2theguide/Index/t/956236 (it was about time travel, close enough)
snet0 5y ago
Is this not some kind of sneaky simultaneity? You're imagining some absolute "this has happened" where, in your perspective, it hasn't yet. I'm interested if anyone qualified could fix this issue for me. When we look into the distance, we see things that we describe as "happening X years ago" based on their light-year distance to us. We imagine that in the actual present at that location, what we're seeing happened X years ago. Is this not implying some absolute time reference that shouldn't really exist?
- R0b0t1 5y ago
  It could be possible to go faster than light and preserve causality. The problem is we don't know a way to do this -- all explored ways create contradictions based on the physical laws as we know them. If you can imagine teleporting and still having a consistent timeline, then you can imagine going faster than light.
  - thethimble 5y ago
    “Going faster than light” is impossible. The intuitive concept of velocity as something that can be infinitely scaled isn’t how real relativistic velocity works. “Teleporting” and “having a consistent timeline” are oxymorons.
  - api 5y ago
    We are pretty sure FTL or “stargate” style teleporting would break causality. If anything like this is possible it means the universe is far, far stranger than we have imagined.
    - Jenk 5y ago
      Disclaimer: uneducated ignoramus posting. Does that apply to wormholes, assuming wormholes are a thing and we ever develop a method to warp spacetime arbitrarily?
      - snet0 5y ago
        If you're interested in some simplified-but-still-roughly-rigorous discussion about the physics of time travel/causality, Sean Carroll did a solo episode of his podcast where he talked about a few different ideas in this space. https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/11/23/124-solo-how-time-travel-could-and-should-work/ https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/11/23/124-...
mike_hock 5y ago
Maybe we could borrow from our distant (or not so distant) ancestors, where an event might have happened on the other side of this planet, but due to the speed limitations of ships sailing the ocean, this information had not yet arrived at the observer.
smiley1437 5y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_cone https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_cone
layer8 5y ago
> has already happened This isn’t well-defined for events outside your light cone. Of course we could introduce an outside-one’s-light-cone tense.
patall 5y ago
But NASA already has that situation with their Mars rovers already. When ever those do something, its always 5-20 minutes when you know it has already happened but the signal is not on earth yet.
tzs 5y ago
It is not just the future that needs it. Time travel stories are part of our mainstream fiction and so we need to deal with time travel tenses when discussing the plots of those stories. Here's what can happen with our current tenses if you try to discuss the popular movie "Back to the Future": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLpUlmiVo2k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLpUlmiVo2k

ThalesX 5y ago

We have this in my native language; adapted to English, it would sound like <It will have happened>. Three black holes will have merged in a nearby galaxy.

diegoperini 5y ago

Turkish has such flavors of past tenses. They are called "observed past" and "learned past" tenses. As the names imply, one is used when you witness the event. The other is used when you forget that you witnessed or you heard it from someone else.

system2 5y ago
Did anyone say anything about Turkish?
- moab 5y ago
  The comment is about turkish tenses that are "similar" to the kind of knowledge conveyed in the tenses OP points out. It seems relevant to me.
- ehnto 5y ago
  The relevancy is obvious. Someone wondered if we will need new words for different nuances of tense, and this comment described that Turkish has some of those already.

shsbdncudx 5y ago

We wouldn’t know about such events until light reached us anyway - light is the speed of causality, so we’d never apply this tense you propose.

CuriousSkeptic 5y ago
Was just going to say that we should perhaps start with using the term “speed of time” instead of “speed of light” to get in the right frame of mind. But then I started to think about it and it doesn’t seem exactly right either. Causality kind of implies interaction, and interaction implies mass (no?), so causality as such must necessarily be strictly slower than C. That is, the speed of the propagation of the wave function between causally connects to events is C but causality as such are the interesting things happening at those events.
- dnadler 5y ago
  > interaction implies mass (no?) Not necessarily. Photons, for example, are massless. But you're still pretty much correct. Information cannot travel faster than C. Though there may be some special cases that I'm not too familiar with. One I'm a little curious about is entangled quantum particles, though I'd have to do a little reading to be able to say anything further.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    Entangled quantum particles cannot transfer information, regardless of your interpretation.
Razengan 5y ago
We have words for infinity and shit that would never be “applied” but are useful logically.
ben_w 5y ago
We might, but Relatively makes it counterintuitive. In the past/future you find all the stuff within the corresponding light cone. The stuff outside the cones can flip between being what seems (non-Relativistically) like it should be past and future, can be either depending on your motion relative to it, so an extra tense for spacelike separation is something I can imagine a sufficiently advanced civilisation using.
foota 5y ago

glandium 5y ago

Wasn't there a paragraph or two about making up a tense for that in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Edit: found it: https://sites.google.com/site/h2g2theguide/Index/t/956236 https://sites.google.com/site/h2g2theguide/Index/t/956236 (it was about time travel, close enough)

snet0 5y ago

Is this not some kind of sneaky simultaneity? You're imagining some absolute "this has happened" where, in your perspective, it hasn't yet. I'm interested if anyone qualified could fix this issue for me. When we look into the distance, we see things that we describe as "happening X years ago" based on their light-year distance to us. We imagine that in the actual present at that location, what we're seeing happened X years ago. Is this not implying some absolute time reference that shouldn't really exist?

R0b0t1 5y ago
It could be possible to go faster than light and preserve causality. The problem is we don't know a way to do this -- all explored ways create contradictions based on the physical laws as we know them. If you can imagine teleporting and still having a consistent timeline, then you can imagine going faster than light.
- thethimble 5y ago
  “Going faster than light” is impossible. The intuitive concept of velocity as something that can be infinitely scaled isn’t how real relativistic velocity works. “Teleporting” and “having a consistent timeline” are oxymorons.
- api 5y ago
  We are pretty sure FTL or “stargate” style teleporting would break causality. If anything like this is possible it means the universe is far, far stranger than we have imagined.
  - Jenk 5y ago
    Disclaimer: uneducated ignoramus posting. Does that apply to wormholes, assuming wormholes are a thing and we ever develop a method to warp spacetime arbitrarily?
    - snet0 5y ago
      If you're interested in some simplified-but-still-roughly-rigorous discussion about the physics of time travel/causality, Sean Carroll did a solo episode of his podcast where he talked about a few different ideas in this space. https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/11/23/124-solo-how-time-travel-could-and-should-work/ https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/11/23/124-...

mike_hock 5y ago

Maybe we could borrow from our distant (or not so distant) ancestors, where an event might have happened on the other side of this planet, but due to the speed limitations of ships sailing the ocean, this information had not yet arrived at the observer.

smiley1437 5y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_cone https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_cone

layer8 5y ago

> has already happened This isn’t well-defined for events outside your light cone. Of course we could introduce an outside-one’s-light-cone tense.

patall 5y ago

But NASA already has that situation with their Mars rovers already. When ever those do something, its always 5-20 minutes when you know it has already happened but the signal is not on earth yet.

tzs 5y ago

It is not just the future that needs it. Time travel stories are part of our mainstream fiction and so we need to deal with time travel tenses when discussing the plots of those stories. Here's what can happen with our current tenses if you try to discuss the popular movie "Back to the Future": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLpUlmiVo2k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLpUlmiVo2k