What if time were a property like mass, charge, or spin?

Humans are unique in that we can believe facts that don’t comport with our intuition.

We intuit that causes precede their effects. For example, if you tip an egg off a table, it falls to the floor and breaks—this outcome is not surprising. However, if the broken egg were to jump off the floor and reassemble itself on the table, that would be amazing.

Magicians mystify us by seemingly defying “natural” laws, making things disappear and then reappear without any obvious explanation.

We expect time to flow evenly so that I can set my watch by asking you what time it is. I expect you and me to run on the same time.

Yet, Einstein’s Relativity demonstrates that movement and gravity each affect time. The famous “twin paradox” shows that identical twins will age differently if one is moving at relativistic speeds or exists in a strong gravitational field.

They will not only seem to age differently, but their time will literally pass at different rates. The traveling twin will return home to find his brother has aged more. Time affects reality.

Quantum mechanics, the science of the very small, presents many counterintuitive facts. Small particles can exist in two different places, simultaneously. They can seem to communicate faster than light speed, instantaneously no matter how far apart they are ( “entanglement”).

Particles can be well-defined or vaguely defined wave-like; they can shift properties merely by being observed without being touched, as exemplified by the double-slit experiment.

Einstein’s masterwork, Relativity, seems at odds with Quantum Mechanics (QE),  though both descriptions of reality have been amply verified, countless times, and both make claims that mere observation can affect test results.

When a mathematically proven effect cannot be explained, intuitively or experientially, we may defend it, but always will feel uncomfortable with our explanations. So we continually ask the most difficult question in science: “Why?”

Why do the above effects occur? Why do Relativity and QE not meet in the middle? Why is reality so counterintuitive?

“Why” is often answered by a speculation (What if?), and I’ll give you one, here, one I’ve not heard of, though it well may already have been suggested and even discarded. If you know, please tell me.

What if . . .

Relativity and QE share at least one factor: Time. The speed of light and gravity waves, the simultaneity of entanglement and of particles existing in two locations, the measures of gravity relate to time. (At Earth’s surface, the acceleration of gravity is about 9.8 metres (32 feet) per second per second.)

We think of time as being a river in which everything swims, a constantly flowing river engulfing everything.

But, what if time isn’t a background dimension flowing uniformly, but a local property—like mass, charge, or spin—carried individually by every particle?

In this view, each atom, each electron, has its own “tempo”—its own block of time. These timeblocks don’t always align, especially at the quantum level. When particles interact or entangle, they synchronize their local time states, at least temporarily.

The “spooky action at a distance” we call entanglement may simply be the expression of a shared time, both forward and backward.

The macro world we experience is the large-scale statistical average of countless synchronized timeblocks. It feels smooth, continuous, and directional, not because time is that way, but because differences fade in the averaging process.

Wavefunction collapse, the observer effect, and even quantum uncertainty may all reflect time as a localized variable. The quantum world looks “weird” because we are using a global clock to measure systems that don’t share it.

This view bridges relativity and quantum mechanics not by changing the math, but by changing the metaphor. If time is a property, not a stage, then what we observe is not paradox—it’s parallax.

Moiré Time: A Visual Unification of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics

Summary Physics has long sought a bridge between the smooth spacetime of relativity and the probabilistic strangeness of quantum mechanics.

I suggest that the unifying variable may not be mass, charge, or spin, but time itself. Not as a universal dimension, but as a localized quantum property, unique to every particle, layered across reality.

Visualized as overlapping temporal patterns, like moire patterns. this “moiré time” forms the composite image we experience as the macroscopic world. The slightest move of one pattern has far-reaching and profound effects on the overall moire phenomenon.

That model may clarify why quantum phenomena appear paradoxical to observers embedded in emergent macroscopic time.

Core Idea In relativity, time is malleable: it stretches under speed and bends under gravity. In QE, time seems to be everywhere and nowhere.

Entanglement occurs instantaneously yet obeys causality. The two-slit experiment suggests particles take all paths, simultaneously.

Uncertainty binds energy and time. And every measurement has a temporal component: when it is made defines what it measures.

The energy–time relationship is widely used to relate quantum state lifetime to measured energy widths but its formal derivation is fraught with confusing issues about the nature of time.

What if every particle carried an individualized, internal time structure—a “time block”—analogous to spin or phase? These timeblocks may oscillate, rotate, or interact with others. The macroscopic flow of time, with its singular direction and steady rhythm, could then be seen as a statistical average of many overlapping timeblocks.

This would create moiré-like interference patterns, where the observer’s own time structure interacts with those of the measured particles.

Entanglement would represent a shared or synchronized time pattern, explaining the apparent “instantaneous” connection.

Wavefunction collapse could occur not because of a mystical observer effect, but due to temporal alignment between observer and particle.

Unifying Power Time, in this view, is the only variable that fully inhabits both the relativistic and quantum worlds.

