Aug
Death of Time!
Posted by
We are all familiar with the age old saying ‘Time and tide waits for no wo/man’. We are all caught up in our race against the clock in our daily life. From the time the buzzer of the Alarm croaks until late in the night when the clock/watch indicates that it is past our bed time, therefore we must sleep! ‘Time’ it is an absolutely inherit part of our daily life. It is an irreversible force that carries us from birth to death the natural process called aging indicating that the body clock is ticking. Time is one of the fundamental dimensions of the universe we know. But what is this ‘Time’? For all those Indians like me who grew up watching the mythological soap Mahabharata on television; Time was denoted as a picture of the stars whizzing past as the camera spear headed through space. At the center a wheel that rotates clockwise and a voice that said ‘I am time’. As a child this image had an everlasting impact on my thinking. If I have to visualize time how would I do it? In our conscious mind as we grow up from being toddlers to adults we ‘learn’ to have a measure of time much like learning a language but that is really nothing but a acquired skill.
The question as to what if Time did not really exist would certainly seem far fetched? But I am going to make that claim. Absolute Time ‘t’ is nothing more then an illusion! Many of us will find this idea unfathomable and perhaps will not bother to even read further. But please bear with me for ‘some time’ (pun intended). I think it will be a little too hasty. In this passage I will make a conscious effort in the interest of ordinary readers to understand and contemplate this radical idea.I will stay away form the world of Quantum Physics to make this as interesting as possible and let you the readers decide. Since this cannot be be done in brief (and I am not talking about stripping into my essentials while writing here) this might be a little longer but the idea to ask the question and let you decide for yourself.
What is time: There are many ways that we can look at time, but the two major classifications that time tends to be grouped under are relative time and absolute time. The main difference between the two is numbers. When categorizing time as relative, there is no use for numbers: there are no dates or quantitative measurements for the passage of relative time. Relative time, (Chronostratic time- just another name), is determined by looking at its relationship to other events. It is usually measured relative to other known events. Absolute time on the other hand, is its mirror image since it is based entirely on numbers. Absolute time (Chronometric time- you guessed it-another name), is usually measured in years, though it can be based on measurements using a combination of time units.
For instance, let’s say you wanted to know the age of a fossil (historic relic). If we knew the age of the rock in which the fossil was found, we could determine the age of the fossil, relative to the age of the rock. This is one example of relative time. Einstein brought new ideas to the field of time physics when he began to categorize time as relative in his theory of relativity (we don’t have to go there).
On the other hand, you could carbon date the specimen and come up with an exact age, say 15,000 years old. This is an example of absolute time since you will quantify the age with some specific number.
Now that we know what is ‘Time’ let me take you to the fundamental question that I ask ‘Existence of time’. Let’s start with an example that we are all familiar with. Imagine I get my hands on the famed ‘Sholay’ movie reel (reel- a Strip of Film containing individual frames). There is a sequence of frames from the time Veru is alive until the last frame where he dies in the arms of his friend Jay. I will call each individual frame as a ‘NOW’ the snapshot of what is happening at that particular instant. When we stitch all the NOW’s together and run it on a reel we get a sense of motion and time. Time and sequence of motion are interlinked. We cannot have a sequence where Jay is dead that is shown prior to him singing a song with his beloved friend Veeru (unless it’s a flashback). What is interesting and important to note is that each of the NOWS or individual frames can exist on their own. Meaning I could very well just have a reel that shows two friends in which one of them Jay dies in Veeru’s arms a perfectly valid snapshot of NOW. But when it is succeeded as mentioned above by two friends singing a song the reader will know something is not in sync. If you noticed the NOW’s or snapshots are not dependent on the preceding and following frames. So let me ask you if you only look at a particular NOW does that give you any indication to a sense of time? There are two people Jay and Veeru sitting on a Bike and singing. The entities or objects in the frame are complete in all respect on their own. Now detach the two friends from the boundaries of the Frame and put them in the universe beyond the earth’s atmosphere amidst the stars. What do you see? You see Jay, Veeru and the Bike (JVB) in space. Now put yourself in the same space as they are. If you are stationary and JVB are moving through space they ‘appear’ to be traveling in space. However if you are moving along with them then they ‘Appear’ to be stationary. This again highlights the point that motion and time are interlinked. What if JVB and you are moving in parallel? You could be moving around the entire universe and yet feel that you have not moved an inch and this can go on and on and we would see nothing changing at all! We all know that all the objects in the universe are moving away from each other spreading out in the vast universe (expanding universe). Perhaps that is what really gives us the illusion that time exists? I would like you to think about it.
