08/06/2025
What is time? Different minds have grappled with the same for over two thousand years, and there have been all sorts of inventions to measure and keep time, from atomic clocks based on the position of a particle in the clock, to sundials, pyramids, watches, and temples.
Many physicists have accepted that like the three dimensions of space, specifically length, width, and depth -- time is also a dimension, and that we live in four dimensions, and that all of this is known as spacetime, and/or spacetime fabric. Visually, this graphs or appears as an exponentially expanding vector, triangle, or cone shape, with each exponentially increasing paired side or ring or layer of the vector, triangle, or cone representing the next or previous moment in time. In a similar manner, some physics theories have argued that there is no end to the universe, and thus there is infinite space that changes over time.
Other physicists have developed more than one grand unified theory using more than four dimensions, for example but not limited to superstring theorists, who argue that rings and strings of energy exist in 11 and 26 dimensions, with the other dimensions we can't see hidden behind the dimensions we can see, similar to how we can't see how wide an electrical or telephone wire is, we can only see its height and length from afar, the other dimension hidden from us.
Superstring theory - Wikipedia
Einstein's work complicates the understanding of time, because time is relative to local concentrations of energy and/or mass in spacetime, and so time on Earth is different than it is in far space. This means that there isn't really one time, but more than one time, and at the same time (one time), which is paradoxial and contradictory, a fallacy in logic, reasoning, and critical thinking, because there isn't one time at the same time that there isn't one time.
Theory of relativity - Wikipedia
A more intuitive description of time is that time is the variable that measures all and/or any change.
If there were no more changes in the universe, then there would be no time, just a frozen universe, where everything is frozen in place, but that isn't the nature of the universe as Heraclitus the Greek first reminded us with the likes of "no person washes their foot in the same river, because it is not the same foot, nor is it the same river", or "the only thing that is constant is that everything will change", or "the only thing that doesn't change is that everything will change".
And so if time is the variable used to measure change, and using the frozen universe analogy, unfreezing/warming the universe for one second, would allow everything in the universe to change for a second. Each of those changes could be compared to the baseline measurement of time when the universe was frozen, or time zero, or time equals zero, and any change in that second would be observable, because a second later, at least one thing in the universe would not be the same.
Emily de Chatelet, a co-author of Isaac Newton, implied that infinite time could exist under specific conditions due to the conservation of energy, which states that energy cannot be created, nor destroyed, but only transferred, and because at least one thing in the universe may not have a beginning or end, then that one thing, energy, exists or changes forever, as an argument for infinite time, mirroring the observation of Heraclitus the Greek.
Émilie du Châtelet - Wikipedia
Physicists and mathematicians also deal with infinity and its limits using calculus, resulting in two branches of math and physics, the branch based on continuous or infinity mathematics, and the branch based on non-continuous or non-infinity or discrete mathematics.
As a result, statistics based on continuous math is used to describe one of the two types of particles in the universe, non-half spinning boson force particles, whose changes are tracked against the variable of time. Similarly, statistics based on discrete or non-continuous math is used to describe the other of the two types of particles in the universe, fermions, which further divide into quarks (inside of atoms) and leptons (outside of atoms).
Physicists Stephen Hawking and James Hartle proposed that the time dimension gave way to space dimensions in the early universe, resulting in space and no time(!?) -- which on its face is nonsense from the perspective that time is the variable that measures all observed change -- and so Hawking and Hartle invited others to ignore time or the variable that measures observed change, while proposing a process requiring time to pass in order for time to give way to space.
Another way to look at this is a frozen universe that doesn't change, and so no variable of time is required to measure the changes, while inviting others to accept that changes have occurred, so wonky at best with respect to logic, reasoning, and critical thinking. Sounds like Trump and the GOP trying to run for office despite having permanently disqualified themselves for office, so that they can change the laws that disqualified them from changing laws type of reasoning. Ignoring logic so that flawed logic can be employed in order to redefine the nature of logic type of reasoning.
But without time, the pluralism would have remained a pluralism, and would not have Big Banged, and the particles of force and matter would not have been derived out of the Higgs boson and field, and there would be no need for integrals, because nothing would change, and so no Big Bang would occur. Without time, there would be no change in energy, no energy transfer, no work, and thus no change at all, a system at rest, totally frozen, and this doesn't jive with the changing requirements for, and unfolding changing nature of, the Big Bang.
"According to the Hartle–Hawking proposal, the universe has no origin as we would understand it: before the Big Bang, which happened about 13.8 billion years ago, the universe was a singularity in both space and time. Hartle and Hawking suggest that if we could travel backwards in time towards the beginning of the universe, we would note that quite near what might have been the beginning, time gives way to space so that there is only space and no time.[4]"
Hartle–Hawking state - Wikipedia
Maybe it is time to develop a common understanding and definition of time?