time is relative.

[White Crane Feather]

It seems like we perceive movement in time the same way we perceive movement in space, I may not be where I formerly was, but I am clearly not 'when' I formerly was either. As far as remaining 'in the present', couldn't we say that that's equivalent to, 'we remain 'here''? I'm always 'here', but my 'here' changes just as 'the present' does; the 'present' doesn't seem to be any more fixed than 'here' is, outside of the fact that we personally have some control over where 'here' is for us.

I wonder how this works also looking at objects a great distance away. We see stars as they were in the past, not as they are in 'the present', so I'm not sure how that's possible if there is only 'the present'. I had always thought that time is treated as 'a dimension' by physics (thus the word, 'spacetime' I think) and that other dimensions may exist, but have no understanding of how that works.

(And don't get me wrong Frank, I'm no expert either, I'm not even sure I disagree with you; just trying to see if I can challenge it and what the repercussions are, if any, if viewing time this way)

It's a simple function of the speed of light. You are not seeing the star as it was in the past, you are preceiving the wavelengths of light as they are now only carrying the information and record of what the star was like in the past. The star has changed and moved on, and if you wait you will see that information aswell.

It's not any different than seeing a flash of lightning and then waiting for the thunder. The conductivity of air to carry sound waves is simply slower than the conductivity of space to carry light.

The illusion of time is what frank said. It's simply a record of change. If you did not have a memory you could not experience time.

[White Crane Feather]

I know where you are going, I think. Is the passage of time a different sort of motion that movement in space. Of course the two are interconnected in ways I don't understand, so I'm out of my depth. It is just that time as a dimension is a very different thing than space as dimensions. We can expend energy to move in space, the proposed movment in time requires no energy expenditure and in fact cannot be controlled.

So I do not perceive movement in time; I perceive change -- movement in space -- but we remain in the present. It's a chessboard with each object moving in accordance to its nature -- physics -- from moment to moment, but the chessboard is still the chessboard.

I don't think you are out of your depth frank. You are dead on. a ticking clock is merely moving energy about in space. There needs to be no dimension outside of perception for this to happen only the current special dimensions and physics that we are aware of. Its easily seen in the effects of realativity because the top speed of the energy moving about is fixed. A moveing ticking clock relative to another is using up some of the conductivity of space for its internal signals to move about and make it tik, therefore it must apear to run slower than the other. That's one way to look at it anyway.

[+Liquid Gardens]

It's a simple function of the speed of light. You are not seeing the star as it was in the past, you are preceiving the wavelengths of light as they are now only carrying the information and record of what the star was like in the past. The star has changed and moved on, and if you wait you will see that information aswell.

Interesting. I am struggling with your second sentence, 'perceiving the wavelengths of light as they are now carrying the information and record of what the star was like in the past' is what I, and I thought everyone, means by 'seeing the star as it was in the past'. I am so far beyond any expertise here that I'm sure my questions are banal, but in what specific way is 'time is an illusion' correct when in your explanation you just used the words 'now' and 'the past'? To put it another way, can we fill in this sentence: "time is an illusion because it's just a 'record of change', when many people actually mistakenly believe it to be 'real' because they think time is 'x'". What is 'x'?

[StarMountainKid]

The popular view around here seems to be that time as dimension does not exist, there is only change in the configuration of space. The past is only memory, and likewise the future does not exist because we can't be conscious of it. Our consciousness is only aware of the present.

I think our consciousness is being selective in this matter. It would be detrimental to our survival if we were conscious of the past and the future as well as conscious of our present moment. Does this selective consciousness of ours prove that the past and future do not exist?

I take the view that all moments of space-time do exist. I think many physicists would agree with me from some of the books I've read, though there is the opposing view as well. If this present moment is a flash that disappears as soon as it happens (as it seems to our consciousness anyway), I think we must still consider time as something real. I say this because

Is there an interval that creates the present moment or is there no time-like interval at all? Is change smooth or is change a series of quantum jumps at the smallest scale (the Planck scale)?

If this interval is real (Planck time) then I would consider time to exist as this interval of change to the configuration of space. In this sense, time allows for change in space. If there were no Planck-time interval, space would remain static. The Plank-time interval (time) allows for change to occur in the quantum scale.

I don't want to make this post too long, so I'll stop here.

