Measurement of time seems to involve comparing a known motion with an unknown motion. The feeling of flow of time possibly emerges as our mind tries to make sense of the world, filled with motion and change. Time is most likely a concept created by our mind, by merging consciousness, memories, anticipation, perception, change and motion. There however is a real underlying process and there is a cause for this process, the exposition of which will bring us to a better understanding of the phenomenon of time. (www.timephysics.com)
"People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between the past,
the present and the future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion" Albert Einstein
To be honest, I'm not even sure if one should attempt to answer this question, since "more significant" is in the eye of the beholder.
Having said that... a fundamental measurement would be one that establishes relativistic light cones, i.e., the geometric and topological structure of spacetime geometry. Almost accidentally, it also provides a direct way of relating units of time to units of length at any point in spacetime.
After the light cones are established, measuring length and measuring time are on the same footing.
Motion is more like a direction. (In fact, that is precisely what it is, in the hyperbolic geometry of relativistic spacetime, where velocity becomes a hyperbolic angle.) So in that sense, I'd argue that it, like the measurement of an ordinary angle, becomes a secondary quantity of sorts.
How would you measure an angle in a plane if all you have is a ruler? You could measure lengths, say, in the X and Y directions and compute the arctangent of Y/X. Same goes for motion: you measure a length, you measure a duration, and you compute the hyperbolic area tangent of the two to get the four-dimensional velocity.
So to the extent that it even makes sense to compare quantities in terms of their "fundamental-ness", I'd argue that time is more fundamental.
time and space are two independent variables that are used to measure the position of a particle in Einstein's space of four dimensions. and any other quantity that can be measured using the two independent variables cannot make the basis of any measurement. so I think time is the more basic concept than motion as we can measure the motion of a particle by measuring the position of the particles varying with time.
We are living in a dynamic world where every thing is changing continously. Every object in the universe is moving relative to all other objects, be it a subatomic particle or a galaxy. It is this change which we need to explain, and that is why we need time. The periodic changes in the position of earth around sun and also around its axis provide us one mechanism to compare or rather measure motion of various objects around us. The day/night cycle on earth is used as time, which is in one way linked to motion only.
Anuj, you might find interesting the viewpoint of J. Barbour.
http://platonia.com/nature_of_time_essay.pdf
Dear Lehtihet,
Thanks for providing link to information. Nice to read about different world view.
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