Time and Clocks

Time is tied up to things in much the same way that space is tied up to things.

Time is also tied up to motion. Things have to move in order for time to become a meaningful concept.

An empty void cannot be measured, neither in distance nor time.

For distance to exist, the void needs to be populated by things. For time to exist, things have to move.

Imagine entering a void in which everything has stopped moving, including our own biological mechanism. How are we to know when an hour has lapsed? The answer is that it cannot be known. Time without motion of any kind is as meaningless as distance without things.

This means that time is a quality derived from distance and motion. We tend to think of motion as something that is derived from distance and time, but it is actually the other way around.

To understand this, we have to keep in mind  that matter comes in two fundamentally different forms. It is either inertial, in which case it has variable speed, or it is non-inertial, in which case it has a fixed speed.

Time is the relationship between inertial matter and non-inertial matter. Inertial matter defines distance, and non-inertial matter defines speed. These are fundamental units, and the fundamental relationship between inertial and non-inertial matter is:

time = distance/speed

To make a clock, we need two components. One component must be an accurate unit of distance, the other component must be an accurate unit of motion. The resulting time unit is the "distance" between the tick marking the start of the time unit, and the subsequent tick marking the end of the time unit.

The smallest possible time unit is therefore related to the smallest distance of inertial matter. This unit is the distance across the hollow of an electron. Anything smaller is either in direct contact with something else, allowing nothing to move between, or in motion and therefore useless as a ruler.

We require two walls and something moving between them in order to record time. Using the smallest possible distance combined with the fastest possible particle, we end up with the smallest possible unit of time. This we can call the time quantum. It is the time it takes for a photon or neutrino to cross the void inside an electron.

Photon traversing an electron

If anything happens faster than it takes for a photon to cross the void inside the electron, it cannot be recorded as having taken any time. Such changes are what we regard as instantaneous, and since any change to the state of a photon or neutrino happens quicker than it takes a photon to cross the inside of an electron, all changes to non-inertial matter is instantaneous.

This is not merely a matter of perception. It is a matter of physical reality and has therefore physical implications.

For instance, since inertia is the time it takes for something to change its energy, photons and neutrinos have no inertia. It takes less than a time quantum to produce a change to such a particle.

On the other hand, electrons and atomic nuclei have inertia because it takes more than a time quantum to perform a change in energy. All the quanta making up such matter have to be informed of their change in size. This information is carried by photons that have to move in three dimensions. It cannot be done faster than it takes a photon to cross the void of en electron in one dimension.