Eli5: Does itself time move, or do we move through the time dimension?
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The current scientific model which represents the universe as a 4-dimensional structure with 3 spatial dimensions and a single time dimension: we are moving through time.
I’m more inclined to say we move through the time dimension, though the question is sort of ill-defined if only because time, at least in theoretical physics, is more of a book keeping tool than anything else. It’s a bit hard to explain.
In any case, when we plot things on a grid and the axes are spatial like x, y, or z we’d say that it’s movement through space. We can easily plot motion on a time axis so I’d say that’s motion through time.
Both, and neither. Time is a dimension, as in the fourth dimension. Time is like space, expanding since the Big Bang.
We see in 3d, 3 dimensions, there are the x,y,z axis and the fourth dimension is time.
But time is relative, meaning that its beaviour is related to where you calculate it. If you monitor time near the sun, or a black hole, you will see that time is going slower than any other place in space, because of the huge mass of the object.
Earth itself slows time as any object does, but the biggest do the most noticeable effect.
It is also related to light/speed, as if you are in space going at the speed of light, you will age slower than someone here on earth going at 700km/h, you would actualy move in time (forward, as for now there are no functionning theories as how to go backward)
So to be short, it doesn’t move, it expands.
And we don’t move in it but rather with it, as it is not a thing, but a concept like space, length, width and height …
You probably noticed that english isn’t my main language but i love Aurélien Barrau and it’s what i understood of him.
“”Flies away””
Does the scientific model that we move “through” time give credit to the idea of determinism/fate/destiny? In my mind it does
Time is really just a human concept to understand the order of events as matter interacts with other matter. Beyond us trying to describe this, time isn’t really a thing.
What we think of as time is an ongoing series of events between matter. For example, imagine this scenario: it’s raining, it starts to rain harder, then the roof starts to leak, then the water pools up on the floor. Let’s say the time it takes for this to happen is two hours. Well the time and the hours are just our own frames of reference to describe the space between events. The only thing that exists materially is the matter and energy, the rainwater being pulled down by gravity then making its way through the ceiling then interacting with the objects inside the house.
So you might then wonder how time is so specific for us if it’s just a construct and not real. The seconds of time are measured with an atomic clock using electromagnetic radiation. This is useful for us to have a consistent measure to call time. The length of a second is useful for us because a second doesn’t allow for many perceivable events to happen, so it’s easy to conceptualize one second versus the next.
Think about it this way… Imagine a universe which was just a solid wall of one type of molecule, nothing moved or interacted in any way. There would be nothing we perceive as time, nothing to measure and no frame of reference for the passage of time.
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