[White Crane Feather]

Interesting. I am struggling with your second sentence, 'perceiving the wavelengths of light as they are now carrying the information and record of what the star was like in the past' is what I, and I thought everyone, means by 'seeing the star as it was in the past'. I am so far beyond any expertise here that I'm sure my questions are banal, but in what specific way is 'time is an illusion' correct when in your explanation you just used the words 'now' and 'the past'? To put it another way, can we fill in this sentence: "time is an illusion because it's just a 'record of change', when many people actually mistakenly believe it to be 'real' because they think time is 'x'". What is 'x'?

We can still talk about an illusion and the terms associated with it. We are beings built upon our memories the past seems very real so we have a term for it. Really it's just an organization of the universe in a different puzzle configuration than it is now and we have a memory of part of that configuration. That's just a hell of a lot more to say than "the past". The past certainly existed, but like everything else it is only information. We need not a dimension or an enabler for the past to change in to the present other than the laws of physics as they are... Momentum...conductivity etc etc.

When you 'see' that star you are experiencing information recorded into the light. You are actually experiencing the light.. Not the star. The star has changed already it could have undergone sepernova already and you would not know about it.

Example: your friend writes you a note to meet you for lunch in 2 hours and sends it via bike carrier service. Your office is just down the street, she expects the message to get to you very fast, so two hours has roughly the same meaning. The currier dosnt realize its time sensitive and stops to talk to a cute girl for an hour then delivers the message. You miss your lunch date because your perception of two hours was different than your friends caused by the time elapsed by irresponsible currier. Why? You were not preceiving your friends actual communication, you were simply precieving written material ( a record) of her actual message.

I think I made that more complicated than it needed to be. The point is that the light of the star is simply carrying a record of the actual star. It's a memory in the light. In reality you and the star are only interacting through encoded information. The dimension of time is simply a way for us to coordinate different configurations of the universe. Some of which we have control over.

Think of a rubix cube. It changes with two dimensions. The relationship of the colors on the cube is 'time'. It's not another dimension persay in the cube but it records different configurations of the cube related to dynamics of those interacting peices in two dimensions.

The two axis of the cube = dimension

Each spot under the colered tape = space

The colored tape = matter

The realation ship of the colors = time

This is why we call it Spacetime, and we call the concept realativity. Time is not a thing any more than "unkle" is a thing. It's simply a word to describe a relationship we have with other configurations of the universe.

Edited April 4, 2013 by Seeker79

[White Crane Feather]

The popular view around here seems to be that time as dimension does not exist, there is only change in the configuration of space. The past is only memory, and likewise the future does not exist because we can't be conscious of it. Our consciousness is only aware of the present.

I think our consciousness is being selective in this matter. It would be detrimental to our survival if we were conscious of the past and the future as well as conscious of our present moment. Does this selective consciousness of ours prove that the past and future do not exist?

I take the view that all moments of space-time do exist. I think many physicists would agree with me from some of the books I've read, though there is the opposing view as well. If this present moment is a flash that disappears as soon as it happens (as it seems to our consciousness anyway), I think we must still consider time as something real. I say this because

Is there an interval that creates the present moment or is there no time-like interval at all? Is change smooth or is change a series of quantum jumps at the smallest scale (the Planck scale)?

If this interval is real (Planck time) then I would consider time to exist as this interval of change to the configuration of space. In this sense, time allows for change in space. If there were no Planck-time interval, space would remain static. The Plank-time interval (time) allows for change to occur in the quantum scale.

I don't want to make this post too long, so I'll stop here.

The plank-time is simply the interval it takes a piece of information to transit one plank. The smallest possible 'time'. It didn't enable the transit, it merely recorded it relative to other transits or sets of transits.

[StarMountainKid]

he plank-time is simply the interval it takes a piece of information to transit one plank. The smallest possible 'time'. It didn't enable the transit, it merely recorded it relative to other transits or sets of transits

Well, in a sense this interval of information to transit one Planck unit is time. If time is the interval of change, Planck time is that interval. I understand that this interval of information transit may not be considered a dimension, yet it determines the rate of change. Is not the rate of change time?

Time dilation can be defined by the mechanics of the speed of light and the relative velocity of different reference frames, but the difference in duration of the relative intervals of 'time' is real. If time does not exist, what is operating that is being expressed in these differences in interval duration?

[Rlyeh]

The popular view around here seems to be that time as dimension does not exist, there is only change in the configuration of space. The past is only memory, and likewise the future does not exist because we can't be conscious of it. Our consciousness is only aware of the present.

I think our consciousness is being selective in this matter. It would be detrimental to our survival if we were conscious of the past and the future as well as conscious of our present moment. Does this selective consciousness of ours prove that the past and future do not exist?