Of course another practical problem here is that you are a living object and that the objects present in the universe out there are life less. So the next obvious question is that they decay of the living object Jay and Veeru and with that a sense of passing time! But hold on to that thought. The decay of Jay and verru is only seen when we sequence a series of NOW’s. A rock that you see for example is an inanimate object but does that ‘rock’, have a sense of time. A rock or an inanimate object is the result of some activity that happened in the subatomic particles (I am deliberately keeping the details out to keep it simple) perhaps a lava eruption or sedimentation to form the rock. Therefore it is reasonable to say a rock is nothing but a record of that particular event. A frozen frame much like the frame in the movie were Jay is dead or another frame when he was alive sitting on a bike. On the same lines the Lava ‘was’ a viscous fluid emitting heat before it cooled down in its final resting place to form a rock. The activity that was seen in the subatomic particles eventually made the rock we see. In a different instance of NOW it would have shown us molten lava. Tomorrow the rock might be hit by a boulder and will be slithered into dust but that again will be a different frame much like the frames that we have in our movie. Do any of those individual instances of NOW’s give you an essence of time? Perhaps not, it’s only when you join the NOW’s in a chronological sequence do you get an essence of time.
Another example I would bring your attention to is the flip book. Something we all are familiar with. As kids we would flip the pages of the book to create the image of a person drinking coke or batsman completing his cricket stroke. A sequence of images each with subtle differences when flipped using the thumb gives a sense of motion and a conscious feeling of passing time. However if we look at any individual page that is on the flip book what do we experience? We see the person and the drink is the frame it exists all by itself. Now if you were to stare at the same frame forever would that ever change? I guess not. Another essential ingredient to our sense of time is the difference between Day and night. But does this really indicate passing time? We will look at this in the subsequent passage. I will also try and indicate to you how can you visualize a universe without time and then let the reader decide his final verdict. Hopefully you will indeed read the subsequent passage to follow this one. Until then I will leave you with a question asked directed at me during one such discussion. Most of us have dreamt in our sleep. I want to ask you the reader how many of us recall that our dream had an essence of time in our dream when we recollect the dream. Think about it perhaps that will get your curiosity going about Time and its existence until then I call a – ‘time out’ !
……Mango Man (aam Aadmi)
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Related posts:
- Why CAT should always be offline
- What keeps you going? – The Motivating factor
- Hitler: An Idol??
- Lessons from the Weekend movie
- Chaos and assorted ramblings about management by numbers and judgment calls
- Bookmark :
- Digg
- del.icio.us
- Stumbleupon
- Redit it
13 Responses to “Death of Time!”
Subscribe!
Utter disrespect
to that magnum opus called Sholay:
>>There is a sequence of frames from the time Veru is alive until the last frame where he dies in the arms of his friend Jay.
Jay died in arms of Veeru
>>Perhaps that is what really gives us the illusion that time exists?
If nothing changes, someone is not aged, nothing moves(its like a still pic/frame); then needless to say time has stopped. But we cannot conclude ‘time does not exist’.
In my view, your whole discussion is actually ‘inability to measure the time without a reference w.r.t. time’. You have discussed how one can lose ability to measure time in certain circumstances when you see no change in environment. But that doesn’t prove ‘non-existence of time’ or ‘death of time’.
“Perhaps not, it’s only when you join the NOW’s in a chronological sequence do you get an essence of time.”
Exercise in pointlessness; study in contradiction.
This is by far the most irritating article i have read on strat.in. The admins on this forum should abolish such writing.
For starters, it has absolutely nothing to do with strategy.
Tomorrow, some 6-year old may come up with a BS theory on how his bed is a time-machine. You lie in it, lose consciousness (read sleep) and it transports you 8 hours ahead. Awesome.
Why don’t the concerned people on strat.in give that hypothetical 6 year old a chance to write here ??
And to think that our very own Sukesh puts a comment trying to make some sense out of this imbecile piece of writing.
This article makes me want to vomit. Badly.
@sudipto
lol
I didn’t read it as strategy article, but just as chit-chat. But yes, your point is correct that blog is not a personal blog, there should be better administrated.
>>’our very own Sukesh’
@sudipto – Sir, we appreciate criticism and take it very seriously too.
Few days back, we had started this as a part of the reflections series as well. (Check post category) This was on special request by readers who wanted the authors to write on something different as well. I guess, you may have missed this development on the blog . Check http://strat.in/category/reflections for more. Reflections was positioned as a category where there is a non-strategy element to the article, yet its interesting for people with different tastes.
@sukesh – yes, we monitor posts meticulously here! Welcome to the strat.in community, and would like to see more comments from you here!
Maybe we need to make the title more descriptive that the article is not strategy and actually reflections. Thanks for the comments, we will try to resolve this issue soon.
My comments were only directed towards the caliber of writing. I am a regular reader of your blog and for the past few days (well a few weeks, to be precise), I have found the writing to be below par.
Maybe a majority of stuff i get to read these days is from “reflections”. In any case, it should be seperated from the core philosophy of your blog – maybe a seperate page ?
Though, I must mention that a few of the articles i have read are absolute brilliance : e.g. the ramayana v/s mahabharata article. The others posted by shubham are pretty good as well.
