Could the smallest movement of time be related to the decay of the shortest lived particles?

Answer 1

My proposition is, that "Time equals change".

I'm thinking that if one were to sub divide "time" into smaller and smaller fragments, eg, milliseconds, microseconds, nanoseconds etc., there must, presumably, come a point where no further subdivision is possible. I'm also thinking that all matter is made of atoms, and that the basic building blocks of atoms, are elementary particles, which have precise "lifespans", in other words they decay (presumably, to a state of pure energy).

In every day life we perceive the passage of time by the visible changes that take place. Night turns to day, the hands of the clock move round the dial, leaves go from green to red, people grow old, summer turns to winter etc., These are the macro changes that reveal the passage of time, but at the atomic level,might it be the decay of fundamental particles (i.e the tiniest change in each individual atom) that indicates the smallest gradations between the tick and the tock of a clock. Furthermore, when an atom has lost a sufficient number of its particles (through decay), it ceases to be an atom, and the element of which it was once part, starts to change.

If I can conclude by giving an analogy: Consider a house built of bricks, and that each brick is made of grains of sand. Every so often, each brick loses a grain of sand. For a long time there would be no observable change in the appearance of the house but, as more and more grains of sand were lost, there would come a time when too many bricks had lost too many grains of sand, and the house could no longer stand. In my analogy, the house is (say) a bar of iron. The bricks are iron atoms, and the grains of sand are elementary particles. Thanks for the opportunity to put my thoughts into print. R.J. Debenham.