| DStrayCat on Time |
| Time & Linear Thinking |
| Linear thinking, like a straight line, is a creation of man and exists nowhere in the Universe. However, that does not stop man from trying to make the Universe and everything in it, into a clear and orderly structure. For some reason man seems to need order and works incessantly to make everything predictable. To most people in western cultures, there is a beginning and end and things are supposed to happen along an imaginary time-line in a predictable fashion. We are born and we die... That is the basis for the beginning and end and we think about the limitations of life as the starting and ending points along our individual time-line. But, what if birth was not the beginning and death was not the end? If we knew what was before birth and we knew what happens after death, then there would be no actual beginning or end, as we in the west understand it. I keep saying "in the west", as time was an invention of the west. The first mechanical clocks were built to accurately bring priests and monks to prayer and until then there were only such things a sun-dials, hour glasses and the celestial bodies by which to tell the time of day or night or the seasons. In any case, the generations of a family such as the Ming Dynasty or the generations of Abraham or King David developed the only sort of written history. For all intents and purposes there was no concept of time as a matter of history, to use as historical data with which the future could be predicted.... Even the Romans had priests that would examine the entrails of a goat to predict the future. How's that for a TIMEX...??? Not until the Muslims took complete control of the spice trading routes to the far east, did Europeans begin to really understand the need for an accurate chronograph (timepiece). The Captain of a ship needed such a device to travel on the open high seas and be able to accurately navigate his course. Bringing the Monks to prayer on time was important but when an Italian Chef could not buy pepper, that became serious business. Eventually, the Gold and Gems of the New World would give them more incentive. Thus, Time was born, not only to predict the time of day but also, to enable man to start keeping accurate records and journals, to use in the day to day predictability of events. Today, man keeps a history of everything and uses that history to attempt to predict the future course of events. In some cases he has succeeded, but only in a very limited way. For some reason man seems to think, "history will repeat itself", but fundamentally we understand the nothing will ever happen exactly the same twice. There is nothing in the paradigm that suggests it will. When 50 people witness an accident or a disaster, no two people will or can describe the event the same. Everyone sees an event from his or her unique perspective and will report it as such. The possibility of two accidents happening with the same two drivers and the same 50 witnesses, all in the same place with the same perspective at two different points in time is remote at best. More than likely, impossible. Therefore, the chances of history repeating itself, is another unfounded creation of man's mind and has no basis in fact. Take the weather, for example, man's science has reached a point where many of the most major events are predictable, but still limited. We know all of the signs of possible tornadoes, but cannot accurately predict when one will spawn, where it will spawn or its potential intensity. With all of our knowledge, history and all of the computers, we cannot predict anything with accurately, except time, itself. We all understand that the sun will rise tomorrow with the same accuracy as the Romans had or the first humans but how many people could predict with any accuracy that the Hi-tech stocks would collapse??? Many people predicted the possibility but no one could say which day it would happen and the markets are an invention of man himself. So, even the things, which we create ourselves, are unpredictable... That is why its called "speculating"... Man builds a "schedule" with the "hope" that it will unfold as predicted. Still no one can predict with any accuracy how or when, exactly any event will take place. The old saying comes to mind, "Life is what happens to you while you're making other plans". We can make all of the plans we want to but they are all speculative... as no one can change the past or predict the future... In the end we can do nothing about the past and nothing about the future therefore, time is a manmade illusion and the only thing you know is, what is happening right NOW. Like the straight line, a time-line is nothing more than a tool to try to give life some sort of order. In fact, there is no such thing as a starting point or an ending or a straight line... What we do have is Chaos... |
| Time & Relativity |
