Does the present exist?

[Lazy Kitty]

The present is the in progress period of time in whichever length said period of time is measure.
Could be hours, seconds, a single instance or centuries, depending on what you're measuring.
Could be "important" events in history. For example a war or the existence of a species. Or the time that the earth exists. Or just dinner or the moment you're reading this.

Basically anything you can preceed with "right now" is the present in some measure of time.
For example "Right now I'm typing this." or "Right now dinosaurs are extinct."
In the second example, the present is from the moment dinosaurs went extinct up until either someone builds Jurassic Park or the end of time, whichever happens first.

Basically, the present is a range of time greater than 0 which the current instance is a part of.

 

[gandhi the peacemake]

You could think of time as binary -

existing = past = 1
not existing = future = 0

- with the present simply being the switch from one state to the other.

This is, of course, framing time solely within the human experiencing of it. Read a physics textbook and you start getting into quantum superposition and relativity, where past, present, and future become more malleable.

 

[TaboriHK]

I'd answer, but you couldn't take me at my word.

 

[2xDouble]

Yes.

Spoiler: Here it is

...I'm so sorry. Also, what the hell took you guys so long to make that joke?

Real answer: The "present", the "moment", the "now"... as described, exists momentarily, as an effective massless singularity in time. But, in reality, "the present" repeats and propagates ad infinitum. The longer time exists, the more of "the present" exists. To put it another way: It doesn't matter how quickly a moment has passed if the next moment instantly becomes the new "now". As such, "The present" exists and continues to exist, not as a specific point in time, but as the vehicle through which we travel time; the frame of reference by which we observe time.

Funny note: the present you perceive is not the actual, up-to-date present. You are actually delayed by the fractional seconds it takes your brain and internal sensors to process the movements of space-time; literally "living in the past".

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Not in the strictest sense, but it often refers to a period of time around the exact present where the conditions in question are similar, which can last centuries in some senses.