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The Phantom Time Hypothesis

Started by Unbeliever, October 06, 2018, 08:34:16 PM

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Unbeliever

I've only just heard about this, and it's interesting. Have any of you ever heard of it before? Should we give it any credence?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_hypothesis
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Baruch

Interesting.  Never heard of this before.  I think the "tell" is that he is a Velikovsky fan.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Cavebear

Quote from: Unbeliever on October 06, 2018, 08:34:16 PM
I've only just heard about this, and it's interesting. Have any of you ever heard of it before? Should we give it any credence?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_hypothesis

Never heard of it, but that is probably because I'm not a crazed conspiracy lunatic.  It seems totally nuts though.
Atheist born, atheist bred.  And when I die, atheist dead!

Draconic Aiur


Unbeliever

Yeah, that's what I thought, too, but didn't have time yesterday to pursue it. Even if it were true I doubt it would have any practical implications.
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Sal1981

Ridiculous historical revisionism.

Baruch

Quote from: Unbeliever on October 07, 2018, 05:48:48 PM
Yeah, that's what I thought, too, but didn't have time yesterday to pursue it. Even if it were true I doubt it would have any practical implications.

Perhaps a reworking of the oft told tale (and in a new movie) ... of the airplane that disappeared from the sky and reappeared years later.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Hakurei Reimu

The only practical use PT would have is making conspiritards think they have something on us "rubes."
Warning: Don't Tease The Miko!
(she bites!)
Spinny Miko Avatar shamelessly ripped off from Iosys' Neko Miko Reimu

SGOS

Quote from: Unbeliever on October 07, 2018, 05:48:48 PM
Yeah, that's what I thought, too, but didn't have time yesterday to pursue it. Even if it were true I doubt it would have any practical implications.
That's was my first thought.  Frankly, I don't care if time began with the birth of Christ, or the invention of the atom bomb.  The basis of our present calendar is completely arbitrary, and serves no purpose beyond keeping track of current events.  For people 3000 years ago.  It must have seemed awkward with each new year marking a backwards march through time.  But the more important question to me rather than if this really happened is, "Why would it make a difference?"

Mr.Obvious

Quote from: SGOS on October 09, 2018, 06:35:15 AM
That's was my first thought.  Frankly, I don't care if time began with the birth of Christ, or the invention of the atom bomb.  The basis of our present calendar is completely arbitrary, and serves no purpose beyond keeping track of current events.  For people 3000 years ago.  It must have seemed awkward with each new year marking a backwards march through time.  But the more important question to me rather than if this really happened is, "Why would it make a difference?"

Don't you see?!

It means we were wrong for laughing at Christians when Jesus failed to show up in the year 2000.
He'll be here in 2297!
Repent!
"If we have to go down, we go down together!"
- Your mum, last night, requesting 69.

Atheist Mantis does not pray.

Baruch

Quote from: SGOS on October 09, 2018, 06:35:15 AM
That's was my first thought.  Frankly, I don't care if time began with the birth of Christ, or the invention of the atom bomb.  The basis of our present calendar is completely arbitrary, and serves no purpose beyond keeping track of current events.  For people 3000 years ago.  It must have seemed awkward with each new year marking a backwards march through time.  But the more important question to me rather than if this really happened is, "Why would it make a difference?"

People "looked" to the past ... not the future in conceptual terms.  With most Romans, it was by "which two patricians were consult that year".  It was unusual to count from AUC (from the founding of the city) which was arbitrary too and unclear, since early records were gone.  In Biblical terms, counting by generations was equally poor.  It was Christians who started to take year counts seriously, because of dating Easter and the Papacy.

