So I had another errant thought the other day and I haven't really had any free time to play with it. So I thought I'd open the idea to the entire blogosphere to see if anyone has anything deep to add to the discussion.
The question is basically this: Is Time Fixed?
Now what got me to start thinking down this road are two things: first was the idea of relativity. In that, our perception of space is relative to our movement through it. Or to use the thought exercise from Einstein, if you are on a train, everything is whizzing by your window, but if you're outside, the train window is whizzing by you. Applied to time in a practical manner, does time itself alter the further away you are from events? Or does time remain static and only our view of it alters as we get further away from the event?
This led me to my second road: entropy. Or to put it more bluntly, nothing ever remains the same. Physical properties of all substances are constantly breaking down, transforming, etc... But since Entropy seems to be a function of time, does it also have an effect on the physical properties of a fixed event in time?
How does this all break out? Well, let's say that time was not fixed. Using an example of Bob the Caveman inventing the wheel, that fact might remain true for say, 1 million years. But eventually, as you got further and further from the event, the facts behind it would begin to erode. Time, itself, would begin to unravel, to fade, to be obliterated by all that follows that event. It would mean, in a practical sense, that after a certain point the past would be a meaningless blur.
We, of course, would take this for granted. We can't possibly know who invented the wheel, right? Its before there was any recorded history. But what about the events of yesterday. Are they fixed? Did what you did yesterday have any permanence whatsoever? Or will it fade from history and memory when there are no forces left to leave it in physical place (i.e. Its not recorded and there is no memory of it by any still alive)? Is this a natural function of space/time? Or is this only a function of limited human knowledge?
Anyway, I was just exploring cool ideas about time. I don't think we can suss out a real answer to the question, but its certainly fun playing around with it.
1 comment:
I suggest acquiring Paul Davies' The Last Three Minutes which deals with the questions you pose from a physics perspective. It's very readable and you can find ultra cheap paperback copies all over the place.
Caveat: It was written in the 1990's so some of the physics is a bit outdated. Nonetheless it's a good quick accessible read.
Cheers.
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