“Time is the ordering of events. That is, it’s not a line along which events are ordered but is rather defined entirely by the order of events. Why events have an order, and why they order can only be visited in one direction is not clear. On a personal level, time is my scarcest resource - I always have more events I could order than I am able to.”  Anglo-Australian Observatory director Matthew Colless

“The way I think about the oddball things that happen to space and time in our best theories of gravity is that in our daily lives we can never experience the extreme conditions where things get ‘weird’.  We effectively measure values down in the picoseconds - a millionth of a millionth of a second. It’s just too small for me to visualise, so it just becomes a number on a piece of paper.  At least until someone asks me a question like this!”  Australian astrophysicist Adam Deller

ScienceNetwork WA talks to some eminent Australian scientists about what time means to them / Image: Istockphoto

“Time puts all of evolution into a framework that allows the modern world to make absolute sense. All the variable environments of the world today, all the diversity of animal and plant life, are just ecologies in state of flux, a continuum of change, when we look at it all from a deep time perspective. Future decisions about the long term sustainability of the planet should also be viewed this way.”  Museum Victoria science director John Long

“The standard explanation for this part of the reality we inhabit is that it is the 'continuous flow of existence'. So far we can only ascertain that it goes one way such that we get older. What most people forget is that time has an intimate relationship with space (the stuff in which matter and energy inhabits). However, we only get to see this in dramatic fashion in astronomical observations of the effect of large concentrations of matter, such as black holes, bending space and slowing down time.” Perth Observatory director Jamie Biggs

“We swim in a river of time and it seemingly has a current that carries us along in a certain direction but it is all relative to the individual in his particular space. As we move through the universe our measuring sticks shrink and stretch and our clocks run slower and faster - all to preserve the one true standard - the speed of light. I like this quote from Charles Lamb in 1810, ‘Nothing puzzles me more than time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less’.” Learmonth Solar Observatory manager Alan Brockman

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