A matter of time?

Question

What is time?
Daylight savings (moving the clock an hour back) proves that Time as a function of the hands of a clock is just what we have imposed on the natural world. However this can be taken to the greater extent of day/night cycle, seasons and revolutions around the sun in so much as our measurement of it has formed discreat units of time. But that dose not explain what time is.

Is time a force which can be discribed and measured or is a function of something greater than ourselves, or even could it just simply be the way that our brains percive an event (each action following the last in a sequence we call a timeline).

If all time is is just a way for our brains to process an event then could it not be possible to travel through time just by thinking?
Or if time is a function of something larger than ourselves, what?
Or if time is a force created by our universe then could it not be harnessed and used the way we use other forces?

Please explain your answers. Thank you

Answer 1

Time for us is the duration (or lag ) bw occurring of 2 events.
An observer notes the duration of one event and calls it the 'standard time'
now if he sees THAT when some event occurs than his standard event occurs 5 times ,then he says that the event he was observing has occurred in '5 units of time' set by him.
take an easy (but quite wrong)example
suppose u set ur heartbeat as a standard event and u find that 2 heartbeats occurs while u take one breathing. so u say that 'time duration ' of your breathing is '2 heartbeats'.
now heartbeat is ur unit of 'time'
this is 'quite wrong' bcos heartbeat is a variable quantity by external factors such as exercise which can give 2 different results for a same event.

but here is a twist now
Theory of relativity says that the durations of occurrence between one event may be DIFFERENT for 2 different observers.if person moving in a very faster car than u compares yr breathing form his own heartbeat then he find that u breath when he takes (say) 1 heartbeat.so his time is slower than ur time.

if time is lag of occurrence between events then it must have started with the first event occurred in the universe.bcos before it there was nothing whose 'duration ' is to be observed.if big bang was first event of universe then time surely will have started from big bang.
But recent advancement of science says that the big bang is just one among a series of clashes between 2 parallel universes.so time cannot start from big bang
BUT to our pity no one knows what the first event in universe was
or there was no 'first event'.
similarly time will END when there will be NOTHING. not our universe,not stars,not black hole and not even the empty space which contain nothing.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
but either this situation will not come or it is out of thinking capacity of our mind to think of nothing or thinking of a universe where there is 'no first event'.

so we can quite safely say that the quantity which we measure and call as TIME neither had started nor ever end

So time is not a kind of force generated by universe, but ur second option that "If all time is is just a way for our brains to process an event then could it not be possible to travel through time just by thinking " is more correct (or I'll say lesser incorrect )

Time can be think of simply as the factor on the basis of which we can differentiate between the occurrence of 2 events and that is it.

Answer 2

First of all, time is not a NATURAL feature of the universe. It's nothing more than a concept sentient beings like us use to separate events into 'past,' 'present,' and 'future.' There is no such thing as absolute time, no Cosmic Master Clock that keeps track of the correct time for the universe. Time is strictly relative. For instance, right now it's 9:05 pm on the west coast, but in New York City it's 12:05 am. Which time is the correct time? They both are!

Lots of folks like to use the so-called twin's paradox as proof that time travel is possible, but they simply don't understand it. If you go zapping away from Earth at near light speed while I stayed behind, and if I could somehow watch a clock on your spaceship, I'd see it ticking away slower than my clock. I'd say, "Aha! Time is slowing down for him." But I'd be wrong because for you on the spaceship time is moving at the exact same rate as ever. But if you could look back and somehow see my clock back on Earth to you it would look to be ticking away faster. I might think that time is speeding up back on Earth. Which of the two clocks is showing the right time? They both are!

Answer 3

“The illusion called time is composed of altering of the particles position in space” and “Alteration is the basic manifestation of time”. (L. Ron Hubbard, 1951)

imagine time as a series of stills (photograghs) each one following the next like a slide show, you could speed it up or you could even go backwards but it's always moving. now what would happen if you stop time, like the still photo nothing would move everything would be frozen in it's position, you me the whole planet the whole universe right down to the smallest particle. thus proving that time is intricate essential part of the universe.

time was there long before us and it will be there long after the human race is extinct and can no longer measure it. all we really are is temporary observers of time. so the moral of the story is 'don't waste time, enjoy it.'

ps. while i was typing i forgot my cuppa of hot tea which is now stone cold, a very annoying factor of time - time doesn't wait for no one.

Answer 4

Interesting what you say about time being a way for our brains to process an event , however motion on a movie screen is how our brains process several still images moving very fast. That doesn't mean we can fast forward the movie just by thinking about it.

Answer 5

No, the hands of the clock are a function of time.
Time was treated axiomatically until 1886 when the Michelson-Morley experiment was done.
In 1892 Lorentz & Fitzgerald deduced it had to be dilatable.
With relativity Einstein gave us the math to see how it was equivelant to space.

Answer 6

Time is : an arbitrary creation and true and absolute . Allowing that beyond our comprehension is a good concept.

Where is the jar with the saved light? It must be a sight to behold and is it blinding to view?