• Question: Where does time go?

    Asked by nazia1999 to Adam, Catherine, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 19 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by ramz555, tedy2002.
    • Photo: Adam Stevens

      Adam Stevens answered on 19 Mar 2012:

      Interesting question.

      What really is time?

      We always talk about it like a thing, a quantity that we have more or less of, more like water or fuel.

      But really time is a coordinate, a point on a dimension. So as we move forward in time our coordinate increases.

      We don’t fully understand time – why it’s different to the other space dimensions, why we can’t move backwards, for example, but it definitely doesn’t /go/ anywhere.

      When you start getting into relativity time gets really fun!

    • Photo: Karen Masters

      Karen Masters answered on 19 Mar 2012:

      Great question. Part of Einstein’s theory of relatively was defining time as a forth dimension. But it’s not quite like the other 3 dimensions because we can only go forwards in it, and we always go at the same speed (well ignoring relativity) or 1 day/day! 😉

      A lot of my time in the last week has gone on answering all your questions though. 😉

    • Photo: Leila Battison

      Leila Battison answered on 19 Mar 2012:

      Time goes too fast, that’s all I know!

      It also only goes in one direction – called the ‘arrow of time’ often. It’s all to physicsy and scary for me!

    • Photo: Nazim Bharmal

      Nazim Bharmal answered on 19 Mar 2012:

      This is a good but difficult question to answer, and perhaps it is part of philosophy rather than science.

      We do talk about space-time so the connection between space (the three dimensions we call up-down, left-right, forward-backward) and time but whereas we can go backwards and forwards in the space dimensions, we can only go forwards in the time dimension.

      Some scientists talk about Time’s Arrow, and the fact that it always points in one direction: towards the future.

      So is time something we get, as humans, that must always go forwards. Is it a thing or a feeling or something that happens because of other things: a consequence?

      I’m afraid I don’t really know, but the first thing to work out is: what is time?

    • Photo: Catherine Rix

      Catherine Rix answered on 20 Mar 2012:

      I wish I knew the answer to this one. Here’s another question why does time go faster when you have homework/an exam to revise for/ a deadline?

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