What is time?

The concept of time is something that has tormented mathematicians, physicists, and religious scholars for centuries. It almost seems as though the question is intrinsically undefinable, but many have taken a stab at the seemingly impossible.

Early physicists, such as Isaac Newton, believed simply that time was universal; if one second passes here, one second passes everywhere. For most day-to-day matters, that model of time worked and still works perfectly well, but for astronomers and physicists, time is not quite that simple. Albert Einstein believed that time was simply a forth dimension. One that could not be observed as a movement to the left, right, up, or down, but that could be thought of as "Space-time", an interwoven fabric of physical space, and it's forth dimension, time. He put it this way:

"Since there exists in this four dimensional structure [space-time] no longer any sections which represent 'now' objectively, the concepts of happening and becoming are indeed not completely suspended, but yet complicated. It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three dimensional existence."

In his later years, he remarked that the here and now happened simultaneously with the past and future. Modern physicists believe the space-time fabric is altered by the mass of objects, resulting in curves of space-time around large bodies such as our sun.

Time in Culture:

Our lives, weather we like it or not, revolve around time like the second hands on a clock. You can see the time everywhere - from your household microwave and oven, to your cell phones and computers. Time can be a stressor, and brings increased anxiety to life, but most would agree that our modern world would not function without the strict rigidity of the ever-present clock.

Not every culture, however, is bound by time. The Piraha Tribe of the Brazilian rainforest and the Hopi Tribe of the Arizona drylands are just two examples of nations without the constraint of time. Their lives have been reported by many to be very peaceful because of this aspect, but in our world of globalized, metropolitan culture, such luxuries would be impossible to live by.

Metric time?

Why is it that we convert length, area, volume, and weight to metric, but not the most fundamental aspect of our daily lives: time?

Our current system of time goes back to the ancient Egyptians who created the first sundials to work out time by the geometry of the earth and sun. It is based upon the sexagesimal (base 60) system - 60 seconds per minute. Although it would be inarguably difficult to adjust to a new system of time, logically, it would be much more sensible to have clocks based on the metric system:

100 seconds per minute
100 minutes per hour
10 hours per day

Assuming we maintain "days" as we currently know them (i.e., midnight to midnight), the question is whether we should also convert to metric years or months. This may create confusion, in that the four seasons would fall in different months each year. Alternatively, we could develop a clock and calendar that divided our current year into 100 days. In this scenario, the time of the day would have little relation to day or night.