re: What is time?

quote:

---

Time is just the progression of existence.

---

Right, which inevitably leads into the question of what is existence and why does it progress (in one direction)? Something is happening, what? And I guess more importantly, why?

quote:

---

We measure it via our planet’s relationship with the sun and moon to apply standards.

---

Nah, there are way more precise ways to measure it. Currently it’s measured via the oscillation of atoms.

You do raise an interesting point though, because we need to utilize something else and it’s change from moment to moment in order to even attempt to define the very concept. So what if all stars burn out, the universe experiences a heat death, no more movement of atoms. Does time still exist? With nothing to determine one moment to the next, does time end?

quote:

---

the question of what is existence and why does it progress (in one direction)? Something is happening, what?

---

“The first time machine, gentlemen,” Professor Johnson proudly informed his two colleagues. “True, it is a small-scale experimental model. It will operate only on objects weighing less than three pounds, five ounces and for distances into the past and future of twelve minutes or less. But it works.”

The small-scale model looked like a small scale—a postage scale—except for two dials in the part under the platform.

Professor Johnson held up a small metal cube. “Our experimental object,” he said, “is a brass cube weighing one pound, two point three ounces. First, I shall send it five minutes into the future.”

He leaned forward and set one of the dials on the time machine. “Look at your watches,” he said.

They looked at their watches. Professor Johnson placed the cube gently on the machine’s platform. It vanished.

Five minutes later, to the second, it reappeared.

Professor Johnson picked it up. “Now five minutes into the past.” He set the other dial. Holding the cube in his hand he looked at his watch. “It is six minutes before three o’clock. I shall now activate the mechanism—by placing the cube on the platform—at exactly three o’clock. Therefore, the cube should, at five minutes before three, vanish from my hand and appear on the platform, five minutes before I place it there.”

“How can you place it there, then?” asked one of his colleagues.

“It will, as my hand approaches, vanish from the platform and appear in my hand to be placed there. Three o’clock. Notice, please.”

The cube vanished from his hand.

It appeared on the platform of the time machine.

“See? Five minutes before I shall place it there, it is there!”

His other colleague frowned at the cube. “But,” he said, “what if, now that it has already appeared five minutes before you place it there, you should change your mind about doing so and not place it there at three o’clock? Wouldn’t there be a paradox of some sort involved?”

“An interesting idea,” Professor Johnson said. “I had not thought of it, and it will be interesting to try. Very well, I shall not …”

There was no paradox at all. The cube remained.

But the entire rest of the Universe, professors and all, vanished.

quote:

---

the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole

---

It's this but measured in relation to something else.

As we know, gravity can distort time.

Need to read that

quote:

---

Need to read that

---

that read to need

quote:

---

Naw baw I’ve got my thinking cap on tonight.

---

Ha! Well played. I am taking my thinking cap off for the evening (not that there is much of a difference). Be well, man!

Time doesn’t exist. It is man-made concept constructed around the counting of repetitious events. The universe is older than the solar system we reside in, yet we refer to the beginning of the universe is terms of Earthly revolutions round the Sun. Neither of which existed then. When the Earth and Sun cease to exist, but the Universe continues ad infinitum, how old will it become?