Time Travel

 I was just thinking about what it's going to be like taking my daughter on a road trip once she can talk.  I remember being stuck in the backseat of my parents' car with my sister on the way to Grandma's house 4 hours away, fighting with her about being "over the line" in the backseat....and constantly asking, "Are we there yet?"  I was thinking how it's going to be different for my daughter because she's going to be the only one and how many more times she'll be asking, "Are we there yet?" because she doesn't have anyone to fight with over the line in the backseat.

It made me think for a bit:  What is time?  Not the school book definition, but the real functional measurement of time.

It's obviously relative- or at least not constant.

Ever notice how time was very slow when you were a child?  or when you're in a boring meeting?  or standing in line?  And then when you're having fun, time speeds by?

After serious contemplation on the subject, I'd like to propose a non-Newtonian/subatomic + biological reason for this.  I'd like to propose, with no evidence what so ever, that perhaps time is really the movement of subatomic particles within our bodies:  The more active you are, the more the particles move; the less active you are, the less the particles move.

Now, activity can just be growing- it doesn't have to be conscious activity, just changes your body's cells.  When you learn, your neurons in your brain are constantly firing, making connections and assimilating information.  When you grow, the cells in your body are replicating and dividing.  The more frequent these activities, the more we feel that time has passed.  As we age, the growth and replication of cells slows.  We start to feel like time is speeding up.

So, perhaps our perception of time is actually the measurement of the time between cell changes.