...not that your "proof" would have amounted to a hill of beans, but because I like you and didn't much enjoy fighting the compelling urge to criticize your position again.

It's difficult to try and explain something only to see the person listening just doesn't get it. Aurino said it very well:

>>>"(Stafford is) insisting we should disregard what clocks measure and insist on our psychological concept of time..."

Disregard what clocks measure and insist on our psychological concept of time. Nail on the head.

(Aurino, if you're reading this, did you go out and get a new brain this summer? The "Aurino Souza" I remember didn't understand Einstein.)

>>>" 'time' is when things happen from the observer's perspective; 'proper time' takes into account the distances of the supernovae from the observer and from each other."

Arrgh! Please read these two links; they spell out in much more detail the concepts you need to get:

http://www.astronomy.net/forums/god/messages/20201.shtml?base=30

http://www.astronomy.net/forums/god/messages/20400.shtml?base=30

Einstein was more than "approximately right" -- his fourth dimension corresponds to what we call time. The only non-physics specific implication we should take away from Einstein's theory is that it's extremely difficult to amend our personal mental paradigms.

If you're looking for something outside of the modern definition of time, then maybe it is your own mental models you are battling. Yes, there may be a trillion unknown laws underlying what we know about reality, but what you and I call time is not anything more than a function of localized physical processes. As Bruce pointed out, Einstein's clarification of time does not represent anything ontological. Of course we are all free to hold our own beliefs in a greater lattice-work behind reality, but sometimes our biggest hurdle in appreciating Einstein is our own holistic bias.

You're looking for that giant ticking clock that runs the whole universe. Please read the above links, and maybe you'll understand a little better that time is not a metaphysical thing.

-LH

• Great post, Luis - a_souza - August 12, 2002 - 12:41 UTC