Moontanman:
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Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care? About time!
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Moontanman,
Ypu asked me this in my "spacetime" thread
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(" Do you have a better idea of what time is?[/QUOTE])
but never replied to my answer. Here it is again.
It belongs in this thread anyway as time-specific.
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Two answers to consider simultaneously...
One:
It is the *concept/measure* of event duration, like
A: one rotation of earth (day and standardized divisions thereof... hours, minutes, seconds... nanoseconds)
B: one earth orbit around sun (measured three different ways giving three technically different *spans of time*)
C: the great cycle of the precession of the equinox
D: a complete "bang/crunch" cycle, if my favorite comology is true...
...You get the idea.
Two: Now, the present is always present, not sliced into units of time in the real world/cosmos. As I've said many times, future is not yet real and present and past is not still real and present, and there is no "time" between future and past. Therefore "time" is not a natural reality in the strict ontological sense of what is real.
So, "spans of time", as above are as real as we make them. There is no cosmic counter clicking at every complete earth rotation, year, etc. Yet we can "be on time" to work by common consensus on the convention, time. and we can plug in "time" as a component of velocity and calculate and execute a round trip to the moon.
It is also conventional to call "time" the fourth dimension added to the obvious spacial three which describe volume. Then we can avoid having two airplanes at the same coordinates in air-space at the same time. A very useful convention.
But it doesn't expand and contract as an actual entity of any kind... See Two above.
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Michael
