This debate has been going on for centuries. Iaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz argued about whether time was truly fundamental to the universe at the start of th 18th century.
525,600 minutes = 1 year.
The greatest trick the universe ever pulled was convincing us that time exists. (title line of New Scientist 19th Jan 2008’s cover story).
This article states that even physicists don’t really know what time is and that some are not sure it exists. In the quest for new theories of the universe, physicists are starting to suspect that time is not a fundamental feature of nature.
‘Some physicists believe we should think the unthinkable and abolish tim altogether’ (quote from Time on trial, artical in New Scientist 22nd Nov 2008.)
What is time?
Time is the clock ticking
Second by second
Minute by minute
Hour by hour
Year by year
Time is of human creation.
Time is a unit of measurement we use to document our journey through life.
We humans travel through what we perceive as time from our birth to our death. We go back in time when we recall our past and to the future when we imagine and anticipate what is to come in our life. We capture past events on film (video and still images) and in writing. We take ourselves back in time when we read the books and watch TV shows on our history. Astronomers looking at the stars are actually looking into the universes past. The further away from the earth they look, the further back in time they look.
According to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, time and space are connected and form a four-dimensional space-time. In general relativity, time is not absolute and different observers have different times, like when its 12:00 in England its 24:00 at the other side of the world. Time does not flow when the universe is viewed as a whole.
Time plays a key part in quantum mechanics. It is used to keep track of the ever-changing probabilities of the quantum universe.
General relativity treats space and time as one and quantum mechanics splits the universe in two. The first part is the quantum system that is being observed. The second part is the classical world outside.
In my view time is just a figment of our imagination, it does not really exist.
We live in a timeless universe where nothing ever disappears and nothing ever appears, everything always is, all of the time.This is what could be described as a preordained universe that is waiting to reveal its secrets.
It is hard for most of us to accurately judge the passage of “time” without the presence of a clock ticking the seconds minutes and hours away.
Time as we know it day by day is imperfect. Not so long ago a leap second was added to the worlds atomic clocks to keep them in line with the universe. We need a leap day evey four years to keep our calenders in line with the universe.
