Is it real?
Let’s see if we can really understand what time is.
Read this sentence. Now read this one. Remember the first sentence you read? Then the second? What really is “first” and “second”? You are currently reading this sentence, right? Not anymore, now you are reading this one… You read all of the above in the past. You might even read it again in the future, because it’s a little confusing, perhaps. However, right now, you’re reading this sentence. We live in the now, with the past that has gone before and the future that’s yet to come. However,
there is no “now”, really, because the minute you measure a point called “now”, it’s already in the past... This view of time has led some very smart people throughout the ages to believe that time is like a fast-flowing river. There is no here and now, because it’s always moving, and you along with it. The classical view was that time was just a property of the universe, and there was no changing it, or slowing or speeding it up. Time no matter where in the Universe you were, would run the same
for every observer. Einstein came along, however, and showed us that time was just a matter of perspective, and what might be simultaneous events in time for one observer, might be two distinct events separated by a significant amount of time to another observer
When The Stars Go BOOOOOOMM...!!!!!!!!
Take for example something as simple as two stars going supernova (exploding) at exactly the same time – assume there is a grand clock somewhere that counts down time elapsed since the big bang, and these two events happened exactly at the same “time” by that clock after the big bang. One star is a billion light years away from us in one direction, and the other is in the exact opposite direction, exactly a billion light years away as well. A billion years from now, we will see both of them going nova at exactly the same time, right? Wrong!
We tend to forget that the Earth moves around the sun, the sun moves around the galactic centre of the Milky Way, and the Milky Way itself moves in space and time. Without knowing our movement relative to the two stars, we cannot know our direction of movement, and thus cannot accurately predict the difference between when we will see the two stars go nova. The only thing we know for sure is that the probability of seeing them explode at the same time is miniscule.
Let’s simplify this however. Let’s assume the Earth is totally stationary in space (for calculation purposes), and we reduce the distance to both stars to just 10 light years. Will we see the stars go
nova at the same time? Yes, we will in such a special case. However, to an observer on a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the events will happen at different times because one star will be closer to that planet than the other.What this boils down to is that time, and specifically events happening in the “now” are different for different observers. But if there is no absolute way of telling time, is it even real? Let’s leave that question aside for now and look at how we’ve distinguished time over the centuries.
Solar years
Life forms have an inbuilt clock. Time, it seems, is an important aspect for life. This makes sense on a planet like ours where there are seasons, and there is changes with time. There are times of the year
when it gets very hot, and times when it gets really cold. This factor alone meant that all life had to evolve a sense of timekeeping. Any organism that could live beyond a solar year, would have to deal with changing weather and seasons, and thus, any organism capable of preparing itself for change in seasons would survive longer and thus breed more. The perception of Time may very well be an evolutionary trait that was advantageous and thus is why all living things have the concept of time – consciously or subconsciously engrained into their very DNA. More on this later though.
Ageing and reproduction
We get older, that’s how things work. You are born, you live, you grow old and eventually die (if there are no unnatural causes that kill you sooner). It’s no surprise that our obsession with time has
increased as our life expectancy has grown. Ageing, however, is how most animals tell time, and in conjunction with reproductive cycles, we see how even simple animal forms can tell time. Within the DNA of most living creatures, based on evolution by natural selection, we have clocks ticking all the time. How does a bird know when it’s ready to try and leave the nest to fly? How do its parents know? How does the body of an animal know what time of the year it is, in order to change hormones and put the animal into heat? How do animals know when to start migrating, or hibernating?
A part of us
Anyone who has a regular schedule, and wakes up at almost the same time every day will attest to experiencing those days when you suddenly wake up, for no apparent reason, and stare at your
alarm clock about a minute or so before it is set to ring. Since the alarm didn’t go off, what woke you up? It seems that we have a clock built into us, and it’s able to tell us, “Almost 6 am, time to wake up!” Of course, that’s not very scientific sounding. The fact is, when it comes to humans, we have two clocks inbuilt into our brains. One is used for timing our circadian rhythm and to time the impulses sent to our muscles (for example), which is why we are able to jump at almost the exact moment we want to jump. Some of us are better at such things than others, perhaps because
some of us have a better internal clock for such things. Another clock that’s inside our brain is there just to calculate the time elapsed. A lot of the brain is still quite a mystery to neuroscientists, so we’re citing cutting edge research that is peer reviewed, but is not substantiated by many more varied studies. Neuroscientists at the University of California, Irvine, USA, released a study in 2013 that found evidence of this second clock being situated in the hippocampus of our brains
.
