A Brief Mystery of Time

At Malaka Spice, a fine dining restaurant in the heart of Pune City, I was sipping beer sitting across from my friend, a dynamo of a woman, owner of synthesis of ardour in her behaviour, an exquisite womanhood. Her other expertise are art, humanity, harmony, emotional and social intelligence over science and factual knowledge. Someone who is intelligent in emotional and social grounds should be also accounted for high speed, ability to learn, understand, assessment, decision making, synthesizing and high IQ. And yet, preserved herself from impostor syndrome or egomania . She has expertise about certain topics, but often noticed her spending a lot of time listening rather putting herself forward. Conversation with her never results expound. She blends perfectly. At this evening, we were deep in conversation as the waiter filled her glass with Martini and served us plates of black pepper fish with garlic, (Pandhali)chicken slices wrapped in some leaves and flat noodles and crunchy peanuts finely tossed in sprouts with lime.

As always my mind whirlwind of thoughts, twirling about anything and everything.

'I am already so busy with my IT stuff and now starting this new cafe business, how am I going to manage the time, to do everything?'  I said and emptied the Corona, encountering in its descent the cool ecstasy.

'I've promised to develop and deliver an application within next two months, there are festivals and holidays like every day, in coming months. I have promises to deliver but with only 24 hrs a day.' So saying, I let fall in my mouth, still left last drop of Corona.

'Hold your horses!! Dude, Time is elastic' She said while looking at me through her captivating but yet so stern eyes.

'Have you ever felt like hours have passed, when in fact, it had only been minutes?'

 I nodded in agreement.

'Time is elastic? hmmm'  I resorted to my mind, for the answer.

'You see, these 24 hours of each day are like elastic. It's up to each one of us how we stretch it and fill in as many activities as we can. And then you create the time to do things you are inspired to do, time becomes elastic'.

Well, my eyebrows arched higher as this struck to my head, rubbing that bruised organ with one hand while attempting to signal waiter with other hand for repeat. I was surprised and thinking that how easily she said 'Time is elastic'. Word is 'The Time'.

'Well, yes. I guess, I know exactly what you mean' as I leaned toward her and shrink my eyes(in habitual reserve). My gestures definitely were not in line with my saying, which she noticed and ignored very conveniently for my convenience.

So engrossed in drinks, food and her talks that I lose track of time? When noticed,We were late. I smiled to her and said 'Time is really elastic, It shrunk!’. At that moment I experienced the first hand meaning of 'time is elastic'.

TIME has always been a favorite subject for legion of people(mine too). The concept of time varies in different cultures and geographies. I'm going to go a bit further into this than normally ’coz it has intrigued Philosophers, Scientists and Artists, since quite a long time.

Aborigines believed that time can’t be measured and divided. Therefore they never celebrated birthdays. Many African ethnic groups believe in the present only and consider the past and future as an envelope of/to it. Artists work also reflected the same. Since Monet couldn't capture everything in one scene, he painted the same scene over and over during the day to create the sequence in order to depict motion.  Picasso also realized the same and therefore liked to paint all sides of any surface simultaneously. And so did the other Cubist’s like Braque, Pollock, Hopi and Navajo. Indians depicted the same in their paintings. 

Thence 'Time is elastic' deserves considerable tinkering. Back in time it was Einstein, who discovered first that Time slows as one approaches to the speed of light, scientists refer to this as time dilation.

And it was Hendrik Lorentz, who figured the physical phenomenon of a decrease in length detected by an observer when an objects travels at any non-zero velocity relative to that observer. This contraction is usually only noticeable at the speed of light and is called length contraction.

I guess it’s proved and we all now know that time dilation and length contraction actually occurs.

Let’s take a look at the following diagram. Where X-axis is time and Y-axis is space.

In following diagram 1.a we can see even when person is not in motion in Space(Y axis), still he ages or he moves in time.

            

Similarly In diagram 1.b we can see when a person starts moving in Y axis i.e. into space. As his speed increases in y axis. His time slows or he covers more space in time.

The graph explains that quantized region is spatial or space-time area, which doesn't really mean that time has to be quantized   but there is a smallest area to a region you can write. However, this region could be very small in space and very long in time, or very large in space and very short in time. Which can be logically reasoned with motion. 

Motion, in space slows time.

So as the motion approaches speed of light in diagram 1.c, time freezes. So mastering the art of motion can lead us to control the time.

But what is motion?? 

When an object gets from point X to point Y in time T, object is supposed to be in motion.

Imagine an archer who shoots an arrow from position A to the target at position B. Now imagine that arrow in flight. This arrow will take some 'time' to hit the target. Now divide up this time into a series of moments or indivisible instants per Se. At any given instant or moment if we look at the arrow, it is at some fixed position and it is not moving. So individually in each instant if we see the arrow, it is fixed at some position and is not moving.

Take it this way if we had captured the flight of the arrow in video or camera, and then watch it frame by frame, what will we notice is that in each frame the arrow is simply hovering in the air. The arrow appears to be in motion only when we bring all frames together. In each frame, the arrow is motionless. So throughout all time(group of instants), the arrow is at rest. Thus motion cannot happen. that exactly is arrow paradox, by Zeno.

