What is time?

Question

In terms of science...please

Answer 1

A measurement of Earth's rotation around the sun.

Answer 2

Time has been studied by philosophers and scientists for 2,500 years, and thanks to this attention it is much better understood today. Nevertheless, many issues remain to be resolved. Here is a short list of the most important ones—what time actually is; whether time exists when nothing is changing; what kinds of time travel are possible; why the time dimension has an arrow but a space dimension does not; whether the future and past are real; how to analyze the metaphor of time's flow; whether the future will be infinite; whether there was time before the Big Bang; whether tensed or tenseless concepts are semantically basic; what is the proper formalism or logic that captures the special role that time plays in reasoning; and what are the neural mechanisms that account for our experience of time. Some of these issues will be resolved by scientific advances alone, but others require philosophical analysis.
Philosophers of time are deeply divided on the question on what sort of ontological differences there are among the present, past and future. Presentists argue that necessarily only present objects and present experiences are real; and we conscious beings recognize this in the special "vividness" of our present experience. The growing-universe theory is that the past and present are both real, but the future is not yet real. The more popular alternative theory is that there are no significant ontological differences among present, past and future. This view is called "eternalism" or "the block universe theory."

This raises the issue of tenseless versus tensed theories of time. Eternalism or the block universe theory implies a tenseless theory. The earliest version of this theory implied that tensed terminology (such as "will win" within the sentence "The Lakers will win the basketball game") is not semantically basic, but instead is analyzable into tenseless terms (such as "does win at time t" and "happens before" and "is simultaneous with"). Once all tenseless facts are fixed, all tensed facts are thereby fixed. Later versions of the tenseless theory do not imply that tensed terminology is removable or reducible, but only that the truth conditions of tensed remarks can be handled with tenseless facts. On the other hand, advocates of a tensed theory of time say that tenseless terminology is not semantically basic but should be analyzed in tensed terms, and that tensed facts are needed to make the tensed statements be true. For example, a tensed theory might imply that the world involves irreducible tensed properties such as presentness or now-ness or being-in-the-present, and no adequate account of the present tensed fact that it's now midnight can be given without these tensed properties. So, the philosophical debate is over whether tensed concepts have semantical priority over untensed concepts, and whether tensed facts have ontological priority over untensed facts.
or perhaps a magizine I read weekly>?
try quantum physics pages

Answer 3

NOUN: 1a. A nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future. b. An interval separating two points on this continuum; a duration: a long time since the last war; passed the time reading. c. A number, as of years, days, or minutes, representing such an interval: ran the course in a time just under four minutes. d. A similar number representing a specific point on this continuum, reckoned in hours and minutes: checked her watch and recorded the time, 6:17 a.m. e. A system by which such intervals are measured or such numbers are reckoned: solar time.

Answer 4

well... that is a bit difficult.
scientists have devised methods to calculate time, to incorporate it into their equations and general theories, made models to describe its effects...
but when all is said and done, no one has any idea really.

many who work with its effects seem to have a faint comprehension somewhere, which leads them to new ideas about how to deal with it... but no one has so far been able to formulate a plain answer to that question. it would be unscientific to do so anyway.

but i can give you a philosophical answer, why it is impossible to really understand. i mean understand it like a lightbulb or a car engine...
and it is a very simple reason too... here it is.

we are bound to time. we are unable to dispatch from its flow, unable to step outside of it and watch it from there.
that is why we can see what time does to us, but not how or why.

we cannot see how it is linked to the universe, how actions by people inside affect it.
it is impossible to describe a system using only the terms of that system, you need a system of a higher order that contains the terms to do so.
same here... only that time is a term of the highest system, the universe itself. to describe it fully, you need access to something higher... whatever that may be. there is probably nothing.

which of course means we will have to live in the knowledge that here are things beyond our grasp, which mayn people are scared of. scientists as well as believers. so the scientists keep searching, formulating and assuming, while believers create a higher being that keeps an eye on things for them.

to each his own...

Answer 5

Time is a measure of the present and the future. A second has a definition but TIME does not as such. As human beings, let us give a meaning.

Answer 6

the measurement of the passing of one moment to the next

Answer 7

time is something which does not flow backwards, to put simply.

Answer 8

time = money.

Answer 9

period that past