What is time?

Question

It is a concept that we invented, but does it truly exist?

Answer 1

No time does not exist. It is something people invented to try to "measure" duration of events. There is only life and it has a beginning point and ending point. Everything inbetween is just living.

Answer 2

Time is a concept invented by humankind to have a relation or measurement of "before and after". Time is not a physical thing but the concept exists, time exists because we make it so. When mankind goes, time goes with him.

Answer 3

Wow! are you ever smart to ask such a deep and knowledgeable question! Time is only a concept in the mind and does not exist in ultimate reality. In Reality, it is always "now". The reason that the concept of time seems so real is because our minds have the ability to remember "nows" that no longer exist and to think about possible "nows" that do not exist but might come to be. Time is a very useful concept but for deep thinkers it is important to know that it doesn't truly exist outside of the mind. Actually, it is possible to exist only in the "now", which is ,of course, the only place we truly exist anyway. Catholic contemplatives call this, "Accepting the will of God in the present moment", "resting in God as He rests in me." Usually we are so preoccupied with worrying about our memories, the decisions we made, and the possible "nows" that we might have to live in as a result of decisions we made. Usually for us to rest in the "now" is only possible if we realize how much God loves us, how much control He has over His Creation and "nows" that will come to be, and train the mind through practice to ignore the thoughts and rest in the Love of God. Thank you so much for asking this question!

Answer 4

time exists in a cause/effect relationship (like was previously said, motion). Our clock is a measure of time, like a ruler is to distance. The concept of the measure of point a to point b is meaningless unless we assign it meaning. There is a standard measure (in america, anyway) of the inch. Absolutley useless in other countries. Same said for time. You cannot use the measure of a minute and year (and all other such legnths) if you were say on mars, or on some other planet at all. It can, however, be made into a proportion much like inch to centimeter (1 in=25.4mm). one earth year (or, orbit around the sun) equals 365 days (earth). one mars orbit equals the equivalent of 687 earth days, so one mars year=1.88 earth years. All of this measurement is relative of course, and for our purposes works nicely and can be applied to almost anything that orbits. It all depends on light and gravity, which I don't feel like typing out explinations for.

Answer 5

Time is a function of motion. Any movement has a velocity which is a distance-time relation. Where there is no motion, there is no time. Of course motion includes electrons running around protons.
As long as there are things in a position related to another thing and it's postion and any changes to the relation occur, there will be time. We did not invent time, we invented ways to talk about it.

Answer 6

Good Question.
Time is usually described as the 4th dimension to normal 4 dimension reality. It seems to bend and shift depending on your speed, mass, and relative location to another location in the universe. The passage of time, as we fell it, does not actually happen; every moment in time is just as real as any other, therefore all must exist constantly. Unfortunately, I think we will never solve all the mysteries of time because we cannot measure all the factors involved because of our limited perception of reality.

Answer 7

Time has long been a major subject of philosophy, art, poetry, and science. There are widely divergent views about its meaning; hence it is difficult to provide an uncontroversial definition of time. Scholars disagree on whether time itself can be measured or is itself part of the measuring system. Many fields use an operational definition in which the only definition attempted is that of the units used.

for more (and its worthy) click the link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time

Answer 8

"People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between the past, the present, and the future, is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

Time is a physical property and can be measured just like height, width, depth. The difference is the type of measuring device required. Einstein proved this.

Answer 9

A nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future.

Answer 10

yeah it does exist. it's the reason that u were a baby and now ur older. if time didn't exist we would never grow up...we might not even exist. time has to move in order for us to move. without it...we don't move therefore we don't live. so i guess i'm trying to say since we live time must exist.

Answer 11

"Time is the stream I go a fishing in." Thoreau

Yes, time exists. Its the 4th dimension. I'm here typing now. This time tomorrow I might be somewhere else.