My Canoe Challenge

[Freodin]

Such as a trees age relative to the canoe ages!

Oh my... now that is a major misconception you have here. I don´t know if I can clarify that for you.

The problem we begin with is that of "age".

In AV´s view, "age" is a physical property of an object that indicates a certain state of "maturity". It is not necessarily connected with the passage of time in his view.

So he needs to come up with different concepts for "age" due to passage of time and "age" due to... whatever he thinks influences it.

But these concepts have nothing (at least, very little) to do with "time". So there is nothing to talk about "relative time" here.

In his example, the canoe is one day old. I guess he measured the day by normal means... constant periodic processes. The age of the tree is also measured by that method. It is of course a different age, but not a relative one.

It is both based on what you called "statical clocks".

 

[Lillen]

No i did not missunderstand! I was not clear with you thats all. The tree of the conoes age in contrast to the finnished work of carving out a tree...

 

[Lillen]

What do you mean with time being relative?

 

[Split Rock]

The canoe is one day old, possessing the maturity of a 1000 year-old tree.

Why doesn't the canoe possess the "maturity" of its 13.7 billion year old atoms?

 

[Nathan Poe]

Why doesn't the canoe possess the "maturity" of its 13.7 billion year old atoms?

Well that's certainly not going to help AV sound smarter than "scientists."

 

[Split Rock]

Well that's certainly not going to help AV sound smarter than "scientists."

No, no, no. "Internet Scientists."

 

[Lillen]

We messure time in days, and hours!

Remeber on mars a day look diffrent from that of earth. so the very way of messureing time is relative! Not statical!

 

[AV1611VET]

In AV´s view, "age" is a physical property of an object that indicates a certain state of "maturity". It is not necessarily connected with the passage of time in his view.

I could not have said this better, myself.

Well-done!

 

[shinbits]

I read the first five pages of this thread, and I have to shake my head.

AV's question is simple and obvious: can a canoe that was just made that day be shown to have a much older age, if no one told you it was just made? I guess this is to argue that a 6,000 year old earth may seem older, because the materials used to make it or much older.

Is that right, AV?

But I wonder, is it possible to tell how long a tree's been dead? I know this can be done with humans by forensic (sp?) scientists. They can tell if a human's been dead a couple of hours or a couple of days. Maybe there's something similar for dead wood?

IF there is a way to tell, then yes, AV, the canoe could found to be a day old, though it came from an old tree.

 

[Lillen]

I been running some cognitive schemes lately. I will stop that and find other ways to hang out with you guys! Because this is getting boring

Lets assume the Sun was bigger in the past, and that the earth was not eight lightminuites away from the sun but rather ten and swinged around the sun with it speed.

We would still have messured years to years, and hours 1day/24, would we not?

yet the very definition of time is diffrent.

 

[Freodin]

I read the first five pages of this thread, and I have to shake my head.

AV's question is simple and obvious: can a canoe that was just made that day be shown to have a much older age, if no one told you it was just made? I guess this is to argue that a 6,000 year old earth may seem older, because the materials used to make it or much older.

There are a lot of questions that seem to be quite simple and obvious... and are not.

AV´s question was answered simply and obviously in the second post of this thread: the canoe is one day old. And then he went of into the canoe having two different ages... unjustifiedly and leading to the occuring debate.

But I wonder, is it possible to tell how long a tree's been dead? I know this can be done with humans by forensic (sp?) scientists. They can tell if a human's been dead a couple of hours or a couple of days. Maybe there's something similar for dead wood?

IF there is a way to tell, then yes, AV, the canoe could found to be a day old, though it came from an old tree.

Yes, it is possible to tell how long a tree has been dead. But that has only marginally to do something with the age of the canoe.

The basic misconception still lies in the concept of "age". AV congratulated me on explaining his concept of age... but this concept is his only. No one else uses it in this way.

The basic concept of "age" is based on simple counting. We take these periodic processes I mentioned and count them. We just have to see that we count them right, and... the important point!... that we correctly identify when to start counting.

But usually people are not stupid, and it is not so difficult to find out when you should start counting, and how that point related to what you are looking for.

In this example, it should be clear that the tree the canoe was made from is older than canoe. So looking for the startpoint "when was the tree planted" is completely off the point. Looking for "when was the tree shaped into a canoe" is what we want to find.

