It's About Time

I've been reading some books on the subject of time. All eventually discuss whether time exists separate from space and matter or if it exists at all.

The theory that time is some tangible thing seems wrong. Sand you can see running down in an hour glass but time is more like and adjective than a noun. To answer the questing; What is time? is in trouble immediately. It would be as difficult to answer the question; "What is fast?"

I would suggest that time in the colloquial sense is a measure of gaps between events such as sun rise and sun set and it implies that between those events something was happening. That something was time. Time was moving along or evolving or flowing between these discrete events or the events were embedded in the flow of time. But the gaps between perceived events are not time and in fact gaps between events are not really gaps.

If you peel back the layers of the physical world and look at ever smaller or ever larger scales, you realize there is always something going on and the gap we thought existed between events, for which we devised clocks to measure, are in fact full of activity and other events. I proposed that there are no discrete events. In actuality there is a continuum of activity, most of which falls beyond our ability to sense. Possibly as a result of our insensitivity to this micro and macroscopic sea of activity, we have created devices that section the gaps we perceive between observed events into increments of change and we call this keeping time. A clock is such a device with a visible display depicting changes that are regular and repeatable. The discreteness of its motion though is an illusion. A spring may provide mechanical energy or the chemical reaction of a battery may power a motor that causes a mechanical arm to pivot about a central pin pointing to numerals equally spaced around a circle. Long before the hand sweeps to the next tic mark on the clock face, there is a crowd of gears or clouds of electrons behind the scenes turning away or racing through circuitry, piling up pressure to move the hand. The hand then helps us section the day and night into apparently discrete intervals. What we are measuring, such as day and night are also just an artifact of our viewpoint. Night an day are just our side of the planet rotating in and out of the its own shade as it continuously spins on its axis in the light of our sun. This occurs as we continuously revolve about the sun and the sun orbits the center of the galaxy which is drifting closer or farther from the other members of our local group of galaxies all of which are linked to the fabric of an expanding universe. Nothing is discrete or still and there is no such thing as empty.

Nothing ever stops or is at rest and nothing is as exact or discrete as it appears to our limited senses. A resting "solid" object that appears motionless, is actually expanding and contracting with temperature differences across it's surface on a microscopic scale. If we look closer, the entire structure of the object is vibrating at the atomic level and electrons wander about the interior and exterior as electric and magnetic fields continuously pass through the object. Nothing is still.

Nothing is empty. Even a vacuum is not empty. If you go into deep space far from out sun, if you can see only one star you can be assured that energy from that star is continuously passing through every cubic inch of space in your vicinity. Even in the cold vast space between galaxies the vacuum is full of energy. Energy in the form of light, magnetic fields, electric fields and gravitational fields permeates all of the universe. At scales far below that of the scale of galaxies we have so called empty space again between and within the atoms that make up our bodies and all we see. On the scale of an atom there is vast, apparently empty space between the nuclei of atoms and the cloud of orbiting electrons. However, as we look at ever smaller scales we see that this apparent empty space again is not empty but a seething foam of virtual particles representing the energy that is locked into very the structure of the universe. There is no such thing as empty.

Thus all events we perceive actually are embedded in a continuum of mater and energy in motion. Events we perceive have developed to the point of our observation through a continuous sequence of events and will dissipate in a similar manner at dimensions or in forms beyond our capability to observe. If we could perceive all activity we would understand that existence is just a continuum of events, overlapping preceding and following unending.

The universe is full of continuous change. In a sense the universe was set in motion and will remain in motion unless there is a source of external influence. We perceive only a tiny fraction of the activity of the universe. Keeping time is our way to fill the gaps created by our limited perception. If we "saw" everything we would need no clocks, watches, sundials or calendars. We would know what has happened, what is happening and could extrapolate what will happen.

Time is just the human attempt to catalogue events we experience.