What is “Time” and how exactly does it work?
In: Physics
Time is a dimension, along with the three dimensions of space, that gives you a particular location in space and time. Asking how it works is sort of like asking how the y-dimension of up and down works. In the spatial dimensions, things can move in any of the directions of that dimension so long as they do not go faster than the speed of light. This is similar with time, but for some reason we don’t seem to be able to move backwards in time. This concept is often referred to as the “arrow of time” and it is an unsolved general physics problem. Another thing worth noting is that as we move faster through space relative to a stationary observer, the observer will measure our time as moving slower than their’s. The reasons for why all of these things happen get complicated and are sometimes still unsolved, but they are studied in field like special and general relativity, cosmology, and quantum mechanics (among other fields).
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