For those who don’t know what the hippocampus does, it’s the part of the brain that is in charge of all of our memories – short- and long-term – and also our spatial memory. Another way to understand what it does is to know that people who suffer from Alzheimer’s, suffer from degradation of the hippocampus. The study was conducted on rats, and used the rats to discern time differences. It found that the rats who had their hippocampus disabled (chemically) were able to still differentiate between short and long intervals of, say, 4 and 12 minutes, but weren’t able to do so when the difference was, say, 8 and 12 minutes. Other similar studies have worked with rats by training them to release a treat by pressing on a lever at a very specific time. So, for example, a rat could be trained to press the lever every 10 seconds. If the rat presses the lever before 9 seconds, or after 11 seconds,it gets nothing, but if it presses it exactly 10 seconds after the last time it pressed the lever, it gets a treat. Amazingly, the rats are able to learn the rhythm and do so flawlessly. Then, the rats can be given chemical substances such as cocaine or marijuana and the effects noted. Interestingly, the rats given cocaine lose the rhythm and start pressing the lever too soon, and the rats given marijuana
mellow out and press the lever too late. Once the effects of the drugs have worn off, the rats return to the precise timing and start getting their treats again.
Similarly in plants, there are genes that dictate the biological or circadian rhythm and turn on and off to tell the plant when it’s night and when it’s daytime. For example, a sunflower has to open up and face the sun at dawn, follow it till dusk and then close the petals and “sleep” at night, but it also has to wake up and be prepared for the next day on time, and sunflowers are always ready. This is because of the biological clock (in this case three genes) working to keep the plant on time. In plants, this is usually a function of three genes called CCA1, LHY and TOC1. CCA1+LHY work together in the early morning and are released in high levels, which break down the TOC1 genes still in the plant from the night time. The plant does all it usually does in the day, and towards dusk the CCA1+LHY levels fall and TOC1 is released in large quantities. This gets rid of any remaining CCA1+LHY, and again, as dawn approaches, TOC1 levels fall, and that’s the signal to the plant’s internal system to make loads of CCA1+LHY, and the cycle continues until death…
So is it real
If it’s built into everything that’s living, into the very DNA of life, doesn’t that make time real? Perhaps. We’re going to have to dive into philosophy to try and answer that one, and we’re not the biggest fans of philosophy. We like our science to be evidence based. We will try and deal with that aspect in a later chapter though. For now, let’s just say that what we know for sure is that time is something that living things can experience.
It’s a circle!
What is a watch or a clock? It keeps time, but what is the time it keeps? We made up the units of time, it’s not like it was handed to us. Had we all been Martians or Venusians, the length of our years would be different and as a result, so would the length of our months, days, weeks, seconds, minutes… Thus, what is a second? What is the nanosecond that atomic clocks calculate?
Keeping time is a very important business now, and accuracy of time is what runs the stock market, how we decide gold medals in photo finishes, how we decide winners in every race, how we decide world records and the like, how we communicate, how we navigate, etc.
It’s all circular referencing though, because there is no standard time. Just as there is no standard length, for that matter.
However, we can at least calculate the distance to the sun and call it one astronomical unit. Regardless of speed (which is time based), if you set off towards the sun, you would get closer and get there eventually. You would see the Earth being left behind. You would see
the sun getting larger, you would notice changes in distance. This is also how we measure time, and it’s circular. You could, theoretically, be in a room with 300 people, and all 300 could decide to play a joke on you, and secretly give you a paralysing agent so that you couldn’t move, and also take that same thing themselves, and everyone would just freeze in place. How would you know whether time was passing or not if this happened? Time is also dependent on reference points, and when you think about it, all of the clocks on Earth, no matter how accurate, are just keeping time with one another, and aren’t really measuring “time” at all; they’re just measuring the difference between one another...