| Back in the days when Einstein first developed the Theory of relativity, a contest was held, where the person able to explain the Theory in 5000 words or less would win a $10,000.00 Prize. It was won, however not by me... I would begin to argue that time is a variable and so much of a variable that it does not exist at all... Had we not created time, relativity certainly would never have been developed, because "time" is at the core of the theory. E = MC Squared... Energy = Mass X the Speed of Light - Squared The speed of light is measured in Miles Per Second (time) and when we measure the distance to The Eagle Nebula we do so in "Light Years" (time). Time is not only the source of the science but it is also it's limitation. Because man has been so caught up in the concept of Time and its importance to his everyday existence, he cannot conceive of a world without time and hence, everything is determined according to it... Everything, from our meal times to Interest Rates... Everything is focused on Time and man could not do anything without it... and mankind has become it's willing slave. We are a slave to our own creation and in the years to come we will lay down our lives to these computers... With a Pentium 4 we have now split one second into billionths of parts, precisely timed and tuned and so fast that no one could possibly comprehend what man has accomplished with his master "time"... Relativity, used to mean relative to the observer..... Who can observe such blinding speeds..... I watched the movie "The Matrix" recently, for the first time and saw many of my thought and ideas in it. People dodging bullets..... People "morphing" into other people but more than anything, I saw the "mind over matter" of the issue. I see the unlimited power of our minds as able to do anything and everything in that movie, if we were not so bound by the self-imposed limitations that we bear. The, "Don't try, but Do" mentality... But back to relativity. Time is Relativity and if you see a car moving toward you and it has an accident, you will see it sooner than someone who saw the vehicle moving away from them will. It's known as Doppler Shift. And if we could split those seconds into a billion parts we would find that the light returning to the person from where the car came would see the accident just a few fractions of a second after you..... The frequency of the light-waves would not change but the length of time they would take to reach each observer would be faster or slower depending on their perspective or where they were in relation to the car. If there were 50 witnesses, then there would be 50 different versions of the accident. Some might say that the car had a bluish glow while others might see a reddish glow... Some might say that the car hardly seemed to be moving as it was moving away from them, while those in front of the car would probably say that the car was speeding and still those who watched the car go by would say that everything was normal..... Now..... If you put yourself inside the car, you would observe that the car wasn't moving at all but that the whole world was passing by..... or perhaps suddenly the windows went black and the occupants could not see anything outside of the vehicle..... Now they might think that the car was parked as they felt no acceleration while being inside the moving car..... Only when the car has the accident do they become aware of any movement. Now, let's look at something else. Let us say that one of the occupants of the car was tossing a ball into the air and let us measure the distance the car travels from the moment the ball leaves the hand of the person, upwards, to the point the car reaches when it comes back down and touches the person again..... To the occupant the ball just went up and down, but to the observer outside of the car the ball would have traveled about 130 feet, in the air, if the car was going 30 mph and the ball was in the air for 3 seconds. To the observer out side of the car the ball made a short but very long arc, where to the person tossing the ball it simply traveled straight up and back down..... Now, let's look at space travel..... If we were to send a spacecraft to the nearest star and back again at the speed of light, here on earth it would take about 3000 years to get there and return, but inside the spacecraft time would barely have changed and the occupants would be only about 17 years older..... Now, one step further..... If the spacecraft were to accelerate beyond the speed of light, the occupants could return to earth before they even left..... .....Well, before they left in their ages but the earth would be 10,000 years older in earth's time..... So, why the difference? Because the earth has carried on and the space travelers have come back to what would be considered another dimension..... Go figure..... lol So, if time is so flexible, why do we rely on it so heavily??? Because the mind of man needs some sort of order. Time does not exist except in man's mind but its enough to give him something with which to govern the world and make sense of everything. As I said before, it is his most important tool yet at the same time, his greatest limitation. What good are time zones to a space traveler? But, here is something to consider..... As a space traveler gets closer and closer to the speed of light the frequency of the light becomes shorter and shorter to them so, what began as a mere red shift is now becoming whiter and whiter..... If you ever had the occasion to look into a very hot oven, a Kiln, as the objects inside the oven reach the same temperature as the heat, they disappear from view because the wavelengths are the same..... Therefore, the closer that space travelers get to the speed of light the more they would appear as light..... Or, as Einstein felt, they would become Light..... But, would that be only to the observer or would it happen inside the spacecraft too..... If the light inside the spacecraft were moving with them then they could pass the speed of light and everything inside of the spacecraft would remain normal like the boy, tossing the ball inside the car..... |
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