Eli5: Does itself time move, or do we move through the time dimension?
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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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