Moving Forward
Yesterday we talked a little bit about time. Specifically how much time we might possibly have to live the rest of our lives with. So, I started wondering about time… what is it really?
We talk about “taking time out,” “wasting time,” “more time,” “time stood still”… as if time is a thing, a commodity, and yet we do actually know (at least most of us know) that this isn’t actually true. Time seems to be more of a measurement, a flow, an experience, a construct, and arbitrary way to keep track of whatever it is we want to keep track of.
Lets Get Scientific:
I was really curious about time, so I did a little bit of research over at Live Science. This is what I came away with:
In the 17th century, physicist Isaac Newton saw time as an arrow fired from a bow, traveling in a direct, straight line and never deviating from its path. To Newton, one second on Earth was the same length of time as that same second on Mars, Jupiter or in deep space.
However, in 1905, Albert Einstein asserted that time was more like a river, ebbing and flowing depending on the effects of gravity and space-time. Time would speed up and slow down around cosmological bodies with differing masses and velocities, and therefore one second on Earth was not the same length of time everywhere in the universe.
Newton and Einstein did agree on one thing, though — that time moves forward. So far, there is no evidence of anything in the universe that is able to dodge time and move forwards and backward at will. Everything ultimately moves forward in time, be it at a regular pace or slightly warped if approaching the speed of light.
But why does time tick forward?
Scientists aren’t certain, but they have several theories. One of these brings in the laws of thermodynamics, specifically the second law. This states that everything in the universe wants to move from low to high entropy, or from uniformity to disorder, beginning with simplicity at the Big Bang and moving to the almost random arrangement of galaxies and their inhabitants in the present day. This is known as the “arrow of time,” or sometimes “time’s arrow.”
Eddington suggested that time was not symmetrical: “If as we follow the arrow, we find more and more of the random element in the state of the world, then the arrow is pointing towards the future; if the random element decreases, the arrow points towards the past,” he wrote in “The Nature of the Physical World” in 1928.
Another theory suggests that the passage of time is due to the expansion of the universe. As the universe expands, it pulls time with it, as space and time are linked as one; but this would mean that if the universe were to reach a theoretical limit of expansion and begin to contract, then time would reverse — a slight paradox for scientists and astronomers.
Would time really move backward, with everything coming back to an era of simplicity and ending with a Big Crunch? It’s unlikely we will be around to find out, but scientists can postulate on what might happen.
Something to contemplate:
- How does time work for you?
- Does your life move forward as if shot from an arrow?
- Or is your life more of a meandering river?
What about a Big Bang? Boom! And everything explodes increasingly out of control? This tends to be my experience. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Oh and speaking of time… our Countdown Timer Widget has gone wonky and says we have 911 days for this project? Does it know something I don’t know? What the heck?
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Time for me… it’s more like a weak internet connection when I’m watching a really good show… suddenly it gets all digitty and starts to cut out and then the screen goes blank and suddenly I missed the best part of the show!