There is a recent media presentation by Lee Smolin WRT problamatic Time? having my own views on Time and Space, I glanced in on Lee's lecture. Very interesting the way he stipulates in lecture 1, the fact: "Time has no Quantity" or observational substance as I like to call it.
I beg to differ.
But why is it Time for observers, actually has a function that, determines a Reality? example if I may, from the Big-Bang to Now, events occured, and from an appointment book, between 12:00 pm 12:01 and 12:02 somethings are going to occur, like your phone rings.
The moments between the Big-Bang and Now, if viewed as a "length of Time", are quite different from the moments between 12:00 and 12:02, one can ask this:Which example has the most moments?, can the experience of time from the Big-Bang to Now, be crammed into the available moments of 12:00 and 12:02 ?
If one thinks about the notion of time, then one can conclude that from the big-bang to now, these moments keep expanding, or specifically moments keep adding to this timeframe. The same moments are added to 12:00 and 12:02.
All the particles that exist between two moments OF time, are the quantities that define a real moment as opposed to a virtual moment. Can particles be in two seperate moments at once? ;)
Let me just add another spanner I like to throw around now and again, the only area/volume of space, that has NO Time value attached to it is the perfect Vacuum. a perfect vacuum has no moments contained, without particles to collide, evidence of time dissapears.
Now one can decompose a container that has a lot of particles, or just one single particle will suffice?..then as one decompose's matter, the observational time paramiter wanes, one can cross the divide of GR and QM by the particle number itself.
One can view Quantum Mechanics , by particle reduction process, as a function that promotes a Vacuum, particle dispersion is time dispersion!
Only the Vacuum has a no/zero spacetime quantity, if a particle enters a vacuum, then TIME is transfered to the vacuum by the particles themselves, thus particles are quantities of Time.
A field is nothing more than a 2-dimensional level of Vacuum Space.
Particles have moments of existence, they ARE the moments in Time.
P.S the golden spike is the 3-Dimensional particle, that transcends moments to a given space?