Zeno’s arrow paradox appears to show that motion is impossible. It works by taking a snapshot of an arrow at a point (either in space or in time) in its flight. At that point, and at every other, the arrow is motionless. If at every point and at every moment in its flight the arrow is still, then how is it possible for it to move from the bow to its target? If there is no point, spatially or temporally, at which the arrow is moving, then the arrow is motionless. Contrary to appearances, an arrow in flight cannot move.

Lets do one more analysis but length now. Imagine the same archer with a bow and an arrow. Target is at position B at the other end of room at distance D. If you shoot the arrow, it has to travel from position A to position B. Assume distance D is 100 m. To reach position B arrow has to travel 100 m. Before it has to reach 100 m, it has to reach halfway i.e. (100/2 m) 50 m first. Before it has to reach 50 m, it has to reach halfway i.e. 25 m first. And before it has to reach 25 m, it has to reach halfway i.e. 12.5 m first. Rather repeating that last sentence a grillion times, let me summarize distance can be divided into infinite halfway. i.e. 100, 50, 25, 12.5, 6.25, 3.125......and so on up to infinite series of points.

So to reach the target which is just 100 m, arrow has to travel pass through these infinite points. To travel infinite points we need infinite time. Which says arrow will never reach at position B which is just 100 m away. Contrary to reality, an arrow can never hit the target. In fact, similar reasoning applies to any other alleged case of motion, so it seems that movement in general is impossible. :-)

Zeno abolishes motion, saying 'What is in motion moves neither in the place it is nor in one in which it is not'. But Zeno's paradoxes is open for discussion provided we settle with an answer on to very basic question that if anything but space and time are infinitely divisible. The question is not about discrete or continuous nature of space and time but ‘bout if we have sufficient wherewithal, apt enough to assess the results. Just because some number system enables us to give a number between any two numbers and we use them for space and time in habitual reserve, doesn't suffice the reasons to use them to measure the instances of space and time between two instants of space and time. Thence, we may need to introduce some different fundamental units to measure the immeasurable units of space and time. 

Fundamental units? Already there are: Planck length and Planck time. Well Calculus is also used to deal with computation related to space, time, and motion. Calculus provides tools, especially the limits, functions, derivatives, integrals, and the infinite series, which helps to resolve these paradoxes.

Above computations stands true with presumption that time and matter are similar; an ontological entity. The Calculus and Planck’s justification are strong enough rather are basis of modern mathematics but still can’t explain a pattern for dividing time/space, which  devoid of regularity and also divide it into pieces.

There is a story circulating among scientist about a man who lost his watch 'Please, Sir, what is time?' And the scientist replies, 'I'm sorry, you'll have to ask a philosopher. I'm just a physicist.'

IMHO it needs to be a philosopher to decipher time, space and motion. IMHO(In my honest opinion), Bergson's was best in putting motion in words—which he thought expressed an absurdity—‘movement is composed of immobilities’.

Epistemology is not my area of interest but Metaphysics. So coming back to Ontology, the Plato way to see the world. Who along with Descartes, Leibniz, Berkeley and Mach supported that space is the matter of which material objects are composed. They strongly believed that space and time can't be separated from matter. And so the paradox which actually depends in part, on stopping at each infinitesimal point.

The Planck's, Calculus's, Plato's and other's explanation doesn't really address the phenomenological issue raised by Zeno's argument. Weierstrass’s continuous function is a static completed entity, invoking this model supports the fact which sounds as an agreement with Zeno, who actually was defending his mentor , Parmenides argument that motion is an illusion and does not truly exist.

Motion is an illusion and as I said back that mastering the art of motion can lead us to control the time. Speed up the illusion :-). 

Easy!! Isn't? Not really. Because, for something to achieve speed of light, its (rest) mass must be 0. ‘Coz if an object with non-zero mass could go at speed of light, according to the transformation formula, its mass would be infinite. Since there is no such thing as 'infinite mass', so it is not possible for something with non-zero rest mass to go at light speed. Also if any object with mass travelling at such a speed will become increasingly massive and therefore will be more difficult to accelerate.

This is quite evident with photons, which moves with speed of light  and has zero rest mass or mass-less. In my earlier blog 'Universe is Motion Picture' I mentioned that photons should be independent of time. Thus for photons time is stretched so much that it is almost frozen and therefore for photon time seems to be paused. So achieving speed of light seems to be impossible for us due to mass.Will  time never be elastic for us?

My friend, with high quotient, broader vision and excel at linguistic and logical intelligence must had meant something if she said ‘Time is elastic’. And yes she does. With achieving speed of light one will pause his time but with any motion we decrease the duration in time. By moving incredibly fast! Time can be stretched and shrunk, and thence TIME IS ELASTIC!! For apparent reasons she is dynamo of a woman.

Einstein also discovered that speed isn't the only way to slow time, gravity also slows time. And gravity is very much attribute of mass. Lets zero in on gravity. :-) Not now may be next time.

I guess to complete this blog I need to meet my friend again. But to reach her I need to reach the halfway first. But to reach the halfway, I need to reach the halfway of halfway first.(pun intended)

Thank God Zeno’s paradox is finally a paradox else I couldn't be able to reach her.