"Does Anybody Really Know What Time it is?" Part I

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5WLedGudyg)

Time is not what we think it is.  It’s not linear. Perhaps it’s circular, spiral, shifting with past, present, and future existing at the same time.  Trippy!  This is the first in a series on time. This week, features a quick tour of the nature and science of time.

There is objective time, homo sapiens time, that defined the standard measurement as clock time and calendar time. There is subjective time that relates to someone’s individual awareness and experience of time that can be influenced by the culture, age, and personality. The concept of subjective time presents a conundrum between how time is objectively measured and how it is experienced.  For example, time seems to elongate when attending a boring lecture and it seems to shorten when having a fun night out with friends.

Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity (1905 and 1916) gives us relativistic time. Before that shift in understanding the nature of time, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Barrow, and Sir Isaac Newton’s absolute time / Newtonian time reined: “…time has always been considered one of the fundamental scalar quantities, along with length, mass, charge, etc (a scalar quantity is one that can be described by a single real number, usually with measurement units assigned). It was also considered to be absolute and universal, i.e. the same for everyone everywhere in the universe (https://www.exactlywhatistime.com/physics-of-time/absolute-time/).

Einstein’s work challenges absolute time with, “… the notion of time as one dimension of space-time in special relativity, and of dynamically curved space-time in general relativity. it was Einstein’s genius to realize that the speed of light is absolute, invariable and cannot be exceeded (and indeed that the speed of light is actually more fundamental than either time or space). In relativity, time is certainly an integral part of the very fabric of the universe and cannot exist apart from the universe, but, if the speed of light is invariable and absolute, Einstein realized, both space and time must be flexible and relative to accommodate this. Although much of Einstein’s work is often considered ‘difficult’ or ‘counter-intuitive’, his theories have proved (both in laboratory experiments and in astronomical observations) to be a remarkably accurate model of reality, indeed much more accurate than Newtonian physics, and applicable in a much wider range of circumstances and conditions (https://www.exactlywhatistime.com/physics-of-time/relativistic-time/).

There is quantum time, developed by Max Planck: “Quantum theory or quantum mechanics is now recognized as the most correct and accurate model of the universe, particularly at sub-atomic scales, although for large objects classical Newtonian and relativistic physics work adequately. If the concepts and predictions of relativity are often considered difficult and counter-intuitive, many of the basic tenets and implications of quantum mechanics may appear absolutely bizarre and inconceivable, but they have been repeatedly proven to be true, and it is now one of the most rigorously tested physical models of all time” (https://www.exactlywhatistime.com/physics-of-time/quantum-time/). I’m not adept at physics, so if you want more info on quantum time, have fun doing deep dive research.

The ‘Arrow of Time’ is an interesting concept attributed to Sir Arthur Eddington in 1927. “Time appears to have a direction, to be inherently directional: the past lies behind us and is fixed and immutable, and accessible by memory or written documentation; the future, on the other hand, lies ahead and is not necessarily fixed, and, although we can perhaps predict it to some extent, we have no firm evidence or proof of it. Most of the events we experience are irreversible: for example, it is easy for us to break an egg, and hard, if not impossible, to unbreak an already broken egg. It appears inconceivable to us that that this progression could go in any other direction. This one-way direction or asymmetry of time is often referred to as the arrow of time, and it is what gives us an impression of time passing, of our progressing through different moments. The arrow of time, then, is the uniform and unique direction associated with the apparent inevitable “flow of time” into the future. What interested Eddington is that exactly the same arrow of time would apply to an alien race on the other side of the universe as applies to us. It is therefore nothing to do with our biology or psychology, but with the way the universe is. The arrow of time is not the same thing as time itself, but a feature of the universe and its contents and the way it has evolved” (https://www.exactlywhatistime.com/physics-of-time/the-arrow-of-time/).

Is time travel possible?  “Arguably, we are always travelling [through] time, as we move from the past into the future. But time travel usually refers to the possibility of changing the rate at which we travel into the future, or completely reversing it so that we travel into the past. Although a plot device in fiction since the 19th Century, time travel has never been practically demonstrated or verified, and may still be impossible. Time travel is not possible in Newtonian absolute time (we move deterministically and linearly forward into the future). Neither is it possible according to special relativity (we are constrained by our light cones). But general relativity does raises the prospect (at least theoretically) of travel through time, i.e. the possibility of movement backwards and/or forwards in time, independently of the normal flow of time we observe on Earth, in much the same way as we can move between different points in space.

Time travel is usually taken to mean that a person’s mind and body remain unchanged, with their memories intact, while their location in time is changed. If the traveller’s body and mind reverted its condition at the destination time, then no time travel would be perceptible” (https://www.exactlywhatistime.com/physics-of-time/time-travel/). Stephen Hawking and other physicists suggest it is possible:”… the fundamental laws of nature themselves – particularly the idea that causes always precede effects – may prevent time travel in some way. The apparent absence of ‘tourists from the future’ here in our present is another argument, albeit not a rigorous one, that has been put forward against the possibility of time travel, even in a technologically advanced future (the assumption here is that future civilizations, millions of years more technologically advanced than us, should be capable of travel). Some interpretations of time travel, though, have tried to resolve such potential paradoxes by accepting the possibility of travel between ‘branch points’, parallel realities or parallel universes, so that any new events caused by a time traveller’s visit to the past take place in a different reality and so do not impact on the original time stream. The idea of parallel universes, first put forward by Hugh Everett III in his ‘many worlds’ interpretation of quantum theory in the 1950s, is now quite mainstream and accepted by many (although by no means all) physicists” (https://www.exactlywhatistime.com/physics-of-time/time-travel/).

Can we really know what time it is?  Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher, Marcus Aurelius shares practical wisdom: “No one can lose the past or the future.  How can you be deprived of what you don’t own?” (qtd. in The Little Book of Stoic Quotes by Phil Van Treuren, p. 15).  The present is all we own.  The seasons change and our markers of daytime and nighttime change with them.  Time sometimes appears to ‘stand still’ and at other times it appears to ‘be getting away from us.’  With shifting timelines and parallel universes, time truly is relative to what we experience.

Please share your stories, thoughts, insights, and suggestions by either commenting below this post if you are reading this on social media, or, if you are reading this through your email subscription, please share, by emailing me, at reimaginelife22@gmail.com.

Thank you for reading and participating in this blog essay; I invite you to subscribe to my blog at www.reimaginelifecoach.com.