Space is the absolute and time is a third order function with two directions.
There is no universal reference frame, but a reference frame is an abstraction in the first place. What is space?
The idea that space is curved is derived from the assumption that it is only the context for physical properties and can so only be measured in terms of their motion.
Now this motion is measured as a function of such properties traveling a distance and distance constitutes a line segmant, so it is one dimensional. Even our abstract reference frames are three dimensional, so we judge the reality of space on the basis of a component of an abstraction.
Three dimensions start at the x,y,,z point, but it is arbitrary. Geometry never incorporated zero. Consider that 4x0=0, but that 4'x0'=4'. Four feet is four feet, but if you wish to assign it a factor of zero, then it should have consequences.
Assuming the point as the center of a reference frame equals one, what is zero in geometry, other then empty space?
Space is ultimately flat, in that all gravitational collapse and universal expansion balance out, so that Newton’s observation; “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” still holds.
Every curvature of the path of traveling mass exists in a larger equilibrium where the tension of any particular disequilibrium is balanced out. If a two dimensional description of space curves into a gravitational well, it cannot do so from a flat plane, as this would imply a universal reference frame. It must be curving upward in inverse proportion to which gravity curves it downward.
The absolute is not a reference frame. It is equilibrium. In fact, any number of reference frames can be used to define the same space, so our map of space may be three dimensional for intellectually reductionistic convenience, but the actual territory of space is infinitely dimensional.
In fact, science generally accepts this equilibrium, considering such concepts as matter/anti-matter, electromagnetic polarities, etc.
Einstein felt the need to balance his theory of relative space and its effects with a cosmological constant, an idea that has yet to be buried.
It is those physical properties which exist in the equilibrium of space that are the second order.
This mass/energy is neither created or destroyed, but is in motion and constantly changing form, which is called information. As the amount of energy doesn’t change, old information is erased as new information is recorded. This is the process of time.
Information which existed, but no longer does, is the past. Information which has been created and still exists is the present. Information which has yet to be created is the future.
The measure of time is of specific motion against its context. As a measure of relative motion, the context is not an absolute, so it is in motion as well, effectively moving in the opposite direction. To the hands of the clock, everything else is moving counter-clockwise.
Our abstract units of time tend to be sequential, but the real units overlap. A day on the east coast isn’t the same time as a day on the west coast. While we see the sun as moving east to west, the reality is that we are rotating west to east, relative to the sun.
What this means is that while the unit of time goes from beginning to end, the process of time goes toward beginnings, away from endings. As daylight is draining from the east, it is pouring into the west.
This relationship between units and processes is fundamental. Individuals go from birth to death, but the process of life is pouring into the next generation as it is draining from the older generation.
While the products on an assembly line go from intiation to completion, the future for the process isn’t with what is finished, but is to be started. What matters to this process is not so much the finished product, but the energy generated in the form of wages and profits that allow it to continue. Just as food and information passing through you propels you toward gathering more.
Thoughts are the entities to the process of the mind, rising and falling as the mind gathers information and quantitizes it. As we get older, it takes less additional information/energy to form each thought, so time speeds up.
In any relationship, that which is defined is the entity and that doing the defining is the process, so it's the motion of the defined, like the hands of the clock, that we notice.
What comes first, past or future? We see past events proceeding future ones, but the events themselves are first in the future, then in the past.
Two people communicating with each other exist in each others future, but are perceived in their own past. Time is simply a function of subjective reality.
