What is time?

Everyone knows what time is. We can practically feel it ticking away . . . To many people, throughout history, time would have been one and the same with the rhythms of nature; the passing of the seasons and the cycles of the celestial bodies. However, modern clocks are more accurate time keepers than the celestial bodies and, moreover, experts state time is universal – something that would keep marching even if all clocks, celestial or man-made, were to stop!

According to the general theory of relativity, space or the universe emerged in the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago. Before that, all matter was packed into an extremely tiny dot. That dot also contained the matter that later came to be the heavenly bodies that tell us about the passing of time. Before the Big Bang, there was no space or time. This theory also says that the development and expansion of space may result in the collapse of the universe – all matter would shrink into a tiny dot again, which would end the concept of time as we know it! However, latest observations claim that the universe will not collapse; rather the intergalactic distances keep growing at a rapid pace. Well, what will happen – only time will tell . . . ?