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I've never really understood time. Time is not a force. It isn't energy or matter. Time doesn't MAKE anything do anything. Time doesn't make a clock tick (motion or batteries do). Time doesn't make the earth revolve around the sun (motion/gravity does). I don't think time exists. People say time is used as a form of measurement but aren't we just measuring movement? Even atomic clocks measure the movement of electrons that orbit an atom's nucleus as they "jump" back and forth between energy states. So my question is if I were to stop ALL motion (even movement of electrons that orbit an atom's nucleus) would I stop time? Is time just masquerading as the measurement of motion?

This question is not a duplicate of "Does time freeze at Absolute Zero?" Because I am NOT talking about temperature. I am speaking about the motion of ALL things. I am asking if ALL things (photons, energy, matter, forces) stop moving would time stand still? I would have to say yes it would. If ALL motion were to stop for a million years (hypothetically speaking) and then start again no one would even know. Atomic clocks wouldn't even miss a step.

Stuart Sloan
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3 Answers3

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time is defined based on change of positions (speed =distance / time). If everything is static ( including the watch hands) then there is no change of position and you can't define time.

Conversely, if time was frozen, then everything would be static.

Manu de Hanoi
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The time you can analyze as fictional, like virtual particles in quantum mechanics which helps with calculus. But the there might exist for e.x. another universe in which clock will be still ticking and measuring the time of no motion in your universe. You can also look on time like the piece of spacetime. The one meter in space time doesn't exits till you tried to measure it, similar with time, you don't measure it, it doesn't exist.

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With such existential questions it us useful to think about three dimensional maps of a terrain. There are mountains and planes and lakes etc. What does the mathematical model do? It maps the changes dx/dy , dy/dz, dz/dx in a system where there is a definition (arbitrary) of a meter, a ruler.

If all values were constant, the map would be flat .

As living observers we have recorded that the space coordinates change without moving to a different (x,y,z). We have recorded these changes since our existence as a human race, and call $t$ a new variable, so the $dx/dt$, $dy/dt$, $dz/dt$ can record the changes on the map, and call it time. It so happens the system obeys the mathematics of special relativity.

The model we have of mapping nature around us is consistent with an (x,y,z,t) mathematical definition , obeying in the appropriate frameworks Galilean, Special or General Relativity rules.

Halting all motion is not an option within the physics models we have developed in this frameworks, what with conservation laws etc.In our mathematical models we can set t=constant and see what it says, halting all motion is science fiction, not physics. By the way, electrons do not orbit, they live in orbitals as do molecules, because they are quantum mechanical entities, but that is another story.

anna v
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