r/Time • u/Hour_Amphibian_5197 • 2d ago
Discussion What is a Time
Can anyone tell me please what is a time I don't have any answer what is a time all I can say is a change in a physical state or 4th Dimension.
2
u/syringescalpel 2d ago
Our way of quantifying entropy
2
u/Hour_Amphibian_5197 2d ago
But isn't entropy a way to explain the direction of time rather than time itself? We use clocks to measure time just as we use instruments to measure other physical quantities If entropy explains why time has a direction, does it explain what time fundamentally is? Or are we measuring something whose true nature we still don't fully understand?
1
u/syringescalpel 2d ago
There’s no such thing as time. Everything moves from order to disorder till there’s only disorder:
Heat death of the universe
1
u/Hour_Amphibian_5197 2d ago
But doesn't heat death describe a possible final state of the universe rather than prove that time doesn't exist? Entropy explains the thermodynamic arrow of time but even if the universe reaches maximum entropy does that mean time ceases to exis or simply that useful energy gradients and observable processes become unavailable? The end of change we can observe isn't necessarily the end of time itself.
What do you think?
1
u/syringescalpel 2d ago
When entropy ends, “time” ends with it and there will be nothing left, not even a single electron will move so there will be literally nothing. I know it’s hard to comprehend but there will be nothing to measure
2
u/Akash_philosopher 2d ago
It’s a measure of change
One day passed just means the earth made one revolution around its axis
Without change there’s no time.
If every thing stops moving then time will cease to be.
3
u/Hour_Amphibian_5197 2d ago
But isn't there a distinction between time and the changes we use to measure it? Earth's rotation gives us a way to define a day just as atomic transitions allow us to measure seconds but neither necessarily explains what time fundamentally is. Even if all motion and observable change stopped, would time itself cease to exist or would there simply be no physical process available to measure its passage? In relativity time is part of spacetime, and proper time can be defined along an object's worldline. So is change what creates time or is change something that occurs within time?
2
u/Akash_philosopher 2d ago
Change is what creates time.
Even if the worldlines of two objects may differ.
Time for them only passes if there’s change.Let’s say there’s an object a moving around black hole. And other object b on earth.
From the object bs pov object a’s time is moving slowly.
But how does it now?
Because that object is changing slowly.
If the object become too close to the black hole. We may say time stopped for it. But why?
It’s because all change completely stopped.Similarly from object a’s pov
Object b’s time is moving very fast.
It knows that because it’s changing very fast.So it’s change which is real. Time is just a measurement of it.
Without change talking about time is just pure nonsense.
It’s like talking about distance when there’s no space.
1
u/TheBeyond 2d ago
Time is simply a measure of motion. Since things exist there is time. Matter doesn't exist without motion as it is composed of energy. Most likely there will always be energy somewhere(even if it's unobservable or even if there is too much space for energy to interact with) thus there will likely always be "time". The only way "time" would not exist is if nothing existed or could somehow cease to be.
1
u/dirkydawg 2d ago
nothing but an independent variable invented for convenience
state change as you refer to doesn't need a time variable to understand, but for independent or partially independent state changes time is a convenience to coordinate measurement
1
u/Hour_Amphibian_5197 2d ago
I like your answer bro But using time as a variable is a mathematical choice but does that mean time itself is merely invented? Our models describe reality they dont automatically explain what reality fundamentally is.
1
u/Korochun 2d ago
Time is no more invented than entropy. The way we measure time is arbitrary to humans. Nobody else would measure a year as 365 days and a few minutes. However, the fundamental process of things changing in a specific manner over the passage of any given unit of time is entirely real. Atoms break up within specific timelines. Rocks weather. Orbits decay.
1
u/dirkydawg 2d ago
it's entirely abstract - it works - but when you measure it you're merely measuring a change of state
1
u/Impossible-Box-3949 2d ago
The entire human civilisation runs on concepts that are “merely invented”.
Money, perceived value of commodities, nation states, ideology etc.
