Time. The idea of time is subjective and objective at the same time depending on your frame of reference. I want to talk about how the idea of time has influenced us, infact, conditioned us in a way that we just can’t break free from it.

We perceive time to be an intangible dimension that moves forward. How true is this? Does time actually “move forward”? What does it mean for time to move forward? Before answering these questions, we need to clarify how we see time and what it actually is.

I won’t dive into the details of physics as this article is not about that.

It’s all in the stars!

Why is 1 second that long and not more or less? I’m spellbound every time I ponder on how fascinating physics is and all that we are today, is by observing and deriving patterns to the events that happen around us and creating generalizations which can be reproduced.

If you look up the definition of 1 second, it says: “9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom”. That’s a mouthful. What our brain has been conditioned to think is:”tick-tick-tick…”. At some point in history, it was not possible to measure the ground state of cesium. We use this to sync our clocks and systems so that we can communicate properly in the digital age.

Before this, astronomers looked up and observed some repetitive patterns of the movement of Sun, the brightest object in the sky. A single revolution of Earth around the Sun is defined as a “year”. A single rotation of Earth is called a “day”. The need to divide year and day in more granular terms was for us to work and communicate with it. Some cultures rather have a lunar calendar.

So when someone says, I’m 31 years old. It’s not really personal. It simply means, since the time you were born, earth has gone around the sun 31 times! And so it has for the rest of the people too!!

This same notion of time would not apply if you lived on moon or mars or any other planet. (Of course, you can still use cesium’s atomic transitions to define a second, but that might not work well in multiples.)

Black Holes & Gravity

Black holes are particularly interesting! According to relativity, time slows down as closer you approach a black hole or anything with more gravity. Time would move slower for a satellite orbiting closer to sun. Heck, even our geostationery satellites experience the time dilation effect compared to the surface of earth. GPS systems account for that and adjusts it to not affect the accuracy.

This is ofcourse, relative to some frame of reference. For the person closer to black hole, the “tick-tick-tick…” will still be the same. So, what does it mean to say time slows down?

When we talk about space-time, time is nothing but a vector co-ordinate.

Probably you’ve seen a similar picture? Closer to a heavier object, the time vector is larger, rest remaining the same.

The time that we talk about w.r.t to our solar system and earth is different than the space-time vector. They are the same in mathematical sense but not when we talk about time in day to day basis.

It is true that a person away from a black hole would age faster relative to the person closer to the black hole i.e. two babies born at the same instant on places close and away from black hole, if they meet after 1 earth year, they will be of different age. By age I mean the biological growth. Assuming all this were possible to observe, we will need to create a new mental model than we currently have to grasp time.

But let’s come back to earth where the frame of reference is the same for everyone (similar gravity everywhere). And where we are always so worried about time!

Movement of Time

What I described in the last two sections was meant to understand the nature of time seen from a scientific lens. Which ofcourse we don’t think about when we say things like, “I’ll be 5 minutes late” or “I want to marry by 30”. What do we mean when we say “passage of time”? There is no tangible thing that we can point to and say this is what it means. We all feel that, but does it have any meaning to it?

Here’s a thought experiment:

Close your eyes (after reading this block :p). What comes to your mind when I ask you to imagine reversing time? Mind you, I’m not asking “going back in time” but “reversing time”.

Did you imagine a clock rotating anti-clockwise? Or a person running backwards? Something similar to how they show in movies when they are rewinding time? Events happening in reverse?

What we are essentially doing is imagining the events in reverse. But does that mean the time is moving backwards? We can easily create a clock that rotates the other way around and call that clockwise direction. Or we can run backwards but that does not mean time is going backwards.

Stop reading. Imagine planets rotating around the sun. Observe the movement.

Were the planets moving clockwise or anti-clockwise? I bet they were moving clockwise(for most people). It’s so interesting that even when we try to imagine the movement of planets around the sun, we perceive it clockwise!! Observing the same movements of the planets from below rather than the above (opposite side of plane of reference) will make it anti-clockwise and yet we almost never imagine that. We always think in clockwise first. Why? I call it the clock rotation bias. (Not sure if this term is already taken). We have always been surrounded by clocks since childhood. Everywhere in the world! It’s really really difficult to imagine a world without clocks. Even the digital watches have clock faces!!

We have been so conditioned since our childhood that we derive strong correlation between an event and the movement of time. It is extremely difficult to imagine doing something or even observing something without a reference of time. Sometimes its conscious, sometimes unconscious. If a volcanic eruption is perceived as time moving forwards (since the reverse event is not possible/rare), does a sinkhole means the time is moving backwards?

Thus we can say that there is no actual “movement of time”, only how we perceive it. And our perception is always dependent from the reference of an event. As such, there is no concept of time as we perceive and have been conditioned to perceive.

Going Backwards

Assuming time travel is possible, (consider it as going to a certain point in the space-time co-ordinate system) it still has no implications as such on the events itself. What would really happen is you will observe an event that has already happened, in the traditional sense of the meaning of time travel. But since you have not been there, from your reference, the event is brand new and you’re observing it afresh!

If you argue that what if I keep going back again? Then my answer to that is you still do that already! Imagine going to the same restaurant everyday at the same time. The moment you go back in time, you are already creating an element of change (Butterfly effect) which IMO is similar to eating at same restaurant example.

My Life

You must be wondering why am I blabbering so much about time! For me it is fascinating how an intangible concept of time, has made us do things and shape how we live our lives. We are slaves to it. Slaves of something that does not really exist other than a tool to measure and explain physical phenomena. We know as a matter of fact that electrons are constantly moving around trillions of protons. And yet that has negligible effect on our day to day lives, how we think and how we want to live our lives.

We pay no attention to the reality that is but willingly enslave our lives to a reality that isn’t.

I’m in no ways saying that keeping time isn’t important. It is a great unit to measure, compare and understand the reality.

Putting pressure on our selves, which are time-dependent, simply doesn’t make sense. Getting education by 20, marriage by 30, starting your own venture by 40, are nothing but a poor yardstick designed to compete in an unfair world. We know for a fact that each individual is different biologically, let alone psychologically and yet we use the same yardstick to evaluate everyone.

Off lately, I’ve started to think of my life not in my age but in terms of events. For example, I want to pursue a PhD. Whenever I can, I will take that up and not by certain age. Of course, there are physical restrictions to some activity as your body gets old but those are few and vary based on how well you’ve treated your body. Seeing the world in terms of events, takes pressure off of you and other people. Easier said than done. This will take time as it is indeed difficult to perceive your life without a frame of time.

When - is the question, I think, doesn’t make much sense. People grow at different pace, in all sorts of qualities. I’m learning to be more patient and accepting of this fact rather than setting my own expectations by my standards.

P.S. This blog is a result of discussions with my brother and his insights were pretty cool!