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
One of Newton’s biggest rivals and considered to be the co-inventor of Calculus (both he and Newton invented calculus independently of one another), Leibniz was also a critic of Isaac Newton’s laws of motion. For one thing, Leibniz was critical of Newton’s laws for being kind
of circular in referencing things, as we also mentioned earlier. To understand Leibniz’s position,we need to do a thought experiment. You can’t think of something as complex as time without a good thought experiment or two thrown in, so here goes. You’re in the universe, inside the Milky Way, the solar system and somewhere on the surface of planet Earth. It’s night time, you’re looking up at the night sky, looking very hard to see things change (just in case). Now we’re not too keen on the idea of God, but since it’s a thought experiment, imagine God lifts up the entire universe and shifts it 10–inches to the right. Would you notice?
Could you calculate the speed at which god moved the universe? How much time elapsed since God picked up the universe and put it down? Don’t worry, no one would be able to tell, because nothing changed, and if nothing changed in your field of reference, then you cannot measure anything, including time. Another thought experiment is to imagine three points in space. Obviously any three points can form a triangle, so imagine you’re moving this triangle through space. Say, you’re in your room and
moving the triangle about like a toy aeroplane. You could calculate the distance between the points, and how fast it was moving because of the stuff in the room that is a reference point. However, now imagine everything else in the universe disappears and there’s only you and
the triangle. With no frame of reference, can you even tell whether you are moving, or whether the triangle is? You can still calculate the distance between the three points, but can you calculate the speed at which you are moving through the void? Thus, it is still possible
for the three space dimensions to exist and be measured in a void, but not time. So is it real?
To Watch the stars around you, you can buy a telescope at low price from amazon.
TO BUY A TELESCOPE CLICK HERE : AMAZON.in
Let’s see if we can really understand what time is.
Read this sentence. Now read this one. Remember the first sentence you read? Then the second? What really is “first” and “second”? You are currently reading this sentence, right? Not anymore, now you are reading this one… You read all of the above in the past. You might even read it again in the future, because it’s a little confusing, perhaps. However, right now, you’re reading this sentence. We live in the now, with the past that has gone before and the future that’s yet to come. However,
there is no “now”, really, because the minute you measure a point called “now”, it’s already in the past... This view of time has led some very smart people throughout the ages to believe that time is like a fast-flowing river. There is no here and now, because it’s always moving, and you along with it. The classical view was that time was just a property of the universe, and there was no changing it, or slowing or speeding it up. Time no matter where in the Universe you were, would run the same
for every observer. Einstein came along, however, and showed us that time was just a matter of perspective, and what might be simultaneous events in time for one observer, might be two distinct events separated by a significant amount of time to another observer
Take for example something as simple as two stars going supernova (exploding) at exactly the same time – assume there is a grand clock somewhere that counts down time elapsed since the big bang, and these two events happened exactly at the same “time” by that clock after the big bang. One star is a billion light years away from us in one direction, and the other is in the exact opposite direction, exactly a billion light years away as well. A billion years from now, we will see both of them going nova at exactly the same time, right? Wrong!
We tend to forget that the Earth moves around the sun, the sun moves around the galactic centre of the Milky Way, and the Milky Way itself moves in space and time. Without knowing our movement relative to the two stars, we cannot know our direction of movement, and thus cannot accurately predict the difference between when we will see the two stars go nova. The only thing we know for sure is that the probability of seeing them explode at the same time is miniscule.
Let’s simplify this however. Let’s assume the Earth is totally stationary in space (for calculation purposes), and we reduce the distance to both stars to just 10 light years. Will we see the stars go
nova at the same time? Yes, we will in such a special case. However, to an observer on a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the events will happen at different times because one star will be closer to that planet than the other.What this boils down to is that time, and specifically events happening in the “now” are different for different observers. But if there is no absolute way of telling time, is it even real? Let’s leave that question aside for now and look at how we’ve distinguished time over the centuries.
