• Question: Why does time exist?

    Asked by Chickenman3000 to Arthur, Clare, Daniel, David, Tora on 13 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Tora Smulders-Srinivasan

      Tora Smulders-Srinivasan answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      To keep this moment apart from the next & the previous!

      So we can enjoy every moment of our lives! ;-D

    • Photo: Daniel Parsons

      Daniel Parsons answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      Great question.
      It doesn’t really exist in its own right – it is part of space-time. This is what Albert Einstein famously suggested- that essentially space and time should be considered together and in relation to each other – and not as separate things.
      His theory basically says that if all observers have to agree on the speed of light being constant, then they can’t agree on the time it takes for other objects to travel relative to them.

    • Photo: Clare Harding

      Clare Harding answered on 13 Nov 2014:

      This is a difficult question, if time didn’t exist then neither would anything else and I guess time started at the big bang. This means that if/when the universe ends, maybe in the big crunch, time would end too.

    • Photo: David Wilson

      David Wilson answered on 17 Nov 2014:

      This is a great question! No one really knows. Is it a thing that came into existence with the universe, or was there time before the universe? Does the idea of time (and space, as Daniel points out) make sense without a universe? These are actually some of the big unanswered questions in physics. What do you think?

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