Time Curves

The biggest difficulty I have with Stephen Hawking's unified cosmic theory is the treatment of time. Newton saw time as a linear function. Past lies to the past, and the future moves forward. Hawking revised this theory to treat time as simply another aspect of space, which becomes warped with gravity and completely stops within a black hole (ultimate gravity). However, no matter how I think I get Hawking's explanation, I know that my mind doesn't buy it. I will think that I get the whole 'time wrapping around with space' idea, but then I find myself wondering what happens 'after', as though any time warps eventually get it back on the path to linear time.

I mean, how can time continue just outside a black hole but not within the nearby black hole center? I suppose it's like turning off a TV program. It simply doesn't go on, even though we do. When 'time' resumes for the show, it's as though nothing happened no matter how long we've waited to turn it back on. Oh, Hawking does say time always moves 'forward', much like a roller coaster, just not in a straight path.

Hawking shows a cute little diagram of the universe, with a train on a roller-coaster path which finally goes back to the beginning, suggesting that if we lived eternally, we'd repeat time? He also has theories about wormholes from one 'time path' to another nearby on a different track--basically time travel.

Anyhow, sometimes I wonder about this stuff that seems so illogical. Time not linear? I am truly stumped.

In fact, these theorists come up with these abstract theories and then look for supporting evidence with their research, which sometimes seems really open to interpretation. The only way I would even have interpreted the study results to agree with the theory is if I'd known the theory to begin with.

I'm not sure Hawking has any direct 'proof' that time isn't linear, but it seems to work for his unified cosmological theory. Hmm, I think that there was actually a satellite experiment which demonstrated a slight difference in time for a dog, perhaps. Maybe he's right... and it does agree with a Church opinion that time began with creation. What a concept.