Why would our consciousness even have access to information our immediate environment does not? Edited April 5, 2013 by Rlyeh

[pitchp]

I've only seen time slow down a couple of times. Both times were to a near death experience. The first time it freaked me a little, I was crossing the road with out looking for traffic. That is when time almost slow down to a complete stop. Everything around me was moving slower and slower. The traffic was travelling slower, the people across the road were walking slower to almost a complete stop. Until I looked around and realised there was a bus heading towards me. I took a step back after realising that the bus was going to hit me and kill me. As soon as I took a step back time sped up almost 4x times it's normal speed. I'm assuming it was trying to catch up from what it lost?? In any case from that day on I realise there is something different about this lifetime, also something different about the universe we live in. After so many years have passed I always thought god was trying to save me from every NDE I was having, until I started pushing the limits. Now I'm kinda having second thoughts. Since I have seen some of the past lifetimes I've been living lately, each lifetime I was taking my own life by the time I hit the age of 30. Now it seems someone has caught on to me. Yes I have been taking advantages of lifetimes. I never bothered about the learning process, nor have I bothered to have old age, I don't like pain and suffering. Which ofcourse normally comes with old age. Anyways to cut a long story short, I've now come to realise, that god is not saving me at all. God is trying to keep me here as long as possible, or until I learn what I really need to learn. In the beggining of my life I was a skeptic of everything, until i started experiencing these paranormal situations. This is from my point of view, I trully understand most people wouldn't believe what I've just said. But that's my 2cents

[StarMountainKid]

Why would our consciousness even have access to information our immediate environment does not?

This is sort of my point. Our consciousness only has access to our immediate environment. This creates for us our present.

Just because we have no conscious access to the past or to the future does not mean these do not exist.

Also, our consciousness of the duration of the present is determined by the capacity of our brain to process information. As we know, we can experience inner time to speed up or slow down. I think this demonstrates that the average rate of time elapsing that we experience is psychological in nature. We create the external spatial world within our minds by our senses, and we also create the duration of time elapsing we experience in our minds. We create our present moment.

I don't think we can extrapolate our psychological experience of time to the universe at large. All moments of space-time may exist, external to the awareness of our limited consciousness. Does an event in space-time just disappear or become non-existant in the next moment, or does that event always exist in that moment of time the event occurred?

In a sense the past must always exist as a foundation of the present. If the past moment does not still exist, how can did the present moment evolve from it?

[Tutankhaten-pasheri]

Reading these posts I thought, well, a few seconds ago I read that post, then before that another, and in a moment I will read one as yet unread. This to me is not time, it is my mind putting things in some order. Has time elapsed for my monitor, for apart from the picture on the screen it has not changed, the passage of time is meaningless to it, there is no time, there is simply an eternal now. But, in all this, were do we place entropy, is entropy a part of time, or is it not what we think. A star will eventually consume all it's fuel and change into something else, and that something will eventually "die". This, we are told will happen to galaxies, to the universe, but it is only conjecture. A leaf falls to the ground, it decays and returns to it's constituent molecules and atoms. So, is this connected with time, or entropy, or something else. If that leaf were transport into intergalactic space, it would never change, never decay, never become anything than a leaf. Time and entropy will not exist for it, it will be in an eternal now. And in a billion billion years it will still exist unchanged and unchanging. To the leaf everything is "now". And now my head hurts and I go out for lunch

Edited April 5, 2013 by Atentutankh-pasheri

[Mr Walker]

That's all too deterministic for me. Probabilities are things that might be, indeed, probably will be, but not must be.

When one gets into the business of trying to calculate the future of any sort of real system, the variables multiply so fast that you soon have a chaotic system where no conceivable computer could make the necessary calculations. It is a fine line between incalculable and only theoretically calculable but never really calculable. The difference will never be tested.

Given the explosive increase in computing power and the introduction of new forms of computing many millions of times faster than the present I wouldnt be at all certain of this. It wil certaibly be tested. How perfectly accurately it can be done will prove very interesting. Like you, I tend to think that certain chaotic vartiables may still create some room for error. there actuially is no physical connection between instants of time; past, present and future, and so randomness and chaotic progression is possible..

[Mr Walker]

Ah but we don't move into the future: we stay in the present.

Or we do both. We move from our present into "our" future, which becomes our present and then our past. Right now, tomorrow is my future, and if I am not very unlucky I will definitely move from today into tommorow. That will then be my present, and the day after tomorrow will be my future, while today will be my past.

