There are two fundamental things in quantum "existence". These are state and events, or one can thing of them as relationship and change.
The two are related -- state holds the probabilities for future events, and provides for causality. State is just a set of relationships that we can describe as bits of information. Because we live in a 3-dimensional space, state involves space.
Events are the change in those relationships. Change is the only way that an observer could know that state, or anything at all actually exists. Time is ordered change. One could imagine disordered change, or circular change, but we happen to have linearly-ordered change. We live in time.
So, time or space could exist differently, and probably have (or do, or will). But without some version of state and change, there is no evidence of existence at all. Therefore there has always been state and change, in some form. If there was ever a "time" that there wasn't, we would literally be contradicting ourselves.
The two are related -- state holds the probabilities for future events, and provides for causality. State is just a set of relationships that we can describe as bits of information. Because we live in a 3-dimensional space, state involves space.
Events are the change in those relationships. Change is the only way that an observer could know that state, or anything at all actually exists. Time is ordered change. One could imagine disordered change, or circular change, but we happen to have linearly-ordered change. We live in time.
So, time or space could exist differently, and probably have (or do, or will). But without some version of state and change, there is no evidence of existence at all. Therefore there has always been state and change, in some form. If there was ever a "time" that there wasn't, we would literally be contradicting ourselves.
