3 ms·
> Time is measured by clocks. What is the fundamental unit of time discovered by using these "clocks"?
by paulnpace 2y ago
> Time is measured by clocks.
What is the fundamental unit of time discovered by using these "clocks"?
- creata 2y agoWhat do you mean by "fundamental unit"? Like, what would you consider a "fundamental unit" of space?
- paulnpace 2y agoWhat I am doing here, really, is demonstrating that time does not seem to be a particle, which is usually made up of some fundamental unit (molecules are made from atoms, atoms are made from nucleons, those are made from quarks, etc) or is a fundamental unit.
- catlifeonmars 2y agoSame with space
- paulnpace 2y agoCan you define "space"?
- exe34 2y agohow much time have you got?
- catlifeonmars 2y agoI have a volume of spacetime approximately equal to 5e11 quartic meters :)
- oezi 2y agoThese clocks fundamentally measure how long certain processes at the quantum level take. We can measure time now so exactely that on the scale of the age of the universe we are less than 1/10th of a second inaccurate. Or as another example clocks are now so accurate that we can measure the time dilation by raising a clock in the gravitational field of the earth by millimeters.
- paulnpace 2y agoHow does this compare to confirming the existence of other things demonstrated to exist? For example, do we confirm the existence of a proton as some percent of the universe of protons? The same for gravity? Magnetism? Why is it that with time, we are always using some kind of tolerance statement based on some understanding of the entire existence of the universe (which I am unclear on how to test such theories), meaning that we still are not coming to a single statement "time is x" while also assuming time to exist (I haven't seen things published such as "we are less than 1/10th of a nuclear force inaccurate" because this is not how the nuclear force is demonstrated to exist)? To me, this suggests there may be certain broadly predictable properties of the universe such that time seems to explain some aspect what we observe, but it is merely concurrent with the mechanics of the universe and useful for human understanding, but not something that exists (note that this is my interpretation, not a scientific proposition). (Conceptually similar to how the Ptolemaic model of the universe can predict the cycles of the stars, but does not provide a description of how the universe works, but I'm not trying to change the topic, just to stick strictly here to demonstrate things can be useful and scientifically not true.)
- exe34 2y agoevery single measurement is subject to measurement uncertainty. the mass of an electron will be quoted with some errorbar. we had a quote in the lab at uni: errorbars or it didn't happen. errorbars aren't a weakness, on the contrary, they indicate how confident we are of some measurement.
- paulnpace 2y ago