[Mr Walker]

I know where you are going, I think. Is the passage of time a different sort of motion that movement in space. Of course the two are interconnected in ways I don't understand, so I'm out of my depth. It is just that time as a dimension is a very different thing than space as dimensions. We can expend energy to move in space, the proposed movment in time requires no energy expenditure and in fact cannot be controlled.

So I do not perceive movement in time; I perceive change -- movement in space -- but we remain in the present. It's a chessboard with each object moving in accordance to its nature -- physics -- from moment to moment, but the chessboard is still the chessboard.

Change creates markers by which to measure the passage of time. A later post refers to entropy. This is a "universal" marker of time. Does time exist without any such changes and markers? Yes. The universe probably existed for a long "time" in state without change where it was impossible to measure time, and yet time passed.

Just as a tree does cause sound in a forest when there is no one to hear it, time passes even when there is no one to measure it.Time is NOT only a construct of humanity but a word we use to describe a real aspect the universe which exists indpenednt of human thought. Time, like matter, would exist without any sapient being to observe or create it.

[Mr Walker]

The popular view around here seems to be that time as dimension does not exist, there is only change in the configuration of space. The past is only memory, and likewise the future does not exist because we can't be conscious of it. Our consciousness is only aware of the present.

I think our consciousness is being selective in this matter. It would be detrimental to our survival if we were conscious of the past and the future as well as conscious of our present moment. Does this selective consciousness of ours prove that the past and future do not exist?

I take the view that all moments of space-time do exist. I think many physicists would agree with me from some of the books I've read, though there is the opposing view as well. If this present moment is a flash that disappears as soon as it happens (as it seems to our consciousness anyway), I think we must still consider time as something real. I say this because

Is there an interval that creates the present moment or is there no time-like interval at all? Is change smooth or is change a series of quantum jumps at the smallest scale (the Planck scale)?

If this interval is real (Planck time) then I would consider time to exist as this interval of change to the configuration of space. In this sense, time allows for change in space. If there were no Planck-time interval, space would remain static. The Plank-time interval (time) allows for change to occur in the quantum scale.

I don't want to make this post too long, so I'll stop here.

This is too humano -centric. Time has nothing to do with humans (in terms of its existence.) It is something which exists, that we, with our senses and intelligence, observe and consider.

Time is as real as a rock and, like the rock, would exist whether we were around or not. The past is NOT only memory. It is/ was real solid and substantial. The rock Ifell over yesterday lays where i kicked it at the time.

It just happens that we have a memory record of the past as it was/occurred. But the memory is of real and solid things.The future, also, will be real, solid and substantial. PAst, present and future are connected as one single/ solid/ material continuumn, along which we travel, and of which we are very aware. Other things also travel along it, but are unaware of this. (Like the rock.)

Ps all humans are aware (to vaiying extents/degrees) of the past and the future. Rather than be dismissive of this we need to work to heighten our awareness of our past and our future to be able to see and use a holistic approach to our life. Survival is promoted (not endangered) by a more full awareness of our past and our present. It is one of humanity's greatest survival strengths.

Edited April 5, 2013 by Mr Walker

[Mr Walker]

This is sort of my point. Our consciousness only has access to our immediate environment. This creates for us our present.

Just because we have no conscious access to the past or to the future does not mean these do not exist.

Also, our consciousness of the duration of the present is determined by the capacity of our brain to process information. As we know, we can experience inner time to speed up or slow down. I think this demonstrates that the average rate of time elapsing that we experience is psychological in nature. We create the external spatial world within our minds by our senses, and we also create the duration of time elapsing we experience in our minds. We create our present moment.

I don't think we can extrapolate our psychological experience of time to the universe at large. All moments of space-time may exist, external to the awareness of our limited consciousness. Does an event in space-time just disappear or become non-existant in the next moment, or does that event always exist in that moment of time the event occurred?

In a sense the past must always exist as a foundation of the present. If the past moment does not still exist, how can did the present moment evolve from it?

