How do you believe time works?

Question

i am curious as to what people think

Answer 1

The idea of time is relative. It only exists because we measure it and use "points in time" as references for ourselves.

Answer 2

Well, you know how light has wave-particle duality, acting as both (eventhough the concepts of particles and waves are seemingly contradictory)? I think that time behaves in a similar fashion, with instant-flow duality. It is made up of billions or infinite instants in a given second, and like a cartoon or movie, the "frames" or instants combine to create the flow of time that we perceive.

Personally, I think time is made of infinite instants, even within a finite measured amount of time. It seems no matter how well our cameras are developed, we can slice time into infinite fractions. It was once thought that plank time was the smallest unit of time, however the Hubble Ultra Deep Field's clarity blew that idea out the water.  

Answer 3

It's integral with the speed of light, as shown by Einstein in his special theory of relativity.  It's a function of the Pythagorean theorem, which can be graphed as a right-angled (90 degree) triangle.  The speed of light is the hypotenuse, and always remains at the same value.   Velocity is one axis (or side), and time is the other.  As velocity varies, so does time, but the hypotenuse always stays the same.  As velocity approaches the same value as light, time shrinks to zero.  As velocity approaches zero, time increases to the same value as the speed of light.  This led Einstein to conclude that everything travels at the speed of light, either through space or through time.  If you are motionless, you are traveling at the speed of light through time (aging 1 second per second).  If you're traveling at the speed of light through space, your speed through time is zero.  Or it can be a combination of each.  This is how it appears from a secondary (and motionless) frame of reference.  Every frame of reverence perceives itself as motionless, however, and travels the whole speed of light through time instead of space.

Answer 4

Sequentially.  One event happens per instant.  So, how is the order determined?  And what happens between instants? (Nothing by definition)  So to a (fictional) outside observer the time interval between two sequential instants could be a billion trillion years or almost no time at all.  Don't think you can have a simultaneous sequence, but that would be even more mind bending.

General relativity teaches that the ordering is non-unique.  A real problem, one supposes.  perhaps there is a possibility of simultaneous multiple orderings of events....

Answer 5

Well if there was no such thing as time things wouldn't work right, people wouldn't age, people wouldn't grow, people wouldn't be able to move, without time the big bang would have never happened, because things happen in time.  There is the past, there is the present, there is the future.  Without time there is no future, no present, no past, nothing.