“Time is an illusion.” Carlo Rovelli, Theoretical Physicist
In this universe, neither basic life forms, particles, nor complex life forms, human beings, repeat themselves. Every movement of a particle/human being is new in the NOW. The incalculable disorder is spread across the universe; the randomness is exhilarating as well as frightening. The rudimentary cycle, Life and Death, doesn’t work here; welcome to the infinite NOW.
If you were in these said universes, how would you define time?
Blink. A moment is gone; it’s a past moment now. When I was fairly young, a blink was my definition of Second.
The BIPM says, “The second, symbol s, is the SI unit of time. It is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the caesium frequency ∆νCs, the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium 133 atom, to be 9, 192, 631, 770 when expressed in the unit Hz, which is equal to s−1."
I didn’t understand the above definition of Second when I read it for the first time. I might have fired a lot of neurons inside my brain to visualise the working model of this definition. As a result, my occipital lobe might have illuminated because of the electricity generated by this mental task.
Let’s make the definition of Second simple and digestible. The definition says - if you boil eggs in a deep pan for… Ah! Let not your time be wasted.
Day and Night are two events and also two units of time since a day repeats itself as well as a night. However, due to changes in the motion of the earth, the durations of a day and a night change. Thus, they can’t be taken as Système International units.
Hence, a standard unit of time is required. In defined circumstances, the outermost atom of caesium oscillates between two levels and completes a cycle like you’re doing a shuttle run. So, in a second, the atom of caesium-133 completes 9, 192, 631, 770 cycles, and hence it’s the standard definition of a second.
Albert Einstein, the genius, who made a major contribution to modern science, published his Annus Mirabilis papers in 1905. His special theory of relativity was one of his outstanding works. In 1907, Hermann Minkowski developed a mathematical structure to show Einstein's special relativity, and it is so-called the Minkowski space. In the said space, time is the fourth dimension.
It was Albert Einstein who proposed that time slows down in a strong gravitational field. This phenomenon is so-called gravitational time dilation. He also told the world that the mass of matter warps the fabric of spacetime. As a result, light bends near a massive object such as the sun, stars, etc.
However, it’s the rate of disorder that slows down in a strong gravitational field and not time per se. Time dilation is a good subject for a sci-fi movie, but in real life, a human body certainly has to suffer the changes due to strong gravity. Since our body has been adjusted to the earth’s gravitational field, we can’t withstand the gravity of a massive planet or star. Our weight will be more on such a planet. An article published in Discovery Magazine says, “We may endure the gravity which is 4 and half times of the earth’s gravity.”
12:23 pm (past), 12:24 pm (present), and 12:25 pm (future)
12:24 only makes sense when you can recall 12:23 or imagine 12:25. If we couldn’t store events inside our heads, we’d only live in the present. Thus, I believe time doesn’t matter in that case. This vague sense of the existence of the past and the future makes us believe that time is real. Whereas, a microscopic world, where the past and the future don’t have any relevance, doesn’t consider time at all.
In the universe, every phenomenon can be broken down to the simplest understandable form. In my opinion, now it’s time we lose time from the term “spacetime”, for it creates confusion and makes us think that time travel is possible. Moreover, associating space with time makes us believe that the past and the future exist in the universe. Well, they don’t exist. All we have is the present or the NOW. How our memories have distorted our perception to see nature and understand it.
We are moving from Order to Disorder.
Sir Isaac Newton said, “Time is absolute.”
Albert Einstein said, “Time is relative.”
Carlo Rovelli says, “Time is an illusion.”
Citations
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/whats-the-maximum-gravity-we-could-survive
https://www.bipm.org/en/home
https://faculty.etsu.edu/gardnerr/5310/5310pdf/dg2-2.pdf
https://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters/spacetime/index.html
What is Time? When you search this question on the internet, a web page soon appears and tells you the current time in your location like the picture below.
Whereas, if you ask a theoretical physicist the same question, she may scratch her head for a while and think how she can explain time to this ignorant person. Later, she probably brings a couple of physics books and throws them at you. Well, in reality, she won’t do that, for a theoretical physicist, who has understood life thoroughly, knows how insignificant we are in comparison to this vast cosmos filled with countless phenomena to awe us. Besides, you won’t find a more humble person than her ever in your life.
Now, let’s dissect time and see how it governs our mysterious universe.
Whereas, if you ask a theoretical physicist the same question, she may scratch her head for a while and think how she can explain time to this ignorant person. Later, she probably brings a couple of physics books and throws them at you. Well, in reality, she won’t do that, for a theoretical physicist, who has understood life thoroughly, knows how insignificant we are in comparison to this vast cosmos filled with countless phenomena to awe us. Besides, you won’t find a more humble person than her ever in your life.
Now, let’s dissect time and see how it governs our mysterious universe.
Time is JUST a Tool
Your dear friend waiting for you under the scorching sun asks on a phone call, “Where the hell are you now?” Still at home, hastily wearing those skinny jeans and hardly managing your phone between your ear and shoulder, you tell a lie, “On my way! I’ll be there in 5 minutes.” Although, you probably need at least 20 minutes to reach your friend’s location.This exemplary case isn’t to showcase how laid-back we are to our friends, rather showing our strange way of measuring the distance between two points in space in Time instead of Length. We do this since time is easy to comprehend; we just have to look at a clock and reckon when an event starts or finishes. On the other hand, a length, say 20 kilometers, further makes us estimate how much time someone needs to travel it.
How Did We Invent Time?