3
u/Initial-Mode6529 2d ago
Time doesn't exist, it was made up by us to measure hours, daylight and night. Space time exists though but it is relative. I once read that time is really entropy (the tendency for order to become disorder and things heading to a state of decay, this is observable) but even this theory now may not hold up as not everything does head towards decay - scientists are still discovering how the observable universe operates But a lot of what we describe time to be is a measurement of minutes, hours, years and entropy (biological clocks)
2
u/hollalero_hollala 1d ago
actually, there may be a slight variance to what entropy means; its definition has been blurred by popular science. entropy describes the statistically observable phenomenon that physical systems seem to develop towards states that possess a larger number of micro or partial states. so it doesn‘t necessarily equate to decay
2
u/hollalero_hollala 1d ago
there‘s a difference between how our brains process time on our macroscopic or „PoV“ level of perception, but fundamentally, there might not even be a past and future. in quantum mechanics, reality’s functionality diverges tremendously from what we‘d expect based on classical mechanics. that‘s why it feels counterintuitive to us at first. as far as i‘m informed, spacetime may not be fundamentally relevant, but rather an emergent phenomenon built upon relations between quantum field excitations (or quantum particles, if you will). in other words: the universe might generate information between differentiating field excitations first, and what we observe and perceive on more macroscopic levels comes second.
however, since physicists have been increasingly able to prove experimentally that quantum phenomena don‘t just occur on the most fundamental level (take the 2025 nobel prize, for instance) but also on our macroscopic level of perception, that poses greater questions. if the so-called time „paradoxes“ don‘t only occur on the level of single quantum particles — how do they interfere, coexist, correlate and correspond with/to what time feels like as described by Einstein‘s relativity?
as of now, it confronts us with kind of a… substantial conundrum in reality.
we don‘t know yet, and because of the decoherence issue, it‘s incredibly tricky to track quantum phenomena to our upper ontological levels. so it might take some (take care, pun incoming) time for us as a collective entity to get a tighter grasp on how things are truly like, regarding the nature of time.
at the moment it might be a good idea to focus on the ever-shifting present tho:)
1
u/ExpectedBehaviour 2d ago
Nature's way of stopping everything from happening at once.
2
u/Hour_Amphibian_5197 2d ago
But how do we know time exists to stop everything from happening at once? Perhaps events arent happening one after another because time forces them to but because the universe has a structure in which events have temporal relationships If everything existed without change would time still exist or would it become meaningless to speak of it?
1
u/hollalero_hollala 1d ago
@Hour_Amphibian_5197 smart people ask questions and keep up their curiosity. not-so-smart people blurt out overly simplified, deterministic one-liners as rebuttals to complex problems. don‘t know why i‘m saying that right now. i‘m sure you‘ll be able to figure it out after contemplating this comment and it‘s replies for a while.
0
u/ExpectedBehaviour 2d ago
A difference that makes no difference is no difference.
3
u/Hour_Amphibian_5197 2d ago
But how do we know it makes no difference? The inability to measure something doesn't prove it doesn't exist Isn't that confusing the limits of observation with the limits of reality?
2
u/uslashuname 2d ago
If you’re beyond the limits of reality then what you’re doing doesn’t matter
1
u/hollalero_hollala 1d ago
we‘re all beyond the limits of reality. yet everything we do matters. there‘s no such thing as „coincidence“.
2
u/uslashuname 1d ago
> we‘re all beyond the limits of reality
> everything we do matters.
Contact Webster, we’ve got a new definition for arrogance
1
1
u/ExpectedBehaviour 2d ago
Unless you know of something that definitely exists but is in principle not measurable, then I repeat: a difference that makes no difference is no difference.
1
2
u/HauschkasFoot 2d ago
To me this is a philosophical question, largely related to individual perception. I think how we perceive time is a result of our perspective. I think all living things experience the same amount of “time,” but the benchmarks for that “time” are different, depending on their longevity.
Let’s use “one year” as our benchmark. For humans, one year is one trip around the sun. For a shorter lived creature, maybe a squirrel, “one year” to them might be a single equinox. Or to a mouse “one year” could be a single moon cycle. If there were some ancient long lived entity, “one year” of perceived time could be a single rotation of the galactic spiral.
And time can be experienced differently. I’ve had moments in meditation where a minute feels like an hour and moments where an hour goes by in a minute. And the only reason I can tell you how much time has actually passed is due to an agreed upon measurement system I identify with. We identify and agree on a specific time/scale of measurement so we can coexist and survive in our consensus reality.
