What do you think would happen if time stopped, and started again?

anonymous

2012-06-19 20:30:33 UTC

My girlfriend and I were talking one day, and I mentioned that I loved thinking about impossibilities. She asked me, "Like what?" I said, "Like what would happen if time stopped."

And so it began.

She said that if time stopped, then that means the earth would have stopped revolving around the sun, the earth would have stopped rotating on its axis, and, essentially, we would all be toast. Good try. I said that I wasn't talking about if the processes by which we measure time stopped, but if time ITSELF simply stopped.

Then she said, if time stopped, everything would stop moving, and we would be stuck under the sun's rays, so our skin would age rapidly. Not quite. I said that, if time stopped, all energy would stop moving, and so the energy from the sun would stay where it was. She said, then we would still be cooking, because the energy that is next to our skin would still be in contact with our skin. Still off. The energy would cease to be transferred, and all particles would cease their movement.

She said, well then, if the particles that make up our body stopped moving, we would essentially freeze. I said, not so. If time stopped, then ALL natural law would cease to be carried out. All natural functions and processes would stop. We would not age, gravity would not be exerted, energy would not be transferred, all particle movement would cease, and when time started again, everything would continue, all natural law would continue, as if nothing had happened.

She asked me to define time. I thought and could not give a good definition of time, so I looked it up. We found that time, by definition, is essentially the system of events happening in a sequential relation. She reasoned that events, in our universe and reality, could be equated to particle movement.

She said that, for time to stop, then all events, down to every individual particle's movement, would have to somehow, simultaeneously, cease. She also said that, even if all events did somehow cease, then, logically, when time started again, no molecular movement could start again without an outside force acting upon it, which would not exist if all particles had been frozen. I told her that her reasoning was based upon the assumption that, in logical sequence, events stopped, then time stopped. I said I believed that time would stop, then all events would stop. In other words, no events occuring is the evidence of time having stopped, not the cause of it.

I used the example of linked portals in space to explain what I believe would happen if time stopped and started again. When one steps into one portal, he steps out of the other portal. The portal causes space to act as if the parts of space linked by the two portals are in contact and continuous from each other. So it would be for a break in time.

I asked her to picture a line that represents time. Picture two points on this line. One is the point at which time stops, and the other is the time at which time starts again. The space between is frozen time as seen by an outside observer, one who is not affected by our time being stopped, one who is outside of our time. To us on the line of our time, the two points would act like two linked portals. Time would continue at one point where it left off at the other, and we would be none the wiser.

So, essentially, I believe that time would pick up where it left off, and she believes that the sequence of events that define time could not continue because molecular movement could not be generated from nil.

Now, enough about what we think. What do you think would happen?