Solar years
Life forms have an inbuilt clock. Time, it seems, is an important aspect for life. This makes sense on a planet like ours where there are seasons, and there is changes with time. There are times of the year
when it gets very hot, and times when it gets really cold. This factor alone meant that all life had to evolve a sense of timekeeping. Any organism that could live beyond a solar year, would have to deal with changing weather and seasons, and thus, any organism capable of preparing itself for change in seasons would survive longer and thus breed more. The perception of Time may very well be an evolutionary trait that was advantageous and thus is why all living things have the concept of time – consciously or subconsciously engrained into their very DNA. More on this later though.
We get older, that’s how things work. You are born, you live, you grow old and eventually die (if there are no unnatural causes that kill you sooner). It’s no surprise that our obsession with time has
increased as our life expectancy has grown. Ageing, however, is how most animals tell time, and in conjunction with reproductive cycles, we see how even simple animal forms can tell time. Within the DNA of most living creatures, based on evolution by natural selection, we have clocks ticking all the time. How does a bird know when it’s ready to try and leave the nest to fly? How do its parents know? How does the body of an animal know what time of the year it is, in order to change hormones and put the animal into heat? How do animals know when to start migrating, or hibernating?
A part of us
Anyone who has a regular schedule, and wakes up at almost the same time every day will attest to experiencing those days when you suddenly wake up, for no apparent reason, and stare at your
alarm clock about a minute or so before it is set to ring. Since the alarm didn’t go off, what woke you up? It seems that we have a clock built into us, and it’s able to tell us, “Almost 6 am, time to wake up!” Of course, that’s not very scientific sounding. The fact is, when it comes to humans, we have two clocks inbuilt into our brains. One is used for timing our circadian rhythm and to time the impulses sent to our muscles (for example), which is why we are able to jump at almost the exact moment we want to jump. Some of us are better at such things than others, perhaps because
some of us have a better internal clock for such things. Another clock that’s inside our brain is there just to calculate the time elapsed. A lot of the brain is still quite a mystery to neuroscientists, so we’re citing cutting edge research that is peer reviewed, but is not substantiated by many more varied studies. Neuroscientists at the University of California, Irvine, USA, released a study in 2013 that found evidence of this second clock being situated in the hippocampus of our brains
For those who don’t know what the hippocampus does, it’s the part of the brain that is in charge of all of our memories – short- and long-term – and also our spatial memory. Another way to understand what it does is to know that people who suffer from Alzheimer’s, suffer from degradation of the hippocampus. The study was conducted on rats, and used the rats to discern time differences. It found that the rats who had their hippocampus disabled (chemically) were able to still differentiate between short and long intervals of, say, 4 and 12 minutes, but weren’t able to do so when the difference was, say, 8 and 12 minutes. Other similar studies have worked with rats by training them to release a treat by pressing on a lever at a very specific time. So, for example, a rat could be trained to press the lever every 10 seconds. If the rat presses the lever before 9 seconds, or after 11 seconds,it gets nothing, but if it presses it exactly 10 seconds after the last time it pressed the lever, it gets a treat. Amazingly, the rats are able to learn the rhythm and do so flawlessly. Then, the rats can be given chemical substances such as cocaine or marijuana and the effects noted. Interestingly, the rats given cocaine lose the rhythm and start pressing the lever too soon, and the rats given marijuana
mellow out and press the lever too late. Once the effects of the drugs have worn off, the rats return to the precise timing and start getting their treats again.
