Do irreversible thermodynamic processes CONSTITUTE time or do they MOVE IN time? [closed]

Question

Time can be associated with irreversibility. A broken egg can't reassemble. Most, if not all, processes are irreversible and this is associated with time going in one direction. Ŕemarkably, living organisms seem to behave contrary to this. They even give birth to the egg which can't reassemble when broken. Which of course doesn't mean that time goes backward. In the larger context the irreversible process is one including the Sun (directly or indirectly). So, while entropy decreases locally, globally the process is an irreversible one and evolving towards higher entropy.

Such processes can be compared with (quasi) periodic processes, called clocks (of which in the ideal case it can't be decided if it goes forward or backward). It's this clock time that's used on the spacetime manifold of relativity. One can imagine such a clock to be placed at all points in space, thus adding the time-dimension connected to space by the invariant lightspeed c.

So there are irreversible, unidirectional, thermodynamic processes on one side and the (quasi) periodic process quantifying it by observing how manny periods have passed between two moments in the process.

The question arises though, are the irreversible processes constituting time or are they evolving in time, which seems the case in general relativity, time being the clock. It's confusing since the very concepts of "a process" or "evolving" already seem to contain time. Which maybe can be resolved by assuming processes constituting time. Or is the clock time, as part of the spacetime continuum more fundamental and existing even without processes taking place in it? Is maybe the field of virtual particles involved? I mean it's the superposition of all energies and momenta and bidirectional in time.

What can be said about this?

Answer 1

I think your question involves a bigger question such as: do phenomenons live in time or do they create it? I think the answer is strongly opinion-based so it may be hard to not infringe site's rules. In the following I will try to simplify your question a little bit, trying to continuosly connect with physics: hope it's not a fail, I tried.

I think we can all agree on the fact that in an ipotetical universe without matter and even quantum fluctuations, there is nothing that varies and the concept of time ceases to hold. Even if your clock ticks in this universe, it is still matter that you introduced, so it's not the same universe. This suggests that time cannot exist without evolution of something, and this something is, in a quantum field theory vision, the energy: in fact hamiltonian operators are time-translation generators on the state of your field.

In a QFT interpretation, particles, with or without masses, emerge from the fields and hence they manifest it. They contribute to the energy density of the field to which they belong to, so I assume we can just talk about this last physical quantity. As before, energy and time are strongly related and the fact that a non-null energy density is present in every point of spacetime make in fact time exists.

Ok, but this is just physical interpretation and doesn't explain what energy is: in fact the very question may not have a meaning in itself, because energy itself is physical interpretation! At the end, may all be spacetime interacting in itself and manifesting itself through a varieties of fields that live in it and that may possibly constitute it: a great unification theory may help interpreting things this way, but at this time they all fail in describing some parts of reality.

The clocks you are talking about are another interpretation: a clock can tick in a point of spacetime, and let's call it just space, because in fact there is space in that point. If there is space there is energy density, as can be seen with Einstein equation in the stress-tensor term. So I suggest to substitute clocks with quantum fluctuations in the very same points: now, time itself may be considered an auxiliary variable that describes the rate of quantum fluctuations and in general of interaction of space with itself, a space that deformes due to gravity self-interaction, but there is not a theory that goes this way at present, for the little I know.

So, in conclusion, you talk about abstract processes, but you are actually talking about what interacts with the observable world: in modern interpretation, these things are actually manifestations of fields, so it's a dance of creation in which every field evolves but at the same time creates time (hope you like this last game of words).

Clearly I don't want to give you an answer that I don't have, I just want to suggest you a simpler way to ask the question without falling in logical traps due to the fact of considering different what are actually the same things. Hope that the intention of this answer is clear, just will to discuss.