And it was the Englishman, the Venerable Bede, who incorrectly setup the present system (nobody knew exactly what the year count was when he was trying to calculate it (from about 732 CE or AD)  That is why King Herod died in about 4 BCE.  And there is no "year zero" in that system either.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

SGOS

For what it's worth, according to Wiki (which doesn't even include the Mayan calendar, although I don't know anything about the Mayan calendar), there is a shit pot full of calendars out there.  The important thing doesn't seem to be the year in which the calendar originated, but how accurately it measures the Earth's solar orbit.  Most any calendar can include a leap year to fix the discrepancy between one full turn on the Earth's axis and one complete orbit around the Sun.  I prefer Star Trek's Dewey Decimal Star Date Calendar: 20.4.603  Whatever that is, I'm sure it's a more useful measure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_calendars
QuoteThe history of calendars, that is, of people creating and using methods for keeping track of days and larger divisions of time, covers a practice with very ancient roots.

Archeologists have reconstructed methods of timekeeping that go back to prehistoric times at least as old as the Neolithic. The natural units for timekeeping used by most historical societies are the day, the solar year and the lunation. Calendars are explicit schemes used for timekeeping. The first historically attested and formulised calendars date to the Bronze Age, dependent on the development of writing in the Ancient Near East. The Sumerian calendar was the earliest, followed by the Egyptian, Assyrian and Elamite calendars.

A larger number of calendar systems of the ancient Near East appear in the Iron Age archaeological record, based on the Assyrian and Babylonian calendars. This includes the calendar of the Persian Empire, which in turn gave rise to the Zoroastrian calendar as well as the Hebrew calendar.

Calendars in antiquity were usually lunisolar, depending on the introduction of intercalary months to align the solar and the lunar years. This was mostly based on observation, but there may have been early attempts to model the pattern of intercalation algorithmically, as evidenced in the fragmentary 2nd-century Coligny calendar. Nevertheless, the Roman calendar contained very ancient remnants of a pre-Etruscan 10-month solar year.[1]

The Roman calendar was reformed by Julius Caesar in 45 BCE. The Julian calendar was no longer dependent on the observation of the new moon but simply followed an algorithm of introducing a leap day every four years. This created a dissociation of the calendar month from the lunation.

In the 11th century in Persia, a calendar reform led by Khayyam was announced in 1079, when the length of the year was measured as 365.24219858156 days.[2] Given that the length of the year is changing in the sixth decimal place over a person's lifetime, this is outstandingly accurate. For comparison the length of the year at the end of the 19th century was 365.242196 days, while today it is 365.242190 days.[2]

The Gregorian calendar was introduced as a refinement of the Julian calendar in 1582, and is today in worldwide use as the de facto calendar for secular purposes.

SGOS

I propose a new calendar where the current moment remains "year zero" at all times.  Today, tomorrow, next week is year zero, day zero, and zero seconds.  Historical dates that measure how long ago would change daily, so we would always know exactly how long ago that date was.  This might possibly resolve the Theory of Relativity's conflict with Quantum Mechanics, because a light year would be relative and distances would change relative to something else.  I'm getting confused.  I no longer know if I'm thinking outside the box or coloring outside the lines, but I think I may be onto something.

Gawdzilla Sama

Quote from: Unbeliever on October 06, 2018, 08:34:16 PM
I've only just heard about this, and it's interesting. Have any of you ever heard of it before? Should we give it any credence?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_hypothesis
The proposal has been universally rejected by mainstream historians.

Burden of proof is on the claimants. Doesn't appear they've met that burden.
We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake  we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the  young for a long long time."
PZ Myers

Gawdzilla Sama

Quote from: SGOS on October 09, 2018, 07:55:27 AM
I propose a new calendar where the current moment remains "year zero" at all times.  Today, tomorrow, next week is year zero, day zero, and zero seconds.  Historical dates that measure how long ago would change daily, so we would always know exactly how long ago that date was.  This might possibly resolve the Theory of Relativity's conflict with Quantum Mechanics, because a light year would be relative and distances would change relative to something else.  I'm getting confused.  I no longer know if I'm thinking outside the box or coloring outside the lines, but I think I may be onto something.
Constant math required. Fuck that shit.
We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake  we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the  young for a long long time."
PZ Myers