But we do have conscious access to our past and our future. One is memory (and technology) The other is extrapolation logic and imagination. I can very precisely plan and act out my life for tomorrow, and "know", today, that I will be at least 95% accurate. (barring my death overnight which is a non- significant variable) Time passes at a consistent rate measured by objective means. Subjective time may pass at different rates and with training one can alter this at will. After being asleep for hours I wake up knowing exactly what time it is whther it is 1.00 am 3.15 or 6.32 because I have trained my subconscious to know/measure accurately, the passage of time The mind can do a great deal in a minute of time and with training the body can respond to the mind and act within nano seconds You can speed your mind up so that the same time passes very slowly and you can do many things within a few seconds of objective time

For example I once lost control of a car on a steep descent, on a wet gravel road. The car had no traction and was sliding/aquaplaning on a watery film. It rotataed around through 180 then 360 degrees as it slid down the road. In only a few seconds I had thought through the problem, remembered the solution from my driver training and applied the knowledge in practice. In 5 seconds or so the car was back under my control. In that time it had slid about 100 metres down the road and was just beginning to veer off the road onto the sloping edge. It seemed like I had all the time in the world to think and act but the distance travelled in 5 seconds showed how critical it was to think and act quickly. I was only doing about 60 ks per hour because of the conditions, but even if i had been travelling faster I would have had time to correct the problem.

[Rlyeh]

This is sort of my point. Our consciousness only has access to our immediate environment. This creates for us our present.

Just because we have no conscious access to the past or to the future does not mean these do not exist.

Well it is more than just your consciousness, your entire body is localized.

Also, our consciousness of the duration of the present is determined by the capacity of our brain to process information. As we know, we can experience inner time to speed up or slow down. I think this demonstrates that the average rate of time elapsing that we experience is psychological in nature. We create the external spatial world within our minds by our senses, and we also create the duration of time elapsing we experience in our minds. We create our present moment.

We create a mental representation of the world around us. I'm not sure what you mean by "We create the external spatial world within our minds by our senses", the spatial universe didn't exist until we sensed it?

From what I understand, the perception of time and time in physics are very different.

[Frank Merton]

Given the explosive increase in computing power and the introduction of new forms of computing many millions of times faster than the present I wouldnt be at all certain of this. It wil certaibly be tested. How perfectly accurately it can be done will prove very interesting. Like you, I tend to think that certain chaotic vartiables may still create some room for error. there actuially is no physical connection between instants of time; past, present and future, and so randomness and chaotic progression is possible..

When you speak of a computer capable of calculating the outcome of large chaotic systems, the needed computers become far beyond what is even theoretically imaginable -- things on the scale of multiples of the entire universe all calculating together.

What big computers do is model, which involves making radically simplifying assumptions, and, interestingly enough, when done right these procedures get good results. They are however far short of producing anything approaching certainty. They are also best for macro-systems, like the weather or the evolution of galaxies. When you start getting into things closer to the atomic level, whole new forms of uncertainty appear.

Edited April 5, 2013 by Frank Merton

[White Crane Feather]

Well, in a sense this interval of information to transit one Planck unit is time. If time is the interval of change, Planck time is that interval. I understand that this interval of information transit may not be considered a dimension, yet it determines the rate of change. Is not the rate of change time?

Time dilation can be defined by the mechanics of the speed of light and the relative velocity of different reference frames, but the difference in duration of the relative intervals of 'time' is real. If time does not exist, what is operating that is being expressed in these differences in interval duration?

Well.,,, I guess to say time dosnt exist is the wrong approach. It's a label we have for change. In that sense of course it exists. But in really is just another label we have given a perception we have. A description of a relationship. The illusion is that the past and future somehow exists independent of the present. In reality a real time machine is impossible because it would have to reconfigure the entire universe. This eliminates all temporal paradoxes because there simlply is no past or future to travel to.

I can say the the relationship of "brother " exists, but in reality I'm only describing more fundamental biological truths. The same thing with time. I can say interval exists, but in reality I'm only describing a combination of more fundamental natural processes. It by itself has no meaning,

If we put on end of an Einstein/Rosenbridge wormhole on a ship traveling close to the speed of light then at some point stepped through it, we would not actually be traveling through any kind of dimension forward in time. We simply would move to a frame of reference who's clock has been ticking faster. In no way could you show up before you left. Completely impossible. It's purely an imaginative construct built upon our recognition that different states of the universe existed or will exist.

Edited April 5, 2013 by Seeker79

[+Liquid Gardens]

This is why we call it Spacetime, and we call the concept realativity. Time is not a thing any more than "unkle" is a thing. It's simply a word to describe a relationship we have with other configurations of the universe.

Thanks a lot for the explanation, Seeker, I'm still trying to get my head around it but I'm seeing better where you are coming from I think. I have two questions which may help clarify for me if you have time (ha). First, if time is not a thing, what exactly then is 'slowing down' when travelling at relativistic speeds (relative to other observers). Secondly, are there other things that are not 'things'? Is gravity also an illusion? My understanding it's caused by the curvature of space. I'm not clear to what extent we are saying things like time are not things because we can explain it as interactions between or being composed of other things.

