What is time?
Is it the clocks you see around every day? Is it an infinite tick-tock across the universe? How to define something that is so vast and long and has no evidence of birth? I've been collecting my own thoughts and answers from everybody around me to understand more about this so-called fourth dimension. Trust me, I'm nowhere near a definite answer. Each time, I end up with a unique idea about time.
Time is constructed by our brain. This is what some of them said. When we are in a very pleasant situation, we feel like we spent less time in that situation. When the situation is unpleasant, we tend to feel that the 'bad time' never ends and it is long. Some of them also had an opinion that when we're bored, time moves slow. When we are busy with doing something fun, time moves fast. Is this true?
Time is like a river. For a practical world, time is always unidirectional. There is past which can't be touched, a present which can't be changed and a future which can't be seen. Time is something which has existed since the beginning of the universe (if there is any!) and will exist till the very end (if there is any!). This however leads to many controversial thoughts that further lead us astray. If time has existed ever since the two singularities bombarded to give us the universe we live in, what was before that? Negative time? No time at all? The thoughts become too deep and philosophical. We use time to keep record of the events but who kept the record of time itself?
So how to measure time? The clocks we use are just one of the many methods to check what the time is. Ancient astronomers depended entirely on the cosmos. They constructed simple devices like sun dials and sand glasses. Even a straight pole on the ground served as an instrument to measure time using the shadow cast by the pole. Time measured using the cosmos is not really accurate. As civilizations developed, measuring time became more and more accurate. We now have atomic clocks. These clocks are the most accurate ones we've ever made. In fact, "one second" is defined by the concept of atomic clocks. "One second is the time that elapses during 9,192,631,770 cycles of the radiation produced by the transition between two levels of the caesium 133 atom". Okay so is this what time really is? We have measured the whole entity so very accurately, but this is nowhere close to what horologists say. Time is relative.
Yes, being the most accepted idea by the science community, relativity concept was first introduced by the genius Albert Einstein. According to him, time dilation is a difference in the elapsed time measured by two observers, either due to a velocity difference relative to each other, or by being differently situated relative to a gravitational field. In other words, time need not be the same for everyone, literally. Let's take an example to understand what this means. Consider a hypothetical situation where there is a clock on a spaceship that can travel at a speed almost equal to that of light. You have a similar clock with you on Earth.
The clocks are simultaneously switched on at the same time and the spaceship takes off at that exact moment. After an hour here on Earth, you contact the person on the spaceship to ask what time the clock there reads. Surprisingly, the time there is slower and it won't be an hour. It will always be lesser than that. So, this means that "time slows down for the objects that are in motion". This phenomenon has actually been proven by using atomic clocks. The one which was on a plane ticked slower than the one on the ground.
One more theory is that our universe is stitched with a fabric called space-time which joins the concept of space and time into a single idea called the continuum. According to this theory, the universe is a complex plane fabric and wherever matter exists, the continuum is bent due to a property of matter called mass. The heavier the object, the larger the bend. A black hole is so heavy that it rips apart the space-time continuum and it leads us to a singularity called a tesseract(hypothetical). From where we started, we considered time as a unidirectional dimension which can't be reversed... or can it be? If you have watched the amazing sci-fi movie "Interstellar" then you must've noticed that in the end, the protagonist enters a tesseract where he sees his past. So, what most scientists presume is that a black hole is a place where space-time continuum is bent so much that you can break the 'universal assumption' that time can't be reversed. So, this tesseract is hypothetically assumed to be a 'wrinkle in space-time'. Can time be reversed?
Our human mind is so very limited to the three-dimensional world that it becomes very difficult to even assume higher dimensions. We might consider time to be like a flow of river but is it really true? For understanding theories like 'The String Theory', higher dimensions (I assume it to be 10-D) are necessary. So, is time a vast ocean? Can it be reversed? Can it be slowed down? We get more questions than answers.
Okay. Take a break. Let's get back to where we started. We just went through a lot of information. Did we define time? Well, it sounds exhausting but no, we haven't. Every single concept about time is true in its own way. We cannot come to a conclusion that one theory is perfect and true. But what we can conclude is that our brain is capable of getting so many different answers and is insanely awesome! We might not have defined what time is but we sure have a lot of questions to ponder about. Are we stitched with the fabric called time? Can we reverse time?
