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Good answer. However it raises the question: is time just a human convention like language and art? Or is it a thing that exists as a natural law even if we didn't - like gravity and valency. Or is it something that may be a human convention - as you say, June - for recording and measuring the rate of change of things and progress of events, but can be affected by speed, gravity and mass. When time gets distorted as we get sucked into a black hole, is time like a sea getting shaped and distorted, together with everything in it, as it vanishes into a vortex, or is it just the effects of gravity on matter that seems to alter a 'thing' called time?
Is time just gravity and relativity's apparent changes of time just that - distortions of gravity? Could be an interesting thread.
Time is really an increase in entropy (higher state of disorder) from a lower state of disorder (higher state of order). Eggs break but don't unbreak and wine spills and stains the carpet but doesn't unspill and unstain the carpet. It is the fourth dimension and the compliment to space itself when we talk about spacetime.
This is all referenced to the fastest speed in the universe (the speed of light) which is why time slows down the faster we approach the speed of light.
Independent of an observer, clocks still slow down the faster they approach the speed of light which tells us that time is still a separate entity and exists on its own.
For example... Take a light clock:
On the left side, the light clock is not moving. It's absolutely static in relation to the speed of light. The photon (moving at or near the speed of light) will bounce a given number of times in one second. The plates measure the number of revolutions the photon makes and once it reaches the number of revolutions required to tick away one second, the clock will show one second having gone by.
But, now, if we set the light clock in motion (such as what is being shown on the right hand side of the image), it takes much longer for the photon to make the required number of revolutions between the plates for one second to tick by. In other words, the clock will count the seconds slower the faster the clock moves in relationship to the speed of light.
time is always now.... the past..doesnt exist other than in memory and the future doesnt exist until it becomes the now. if we live fully in the present moment time no longer exists to trap us.. the idea of time and dates and clocks can be usful to keep appointments etc but when we get trapped in the belief of time we lose the very magic of the present and we get caught in the mind.
Good answer. However it raises the question: is time just a human convention like language and art? Or is it a thing that exists as a natural law even if we didn't - like gravity and valency. Or is it something that may be a human convention - as you say, June - for recording and measuring the rate of change of things and progress of events, but can be affected by speed, gravity and mass. When time gets distorted as we get sucked into a black hole, is time like a sea getting shaped and distorted, together with everything in it, as it vanishes into a vortex, or is it just the effects of gravity on matter that seems to alter a 'thing' called time?
Is time just gravity and relativity's apparent changes of time just that - distortions of gravity? Could be an interesting thread.
It's TEBOW-TIME! (Glad he's not a Bronco anymore).
I've often wondered that myself. Time is recognized in physics as a dimension, but is that just because of our mathematical understanding of physics or does it really exist as a natural physical property? Where is Michio Kaku when you need him?
I've thought about this long and hard. Here are my thoughts.
1. Time isn't natural. It's an artificial way of perceiving the universe. Without humans, there is no time. Without a thing to perceive time, there would be no time. (Not true with something like space (barring other philosophical arguments..))
2. Time, from a human perspective, is only a measurement of how close we are to death. If humans were immortal, then time would irrelevant. There are beings out there that can "reverse grow", and to such a being, does time exist? I'd argue not.
3. There are different times. People perceive time differently. Some perceive it going faster..and others slower. To one, the same "10 minutes" can be "30 minutes" to another. It makes you wonder, then, that some people are actually a lot closer to death than others...at least from their perspective.
4. It's virtually impossible to talk about time with language. Language assumes time in everything...and as such, to reach a definite conclusion of what time is, a new method of communication would have to be devised. (Mathematics, also, assumes sequence, which would have to be negated in some way for mathematics to objectively say anything about time...which may or may not be the case, I'm not really too familiar with the mathematics of time..)
5. Time is neither just cyclical, or just linear...it has elements of both which leads me to believe that it's actual essence will be something completely different.
6. Time is extremely variable from one person to the next...it's easy to "speed up time" and "slow down time"...as it's mostly a cognitive perception.
7. To speak of time and space as a single thing is deeply flawed. Space is inherently more innate than time. Though I understand why one would be tempted to think of a "time-space" matrix, I don't think the essence of time or space lend themselves to be synonymous.
8. The big bang is a cop out. It's major flaw is that it assumes it knows the essence of time (as linear, sequential, cyclical, whatever...)
Also,
In response to Einstein's utterance that "Everything is relative", I say "Time will tell".
Time will tell what exactly time is, but the first step would be to arrive at something that it is not.
So perhaps a better question would be "What isn't time?" which is also a tough one..
To answer your question, I don't know what is time, sorry.
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