[White Crane Feather]

Thanks a lot for the explanation, Seeker, I'm still trying to get my head around it but I'm seeing better where you are coming from I think. I have two questions which may help clarify for me if you have time (ha). First, if time is not a thing, what exactly then is 'slowing down' when travelling at relativistic speeds (relative to other observers). Secondly, are there other things that are not 'things'? Is gravity also an illusion? My understanding it's caused by the curvature of space. I'm not clear to what extent we are saying things like time are not things because we can explain it as interactions between or being composed of other things.

Think of it this way. A clock is traveling relative to another. The seed of light is fixed. The tick of a clock is actually an exchange of energy. Let's make them light clocks where a peice of light is bouncing back and forth to create a tick of the clock. Kinda like pong.

From the observation of the resting clock the light in the moving clock must have a longer path than the one at rest even though they are identicle clocks. Now since the speed of light is fixed it must take that light a longer interval to create a single tick.

Imaging pitching a ball back and forth in a motor home. From your perspective it only traveled 10 feet, but as you zoomed by a person standing outside it actually traveled 50 ft. Since the speed of light is fixed it must take longer for it to travel the 50ft instead of the apparent 10 that you are observing. But you will not know the difference the speed of light will still seem the same to you, but your clock will tick slower than the person at rest. Everything in the universe is ticking in some way. Mostly radioactive decay. Anything moving, accelerating or do to the equivalence principal in a gravity well will tick slower relative to something else. No 'time' needed. I guess you could say the ticking is time. But really it's perfectly explainable with other physical processes.

Gravity is another issue. They say they have found the Higgs boson, but I remain skeptical until they can demonstrate that the Higgs is responsible for gravity. Finding a new particle where they thought they might is a far cry from demonstrating that it is actually responsible for gravity. Many still remain skeptical.

But yes you can think of gravity as a curvature of space. No one really knows if it's actually curved or not or if it's just that matter acts as if it were curved do to some particle like the Higgs.

I tend to think of gravity like surface tention.

Like I said Mabey saying it is not a thing is the wrong approach. It's just that there is this false image out there that time is some sort of force or enabler. Like a substance that can be manipulated. It's non of those things. It's simply our recognition of a changeling universe. The only time that exists is the simple marching of the universe.

What will really make your head hurt is how the delayed choice quantum eraser fits into all this. But if I had that answer I would have successfully merged quantum mechanics with relativity and I'd have a Nobel prize... But im only a parrot not a scientist . But it's cool stuff.

Edited April 5, 2013 by Seeker79

[Frank Merton]

I understand how an illusion of gravity could arise from the fact that a massive object creates a warping or curving of the space around it. This is an issue in solid geometry extended to another dimenson -- it takes some mental gymanastics and abandonment of certain assumptons but it can be done. I don't see how a particle gives mass; I think what they refer to a particle is really nuclear physics talk for the origin of a field, just as an electron is such talk for the origin of an electric field, and fields are distortions or bendings of space-time again.

[White Crane Feather]

I understand how an illusion of gravity could arise from the fact that a massive object creates a warping or curving of the space around it. This is an issue in solid geometry extended to another dimenson -- it takes some mental gymanastics and abandonment of certain assumptons but it can be done. I don't see how a particle gives mass; I think what they refer to a particle is really nuclear physics talk for the origin of a field, just as an electron is such talk for the origin of an electric field, and fields are distortions or bendings of space-time again.

Agreed. I think there is a bias push to find particles for everything.

[StarMountainKid]

This is too humano -centric. Time has nothing to do with humans (in terms of its existence.) It is something which exists, that we, with our senses and intelligence, observe and consider.

This was the point I was trying to make. The only difference is, I was wondering if our human consciousness of the rate of time elapsing is an accurate representation of the rate of time external to our consciousness.

If, as I posit, the past, present and future already exist, everything has already happened, and it is our human consciousness that creates for us our prsence in the present moment and our psychological experience of the rate of time elapsing.

[lightly]

wanna hear a weird idea? .. ok I think time is what happens as all matter/energy is recreated , (maybe at the speed of light) . I think maybe it's this constant state of recreation that allows for all physical movements and changes we can observe. LIke .. fire.. that transformative process is only possible because of the underlying state of transformation.