Also, if time does exist, doesn’t there have to be a definable beginning or end? Otherwise it’s just infinity which to me suggests the absense of time.
I partially read “The Discoverers” by Daniel Boorstin several years ago and he discussed how different societies conceptualized of time and how they kept time. And it has had me wondering ever since. Then I started exploring Zen Buddhism which emphasizes the present moment as the only tangible reality, along with the illusion of the ego, which only furthered my questioning.
EDIT – I am aware that the concept of time is based on the revolution of the Earth and it’s moon. However, that is just how humans conceive of time. That’s not proof of time itself.
EDIT 2 – The explanation of timespace and relativity is the best from an objective point of view. No matter how much I read or watch, it was always a bit hard to grasp but it makes sense in terms of change or entropy. The reality of time being flexible vs the human perception of time being linear and unchangeable gets closer to what I am asking.
EDIT 3 – “Exist” is a tricky word.
In: 7871
Yes, time exists.
The way we measure it is fairly arbitrary. It’s formally defined as 9,192,631,770 vibrations of a particular cesium isotope. That number was arrived at later; originally time started being measured in easily divisible segments based on the earth’s rotation, and the formal measurement is just however many vibrations it takes to count out one of the seconds that were already in use.
But time does pass, regardless of whether you call it a second, or a minute, or X vibrations of an atom, or anything else. You can see this in the decay of subatomic particles; when we produce them, they last for a certain interval and then decay. We can slap different labels on this interval, but it’s an interval of *something* and that something is time.
Time can also be bent and twisted. You mentioned relativity in one of your comments; that describes how gravity modifies time. When you’re moving very fast or are in a very high gravitational field, time appears to speed up for everything that isn’t you (from your perspective), and you age very slowly for anyone looking at you from outside (their perspective). It’s called “relativity” because the way things work is directly relative to your frame of reference (meaning, where you are and how fast you’re going, among other things). We can prove this, too; when we make those particles and get them moving really fast, the amount of time they last before they decay is increased in a way that’s directly related to their original lifespan and the speed they’re going at.
With all of that said, it’s also accurate to say that the present moment is the only tangible reality. You can’t reach back in time to change things; you can’t reach forward in time to change things there, either. All you can do is whatever is available to you in any given moment. But that’s more of a spiritual and mental-health thing than a physics thing.
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