What is time?
OR
Does time even exist...?
Time is constructed by our brain. This is what some of them said. When we are in a very pleasant situation, we feel like we spent less time in that situation. When the situation is unpleasant, we tend to feel that the 'bad time' never ends and it is long. Some of them also had an opinion that when we're bored, time moves slow. When we are busy with doing something fun, time moves fast. Is this true?
Time is like a river. For a practical world, time is always unidirectional. There is past which can't be touched, a present which can't be changed and a future which can't be seen. Time is something which has existed since the beginning of the universe (if there is any!) and will exist till the very end (if there is any!). This however leads to many controversial thoughts that further lead us astray. If time has existed ever since the two singularities bombarded to give us the universe we live in, what was before that? Negative time? No time at all? The thoughts become too deep and philosophical. We use time to keep record of the events but who kept the record of time itself?
So how to measure time? The clocks we use are just one of the many methods to check what the time is. Ancient astronomers depended entirely on the cosmos. They constructed simple devices like sun dials and sand glasses. Even a straight pole on the ground served as an instrument to measure time using the shadow cast by the pole. Time measured using the cosmos is not really accurate. As civilizations developed, measuring time became more and more accurate. We now have atomic clocks. These clocks are the most accurate ones we've ever made. In fact, "one second" is defined by the concept of atomic clocks. "One second is the time that elapses during 9,192,631,770 cycles of the radiation produced by the transition between two levels of the caesium 133 atom". Okay so is this what time really is? We have measured the whole entity so very accurately, but this is nowhere close to what horologists say. Time is relative.
Yes, being the most accepted idea by the science community, relativity concept was first introduced by the genius Albert Einstein. According to him, time dilation is a difference in the elapsed time measured by two observers, either due to a velocity difference relative to each other, or by being differently situated relative to a gravitational field. In other words, time need not be the same for everyone, literally. Let's take an example to understand what this means. Consider a hypothetical situation where there is a clock on a spaceship that can travel at a speed almost equal to that of light. You have a similar clock with you on Earth.
The clocks are simultaneously switched on at the same time and the spaceship takes off at that exact moment. After an hour here on Earth, you contact the person on the spaceship to ask what time the clock there reads. Surprisingly, the time there is slower and it won't be an hour. It will always be lesser than that. So, this means that "time slows down for the objects that are in motion". This phenomenon has actually been proven by using atomic clocks. The one which was on a plane ticked slower than the one on the ground.
One more theory is that our universe is stitched with a fabric called space-time which joins the concept of space and time into a single idea called the continuum. According to this theory, the universe is a complex plane fabric and wherever matter exists, the continuum is bent due to a property of matter called mass. The heavier the object, the larger the bend. A black hole is so heavy that it rips apart the space-time continuum and it leads us to a singularity called a tesseract(hypothetical). From where we started, we considered time as a unidirectional dimension which can't be reversed... or can it be? If you have watched the amazing sci-fi movie "Interstellar" then you must've noticed that in the end, the protagonist enters a tesseract where he sees his past. So, what most scientists presume is that a black hole is a place where space-time continuum is bent so much that you can break the 'universal assumption' that time can't be reversed. So, this tesseract is hypothetically assumed to be a 'wrinkle in space-time'. Can time be reversed?
Our human mind is so very limited to the three-dimensional world that it becomes very difficult to even assume higher dimensions. We might consider time to be like a flow of river but is it really true? For understanding theories like 'The String Theory', higher dimensions (I assume it to be 10-D) are necessary. So, is time a vast ocean? Can it be reversed? Can it be slowed down? We get more questions than answers.
Okay. Take a break. Let's get back to where we started. We just went through a lot of information. Did we define time? Well, it sounds exhausting but no, we haven't. Every single concept about time is true in its own way. We cannot come to a conclusion that one theory is perfect and true. But what we can conclude is that our brain is capable of getting so many different answers and is insanely awesome! We might not have defined what time is but we sure have a lot of questions to ponder about. Are we stitched with the fabric called time? Can we reverse time?
What is time?
OR
Does time even exist...?
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