WE ARE born. We die. We call the span that separates these events time. Its passage is perhaps the most fundamental feature of our human experience, yet we are incapable of saying exactly what it is. Worse – the laws of physics don’t help. That time exists is undeniable, but the way we experience it makes no sense.

“There’s an old joke about time – it’s nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once,” says physics Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas, Austin. To us mortals, time is the passage of the sun and seasons, the progressive wrinkling of our skin as we age – irreversible markers of a present that is moving forwards, and a future that is ineluctably becoming the past. Unlike space, time has a natural order. If A influences B, then B is always later in time. This is the central feature of time as we perceive it: as a flowing entity that orders our lives.

There’s only one problem with this, says David Deutsch of the University of Oxford: it’s nonsensical. We see ourselves as living in a present that marches down an imaginary timeline at a set pace. The imagery implies the existence of some sort of universal ticking time setting the beat against which all else is measured. “But what is that other time?” says Deutsch. We’ve only succeeded in creating a new problem.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23130890-900-metaphysics-special-is-time-an-illusion/?cmpid&utm_medium=EMP&utm_source=NSNS&utm_campaign=metaphysics_part6&utm_content=IsTimeAnIllusion

In classical mechanics, time is something that passes uniformly regardless of whatever happens in the world. For this reason Newton spoke of absolute space and absolute time. On the other hand, Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity predicted that time does not flow at a fixed rate: moving clocks appear to tick more slowly relative to their stationary counterparts. Quantum mechanics does not neglect the time either. In standard model, photon does not experience time. Some new theories suggest that time does not exist at the quantum level. The study of the quantum universe shows us that time does not exist. It shows us that time is a function of relativity only and exists relative to some arbitrary point of reference [1]. Whatever else may be said about time, one thing is certain. It defies definition. The best we can say is that we all know what time is, intuitively. The Seventh Edition of Webster's Collegiate Dictionary tells us that time is "the measured or measurable period during which an action, process, or condition exists or continues." Of course, what the lexicographer has done here is to tell us that time is defined by its measurement and that measurement is of a period during which something occurs. He has not told us what time really is [2]. In fact it is the definition of a clock. What is the nature of physical time, really? In this paper, I have tried to answer this question.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279531060_Graviton_physical_time_and_thermodynamics

Article Graviton: physical time and thermodynamics

More Hossein Javadi's questions See All
Similar questions and discussions