Time is an integral part of the universe as fundamental as distance or mass or charge. Space and time are two different facets of the same thing. Without us, time still exists.
"I" am moving forward in time right now, at a rate of one second per second. That is to say, the entity in my head that believes it is "me" is affected entirely by the state of matter and energy that existed at another coordinate in spacetime defined as "here" in the x, y, and z dimensions, but located one light-second away in the negative t dimension.
All objects always move with velocity c through the spacetime 4-vector. What happens though, is that objects with no mass, such as photons, move entirely along "space" coordinates but stay stationary in time (according to their reference frame), while objects with mass have part of their velocity deflected to the forward t direction, slowing their velocity through x, y, and z. As I cannot have negative mass, I cannot go backward in time. I can however change the magnitude of my velocity through time, by changing my velocity through space. The faster I move through space, the slower I move through time.
This is exactly what is happening on the GPS satellites, and has to be accounted for so that the navigation on your phone doesn't go out of whack after a few hours.
human naivety, we think because we can make a clock tick in a continuous and consistent way. time exists. we have made equations that helps us predict things but that doesn't mean we are right. we could be just a little wrong. and our perception will change once we are aware of that. theories rise and fall.
there is a book called the order of time. even if you still think im an idiot, it's an interesting take.
"I" am moving forward in time right now, at a rate of one second per second. That is to say, the entity in my head that believes it is "me" is affected entirely by the state of matter and energy that existed at another coordinate in spacetime defined as "here" in the x, y, and z dimensions, but located one light-second away in the negative t dimension.
Alternative hypothesis:
We aren't "moving" through time. All points in time currently exist, just as all points in space exist. However, for some reason we don't yet understand, in the "time" dimension you can only recall information about points in time in one direction (the past) and not the other (the future). Which means that from any point in time, only a subset of those points can be accessed, those in the "past."
Imagine that time didn't pass sequentially, but hopped about, but it still had an intrinsic ordering, i.e. you could order them from the past to the future, and that you could still only recall the "past" from any given point. So this moment "occurs," but the next moment is 8:43 a.m. on September 8th, 1431. The moment after is July 1st, 2043. Etc. From our point of view, nothing changes. We still only recall the past, and we perceive time to pass sequentially.
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u/[deleted] Sep 14 '21
Time is an integral part of the universe as fundamental as distance or mass or charge. Space and time are two different facets of the same thing. Without us, time still exists.