TIME - you will finally understand what it is and how it "works" - WITHOUT SINGLE FORMULA!

 

How many times have you heard all these complicated theories preached by various specialists explaining the intricate nature of time?

What is it, how does it "work", that it’s the fourth dimension, are the time travels possible, can it be reversed, how does the twin paradox work, where in space time runs faster and slower, etc. etc.?

And how many of you know and understand the formulas for time dilation, or all those fancy graphs showing its "action"?

Or maybe you've even heard that time creates space? 
Aren’t you lost in all this? - because I used to be totally 😊

 

But I guarantee you that in a moment you will fully understand what time really is and most importantly, you will feel it intuitively.
 You will be able to answer even the most complex questions about time on your own.

 

Because its nature is really very simple.

 

We only need 3 elements for this:

 

1)

Let's start with what is generally meant by the term time, or rather "the passage of time" and what we use this term for. 
 
Is time physical? - some physical structure? 4th dimension of the universe, which is often talked about by various experts, something influencing some other things (e.g. creating gravity or mass?)

 

No, time is a purely abstract concept used to describe some change that is taking place or has taken place, that is:

 

By measuring time, or rather its passage, we measure some change that occurs between two different moments. 
 
Time is a direct derivative of space, but it space is something physical, and time, i.e. the speed of changes that we observe, depends on the structure of this space and - in a moment I will explain it to you in a very simple and vivid way.

 

2)

What is the whole universe, that is us and everything that surrounds us - for the sake of simplicity, all this is a collection of trillions of trillions of trillions ... elementary particles that are in constant motion and react with each other (we do not have to consider here the types of particles – whether they are bosons, fermions etc. etc. - let's call them elementary particles).

 

So the entire universe is a mixture of constantly moving particles in various configurations and concentrations.

 

3).

Where do all these particles `are and move? - in space, but not in 4-dimensional space - time, just in 3-dimensional space.

 

And now let's introduce a concept that often appears in various considerations, i.e. the structure of space, called “the fabric of space”, material from which it is "built" of, because it will be fundamental here.
 

Well, space is not an abstract concept, i.e. a void that is filled with moving elementary particles, but space itself has a certain structure - it is a certain mesh in which all the aforementioned elementary particles are suspended (move).

Again - for the sake of simplicity let us assume that the space itself consists of some kind of elements (molecules) forming a kind of spatial grid (let's say something about the structure of a crystal), in which the elementary particles move, and most importantly, with which lattice these particles are able to interact in different ways.

 

 

 

 

We know that space has its geometry, which fundamentally affects how the entire universe behaves, that is, how all our elementary particles behave. On how fast they move, where their concentration is greater and less, etc.

 

What is this geometry of space? - or simply how much the mesh of particles that make it up is deformed from its original state. 
 So if this structure of the particles that make up space is deformed in some way, it is just a change in the geometry of space.

 

Imagine that elementary particles react with space particles and attract each other. If for some reason (no matter what) more elementary particles are concentrated in a given place, and they will have a much greater density than elsewhere, then in such a model they will also attract particles that form a space mesh, and thus they will stretch the structure of space exactly as Einstein's theory assumes.

 

So in our model we now have trillions of elementary particles moving in a differently stretched grid of space consisting of trillions of a trillion times more space particles (let's assume that space particles are much "smaller" than our elementary particles). 
 And in addition, the structure of space itself is also dynamically changing all the time, not only under the influence of the behavior of elementary particles with which it reacts, but as far as we know, space is expanding, i.e. the mesh is constantly stretching, i.e. the average distance between the particles of space all the time increases.

 

So for a greater simplification, our universe is a kind of soup of constantly moving and reacting elementary particles and particles of space.

 

And now let's go back to what is time and its passage? - Well, as we said, the passage of time is some change of the situation between one moment and another, i.e. in our model between one distribution of our mixture of particles and its next distribution. 
Whatever change occurs in all of this soup is what we call the passage of time. So with the passage of time we call this continuous change of mutual position of elementary particles and particles of space.

 

And now, for a better understanding, let's turn to what time is for a single elementary particle.

 

We have a structure of space and its constituent particles, and some of our elementary particles.

 

For the sake of simplicity, this situation can be presented in a 2D view, i.e. on a plane, as follows.

 

 

What will be indicative of the passage of time for her and of some change that has taken place?