Just as you don´t look for the manufacturing date of your wristwatch when you want to know the time.

So you look for a certain point - a point of relevance for your question - and use that for establishing an "age". Anything else would be quite stupid.

 

[Cabal]

I been running some cognitive schemes lately. I will stop that and find other ways to hang out with you guys! Because this is getting boring

Lets assume the Sun was bigger in the past, and that the earth was not eight lightminuites away from the sun but rather ten and swinged around the sun with it speed.

We would still have messured years to years, and hours 1day/24, would we not?

Define "bigger". If you mean a larger solar mass, then the orbital period of earth would be different. Changing the radius will definitely alter it.

yet the very definition of time is diffrent.

No, all that would do would be provide a different set of natural units of time based on the motion of our planet. There would still be the same proportional relation between different intervals of time.

 

[Freodin]

I been running some cognitive schemes lately. I will stop that and find other ways to hang out with you guys! Because this is getting boring

Lets assume the Sun was bigger in the past, and that the earth was not eight lightminuites away from the sun but rather ten and swinged around the sun with it speed.

We would still have messured years to years, and hours 1day/24, would we not?

yet the very definition of time is diffrent.

No. The definition is the same. The conditions are different.

The very point of timekeeping is to find a basis that is constant... and to know when your basis in not constant.

In your example, these 10-lightminute-earth-people would most likely have based their timekeeping on their "years" and "days". But these would have been different from our base... but that would not have influenced processes that are independent from this solor cycle.

 

[Lillen]

What i mean is that if the sun was larger, such as a red giant, and our planet were so far away it the red giant would look like our own sun. Even under these circumstance, a year would still be a year, and an hour an hour would it not?

If we lived on mars, one hour would look diffrently from earth, one year would look diffrently from earth, yet defined in the same way!

 

[Cabal]

What i mean is that if the sun was larger, such as a red giant, and our planet were so far away it the red giant would look like our own sun. Even under these circumstance, a year would still be a year, and an hour an hour would it not?

If we lived on mars, one hour would look diffrently from earth, one year would look diffrently from earth, yet defined in the same way!

Yes, the actual length of a "year" (i.e., if you define it as the orbital period of the planet you're on) would change. As every interval of time is rescaled, however, the ratio of the length of times of any two different events will not change.

 

[Lillen]

I look diffrently on it: If we lived on mars instead of on tellus we would still define one second as one second, and one year for one year. But the frequncy or pulse would beat diffrently from the earth.

 

[Cabal]

I look diffrently on it: If we lived on mars instead of on tellus we would still define one second as one second, and one year for one year. But the frequncy or pulse would beat diffrently from the earth.

Well, descriptively you can't really say "one second as one second", as it wouldn't be the same length of time nor defined in the same way. But there would indeed be a different set of natural units that would arise based on the orbital dynamics of that star-planet system.

 

[Freodin]

I look diffrently on it: If we lived on mars instead of on tellus we would still define one second as one second, and one year for one year. But the frequncy or pulse would beat diffrently from the earth.

Depends.

A year is defined as the period in which the planet goes around the sun once. This definition depends on the orbit.

A second is defined by a certain physical property of a certain kind of atom. This would be the same on Mars as on Earth.

 

[Lillen]

In my knowledge, a second i defined as a 60th part of a minuite, an minuite as a 60th part of an hour, and a hour 24th of day...

A second is defined by a certain physical property of a certain kind of atom. This would be the same on Mars as on Earth

Now i don't refute that yet, as there is more then one way to describe the same event, or phenomenon.

How does atomic clock work once again? Universial time is set up to synchronize universe pulse... as for the rest i have no clue!!!

 

[Freodin]

In my knowledge, a second i defined as a 60th part of a minuite, an minuite as a 60th part of an hour, and a hour 24th of day...

Err... not quite.

The basic physical unit as defined by the International System of Units is the second. A minute is 60 seconds, an hour 60 minutes, a day 24 hours. Not vice versa.

And the second is defined by physical properties... not cosmological.

It is defined as "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom."

You don´t need to understand what exactly that is. What is important is that this is a very precise, short and periodic... perfectly suited to count time.