Time
“Time, Dr. Freeman…Is it really that time again?”
--G Man
Two weeks of the new semester are done already. It really is amazing how fast time passes. I remember when I was a little kid everyday seemed like an eternity. The summer between kindergarten and first grade went on forever. In those days I didn’t have a watch and I never cared what time it was. Now we have to plan out every day in order to do everything we want to. I think I use my time better these days; I’m productive. Back when I was a kid I should have been learning algebra and Spanish instead of…uh…doing whatever it is that I did for all those years. I’ve concluded that if you do more things and make accomplishments, the overall experience is more satisfying and memorable, although it may require more work and energy.
My theory for why time seems to pass quicker now is that as time passes each successive minute is a smaller percent of your life up until that point. When you were first born, the second minute of your existence was 50% of your life so far. When I was five years old a minute was 1/2628000th of my life. Now a minute is 1/10944000th of my life. I also think that we lose a lot of time in thought. As we gain more experiences in our memory we spend more time reflecting. As we gain a better understanding of the world around us we spend more time contemplating abstract thoughts and ideas that don’t necessarily pertain to our life at the present. When we were little we tended to live for the moment.
“All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you.”
--Gandalf
I think that each person lives in their own specific consciousness timeline. The basis of this theory is that we measure time by observing it as it passes. Therefore when we sleep we skip ahead relative to real time. So the very next moment after falling asleep is waking up. I tend to think about this when I’m up late at night and I know that someone else went to sleep a few hours ago. While I look at the clock and see that it is 2:18 am, the other person has spent the last couple hours of their streaming consciousness getting up, and is now in his or her first class. If I know that I have something unpleasant to do in the morning, I never want to go to sleep because then the unpleasant event will come sooner. A person who sleeps more progresses through their life faster.
“Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'…Into the future”
--Steve Miller
My physics TA, Big Joe, likes talking about time. He says that the concept of time being linear is artificial. He says that “the ancients” conceived time as circular hoops, and that our abandonment of that theory has led to the downfall of our civilization. He also talks about how the preciseness of what time it is slowly blurs and diffuses. But when someone looks at a clock, time collapses back to a point. He says that he has been practicing going entire days without looking at a clock.
One of my friends posed the question: what time is it on the moon? Now we could just bring an earth clock there but that just wouldn’t make sense. A time scale is based on a day and a year, but I think a day on the moon is a more complicated notion. The moon itself spins, it revolves around the earth, and then the earth goes around the sun. Is a year on the moon how long it takes to go around the Earth, or how long the Earth takes to go around the sun? There is also the fact that the same side of the moon is always facing the earth, which might complicate time zones on the moon. If I ever learn how to tell time on the moon I’ll be sure to post it.
Until next Time…
--G Man
Two weeks of the new semester are done already. It really is amazing how fast time passes. I remember when I was a little kid everyday seemed like an eternity. The summer between kindergarten and first grade went on forever. In those days I didn’t have a watch and I never cared what time it was. Now we have to plan out every day in order to do everything we want to. I think I use my time better these days; I’m productive. Back when I was a kid I should have been learning algebra and Spanish instead of…uh…doing whatever it is that I did for all those years. I’ve concluded that if you do more things and make accomplishments, the overall experience is more satisfying and memorable, although it may require more work and energy.
My theory for why time seems to pass quicker now is that as time passes each successive minute is a smaller percent of your life up until that point. When you were first born, the second minute of your existence was 50% of your life so far. When I was five years old a minute was 1/2628000th of my life. Now a minute is 1/10944000th of my life. I also think that we lose a lot of time in thought. As we gain more experiences in our memory we spend more time reflecting. As we gain a better understanding of the world around us we spend more time contemplating abstract thoughts and ideas that don’t necessarily pertain to our life at the present. When we were little we tended to live for the moment.
“All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you.”
--Gandalf
I think that each person lives in their own specific consciousness timeline. The basis of this theory is that we measure time by observing it as it passes. Therefore when we sleep we skip ahead relative to real time. So the very next moment after falling asleep is waking up. I tend to think about this when I’m up late at night and I know that someone else went to sleep a few hours ago. While I look at the clock and see that it is 2:18 am, the other person has spent the last couple hours of their streaming consciousness getting up, and is now in his or her first class. If I know that I have something unpleasant to do in the morning, I never want to go to sleep because then the unpleasant event will come sooner. A person who sleeps more progresses through their life faster.
“Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'…Into the future”
--Steve Miller
My physics TA, Big Joe, likes talking about time. He says that the concept of time being linear is artificial. He says that “the ancients” conceived time as circular hoops, and that our abandonment of that theory has led to the downfall of our civilization. He also talks about how the preciseness of what time it is slowly blurs and diffuses. But when someone looks at a clock, time collapses back to a point. He says that he has been practicing going entire days without looking at a clock.
One of my friends posed the question: what time is it on the moon? Now we could just bring an earth clock there but that just wouldn’t make sense. A time scale is based on a day and a year, but I think a day on the moon is a more complicated notion. The moon itself spins, it revolves around the earth, and then the earth goes around the sun. Is a year on the moon how long it takes to go around the Earth, or how long the Earth takes to go around the sun? There is also the fact that the same side of the moon is always facing the earth, which might complicate time zones on the moon. If I ever learn how to tell time on the moon I’ll be sure to post it.
Until next Time…