What is time?

Answer 1

fantastic question. heres what www.dictionary.com says:

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

Answer 2

Time is a man made word to measure the decay of life. Time has a few properties akin to light. They are both affected by gravity, and they are both seemingly relative to ones perception. An atomic clock works by measuring the "time" it takes for an electron to bounce from one plate to another inside the clock. After so many bounces (something in the hundreds of thousands), it is one second. An experiment was performed many years ago when two VERY accurate clocks were syncrhronized and one was left on sea level, the other was placed atop a water tower. After a while, the clocks were off. The clock higher up was a few seconds behind. I would have to do some research to tell you exactly how far off, and the ratio of height to effect. This experiment leads us to the twins paradox. One twin lives on the ground all his life, one lives on a mountain all his life. the one on the ground is on his deathbed and is visited by the much younger twin. This is an exaggeration. Over the course of a humans life, total difference would not even equal a week's difference in "real time". But, since time is measured as the speed at which electrons flow, if you were to travel at the speed of light, inertia would dictate that the electrons could no longer complete a full revolution within the system they are contained. Would time time stop? Would the bonding between electron, nuclei, protons, and neutrons fail? I believe things would freeze. Absolute Zero is a temperature at which all movement stops. Have you ever noticed that things travelling very quickly tend to grow cold? Trains, airplanes, air itself...(not the space shuttle though, still workin' on that problem...) Maybe when an object ceases to move the temperature inherently drops. Propelling something at light speed would be directly proportional to causing a ceasing of motion, I believe. I'm done now

Answer 3

Time does not actually exist, it is an invention of man to measure and define things. It is motion, the motion of the earth along its axis whereas we divide night into day where the light reaches the earth and years by the motion of the earth, where everything is broken by its motion. Really none of these things exists in absoulte reality for such is indefinable because of the illusion of our sensory elements. Also, time is warped by gravity.The relativity and illusion of time is easily noticiable and irrefutable when one ponders the passage of time given certain situations. Such situations would be - A few minutes in sensory deprivation or a few minutes watching the clock move during a boring class contrasted to spending a few minutes with a new lover or a few minutes with an old friend. Time will stagnate in the first examples, yet in the second it will pass so quickly the hands on the clock will literally run around the clock. If it sounds like nonsense, set alone and still in a dark, quiet room for as long as you can, when you come out the time will not be as you expect it.

Answer 4

Time is a necessary illusion for our perception of matter/space, and is necessary for our feeling of balance and continuity. As time is an integral part of the concept of place, scientists have recently introduced the space-time concept where one cannot go without the other.
Thanks to the space-time concept, we are now able to measure distances that have recently been immeasurable, and determine the speed of moving objects in vacuum.
All scientific discoveries about time so far lead to one scary fact: Time, space and causation are illusions that come like a colored glass between the mind and the real creation out there - the universe. The universe we see through this glass is not the real one. What is the real one? You have to take off that glass and look again. What do you see? Scary, isn't it?

Answer 5

Time is what is given to you by god. whether it is a breath of air, a walk in the park, swimming. Anything and everything is time. An hour of work, a day of work. Make use of your time wisely. Time cannot be turned back. Every minute, every second you stand by and do nothing time is passing by, your loosing time and not knowing it.

Answer 6

One of the most fundamental questions in science and philosophy. Many physicists would argue that time is a physical dimension like space, in which we physically travel forward, in general, but in which it is also possible to travel backwards. It can also be argued, philosophically, that time is simply a way of organizing the physical world around us, so as to understand the relationships between objects as they change and interact, and has no physical reality outside of our own minds. In this latter scenario, "time travel" is a meaningless concept.

Answer 7

the way we measure the increments in a second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year... so that we can manage what goes on in our lives a bit better - but sometimes things get a bit stressed as we become slaves to schedules and planners. Time used to be just daytime and nighttime, but now seconds seem to be measured by cell phone companies and others who have found ways to charge us for smallest increments of time used.

Answer 8

Time is a direction, (like 'to the left or 'forward', except not) in which we all travel at the speed of light unless we are moving in another direction (like 'to the left' or 'forward) at the same time, in which case our passage through time slows down by the speed at which we travel in that other direction so that our total velocity in all directions including time is still 'the speed of light'. So, if we were able to travel 'to the left' at the speed of light, our passage through time would stop.

That's basically it except, of course, everything's relative. :-)

Xan Shui
Philosophic Philanthropist, Honest Man

Answer 9

time is time.

Answer 10

Time is the distance travelled divided by the speed.