The notion of time belongs to one of the most frequently used concepts in physics and that is why it should properly be understood.
Time is credited with a lot of misrepresentation of properties without appropriate knowledge of how to understand it and this is the most serious error of scientists, and such procedure is of course, unscientific. First of all, I'd like to stress that the often asked questions: Does time exist? Does time have a beginning? could be converted to their equivalents, thus are similarly logical as: Does motion exist? Does change exist? Does motion have a beginning? Does change have a beginning? Now we can clearly see, that such questions are pointless because they refer to abstract notions. Consequently, time/motion/change does not appear autonomously in reality. It must be always of something. Thus, anything I write about time should be understood as the time of something.
Since many years I have been explaining in various publications what time is. Well, there is nothing mysterious about this basic physical concept. On the contrary, it is very simple. And as I mentioned above, it can be described by means of the commonly known synonyms to give it a concise and comprehensible elucidation. Without the use of synonyms, it cannot be done. In other words, time can be described tautologically, by referring to itself. Such a procedure is known as a logical error idem per idem, circculus vitiosus, or circulus in definiendo but there is no other circumvent of defining it. Such a description, at the same time, gives a clear answer to what it is, and what it cannot be. I am omitting here, of course, ambiguities and colloquialisms associated with the understanding of the meaning of time, though, its synonyms are contained in them too. Specifically, it is neither about the accepted unit of time (such as the definition of a second) nor measuring or measured motion of something. The matter is about a concise description of time in the real world. Where did it come from, and if it came from somewhere, how was it possible, since there were no chronometers then. At first, it should be noted a proper understanding of time. In short, one might put it: "Time is motion, change". There is no limit to a myriad of its synonyms, such as flying, swimming, walking. In a word, verbs. But not only. Using the word "motion" (noun), we also interpret it as a "moving" similarly to vibration, oscillation, etc. Time (of something) is also a noun, but it can be understood as a verb in the sense of motion (of something), not necessarily measured. Speaking of motion, change, etc. one should always have regard to "something". Please then bear in mind that the sole word "time", "motion", "change" doesn't really mean anything, without any indication of what it applies to. So, for a fuller understanding of time, we can describe it in the following way: "Time is the motion of any form of matter in relation to any form of matter" also: "Time is the motion of anything in relation to anything". Motion is also a tautological description of time. Now, "Motion is a change of any form of matter's position in relation to any form of matter" also: "Motion is a change of anything's position in relation to anything". Why is this so? The matter is very simple - we measure motion with time, and time with motion. Immobility means lack of time. But in nature there is no ideal state of rest of anything, so we can only speak about the apparent immobility. I don't think this requires a broader comment. Having understood what concept of "time" means, we can clearly see that no one and nothing can have control of motion (of something); time (of something). Indeed it is impossible to stop, slow down or speed up motion (time) of something. It is physically impossible! What can we do in order to stop time/motion of something, to get in effect a longer or shorter time/motion of something? Well, it can be done in three ways.
The first: stop, speed up or slow down something. Example: The car goes from the town A to the town B, and we want to be there within 3 hours. In the middle of the road we find that:
- We are going too fast and going at the pace we will be one hour earlier, so we slow down (speed of the car but not motion/time).
- We are going too slow and going at this rate we will be one hour later, so we speed up (speed of the car but not motion/time).
The second: at constant speed driving, we can go a circuitous route or shortcuts.
The third: It's a combination of the both mentioned above.
In a word, time (of driving) of the car was 3 hours; the car beat the distance in 3 hours; came after 3 hours - and all the three methods boil down to control the speed and the distance, consequence of which is achieved time (motion) of the vehicle.
Some scientists make the mistake of not distinguishing between time and velocity. For them, slowing down or increasing the speed of motion means the same as slowing down or increasing the speed of something. Hence, according to them, time can dilate, whereas it has neither a physical form nor autonomously does not exist. Time of something (of an object) exists because its motion exists and it can be measured as it is always associated with some physical entity. Did time of matter have a beginning? Indeed it had. It was created along with it and was born before the watch. Prematerial state of the universe was timeless because there were not any changes in it - but that's another and longer story. So much in a nutshell.
By the way, there is no such thing as space-time, as mathematical formula cannot couple with physical reality. In addition, time cannot be a fourth spatial dimension, because moving in any of three dimensions ''produces'' time.
Summing up. According to the classical notion of "time dilation", means that time is slowing down. In other words, e.g. 1 minute can last longer than 60 seconds! It's obviously absurd (due to many reasons). There must happen the following sequence:
- At first, something must slow down,
- then time/motion (of something) becomes longer.
Slowing down of just only time/motion is impossible because time is resultant (no one can do anything with 1 second, 24 hours, or 1000 years). It's obvious that clocks used in experiments showed time difference but such difference was resulting from exertion of influence of changed conditions on clock mechanism (whatever it could be), i.e. matter on matter, but never time on time nor time on matter or vice versa. This is the obscurest point when one wants to have a try to comprehend of the so-called and alleged time dilation that needs to be explained by scientists if they want to maintain their nonsensical attitude in this question. In order dilation of time was possible, then time should be an object, having its speed but then there would be no difference between time and speed, which everyone knows, are two different notions in physics.
Returning to the core, time cannot dilate - either at the macro or micro scale. I'd like to clearly stress that no clock is neither time, nor its representative, or deputy. Any clock used in nonsensical experiments to confirm an alleged and so-called time dilation was always the physical body and as all physical bodies subjected to the same laws of physics. If I haven't convinced you yet and you still insist that time can dilate (slow down its speed) then what will be the difference between s/v and s/t? And can the mathematical formula move? What's more, time cannot be the fourth dimension either because moving in each of the three real dimensions, we "produce" time.
By a lack of understanding of the notion of time, scientists have tangled up simple things giving rise to a multitude of scientific myths, thereby making the world more complicated, difficult to understand and untrue.