What is time?

I heard once that time is a construct to allow for the effects of entropy. As Adams puts it, “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”

Time is the fire in which we burn.

Time is the non linear measure of distance between events in the dynamic movements of material reality. If the stuff of material reality never moved, time would be irrelevent or would not exist. But motion is a fact of reality, and one event of motion occurs separate from the previous event. The difference in space between the two events becomes time/space which is what time measures.

@josie That would be the scientific explanation of time, yes. I don’t think it covers it, though. But then again, I can’t define time.

@tups Does this mean you want a non scientific definition of time? Good luck.

@josie I just want all kinds of definitions and guesses.

@tups
OK
Time is the thing that makes your bath towel smell funny if you use it for more than three or four days.
It is what make your breath smell bad if you do not brush and floss your teeth more than one a week.
It is what makes your gut stick out if you never exercise.
Time is the reason that people like Ted Kennedy turn to the local Bishop for absolution before they die.
Etc.

Time is what you wish you had more of.

Our most feared enemy.

It’s a classic rock song by Pink Floyd.

@ZEPHYRA Thanks for reminding me. :-Þ The fact I wasn’t young at time when Pink Floyd recorded Time is indication enough of why that’s a depressing thought.

@tups Great Question, but are you sure it’s time to ask it? I mean, we assume time is constant. That whatever interval we agree upon to measure time, a clock 10 billion years ago and one running today, or 10 billion years in the future, would all run the same in relation to the local observer. But is that even true? If a nuclear clock is currently our most accurate timepiece, and spatial expansion is speeding up, mustn’t time then slow down in inverse proportion to space speeding up? When we reach heat death (Infinite entropy), won’t time have stopped?

Ah well, we’ve got plenty of time to worry about that at some time far in the future.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
(D. Adams)

Time is late for dinner.

It’s what prevents everything from occurring at once.

Another view: We note that there is no dynamics in space-time – nothing moves in space-time – nothing happens in space-time – nothing changes in space-time.

A Swiss watch-makers best friend.

An entity which dominates everything & everyone, unfortunately.

All forms of matter have their own time, measured from their beginning to their end. Subatomic particles have a very short time and galaxies a very long time. Our time is said to be some four score and ten, but any individual cell in our body lasts but a fraction of that time. If there is a place in space where there is nothing (debatable), time does not exist. However time at a black hole’s event horizon is nearly infinite.

Time is what punctual people are on.

I think people would experience life in slower motion if we didn’t invent time. If we weren’t so-and-so years old or we only had so long to do this or that. Those hands that keep ticking on the clock are constant reminders of impending doom. We’d be happier without them, but it would cause massive disorder and chaos in society, no doubt, lol.

Time is part of the matrix of the universe.

What is time to me? Samuel Johnson said it best: “He who competes against time has an adversary who does not suffer casualty.”

“What seest thou else

In the dark backward and abysm of time?”

-Shakespeare’s The Tempest (Act 1, Scene 2)

Time is not an entity, or any type of existence for that matter (in my opinion). Time is just a measuring ‘tool’.

@Paradox25 Measuring tools are fictions we invent, but that does not mean that what they measure did not exist till we dreamed up a tool The fabric of this Universe is spacetime, and the Universe as we know it could no more exist sans time than without space.

@Paradox25 It’s definitely a word we’ve invented. Just like every other word. A way to get a hold of things. Like science and labels.

I think that it is possible for a ‘Cosmic Time’ that exists separate from our conventional space-time universe. It would be based upon the speed of light. I imagine a sphere of cosmic time expanding from a singularity at Planck speed. The surface of this bubble is where ‘reality’ exists as information in a holographic point that creates the illusion of the space-time we experience.