… the question being, does time exist?

The Rev Dodgson said:

… the question being, does time exist?

Without time, what would we comprehend?

no yes anything

roughbarked said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

… the question being, does time exist?

Without time, what would we comprehend?

I don’t think we could have evolved brains without time, let alone be able to comprehend anything.

I think those who say time doesn’t exist, or it is just an illusion, must have a different meaning for “exist”.

And without time, how could we have

Perpetual Change

Yes

Does time exist?

My personal preference is that time is far more fundamental than is normally assumed.

General relativity allows us to warp time, and even in certain circumstances generate time loops.

But my idea is that time is truly one dimensional and that the impossibility of time loops governs the combined universe of general relativity and quantum mechanics, making it more fundamental than both.

mollwollfumble said:

Does time exist?

My personal preference is that time is far more fundamental than is normally assumed.

General relativity allows us to warp time, and even in certain circumstances generate time loops.

But my idea is that time is truly one dimensional and that the impossibility of time loops governs the combined universe of general relativity and quantum mechanics, making it more fundamental than both.

I think I agree.

Or at least it seems possible.

The Rev Dodgson said:

mollwollfumble said:

Does time exist?

My personal preference is that time is far more fundamental than is normally assumed.

General relativity allows us to warp time, and even in certain circumstances generate time loops.

But my idea is that time is truly one dimensional and that the impossibility of time loops governs the combined universe of general relativity and quantum mechanics, making it more fundamental than both.

I think I agree.

Or at least it seems possible.

Thanks. If I Understand correctly, that idea is not inconsistent with two TOEs.

One being CDT, causal dynamical triangulation, in which the unidirectionality of time is explicitly built into the model.

The other being ER = EPR where wormholes equate to spooky action at a distance. For reasons that are a bit subtle.

Time is the direction in which we grow sadder and more decrepit.

Bubblecar said:

Time is the direction in which we grow sadder and more decrepit.

yes, William

I think so, sure as my coffees goes cold, temperature tends to equalize with surrounds

Another one that I put to the physics forum, just a hypothesis,
is that time is a way of measuring temperature.

In the earliest universe before everything happened, time and temperature both existed, and moved in lockstep. Temperature decreased as time increased.

At some early but as yet undefined epoch, time and temperature decoupled and each went their separate way.

I’m not sure which epoch this would have been, perhaps the formation of the first subatomic particles, so that the temperature of particles decoupled from the temperature of the space around it.