"Time Doesn't Exist" by Professor Julian Barbour
Further discussion on the topic of the non-existence of time, as presented by prof. Julian Barbour. He has a much deeper understanding than I do, but before we go to the video, let's talk about a few things...
First of all, let's consider a "universe" that is empty. There are no limits, no walls, no points of reference. In all of existence is a single object. I like to picture a rock. The rock has three dimensions and is irregular. But since it is the only such object in our empty universe, it can be any size you want. Why? Because there is no "outside" frame of reference. We can only make comparisons of size to itself.
Also, the rock is motionless. It's just "sitting", or existing, in the center of the deepest expanse of space. But for the sake of argument, you can "throw" your rock and give it a velocity. It still doesn't matter, because we have no way to prove its motion without any identifiable frame of reference in our empty dark universe.
In this strange "universe", how would a conscious observer define time? If this was the first place for you to come into existence, and your pet rock is your only friend, can you observe the passage of time? No, you can't. All you have is the absolute existence of the rock for all eternity, as far as you can tell. What I mean by "eternity" is the absence of "time", not some measurable linear time scale that runs on forever.
In order to create the illusion of time, we need another rock. If our second pet rock existed at a distance of 10' from our original rock, we still have the same problem. We can define the location of one rock relative to the other rock, but if they are motionless, or traveling at the same velocity and "direction", we don't have any more information we can extract from this relationship.
It is only when we change the direction of the apparent motion of one of our pet rocks that we have something we can measure. As long as that velocity is constant, we might be able to create an equation that represents a concept of "time". But what happens if the path of pet rock #2 is not linear? What happens to our observation of "time" when the path our second rock is traveling is curved, on a spiral pathway? Depending on which direction the spiral is developing, "time" will either smoothly speed up, or slow down.
But what if we add a variable? Instead of constant velocity over a spiral pathway, what happens when we add acceleration? Sure, we can write some motion equations that might predict the location of rock #2 in the "future", but they will only hold true if the slices of "time" are held constant.
Let's ratchet this up to a mind-numbing level. What if we have 100 pet rocks that travel an unpredictable pathway, similar to a swarm of bees? Would we be able to determine a predictable linear time scale? Probably not. What we would end up with is a universe similar to the quantum world.
Without adding more complications and forcing decisions of what measurements are to be held "constant" for purposes of predictability, I'll stop right there and let you dive into this video presentation of Dr. Barbour's lecture. Pay close attention to the points he makes in the latter part of the presentation, and let that soak into your mind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5rExaKLEoU
