Time: Forward, backward, WHAT?

Question

Help me understand this please--I'm very ignorant to physics and philosophy so setting me straight is well-appreciated!

Does time have a definite direction? How do we know we're traveling "forward?" I don't mean to say that we're traveling "backwards" in the sense that if you threw a ball through a window, the window would break, reassemble, and the ball would be thrown back at you. That is a negative function, and not what I'm referring to. Why can't TIME being moving backwards, or sideways even? Even if I throw a ball and it shatters a window, if that is abiding laws of motion why does it HAVE to be that time is moving forward if it is still a constant duration? Why wouldn't it work the same if time were moving in a different direction and the ball could still have the same affect on the window? The ball is still existing the same way from moment to moment, as in duration (time) but is going in a different direction. PROgression BACKwards? If this is all we've known of time, how do we know that it's moving a certain way? Even if time is moving forward in the sense that tomorrow is "in front of" today, why can't it be that tomorrow and today are side-by-side. If we know that time is moving, and there is going to be a tomorrow in time, couldn't that be a side-by-side or a simultaneous front-back deal? And considering time is constant, this is a continuous system of front-back, side-side. I don't know how to better-explain what I mean by that, I apologize.

I know that (though it's subject to controversy) photons experience "time" differently (or not at all!) To us, it goes that "Photon is emitted and exists in that instant. Ceases to exists. Comes back." Photons are light "wavelets" (but they're really BOTH particles and waves at the quantum level.) Time, as we "know" it, doesn't affect photons the same way as does us. Is it possible that it may but we can't find a way to test the testers effectively and conclusively enough?

How do we know time is moving forward if we haven't a reference point? (I'm not entertaining the God answer to this question, but that seems the most logical in this case!) Or do we have a reference point?


Of course, this is all asked under the assumption that time EVEN EXISTS. Which is another topic entirely...

Set me straight please! I'm very ignorant and curious to all this....

Answer 1

Particles DO go backwards in time. The forward arrow of time is expressed by entropy (broken windows don't mend) but the reason it only goes one way for you is consciousness. Consciousness, so far as we know, can only experience time in one direction.

Answer 2

It's really a matter of nomenclature. We designated the natural flow of time as "forward" just as we have designated North to be "up."



Any map we look at always has North America, Europe, and Asia on the top and Australia, South America, and Antarctica on the bottom, but that's only because we have decided to have it that way. Cartographers could have just easily made maps the other way around - with Antarctica, South America, and Australia on the top, and North America, Europe, and Asia on the bottom.



The reason we designate the Northern hemisphere to be the "upper" hemisphere is because that's where most of the habitable land mass is, that is where civilisation began, and that is where most of the world's superpowers have been through out history.



Similar we designate the natural direction of time to be "forward" because that's the same word we use for our day-to-day locomotion - walking forward, driving forward, and so.

Answer 3

The reason why we have time is so that everything doesn't happen all at once..



Everything has a story, everything has its own time.