• Question: Why does time exist?

    Asked by Katerina to Connor, Jillian, Lidunka, Sarah, Steven on 18 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Lidunka Vocadlo

      Lidunka Vocadlo answered on 18 Jun 2015:

      @Katerina Oh what a difficult question. Well, I think it probably really does exist – although one might argue that it is all relative depending on where you are in the universe and how fast you are travelling. But also there is this thing called the laws of thermodynamics which insist that something called “entropy” (a bit like increasing messiness) is always increasing, and that would require time to be moving forward. I think. And I realise that doesn’t really answer the question. So over to my fellow scientists for a better go….

    • Photo: Jillian Scudder

      Jillian Scudder answered on 19 Jun 2015:

      Space and time seem to be linked together as fundamental properties of our universe. We don’t know -why- they exist in our universe in the exact form that they do – this is part of the study of cosmology, figuring out why the universe is set up exactly the way it is.

    • Photo: Steven Thomson

      Steven Thomson answered on 23 Jun 2015:

      Can you imagine what life would be like if time didn’t exist?! I can’t!

      Time looks like it’s built into the fabric of our universe. Things like energy and entropy define time and are defined in turn by it – it’s a little circular, but without time nothing we know of could possibly exist.

      Maybe time doesn’t have to exist at all -maybe if time ever ends, people might end up sitting around in some timeless void and think that’s normal. Who knows?!

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