When I was attending community college in 2011, I was thinking a lot about time, so I ended up writing a paper (not for school) about time and my theory that it doesn't actually exist.

Unfortunately no copies of that paper exist anymore, I wish I could re read it. I am sure my ideas about time have changed a bit since then, but I still think about the base idea I had about time, at that time.

The Theory:

There is no actual time. Only Energy, Matter (which in a sense is energy in a particular order), and movement of said energy and matter.

At least I think that was the sum of the paper.

When I think about how humans measure time, it still always comes down to movement. At first, it was mainly seeing the movement of the Sun and Moon to keep track of time, as well as the movement of ones own self to have a perception of how much time has passed since starting walking, riding a horse, oscar, or sailing, etc...

We still use those methods today and we have devices and calculations to pass time to speed and get estimates of how long something will take or something did take.

How many times can we divide a second? I am sure scientists have figured this all out to the point they can with existing technology. I think there is a camera that can take a million pictures in a second. If you look at one after another, it looks like it's just one still picture. A lot can still happen in one second if things are moving fast.

Now almost all time is measured by computers of some sort, and that's how we decide how much time has passed.

A computer of any kind has a clock, I don't know how many different kinds of clocks they have but in a lot of microcontrollers it's a crystal resonator. The crystal actually deforms its shape when a voltage is applied, and in a sense moves, X many times per second (hertz), hence KiloHertz, MegaHertz, GigaHertz, etc. We are using this movement to control the flow of electricity and use that to measure time. 

I want to do more research on clocks because its fascinating to me. Last time I was reading about clocks the more accurite ones the government uses are atomic clocks, that use the resonant frequency of some sort of atom. The movement in that case are the electrons orbiting around the atoms nucleus.

How much time passed since I started writing this? About 30 minutes I would say. If I didn't know it was roughly 10:15-10:30pm when I started writing, and my phones clock says it's now 10:50pm, it would be hard to say. Only my thumbs were moving to type this out. But my cat came in and stayed for a bit then left, I estimated that to be about 10 minutes.

If there was a universe with no energy or matter, would time exist in that universe? If there is no matter to accumulate the effects of it's own movement, and there is no movement does time still pass?

I think time is real, but I don't think it's an actual thing that exists. it's more like one of the following:

• A precice measurement of some kind of movement (clocks)
• An observation of movement and following calculations.
• An observation or measurement of cumulative movement and following calculations. This could be observing decay, growth, etc.