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Hi Suzy;
Sounds like you're really getting into it all there !
Humans have probably been pondering time for as long as they've been around. Whether or not it exists without humans being around, is kind of a moot philosophical point, as there wouldn't be much conversation about it, if there were no brains to contemplate it, or mouths, (or fingers in our case), to talk about it. Nonetheless, it is a fundamental to theoretical physics for self-consistency, and for us to interpret its outputs.
A little word of warning … Lee Smolin has some pretty innovative ideas which may yield some interesting insights, and his work may ultimately take physics to new levels of descriptiveness. At the moment, I wouldn't say his ideas have been adopted by the broader scientific community. Some time spent baking in the light of plain ol' Special Relativity, described by authors like Brian Greene, might be of assistance in gaining more understanding of why Smolin's ideas are kind of neat.
This discussion is probably more relevant to the recently suspected faster-than-light measurements of neutrinos, by the OPERA research team at CERN in Italy. I think most folk suspect something has been overlooked in the measurements themselves, whilst at the same time, most would also love for them to be verified by another team elsewhere.
The discovery of the Higgs Boson on the other hand, would confirm that particle physics is on the right track and .. yes .. even Cox might present those big white pearlies in a big grin, if they formailse the rumours.
Cheers .. & good to see you posting your progress updates in the Science Forum .. always interested to hear how your seeing things.
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