The OP was, is there time? Some of the discussion dissembled into explorations of perceptions of time, its directionality, etc. There have been many great observations.
Entropy implies that there must be time, and this is not a perceived state but one common to all in the physical world. It's a natural and elastic state where something once "new" becomes "old" and in the process becomes more "disorganized." Now, quantum physics has proven that there is no such thing as true randomness - that all things have a pattern to them - but the fact of entropy infers time, even if entropy occurs as it does at different rates.
Of course, Einstein in e=mc2 inherently proves time, since the equation doesn't work without it. Even in quantum physics, also touched on in the discussion, time is inherent.
Take the simplest chemical reaction - without a time component, it simply would not occur. Or our wine. Without a time component, it would never age.
As far as the Big Bang, fairly recent research in physics has postulated that there exists in everything a very slight, tiny flaw favoring matter over antimatter. It's way out there in the 0.000000000 etc. realm, out to the thousands of zeroes, and the problem had proven intractable for 75 years until it was finally solved with the aid of supercomputers. It's theorized that this very very tiny imbalance in everything is what kicked off the Big Bang, although all the astrophysicists I have talked personally with here say no one can definitively say whether time started at that moment or not.
The "flaw" ever so slightly shifts the balance of the universe to matter, or else everything including us would not exist.
What intrigues me most about the current state of physics, as in the point above, is that it is proving more and more the musings of the mystics of the past. For example, American Indians have for 50,000 years believed that only the Creator is perfect and that all else is flawed or imperfect, to the point where they will purposefully put imperfections into their work to reflect that. Now the inherent flaw their mystics speak of is being proven mathematically.
The Bang itself was a rapid expansion of super-dense, super-heavy matter (and yes there's no adequate way in words to say it but it can be said in calculations, since matter came into being at that time), and we're sending up spacecraft all the time to measure the oldest portions of the remnants of that blast to get a handle on what happened. If there were not time, scientists would not be able to age those portions of the universe as opposed to others that are younger, and yet by their features researchers can do that.
Some of the discussion has involved religion or spirituality as it applies to time. My own take on it is that spiritualists and physicists both "talk to God," they just use different means. As an astrophysicist said to me, "My work makes me believe all the more in a Creator. For example, I can take iron ore and I can form it and melt it and make it into many shapes. But I cannot create that iron ore. Only God can do that."
As far as the universe and time, I have asked physicists to explain what the universe is. The best explanation; "I am not smart enough to know what it is, or if there is an 'inside' or 'outside' to it. I can say that a good analogy is a balloon that is being blown up. I am like an ant on that balloon, and I know that time is passing and the balloon is expanding because I know that it takes me longer to travel from one point on it to another than it did before. But I do not know the nature of that balloon. That's why we study the universe."
I thought that was very insightful. Then there are a whole bunch of other factors - like galactic baryons and the degree of their presence - that physicists are using to try to answer these complex and broad questions. See this article I wrote on baryon research:
http://www.uah.edu/news/research/63...-universe-may-spawn-new-research#.UoVDj6WYVlI
Anyway, an interesting discussion to read and I hope I've added something to it with my ruminations. I'd like to leave off with this segment of an article I wrote about Voyager 1, the spacecraft that has now broken out of our heliosphere into interstellar space. The person quoted is Dr. Gary Zank, a University of Alabama in Huntsville heliophysicist, and there's an inherent time element involved.
Truthfully, by now the Voyager 1 spacecraft should be just another burnt out retiree, it's primary work done as of Nov. 20, 1980, floating away out in space somewhere.
But Voyager refuses to go quietly into that dark night. With most of its sensors still working, it utilizes computer power that's dwarfed by today's smartphones to send sometimes surprising data packets back to Earth *- first recording them on its ancient 8-track digital tape machines before assembling them and blasting them out at a staggering 23 watts for a trip that NASA says now begins in interstellar space.
Thing is, almost nobody on Earth is learning from the old codger, launched Sept. 5, 1977, during the "Saturday Night Fever" disco dancing era primarily to study the planets. For example, NASA's Dr. Fayock says funding is drying up for his Voyager work, and he is holding on to the hope that an upcoming UAH graduate student may see value in continuing it. Yet news from the geezer satellite keeps intriguing scientists. NASA expects it to send data through at least 2020, and its ability to power itself could last until 2025.
Taking a momentary break during a hectic day, CSPAR Director Dr. Zank indulges a visitor to his office by setting aside mounds of calculation-laden journal proofs he's reading and speaking about the impact of Voyager 1's amazing journey.
He paints a picture of a spacecraft constructed entirely of materials made by the sun, even put together by people made of stuff made by the sun. It's a package totally of solar origin that scientists with a great degree of certainty say has shed itself of its creator and now exists in a place where almost nothing around it is of solar creation or influence.
As the first human-made craft to achieve such a feat, it's an emissary that travels with its Golden Record - literally a gold phonograph record containing a wide assortment of information about Earth including a stylus and cartridge to play it - in an area where there's almost nothing that can harm it.
"So when the sun burns out a few billion years from now and Earth ceases to exist and humans are extinct, this craft could still be out there in orbit," Dr. Zank said, "where it will exist for billions more years."
He thinks it's important we learn from it as long as we can.