It is common to the changing of clocks in gravitational fields and to the uncertainty of energy in quantum transitions.

Rather than treating time as a background coordinate, we elevate it to a quantum participant. Reality becomes a familiar phenomenon—a moiré of overlapping timeblocks, each pattern contributing to the image seen by each observer.

Conclusion

By imagining time not as a single flow but as a field of local temporal patterns, we gain a new view of a merger between quantum weirdness and relativity. Time re-envisioned may be the only variable rich and strange enough to belong to both worlds, and simple enough to unify them.

What appears to be a paradox may, in fact, be parallax—the artifact of perspective across entangled timeblocks. It may be why observation changes reality.

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Delving a  bit deeper

1. Can time be an entangled property?

When two particles become entangled, the state of one particle is instantly related to the state of the other, regardless of the distance between them.

If the properties, spin or polarization,  can be entangled, why not time? In fact, in delayed choice quantum eraser experiments, it seems like actions in the present affect outcomes in the past.

The delayed choice quantum eraser is an experiment in quantum mechanics that explores the peculiar consequences of the double-slit experiment and quantum entanglement.

It demonstrates that the behavior of quantum particles (whether they act like particles or waves) can be influenced by measurements made after the particles have been detected.

Maybe what’s entangled isn’t just spin—it’s the timelines of two particles. When you measure one, you’re not just collapsing a property, you’re collapsing the time experience of both particles.

That’s not faster-than-light signaling—it’s shared chronology collapsing into coherence.

It seems time can be entangled—if it’s a property, not a background.

2. Can time be in a superposition?

In quantum mechanics, quantum superposition is a fundamental principle stating that a quantum state can exist in multiple states simultaneously until it is measured.

Quantum states exist in superpositions. Could a particle be in multiple time states at once?

That’s been proposed, actually—there’s a field called quantum time crystals which suggests that, under the right conditions, events may not happen in a definite sequence.

Quantum time crystals are systems of particles whose lowest-energy state involves repetitive motion, and they cannot lose energy to the environment.

So again: If time is a property, it can exist in superposition, just like position or energy, and in fact, that may be another term for entanglement.

3. Can time be quantized? Many physicists suspect that at the Planck scale, time is not continuous.

If it’s discrete, then each “tick” of time may be like a photon of time—maybe even exchangeable, the way photons mediate forces.

Planck Length: Approximately 1.616 × 10⁻³⁵ meters, the smallest measurable length.   Planck Time: About 5.391 × 10⁻⁴⁴ seconds, the time it takes light to travel one Planck length. 

If time isn’t a smooth flow, but a quantum resource, like angular momentum, that would fit in with the idea that each atom carries its own quantized time structure, like a wristwatch with digital ticks.

4. Can time be non-local?

That’s the heart of the entanglement puzzle. In current theory, properties seem to collapse non-locally, but time is still assumed to flow locally.

But if time is itself a correlatable quantum variable, then non-locality might simply mean: two particles share a single time state across space. There’s no signal—just synchronization

Most quantum interpretations are mathematical patches on a broken visualization: we don’t know what is happening, we just know the math works. But what if time isn’t the canvas but part of the paint?

That might not provide equations, but rather a map for what to visualize.

What would the universe look like if time were a locally defined variable, like mass or spin? Exactly what the universe looks like now. And that is the point. The universe already provides us with evidence of quantum time:

• Entanglement is just a shared time state. No faster-than-light communication or hidden variables.
• Quantum weirdness is normalized.
• Superposition is the time ambiguity demonstrated by Relativity.
• Wavefunction collapse is the resolution into one temporal framework.
• The observer effect is not “consciousness affects physics.” It’s a clash of local time states.
• Twin paradox is not paradoxical—it’s two local time properties interacting through spacetime, not flowing within it.

We posit that the macro world isn’t fundamentally different. It’s just a more synchronized, harmonized average of billions of local time systems. Coherence wins out. Local uniqunesses wash away.

A quantized time could be the long-sought bridge connecting Relativity and QE.

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One last speculation for illustrative purposes.

Consider that time might resemble mass in that it is not fundamental in itself, but rather emerges from interaction with a pervasive field.

While some have speculated that time is composed of discrete units known as chronons, we might go further and ask: What if time, like mass, is not fundamental but arises from a field?

Just as the Higgs field’s excitations produce mass, a “time field” might give rise to both the flow and structure of time. In such a view, the chronon would be not just a discrete tick, but the quantum ripple of that field, a “tempon,” so to speak.

In this view, time would not merely be a coordinate or background dimension, but a derived property—an emergent feature of interactions with an as-yet-undiscovered field, whose quantum excitation (if such exists) might one day be detectable, as the Higgs boson was.

Whether this “time field” is real or metaphorical, the comparison invites a deeper exploration of whether time, like mass, is not something possessed but something conferred.

Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

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