First, we should know the significance of time in our universe. Then only we can understand the nature of time and its discovery or invention. To achieve this objective, we should experience events in three hypothetical universes.A Universe with No Pattern - Chaos
The first universe is No Pattern/Chaos. Imagine a universe where every phenomenon is unprecedented; nature doesn’t follow a pattern like - day, night, and day. Besides, you don’t follow a pattern, for example, blinking. You merely excite some neurons on perceiving events happening in the NOW and just experience the NOW. Although the past (total randomness) is stored in the wrinkled thing between your ears, you can’t relate it to the NOW since every experience is novel as though you were a particle with senses only and a human being with no cerebrum in such a universe.In this universe, neither basic life forms, particles, nor complex life forms, human beings, repeat themselves. Every movement of a particle/human being is new in the NOW. The incalculable disorder is spread across the universe; the randomness is exhilarating as well as frightening. The rudimentary cycle, Life and Death, doesn’t work here; welcome to the infinite NOW.
A Universe with a Single Continuous Event - Order
Now, we have to visualise the second universe through human perspectives. Assume a universe with only one event, and the movement of the event has ceaseless nature. For instance, you may imagine a dot incessantly moving and forming a straight line with infinite length. Here, you have a single event that has been going on in one direction like the movement of time. You don’t know when this event started and when it’ll end.A Universe Without an Event - Paused/Immovable
The third universe is a bizarre place since it has no event whatsoever; it’s a universe with no movement as if everything were paused. In other words, you may consider a universe that has immovable particles.If you were in these said universes, how would you define time?
Before you attempt the question above, you should know how we keep track of time on the earth. First, we need a defined unit of time; we can do so by linking an imaginary unit of time(seconds, minutes, etc) with a real physical event that can be repeated in the same way under defined circumstances. Thus, you get a defined unit; you can derive other units of time from it.
Blink. A moment is gone; it’s a past moment now. When I was fairly young, a blink was my definition of Second.
The BIPM says, “The second, symbol s, is the SI unit of time. It is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the caesium frequency ∆νCs, the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium 133 atom, to be 9, 192, 631, 770 when expressed in the unit Hz, which is equal to s−1."
I didn’t understand the above definition of Second when I read it for the first time. I might have fired a lot of neurons inside my brain to visualise the working model of this definition. As a result, my occipital lobe might have illuminated because of the electricity generated by this mental task.
Let’s make the definition of Second simple and digestible. The definition says - if you boil eggs in a deep pan for… Ah! Let not your time be wasted.
Day and Night are two events and also two units of time since a day repeats itself as well as a night. However, due to changes in the motion of the earth, the durations of a day and a night change. Thus, they can’t be taken as Système International units.
Hence, a standard unit of time is required. In defined circumstances, the outermost atom of caesium oscillates between two levels and completes a cycle like you’re doing a shuttle run. So, in a second, the atom of caesium-133 completes 9, 192, 631, 770 cycles, and hence it’s the standard definition of a second.
Time is More than Just a Tool
Ancient science told us that matter in space is surrounded by luminiferous aether/ether as though planets, stars, etc were inside a balloon filled with water/aether. The analogy between space and a water-filled balloon may confuse you, so don’t consider it as the current state of the universe. Previously, it was believed - light propagated through static aether/ether acting as a medium. The Michelson-Morley experiment was an attempt to detect the earth’s motion through the aether. However, it was unsuccessful in detecting its presence in space. Thus, we have to stick to the fact that space is a vacuum that is disturbed by energy and matter.Albert Einstein, the genius, who made a major contribution to modern science, published his Annus Mirabilis papers in 1905. His special theory of relativity was one of his outstanding works. In 1907, Hermann Minkowski developed a mathematical structure to show Einstein's special relativity, and it is so-called the Minkowski space. In the said space, time is the fourth dimension.
It was Albert Einstein who proposed that time slows down in a strong gravitational field. This phenomenon is so-called gravitational time dilation. He also told the world that the mass of matter warps the fabric of spacetime. As a result, light bends near a massive object such as the sun, stars, etc.
However, it’s the rate of disorder that slows down in a strong gravitational field and not time per se. Time dilation is a good subject for a sci-fi movie, but in real life, a human body certainly has to suffer the changes due to strong gravity. Since our body has been adjusted to the earth’s gravitational field, we can’t withstand the gravity of a massive planet or star. Our weight will be more on such a planet. An article published in Discovery Magazine says, “We may endure the gravity which is 4 and half times of the earth’s gravity.”
Time is an Illusion
Past, Present, and Future
Our ability to create possible outcomes is simply an illusion. The past isn’t real now, for it happened at some point in “the past”. The future isn’t real, for it’s just some ideal combination of events that happened in the past. We predict the future; we recall the past. We recall the past and alter the past events that would’ve happened or wouldn’t have happened; We imagine the future by placing memories in ideal order.12:23 pm (past), 12:24 pm (present), and 12:25 pm (future)
12:24 only makes sense when you can recall 12:23 or imagine 12:25. If we couldn’t store events inside our heads, we’d only live in the present. Thus, I believe time doesn’t matter in that case. This vague sense of the existence of the past and the future makes us believe that time is real. Whereas, a microscopic world, where the past and the future don’t have any relevance, doesn’t consider time at all.
In the universe, every phenomenon can be broken down to the simplest understandable form. In my opinion, now it’s time we lose time from the term “spacetime”, for it creates confusion and makes us think that time travel is possible. Moreover, associating space with time makes us believe that the past and the future exist in the universe. Well, they don’t exist. All we have is the present or the NOW. How our memories have distorted our perception to see nature and understand it.
We are moving from Order to Disorder.
Sir Isaac Newton said, “Time is absolute.”
Albert Einstein said, “Time is relative.”
Carlo Rovelli says, “Time is an illusion.”
Citations
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/whats-the-maximum-gravity-we-could-survive
https://www.bipm.org/en/home
https://faculty.etsu.edu/gardnerr/5310/5310pdf/dg2-2.pdf
https://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters/spacetime/index.html
Comments
Post a Comment