Remember the theorists are still trying to figure out how little tiny vibrating strings are the basis of everything. It's hard to really get away from materialism.

Here's idea though.

We are mobile organisms, logically necessitating this sequential process of perceptions, as a navigation function.

So our experience of time is as the point of the present, moving past to future. Physics codifies it as measures of duration.

The reality is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Duration is the present, as the events coalesce and dissolve. Potential>actual>residual.

There is no literal dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.

Energy is "conserved," because it is the present, creating time, as well as temperature, pressure, color and sound. Time is frequency, events are amplitude.

So the energy, as present, goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past.

Energy drives the wave, while the fluctuations rise and fall. No tiny strings necessary.

Galaxies are energy radiating out, as structure coalesces in.

The structure is centripetal, as it synchronizes, as that is the path of least resistance for structure.

While the path of least resistance for energy is expanding to fill out space. While is harmonious, as it is distributed across all structures. So both directions are entropic.

Nodes and networks, organisms and ecosystems.

Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past. Though it's the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy, feeding the flame, while the central nervous system sorts the information, signals from the noise.

Creating this academic obsession with the information, rather than the processes generating it.

Without which, it is just shadows on the wall.