The way it is

Time

Time is one of many human abstracts. An idea. A concept. Wonderful but non-existent. We have plenty of things we can use to represent the so called passing of time, but you know, I know that no one can pick up time. No one can hold time in their hand. Time is just something we believe exists. Time is imaginary.

Let’s begin with the history of the concept. Why did someone decide to set 24 as the number of hours in a day? Why not 25 or 30, or some other number? The magic of numbers. It is an inherent magic. One that has profound implications whilst being nothing special. 24 can be divided by 1,2,3,4,6,8,12 evenly. 25 can only be divided by 1 and 5. A small change in the number, in this case one more, 24-25, and things are so different. Simple numbers, small differences, large impact. I will show you the impact. It is huge. The manifestation of all structures in nature, in physics and chemistry boil down to simple facets of integer whole numbers.

How old are you precisely? Every year that passes is not the same length. By length I mean the number of pulses counted in a clock. Water clocks were built long ago to give us a rudimentary way of counting time. We upgraded those to an electronic circuit containing a quartz crystal. They were superseded by a clock that counts the oscillations of an electron in a caesium atom. Your age is not a number of years, months and days but a number of counts in a clock. We add a day, every so often to a year, to make life unfair for some. Those lucky enough to be classed as born on a leap day get to celebrate their birthday once every four years rather than every year.

Atomic clocks are most accurate except they are not. Put two of them synced, side by side and take one on a journey. When it returns, the time shown on each is different. A change in velocity changes the mass effect thereby changing the relative rate of pulses in any clock.

We measure our age by years that contain a differing number of days, days that get slightly longer each day, with a clock that has inconsistencies. Perhaps those that view time as being a constant fixed reliable entity are people that can pin down what love is and prove that money is real.

We discuss time, love and money as if they are something tangible. Yet they are nothing but human created abstracts. We feel time is a steady, reliable thing. We feel that we live our lives in a segment within a grander continuum. We acknowledge that time is something we can’t control. However, we can manipulate the things by which we measure time. The oscillations in the atom that we use to count time passing is affected by acceleration. We could therefore compensate somehow for any acceleration that a clock maybe subjected to. However, we have no reference point. We can’t pin down our underlying velocity or acceleration we are being subjected to. We are on a planet that is spinning on an axis that wobbles, in a solar system on the move within a galaxy that is also moving. Where on Earth is standard universal time. Where is the clock that governs the universe? What we can be sure about, is that as something moves from one point to another, a number of oscillations can be counted. Things move a relative distance whilst a number of counts are counted.

Our ideas of the world are based on subjective personal experience. I will give you a simple illustration. The manger asked a new employee to get a job completed by the end of the day. Five o’clock came and went but no work was handed in. The manger called in the employee to explain themselves. There was a look of perplexment on the employee’s face. They thought they had until midnight to complete the assignment. The manager assumed all people knew that a day in this context means a working day, nine till five. What you believe to be, ain’t necessarily so. The essence of time is one of that many things that we haven’t fully thought through.

Clocks are good enough for practical purposes. We can stay in sync with each other accurately enough. Clocks ensure we go to bed at a suitable time. Clocks help us arrive outside a meeting room simultaneously with others so that we can walk in two by two. Clocks aid our life. Yet time is not a thing. When you examine the failings in your understanding of so-called time, you also uncover a range of other things that are also wrong. From there you can get a new understanding of how things are and a new reassurance that you are not wasting you days believing in falsehoods. The only way people can keep you accepting nonsense is if they threaten you with punishments and hardships. Life is a little better when you believe in better.