Time.

Time is a funny thing. Although time can be measured in terms of seconds, minutes, hours, days and so on and so forth... none of us are really all that tied to it - which I will attempt to explain later... I have been wondering of late where time comes from, and who decided how time works. Like, who decided how long a second was? Who worked out that 60 seconds made up 1 minute, and that 60 minutes made up 1 hour, and so on?

Dictionary.com (my best friend when my 'other' dictionary is not to hand) gives the follwing definitions of time:

1. the system of those sequential relations that any event has to any other, as past, present, or future; indefinite and continuous duration regarded as that in which events succeed one another.
2. (sometimes initial capital letter) a system or method of measuring or reckoning the passage of time: mean time; apparent time; Greenwich Time.
3. a limited period or interval, as between two successive events: a long time.

Minutes caused me problems when trying to find definitions, in relation to time. As you see from the following explanation - again from dictionary.com:

1.	the sixtieth part ( 1/60 ) of an hour; sixty seconds.

2.	an indefinitely short space of time: Wait a minute!

3.	an exact point in time; instant; moment: Come here this minute!

We can time an exact minute, but when someone says to you - Wait a minute! How long do they actually make us wait? I have half a mind to time an exact minute but then wonder what the repercussions would be - a clip round the ear, perhaps for being both pedantic and childish. The same applies when someone says "Come here this minute" - I wonder how they would react if you took a whole minute to go to them... probably yet another clip around the ear.

Dictionary.com gives these definitions of seconds...

1. A unit of time equal to one sixtieth of a minute
2. A brief interval of time; a moment.
   

Hmmm... very short and sweet. No room for error there, I mean - you can't stretch it like you can a minute. Then again, when asked how long something will take, I have been known to say "Oh, just a second". Never has it taken me 'just a second' though, I always need a few more.

Ok, so all that's pretty straightforward. What about what Einstein thinks of time... According to what my digging has unearthed - time moves differently, depending on whether you're moving or not. Sounds weird? Of course it does. In 1971, scientists in the US used an atomic clock - apparently for it's accuracy - on a round-the-world trip and compared it to clocks that were left behind. Their findings were that the airborne clock had lost time. It has also been suggested that if a clock, in a spaceship travelling at light-speed, the clock would stop. In theory at least. Maybe one day scientists will figure out a way to test it and either prove or disprove it. I hope they do - at least then I'd know and wouldn't have to think about it any more.

Ok, so I failed to find adequate evidence to fully explore the concept of time - mostly because a lot of what I found was either total garbage or complete gobbledegook. Ah well, I guess I can think about that another time... ;-)