Does time move in a seamless orientation, or can there be rips or tears in time that we do not know about? I'am asking out of curiosity only, not a study problem.
Asked
Active
Viewed 45 times
-2
-
How do you define a rip or tear in time? And how can we know about it without knowing about it? – BioPhysicist Jan 24 '19 at 21:42
-
I think there are two distinct questions here: (1) does time only ever flow in one direction - the "arrow of time", and (2) are there the "rips or tears" in time? Niels Nielsen has answered the second one below; for the first one, see the Community Wiki post What is time, does it flow, and if so what defines its direction? – Chappo Hasn't Forgotten Jan 24 '19 at 23:52
1 Answers
1
Time and space are intermingled, so a rip or discontinuity on one would involve a rip in the other.
We strongly suspect that such a rip- called a spacetime singularity- exists at the very center of every black hole. But the singularity is cloaked from our view by an event horizon that surrounds it.
Since it seems that every galaxy has a supermassive black hole in its center, it then follows that there are lots of such rips in the universe- every one of them hidden behind an event horizon.
We also suspect that because of the way the universe is put together, there are no "naked" singularities (that is, a singularity without an event horizon). There is a theorem of physics which states this but it has not yet been proven.
niels nielsen
- 92,630