Jim,

I kind of know and I do care and I am  a child of the 50's.

There is many things under one name so I dare say time in general is an emergent phenomenon from persistent things and their change.

Other say it is something that prevents everything from happening at once. That well reflects the nature of interactions.

When it comes to time as duration in physics, the best description I have found so far is one given by Ernst Mach:

It is utterly beyond our power to measure the changes of things by time. Quite the contrary, time is an abstraction, at which we arrive by means of the changes of things ; made because we are not restricted to any one definite measure, all being interconnected.

A motion is termed uniform in which equal increments  of space described correspond to equal increments of space described by some motion with which we form a comparison, as the rotation of the earth. A motion may, with respect to another motion, be uniform. But  the question whether a motion is in itself uniform, is senseless. With just as little justice, also, may we speak of an ** absolute time" — of a time independent of  change. This absolute time can be measured by comparison with no motion ; it has therefore neither a practical nor a scientific value ; and no one is justified in saying that he knows aught about it. It is an idle

metaphysical conception.

[ "The science of mechanics; a critical and historical account of its development"]

Hello Jim and Andrew,

My work involves developing methodology for discipline-spanning transdisciplinary understanding that enhances communication between the disciplines. To develop the methodology it is necessary to examine and compare the real-world subject matters of the various disciplines.

While using transdisciplinary methods to develop an understanding of the intrinsic nature of space, I unexpectedly came upon the basis of time in the universe.

In the universe, the form of change that is the continuing-existence of space plays all the roles that can be realistically attributed to time.

(This is the continuing-existence of space as measured by a clock, not the extension of three-dimensional space as measured by a ruler.)

Understanding how spatial-continuing-existence plays the roles of time provides the answers to the questions: What is time?, Why does time occur?, and Why does time have the specific qualities that it has?

There is a paper on ResearchGate.net and Academia.edu. titled, The Identification of the Intrinsic Nature of Time, that provides the understanding of how spatial-continuing-existence plays the roles of time.

I hope that understanding the intrinsic nature of time will be useful to you.

Regards,

Vincent Vesterby

Vesterby, Vincent. 2014. The Identification of the Intrinsic Nature of Time.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/299437469_The_Identification_of_the_Intrinsic_Nature_of_Time

Vesterby, Vincent. 2014. The Identification of the Intrinsic Nature of Time.

https://www.academia.edu/21710898/The_Identification_of_the_Intrinsic_Nature_of_Time

Research The Identification of the Intrinsic Nature of Time

The Chicago Transit Authority (aka Chicago) knew the question and possibly the answer in their 1969 lyrics. You need to have a timescale, a time interval (the SI second) and some event to uniquely establish the moment when you  asked the question. Failing all that, just buy an atomic clock, gps receiver or call TIM (the speaking clock).  If all that fails then go outside on a sunny day.  I have no time left to give you any more suggestions

 Is it safe to think that time irrelevant and that it only puts things in there logical perspective?  How do I explain the aging process without using the tool of time?

Hello Jim,

There are three papers at OSF Preprints that report the discovery of the intrinsic nature of time. The paper of my previous post here is mostly about the discovery itself. The most important of the other papers is a description of time with comments about the role of time in the universe. One of the papers clarifies the issue of the flow of time, and the other paper clarifies some misconceptions the physicist Lee Smolin has about time.

Vesterby, Vincent. 2019. “The Basis of Time in the Universe.” OSF Preprints. July 24. osf.io/q4ntk.

https://osf.io/q4ntk

Vesterby, Vincent. 2019. “Paul Davies and Why Time Is Not a Flow.” OSF Preprints. July 27. osf.io/bh23c.

https://osf.io/bh23c

Vesterby, Vincent. 2019. “Temporal Naturalism—analysis of the Paper by Lee Smolin.” OSF Preprints. July 29. osf.io/mk9wz.

https://osf.io/mk9wz

People have been wondering about the nature of time for thousands of years. There have always been the questions:

What is time?

Why does time occur?

Why does time have the specific qualities that it has?

No one has ever been able to provide realistic answers to these questions. Because no one knew what time was, all the proposed answers were speculative, just guesses.

These papers are not speculative. Nor do they provide a definition of time. They are descriptions of the nature of time and its role in the universe, and thus provide the answers to the three questions.