Since this thread has been resurrected, I've taken the liberty of posting something else I once wrote on this question. Please bear in mind that it's not a scientific paper, it's half tongue in cheek, it's just a concept that amuses me, and about which I was thinking. Rip it to shreds if you want, I'm not even sure if I can defend it. All thoughts are welcome. 
We know that energy cannot be destroyed. It exists in potential until we liberate it through one of a variety of mechanical or chemical processes, it performs its function, and is then converted into one of innumerable other states. We release it back into the depths of space, from whence it came, and never give another thought to it.
And yet it cannot be gone. It exists still, in whatever altered state it has achieved or been forced into. What are the implications of this? Anything that ever was, ever existed or ever happened, must, in one form or another, still be existing or happening right now.
Now if we can assume that all energy is immortal, let us ask another question. Where do we draw the line? What isn’t energy? Everything alive is obviously energy. Yet energy exists in non-living objects as well. That lump of coal for example. The rock at your feet is potential energy. What about things we cannot see? Well sunlight is energy, so is gas. Even steam is energy. What else?
How about time? Can we consider time to be a force? Of course it must be. Time can affect its surrounding, simply by virtue of the fact that nothing could happen at all if things did not exist in time. Although we cannot perceive Time without some context, once that context is in place, (the context in this case is our existence-- eat your heart out Schrödinger) its effects are instantly obvious.
So if we consider time as energy (I choose to call it Chronomic Energy) then we must concede that it cannot be destroyed. In other words, all time that has passed, must have gone somewhere. It has been converted from future energy, to present energy, and from there to past energy. Science suggests that if we were to travel at a speed greater than that of light to some distant point in the galaxy, and look toward earth, we would see events there as they occurred in the past, because the light from the Cretaceous period is still traveling out in space. It can take years for a dead star to disappear from our skies, because its light continues traveling toward us for long after the star dies.
Time is nothing but another direction, and at some point, technology will allow us to alter our position relative to the time flow. Our concept of Time is purely Human-Derived. And yet, it must have passed for millennia before we were ever there to observe it, to apply our limited understanding and manipulation to it. Why do we conceive that Time is Uni-Directional? Certainly, things in nature tend not to be. Nature and the universe are symmetrical. Why not Time? I believe that the error lies in our perceptions. The nature of our conception of time is flawed, and until we repair it, time will be forever closed to us.
A large part of our conceptual error lies in the geometry of Time. It is a fairly common consensus that Time is the so-called Fourth Dimension. And certainly this is a fair enough deduction.
Let us continue with a brief consideration of the nature of Geometry.
An excellent starting point is Euclid’s perfect geometric point. Imagine it if you will. Nothing but a single point, a placeholder, no breadth, no depth, no length.
You can’t. It isn’t possible. If you are imagining it, you must have some place for it to be. Now we have the first dimension, length. The point must have a line to support it. However, the line cannot exist independently. It too requires another dimension to support it. Breadth. The second dimension. Now we have a plane. However, and I’m sure that you can see where this is going to; something must support this dimension as well. Hence the third dimension, or depth. Now, something must support this depth. Hence a fourth Dimension, time. Somewhere to support the other three. Three dimensions cannot be perceived unless we have somewhere to perceive them from.
However, why the hell do we stop there? Surely if we recognise that for each dimension to exist there is the requirement of another dimension to support it, a viewing platform if you will, then we must postulate yet another. Do we now suspend logic and say, “that’s it now, we’ll leave time just hanging there.” Of course we can’t. Even though Time as a dimension exists at right angles to the other three, logic dictates that it too requires the support of another dimension.
And so on, ad infinitum. Its elephants all the way to the bottom. Of course, we can continue postulating one dimension after another for all time, and it doesn’t actually prove anything. For science to have any validity at all, there must be a bottom somewhere. But here we are into n-dimensional geometry, about which I know even less than I do about the normal stuff.
Time is a direction. Keep it in mind. You never know when it could come in handy.
None of the nonsense I have just blathered on about should be taken seriously.
