I am not really skilled in physics and have never understood why time would be a tangible dimension like, say, width or height, instead of a mathematical construction to argue about change.<p>I get it that it is convenient to talk of change in something, like movement from state a to state b, under the guise of wrapping it in "time", but is there some physical argument in support of time in general? Honest question.<p>Living beings getting older is their cells becoming more and more inefficient in division and cell repair. One could likely achieve the same effects with chemicals, but doing so would not mean time has run faster.<p>The concept of time for humans seems to be all about observable change, which needs an observer with a memory to compare the current state with previous state to be able to say: time has passed.<p>A rock changes via erosion and such, but it has no memory, and cannot observe anything. Does a rock feel time? Of course not. Does it exist "in time"? Does it, without an observer that somehow measures the flow of time (via changes in Cesium atoms or something)? Or is the rock just existing and under the whims of all forces of nature that might impact it and change it into smaller pieces and eventually to sand, and so on.<p>I guess my question is: what exactly is time, physically, and why should it have to exist as some sort of a physical process in the first place.
> Unlike general relativity, quantum mechanics, and particle physics, thermodynamics embeds a direction of time.<p>This is the bit that irks me. Quantum mechanics, the real QM that physicists actually use, involves collapse of the wavefunction. This is absolutely time-asymmetric. But in all these discussions of "why is time one-way?" this never seems to be mentioned. Apparently QM is not a real theory, and just a placeholder until we can work something out properly. Irk!
Would it be fair to say that the second law of thermodynamics is only "a law" given our human perspective of the direction of time? If time has no "arrow", but a memory is only possible in non-decreasing entropy which is our perspective, there can be another perspective in which the big bang is the future and our future is the past, only we cannot comprehend it because a memory is not possible in decreasing entropy?
If you found that interesting you might also enjoy Rovelli's defence of Aristotle's physics: <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.4057" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.4057</a>
We know that the universe went through various very fast state changes in its very first fraction of seconds.<p>Given that the gravity must have been immerse then how should we understand this time?
> <i>In fact, clocks tick slower when they are in a stronger gravitational field</i><p>They shouldn't, if they are properly made. They should tick and measure at their usual rate. Their local timeframe is out of whack with somewhere else, but that's got nothing to do with the clocks.