But on the whole, i find the quality of your blog to be deteriorating very quickly. Because i have been a regular reader (although not posted a lot of comments, i must admit), i am genuinely pained to see what the blog has become. Frankly, its reached a point where anyone, just anyone can keep posting whatever he feels like.
This has to stop. Or the readers will take their viewership elsewhere.
@ Sudipto.
Thanks for that extremely constructive feedback. It would be nice to know the kind and nature of articles that readers admire. And one metric we have is the comments on the post. Would it be possible to write a small comment whenever you really like a post and maybe a long, descriptive one when you don’t? That would be really appreciated.
Few thoughts:
@Sudipto: Appreciate your concern and thanks for the feedback, and I’m glad you enjoyed my Ramayana v/s Mahabharata article. We will take your comments under advisement, and we’d also appreciate your comments on our other posts as well. Like Gupte said, our best source of feedback is comments.
@Author: I agree with Sudipto here, although we should give a little bit of leeway to the author since he does mention that there is a second part, but there are a few things I’d like to say:
1) This article does indeed feature no analysis, though it does offer some interesting insights, but these would have been more at home at a science/metaphysics blog rather than a strategy blog. I know that there is a second part, but this part did seem a bit longer than necessary, and doesn’t really have anything to say that would be at home in Strat.in
2) The writing style is a little heavy and overbearing, and it is an example of what is commonly referred to on the internet as “Wall of Text”.
You do have a lot to say, and I agree that it would take a certain amount of space to put forward your ideas, but you could have improved on your presentation. For example, you could have kept shorter blocks of texts, or used pictures to drive home a point. This would have made it much easier on the reader.
For instance, the Flip Book is an excellent example, but you could have made it a little easier for the reader, by either a pictorial example, or by putting your ideas in bullet points.
@Abhishek: Sure. Its not a big deal. I think it might be very difficult to run a blog which has a really huge author base and your work is totally commendable. Having said that, the problem, I feel is a classic case of quantity over quality. Atleast that is what is being portrayed across. Maybe a bit more focus on quality and cutting down on quantity could help you people. Just a suggestion.
@Abhiram: You make a very interesting point number 1. This is what I was exactly arguing for. And keep the good work coming in. I went through your comics article as well and found them very interesting read.
@Shubham: Liked your recent article on facebook lite. I think you and Abhiram contribute the best work on strat.in. Although to a finance guy, Abhishek’s articles would seem extremely impressive as well.
@comments: thank you all for a few constructive comments.
@ Sudipto:
1. This was never intended to be an article of strategy.
2. This is a radical idea in physics and difficult to comprehend but one that does have credence. The idea of writing this blog was to possibly present this in the terms that a wider audience can relate or think about without any background to Quantum Physics or mathematics. Hence the examples though I must say I am not very good at hindi movies!
3. Incidentally this is not a Whim that I alone am personally perusing like ‘bed being a time machine’. For starters if you want to know more with out getting into the details of Quantum physics may I humbly recommend a book that can quick start this ‘THE END OF TIME’ by Julian Roberts’.
4. ‘Time’ did not exist before the ‘big bang’ (also known as singularity) in the universe, this might be a far fetched idea to contemplate but this is a fact which leads to one stream of thought that says time is not an absolute entity in physics.
@Abrahim:
1. Appreciate your view on presentation and will present more pictorial view when dealing with such subjects.
2. I would love to present the mathematically equations here that will certainly drive the analysis aspect but cannot be done in couple of short blocks.
@Suresh:
1. I must admit this was indeed a faux paus, an oversight but the idea was to try and project a rather abstract idea that can be better understood and all can relate to.
‘Time’ did not exist before the ‘big bang’ – Mangoman, but isn’t there a theory in Physics by Fred Hoyle called “Steady state theory” which states that the Universe had always been in existence.
I liked your article – in fact, I did not read this article as one of strategy, rather, an attempt to tell something different. Your Faux Pas on Sholay doesn’t matter to me (though I am a big fan of the movie) – because the idea was not to write about Sholay, but something else.
But, it would be easier on the eye and mind for ignorant readers like me if you could keep the language a bit lighter
@Mangoman : I am aware of the theory. It has been in circulation for many years now. It started with the wheeler dewitt equation (Which btw i have no interest in googling and finding out). But that is besides the point.
The contention here is why the blog owners admit such an article in a place which is primarily intended for strategy related discussions. You need not be defensive. Maybe on a different blog, at a different time (if you think it exists) i might have not been so uptight about it. Although I daresay, the writing style leaves a lot to be desired. Maybe you could implement a few of the suggestions given by your friends.
Also, my comments were not specifically directed at you. In case they hurt you, i apologize.
@kaushik: liked your recent article on freedom fighters. Its a shame our history books have conveniently obliterated their names in favour of some other bigger ones.
@others: kaushik’s article is a good example of how even non-strategy articles can be entertaining, provided we know that we are reading in context of the incredible indians contest. Maybe it has to do with the blog headline and how the article is being conveyed across.