Random hypothetical...

[marrstians]

if there were a way to freeze or stop time, and you could observe this without being affected by the stopping of time, what would happen to other objects? would you observe a bullet floating in the air like in the movies? would the weight of things be changed? if you moved an object, like a moving bullet, and placed it elsewere, would the bullet still have the same velocity when time was restarted? is there any real theroys about stopping or starting time? just a curiosity that i was looking into...

[Queso]

The mind is the only thing I know of that is capable of altering, dismantleing, and obeying physics all in one.

 

It all depends on who's doing the time bending, I guess.

[pgrmdave]

There is an inherent flaw in that hypothetical. Assume you could stop time. That means that all motion stops. That means that light stops, which means that light stops reaching your eyes, which means you can't see anything. There are so many things wrong with the idea that one cannot even begin to logically define the outcomes.

[marrstians]

well you don't have to see an object for it to still be there... if the sun stoped producing light, the earth would still be in the same spot, at least it seems...

[pgrmdave]

What you are asking, in short, is "If the laws of physics stopped working as we know them, what would the laws of physics be?"

 

My point about the light is this. Assume that your body is outside the realm of time stopped (if not, you couldn't think). Are the laws of physics still in effect for everything? Do planes drop out of the sky? Does the earth stop rotating, thus causing inertia to cause buildings to topple? Do air molecules stay 'frozen' - thus preventing you from moving - or do they stop their motion, but then are quickly affected by gravity, causing the air to become considerably more dense (thus crushing things, possibly you)? There are so many unanswerable questions that the question itself is unanswerable.

[Boerseun]

I see what you're trying to get at.

 

If we ignore Dave's valid points for a second, like the fact that you won't see anything or be able to breathe or anything to that effect, if you stopped time in its tracks, I suppose that yes, you will see a bullet hanging in mid-air. But you won't be able to interact with it, like point it somewhere else, because doing that or interacting with it at all implies motion. Motion under the conditions you specify would be impossible, because motion, once again, depends on time, which you have stopped for this specific scenario. You won't be able to interact with the scenery at all, whether you're part of it or an objective observer.

[CraigD]

if there were a way to freeze or stop time, and you could observe this without being affected by the stopping of time, what would happen to other objects?

There is an inherent flaw in that hypothetical. Assume you could stop time. That means that all motion stops. That means that light stops, which means that light stops reaching your eyes, which means you can't see anything. There are so many things wrong with the idea that one cannot even begin to logically define the outcomes.

What you are asking, in short, is "If the laws of physics stopped working as we know them, what would the laws of physics be?"

I think we can entertain marrstians’s question, without requiring the complete freezing of light or suspension of the laws of physics, by modifying is slightly to read:

 

If you could sense, think, and move many (for the sake of discussion, let’s assume 100) times faster than normal, how would the world appear to you, and you to the world?

 

It’s an interesting question, and a popular if infrequent basis for science fiction stories. The first time I remember encountering the idea was the 1966 episode of the TV series “The Wild Wild West”, “The Night of the Burning Diamond”, then again in the 1968 “Star Trek” episode “Wink of an Eye”. Though very imaginative TV screenplays, both were pretty lax with their science, the STrek episode more than the TWWW.

 

Having kicked the idea around for nearly forty years now, I’ll throw out a few more and less obvious repercussions of the “high-speed living” idea:

• (as both TV episodes depicts) You’d be practically invisible, or at least a hard-to-percieve blur, to normal-speed observers
  
• (as the TWWW episode depicts) You’d be moving so fast that air friction would be a hazard. The ability to move your body at speeds as great as a hypersonic airplane could heat your skin and cloths to burning temperatures
  
• If you moved faster than the speed of sound, you’d have a detectable (and mildly descructive) sonic boom.
  
• (unlike either episode depicts) You’d be practically weightless. Normal walking would be impossible. You’d have to move the way astronauts in a space station do, by pushing off of surfaces or climbing with the help of hand and footholds. They’d have to be sturdy surfaces and handholds, too – ordinary walls would be like tissue paper, and even hardened concrete would be prone to cracking. You’d have to be careful not to lose your grip and “go ballistic”, or you’d find your self trapped in midair, moving a sluggish few hundred km/hr, like a skydiver.
  
• Breathing would be a problem. The air would be like a unprecedentedly thick liquid, and once depleted of oxygen, would take a while for more of the gas to diffuse from the surrounding air. You might have to hold your breath the whole time you were in high-speed, or have some sort of exotic system to supply concentrated oxygen to your lungs or directly to you blood
  
• Blood circulation might be a problem, too. Unless your circulatory system were reinforce, the pressure of your blood rushing through its twisty course would tear it apart from the inside. You might need an exotic system to slow or stop it, while hyperoxygenating your blood to compensate for the slowdown.
  

It’s difficult to imagine a scientifically plausible way to accomplish high-speed living. The only vaguely plausible idea I’ve been able to concoct involves uploading your mind into some sort of artificial host – a synthetic biological analog of your brain, or some sort of computer – with the ability to sense and move, a sort local-control robot. Some sort of very powerful negative gravity field generated by exotic matter (everybody’s favorite wormhole-building material :hihi:) might be capable of high-speeding an ordinary human and his surroundings (solving several of engineering challenges above), but getting a uniform field while avoiding being thrown around or yanked apart by it presents a bewildering challenge (as if creating exotic matter was not daunting enough!).

 

The idea is certainly a fertile playground for the imagination!

[freeztar]

[*]Breathing would be a problem. The air would be like a unprecedentedly thick liquid, and once depleted of oxygen, would take a while for more of the gas to diffuse from the surrounding air. You might have to hold your breath the whole time you were in high-speed, or have some sort of exotic system to supply concentrated oxygen to your lungs or directly to you blood

 

The real kicker is your compressed air tank that you would need. As your mass inflates towards infinity, so do your peripherals. It would seem to me that your compressed air would be quickly comprimised by the changing pressure, but I'm not sure about pressure change within those limits.