 

Now let us assume that the measure of change, i.e. the measure of what we call the passage of time, is contact with a particle of space.
 

We know that our elementary particle is constantly moving, so it is in contact with one of the spatial particles all the time. Because the particles of space are definitely denser and smaller than elementary particles, before one moving elementary particle meets another elementary particle, it will surely meet some space particles on its way.

 

Thus, in our model, the smallest observable change will be the change in the contact of an elementary molecule with one and later with another molecule of space. So our elementary particle contacts one particle of space in the first moment, and the other one in the next.

That is, let's call it the minimum "time lapse".

 

And now the crucial thing  - if in one place we stretch the mesh of space particles and in another it remains unchanged, then if we assume that elementary particles move at the same speed, then when in place A the number of contacts will be X, then because in place B the distance between the particles of the stretched space it is twice as large, there will be two times less of these interactions, that is, when the "A" molecule has been exposed to 10 contacts with the space molecules, then the "B" molecule is only 5.
 

 

So we can say that in a place where space is stretched, ALL CHANGES occur less frequently than in a place where the structure of space is not stretched. And when it is squeezed, changes will take place faster.

 

Can we transfer this to our macro realities? - of course. How do we measure time super precisely today? - using the so-called atomic clocks, where time is measured by the speed of electrons passing between shells in an atom, e.g., cesium. 
 Can the interactions of elementary particles that make up the atom and those influencing this speed with the structure of space affect the rate of this change? - If we only assume that space has a real structure, it becomes even obvious.

 

So, we have an extremely simple mechanism that explains why time runs slower where space is stretched, and faster where it is "compressed". 
It is simply that the elementary particles that make up a given body, located in a more "stretched" space, undergo fewer changes, ie "age" slower.

 

Now let's move on to the theoretically more difficult thing, which is the effect of speed / acceleration on time.

 How many of you really understand and explain to others what the twin paradox is and how it works? - you will all feel it intuitively soon.

 

Let's go back to our simplified 2D space model. 
 We have our elementary molecule in the particle structure of space. When an elementary particle moves slowly in relation to the particles of space (it always moves, because it constantly reacts with other elementary particles and particles of space), it contacts or reflects from the particles of space with a certain frequency. 
 Now let's put it in motion. It begins to move like this, i.e. the frequency of contacts with the particles of space decreases, i.e. the number of contacts of a rapidly moving particle with the particles of space is smaller than a particle that is moving slowly in relation to space at the same time.

 

So we intuitively see that for elementary particles, and therefore for everything that is made of them, the number of changes that they undergo is less than that of the particles, let's call it "at rest".

 

So it is not strictly about the fact that the particles (the body) are accelerated - it is about the speed of movement of elementary particles (making up the body) in relation to the structure of space and the number of "interactions" they "account" with each other.

 So now the question of which of the twins will be younger after the rocket returns to the ground is obvious - their mutual speed, acceleration etc. is irrelevant - in this particular situation it is important which of them traveled faster through the space structure, because the particles of which it is built have undergone fewer changes and thus have aged less than a twin whose molecules have had more contacts with the structure of space.

 

So simple😊- and using this logic you are able to answer any theoretically intricate question about time and its passage.

 

One of the fundamental - is it possible to go back in time, does the flow of time have one direction?
 

If the passage of time is a sequence of changes of all the elementary particles present in the universe and the particles that make up the structure of space, then what would it be to reverse time? - you would have to return exactly all these particles (elementary particles and space particles) to some previous state / place…. And let's add that the space itself, as we know, is constantly changing (stretching) - what force would cause all these particles to return to their previous state? - there is no such.

 

And it is also impossible to make such a change "only locally” because it is impossible to separate completely a certain area of space, so that it does not "interact" with the remaining part.

 

Another interesting question - why photons do not "undergo” the passage of time and they are moving at the maximum "allowed" speed? - because they move through the structure of space without contacting the particles of space, so the photon do not experience “the change” consisting in contact with subsequent particles of space.

 

Going further, you can ask yourself - how is it that some elementary particles hit space particles, while others (like a photon) do not? - it is enough to introduce another assumption - let the space consist of at least two kinds of particles with opposite potential - then one can easily derive another assumption - that for some reason photons always move at zero potential between the particles of space - so they never interact with any of them and therefore are not subject to the passage of time ...

 

Going further, you can ask more deeper questions about the spatial structure, but more about that in another post ...😊