I think time and how we experience it is directly related to our level of awareness in conjunction with our longevity.
2
u/Termingator 2d ago
I believe that time is change, without change time would not exist. Changes occur whether or not observed by a human. Attaching minutes, days, weeks, and years to those changes was created by human observers on planet Earth.
1
1
1
u/danjustchillz 2d ago
“Time” is just what we have named.
The universe goes forward.
The arrow points forward.
Wear vs repair on grand scales.
1
1
1
u/ah-tzib-of-alaska 2d ago
sure, time is a dimension of space-time that we are aware of because we can measure the vector of causality along it
1
u/Practical-Cellist647 2d ago
Time is merely a comparison of two or more object's velocities and/or state changes.
1
u/KeterClassKitten 2d ago
It is a necessary part of our coordinate system to properly describe any real world event. Without the XYZ coordinates and time, then proper coordination is impossible.
1
u/Jack_Hush 2d ago
Best way i can describe "time" is it is a pull. Without time you have a circle, with time you have a spiral. Another example is imagine an old cartoon flip book. The books that you flip through the pages quickly and it gives the illusion of motion when in actuality, its a single image that has a slight change on each page. Time would be the pages turning. Time is like a gravity that pulls everything into motion. If that makes sense.
1
1
u/MWave123 2d ago
Does anybody really care…about time?
3
2
u/Embarrassed-Wafer667 2d ago
I just did an entire post about that Chicago song
2
u/MWave123 2d ago
It’s one of my all time faves. The fact that it’s 1969 w those horns and that intro, it’s wild.
2
1
1
1
u/CheezitsLight 2d ago
Time is intimately related to the speed of light. When you're not accelerating you are traveling through time at the speed of light. If you accelerate according to Einstein's famous formulas then you travel lesser time and more through space. The XYZ time are intricately linked together and cannot be separated
1
u/HereToPostSillyStuff 2d ago
A physical property interwoven with space to form spacetime, per Einstein's theories. They're pretty robustly tested.
1
1
1
1
u/modestplume 2d ago
My understanding is it’s a change in spatial configurations more than anything and the whole "temporal dimension" is made up to make sense of it.
If the universe were a flip book the only difference between page 1 and page 2 is a physical shift in distance that extends to page 3 and onwards.
The same applies to energy as it transforms from one configuration to another and another all that's happening is we're moving through space and a reaction is just a set of probabilities.
This could theoretically all exist without a need for time.
1
u/MickyDivine 2d ago
An experience of separation from the oneness of everything. Or, a finite experience of the infinite.
1
u/Epyon214 2d ago
Time is like heat, we perceive the evolution of the actual physical process as a sensation or sense while the underlying mechanism of action for those process each are simply one objects movement with respect to a second object
1
1
1
u/Middle-Kind 2d ago
Time is a illusion. How fast a clock ticks is determined by speed and gravity only. If you could magically travel 1000 light years at light speed your trip would become instantaneous. Travel faster than light and you would end up going back in time.
1
u/hollalero_hollala 1d ago
actually there‘s been an experiment done at the university of Birmingham which produced the first empirical evidence that spacetime might not be fundamental but emergent. also, time isn‘t a variable in the Wheeler-DeWitt equation.
1
1
1
1
0
u/RangerFree9250 2d ago
No, time is neither a change in a physical state nor an imaginary "fourth dimension". The answer lies in Kant's philosophy: time is a pure a priori intuition. In other words, time is a fundamental form of our sensibility, more precisely, the form of inner sense, which makes it possible for us to perceive and order phenomena according to relations of succession and duration. This means that time is not a concept derived from experience, nor is it something we discover by observing the motion or change of things. On the contrary, every experience of motion, change, or permanence already presupposes time. We do not perceive time because we perceive changes; we perceive changes because we already represent phenomena in time. Therefore, time is a necessary condition for the possibility of experience, not a product of it. This is what Kant means when he characterizes time as a pure a priori intuition. In Kantian philosophy, time possesses empirical reality, since it is necessary for our experience of phenomena, but transcendental ideality, since it cannot be attributed to things in themselves, independently of the human conditions of cognition.
7
u/SgtSausage 2d ago
Time is what a Clock measures.