• Unlimiter
    9
    The universe is defined by two things: matter and action.
    Time for me is no more than the difference between matter doing a number of actions. More time means more actions, and vice versa.
    Humans thought of time travel because they experienced memories.
    Time is just a concept and not something without which the universe cannot exist, like matter and actions.
  • Richard Bronson
    2
    I'm not sure I agree. It seems to me that actions are causally connected sequences of states. The action of throwing a fastball starts with the pitcher's windup and ends when the ball comes to rest in the catcher's mit. An action is an incremental set of change to the state of an object over time. I'm having a hard time imagining instantaneous actions.

    What do you think?
  • Lida Rose
    33
    Aside from the old saw that time exists to keep everything from happening at once, it only exists where successive events occurs. If absolutely nothing, and I mean a b s o l u t e l y n-o-t-h-i-n-g occurs then time. " a nonspatial continuum that is measured in terms of events which succeed one another from past through present to future." does flow (exist).
  • elphidium55
    8
    @LidaRose states:
    If absolutely nothing ... occurs then time ... does flow (exist).

    I would think that absolute nothingness would lack everything, including time. I'm guessing this is a typo.
  • Benj96
    2.2k
    "action" or "change" I would have said is the product of interplay between energy and time. No energy + all time = no change, and similarly all energy + no time = no change either. Only when energy and time are in some ratio between but not including 1 and 0 does anything actually happen "act".
  • aRealidealist
    125
    “Energy,” based on E = mc2, is inconceivable without time; such that it can’t be separate from it, in order to be eventually combined with it. For energy is a product of mass in motion, & motion, as change of place, is time-dependent. Thus (all) energy without time, i.e., with “no time,” by definition, is inconceivable.
  • Benj96
    2.2k
    Energy,” based on E = mc2, is inconceivable without time;aRealidealist

    Energy as "change" or the "act of doing" is for sure inconceivable without time as to accomplish anything one needs time, however energy as "potential" to do work is not dependent on time I would say. As the potential/possibility to do work is not the same as "doing" work.

    Consider it this way; if I have 20 kilojoules of energy act over the course of 10 seconds that wont be the same as the same 20 kilojoules acting over the course of 10 years. This is essentially differences in the "power".

    So despite energy requiring time to act... the rate (or magnitude or intensity) of energy can be as described as a ratio of energy or work done over time.
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