r/Time

“If you think too long about this, you’ll go down the drain.”  Physicist Richard Feynmann

Feynmann, the discoverer of “sum over histories” in quantum mechanics, understandably found it troubling to imagine a particle having more than one “history”—let alone many histories.  Yet his own approach to calculating this mystery is an essential part of scientific understanding today—as long as you don’t “think about it” too much!

Feynmann’s mentor was John Archibald Wheeler, who soon “thought about” some of the far-reaching implications of Feynmann’s discovery.  Wheeler pointed out that the light of a distant star, passing the gravitational field of a “superstar” billions of years in the past, can be switched to the other side of that star, today, by the human choice of an astronomer, Now.

But how?  Einstein showed that there is no universal moment in time. Today is not the same as today, billions of light-years away.  “Now” is entirely local, and only affects what we see in this moment. “Virtual roads of time” understands that the potentials of that distant starlight follow many histories. Astronomy can choose Now which one to "observe," and thus actualize.

Why is it so “scary” to think about these “potentials” of history?  We try to plan our choices ahead of time, using our imagination, instincts and memory.  Thrown into an unfamiliar situation, we suddenly don’t know what to do.  Our familiar environment suddenly changes into an unpredictable “spook world.” Fear always arises from the unknown.

Humans tend to think that history is the most stable of all our certainties.  We can’t entirely predict the future, but at least we know what “happened” in the past—don’t we?  Well, we’re pretty sure of our own memories—okay, let’s say everybody’s memories, and the written records of them.  And surely we can trust archaeology, geology—but not astronomy?  

“Many histories” opens up a lot of scary territory—but, says VRT, let’s not let fear control us!

Stupid question, maybe not, but is there like a single comprehensive earth time? And if not, why not? If we meet aliens or something if they asked “hey what time is it back home” and then the human’s like, oh for me it’s 5:30 PM and the another guy is like, oh it’s 12:40 wouldn’t that be confusing?

I was working from home this afternoon. I have two dogs who were sitting at my feet. My husband came home from work but left again going to run errands. About an hour later, I heard him come home and enter the stone driveway. The dogs raised up - one of them whined and barked thinking he was home. I heard the door open. I heard it close the dogs both began wagging their tails. I continued to finish the email I was working on which was just a few short minutes and sent it. About that time, I received a text from my husband saying “I’m about there” - I remember thinking it was strange because I just heard him come in. I thought that the text must have been delayed and shrugged it off. I got up, walked downstairs and noticed his car wasn’t in the driveway. I called out for him - he wasn’t home. I checked both doors. They were locked. The dogs and I walked out on the porch. A few moments later my husband pulled in the driveway. It literally startled me because I know I heard that door open and him come in. My dog whined and barked. We all heard him come in. I did tell my husband about it. He kinda laughed it off - and we walked in the house. I can’t shake it off. It was the strangest thing. From the time I thought I heard him come in to me receiving the text to me walking downstairs was approximately maybe 5 minutes if that. There is no way he could have left - got in the car pulled away and came back. We live on a mountain, in the woods and the roads are curvy. It just wasn’t possible within the time frame I thought I heard him come in to me standing on the porch. What in the world did I experience?

I have always been a time nerd, and was toying with the idea of decimal time a couple years ago. I feel like there is never enough time, and I hate to waste it.

So I divided the day up into 100 pieces (I call them Lens), each 864 seconds long. The clock resets at solar midnight (same as traditional time) and this is the only real connection with traditional 12/24 hour time. (well, 25, 50, and 75 match up well also...)

Doing it this way, it's really easy to tell where we are in the day and how much I have left. For me, the productive day begins around 25 (6am) and ends around 75 (9pm). The lentime is by definition a percentage of the day so far.

This is not meant to be a serious call to change the way we tell time, just a fun diversion that I'd been thinking about.

Check it out and tell me what you think - I get nothing out of this so I hope this doesn't come off as promotion, just wanted to share with other time nerds.

The mobile and desktop versions are very different, fyi.

www.lentime.com

“…we have imagined the existence of “eternity,” a strange world outside of time…”  Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time, 2018

Rovelli understands the unreality of time better than almost anyone, but along with almost everyone, he seems to have misunderstood eternity.  What we call “time” can happen only inside of eternity, which is its “container.”  It is eternity that’s actually real—and the “virtual roads of time” (VRT) are mapped out within it.

Because human thinking is rooted in our “riverlike” time experience, we often confuse our use of the word “eternity” with the idea of a universal flow.  “Eternal” is supposed to mean something like “time without end.”  But while an eternal future is imagined, the very idea of an eternal past is seldom considered—surely there has to be a beginning!

This confusion lies in a false assumption:  “Eternity must exist as an unending extension of some real, measurable universal time.”  But the opposite may be true:  In VRT our “time” is just a moving picture show of linked “Now states” scattered across an eternal “landscape.”  Time only exists in us, in our flickering conscious observation along “informational roads of Nows.”  

A similar idea of time is set forth in Julian Barbour’s earlier book The End of Time (1999.)  His “Platonia” is like the real “eternity,” containing all possible different states of the universe.  Eternity includes Everything, and if there is anything “outside” of eternity, it’s not accessible to us, and probably not conceivable or understandable from “within.” 

Rovelli himself clearly represents time as human-centered:  “Time, then, is the form in which we beings, whose brains are made up essentially of memory and foresight, interact with the world: it is the source of our identity.”  Time “as such” is not real:  “There is no special variable “time,” there is no difference between past and future, there is no spacetime.”

Eternity, however, is real. VRT visualizes it as a vast information matrix underlying physical reality.  Since it includes us and our experience of time, it’s Everything there is.