What really is TIME?Is it an illusion?

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The discussion centers on the complex nature of time, prompted by personal reflections on aging and the passage of life. Participants highlight that time is not an absolute concept, as demonstrated by the principles of special and general relativity, which show that time can vary based on relative speed and gravitational potential. The conversation references physicist Carlo Rovelli's insights, emphasizing that spacetime is a dynamic field and that quantum mechanics suggests all such fields are quantized. The mention of the Wheeler-Dewitt equation raises the intriguing point that time is absent from this fundamental equation, leading to philosophical questions about the directionality of time in certain scenarios within general relativity. Ultimately, the discussion leans towards philosophical interpretations of time rather than purely physical explanations.
gabrielgowriel
Hello everybody!
I was wondering these days while resting on a bed , thinking about my sister and her 3 year old girl, my parents which are getting old now beeing 63 and 61(dad and mom),thinking about my childhood from the 1990's which has passed SO FAST(or is it just me?!), thinking about the moment I started to write this post , the moment I AM typing this post and the moment that I WILL type some more words here on this forum!
What do you SMART physics guys and girls think about time?
What really is it?!
Because I feel sorry for "contemplating" at how my life goes by and I can't do a thing to "freeze it" at least for a moment or more(years if possible)...
I feel "sorry" because all the good moments pass away, all my relatives get old and eventually die,all the happines goes away , beeing replaced by sadness and many thoughts of "WHY"?!
I suppose this notion of "time" , has A LOT to do with physics because it doesn't really looks like chemistry, mathematics or biology...
So, I hope this question hasn't been asked so far or at least "lately" and someone here could offer a reasonable answer to my "dilema"/question...
Thank you all in advance!
:rolleyes:
 
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Nobody knows just what time is.

Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.

Special relativity weakens the notion of absolute time; general relativity weakens it further.
Relativity shows time is not constant...and varies between observers due to relative speed and or differences in gravitational potential. This means space-time is a dynamical field.

Rovelli:
...we learn from GR that spacetime is a dynamical field and we learn from QM that all dynamical fields are quantized.

Yet in the wonderful Wheeler-Dewitt quantum mechanical equation there is no time variable!

PS: there are a lot of discussions you can find i9n these forums on 'time'.
 
Just for the sake of interesting pathological examples, in general relativity you can, in principle, come up with space - times where there is no unambiguous notion of going "forward" or "backward" in time. It has no uniquely defined direction. Anyways, it seems like what you are asking is more philosophy than it is physics the way you phrased it as of now.
 
Sorry, we don't have a philosophy section here.
 

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