| NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE |
|
| 7th March 2002 - Page 4 |
| THE NATURE OF TIME |
as observed by two carbon based life forms on an insignificant speck of blue and green in the western spiral arm of a rather ordinary galaxy. | |||
| NO TIME ON MY HANDS |
TIME IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER |
|||
| The position of something can only be expressed as relative to something else. This shows that space is not absolute i.e. you can not show the position or velocity of anything independently. But an experiment conducted by two scientist, Michelson and Morley, shows that the speed of light is constant and will be the same regardless of the speed of the source or the speed of the observer. Since distance is a spatial quantity, it is not absolute. This at the very least shows that time is not absolute. If time indeed existed it would be the same everywhere. But just look at the night sky you see Alpha Centuri as it was 4 years ago (time taken for it's light to reach us), while some stars we see as they were eight billion years ago. So what is that quantity which is different for everything? Assuming that the big bang theory is correct, time does not exist. Hubble himself said that there was no time before the big bang. At the instant of the big bang large (possibly infinite) amounts of matter and energy were thrown out. Where did this time come? There is no evidence to support the existence of time. So it is logical to assume that it doesn't exist. I hope that at the very least this article will let me get away with coming to school late. Daksh Varma
|
We know that motion and time is all relative and there exist no universal clock. This causes a phenomena called time dilation to occur. What this means is that if two space ships have two identical clocks on board and are moving away from each other, a person on one of the ships will notice that the clock on the other ship is moving slower that usual, hence time has slowed down for him. Unfortunately this phenomena cannot be experienced on day to day basis on earth due to the velocity of things around us is very low. So time dilation does not occur (clocks don't slow down). But what if we were manually to slow these clocks down? What I mean to say is, what if we actually tamper with the other persons clock without him knowing. It is then that we would experience time travel in the true sense. For example Moe and Joe are supposed to witness a event (let’s say a play). They are supposed to arrive at the hall at 10:00 am. If we were to slow Joe's clock by one hour,
|
so at 10:00 am (according to his clock) it is actually 11:00. So when he arrives Joe will find everyone leaving the hall. So effectively an event, which was supposed to occur, is not happening, but the initial events are occurring. So logi
cally he has traveled ahead in time at 10:00 am. Abhishek Narula Left: An actual clipping takenfrom a newspaper in America. |
||
