I always saw time as a way of applying numerical labels to a state of the universe. In my view, the universe only ever exists in one state, albeit constantly changing at the "speed" of light. It is our biological capability to remember past states and envision future states that project this notion of time into everything.
Time is lodged into almost all of physics because the only way we can do something useful (not being God and not knowing the absolute equations sans-units) is to compare present values to previous-present values. That division sign wedged into every relative unit of measure - kg, sec, meter, etc - is basically a way of saying "as compared to". Present as-compared-to the-previous-present. What-is-now ÷ the-remembered-now. Universe-at-Planck-Tick #145 ÷ Universe-at-Planck-Tick #144
All of the universal constants come down to comparing a present state to a previous-present state and noticing that the delta between them is a consistent value. I don't think this is really news to many, but it helped to make physics and the some of the exotic math behind it make more sense to me.
Time is lodged into almost all of physics because the only way we can do something useful (not being God and not knowing the absolute equations sans-units) is to compare present values to previous-present values. That division sign wedged into every relative unit of measure - kg, sec, meter, etc - is basically a way of saying "as compared to". Present as-compared-to the-previous-present. What-is-now ÷ the-remembered-now. Universe-at-Planck-Tick #145 ÷ Universe-at-Planck-Tick #144
All of the universal constants come down to comparing a present state to a previous-present state and noticing that the delta between them is a consistent value. I don't think this is really news to many, but it helped to make physics and the some of the exotic math behind it make more sense to me.