Similarly in plants, there are genes that dictate the biological or circadian rhythm and turn on and off to tell the plant when it’s night and when it’s daytime. For example, a sunflower has to open up and face the sun at dawn, follow it till dusk and then close the petals and “sleep” at night, but it also has to wake up and be prepared for the next day on time, and sunflowers are always ready. This is because of the biological clock (in this case three genes) working to keep the plant on time. In plants, this is usually a function of three genes called CCA1, LHY and TOC1. CCA1+LHY work together in the early morning and are released in high levels, which break down the TOC1 genes still in the plant from the night time. The plant does all it usually does in the day, and towards dusk the CCA1+LHY levels fall and TOC1 is released in large quantities. This gets rid of any remaining CCA1+LHY, and again, as dawn approaches, TOC1 levels fall, and that’s the signal to the plant’s internal system to make loads of CCA1+LHY, and the cycle continues until death…
So is it real
If it’s built into everything that’s living, into the very DNA of life, doesn’t that make time real? Perhaps. We’re going to have to dive into philosophy to try and answer that one, and we’re not the biggest fans of philosophy. We like our science to be evidence based. We will try and deal with that aspect in a later chapter though. For now, let’s just say that what we know for sure is that time is something that living things can experience.
It’s a circle!
What is a watch or a clock? It keeps time, but what is the time it keeps? We made up the units of time, it’s not like it was handed to us. Had we all been Martians or Venusians, the length of our years would be different and as a result, so would the length of our months, days, weeks, seconds, minutes… Thus, what is a second? What is the nanosecond that atomic clocks calculate?
Keeping time is a very important business now, and accuracy of time is what runs the stock market, how we decide gold medals in photo finishes, how we decide winners in every race, how we decide world records and the like, how we communicate, how we navigate, etc.
It’s all circular referencing though, because there is no standard time. Just as there is no standard length, for that matter.
However, we can at least calculate the distance to the sun and call it one astronomical unit. Regardless of speed (which is time based), if you set off towards the sun, you would get closer and get there eventually. You would see the Earth being left behind. You would see
the sun getting larger, you would notice changes in distance. This is also how we measure time, and it’s circular. You could, theoretically, be in a room with 300 people, and all 300 could decide to play a joke on you, and secretly give you a paralysing agent so that you couldn’t move, and also take that same thing themselves, and everyone would just freeze in place. How would you know whether time was passing or not if this happened? Time is also dependent on reference points, and when you think about it, all of the clocks on Earth, no matter how accurate, are just keeping time with one another, and aren’t really measuring “time” at all; they’re just measuring the difference between one another...
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
One of Newton’s biggest rivals and considered to be the co-inventor of Calculus (both he and Newton invented calculus independently of one another), Leibniz was also a critic of Isaac Newton’s laws of motion. For one thing, Leibniz was critical of Newton’s laws for being kind
of circular in referencing things, as we also mentioned earlier. To understand Leibniz’s position,we need to do a thought experiment. You can’t think of something as complex as time without a good thought experiment or two thrown in, so here goes. You’re in the universe, inside the Milky Way, the solar system and somewhere on the surface of planet Earth. It’s night time, you’re looking up at the night sky, looking very hard to see things change (just in case). Now we’re not too keen on the idea of God, but since it’s a thought experiment, imagine God lifts up the entire universe and shifts it 10–inches to the right. Would you notice?
Could you calculate the speed at which god moved the universe? How much time elapsed since God picked up the universe and put it down? Don’t worry, no one would be able to tell, because nothing changed, and if nothing changed in your field of reference, then you cannot measure anything, including time. Another thought experiment is to imagine three points in space. Obviously any three points can form a triangle, so imagine you’re moving this triangle through space. Say, you’re in your room and
moving the triangle about like a toy aeroplane. You could calculate the distance between the points, and how fast it was moving because of the stuff in the room that is a reference point. However, now imagine everything else in the universe disappears and there’s only you and
the triangle. With no frame of reference, can you even tell whether you are moving, or whether the triangle is? You can still calculate the distance between the three points, but can you calculate the speed at which you are moving through the void? Thus, it is still possible
for the three space dimensions to exist and be measured in a void, but not time. So is it real?
To Watch the stars around you, you can buy a telescope at low price from amazon.
TO BUY A TELESCOPE CLICK HERE : AMAZON.in
TRY TO UNDERSTAND TIME (part-1)
Reviewed by SURVIVOR
on
September 02, 2018
Rating:
Reviewed by SURVIVOR
on
September 02, 2018
Rating:
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